Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: Song cycles
- All Subjects: Piano music--Analysis, appreciation.
- Creators: Norton, Kay
- Creators: Holbrook, Amy
Description
This document is intended to show the various kinds of stylistically appropriate melodic and rhythmic ornamentation that can be used in the improvisation of the Sarabandes by J.S. Bach. Traditional editions of Bach's and other Baroque-era keyboard works have reflected evolving historical trends. The historical performance movement and other attempts to "clean up" pre-1950s romanticized performances have greatly limited the freedom and experimentation that was the original intention of these dances. Prior to this study, few ornamented editions of these works have been published. Although traditional practices do not necessarily encourage classical improvisation in performance I argue that manipulation of the melodic and rhythmic layers over the established harmonic progressions will not only provide diversity within the individual dance movements, but also further engage the ears of the performer and listener which encourages further creative exploration. I will focus this study on the ornamentation of all six Sarabandes from J.S. Bach's French Suites and show how various types of melodic and rhythmic variation can provide aurally pleasing alternatives to the composed score without disrupting the harmonic fluency. The author intends this document to be used as a pedagogical tool and the fully ornamented Sarabandes from J.S. Bach's French Suites are included with this document.
ContributorsOakley, Ashley (Author) / Meir, Baruch (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Pagano, Caio (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Libby Larsen is one of the most performed and acclaimed composers today. She is a spirited, compelling, and sensitive composer whose music enhances the poetry of America's most prominent authors. Notable among her works are song cycles for soprano based on the poetry of female writers, among them novelist and poet Willa Cather (1873-1947). Larsen has produced two song cycles on works from Cather's substantial output of fiction: one based on Cather's short story, "Eric Hermannson's Soul," titled Margaret Songs: Three Songs from Willa Cather (1996); and later, My Antonia (2000), based on Cather's novel of the same title. In Margaret Songs, Cather's poetry and short stories--specifically the character of Margaret Elliot--combine with Larsen's unique compositional style to create a surprising collaboration. This study explores how Larsen in these songs delves into the emotional and psychological depths of Margaret's character, not fully formed by Cather. It is only through Larsen's music and Cather's poetry that Margaret's journey through self-discovery and love become fully realized. This song cycle is a glimpse through the eyes of two prominent female artists on the societal pressures placed upon Margaret's character, many of which still resonate with women in today's culture. This study examines the work Margaret Songs by discussing Willa Cather, her musical influences, and the conditions surrounding the writing of "Eric Hermannson's Soul." It looks also into Cather's influence on Libby Larsen and the commission leading to Margaret Songs. Finally, a description of the musical, dramatic, and textual content of the songs completes this interpretation of the interactions of Willa Cather, Libby Larsen, and the character of Margaret Elliot.
ContributorsMcLain, Christi Marie (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Arnold Schoenberg's 1908-09 song cycle, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten [The Book of the Hanging Gardens], opus 15, represents one of his most decisive early steps into the realm of musical modernism. In the midst of personal and artistic crises, Schoenberg set texts by Stefan George in a style he called "pantonality," and described his composition as radically new. Though stylistically progressive, however, Schoenberg's musical achievement had certain ideologically conservative roots: the composer numbered among turn-of-the-century Viennese artists and thinkers whose opposition to the conventional and the popular--in favor of artistic autonomy and creativity--concealed a reactionary misogyny. A critical reading of Hanging Gardens through the lens of gender reveals that Schoenberg, like many of his contemporaries, incorporated strong frauenfeindlich [anti-women] elements into his work, through his modernist account of artistic creativity, his choice of texts, and his musical settings. Although elements of Hanging Gardens' atonal music suggest that Schoenberg valued gendered-feminine principles in his compositional style, a closer analysis of the work's musical language shows an intact masculinist hegemony. Through his deployment of uncanny tonal reminiscences, underlying tonal gestures, and closed forms in Hanging Gardens, Schoenberg ensures that the feminine-associated "excesses" of atonality remain under masculine control. This study draws upon the critical musicology of Susan McClary while arguing that Schoenberg's music is socially contingent, affected by the gender biases of his social and literary milieux. It addresses likely influences on Schoenberg's worldview including the philosophy of Otto Weininger, Freudian psychoanalysis, and a complex web of personal relationships. Finally, this analysis highlights the relevance of Schoenberg's world and its constructions of gender to modern performance practice, and argues that performers must consider interrelated historical, textual, and musical factors when interpreting Hanging Gardens in new contexts.
ContributorsGinger, Kerry Anne (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Mook, Richard (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Bohuslav Martinù (1890-1959) was a prolific composer who wrote nearly 100 works for piano. His highly imaginative and eclectic style blends elements of the Baroque, Impressionism, Twentieth-century idioms and Czech folk music. His music is fresh and appealing to the listener, yet it remains intriguing as to how all the elements are combined in a cohesive manner. Martinù himself provides clues to his compositional process. He believed in pure musical expression and the intensity of the musical idea, without the need for extra-musical or programmatic connotations. He espoused holistic and organic views toward musical perception and composition, at times referring to a work as an "organism." This study examines Martinù's piano style in light of his many diverse influences and personal philosophy. The first portion of this paper discusses Martinù's overall style through several piano miniatures written throughout his career. It takes into consideration the composer's personal background, musical influences and aesthetic convictions. The second portion focuses specifically on Martinù's first large-scale work for piano, the Fantasie et Toccata, H. 281. Written during a time in which Martinù was black-listed by the Nazis and forced to flee Europe, this piece bears witness to the chaotic events of WWII through its complexity and intensity of character. The discussion and analysis of the Fantasie et Toccata intends to serve as a guide to interpretation for the performer or listener and also seeks to promote the piano music of Bohuslav Martinù to a wider audience.
ContributorsCrane-Waleczek, Jennifer (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Hackbarth, Glenn (Committee member) / Meyer Thompson, Janice (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Owen Middleton (b. 1941) enjoys an established and growing reputation as a composer of classical guitar music, but his works for piano are comparatively little known. The close investigation offered here of Middleton's works for piano reveals the same impressive craftsmanship, compelling character, and innovative spirit found in his works for guitar. Indeed, the only significant thing Middleton's piano music currently lacks is the well-deserved attention of professional players and a wider audience. Middleton's piano music needs to be heard, not just discussed, so one of this document's purposes is to provide a recorded sample of his piano works. While the overall repertoire for solo piano is vast, and new works become established in that repertoire with increasing difficulty, Middleton's piano works have a significant potential to find their way into the concert hall as well as the private teaching studio. His solo piano music is highly effective, well suited to the instrument, and, perhaps most importantly, fresh sounding and truly original. His pedagogical works are of equal value. Middleton's piano music offers something for everyone: there one finds daring virtuosity, effusions of passion, intellectual force, colorful imagery, poetry, humor, and even a degree of idiomatic innovation. This study aims to reveal key aspects of the composer's musical style, especially his style of piano writing, and to provide pianists with helpful analytical, technical, and interpretive insights. These descriptions of the music are supported with recorded examples, selected from the works for solo piano written between 1962 and 1993: Sonata for Piano, Childhood Scenes, Katie's Collection, and Toccata for Piano. The complete scores of the recorded works are included in the appendix. A chapter briefly describing the piano pieces since 1993 concludes the study and invites the reader to further investigations of this unique and important body of work.
ContributorsMoreau, Barton Andrew (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Spring, Robert (Committee member) / Gardner, Joshua (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Emily Dickinson is a well-known American poet of the nineteenth century, and her oeuvre consists of nearly 2,000 posthumously published poems. Written largely in hymn form with unique ideas of punctuation and grammar, her poetry attracts composers with its inherent musicality. The twentieth-century American composers Aaron Copland, Ernst Bacon, Lee Hoiby, and Gordon Getty have created song settings of Dickinson's poetry. Copland's song cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (1949-50) is admired by many as an illustration of poetry; however, the Dickinson cycles by Bacon, Hoiby, and Getty are also valuable, lesser-known representations of her writing. Settings of one poem, "There came a Wind like a Bugle--", are common among Copland's Twelve Poems, Bacon's cycle Songs from Emily Dickinson: Nature, Time, and Space (1930), Hoiby's Four Dickinson Songs (1988), and Getty's The White Election (1982). These latter three settings have previously undergone some theoretical analysis; however, this paper considers a performance analysis of these songs from a singer's point of view. Chapter 1 provides background for this study. Chapter 2 consists of a biographical overview of Dickinson's life and writing style, as well as a brief literary analysis of "There came a Wind like a Bugle--". Chapters 3, 4, and 5 discuss Ernst Bacon, Lee Hoiby, and Gordon Getty, respectively; each chapter consists of a short biography of the composer and a discussion of his writing style, a brief theoretical analysis of his song setting, and commentary on the merits of his setting from the point of view of a singer. Observations of the depiction of mood in the song and challenges for the singer are also noted. This paper provides a comparative analysis of three solo vocal settings of one Emily Dickinson poem as a guide for singers who wish to begin studying song settings of this poem. The Bacon and Hoiby settings were found to be lyrical, tonal representations of the imagery presented in "There came a Wind like a Bugle--". The Getty setting was found to be a musically starker representation of the poem's atmosphere. These settings are distinctive and worthy of study and performance.
ContributorsCastellone, Amanda Beth (Author) / Doan, Jerry (Thesis advisor) / Kopta, Anne E (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Mills, Robert (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Musical Impressionism has been most significantly reflected through the works of Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). These two key figures exhibit the essence of this art and their piano music remains substantial, influential, and frequently assigned and played today. Nevertheless, from a pedagogical perspective, important factors required in achieving a successful performance of Debussy and Ravel's piano music--delicate tone production, independent voicing, complicated rhythm, sensitive pedaling, and a knowledgeable view of Impressionism--are musically and technically beyond the limit of early advanced students. This study provides a collection of short piano pieces by nine lesser-known European and American composers--Edward MacDowell (1861-1908), Charles Griffes (1884-1920), Marion Bauer (1887-1955), Cyril Scott (1879-1970), Arnold Bax (1883-1953), Selim Palmgren (1878-1951), Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) and Federico Mompou (1893-1987). They were influenced by impressionistic aesthetics or composed at one time in an impressionistic manner over a span of their lifetimes and their music provides a bridge to the more advanced impressionistic pieces of Debussy and Ravel for early advanced students. These composers' selected short piano pieces display richly colored sonority through the use of impressionistic techniques such as non-functional harmony (parallel chords and free modulation), exotic setting (e.g. modality, pentatonic and whole-tone scales), ostinato figures, bell-sound imitation, and extended texture. Moreover, personal interpretive elements, such as poetic and folklore references, were incorporated in some piano works of MacDowell, Griffes, Bauer, Scott, and Bax; among them MacDowell and Bax were particularly inspired by Celtic and Nordic materials. Mompou infused Spanish folklores in his individual naïve style. Most importantly, these selected short piano pieces are approachable and attractive to early advanced pianists. These works, as well as other largely undiscovered impressionistic piano character pieces, ought to be a great source of preliminary repertoire as preparation for the music of Debussy and Ravel.
ContributorsChien, Chieh Jenny (Author) / Thompson, Janice Meyer (Thesis advisor) / Hamilton, Robert (Committee member) / Humphreys, Jere (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Pagano, Caio (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT
This study will have three sections: 1) outlining the imperative need to include in-depth character study in the preparation of art-song performance; 2) addressing the insufficient theatrical equipping of young collegiate singers in leading undergraduate applied voice programs and its causes, and 3) suggesting methods to advance acting training in classical voice programs. The primary goal will be to improve art song performance pedagogy and the performer’s ability to emotionally communicate with the audience. The first section will demonstrate why character study is necessary in the preparation of a sound art song performance. The musical works used in this study will be Songs of Travel (1904) by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A Young Man’s Exhortation (1929) by Gerald Finzi. These works provide examples of the cycle type in which a single character moves forward through time during the course of the song cycle. The second section will investigate the inadequate instruction received by students in undergraduate voice programs, concerning character analysis, by gathering course requirements from a variety of public and private universities. It will also examine the accrediting bodies that dictate much of the standardized curriculum across the majority of music schools in the U. S. such as the National Association of Schools of Music and the Higher Learning Commission. In the final section, a number of improvements will be suggested and examined according to their viability in training singers to convey both the musical and dramatic context found in the art song repertoire. The sources used in the course of this study include the scores (Boosey and Hawkes) of the aforementioned works, as well as published research on those works. Syllabi and curriculum checksheets from various university voice programs are also used to determine the required course requirements in contemporary applied voice degrees. The accrediting processes from bodies such as the National Association of Schools of Music and the Higher Learning Commission are used in my assessment of obstacles that those processes may inadvertently present.
This study will have three sections: 1) outlining the imperative need to include in-depth character study in the preparation of art-song performance; 2) addressing the insufficient theatrical equipping of young collegiate singers in leading undergraduate applied voice programs and its causes, and 3) suggesting methods to advance acting training in classical voice programs. The primary goal will be to improve art song performance pedagogy and the performer’s ability to emotionally communicate with the audience. The first section will demonstrate why character study is necessary in the preparation of a sound art song performance. The musical works used in this study will be Songs of Travel (1904) by Ralph Vaughan Williams and A Young Man’s Exhortation (1929) by Gerald Finzi. These works provide examples of the cycle type in which a single character moves forward through time during the course of the song cycle. The second section will investigate the inadequate instruction received by students in undergraduate voice programs, concerning character analysis, by gathering course requirements from a variety of public and private universities. It will also examine the accrediting bodies that dictate much of the standardized curriculum across the majority of music schools in the U. S. such as the National Association of Schools of Music and the Higher Learning Commission. In the final section, a number of improvements will be suggested and examined according to their viability in training singers to convey both the musical and dramatic context found in the art song repertoire. The sources used in the course of this study include the scores (Boosey and Hawkes) of the aforementioned works, as well as published research on those works. Syllabi and curriculum checksheets from various university voice programs are also used to determine the required course requirements in contemporary applied voice degrees. The accrediting processes from bodies such as the National Association of Schools of Music and the Higher Learning Commission are used in my assessment of obstacles that those processes may inadvertently present.
ContributorsCarpenter, Donald Justin (Author) / Britton, David (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
John La Montaine (b. 1920) has devoted his life to music composition. His major works total 62 opus numbers, including operas, concertos, songs, chamber music, and orchestral works as well as eleven compositions for solo piano. Among his composition teachers were Nadia Boulanger and Howard Hanson, and his first piano concerto was awarded the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Music. He was active also as a concert soloist and collaborative pianist, appearing on prestigious concert series and with first-rank orchestras. Despite his obvious success, La Montaine did not seek publicity. As a result, the majority of his music is not widely known. La Montaine's eleven compositions for solo piano are written in a wide variety of styles, from tonal to serial, with many based on a tonal center, and they range in difficulty from the easiest beginner pieces to challenging concert works. His elementary works include a set of easy canons and many small pieces written for an early piano method. An imaginative set of children's pieces and a small virtuoso étude challenge the intermediate pianist. A diverse range of works for the advanced pianist includes a serious sonata, a lively toccata, several contrapuntal works, lilting dance pieces, and unique smaller pieces. The recording included with this research project is the first to present La Montaine's complete works for solo piano. The composer's own recordings of many of his works are difficult to obtain, and only a few have been recorded commercially. While some of his works remain in publishers' catalogs, those which are out-of-print can be obtained via interlibrary loan. This recording and discussion of La Montaine's solo piano pieces are intended to make his work better known.
ContributorsO'Brien, Andrew Charles (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Cosand, Walter (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Meyer Thompson, Janice (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The purpose of this study was to: (1) record and describe a brief history of the life and career of Bolivian composer Dr. Nicolás Suárez Eyzaguirre, and (2) write an analysis from a vocal performer's perspective of Suárez's song cycle for soprano and piano, Monólogos del Desierto, with texts by Dr. Guillermo Mariaca Iturri.
In August of 2013, I traveled to La Paz, Cochabamba, and Coroico, Bolivia, with translator Dr. Marie Cooper Hoffman for thirteen days in order to conduct interviews with Suárez, his family, his colleagues, his composition professors, and other professional musicians. In addition to both in-person and e-mail interviews, I reviewed television productions, videos, and newspaper/magazine articles that featured interviews with Suárez and/or reviews of his works. Also, I familiarized myself with Suárez's compositional style by performing a leading role in the 2011 world premiere of his opera El Compadre; collecting and listening to as many recordings of his works as I could find; and reading the transcript of Suárez's Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Recital. For this study, I focused specifically on the compositional style of his three-song cycle Monólogos del Desierto. A performance of the work will be part of my defense of this paper.
In August of 2013, I traveled to La Paz, Cochabamba, and Coroico, Bolivia, with translator Dr. Marie Cooper Hoffman for thirteen days in order to conduct interviews with Suárez, his family, his colleagues, his composition professors, and other professional musicians. In addition to both in-person and e-mail interviews, I reviewed television productions, videos, and newspaper/magazine articles that featured interviews with Suárez and/or reviews of his works. Also, I familiarized myself with Suárez's compositional style by performing a leading role in the 2011 world premiere of his opera El Compadre; collecting and listening to as many recordings of his works as I could find; and reading the transcript of Suárez's Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Recital. For this study, I focused specifically on the compositional style of his three-song cycle Monólogos del Desierto. A performance of the work will be part of my defense of this paper.
ContributorsStanford, Allison (Author) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Thesis advisor) / Dreyfoos, Dale (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015