▼ World-renowned contemporary composer and flutist Jennifer Higdon has made her mark on the music world with her innovative and highly individual compositions and has made significant contributions to the mixed chamber ensemble repertoire. This research examines Higdon's individual approach to composition by focusing on stylistic trends in selected chamber compositions. This DMA document examines the background of Jennifer Higdon with emphasis on her musical influences and the orchestral compositions that have heightened her fame. The focal point of the research includes detailed stylistic analyses and discussions of the chamber compositions Summer Shimmers, DASH-, and running the edgE. Included in the stylistic analyses and subsequent discussions are the structural, intervallic, harmonic, motivic, lyrical, and rhythmic elements and trends that permeate her compositions. These elements reveal many of her trademark characteristics and define her unique compositional style in the context of her chamber works. Advisors/Committee Members: Garner, Bradley.

▼ Before the emergence and subsequent dominance of professional and school-based performing ensembles in the United States, music making was the domain of community-based groups that varied in size, scope, quality, and performance goals. Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, one of the most common musical ventures was the industrial or corporate-sponsored ensemble. Advanced for a complex web of reasons, these groups served an important and often overlooked part in introducing communities to both music-making and regular concert attendance. Based in Middletown, Ohio, the American Rolling Mill Corporation (Armco) sponsored a concert band that serves as an exemplary case study of this phenomenon. While many community-based ensembles did not last nor had little local or national impact, the Armco Band achieved success as a regional and national entertainment act during the twenty years of its existence, 1920-40. A key factor in this success was the leadership of Middletown native Frank Simon. Dr. Simon founded the band after leaving the legendary Sousa Band. He utilized his extensive performing experience, knowledge of band repertoire, and formidable musical skills to shape the Armco Band into a professional ensemble of considerable ability. The purpose of this essay is to present a case study of the Armco Band as an important popular entertainment phenomenon in American music. The primary function of the Armco Band was to entertain a mass audience, and this has an inexorable link to the Armco corporate agenda. This paper examines the history, personnel, programming, and community reaction to the Armco Band to explore the intertwined ideas of commercialism and music production. Advisors/Committee Members: Milligan, Dr. Terrence.

▼ Revered as Denmark’s most celebrated musical figure and regarded as one of the finest, albeit under recognized composers, Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) holds a place as one of the most individual and creative artists of his time. Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and with consideration to the dramatically changing musical climate of that time, Nielsen’s vast output is stylistically complex. His music spans an array of styles, with elements of Romanticism in his early works, to an outright rejection of these same principles and an adoption of extensive progressivism in later works, all the while maintaining features of neoclassicism. There are six known works by Carl Nielsen that include flute in a solo or chamber role. These works date from his late, mature compositional period and include a short piece for solo flute from the incidental music to Aladdin, Op. 34 (1918–19); three pieces from the incidental music to Moderen (The mother), Op. 41 (1920): “Taagen letter” (The fog is lifting) for flute and piano or harp, “Børnene spiller” (The children are playing) for solo flute, and “Tro og håb spiller” (Faith and hope are playing) for flute and viola; the Wind Quintet, Op. 43 (1922); and the Flute Concerto (1926). The latter two works enjoy particular significance and popularity in the flute repertoire. This thesis demonstrates how the stylistic development in Nielsen’s late works evolves from simple, traditional roots and merges into a progressive, multifaceted style, as exemplified in the flute works. Through examination of these works, as well as other contemporaneous works by Nielsen, this study explores the nature and development of Nielsen’s style, identifying important compositional and aesthetic hallmarks. The analysis addresses Nielsen’s treatment of specific neoclassical or retrospective elements that are common to these late works, as well as the juxtaposition of many of these conventional elements with contemporary, innovative features. Through consideration of both the similarities of and differences between these various works, this study traces how the progression and amalgamation of many influences and stylistic traits are evident in the works that feature the flute. Advisors/Committee Members: mcclung, Dr. bruce d.

▼ Extended flute techniques include many different ways of producing non-traditional sonorities and effects on the flute and have been an important compositional staple of Avant-garde composers in the twentieth century. While many of these techniques developed exclusively within the Western tradition, many others derived from influence of non-Western flute traditions. Three East-Asian composers, Isang Yun (1917–1995), Toru Takemitsu (1930–1996), and Kazuo Fukushima (b.1930), contributed to this performance practice style by drawing from the flute traditions of their cultures. By focusing on the unaccompanied solo flute works of these three composers, this document will demonstrate many of the important applications of extended flute techniques in the twentieth century present their East-Asian influences and provide performance suggestions for this repertoire. Advisors/Committee Members: Garner, Bradley.

▼ With a career spanning over six decades, Ravi Shankar has been the seminal figure in the dissemination of Indian classical music to the West. His presentation of Indian music to Western audiences has heightened American interest in and appreciation for Indian music and has resulted in the exportation of thousands of sitarsto Western countries. His extensive training in Indian music, coupled with his exposure to Western society, has led to a compositional style that embraces elements of both cultures. Shankar is not the only Indian musician, however, to explore Indian-Western fusion. A less well-known Indian musician who has contributed extensively to this genre is John Mayer, a composer and violinist from Calcutta. More than a decade before the partnership between Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar at the 1966 Bath Festival, Mayer began composing works that combined these two distinct musics. Shankar’s and Mayer’s careers have many parallels with regard to Indian classical training and exposure to Western society. Both also created their own musical languages for compositions that combine elements of Indian and Western music. However, differences in their biographies have led to divergent approaches to Indian-Western fusion. While learning to compose effectively in this new genre, both composers were drawn to the combination of the flute and harp as a medium for this expression: Shankar composed L’aube enchantée(The enchanted dawn) in 1976, and Mayer followed with Nava Rasa(Nine moods) in 2003. This document provides a comparative study of L’aube enchantéeand Nava Rasaand thereby illustrates the composers’ diverse approaches to Indian-Western fusion. First Indian aspects are explored, followed by Western influences, and finally elements shared by both traditions. In addition, biographical information about Shankar and Mayer demonstrates how the degree to which they borrowed from each tradition reflects their differences in background and training. Advisors/Committee Members: mcclung, Dr. bruce d.

▼ The purpose of this document is to present the history of extended techniques for the flute and examine their potential as a teaching tool. This study will trace the development of the flute’s technique and range of musical expression with special emphasis placed on early innovations, significant composers and flutists, and research that ultimately resulted in new effects and sonorities. It is also necessary to catalog the established extended techniques by discussing, defining, and illustrating these effects through musical examples. Furthermore ,these devices will be discussed in reference to studio teaching and will be illustrated by exploring the benefits of, and the implementation of these techniques in the young flute player’s musical education. The paper will conclude with four orchestral excerpts for flute, each approached from an extended technique standpoint. Advisors/Committee Members: Garner, Bradley A.

▼ The Cinq incantations pour flucircte seule by Andreacute Jolivet are the manifestation of many of the philosophical, spiritual, and musical ideas that occupied the composer early in his career. Somewhat of an auto-didact in philosophical matters, through his studies Jolivet became convinced of the power of music to affect the listener in such a way as to be a means of communication between people, a pathway to self-knowledge and a bridge to spiritual transcendence. He sought to capture the ‘magic’ that would allow a composition to work on the psyche, and even the physiology, of the listener. This document will first describe the influences that impacted the development of Jolivet’s early style: a fascination with other cultures (especially their music and ritual practices), an interest in ethnology, and studies in spirituality. These three interests resulted in the development of the musical philosophy that became the impetus for the compositions from his early period, 1934-1939, when the Cinq incantations were written. An in-depth analysis of each incantation follows, concentrating on motivic development and how these motives work to express his extra-musical ideas. Next, the document examines two specific compositional techniques which most obviously serve to further Jolivet’s aims of creating a ‘magic spell’: repetition and juxtaposition of contrasting elements. Repetition has long been used as a means of reaching altered or ecstatic states; it works in these pieces in a similar way, serving to focus the mind like a chanted prayer or mantra. The juxtaposition of contrasting elements is so effective because it heightens the awareness of the listener while mimicking the constant motion and flux of our own inner lives. The document concludes that Jolivet is successful in his aim of capturing both the programmatic theme of each incantation (evocations of singular moments in the life of a person and community, such as inter-personal communication, childbirth, daily labor, spirituality and death) and, on a deeper level, accessing the resonance of universal experiences. Advisors/Committee Members: Ostoich, Mark.

▼ Aaron Copland’s final compositions include two chamber works for flute, the Duo for Flute and Piano (1971) and Threnodies I and II (1971 and 1973), all written as memorial tributes. This study will examine the Duo and Threnodies as examples of the composer’s late style with special attention given to Copland’s tendency to adopt and reinterpret material from outside sources and his desire to be liberated from his own popular style of the 1940s. The Duo, written in memory of flutist William Kincaid, is a representative example of Copland’s 1940s popular style. The piece incorporates jazz, boogie-woogie, ragtime, hymnody, Hebraic chant, medieval music, Russian primitivism, war-like passages, pastoral depictions, folk elements, and Indian exoticisms. The piece also contains a direct borrowing from Copland’s film scores The North Star (1943) and Something Wild (1961). Several expressive elements in this Vietnam-era piece relate to war and peace, shedding light on Copland’s views of the artist’s role in a war-torn society. Threnody I was composed as a tribute to Igor Stravinsky. Unlike the Duo, the piece outwardly appears independent from Copland’s 1940s idiom in its canonic, neoclassical treatment. However, the work quotes a Spanish song from Kurt Schindler’s Folk Music and Poetry of Spain and Portugal. This finding suggests that even while employing modernist techniques in the Threnody I, Copland was still incorporating 1940s ideas with specific folk connections. In 1973 Copland composed Threnody II, a memorial tribute in honor of Beatrice Cunningham, a personal friend. The distinctly modernist work employs tone rows in the forms of motives and harmonic dyads. The tone row is nevertheless combined with Copland’s signature wide intervals and relaxed pastoral style. By drawing upon score analysis; published texts by Copland, his contemporaries, and outside scholars; related literary and cultural sources; and Copland’s unpublished letters, manuscripts, and related documents in the Copland Collection at the Library of Congress, this thesis provides insight into the end of the composer’s career by highlighting his interest in borrowed sources even as he sought to create music that was new. Advisors/Committee Members: mcclung, Dr. bruce d.

▼ The purpose of this thesis is to define and identify nationalistic elements within selected flute compositions by twentieth-century Brazilian composers. The flute has been a primary melodic instrument in Brazilian indigenous, folk, popular, and art musics for centuries. In the late nineteenth century, Brazilian composers such as Joachim Antônio da Silva Callado began to draw upon virtuosic melodic devices and styles from popular genres in their salon compositions for flute. With the development of musical nationalism in the twentieth century, several Brazilian composers have written solo and chamber works for the flute that incorporate musical elements from folk and popular Brazilian genres. Some of the works I have analyzed are in the modern flute canon, such as the chamber works of Heitor Villa-Lobos. However, most flutists overlook the contributions of other Brazilian composers such as Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, Francisco Mignone, Pattápio Silva, Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez, Radamés Gnattali, José Siqueira, Cesar Guerra Peixe, Cláudio Santoro, and Osvaldo Lacerda. Each of these composers used similar nationalistic elements, including Afro-Brazilian syncopation, ostinatos in the accompaniment, and in particular, specific characteristics of the popular choro genre, in which performers incorporated virtuosic and idiomatic flute playing since the late nineteenth century.For background, I review the history of the flute in Brazilian art music (Chapter One). I discuss the role of the flute in indigenous, folk, and popular Brazilian music (Chapter Two) and describe musical haracteristics for each musical genre. In the third chapter, I summarize the musical career of Heitor Villa-Lobos and analyze his chamber works Choros No. 2, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6, and Assobio a Játo. I then discuss the career of Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993) and analyze his Three Improvisations for solo flute and Sonatina for flute and piano (Chapter Four). The final chapter contains biographical information on other twentieth-century Brazilian composers and overviews of their flute compositions. To conclude, I summarize the nationalistic elements common to the majority of these works. Advisors/Committee Members: Templemand, Robert W.