DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2019, College-Conservatory of Music: Piano

The purpose of the document is to advocate for the appreciation and application of the common nineteenth-century practice of improvised preluding. After studying Clara Wieck Schumann's compositional process based on her eleven notated preludes and selected twentieth-century pianist-composers' approaches to preluding, I provide three preludes based on their prelude sketches, styles, and transcriptions. Because I am an advocate of historically informed performance practice, my goal is to delve further into historical piano recordings and the artists who left their legacies through live performances and studio recordings. I endeavor to preserve some of their preluding attempts by way of transcribing them from the selected recordings. The document is organized in three main parts. Chapter one presents Clara Wieck Schumann's training and influences, preluding practices, and her notated eleven preludes. Chapter two provides the transcriptions of the selected twentieth-century pianist-composers' preluding from the recordings of studio and historical live performances, comparing and contrasting their approaches to preluding. Chapter three contains my own transcriptions of performed preludes. The first two preludes are modeled after Einfache Praeludien fu¨r Schu¨ler, and the last prelude will be on my own. All relate to Schumann's concert program on December 14, 1854.

Committee: Steven Cahn Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Michael Chertock M.M. (Committee Member); Stephen Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music