PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, College-Conservatory of Music: Music (Musicology)

In the late nineteenth century, the flow of people, material, and ideas between Europe and the United States brought many values and practices from one culture to another, contributing to various ideas surrounding the articulation of U.S. national identity. Through the convergence of the international prominence of Shakespeare, the transatlantic discourse of musical style and taste, and the unique perspectives of Shakespeare and music embodied in five contemporary Hamlet compositions, this dissertation tells novel and significant stories about the intercultural dynamics at play in the efforts to articulate a distinct U.S. national cultural identity in the late nineteenth century. Each case study of Hamlet music employs the methodology of cultural transfer to parse the exchange of aesthetics and patterns of musical thought operating through each composition and performance as they participate in broader trends of defining U.S. national identity. The first two case studies feature New York performances of programmatic Hamlet music: Theodore Thomas's 1873 world premiere of Franz Liszt's symphonic poem, Hamlet, and Frank Van der Stucken's 1887 American Festival featuring a performance of Edward MacDowell's symphonic poem, Hamlet. Ophelia. Zwei Gedichte fur grosses Orchester, in the festival's first concert. The next case study turns to opera, examining the 1884 performance of Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet by Henry Abbey's Metropolitan Opera company in Cincinnati's Fourth Opera Festival. The final two case studies explore incidental music accompanying theatrical settings of Hamlet and their concert hall adaptations manifesting as overtures and orchestral suites: Walter Damrosch's 1891 performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Hamlet overture at the New York Symphony Society's inaugural concert at Music Hall (present-day Carnegie Hall) and George Henschel's 1892 performance of his own Suite from the Music to Shakespeare's “Hamlet” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Kregor Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Douglas Shadle Ph.D. (Committee Member); Stephen Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Member); Shelina Brown Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Musicology

Many of today's vocal techniques and ideas about vocality originate at the turn of the previous century. Over the course of the nineteenth century, science and aesthetics, theory and practice, the medical and the musical came together. Arthur Chervin exemplifies the nineteenth-century impulse toward blending theory and practice in his journal La Voix Parlee et Chantee, published from 1890 through the end of 1903 in Paris. From 1848 onward, doctors and medical practitioners in France began to infiltrate many aspects of politics, social life, and art. As an acknowledged expert in stuttering and a state-appointed physician and the Paris Opera, Chervin was well positioned to facilitate a multi-disciplinary publication that merged medical perspectives with those of performers and pedagogues. His journal is unique in its interdisciplinarity and its wide-ranging arguments about vocal health and aesthetics. A close reading of La Voix enables an exploration of the many sociological, cultural, and artistic implications of voice, health, and pathology in 1890s France. In the early chapters of this dissertation, I show how physicians' interventions into the bodies of ailing singers both constricted the timbres available for expressive singing and contributed to the idea that vocal anatomy determines vocal sound. And, moving beyond the physical, I investigate the relationship between mental interiority (sanity, trustworthiness, identity, etc.) and vocality, showing that contributors to La Voix believed they could evaluate an individual's innermost feelings by listening to the sound of their voice. Later chapters examine pedagogies designed to shape children's voices, and finally an exploration of timbral practices in three distinct groups of voice users—amateur choristers, professional orators, and singers/actors. Throughout, I synthesize contents from La Voix and other period sources, as well as from contemporary scholarship on vocality, contemplating how fin-de-siecle vocal (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Francesca Brittan (Advisor); David Rothenberg (Committee Member); Peter Bennett (Committee Member); Andrea Rager (Committee Member) Subjects: Medicine; Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Music Theory

As one of her most mature works, Clara Schumann's Drei Romanzen, op. 21, no. 1, composed in 1855, simultaneously encapsulates her musical preferences after half a lifetime of extensive musical study and reflects the strictures applied to "women's music" at the time. During the Common Practice Period, music critics would deride music by women that sounded too "masculine" or at least not "feminine" enough. Women could not write more progressive music without risking a backlash from the music critics. However, Schumann's music also had to earn the respect of her more progressive fellow composers. In this piece, she achieved that balance by employing a very Classical formal structure and a distinctly Romantic, if somewhat restrained, harmonic language. Her true artistic and compositional talents shine forth despite, and perhaps even due to, the limits in which her music had to reside.

Committee: Gregory Decker (Advisor); Gene Trantham (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2010, College-Conservatory of Music : Music (Musicology)

Standard histories of Western music have settled on the phrase “German Romantic opera” to characterize German operatic developments in the early part of the nineteenth century. A consideration of over 1500 opera reviews from close to thirty periodicals, however, paints a more complex picture. In addition to a fascination with the supernatural, composers were drawn to a variety of libretti, including Biblical and Classical topics, and considered the application of recitative and other conventions most historians have overlooked because of their un-German heritage. Despite the variety of approaches and conceptions of what a German opera might look like, writers from Vienna to Kassel shared a common aspiration to develop a true German opera. The new language of concert criticism found from specialized music journals like the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung to the entertainment inserts of feuilletons like the Zeitung fur die elegante Welt made the operatic endeavor of the early nineteenth century a national one rather than a regional one as it was in the eighteenth century.

Committee: Mary Sue Morrow PhD (Committee Chair); Jonathan Kregor PhD (Committee Member); Steven Cahn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2001, College-Conservatory of Music : Conducting, Wind Emphasis

In the United Kingdom, the tradition of the wind band is primarily found in the military. Great Britain, in 1845, published almost no music for wind band. It fell upon each bandmaster to compose or arrange suitable music for the regiment's band. Carl Boose, bandmaster of the Scots Fusilier Guards Band, tried to have his arrangements published. Failing that he, himself, printed the parts for each arrangement and distributed them on a subscription basis. The immediate success of his journal induced Boosey & Co. to take over the publication of Boose's Military Journal (BMJ), retaining Boose as editor. A short history of the military band in Great Britain begins with the Crusades. What may be considered a true wind band, however, came from the Prussian and German harmonien (wind ensembles of six or more musicians). From 1760, British regiments began to hire harmonien in total or recruited continental musicians to form the regiments' military bands. The growth in number and kind of instruments in British military bands is traced through the nineteenth century. Also studied are changes in instrumentation of BMJ from 1846 to 1900. Instruments, keys, and number of parts per instrument, however, had become somewhat stabilized by 1851. So innovative was Boose's instrumentation that there was little change after that date. Fourteen to seventeen British military band journals sprang up in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Most were begun with arrangements of bandmasters who also served as editors of the journals. Descriptions are given of each journal including publisher, editor, instrumentation, and a sampling of pieces. An extremely interesting discovery is that the British Library dates Jullien's Journal for Military Music as having begun in 1844, one year before Boose began his journal. An analysis of the contents of BMJ from 1846 to 1900 is broken down by category and genre. Changes in importance over time are noted and compared with BMJ and other major British mi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Robert L. Zierolf (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Music

PHD, Kent State University, 2011, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

Part One of this dissertation is a twenty-four-minute piece, Mass for Full Orchestra and SATB chorus. The first movement of the Mass, Kyrie, is a previously-composed work from 2003. The remaining four movements (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei) comprise the composition portion of the dissertation. The main harmonic language is predominantly tonal, and the material for the four movements is derived from a major scale with a lowered sixth and seventh scale-degrees. The number three (to represent the Trinity) is important in all five movements. The Gloria begins with an outline of the scale representing the harmonic language of the piece in a soprano solo. The soprano soloist marks crucial structural changes in the ABA¹ form. The Credo is characterized by its drone, whether in the orchestra or the voices. It takes on a rondo form, with A material occurring three times, and moves from sparse, atmospheric textures to thick, homophonic orchestration. The two-part (AB) Sanctus possesses a melismatic opening with undulating stepwise material. The B section is syllabic and the climatic point of entire piece occurs at its end, using the thickest orchestral voicings of the entire Mass. Its structure is derived from the symbolic tri-fold restatement of various lines of text. The Agnus Dei functions to release the energy from the end of the Sanctus and to bring the Mass to its conclusion in its cyclical reworking of previous motives and the Kyrie material. The movement is also in two parts, AB. The opening A section is derived from the main scale of the piece, and tri-fold statements of “Agnus Dei” and “Miserere” overlap. When the B section begins with the Kyrie material returning in its “Dona nobis pacem” setting, it is faster and voiced slightly thinner to contribute to a sense of contented completion that contrasts with the heaviness of the Kyrie. The Mass is scored for tripled woodwinds, brass, 3 percussion, harp, piano, SATB chorus and strings. Part two of this dissert (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Frank Wiley Dr. (Advisor); Richard Devore Dr. (Advisor); Scott MacPherson Dr. (Committee Member); Mark Lewis Dr. (Committee Member); Donald Hassler Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2023, Music History and Literature (Fine Arts)

Much of the writing on Mexican composer Ernesto Elorduy (1853-1913) has tended to focus on the European influence in his music and disregarded it due to its lack of Mexican folkloric tunes as well as the technical accessibility of the piano compositions. To gain a deeper understanding of Elorduy's career and works this thesis shifts the focus onto Elorduy's cosmopolitan attitude, piano music (character pieces and dance music), and its reception. I also explore the musical thought of the nineteenth century and propose that the period's values and ideas are crucial to situate Elorduy's work in the history of Mexican music.

Committee: Garrett Field (Advisor); Emely Phelps (Committee Member); Dominique Petite (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Latin American Studies; Music; Performing Arts

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Music History

When Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887) came to the United States in 1850, the ecstatic craze surrounding her arrival belied a larger trend which was taking root among the American press and public: a fascination with the lives of celebrity opera singers. One of the Lind enthusiasts was a college student named George P. Upton (1834-1919), who later became the music critic for the Chicago Tribune. In his work over the following decades, Upton continued to take a vivid interest in the lives, careers, and personalities of prima donnas, writing about them with an intensely personal style that was common in newspapers of his time. As journalists for the Tribune provided news about opera stars to their readers in Chicago, they not only shaped the public images of these singers but also promoted the appreciation of classical music as a cause for civic pride in their relatively young city. In this study I examine how George P. Upton and other journalists published in the Chicago Tribune wrote about two star sopranos of the mid to late nineteenth century: Adelina Patti (1843-1919) and Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916). I bring together newspaper articles from the years 1860 through 1876 and use secondary literature to place the critics' approach in context. In each case study, I delve into historical perspectives reflected in this music criticism to trace how journalists articulated concepts of celebrity, genius, nationalism, and gender. I especially draw from scholarship on prima donnas by Hilary Poriss, Kristin Turner, and Katherine Preston as I explore how music critics of the time used the lenses of the nineteenth century to observe the light of these bright musical stars and reflect on American society.

Committee: Eftychia Papanikolaou (Advisor); Ryan Ebright (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Journalism; Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2018, College-Conservatory of Music: Violin

The purpose of this document is to compare and contrast the compositional style of Robert and Clara Schumann through a detailed exploration of similar sets of music: Robert Schumann's Three Romances, Op. 94 for violin and piano and Clara Schumann's Three Romances, Op. 22, for violin and piano. Robert's Op. 94 was originally composed for oboe and piano but published for violin and clarinet as well. I will explore similarities and differences between these works, the nature in which they relate to each composers' romance style, and the relation to other composers' violin romances in the nineteenth century by Ludwig van Beethoven, Camille Saint-Saens, Max Bruch, Antonin Dvorak, Gabriel Faure, and Johann Svendsen.

Committee: Catharine Lees D.M.A. (Committee Chair); Yehuda Hanani M.M. (Committee Member); Won-Bin Yim D.M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Performing Arts

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Music History

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Israel Jacobson (1768-1828) created a radically new service that drew upon forms of worship most commonly associated with the Protestant faith. After finding inspiration as a student in the ideas of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, Jacobson became committed to revitalizing and modernizing Judaism. Musically, Jacobson's service was characterized by its use of songs modeled after Lutheran chorales that were sung by the congregation, organ accompaniment, choral singing, and the elimination of the traditional music of the synagogue, a custom that had developed over more than a millennium. The music of the service worked in conjunction with Protestant-style sermons, the use of both German and Hebrew, and the church- and salon-like environments in which Jacobson's services were held. The music, liturgy, and ceremonial of this new mode of worship demonstrated an affinity with German Protestantism and bourgeois cultural values while also maintaining Judaism's core beliefs and morals. In this thesis, I argue that Jacobson's musical agenda enabled a new realization of German-Jewish identity among wealthy, acculturated Jews. Drawing upon contemporary reports, letters, musical collections, and similar sources, I place the music of Reform within its wider historical, political, and social context within the well-documented services at the Jacobstempel in Seesen and the New Reform Temple in Berlin. Although much of this project discusses general practice rather than specific repertoire, I examine several works composed for these services: a canata by Johann August Gunther Heinroth (1773-1843), a hymn by Jacobson, and the 1815 Hallelujah Cantatine by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864).

Committee: Arne Spohr Dr. (Advisor); Eftychia Papanikolaou Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Judaic Studies; Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Music History

Moravian-born impresario Max Maretzek was one of the leading opera managers in nineteenth-century America, specializing in Italian opera. During his career, Maretzek highlighted three cities as being "musical centers" in America: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. While he noted that these cities were the most important for opera, he did not treat each one the same. Indeed, each of these cities had a heritage that affected their responses to opera. For example, the Puritanical heritage of Boston caused Maretzek to cancel his production of Verdi's Rigoletto in 1861, because citizens were revolted by the opera's immoral plot. In this project, I will explore, discuss, and analyze reception of Maretzek's Italian operas, and how this reception affected how he produced opera. Using Jauss's ideas on reception theory, specifically the "horizon of expectations," I will explore the historical and cultural contexts of Maretzek's three musical centers, coupled with research on opera in nineteenth-century America by Katherine Preston, John Dizikes, and June Ottenberg. Since Maretzek was an early proponent of Verdi's operas, I will discuss the reception of Maretzek's productions of Italian opera, with emphasis on Verdi and the various controversies his operas engendered. I will show that Maretzek responded to criticism differently in each of the three cities: his productions were more adventurous in his home base of New York, and more conservative in Boston and Philadelphia. Finally, I will situate Maretzek and his work in the overarching cultural context of Italian opera in nineteenth-century America, drawing on the work of Lawrence Levine and Kristen Turner. While Italian opera is commonly discussed as representing the interests of the wealthy upper class in America during this time, I will argue that discussions of Maretzek in this context require a more nuanced discussion. While there were efforts by wealthy citizens to claim Italian opera as their own, Maretzek marketed (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eftychia Papanikolaou Ph.D. (Advisor); Ryan Ebright Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Music

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's third of his fifteen operas, Snegurochka [Snowmaiden], is examined here from historical and analytical perspectives. Its historical importance begins with the composer's oft-expressed preference for this work. It was by far his most popular opera during his lifetime, and has endured as a staple of the operatic repertory in Russia to this day. Rimsky Korsakov's famous declaration that he considered himself for the first time an artist “standing on my own feet” with this work, Snegurochka also represents a revealing case study in the dissolution of the Russian Five, or moguchaia kuchka, as a stylistically cohesive group of composers. The opera's dramatic source was a musical play by the same name by Aleksandr Ostrovsky, with music by Piotr Tchaikovsky. Rimsky-Korsakov solicited and received Ostrovsky's permission to adapt the script into an opera libretto. Primary sources, including the composer's sketchbooks, the first editions of the score and the subsequent revisions, and correspondence with Ostrovsky and others, reveal how he transformed the dramatic themes of Ostrovsky's play, in particular the portrayal of the title character. Finally, the musical themes and other stylistic features of this opera are closely analyzed and compared with those of Richard Wagner's music dramas. Although Rimsky-Korsakov had not yet seen or studied Der Ring des Nibelungen when he worked on Snegurochka, he was acquainted with Wagner's early works and his theoretical writings. Comparison of these two composers' representations of dramatic themes through music is not only appropriate, but necessary for a full appreciation of Snegurochka in its historical context. Far from the pedantic conservative that others have described, this study reveals Rimsky-Korsakov to have been a profoundly innovative composer. Disenchanted as he was with the naturalistic prosody that characterized his comrade, Modest Musorgsky's most well-known works (as well as Rimsky-Korsakov's own (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Margarita Mazo (Advisor) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Musical Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2007, Musicology

The performance of piano variations on simple popular songs was a practice embraced with great earnestness by young ladies in mid-nineteenth-century American domestic settings. Variation settings of “favorites,” in their great array of styles, techniques, and theatrical effects, served as important vehicles for defining pianistic activity of the time and played a mediating role in relation to a number of the dichotomies characterizing nineteenth-century American musical culture. This study addresses issues of cultural context, education, performance, and compositional convention related to such works, exposing their usefulness in bridging the aims of “cultivated” and “vernacular” music that appear to have polarized middle-class entertainment during this period. Beyond this function, the genre provides a valuable frame for examining the role of pianistic expertise amidst the mostly female populace of drawing room performers. Accompanying this study is a representative collection of thirty-five variation compositions based upon familiar songs of the day. The pieces span the period of 1800 to 1865, roughly outlining a time of great cultural and economic change from the post-Revolution decades into the Civil War. The works chosen also span the ranges defined by such terms as “complex” and “simple,” or “brilliant” and “easy.” This differentiation is but one of the dialectical frames, discussed in literature of the time, that show arduous effort on the part of nineteenth-century minds to assess the musical values of young America. In order to support a perception of the piano variations as sitting on the cusp of a “highbrow/lowbrow” divide, a thorough investigation of American antebellum manifestations of that divide is provided. Full examination of this tension shows the unique place of the variation genre in relation to such dualistic discourse in nineteenth-century musical life. The findings suggest that this unusual showcase for female virtuosity is a protected avenue (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: L. Peter Bennett (Advisor) Subjects: Music; Women's Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2013, College-Conservatory of Music: Music (Musicology)

When one thinks of nineteenth-century Britain—that powerful empire on which “the sun never set”—rarely does music come to mind. In fact, since the death of Henry Purcell, Britain was commonly known as the “land without music” due to its lack of composers that achieved the kind of fame of their German and Italian counterparts. The question of Britain's role in nineteenth-century European musical life has been widely ignored in musicology until recently. Most important to British music studies is the recognition that while Britain had no Beethoven, its citizens participated in musical activities daily, making it no-less a musical nation than Italy, Germany, or France. Several recent studies of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British public concert life and musical press certainly reflect this important trend. However, such studies have not adequately addressed the class and gender components of these listening publics, nor do they acknowledge the role of women and class in defining other musical cultures. Attempting to propose a more nuanced understanding of the role of class and gender in musical activities, this dissertation focuses specifically on British aristocratic and genteel women's representations of music in life writing of the long nineteenth century (1760-1918). Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the most conventional and common type of life writing: diaries, letters, and memoirs. Chapter 1 argues these sources primarily present musical performances as social events that were essential to maintaining one's position in high society. Highlighting a parallel trend to socializing, Chapter 2 demonstrates how women, when actually discussing music they heard, focus primarily on singers, in particular foreign prima donnas. Chapter 3 considers manuscript music collections of English country houses, showing how these rarely-examined archival sources reveal musical taste, and through their marginalia, are a genre of life writing that has not been acknowledged in w (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jeongwon Joe Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Tamar Heller Ph.D. (Committee Member); Mary Sue Morrow Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Music

William Gadsby (1773-1844) stands out as an exceptional figure in the history of nineteenth-century English Particular Baptist churches: he is at once a defender of high orthodoxy, a radical separatist (as perceived by his Baptist peers), a popular preacher in the areas surrounding Manchester, and a vanguard of high Calvinistic, experimental hymnody. He is also the compiler of one of the oldest English hymnbooks still in current use, A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship (1814), known informally as “Gadsby’s Hymns.” During his lifetime Gadsby was criticized both for his anachronistic high orthodoxy and for his experimentalist modernity. To the men who argued with Gadsby, the relationship between his traditional orthodoxy and his experimentalism must have seemed bewildering, but seen from a more distanced perspective, his theological stance may be understood as a synthesis of two cultural movements: the Enlightenment and romanticism. Gadsby's high Calvinistic orthodoxy was influenced by the Enlightenment teachings of eighteenth-century Baptist theologians John Brine and John Gill, but as the eighteenth century came to a close the influence of high Calvinism began to decline. At the same time, Andrew Fuller's moderate Calvinism, which encouraged free evangelism, was sweeping through the Calvinistic Baptist churches, reaching the laity through the “Bristol Collection” and John Rippon's Selection of Hymns. Gadsby sought to revitalize high Calvinistic orthodoxy through experimentalism, which he gleaned from the Protestant Reformers, the English Puritans, and in particular, the nascent romanticism evident in the teachings of William Huntington. Because Gadsby believed singing to be the duty of all men, he turned to hymnody as a means through which to communicate what might be called a romantic high Calvinistic theology, which I shall term “romantic orthodoxy.” Gadsby's romantic orthodoxy led him to develop a distinct method of evangelism throu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Charles M. Atkinson (Advisor); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Udo Will (Committee Member); David Clampitt (Committee Member); Roger Crawfis (Other) Subjects: History; Music; Theology