Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This dissertation explores the life and songs of the “Folksong King of Western China,” Wang Xiangrong, looking at how both elements are intricately tied to social changes in China during the last few decades. Building on extensive fieldwork and interviews with Wang and other folksingers from northern Shaanxi province, it shows how a “traditional” art form has interacted with and been affected by economic development, new media forms, government policies, commercialization of art, TV singing contests, and the rise of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) preservation. At the same time, it gives voice to an individual's interpretation of that tradition (an individual who has been declared one of two “national bearers” of ICH for this tradition), thus personalizing the tradition within its broader social and historical context. By fusing together both performer-centered and tradition-centered approaches to oral literature, the songs and the speeches surrounding them are shown as serving to negotiate relations with real people, imagined characters, and gods from the past, present, and future.

Committee: Mark Bender (Advisor); Meow Hui Goh (Committee Member); Kirk Denton (Committee Member); Ray Cashman (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Biographies; Cultural Resources Management; Folklore; Music; Performing Arts

Master of Music, Youngstown State University, 2010, Dana School of Music

Samuel Barber's professional career covered the majority of the twentieth century, spanning from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. An honored and frequently performed American composer, many of Barber's compositions have gained a place in the standard repertoire. Despite his success, scholarly sources have a tendency to treat Barber as a twentieth-century afterthought. This thesis takes the question of Barber's historical reception as a point of departure to study his song cycle the Hermit Songs (1952-53). The Hermit Songs, written during the peak of Barber's career, demonstrate many of the compositional features associated with his mature style. Alone, the texts constitute a collection of poetry related through a number of contrasting themes: solitude and community, faith and doubt, and piety and promiscuity. More corporeal relations among the texts include the repeated appearance of birds and bells. Barber's treatment of the texts enhances these thematic connections and unites the poetry through a number of musical devices. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of this representative work, this thesis will examine the personal and educational experiences that helped shape Barber's predilection for Romantic and post-romantic techniques. The subsequent analysis of the Hermit Songs will address the history, composition, and premiere of the cycle, followed by an examination of the songs' harmonic language and analysis of narrative structure as articulated through textual and musical cross-references, time-determined events, and abstract patterning and symmetry.

Committee: Randall Goldberg (Advisor); Jena Root PhD (Committee Member); William Slocum MM (Committee Member); Allan Mosher DMA (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Fine Arts; History; Literature; Music

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Musicology

The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of tremendous change in American musical life. It was the early days of the American popular music industry, represented by the moniker “Tin Pan Alley.” One of its leading lights was Charles K. Harris, an American songwriter who wrote “After the Ball” (1892), a song that became synonymous with the industry and Harris himself. However, like the music industry, Harris's story may have begun with a hit song, but it did not stop there; motivating him over the next few decades was a quest—how to keep a popular song popular—that put him on the edge of several transformative moments and technologies in American music. This dissertation explores and interprets Harris's attempts at keeping his music, notably “After the Ball,” popular as representative of the ways in which the music industry transformed in response to shifts in technology along with the new relationships audiences formed with popular music. Building upon the existing literature on Charles K. Harris, in particular that of Charles Hamm, Esther Morgan-Ellis, David Suisman, and Daniel Goldmark, as well as secondary literature on marketing theory, film, cartoon, media, nostalgia, and American cultural history, I shed light not just on a fascinating and influential figure in the early popular music industry, but on the ways in which popular music, media, and advertising interrelated during the era in which mass media and many of the most salient features of modern life were born.

Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor) Subjects: American Studies; Marketing; Motion Pictures; Music

BA, Oberlin College, 2022, Religion

Isaac ibn Sahula was a marginal figure in the Castile community of medieval Spanish kabbalists, which included those mystics who would come to compose the groundbreaking book of Zohar toward the end of the thirteenth century. While Ibn Sahula is best known for his anthology of animal fables, this essay casts his more obscure Commentary on the Song of Songs (ca. 1283) as a key document in tracing the genealogy of the Song's interpretation in classical Kabbalah. Through the translation and analysis of two exemplary sections of the Commentary, this essay will discuss its uniquely kabbalistic reading of the Song as a love story between the secrets of Torah and their interpreter and ultimately advance a thesis locating Ibn Sahula's "erotics of reading" in its broader medieval context.

Committee: Sam Shonkoff (Committee Member); Corey Ladd Barnes (Advisor) Subjects: Judaic Studies; Religion

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Music

Singing Mandarin repertoires is an arduous and intimidating task for most non-native singers due to two main challenging aspects. Firstly, the Chinese language is difficult to read and pronounce because the Chinese language is comprised of characters or symbols that do not seemingly provide any pronunciation information for the words. In contrast, most western languages are made up of letters, which are spelled phonetically. Second, there are rarely reference books or audiovisual resources about Chinese music compositions and composers on the international market, making it more difficult for Western singers to learn and sing Chinese repertoires. This dissertation will, via a singer's perspective, explain the Mandarin pinyin system's pronunciation rules and translates them to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Additionally an analysis and investigation of the four historical stages of Chinese art songs and the correlating content characteristics. The inclusion of sixteen well-known Chinese art song repertoires composed by Yuanren Zhao, Qing Zhu, Zi Huang, Shande Ding, Luobin Wang, Yinghai Li, and Zaiyi Lu will offer specific examples for inclusion and application Chinese art song for Westen classical singers. Each song was presented with a brief introduction, performance analysis, word-for-word IPA, and text translations.

Committee: Katherine Rohrer (Advisor); Youkyung Bae (Committee Member); Russel Mikkelsson (Committee Member); Edward Bak (Committee Member) Subjects: Music; Music Education

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2019, Theological Studies

This thesis is a narrative of how nuptial imagery has been used in monastic and religious life by men and women as an expression of their unique love relationship with God. It begins with a close look at how the Song of Songs was used by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and other mystics as symbolic of their mystical marriage with Christ and their eschatological longing for heaven. The focus then turns towards examining shifts in the twelfth century regarding the practice of celibacy and the understanding of gender, shifts that contributed to the “bride of Christ” being solely identified—in a concrete and literal way —with the nun. This thesis shows how the nun as the bride of Christ was enacted in ritual, particularly habit and profession ceremonies, before this imagery was abandoned by many women religious in the United States after Vatican II. Finally, the author examines whether nuptial allegory can be re-appropriated by men and women religious in a non-patriarchal way as a helpful expression of the eschatological nature of religious life.

Committee: Sandra Yocum PhD (Advisor); Meghan Henning PhD (Committee Member); William Johnston PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Theology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Music

In this document, I examine the history of the campaign song in presidential elections in the United States, finding its changes in function as a result of the changing American electorate and advancing technology. As voting rights get extended to a greater percentage of the total American population and as popular mediums for dissemination of information change, the format of an effective campaign song changes from contrafacta of a well-known song to unaltered popular songs. I also identify the various signifying elements of popular songs that allow them to complement campaign rhetoric. Finally, I provide an exegesis of several popular songs whose original political meaning has changed as a result of their being used in the context of American presidential campaigns. In providing this analysis, I show how popular songs come to represent shared American ideals in the absence of any broad agreement as to what form those ideals should take.

Committee: Arved Ashby (Advisor); Robert Kraut (Committee Member); Graeme Boone (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2015, College-Conservatory of Music: Voice

Canadian composer Barbara Pentland (1912 – 2000) is primarily recognized for her piano and chamber music. She composed a number of art songs worthy of study and performance, yet audiences are generally unfamiliar with her solo vocal music, and singers largely neglect the repertoire. Despite the quality of her output, limited scholarly consideration has been given to her solo vocal works, and, to date, there exists no performance guide to her vocal-piano literature with in-depth attention given to the performance requirements. This document is a study of four representative works suitable to the soprano Fach, each representing distinctive stylistic periods and exhibiting diverse aesthetic influences on Pentland's approach to composition: Ruins (Ypres, 1917) (1932), Song Cycle (1942-45), Three Sung Songs (1964) and Ice Age (1986). The introductory chapter of this document includes the statement of purpose for this study, background information, review of related literature, and methodology. Chapters 2 through 5 discuss each of the four vocal works, with particular attention given to the components of style of each song and performance considerations. The final chapter is a summary of findings and conclusions. Appendices include an up-to-date discography of recordings of Pentland's art songs and a list of published scores for solo voice(s) currently available from the Canadian Music Centre.

Committee: Mary Stucky M.M. (Committee Chair); Amy Johnson M.M. (Committee Member); William McGraw M.M. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctorate in Sacred Theology (S.T.D.), University of Dayton, 1996, International Marian Research Institute

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Committee: Eamon Carroll O.Carm. (Advisor) Subjects: Theology

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2001, College-Conservatory of Music : Theater Performance

This thesis focuses on twenty-three songs written by the musical theater composer Stephen Sondheim over the fifty-year span of his compositional career. The purpose of this study is to show how these songs qualify as crossover song literature appropriate for the classical voice studio. I shall address this premise through comparison of the crossover performance and the art song to the songs of Stephen Sondheim. Chapter One contains introductory material. Chapter Two is a study on crossover performance. Chapter Three is a general comparison of art song traits to traits of the songs of Stephen Sondheim. Chapter Four provides practical performance details. As source material for crossover song literature, Chapter Five surveys ten shows and twenty-three songs of Sondheim. An introduction to each song begins with a list of source(s) and details, such as range, tessitura, and Fach. Analysis shows each song's compatibility with basic-to-advanced vocal protocol. An integral part of my analysis focuses on individual motifs and detailed graphs—with suggested phrasings – emphasizing Sondheim's extensive and precise motivic organization. Several of the earlier songs do not rely heavily on similar organization, so only the basic form is analyzed. Chapter Six summarizes the qualities that make Sondheim's twenty-three songs appropriate for the academic, classical voice studio and ultimately challenges voice teachers to familiarize themselves with crossover literature. These musical theater songs can be sung well in a classical voice studio without compromise or harm to vocal technique. Granted, they may not sound like Broadway when sung with a legitimate technique, but they will prove advantageous for teacher and student alike. Containing intricate and sophisticated modern language, subject matter, and motivic organization, these songs by Stephen Sondheim provide a necessary link between the contemporary student and the school of music.

Committee: Karin Pendle (Advisor) Subjects: Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2011, College-Conservatory of Music: Voice

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Mediterranean countries arrived in the United States. New York City, in particular, became a hub where various nationalities coexisted and intermingled. Adding to the immigrant population were massive waves of former slaves migrating from the South. In this radically multicultural environment, Irving Berlin, a Jewish-Russian immigrant, became a songwriter. The cultural interaction that had the most profound effect upon Berlin's early songwriting from 1907 to 1914 was that between his own Jewish population and the African-American population in New York City. In his early songs, Berlin highlights both Jewish and African-American stereotypical identities. Examining stereotypical ethnic markers in Berlin's early songs reveals how he first revised and then traded his old Jewish identity for a new American identity as the “King of Ragtime.” This document presents two case studies that explore how Berlin not only incorporated stereotypical musical and textual markers of “blackness” within two of his individual Jewish novelty songs, but also converted them later to genres termed “coon” and “ragtime,” which were associated with African Americans. This document also studies how visual and aural markers serve to reinforce or contradict ethnic identity as defined musically and textually by Berlin.

Committee: Steven Cahn PhD (Committee Chair); David Berry PhD (Committee Member); Barbara Paver DMA (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Music

Vignettes: Ellis Island is a twenty-six piece song cycle by American composer Alan Louis Smith. Crafted as a genuine portrayal of the human spirit, it was initially meant to be a single song written as a birthday gift for mezzo-soprano and friend, Stephanie Blythe. The composer, however, was so compelled by this topic that he set a musical backdrop that chronicled American immigration in the early 20th century, through the stories of twenty refugees. A fortuitous meeting between Alan Smith and Paul Sigrist, Jr. (former director of the Ellis Island Oral History Project), resulted in a collaboration that became the catalyst for this song cycle. Mr. Sigrist supplied over 100 pages of quotations, taken from interviews he conducted with the Ellis Island Oral History Project, which then were carefully abridged by the composer to create Vignettes: Ellis Island. This document chronicles the development of this cycle, discussing its origins, influences, historical relevance, and performances. It also provides a biography on the composer, and details interviews conducted from July-October 2008 with Alan Louis Smith, Paul Sigrist, Jr. and Stephanie Blythe. Finally, it serves as a performer's study on the musical and dramatic interpretation of the work, as coached by the composer.

Committee: Loretta Robinson (Advisor); C. Patrick Woliver (Committee Member); Karen Peeler (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Music Performance/Voice

Welsh art songs borrow many ideas from Welsh folk songs, and there are many societies in Wales that devote their resources to the promotion of Welsh music and art. The musical characteristics of Welsh folk songs can be seen in the composition of Welsh art songs. The subject matter in folk songs and in art songs is similar, with the same basic subject areas accounting for the majority of texts set to music. The songs also use similar tonalities, rhythms and meters. Modal tonalities and mixed meter are common in both folk songs and art songs. It can be clearly seen that the art music of the current time develops directly out of the folk music of the country. The art music of Dilys Elwyn-Edwards illustrates the influence of Welsh folk songs on Welsh art songs and shows the progression from folk song, to twentieth century art song, to new music of the twenty-first century.

Committee: Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers DMA (Advisor); Vincent Corrigan PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Fine Arts; Music