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

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Music

In March 2015, a jury awarded Marvin Gaye's estate nearly $7.4 million, finding that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed on Gaye's 1977 song, “Got to Give It Up,” with their own 2013 hit, “Blurred Lines.” The highly publicized federal copyright lawsuit has raised concerns about the ramifications of this outcome for the legal protection of music and the future of artistic creativity. The question underlying this case, as in much of federal copyright litigation, involves negotiating the putative similarities and differences between expressive works. Although the court system has developed methods designed to assist triers of fact in such legal analysis, the unpredictable outcomes of these cases illuminate the problematics of this task. Triers of fact may hear testimony from expert witnesses, whose specialized knowledge, skill, and experience is intended to inform the decision-making process. The results of such testimony, however, are not only insistently variable, but they also reflect unsettled debates over how, and by whom, musical identity can best be defined. Given this situation, how should we understand the historical and contemporary role of the musical expert witness in American music copyright litigation? Drawing on research methods from musicological and legal scholarship, the present dissertation examines extant court records and judicial opinions of prominent cases chronologically from their origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to recently-decided lawsuits. In situating the role of the musical expert in the context of the legal similarity inquiry and considering their contributions to it, the study reveals the essential role that experts have historically played. It then recasts contemporary problems with case outcomes as a result of the similarity inquiry itself and looks to expert testimony as one potential area of reform. Such study of musical expertise sheds light on the courtroom as a forum for musical experts, particularly co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Graeme Boone PhD (Advisor); Charles Atkinson PhD (Committee Member); Guy Rub SJD (Committee Member); Mark Rudoff MM (Committee Member) Subjects: Law; Music

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2016, Musicology

An emblem of youth and vitality at the turn of the 20th century, the New Woman existed simultaneously as both living woman and fictional icon. Her detractors and advocates skirmished with each other in editorials and magazine features, and their arguments created disparity between a character portrayed at one moment as aggressive and calculating, and at another as charming and educated. Popular sheet music of this period provides an untapped resource to demonstrate the interweaving of the fictional New Woman with the documented experiences and interests of female consumers. This dissertation sheds light on Tin Pan Alley's role in tying the New Woman's youth and freedom to the act of consumption. Through a nexus of sight, sound, and theatricality, this music offers a fresh way to explore intersections between public debates and the stereotypes adopted in the advertising and entertainment industries. Investigation into music as a key component of the New Woman has been neglected in favor of research into other media forms. I seek to remedy this lacuna by demonstrating Tin Pan Alley's role in defining the New Woman as an unruly figure shaped through sound, whether in lyrics that assigned disruptive sounds to female subjects, sheet music covers that depicted the soundscapes of the New Woman, or auditory qualities shaped by musical notation and performance. The New Woman persona crossed class divides from socialite to shop girl, and encompassed hot-button issues regarding appropriate female activity. Songwriters strove to create products that would appeal to both sides of the New Woman debates. My analysis demonstrates how songwriters turned to vaudeville's ethnic stereotypes and class humor to appeal not only to those who approved of what the New Woman represented, but also to those who viewed her as a threat to American society. To that end, I investigate New Woman girl “types” including the Working Girl, College Girl, Athletic Girl, and Technology Girl. Intended (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Goldmark Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: American Studies; Music

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2006, College-Conservatory of Music : Music History

The Story of Irving Berlin (1925), written by drama critic Alexander Woollcott when Berlin was only thirty-six, is the composer's first full-length biography. Despite its acknowledged hyperbolic and apocryphal nature, the biography is consistently invoked by scholars as a source document for Berlin's career. This thesis examines the rhetoric, function, and influence of The Story of Irving Berlin and uses its construction to consider dominant American ideologies of the 1920s. Situated among other biographies of its era, Woollcott's writing adheres to the tenets of the then-popular “new biography” school, which emphasized an anecdotal, fiction-like approach. By fashioning a narrative modeled on patterns of fiction and invoking Berlin's Jewish heritage to heroically characterize the composer, Woollcott effectively mythologized Irving Berlin as an archetype for the American dream. Although this characterization was intended to promote Berlin's public image, Woollcott's fictional constructs have hampered subsequent scholarship on the composer, outlasting the era they were intended to serve.

Committee: bruce mcclung (Advisor) Subjects: