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Many occupations have a standard path for education and training that leads to a professional career. The training for a professional or university-level symphony orchestra conductor is not standardized though different methods are recognized. One method of conductor training in the United States is through degree-granting programs at a university or conservatory. The purpose of this study is to identify universities accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) that offer doctoral level programs in orchestral conducting and evaluate the identified programs’ current curricula to determine if the current requirements are adequately preparing students for careers with professional orchestras and academic institutions. This study examines whether or not the Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A) programs in orchestral conducting are responsive in adequately preparing entry-level academic and professional orchestra conductors. In order to determine responsiveness of orchestral conducting D.M.A. programs to entry-level job requirements and responsibilities, orchestral conducting D.M.A. curricula are gathered from the identified universities websites and are compared to NASM requirements. Trends in the D.M.A. curricula are then compared to academic and professional orchestral conducting position requirements publicly advertised between July 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. Through the course of the study it is shown that the D.M.A curricula in their present form are responsive to industry and academic job requirements and responsibilities in the areas of conducting and musical skills. The results of the study also show that the current curricula have room for improvement in the areas of administration and scholarly development. Additionally, although the D.M.A. curricula are responsive to entry level positions, the majority of the posted conductor positions did not require a doctoral degree as a prerequisite for employment.

During the past twenty years, Josef Rheinberger’s choral music has emerged in choral communities throughout the world, and the performance of his late-nineteenth century motets and masses have captivated conductors, musicians, and audiences. While the composer’s sacred music is commonly performed, his secular choral works are largely under-researched. Some of his richest writing was for German singing societies, with more than 100 male chorus part songs composed between 1854-1897. The purpose of this document is to introduce choral scholars to Josef Rheinberger’s male chorus part songs and support his position among the finest nineteenth century German composers of the genre. The document provides basic information about his early musical training and involvement in the German male chorus singing tradition. However, the core of the study provides poetic and musical analyses of six representative songs written between 1870-1896.

1.- Sonata for Flute and Piano Sergei Prokofiev 2.- Piano Concerto N3 L.V. Beethoven 3.- Partita in C minor J.S. Bach 4.- Two pieces from piano suite "Miroirs" Maurice Ravel 5.- Sonata N2 in Bb minor F. Chopin

I designed a qualitative study that focused on music students’ experiences of an 8-week meditation class. Through surveys and interviews, I assessed to what extent they applied the information or practices from the meditation class into their musical practice and performance. There is little extant research on the role of meditation and music, most of it focusing on the role of practices such as meditation and yoga in ameliorating performance anxiety. Outside of music, qualitative research into meditation has given us a window into how people experience learning meditation, applying it to their lives, and making sense of the new ideas they encounter. Thus, the current study contributes both to our growing understanding of how people process meditation as an experience as well as how musicians might integrate meditative practices into their musical practice and performance. A group of music students (N = 7) participated in an 8-week meditation class, introducing them to a diversity of meditative practices. Completing weekly surveys and a post-interview, each of the participants answered a series of questions relating to their perceptions of music practice, music performance, and meditation. Questions also asked how they had or how they might apply what they had learned in the meditation class to their musical activities. Assessed through a phenomenological orientation, the results present both detailed individual accounts as well as common themes across participants. Results show consistently positive reactions to the class, and results also show a variety of positive benefits attributed to the class, ranging from increased somatic awareness to changes in perception of thoughts and feelings. Moreover, the rich, first-person accounts offer us a window of how people try to make sense of meditation in relation to their spiritual/religious backgrounds and how they reconcile it with their own personal philosophies of music making. Given the small sample size and lack of a control group, further research is needed to assess the validity of themes that emerged in the results of this study. Moreover, future classes may focus more explicitly on transferring meditative practices into musical practices, or, furthermore, may even make an effort to help participants integrate meditative practices and approaches into their musical philosophies.

My thesis concentrates on the trope of music as a mystical power within pre-Christian Irish folklore. I have emphasized folk tales and songs from four Cycles of Irish folk literature. The Mythological Cycle: these stories are of the former gods and origins of the Irish and are considered to illustrate the Golden Age. The Ulster Cycle (Ultonian Cycle): traditionally set around the first century CE, these stories involve action taking place in the provinces of Ulster and Connacht and are considered to represent the Heroic Age. The King Cycle (Historical Cycle): written by Irish poets and bards, these stories are about the genealogy of kings in Ireland through the combination of mythology and history. And the Fianna Cycle: stories from around the third century CE about Fionn Mac Cumhail and his band of warriors, the Fianna. Generally speaking, there are three categories of music in Irish folklore: geantraí, the music of happiness; goltraí, the music of sadness; and suantraí, the music of sleep and meditation. In the Cycles, these three kinds of music are used in various ways, usually as a way to control people, items, or the outcomes of events through weaponry, sorcery, or beauty. An example of this is a story from the Mythological Cycle called Battle of Magh Tuireadin. In this story, the Dagda (the father deity of the Tuatha Dé Danann) searched for his sacred harp Uaithne, who had been taken by the Fomorians. When the Dagda saw the harp hanging on the wall, he called it and began to use all three types of music. Opening with goltraí, he made the women in attendance weep; continuing with geantraí, he caused the young people to erupt with laughter; and ending with suantraí, to lull the whole assembly to sleep in order to escape with his harp unharmed. Along with excerpted texts from the four Cycles, I employ secondary sources drawing upon literary analysis, folklore scholarship, as well as certain aspects of pre-Christian Irish history and ethnography. My methodology includes close reading and textual analysis. An important source that influenced my methodology is Ann Buckley’s “Music as Symbolic Sound in Medieval Irish Society.” I more completely and concretely demonstrate the use of music as a source of power or magic in Irish folklore, and in turn to demonstrate the importance and status of music and musicians during Ireland’s pre-Christian era.

Barideki for String Sextet is composed for violins 1 and 2, violas 1 and 2, and cellos 1 and 2. The whole composition consists of three movements in accordance with the development of the story, and each movement is divided into detailed subdivided stories. In other words, all musical progress proceeds exactly with the storytelling. The first movement is the process before the abandonment of the character, Barideki; the second movement is the story after Barideki has grown; and the third movement includes the content when Barideki becomes a god. All the movements show the development of the detailed story—the first movement is divided into nine parts, the second movement is divided into seven parts, and the third movement is divided into three parts. The content of the story and its atmosphere are represented through all the instruments, and the emotion and action of the characters are described by the techniques of instruments, i.e., the dynamics and tempo, etc., in detail. Furthermore, this doctoral project discusses and analyzes 'Barideki for String Sextet’ through a precise explanation of the storytelling step by step for each part. And, the significant meaning of the discussion and analysis aims to find the association between the story and the program music through the compositional process to achieve specific instrumental expressive techniques. Also, the object of the musical meaning is focused on the way of expressing the story, therefore, a discussion of the techniques of the instrumental writing and the theoretical composition of music are focused on the expression method. In that sense, the analysis of all parts through the whole composition is very detailed and thoroughly analyzed based on the content of the story.

1. Recital, May 1, 2016 The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Op. 35 by Benjamin Britten Sweeter than roses, Z. 585 by Henry Purcell 'Twas within a furlong of Edinborough Town, Z. 605 by Henry Purcell If music be the food of love, Z. 379C by Henry Purcell Avenging and Bright, At the mid hour of night, and The last rose of summer from Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies arranged by Benjamin Britten 2. Recital, February 26, 2017 Règne Amour from Pigmalion by Jean-Philippe Rameau Nun wandre Maria, Herr was trägt der Boden hier, and Die ihr schwebet um diese Palmen from Spanisches Liederbuch by Hugo Wolf Quando è parto from La resurrezione by George Frideric Handel Fewer Words by Ricky Ian Gordon Il barcaiolo from Nuits d'été à Pausilippe by Gaetano Donizetti 3. Susannah (opera), March 31, 2017 Composer: Carlisle Floyd Role: Little Bat

1) Breath of Life: J. Todd Frazier 2) MM Recital: Robert Schumann, Erik Satie, David Sisco, Gioachino Rossini

With the growing presence of historically informed performance (HIP) of baroque music in the cultural mainstream, as well as modern productions of J.S. Bach’s (1685-1750) works that push the envelope with increasingly varied interpretations, current performers must continually bring a greater diversity of scope, audience experience, and flexibility of implementation to their respective roles. Bach’s Evangelist role—the Gospel narrator set for a solo tenor voice, most notably in his St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, Christmas Oratorio, and Ascension Oratorio—incorporates a daunting number of factors for its performer. One must navigate an array of characterizations and HIP considerations through acute intonation and agility, all while compelling and engaging an audience. Therefore, a young singer learning the role for the first time, with the goal of performing it professionally, might understandably feel a bit lost. Helmuth Rilling (b. 1933), Masaaki Suzuki (b. 1954), and Craig Hella Johnson (b. 1962) represent three generations of the most celebrated, award-winning conductors spanning the past six decades, who have all played influential roles in the cultural landscape of vocal and choral music, especially with regard to the works of Bach. They agreed to give interviews during the summer of 2015, in which I asked each of them the following three categorical questions: 1. What do you look for when hiring a Bach Evangelist? 2. What is the Bach Evangelist’s function to you? 3. What do you recommend to a young singer when first learning the role? Based on information gathered through interviews with acclaimed conductors Helmuth Rilling, Masaaki Suzuki, and Craig Hella Johnson, along with my own experience as a professional performer of the Bach Evangelist roles with such interpreters, this document aims to highlight assertions and special considerations during the preparation of the role, as a resource to supplement and support conventional, institutional vocal training.

The official tagline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is “Everything is connected.” Films recounting the heroic exploits of Iron Man, Captain America, and their fellow Avengers are all set in the same shared universe taken from the pages of Marvel Comics. While the film series’ visual aesthetic, recurring characters, shared locations, and interweaving plot points (sometimes spanning both the film and television incarnations of the MCU) exhibit explicit visual and narrative continuities, the orchestral-based original film scores for the series lacks cohesive musical identities, leitmotifs, as heard in other blockbuster franchises such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or The Lord of the Rings. Iron Man’s musical identity was conceived by five different composers over the course of the films from Iron Man (2008) leading up to Captain America: Civil War (2016). The same issue pervades the Captain America series in which Alan Silvestri’s ideas for the character as heard in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and The Avengers (2012) went largely unutilized in the subsequent films Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Upon a more concise musical examination, however, patterns in melodic contour, orchestration, harmonic content, and the functionality of popular (source) music in the series exhibit a sense of musical unity despite lack of concrete leitmotivic lexicon. Primarily focusing on the films featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Avengers, this in-depth study into the music of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seeks to present ways in which music establishes narrative continuity outside of the norms established by Wagner and later John Williams. Many of the musical examples therein offer the first musical analysis of the music of the most financially successful film franchise of all time.

One of the most significant contributions to the global culture that the United States has made in the last century has been its musical traditions. American vernacular musics such as rock & roll, blues, hip-hop, jazz, and country can be found almost anywhere in the world that commercially recorded music has travelled. Traditional conceptions of audience-performer identity have been challenged in this music through community-based, participatory events known as open mic nights. During these events, the artistic output of the participants in the community is developed and consumed. Additionally, the physical and cognitive space in which the community ritual of the musical open mic is adapted to better suit the needs of the community. In a national artistic environment in which the traditional boundaries between artistic producers and consumers are changing, it is of utmost importance that academics and both formally trained and amateur musicians gain an understanding of the musical open mic night as a vehicle for American musical community. This paper argues that analysis of musicological, spatial, and ethnographic forces reveals that open mic nights embody the constructed cultural priorities of their participants. Using data-gathering methods from the disciplines of ethnology, anthropology, musicology, and historiography, this paper provides observation and analysis of the dynamics at work within one participatory arts community in Denton, Texas. By doing so, this paper aims to offer a contribution to the academic and professional literature on American vernacular music and provide suggestions for ways they can be used within a wider analytical framework for observing creative communities.

My thesis will focus upon the trope of the Cailín (the “young girl”) used in three western Ireland sean-nos (“old style”) Irish language songs. My emphasis will be mapping recurrent ornamentation choices and the possibility of their concurrence with connotations carried in the lyrics. I will analyze both literary and melodic constructions, and work to explore the connections between physical description, morality, and archetypal feminine identity. While individual choices in performance may be influenced by proximity and exposure to other performers, I suggest that the choices made by performers of Cailín songs intend to express cultural values and moral expectation and enhance performance impact through technical and interpretative choices within the song’s structure.

This paper suggests storytelling as a form of mental practice to musicians who spend time on physical practice.

This paper provides conductors with information on the essential background and structure of the five-voice settings of 9 Lamentationes Hieremiae by Orlande de Lassus. A thorough exploration of the ways in which Lassus highlights the meaning of the text through various types of text painting in the verse settings is provided to facilitate analysis and engagement of the scores in preparation for performance. Because of the analytical nature of this document, it is recommended that it be read alongside an edition of the scores, references to which are provided in the body of the paper and the bibliography. The performance edition by Clive Wearing published by Mapa Mundi in the London Lassus series was the primary source consulted for analysis. Brief background information is provided on the text taken from the biblical book of Lamentations, and a discussion follows of how the structure and content of the poetic excerpts informs their use in the liturgy and in the polyphonic musical settings. Relevant biographical details about Lassus are given, connections are drawn to historically relevant details of the developments and changes within the Church resulting from reforms mandated by the Council of Trent, and an explanation of how these changes impacted the composition of the lamentation settings is offered. The various types of text painting including changes in texture, voice grouping, counterpoint, polyphony, pitch, harmony, and rhythm are analyzed and explained. The brilliance of Orlande de Lassus is evidenced in the beautifully crafted polyphony that when paired with thorough analysis and attention to all of the ways the composer has musically highlighted the meaning of the words brings the music to life for performers and audience alike.

Texas contest style fiddling remains a distinct sub-genre within American fiddling. It is performed in a competitive context that involves the direct use of ornamented and varied folk melodies. As the contest tradition evolved in style of performance and eventual locations outside of Texas, the term likewise evolved to describe a virtuosic and indigenous type of fiddling. In order to trace stylistic evolution, I analyze three successive generations of contest fiddle performers by focusing on recordings and fiddle tunes that best represent the performance practice. These individuals are Eck Robertson (November 1887- February 1975), Benny Thomasson (April 1909- January 1984), and Mark O’Connor (August 1961). Basing comparative analysis on transcriptions of each players recording, the thesis focuses upon bowing styles, fiddle techniques, and improvisation to demonstrate a nuanced picture of stylistic modifications made by the performer. Combining historical backgrounds and memory narratives, this thesis shapes the history of the Texas contest fiddle tradition, and contributes to the idioms continued relevancy. Situating the fiddlers’ performance innovations within the expectations of the fiddle tradition, it is clear these players carry on the tradition of fiddling while nevertheless creating individualistic renditions of canonic fiddle tunes.

1. MM Chamber Recital: Beethoven, Piazzola, and Rachmaninoff 2. MM Solo Recital: Bach, Camargo Guarnieri, Nazareth, Pascoal, Villa-Lobos, Rachmaninoff

Masters Recital Program 1 and Iolanthe Program

Symphony is an orchestral composition that explores the large-scale forms and soundscapes of the traditional symphonic medium while intermingling a range of musical ideas from the ancient to the modern. On the whole, the work—divided into four movements—utilizes chromatic counterpoint to create chord progressions of both standard and non-standard functional pathways. Using counterpoint of this kind, it was necessary to develop a system of flowing into and out of keys quickly and smoothly so as to maximize correspondence in non-chord tones to the sounding chord. The significance of such a system comes into play when trying to explain Romantic era harmonies (for example, Wagner, &c) to students.

The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent preservice educators, both music and traditional classroom, were able to predict the music preferences of 3rd, 5th and 7th grade students from rural, suburban, and urban areas. The process included data collection from two populations: student music preference ratings (N = 647); and preservice educator predictions of student ratings (N = 124). Students and preservice educators responded to a stimulus recording consisting of 15 song samples. ANOVA calculations compared the results of the preservice music and preservice traditional classroom predictions of the students’ actual preference rating. If the results did not yield a significant difference between the prediction and the student ratings, then the teacher prediction was noted as accurate. Preservice educator prediction trends were revealed as the data were explored across student gender, grade, and geography. Although preservice traditional classroom educators were significantly more accurate in their predictions than preservice music educators, neither group had an overall success rate greater than 44.44%. Implications for teacher preparation included the dissemination and application of student preference materials for a more productive and successful learning environment, and the connection of music to the outside world and across the curriculum.

Since 2000, a new musical genre has emerged revolving around the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling. This genre, called Wizard Rock, is comprised of more than 700 bands and thousands of listeners. These individuals make up the Wizard Rock community, a musical subculture founded on the ideals of unity, charity, and equality. However, like many musical communities, Wizard Rock participants struggle to behave according to their rhetoric. In this thesis, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Wizard Rock events around the United States, videography, audio analysis, field interviews, and other ethnographic data, I will argue that there is a noticable disparity between Wizard Rock community rhetoric and its behaviors, particularly focusing upon various constructions of Identity, Social Activism, and Gender and Sexuality.

Prior to 1942 North Mississippi blues fife and drum music was virtually unknown outside of its Hill Country context. It was during the 1940's, 50's, and 60's that ethnomusicologists like Alan Lomax made some of the first field recordings of Sid Hemphill (1876-1963), Othar Turner (1908-2003), and Napoleon Strickland (1924-2001), legendary players in the tradition. Through that early fieldwork this unique culture and music was first introduced to the world, and to an audience interested in commercializing and profiting from it. In this thesis, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Hill Country, videography, audio field recordings, field interviews, and other ethnographic data, I will argue that scholarly researchers and their methods profoundly affected the development of its community, musical content, and musical context.

Cal Tjader’s role in the development of 1950s jazz has been given little attention. Many Latin Jazz musicians and critics acknowledged him as a major figure in this regard, but he is largely ignored in formal historical studies. Most of the writing about jazz in the 1950s shows a romantic view of black musicians primarily from the East Coast. Scholarship tends to focus on biographical concerns and personal issues, rather than a nuanced musical analysis. Tjader’s legacy also suffered from a tendency in earlier criticism to portray white fifties-era West Coast jazz players as musicians that do not play “true†jazz. The critical writings on 1950s jazz thus tend to paint a simplistic picture of black versus white musicians and an unrealistic battle for jazz dominance. It seemed historically unlikely that in the 1950s Cal Tjader was a major participant in a musical revolution fueled by the incorporation of Latin music and jazz. The Latin style that inspired Tjader utilized Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Caribbean musicians living in New York. Geographic location and ethnicity were against him. Even Poncho Sanchez, who had worked in Tjader’s group in the last years of his life, was an outsider, as a Mexican-American musician developing an interest in Caribbean music. Ted Gioia, author of West Coast Jazz, stated that Tjader was not easily labeled due to a potpourri of musical influences that spanned cultural boundaries; all this in a decade when segregation was a way of American life. This dissertation will confront the simplistic picture created by music historians by addressing the impact of a third group of musicians, largely ignored by conventional jazz histories, who nevertheless played a crucial role in 1950s jazz’s incorporation of musical influences from the Caribbean. Because of his role as both a San Francisco native and a white musician of Swedish descent, Cal Tjader’s career in particular presents multiple layers for semiotic analysis. Due to the limited materials available on Cal Tjader, preliminary study on this project required extensive and varied research tools. The methodologies and materials employed for research included iconographic analysis, interviews conducted by myself, book, journal and periodical authorship, discographies, musical transcription and musical analysis. Original research focused on creating a timeline of musicians associated with Tjader’s groups throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. This was created through interviews with surviving members of Tjader’s groups and a thorough analysis of Tjader’s discography. The discography was most helpful. It revealed the relationships, knowledge, understanding and involvement of Tjader with specific Latin American musicians from New York and California. Another original contribution was the addition of new interviews with surviving relationships. Interviews were conducted with family members, musicians from various eras of his career and industry related people, such as album cover artists. Three surviving percussionists were interviewed and contributed to the creation of a chapter focusing on the careers of pivotal Afro-Cuban performers in the 1950s. This dissertation also utilized iconographic analysis to show the simplistic, yet non-threatening, portrayal of a musical style to a group of Americans that were unfamiliar, yet entranced by the mambo craze. Musical analysis was also used to show the original contribution Cal Tjader made in the incorporation of Latin jazz to the small combo. In the field of Latin jazz, Cal Tjader is known and revered by the participants of the genre, but not by the historians. Tito Puente highly respected his work, and his greatest percussionists left his group for Tjader, only to create fame for themselves as bandleaders in the pantheon of Latin jazz. Tjader’s experimentation in the 1950s with the synthesis of the jazz combo and Afro-Cuban music was an original, and eventually successful, endeavor that has been mimicked from its inception to the present day.

Music educators have been trained to assist male students through the voice changing process. A major challenge of assisting students through this change is identifying where they are in vocal maturation process. According to John Cooksey, there are six stages in this process. Identification of the first stage, the unchanged voice, may be especially problematic. Is the boy’s voice unchanged, or has it changed and the boy is singing in falsetto? The purpose of this study is to examine the abilities of the pre-service music educator to identify, describe, and distinguish between the male adolescent unchanged and falsetto voices when listening to a stimulus recording. Secondary questions involve pre-service educators’ confidence in their decisions and their verbal descriptors of the unchanged and falsetto voices. Methodology consisted of developing a stimulus recording (N= 16) containing adolescent male falsetto (n=8) and unchanged (n= 8) vocal samples selected by a panel of experts. Pre-service music educators (N= 61) then assessed the stimulus recording, followed with a Likert ranking of the confidence in their choice and written descriptors of the adolescent male falsetto and unchanged voice. Some of the significant findings revealed in this population were: the unchanged voice was more often correctly identified than the falsetto voices; males had greater identification accuracy than females; and males that had participated in elementary/middle school music programs were more accurate in identification than those in only secondary programs. The results yielded supporting data for stronger pre-service music educator training including, but not limited to: accurate vocal range identification, aural skills, selection of appropriate solo and choral curriculum, recognition of vocal and physical cues from students, and the ability to assist the adolescent male through the vocal maturation process physically and emotionally.

1) "Bits and Pieces" by Joseph Willcox Jenkins #2) "Virginia Tate" by Paul Smadbeck #3) "Chrysoprase IV" by Norman Weinberg #4) "Mudra" by Bob Becker #5) "Square Dance" by Takayoshi Yoshioka #6) "Rhythm Gradation" by Toshi Ichiyanagi #7) "Drei Volksliedparaphrasen fur Vibraphon by Gunter Lege #8) "Dance on Wahbehkaness by Daniel McCarthy #9) "In Praise of Johnny Appleseed" by Lou Harrison #10) "Endure" by Tommy Igoe

The history of the introduction and integration of Orff and Kodály methods of music education into the pre-service and continuing education of Oregon music educators was documented through interviews and correspondence with individuals who played active roles in this process. Pioneers of the American Orff and Kodály movements including Katinka Dániel and Grace Nash were among the interviewees. Additional subjects were university professors, teachers in Orff and Kodály certification programs, members of the Oregon Music Educators Association Board of Control, representatives of the music industry, members of the Portland Orff Schulwerk Association, Lane Orff Schulwerk Association, and the Southern Washington and Oregon Kodály Educators. Information gathered through the interview process was triangulated through consultation with issues of the Oregon Music Educator, the professional journal published by the Oregon Music Educators Association and by comparing data presented by multiple interviewees. Confirmation of data was also accomplished through consultation with national and international music educators’ journals and dissertations on related subjects. The Orff and Kodály methods were each considered separately. After presentation of biographical information on the founder and a short history of each method’s development, the Oregon specific data were presented. The history of each method in the state of Oregon was traced from its introduction (Orff in 1956 and Kodály in 1964) through 2005. The contributions of conference workshops, Orff and Kodály certification programs, college methods courses, professional organizations, university summer courses, and workshops sponsored by the music industry were examined. Twenty-seven individuals were interviewed for this research. Transcripts of fourteen recorded interviews are included in the appendices. An additional thirty-six individuals contributed information via correspondence and informal interviews. The oral history record of past events has preserved eyewitness accounts of historically significant events in the history of music education in the state of Oregon.