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This dissertation offers a thorough investigation of Pascal Dusapin’s song cycle O Mensch! (2009) for baritone and piano. By examining the score’s music and text, I summarize and clarify important musical features within the work, delineate the source of generative harmonic and motivic material, identify normative musical behaviors as well as departures from the normative, and present detailed analysis of several representative songs taken from the larger cycle. I also provide new English translations of the cycle’s source texts, which were selected and assembled by the composer from the writings of poet-philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. These translations were informed and shaped by Dusapin’s musical setting and are intended for use in performance as projected text for an English-speaking audience. While O Mensch! presents itself as a traditional cycle of lieder in its form and construction, it remains a work of theater in spirit. As such, I offer thoughts on the work’s characterization and narrative structure, and describe important visual and dramatic elements from my performance of the work in its American premiere in January of 2019. Dusapin’s music presents considerable challenges of execution and interpretation for the singer and pianist, and through analysis and translation I elucidate the process by which I, as a performer, arrived at my interpretative representation. I also suggest that this process might be used as a model for structuring future investigations into other works of a similar musical and theatrical nature.

Processing and publication of this issue were made possible through the financial support granted in 2023 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Education, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The study will aim to characterize the songwriting of Dominick Argento (1927−2019), a leading American composer and Pulitzer Prize winner, and to outline the possibilities of its application in the education of solo singers in faculties of education. Argento’s songwriting is rich (he composed cycles for every voice except bass) but not well known and rarely performed in Europe. It may be due to the difficulty of some cycles and the fact that not all sheet music is readily available. Part of the study presents the musical compositions of Dominik Argento with a focus on songwriting, the characteristics of textual aspects of songs, and the composer’s approach to the musical treatment of song cycles. The second part of the study deals with using Dominik Argento’s songwriting in teaching voice at faculties of education. This section includes a short musical and interpretative analysis of selected songs and suggests specific compositions for voice study. The topic’s treatment benefits Central European vocal teachers and the professional public.

This dissertation with accompanying Creative Works lecture documents a collaboration between a professional singer (myself), a professional pianist, and a composer as they create a song-cycle together. It is an autoethnography of my journey as I explore the processes of choosing lyrics, first reads of the songs, rehearsals with the composer present, rehearsals without the composer present, two performances and the recording sessions resulting in a CD of the cycle. The roles of notation, live performance, and recordings in the realisation of a score are explored. I document the way I learn a new score and make technical choices when singing sections of music that are challenging for my voice type. The study also investigates the way the composer began to write specifically for the two performers after hearing the live performance of the first four songs in the cycle. The collaboration between the performers is investigated through issues of vulnerability, trust, communication, and accountability. The research indicates that collaborations between performers and composers result in musical scores that are clear in terms of a composer’s intentions and can also reflect the abilities of the performers.

Etter sitt kommersielle gjennombrudd med good kid, m.A.A.d. city i 2012, ble Kendrick Lamar regnet som den store frelseren av hip hop. Det var med andre ord store forventninger da han utga oppfølgeren To Pimp a Butterfly i 2015. Lamar levde opp til forventningene med et album som ble hyllet av både fans, kollegaer og kritikere. Resepsjonen var positiv både i lys av hans musikalske evner, men like mye for å lage musikk som gir introspektive skildringer av hvordan det er å være afro-amerikaner i nåtidens USA. Han har blitt studert i mange forskjellige fakultet i Akademia og konseptalbumet er komplekst nok til å engasjere mange forskjellige fagfelt. Til tross for at det er et konseptalbum, er det få som ser på albumet i sin helhet. Denne oppgaven tar denne retningen, og ser på hvordan To Pimp a Butterfly viser en mann i en selv-realiserende prosess. Etter å ha introdusert min problemstilling, albumet og dets resepsjon, ser jeg i andre kapittel på hvordan denne prosessen blir presentert i to dikt som Lamar leser høyt i slutten av albumet. Jeg viser hvordan det ene diktet, som jeg har kalt «spoken-word poem», strukturerer albumet ved å gradvis tilføye nye linjer som skildrer Lamar sin personlige utvikling. Det andre diktet, «Poem of the Caterpillar and the Butterfly”, skildrer det han har lært om samfunnet han vokste opp i. Dette diktet beskriver allegorisk den selv-realiserende prosessen. Videre utforsker jeg sjangrene ‘konseptalbum’ og ‘sang syklus’ og hvordan albumet svarer på disse. Jeg sammenligner også Lamar sin fortelling med den tradisjonelle sjangeren for personlig utvikling, bildungsromanen. Videre viser jeg hvordan de to diktene konkluderer med temaet ‘samhold’. Sangen «Alright» er kjent for sine forenende egenskaper. Derfor velger jeg å analysere musikkvideoen til denne sangen gjennom multimodal teori i kapittel tre. Her viser jeg hvordan musikkvideoen gjenskaper metaforene fra diktene gjennom det visuelle. Ved å se på samspillet mellom lyd, tekst og bilde utforsker jeg hvordan videoen skaper ny mening og dybde. Samspillet gjør at videoen både oppsummerer og bygger videre på Lamar sin store suksess, To Pimp a Butterfly. Engelsk mastergradsoppgave MAHF-LÆFR MAHF-ENG ENG350

Six Blake Songs is a song cycle for Soprano and mixed chamber ensemble (Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Violin and Viola). The work sets several texts by the English poet William Blake (1757-1827), which all share the central theme of Time. Nearly all of these texts are excerpts from larger works, with the exception of the poem Ah, Sunflower, which is presented at the work’s conclusion. Discrete collections of frequencies, which are derived from either the frequency modulation of two notes or from the overtones of a single fundamental, provide the pitch content for the entire piece. In addition, many of the durations of notes, gestures, and phrases, are designed to fluctuate in size systematically.

Through examining Judith Weir’s woman.life.song (2000), the work presented in this written reflection is centered on the power of collaboration and context to create meaningful art and music that express important and often underrepresented experiences. Through a musical and sociological analysis of this piece, it is examined how the personal is political and how the creation of music and art are therefore inherently political projects. This paper argues that musicians have a responsibility to consciously select our repertoire: a conscience based upon an understanding of intersectionality. Such consciousness must take into account structures of sexism and racism, which positions music in its socio-political context and actively challenges the concept of “quality” as it is constructed in the art music canon. Placing the composer and authors within their broader socio-political contexts, it is argued that lifting pieces such woman.life.song are important contributions of a musician’s participation in music. This paper draws upon work in sociology that centers on identity to examine how structures of power impact the voices that are heard and that are represented in the musical canon. Kristine Nowlain, sopranGustave Charpentier (1860-1956)Depuis le jourUr Louise(Louise)Libretto av G. CharpentierAlbert Dahllöf, piano Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)The Divan of Moses-Ibn-Ezra1. When the morning of life has passed2. The dove that nests in the tree-top3. Wrung with anguishText av Moses-Ibn-Ezra (1058-1138) Gustav Sondén, gitarr Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)Bachianas Brasileiras, no. 5 (Aria)Text av Ruth V. Corrêa Gustav Sondén, gitarr Åke Uddén (1903-1987)Tre sånger ur ”Les Chanson de Bilitis” 1. Tendresses3. ChansonText av Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925)Johanna Johnsson, piano Gösta Nyström (1890-1966)På Reveln3. Havet SjungerText av Ebba Lindqvist (1908-1995)Johanna Johnsson, piano Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)The Seal ManText ur A Mainsail Haul av John Masefield (1878-1967)Albert Dahllöf, piano W.A. Mozart (1756-1791)Ach, ich Fühl’sUr Die Zauberflöte(Pamina)Libretto av Emanuel Schikaneder (1751-1812)KMH Kammarorkester Judith Weir (f. 1954)woman.life.song1c. Edge (text av Toni Morrison, f. 1931)2. Eve Remembering (text av Toni Morrison)3b. The Mothership: when a good mother sails from this world (Stave II) – (text av Clarissa Pinkola Estés, f. 1945)KMH Kammarorkester: Sofia Winiarski, dirigentAlbert Dahllöf, pianoAndreas Nyström, slagverkAstrid le Clercq, klarinettCatrin Spångberg Johansson, altflöjtEnno Leggedör, violaGustav Wetterbrandt, basklarinettHenrik Wassenius, slagverkHugo Olsson, klarinettIsabel Godau, violinJohanna Moraeus, violinKajsa Nilsson, flöjtKlara Källström, celloMiia Roiko-Jokela, flöjtMiriam Liljefors, harpaMoa Nissfolk, gitarrRagnhild Kvist, violaSimon Landqvist, slagverkSvante Söderqvist, kontrabasViktoria Hillerud, cello

An Imaginary Musical Road Movie revolves around two integrated objects: on the one hand, the programmatic and cyclic concept album Highway Rider (2010), which is jazz pianist and composer Brad Mehldau’s most complex instrumental work, and on the other hand transmediality, both as a concept and phenomenon. Musicologist Mats Arvidson claims that a deep understanding of an intermedial music culture is a prerequisite for knowing how to interpret a work like Highway Rider. Having such an intermedial framework at hand further enables the integration of formal and structural analysis with cultural, historical and technological aspects of music. In a captivating manner, Arvidson shows how Highway Rider circulates in and through different cultural systems, and in doing so, explains how, where and when musical meaning is produced. Highway Rider is understood as a transmedial phenomenon both through its genre-specificity and its narrative structure, that is, as an imaginary musical road movie whose story raises questions about the meaning of life. The study is addressed to musicologists interested in issues related to intermediality, as well as to researchers within the field of cultural studies, film studies, media studies, visual studies and comparative literature. The idea of ‘music alone’ as an independent auditory medium expressed in the institutions of today’s academia does not resonate with how we listen to and perceive music in everyday life; music is always accompanied with paratexts such as programme notes, LP sleeve images or other types of media. This idea forms the basis for this essay and is used to present a number of issues concerning meaning production: How, where and when is musical meaning produced? To be more specific, this essay deals with how an intermedial music culture can be described and analysed through one specific case study. Intermediality arises in the crossings between constructed media borders, which means that different aspects of a specific medium can be transgressed in various ways. Based on the American composer and jazz musician Brad Mehldau’s (1970–) most complex instrumental works, the concept album Highway Rider (2010), this essay explores how such an album can be understood within an intermedial music culture. It merges formal and structural analysis with cultural, historical, technological and psychoanalytic aspects of music emphasising the role of subjectivity in the production of meaning. By offering a varied and broad theoretical and methodological framework, the author demonstrates ways to approach the work using concepts like transmediality, intermedial reference, meta-reference, iconicity, semiotics, paratext, psychoanalysis and ecological psychology.