Dissertations 1990-1999

Makers of a Songbook: The Scribes of the Laborde Chansonnier
Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award
(under the direction of John Nádas)

The Laborde Chansonnier (Washington, Library of Congress, Music Division, MS M2.1.L25 'Case') is one of the central sources for French songs from the second half of the fifteenth century. That there are close relationships between it and other manuscripts (the 'Copenhagen', 'Dijon', 'Nivelle' and 'Wolfenbüttel' chansonniers) has long been known, but previous interpretations have engendered assumptions which are not supported by the evidence of the manuscripts themselves. Of the five, Laborde has the most intriguing history of copying, with implications that the plan for the manuscript changed on more than one occasion. While Laborde is at the centre of this investigation, the discussion frequently addresses its relationship to the other manuscripts in the group. To understand the cultural conditions that led to the copying of chansonniers, chapter 1 addresses the function of small decorative books within the context of fifteenth-century society. Of particular relevance is the status of manuscripts and the role of the scribe in the early years of printed books. Problems are identified in scholarly approaches which do not adequately consider scribal methods of compilation and organization of repertory. Chapter 2 focuses on the physical aspects of Laborde, identifying and numbering its scribes. The chapter also reconstructs a relative chronology for Laborde's compilation, and outlines the various stages of completion. Chapter 3 tests the application of ordinary scribal practices to the specialized copying of music manuscripts. Through a close examination of script, an evolution is traced in the work of the scribe responsible for the Dijon and Copenhagen Chansonniers. Since this scribe also worked on Laborde, the identification of an earlier and later style has important chronological implications. Chapter 4 calls into question the chronology which has come to be accepted for the five manuscripts. It argues that the assumptions which led to the Nivelle Chansonnier being considered the earliest of the group were based on a flawed methodology. In the light of a revised chronology, chapter 5 reconsiders the repertories contained in these manuscripts, and their changing patterns of transmission. The popularity of certain pieces is viewed from a local rather than an international perspective.

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Accompanied Recitative in Mozart's Operas: “The chef d'oeuvre of the Composer's Art”
(under the direction of Mark Evan Bonds)

Orchestrally accompanied recitative occupies a nebulous realm in the world of opera. Lying at the intersection of speech, aria, and instrumental music, it lacks the lyricism of arias; yet it is not as speech-like as simple recitative which is supported solely by the harpsichord and cello. Mozart's mature operas provide an ideal compendium of the era's compositional strategies within this hybrid genre. Using eighteenth-century music theory as a springboard, this study examines Mozart's accompanied recitatives from textual, musical, and dramatic perspectives.

In contrast to other vocal genres of the time, accompagnato treats the voice and orchestra as essentially equal partners. The instruments "speak" between the singer's phrases. During an age that consistently criticized instrumental music as "inarticulate" and "meaningless," the idea that the orchestra can convey "passions even more effectively" than the voice is a bold assertion. This potential for expressive power prompted Rousseau to call accompanied recitative "the chef d 'oeuvre of the composer's art." Additionally, modulations that are unusual for arias, such as the one Mozart uses to set Osmin's rage, are commonplace for accompanied recitatives.

Although analysts have typically treated accompanied recitatives apart from an opera's arias and ensembles, these passages are an integral part of a work's dramatic flow and musical expression. Accompagnati often generate musical processes that continue into the subsequent number. Elisions, interjections of recitative into lyrical numbers, and harmonic, thematic and motivic links all blur the boundaries between recitative and arias. Analyzing accompagnato-aria pairs reveals a middleground of musical coherence that stands in-between large-scale tonal plans and motivic unities within individual numbers. Similarly as distinctions between opera seria and opera buffa were collapsing, accompagnato, a genre associated with the elevated serious style, expanded its dramaturgical associations. While in seria works, the texture portrays moments of great distress and high passion, in Mozart's comedies it acts as a marker or signifier of certain character types, such as the sentimental heroine. Accompanied recitative's traditional uses may also be subverted to portray moments of deception. In short, the genre of accompagnato challenges, as well as complements, some of our underlying assumptions about operatic form.

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The Critical and Musical Work of Deems Taylor in Light of Contemporary Cultural Patterns
(under the direction of Thomas Warburton)

Deems Taylor (1885-1966) was one of the most visible figures in American art music during the 1920s. Known for his activities as an intellectual, critic and composer, Taylor has been often described as a conservative or post-Romantic. Careful reconsideration of his work proves that although such labels are indeed accurate, they were also too narrow and too simplistic, for at times his critical views were in conflict with his musical practices. As a critic he was sympathetic to the work of many musical modernists, yet as a composer he was unable to break free from the more conservative romantic tradition.

Taylor's work was a consequence of the global atavism which grew in response to the tremendous aesthetic and stylistic ferment of modernism. Some composers responded by seeking inspiration and revitalization from primitive, early (neoclassicism for example), folk and popular music. In Taylor's case, he searched for inspiration, accommodation, and revitalization along more antimodern lines. As defined by T. J. Jackson Lears, antimodernism was a "retreat to oriental or medieval aesthetics, the pursuit of intense physical or spiritual experiences, and the search for a sense of self sufficiency." Taylor's life and work embodied these activities. This dissertation traces Taylor's life and work, beginning in the late 1880s and ending in 1931. Particular emphasis is placed on his work from 1918 to 1931, especially his article on music for Harold Edmund Stearns's Civilization in the United States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans, his critical writings for the New York World, and his musical settings of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and James Branch Cabell's Jurgen.

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Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev
Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award
(under the direction of Jon W. Finson)

Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev is well-known to audiences as the composer of the popular Peter and the Wolf, Alexander Nevsky and Lt. Kije Suite as well as the ballets Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. But the success of these pieces and other works from his career in the Soviet Union has overwhelmed his early work for Sergey Pavlovitch Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: Chout (1921), Le pas d'acier (1927) and L 'enfant prodigue (1929). These ballets usually garner no more than brief mention in the plentiful surveys of the Ballets Russes or in studies of Prokofiev's much celebrated contemporary, Igor Stravinsky. However, knowledge of these works is crucial for an understanding of Prokofiev's mature ballet style. These ballets provided his first theatrical successes in western Europe. Furthermore, they document the composer's self-professed stylistic redirection away from Parisian modernism towards heightened lyricism--a style that is incorrectly associated with only his Soviet period works.

Chapter One traces the fifteen year relationship between Diaghilev and Prokofiev during which the impresario influenced the composer at many important junctures. Though Diaghilev rejected Prokofiev's first ballet Ala i Lolli as well as the first version of its successor, his tenacity, discernment and encouragement led to a fruitful collaboration. Chapter Two demonstrates that while Prokofiev followed Stravinsky to the Ballets Russes, he worked there on his own stylistic terms. Despite a common heritage each composer responded to Diaghilev's call for an overt Russian style with a personalized "neokuchkism." By comparing the original 1915 short score of Chout with the Diaghilev-directed revised version in Chapter Three I show how Prokofiev's development as a ballet composer was indebted to the impresario's guidance. Chapter Four examines the Janus-faced Le pas d'acier: on the one hand the most trendy work Prokofiev penned for Paris and on the other, the beginning of his shift towards a more prominent lyricism. Chapter Five summarizes the collaboration that produced one of the company's enduring masterpieces, L'enfant prodigue. Its recognizable "new simplicity" is distinguished from Stravinskian neoclassicism. A summary of some common themes in Prokofiev's ballets for Diaghilev precedes a brief valedictory.

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Antonio Barrè and Music Printing in Mid-Sixteenth Century Rome
(under the direction of James Haar)

Antonio Barrè (fl. 1551-1572) was a singer and composer who arrived in Rome in the early 1550s and issued his first books as a printer in 1555. His chosen genres for printing were the light forms: villanesche, moresche, and most prominently, madrigals. His anthologies, collected under the series title " ... delle Muse ... " (of the Muses), defined the new style of Roman madrigal, the "madrigali ariosi," which had developed outside the milieu of the Ferrarese and Venetian styles.

As a printer, Barrè was innovative in his use of special symbols, most notably being the first to print the natural sign, which was first seen in his printing of Nicola Vicentino's treatise, L'antica musica riddotta alla moderna prattica. Because of his background as a composer, his music prints are noted for their careful attention to detail, with few typographical music errors. In addition to his music prints, Barrè also published non-music books. These appeared only during his first year of work, 1555. They include one of the most reprinted books from the mid-sixteenth century, Paolo Giovio's Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose. This has remained in print from 1555 until the late twentieth century. Another was a book of poetry in memory of Livia Colonna, a woman who had been the victim of a particularly gruesome murder. Through his music and non-music books, we can see how Barrè represents the norm of publishing in Rome. His activities and failures in publishing permit us to examine the economics of printing, the competition and cooperation among publishers, and allows us to observe at the larger picture of Rome as a failed center of publishing, as it increasingly lost ground to the more active printers in Venice. The dissertation includes texts from all Barrè music publications.

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Ignaz Pleyel and His Early String Quartets in Vienna
(under the direction of Mark Evan Bonds)

The 1780s are widely recognized as the decade in which the string quartet became a genre independent from other kinds of Austrian instrumental chamber music. Many Viennese composers cultivated the string quartet at this time, including Joseph Haydn and W. A. Mozart. One of the most popular and prolific of these quartet composers was Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831).

The early string quartets of Pleyel, op. 1 through op. 9, were written between 1782 and 1786. Pleyel's string quartets show great variety in their cyclical structure, e.g., in the number of movements (two, three, or four), the sequence of tempo, key, and formal structure. These quartets are mostly homophonic with the first-violin melody dominating over simple accompaniment; this texture is often identified by an amiable and light style. At the same time, Pleyel tried to emulate the quartets of Haydn and Mozart, as, for example, in the four-movement quartets, op. 3 and 5A, and in the quartets displaying a concern for motivic unity and contrapuntal texture. Our modern perception of string quartets, which is almost entirely based on those of Haydn and Mozart, has exalted the string quartets as the genre for connoisseurs, demanding the most refined taste and intellectual content. But Pleyel's string quartets mostly appealed to the growing number of amateur musicians, and contemporaneous reception shows that the most popular quartet composer from the mid-1780s until the end of the century in Vienna was not Haydn or Mozart, but rather Pleyel.

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The Responsory-Communions: Toward a Chronology of Selected Proper Chants
(under the direction of James McKinnon)

This study explores those chants that serve as both communions for Mass and as Matins responsories. The frequency with which these two genres are exchanged is unique--over one quarter of the communion cycle, in fact, has some history in the responsory repertory. An examination of their texts, melodies and liturgical assignments shows the responsory-communions to be frequent and distinct anomalies in both the genres in which they appear, and finds that most are assigned to dates known to be the subject of eighth-century liturgical revisions. It is argued here that these observations are both related and chronologically significant, and that the responsory-communions are a comparatively late layer of the Roman repertory. As liturgical texts, responsory-communions are notable for their length, scriptural derivation, and literary style. Only nine of the total forty-one are psalmic--most are gospel texts of a dialogue type drawn from particularly dramatic or poignant points of scripture. In addition to their dual liturgical role, and the biblical translation they most often employ, this could suggest that some originated as a discrete set relatively late in liturgical history.

The responsory-communion melodies support this hypothesis. As a comparative base, a representative sample of psalmic communions and responsories are examined in detail, and with surprising frequency responsory-communions prove to conflict with the stylistic, modal and formal norms of these presumably older psalmic chants. Responsory-communions are also distinguished by a highly unstable theoretical and written tradition, further recommending them as latecomers to the Roman repertory.

Liturgical information also supports a late date for the responsory-communions. Most are assigned to Paschaltide, recently described as the last season to be revised in the late-seventh or early-eighth-century formation of the Franco-Roman communion cycle. The ordines romani show a concurrent restructuring of the Matins Lectionary that appears to have had equally significant consequences for the responsory repertory. It is within the context of these liturgical adjustments that responsory-communions were most likely created, as products of a concerted musico-liturgical project to fill a shortage of repertory in both of the genres to which they are assigned, shortly before the reception of the cantus romanus by the Franks.

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Josquin des Prez and His Motets: A Case Study in Sixteenth-Century Reception History
(under the direction of James Haar)

Josquin des Prez (ca. 1440-1521) is the first major composer whose repertory and reputation vastly outlived their maker. His motets in particular were copied, printed, performed, and studied throughout the sixteenth century, marking the emergence of a new phenomenon in the history of western music. The present dissertation considers many of the forces that contributed to the longevity of these works and the composer's posthumous fame. At the core is the blossoming of music historiography as an outgrowth of the humanistic movement. Stylistic and nationalistic considerations also put Josquin at the center of methodical explorations of music's recent past.

The first chapter of this study examines the role of printed anthologies in the preservation and dissemination of Josquin's motets. Publications of Petrucci, Grimm & Wyrsung, Formschneider, Berg & Neuber, and LeRoy & Ballard are among those considered. Close readings of dedicatory letters, studies of the repertorial organization and scope, and investigations of the interests, aesthetics, and agendas of the compilers of these volumes document a sixteenth-century perception of the historical significance and timely relevance of this repertory. The next chapter explores Josquin as a subject in sixteenth-century musical thought. In music treatises and other non-musical texts, Josquin is frequently associated with the notions of genius and natural talent; his music is subjected to some of the earliest attempts at music criticism. His motets are also associated with the changing status of music from a mathematical craft to a poetic art. For these reasons his music is considered a turning point in accounts of music's past and he is thought to be the originator of a new modern style. The third and fourth chapters explore ways in which sixteenth-century musicians interacted with Josquin's motets: the circuitous paths by which they traveled, the adaptations and revisions to which they were subjected, and how other composers explored these works through parody, imitation, and by adding si placet parts. To conclude the study, comparisons between the fate of Josquin's motets and those of his contemporaries, particularly Mouton and Isaac, place in greater relief the unique regard for Josquin.

The Genesis of Gaspare Spontini's Agnes von Hohenstaufen: A Chapter in the History of German Opera
(under the direction of James Haar)

Spontini wrote his final opera, Agnes von Hohenstaufen, for the court opera in Berlin in 1827 and later revised it for performances in 1829 and 1837. The opera's prolonged genesis took place against a background of changing ideals in operatic aesthetics and the composer's own shifting fortunes as General Music Director in Berlin. Spontini wrote and revised Agnes at a time when German Romantic opera had begun to take root, Rossini's operas dominated stages throughout Europe, and grand opéra developed in Paris.

The dissertation presents an archival, source, and stylistic study of Spontini's final opera. The first chapter provides an introduction by briefly surveying the reception history of Spontini's German operas and the musicological literature devoted to them. The second chapter presents new archival material in an examination of Spontini's tenure as General Music Director in Berlin from 1820 to 1841. Among the issues explored are the continued impact of French taste on the operatic repertoire of Berlin, Spontini's conflicts with Ludwig Wittgenstein, his superior at court, and the intendants, Count Brühl and Count Redern. Spontini's strained relationships with his colleagues led to a significant loss of power when his contract was renewed in 1831. The next chapter examines the libretto of Agnes. Spontini's awareness of new aesthetic ideals is apparent in his choice of subject matter loosely based on German Medieval history and the incorporation of local color. The fourth chapter is an evaluation of the surviving musical sources for Agnes, including autograph, manuscript, and performance material from Berlin. The remaining two chapters provide an account of the opera's genesis by focusing on the musical changes undertaken in the revisions by Spontini. These changes are seen in light of the work's relationship to contemporary operatic trends, especially the rise of grand opera, and its place within Spontini's own stylistic development.

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Johann Nikolaus Forkel's Philosophy of Music in the Einleitung to Volume One of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788): A Translation and Commentary with a Glossary of Eighteenth-Century Terms
(under the direction of Howard E. Smither)

Johann Nikolaus Forkel's metaphysical essay on the philosophy, aesthetics, and rhetoric of music forms the Einleitung to volume one of the Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (1788). Forkel shows in this writing that the musical expression of man stands in synchronic relationship with man's development of mental and perceptual capacities, termed Empfindung. He presents his understanding of tonal structure and its gradual development in various cultures. These ideas, new in his time, are based on precepts of universal history with the purpose of loosening the philosophical orientation of music from its mooring in mathematics and placing it within a linguistic model. Given this change of conception, he could include musical lectures and concerts in the fine arts offerings at the University of Göttingen. Evidence is presented for Forkel's strong reliance on writings by Johann Adolph Scheibe as the starting point of his essay.

Forkel describes how each musical element contributes to the expression of the flow of feelings in a composition, because, as he sees it, music is a full-fledged language of feelings. Musical rhetoric provides the structure through which to channel the expression of feelings in a composition, which consists of several aspects of a primary feeling. The narrative of feelings throughout an entire work constitutes a process of experiencing feelings, a sequence better understood in the twentieth century than in the eighteenth.

Forkel balances four dichotomies present in eighteenth-century thought: interpretive versus descriptive history, music as language versus mathematics, harmony versus melody, and instrumental versus vocal music. Some of these dichotomies possibly result from the physical manner in which we process perceptions and information in the brain. Under contemporary rubrics of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, linguistics, biomusicology (perception), aesthetics, and rhetoric, music theorists in the twentieth century are pursuing the same complex of interwoven topics as did Forkel. In addition, Forkel's essay suggests to performers ways of consciously building artistic conceptions of eighteenth-century compositions. As a musical philosopher, Forkel not only summarizes some significant intellectual trends of the eighteenth century, but treats issues that are of interest to twentieth-century music theory, philosophy, and performance.

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Lauriejean Reinhardt

From Poet's Voice to Composer's Muse: Text and Music in Webern's Jone Settings
(under the direction of Thomas Warburton)

This study examines the creative friendship between Anton Webern and the poet/painter Hildegard Jone. The primary objective of the study is two-fold: (1) to view Jone's poetry and Webern's Jone settings through the lense of early twentieth-century Austrian culture; and (2) to consider the ways in which Webern's music relates to Jone's poetry. The study draws on archival materials pertaining to both artists, including primary sources that have only recently been made available. The opening chapters establish a profile of Jone as an artist. Chapter 1 sketches Jone's biography and discusses her activities as a painter. Chapter 2 considers Jone's career as a poet, focusing on her working methods, publication history and aesthetics and examining representative poems. Chapter 3 discusses Jone's creative relationship with Webern in light of the correspondence; the issue of collaboration is discussed with regard to Webern's Kantate op. 31/VI. Chapters 5 through 8 focus on Webern's Jone settings, with an emphasis on the insights afforded by the primary sources. Chapter 5 offers an overview of the sources, including literary materials, sketchbooks, row tables, short scores and fair copies. Chapters 6 through 8 discuss the evolution and style of Webern's first Jone settings; more specifically, they examine the curious relationship between Webern's Drei Gesänge op. 23 and a texted fragment found in the sketches for the Konzert op. 24. Careful analysis of the sketches reveals important interconnections between the histories and musical languages of the two compositions. The relevance of these interconnections to the Drei Lieder op. 25 and Das Augenlicht op. 26 are also discussed. Chapter 9 explores the broader ramifications of Webern's creative relationship with Jone. In particular, the chapter considers why Webern turned to Jone's poetry for his mature, twelve-tone works by noting similarities in the artists' responses to the events of World War I, the cultural climate of the First Austrian Republic and the advent of World War II. Three issues identified as central to Webern's interest in Jone's poetry are the artists' mutual belief in art as language, their shared understanding of their relationship to the past, and their belief in the spiritual nature of art.

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The Genesis of Richard Strauss's Macbeth
(under the direction of James Haar)

Richard Strauss's first tone poem, Macbeth, Op. 23, is the pivotal work in his turn from the conservative style of his youth to the progressive style that made him the leading German composer at the end of the nineteenth century. Strauss's earliest orchestral compositions display his strong affinity for textbook sonata-allegro form as he learned it from his father, Franz Strauss, and his only teacher, Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer. Even when he began to develop his own style in the mid-1880s, his orchestral works continued to follow standard formal models, although Strauss often modified tonal plans and disguised the seams in the subdivisions of movements.

Strauss encountered difficulties in the composition of Macbeth as he attempted to reconcile his conservative education with the progressive ideas of the New German School that he learned from Alexander Ritter. A study of the extant sources makes it possible to partially reconstruct the earliest version of Macbeth and to demonstrate how Strauss revised the first score. That revision, made on the advice of Hans von Bülow, was more extensive than Strauss's comments on the matter have implied. In addition to cutting a long coda that represented the "Triumphant March of Macduff," Strauss also removed a literal return of part of the first theme and reworked the approach to the ending. Strauss later withdrew this revised first score to correct imbalances in the orchestration. In the definitive second score, Strauss also made other changes which made his intentions easier to realize in performance.

A study of various correspondences and other documents, including many previously unknown items, shows some of the difficulties Strauss encountered in trying to secure performances and publication of his works in the late 1880s. His publisher, Eugen Spitzweg, initially refused to accept Macbeth, and only later took it when Strauss withheld the more successful Tod und Verklärung. Macbeth failed to earn a place in the repertoire in part because of negative critical opinion that misunderstood the relationship of the work's program to its form. A careful examination of the work's motivic surface shows, however, that program and form are consistent with one another in Macbeth.

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The French Song Cycle (1840-1924), with Special Emphasis on the Works of Gabriel Fauré
(under the direction of James Haar)

This study outlines the origins and development of the French song cycle from its early roots in a style based on the German song cycles of the first half of the nineteenth century, especially those of Robert Schumann, to the death of one of its primary practitioners, Gabriel Fauré. The works discussed begin with Poème d'avril (1866) by Jules Massenet, with an aside to Hector Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été, and end with Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (1937) by Maurice Ravel. Gabriel Fauré wrote seven song cycles spanning the period under consideration. Three of his cycles are in the early style, three are in the late style, and one combines traits from both styles. The early style is marked by its dependence on musical links to provide the unification of the cycle. These links are often accomplished by the return of material from the beginning of the cycle at its end. The late style differs from the early style in that its unity resides in the text, not in the music. There are a large number of cycles and possible cycles from the period under study and continuing on into the twentieth century, most of which are unpublished or are otherwise difficult to obtain. The genre also undergoes another profound shift in the 1910s and 1920s where the use of an instrumental ensemble or orchestra begins to supplant solo piano as the accompanimental medium of choice for songs. The material and the methodology presented here provide a starting point from which to begin to reassess this neglected genre.

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Battling over the Lyric Muse: Expressions of Revolution and Counterrevolution at the Théâtre Feydeau, 1789-1801
(under the direction of James Haar)

The French Revolution is inseparable from the rhetoric that surrounds it, and the theater of the revolutionary era is particularly rich in source material for the study of revolutionary rhetoric. Drama, opera, vaudeville, melodrama, as well as the place and manner of performance, all reflected the contemporary political discourse. The theatrical world and the political sphere drew upon each other in such a way that theaters became political forums while, in turn, public figures adopted self-conscious, theatrical mannerisms in order to create and project a suitable public image. Indeed, as revolutionaries opened up politics to popular scrutiny, the French government appropriated theatrical models and deliberately "staged" their proceedings as a means to generate favorable public opinion and legitimate their position. Music proved to be well suited to its rhetorical role in advancing the cause of the Revolution. Throughout the 1790s music frequently served as a means of intensifying the emotional content of political as well as poetic texts. France had a long tradition of employing music to support a text rhetorically, and this tradition informed revolutionary musical practice. For example, composers of opera consciously adapted the musical conventions that they had inherited to new political contexts and created a revolutionary music of the theater.

This study examines the rhetorical uses of music, specifically music for the theater, during the French Revolution. The mixture of music and drama at theaters such as the Opéra, Opéra-Comique, and the Théâtre Feydeau possessed a special persuasive force that made them especially valuable as well as potentially dangerous. The focus of my study is one of these theaters, the Théâtre Feydeau. At that theater, music assumed an enormous rhetorical significance that attracted both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary audiences. These groups appropriated the Théâtre Feydeau as a public forum in which to express their social and political views. As a result, the history of this theater reflects the politicization of French culture during the 1790s and the aesthetic consequences of this process.

Cyclic Musical Settings of Laments from Ariosto's Orlando furioso
(under the direction of James Haar)

The publication of Ariosto's Orlando furioso in 1532 provided a rich text source for madrigal composers during much of the sixteenth century and beyond. About 730 settings by over 150 composers have survived, at least in part. For musicians, the most popular sections of the poem were the laments; those portions where a character steps out of the action to speak directly to the reader about his or her unhappiness concerning the loss (or perceived loss) of a love. This study analyzes twenty-four cyclic musical settings of eight such laments from the Furioso, including works by Berchem, Gabrieli, Merulo, Nicoletti, Rossetto, and Wert, spanning the years 1554 to 1588.

After a brief overview of the poem and the range of musical settings from it, Chapters 2 through 7 examine each cycle in detail, looking particularly at modal manipulations and text/music relationships. Chapter 8 offers concluding observations about the works and Volume 2 provides a critical edition of nine of the cycles previously unavailable in modern edition. The most impressive aspect of the musical settings addressed in this study is their rich diversity of style, in contrast to the somewhat generic nature of the texts. These styles include arioso, note nere, declamatory, canzonetta, highly dramatic, and didactic canonic styles. Despite this diversity, some general trends can be seen in the sample. First, like madrigal cycles in general, these cycles experience heightened modal manipulations, both for structural and expressive reasons, as the century progresses. This is particularly true in the longer laments which include narrative portions. Second, as a group the cycles reflect the lamenting character of their texts both through modal associations (a marked preference for Mode 2) and melodic signatures (the widespread use of a group of related lament arie, based on the descending stepwise span of a fourth). Finally, there is a strong tendency for composers to pay tribute to the oral reciting traditions of the Furioso by using archaic formal repetitive patterns and various melodic formulas in their musical structures.

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Opera at Mannheim, 1770-1778
(under the direction of James Haar)

In November 1780 Mozart traveled from Salzburg to Munich to finish writing Idomeneo, an opera that reflects his musical experiences at Mannheim, Munich, and Paris, in 1777 and 1778. Most decisive was his encounter with the music establishment of elector palatine Carl Theodor at Mannheim. The famous orchestra was called "an army of generals, equally fit to plan a battle, as to fight it," and magnificent operas were performed regularly at the court theater. During his stay, Mozart won the respect of the musicians with his skills as a composer and performer. Mannheim opera in the 1770s sets the stage for Mozart's Idomeneo, written for and supervised by basically the same group of people.

Drawing on a variety of sources, including newly identified reports and music manuscripts, this dissertation re-examines the historical and cultural context of opera at Mannheim. A relatively stable company of singers maintained high standards of performance in Italian and German, comic and serious, operas. Together with the orchestra, these singers helped to shape the musical character of the arias and ensembles. In 1770 Anton Raaff, the most famous tenor of the day, arrived at court; in the next decade he sang the title roles in the major operas, including Idomeneo. The principal soprano roles were shared by Dorothea Wendling (the first Ilia) and her sister-in-law Elisabeth Wendling (Elettra).

Musical tastes at Mannheim were eclectic. A series of "reform" operas by Jommelli, Traetta, and Majo--all to librettos by Mattia Verazi--yielded to works by a new generation of composers in about 1770. Italian opere serie by Piccinni (Catone in Utica, 1770) and J. C. Bach (Temistocle, 1772 and Lucio Silla, 1775) were superseded by serious German operas with performances of Wieland and Schweitzer's Alceste, by Marchand's company in 1775. This period of opera at Mannheim culminated with Holzbauer's Günther von Schwarzburg (1777) and Schweitzer's Rosamunde, scheduled for carnival 1778 but postponed following the death of the elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph. Less than a year later, Carl Theodor (now duke of Bavaria) transferred his court to Munich. Because of this accident of fate, Idomeneo, the most famous "Mannheim opera," had its premiere in Munich.

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The Florid and Equal-Discantus Motet Styles of Fifteenth-Century Italy
(under the direction of John Nádas)

Italy in the early fifteenth century fostered a period of intense musical exchange, furthered by the Council of Pisa in 1409. Motets in the surviving manuscripts reflect the cultivation of older styles and the development of new kinds of motets. The organization of the manuscripts themselves helps define the motet as a genre. The equal-discantus motet style descends directly from the Italian motet of the fourteenth century. The style emphasizes the interaction of two equal discantus parts--equal in terms of range, melody, rhythmic activity, and text--above a slower, free tenor. It underwent less an internally-generated change than an absorption of new style influences. The cultivation of the style spread from the principal musical centers across Italy; its forms depended in large part on the requirements of patronage. Later equal-discantus motets, after 1425, such as "Summus secretarius" by Johannes Brassart, reach a new maturity by employing the style in individual ways with respect to melody and structure. In contrast, the florid and discantus-tenor motet styles developed through a process of style transference. The latter is characterized by a strong duet between the structural voices. It originated through the application of song style to motet texts in the 1420s. Two early antecedents date from the time of the Council of Pisa, including Johannes Ciconia's "O petre christi discipule." The florid motet style probably developed from the discant Mass style in Italy. Its first examples are the liturgical "Ave verum corpus" by Hugo de Lantin, and "Flos florum" by Guillaume Du Fay. The style emphasizes a flowing, ornate discantus voice over a slower tenor-contratenor pair. "Flos florum" was imitated by other musicians in Italy, most of whom knew Du Fay, resulting in a cohesive body of works. Several allude, directly or indirectly, to the opening phrase of "Flos florum." Du Fay's "O proles yspanie/O sidus yspanie" places the florid motet within the Office of Vespers and extra-liturgical contexts. The process of style transference closes with Du Fay's rondeau "Seigneur leon" of 1442, written in the manner of a florid motet.

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Latin Sacred Music and Nicola Fago: The Career and Sources of an Early Eighteenth-Century Neapolitan Maestro di Cappella
(under the direction of Howard Smither)

Nicola Fago, "il Tarantino," was the first of three generations of maestri di cappella to work in Naples during the Settecento. He arrived in Naples in 1692, studied with Francesco Provenzale, and was an active professional there from ca. 1700 to 1745. As maestro di cappella of the Conservatorio Sant'Onofrio a Capuana, the Chiesa San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, the Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, and the Conservatorio Santa Maria della Pieta dei Turchini for 3½, 9, 29, and 32 years, respectively, Fago was highly regarded as a pedagogue, contrapuntist, and composer of church music. Indeed, during the years 1708-1725 he was one of the most frequently mentioned musicians in the Gazzetta di Napoli. His students included Leonardo Leo, Francesco Feo, Giuseppe de Majo, Niccolo Jommelli, Nicola Sala, and likely Michele Falco, as well as his son Lorenzo. Giuseppe Sigismondo described Fago as the catalyst behind Sala's Regole del contrappunto pratico (1794), which was later incorporated into Choron's Principes de composition des ecoles d'Italie (Paris, 1809). Fago was also the brother-in-law of the great castrato Nicolino and worked closely with such singers as Nicolino, Matteuccio, and Farinelli. He clearly was an integral part of the Neapolitan music scene in the early eighteenth century.

Source studies form the core of this work. Part I discusses Fago's biography, legacy, and standing in the Neapolitan musical environment. Part II treats, in detail, at least 107 sources containing his Latin sacred music and establishes the autograph and other hands (while exposing a heretofore unrecognized Leo autograph), establishes the original (versus later) instrumentation of several of his works, and corrects several misattributions (one of which was to Domenico Scarlatti). Part II also includes 137 hand samples. Part III is an overview of Fago's Latin sacred works, which include a Requiem Mass, Mass Ordinaries, litanies, psalms, canticles, hymns, sequences, responsories, motets, and miscellaneous works. Appendices include diplomatic transcriptions of twenty early documents; transcriptions of early historiography concerning the composer; a works list consisting of 99 titles (approximately 25% of which are new) with incipits and detailed source information; 216 watermark tracings; and 196 rastra measurements.

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Music Manuscripts and Their Production in Fifteenth-Century Cambrai
(under the direction of James Haar)

Cambrai Cathedral is well known as a fifteenth century musical center, and home to the composer Guillaume Dufay. The wealthy chapter also promoted the copying and production of music manuscripts. Since few northern sources of sacred music survive from the early and mid-fifteenth century, the study of those which are still extant is particularly important. The music manuscripts 6 and 11 of the Cambrai Bibliothèque municipale are unusual in many respects, such as their large dimensions, and late use of parchment and black notation. Dates of the mid-1430s for Ca 6 and early 1440s for Ca 11 are proposed. The seven works unique to these sources, including several Kyries which may be of English origin, a Credo, and three hymns are edited here.

Through an examination of archival documents and Cambrai music sources of both chant and polyphony (Ca 11), a number of manuscripts can be identified as having been copied by the well-known scribe Simon Mellet. The breadth of his production in the years 1445-1480 gives us a new understanding of the role of a cathedral scribe. Two outside scribes, Jean de Namps and Gerard Sohier, were hired to recopy the cathedral antiphoners in the years 1446-1456. This monumental project stressed the high priority of chant in the musical life of the cathedral, as well as the constant flux of the liturgy, which resulted in the need for this recopying. Other documents reveal the use of choirboys in polyphony earlier than 1417, and provide information on groups with musical responsibilities, including the greater and lesser vicars.

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Jacques Hotteterre "le Romain": A Study of his Life and Compositional Style
(under the direction of James Haar)

Jacques Hotteterre "le Romain" (1674-1763) is the most famous member of his family of woodwind players and instrument makers who were active at the French court during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV. His own reputation is based, however, not on the work that he did as a performer or instrument maker, but rather on his publications of music and treatises. This study compiles all of the available biographical information which presents evidence of his activity at court, as well as his teaching, publishing, and other business ventures. Nearly all of Hotteterre's extant compositions were published between 1708 and 1723, and various reasons account for his subsequent inactivity as a composer. Aside from his craftsmanship and originality, Hotteterre's importance as a composer must be evaluated in the light of the enormous popularity of the instruments for which he wrote: the transverse flute and the musette.

Whether or not "le Romain" actually travelled to Rome, his music displays the influence of Corelli. A stylistic study of both French music in the 1680s and the music of Corelli was undertaken in order to provide a background for a study of Hotteterre's compositional style, which synthesizes elements of both earlier styles. From these background studies, the tangible, identifiable characteristics of each profusion of ornaments indicated by signs, melodies which can stand independently of their accompaniment, and rhythms which are remarkably unrepetitive while using a limited number of rhythmic patterns. Corelli's influence on Hotteterre can be seen in his use of strongly tonal and patterned harmonic progressions, his composition of sonatas which contain structural and harmonic relationships among movements, his use of rounded binary forms, the quantity and quality of imitative and fugal compositions, the rhythmic independence of the parts, the variety of textures and melodic intervals, and the frequency of sequences, suspensions, and internal rests.

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The Late Madrigals of Luca Marenzio: Studies in the Interactions of Music, Literature, and Patronage at the End of the Sixteenth Century
(under the direction of James Haar)

This dissertation is designed as four independent but interrelated essays on Luca Marenzio's late madrigals. After a general introduction to the various channels of traditional music patronage available in late sixteenth-century Rome, Chapter I reconsiders Marenzio's unorthodox career in the broader perspective of Roman intellectual patronage. The three other essays address issues surrounding the music itself. Chapter II places Marenzio's Quinto libro à sei (1591) in the context of Medici Florence--comparing it to the composer's contributions to the wedding festivities of 1589. Chapter III considers the sixth and seventh books for five voices, both of which are dominated by texts drawn from Giambattista Guarini's Il pastor fido. Marenzio's Pastor fido madrigals are stylistically distinct from those of his northern contemporaries Giaches Wert and Claudio Monteverdi. It is argued here that Marenzio's Pastor fido style reflects the play's reception in Rome as opposed to the northern courts. In Chapter IV, Marenzio's striking use of Petrarch's poetry in three late publications is placed in the context of late Renaissance poetics. The books discussed in this chapter are the Madrigali (1588), the Sesto libro à sei (1595), and his last book, the Nono libro à 5 (1599).

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Word-Sound and Musical Texture in the Mid-Sixteenth-Century Venetian Madrigal
(under the direction of James Haar)

Around 1540, the composers Adrian Willaert, Cipriano de Rore, and Willaert's pupils worked within a culture filled with a new spirit of invention in the Italian language. Venice was under the aesthetic spell of the great poetic theorist Pietro Bembo, who developed a comprehensive neo-Ciceronian theory of linguistics, syntax, accent, and even affect for individual vowels and consonants. Recent research has linked syntactical rigor and variety in Willaert's music with this theory; the specific Bembist emphasis on word-sound and accent shapes my focus for musical analysis. Through detailed examination of diction, I show these composers to be highly sensitive to linguistic matters. Composers frequently arrange rhythm and texture to highlight internal textual similarities. Favorite methods include aligning sounds vertically in different voices (with assonant or alliterative attacks) and forming consecutive sound-clusters and accents.

Following an introduction to my methods, I analyze the four-voice madrigals in Willaert's great collection Musica nova (written c. 1538-1545, published in 1559). The unusually dense textures in these four works emphasize phonic sonorities. I then expand my inquiry to include cinquecento ideas of poetic accent and study Willaert's structural uses of accent in Musica nova madrigals à 5 and à 6. In Chapter 4, I compare seven madrigals from Venice and Florence, written to the same Petrarchan sonnet. Imitative writing produces some sound-alignments as a matter of course; however, in exhaustive embedding of poetic sound in musical texture, non-Venetian madrigals fall far short of Venetian ones. I also compare a previously unnoticed madrigal pair (by Arcadelt and Willaert), which demonstrates further the distinctiveness of the Venetian approach to poetry in polyphony. In Chapter 5, I provide a new assessment of Rore's imitative process in the Primo libro (1542), showing its relationship to word-sound and demonstrating its flexibility. Challenging prevailing notions, I show that his melodies frequently imitate material from the middle of earlier entries and even from earlier passages. I also offer new speculations about Rore's influences on Willaert, as Rore follows Willaert's phonic style only in part. In conclusion, I combine analytical tools in a detailed study of Rore's "Hor che'l ciel." This study shows the profound influence of humanistic thinking and literary criticism on an entire repertoire and offers a new way of studying polyphonic vocal music.

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Henry Purcell and "Ancient" Music in Restoration England
(under the direction of James Haar)

In the early 1680s Henry Purcell turned his attention toward older polyphonic music, copying anthems by Tallis, Byrd, and Gibbons, among others, and composing new anthems using older polyphonic techniques, all within a single manuscript volume, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, MS Mus. 88. This dissertation examines this seldom-explored part of Purcell's career, concluding that the study of old polyphony was an important force in Purcell's musical maturation, a force that made its impact felt throughout his career.

Views of Renaissance music in writings from seventeenth-century England are given in Chapter 1 as a backdrop to this study. These writings indicate that the rules of old polyphonic composition--the stile antico--were never codified in England and that old polyphony was regarded with increasing veneration as the century progressed. By Purcell's time a number of older polyphonic masterworks were still held in high esteem, but their style was not easily reproduced. Purcell is thus seen as pursuing a relatively untrodden path in trying to recapture this style in his compositions. Additional context for Purcell's activities is given in Chapter 2, in which the sources of sacred music from his time are examined to show what proportion of the repertory was still based on older music. A core group of old polyphonic pieces, closely reflecting the contents of John Barnard's First Book of Selected Church Musick (1641), was carefully maintained in the sacred repertory of Purcell's time, and it is from this core that Purcell copied works into Fitzwilliam 88.

The next two chapters are devoted to Fitzwilliam 88 itself. Chapter 3 provides a full manuscript analysis of this source, in order to reveal Purcell's methods of copying older works and to shed light on the resulting didactic process. Chapter 4 examines Purcell's own anthems from Fitzwilliam 88 in detail, showing their indebtedness to older polyphonic models. The final chapter indicates that Purcell's study of the past remained a significant stylistic influence throughout his oeuvre. The viol fantasias, created around the same time or slightly before the Fitzwilliam 88 anthems, are investigated to show their relationship to Purcell's vocal polyphony. And finally, some of the later dramatic music is explored to demonstrate that Purcell's polyphonic techniques continued to wield their influence throughout his career and were sometimes used for specific and meaningful dramatic connotations.

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Sacred Music in Mozart's Salzburg: Authenticity, Chronology, and Style in the Church Works of Cajetan Adlgasser
(under the direction of Howard Smither)

The church music of Cajetan Adlgasser and other Salzburg contemporaries of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has received relatively little scholarly attention. Nevertheless, judging from the large number and broad dispersal of sources, the composition of church music was a major occupation of these composers, including Mozart himself. Cajetan Adlgasser contributed to all the major subgenres of Salzburg church music in the mid-eighteenth century: his output included Masses, Requiems, Litanies, Vespers services, Offertories, Marian Antiphons, Hymns, and German sacred songs. His work as a composer, from c. 1745 until his death in 1777, bridged the activity of the older generation of Johann Ernst Eberlin and Leopold Mozart and the younger generation of Wolfgang Mozart and Michael Haydn. This dissertation examines both the sources and the style of this pivotal figure in the history of Salzburg church music.

In Part I of this dissertation, after a discussion of the dissemination of the sources of Adlgasser's church music, the issues of authenticity and chronology are considered. Because of the lack of signed autographs, other means of verifying authenticity must be developed. Several criteria for examining the non-autograph sources are established, and each source is studied according to these criteria. The authenticity of each work is determined on the basis of this source study. In addition, all of the evidence regarding chronology is assembled, and a partial chronology of the works is developed. Part II examines aspects of the style of Adlgasser's church music. The role of music in the liturgy is briefly considered, and the large-scale structure and instrumentation of the works are discussed. Fugal techniques and aria forms are examined in detail and compared to the fugues and arias of contemporaries, including Mozart. In Part III a thematic catalogue provides detailed information on all of the known sources of Adlgasser's church works. This study contributes to a clearer understanding of the sources of Salzburg church music, and it expands our knowledge of this neglected but significant genre of Classic music. It also provides a context for the sacred music of the greatest Salzburg composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

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Kurt Weill's Street Scene
(under the direction of Thomas Warburton)

In the dissertation, I attempt to answer some of the questions raised by Weill concerning the essential character and nature of Street Scene. What role should it assume in the overall scheme of his career? Does it contain within it a partial solution to the reconciliation of his European and American careers? Did he ascribe to it an importance beyond its scope and aesthetic value, or was it instead the most ideal representation of his thoughts on the American musical theater to that point? In order to discuss these questions I have divided the dissertation into three sections, each of which should lead cumulatively to a clearer perception of what the work represented for Weill, and what relationship it bore to his vision for the American musical theater.

The first section of the dissertation attempts to reconstruct Kurt Weill's Street Scene, tracing its development from Weill's original conception to the final preparation of the Broadway production. In addition to all the relevant secondary sources, I have utilized all the available primary sources from Weill's diaries, letters, project notes, and, most importantly, his own annotated copy of Elmer Rice's original Street Scene play. The evidence from the primary sources presents an earlier version of Street Scene than hitherto known; in certain statements made by Weill in letters, he indicated that he was not adverse to certain additions which would be of benefit in future productions. Also, I have concentrated on Weill's own constantly evolving ideas for the show and the consequences of the collaborative process which led inevitably to something quite different from the original conception.

The second section represents an examination of selected American writings by Weill, their relationship to his European and American careers, and their influence on what he sought to achieve in Street Scene. Here I emphasize Weill's notions of opera and Broadway opera, how these are connected to his ideas formulated in Europe, and how in Street Scene he attempted to reconcile seemingly disparate genres. The third section focuses on Street Scene's music, seeking to synthesize an examination of the music with the discussion presented in the previous two sections. By considering the piano-vocal score, along with the musical drafts and sketches, I hope to clarify the relationship of the music to his writings on music, and to demonstrate that some aspects of the music represent a thread of continuity with that which he had achieved already in Europe. Finally, the dissertation contains an appendix that illustrates the transformation of the original play to the musical theater work, a synopsis corresponding to the individual musical numbers, and a complete list of all the cuts, omissions, and projected numbers from the annotated play, all coordinated with Rice's original work.

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