Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 31
-
ItemFolio of Original Compositions 2012-2016 and a Dissertation entitled: Elements of Chinese philosophy and poetry as compositional inspiration( 2018)This submission includes a folio of original compositions fo 90–120 minutes in length. This is accompanied by a dissertation (exegesis) illuminating the folio works in technical, philosophical and aesthetic ways. A recurring and significant thread appearing within my compositions since I began composing is the inspiration I have drawn from aspects of Chinese philosophy and poetry. This inspiration has never been exclusive, however I have consistently returned to these sources to find ideas to express in my music. This thesis examines how this inspiration has guided my work and the broader influence and philosophy behind the creation, performance and interpretation of my music.
-
ItemDomenico Scarlatti's Construction of a Spanish Style( 2018)The question of Domenico Scarlatti’s Spanish style has been the subject of a significant body of commentary and analysis for more than a century. Over that period, Scarlatti’s Spanish idiom has generally been viewed through the prism of Alhambrism and flamenco music, two visions inherited from late nineteenth-century representations of Spain. The commercial success of flamenco as a multidisciplinary art representative of Spain, together with stereotypes of Spanish, Gypsy and Andalusian cultures, have thus shaped the reception of Domenico Scarlatti’s music in the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. This thesis deconstructs such narratives and investigates Scarlatti’s construction of a new Spanish style in its historical, cultural and musical contexts, drawing on the musical documents that are contemporary with the composer. Scarlatti’s years in Spain (1729-1757) coincided with an effervescent period in the genesis and development of what today are recognized as Spanish classical dances, seguidillas, boleros, fandangos and jotas. Those dances were performed in the theatres as part of the entr’actes (entremeses, sainetes) of dramatic plays (comedias). From there, they spread across Europe, replacing the chaconne and sarabande as the typical markers in the characterisation of Spanishness. Examples of these new Spanish dances abound within the entr’acte repertoire and have proven fruitful in identifying the dance-structure of certain sonatas by Scarlatti. This research has been reinforced by the author’s practical approach, namely through the observation of, and experimentation and performance with, Spanish dancers, both those with folk training and background and those trained in the bolero school. In the course of my research, I have examined and performed about 550 sonatas today attributed to Domenico Scarlatti in order to identify the Spanish sonata-dances discussed in this dissertation. Additionally, I have focused on the Essercizi, the earliest dated collection of Scarlatti’s keyboard works, to explore the composer’s new keyboard language and construction of a distinct Spanish idiom. The applications of this research to performance are illustrated in a series of recordings and a DVD.
-
ItemFolio of compositions: Chimera_52: the genealogy of a contemporary composition practice( 2018)This folio of work explores the composer’s compositional aesthetic through a method of creating one new piece of music per week for fifty-two weeks. This thesis expands upon the impressive literature in this field by providing a significant amount of music composed regularly over an extended time scale. It comprises one new musical work in fifty-two parts of recorded acoustic, electroacoustic and electronic works in varied styles experienced interactively through QR codes. A shorter curation of the entire composition is supplied, along with a written introduction followed by fifty-two blog posts that supplement the research. The resulting work demonstrates a synthesis of styles and techniques using multiple crafts and technologies.
-
ItemMusic therapy as an anti-oppressive practice: critically exploring gender and power with young people in school( 2018)This project sought to locate music therapy within broader health, research, and education contexts, as a participatory and anti-oppressive practice for young people in school to explore issues related to gender and power. In parallel, the research aimed to expand music therapy as an anti-oppressive practice (Baines, 2013), specifically focusing on deepening music therapists’ understanding of critical issues related to gender, power, and young people in education settings. Predicated on the notion that schools can be both sites of violence, and microcosms for change-making, the project occurred during a time of significant shifts across education settings worldwide to respond to endemic gender-based violence (Chandra-Mouli et al., 2017). Meanwhile, young people themselves continue to demonstrate new forms of resistance to gender-based violence and dominant gender and sexuality norms (Bragg et al., 2018; Keller et al., 2018). This project responds to a need for approaches that support young people’s autonomy and challenge processes of pathologisation and individualisation; approaches that seek to understand social structures, and the ways in which young people are shaped by their relationships with these social structures, and with each other (Brunila & Rossi, 2018). Framed broadly as a participatory action research project, the study was informed by a series of music-based workshops conducted in the first year, exploring the issues that young people identified as most important in relation to gender. The project then established a music therapy group program in a government school. The school was located in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, with an index of community socio-educational advantage below the national average, and a high percentage of students with a language background other than English. This primary project took the form of a critical ethnography, and generated a wide range of data over nine months. Interviews were conducted with five staff and sixteen of the young people who participated in music therapy groups exploring issues related to gender and power. Discourses of risk and deficit emerged as critical issues to respond to in the project, and became a key focus of the four chapters of results. The research revealed the complex forms of violence that can occur when exploring gender-based violence in a school context, and how these relate to young people’s layered subjectivities and social positioning. The findings demonstrated a need to problematise and expand upon current responses to gender-based violence in the context of Australian education settings, especially where Whiteness and colonial relations remain profoundly underexamined. Chapter Six overviews the five broad, salient themes that emerged in relation to the role of music in creating conditions for young people to explore gender. Chapter Seven outlines the role of music therapists in supporting young people to do so, the unique skillset and critical lens required in this emerging practice, and a new method developed in the project: ‘Insight-Oriented Narrative Songwriting’. Informed by anti-oppressive and decolonial approaches to reframing violence and harm, music therapy is ultimately constructed as a practice congruent with shifting understandings and paradigms related to trauma. Overarchingly, the research exposes the complex conditions of power in schools, and explicates the potential of music therapy within these conditions, to support young people to resist discursive positioning, and rewrite their own subjectivities.
-
ItemThe pursuit of originality: aspects of unity and individuality through compositional synthesis( 2018)This thesis forms case studies using compositions by its author Lorenzo Alvaro as a catalyst for understanding how originality is manifested in the consistent re-enactment of borrowing and self-borrowing. Understanding how compositions ‘come together’ through ‘Synthesis’ oppose long-debated theories of originality being an innate power giving rise to the notion of ‘genius’. More recent scholarship acknowledge borrowing and collaboration as a means for originality, and based on this, the thesis argues that true originality is nothing more than an ideal.
-
ItemLiszt as interpreter of Beethoven's piano sonatas: adopting aspects of an historical approach to contemporary piano performance( 2018)This integrated performance and written project comprises recordings of my performances of Beethoven piano sonatas and solo piano works by Liszt, alongside a thesis. I evaluate Liszt’s role in the performance, editorial, and pedagogical history of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, the impact of which has been largely overlooked by scholars and performers. My approach, which is influenced and inspired by Liszt’s interpretation, expands upon contemporary notions of Beethoven performance practice. Through recordings of three recital programmes and a written thesis, I address the following research questions: What was Liszt’s impact on late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century performance practice of Beethoven’s piano sonatas? In what ways can adopting aspects of Liszt’s interpretation of Beethoven’s piano sonatas expand upon our contemporary notions of Beethoven performance practice? The recital programmes consist of Beethoven Piano Sonatas Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’, Op. 57 ‘Appassionata’, Op. 90, Op. 106 ‘Hammerklavier’, and Liszt Années de pèlerinage: Deuxième année: Italie (complete), Deux légendes, Sonata in B minor. The choice of Beethoven sonatas recorded for this project has been made from the works that Liszt performed frequently. The choice of music by Liszt has been selected from works that show an intrinsic link to the music of Beethoven and were frequently performed and recorded by Liszt’s pupils in the early-twentieth century. The research I have undertaken has influenced my interpretation of this music, and this is reflected in my recordings. Accompanying the recorded recital programmes is a 25,000-word written thesis. In the introduction I detail my methodology, conceptual framework and provide a review of relevant literature. Chapter One is an examination of the elements of fact and fantasy within Liszt’s highly complex relationship to the figure of Beethoven while Chapter Two analyses Liszt’s pedagogical influence on the interpretation of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Chapter Three discusses Liszt’s editorial approach to Beethoven’s piano sonatas. It includes my critical response to Liszt’s editing of Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’ and a comparison between Liszt’s and von Bülow’s editions of Op. 106 ‘Hammerklavier’. In the concluding chapter I describe the ways my research has influenced and inspired my approach to performing the music of Beethoven and Liszt, and provide some possible avenues for this research to be continued.
-
ItemExhibiting music: music and international exhibitions in the British Empire, 1879-1890( 2018)Between 1879 and 1890 there was barely a year in which an international exhibition was not held somewhere within the British Empire. These monumental events were intended to demonstrate, through comparative and competitive displays, the development of every branch of human endeavour: from industry and manufacturing, to art and design. They were also a massive and literal manifestation of the Victorian obsession with collecting, ordering, and classifying the world and its material contents. Though often considered in scholarly terms of grandiosity—of Victorian monumentalism and Benjamin-esque phantasmagoria—exhibitions were also social events, attended by individual members of the public for both education and entertainment. Music, as a fundamental part of cultural life in the societies that held such events, was prominent at all these exhibitions. This thesis interrogates the role of music at the international exhibitions held in the British Empire during the 1880s, arguing that the musical aspects of these events demonstrate, in microcosm, the broader musical traditions, purposes, arguments, and anxieties of the day. Further, it argues that music in all its forms—whether in performance or displays of related objects, and whether deliberately or inadvertently—was codified, ordered, and all-round ‘exhibited’ within the exhibition-sphere in multiple ways. Exploring thirteen exhibitions held in England, Scotland, Australia and India it traces ideas and trends relating to music and the idea of ‘display’ across the imperial cultural network. This thesis begins with an historical survey of music and exhibitions in London from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the 1880s, analysed through the lens of contemporary discourses around music and concepts of display, and recent museological scholarship on the presentation of musical art in physical space. Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, several broad concepts relating to music at the 1880s exhibitions are then examined. These include a discussion of musical instruments as spectacularised commodities within the phantasmagoric exhibition space, music as both an educational device and a means of entertainment and leisure in line with contemporary theories of rational recreation, and the ways exhibitions created forums for engagement for Western audiences with non-Western musics.
-
ItemFolio of compositions( 2018)Folio of 6 compositions including orchestral, choral and chamber music. The works traverse a stylistic spectrum, moving freely between the simple and the complex, synthesising liturgical choral traditions with instrumental modernism, resulting in a unique approach to harmonic and rhythmic materials.
-
ItemHoratio Parker’s opera MONA (1912) and visions of U.S. identity in the early twentieth century( 2018)At the turn of the twentieth century, composers in the United States struggled to establish a national voice. While many musical minds promoted the use of American-derived musical material, some intellectuals endorsed whole-hearted participation in the hegemonic European legacy, assuming the composers’ American provenance would endow their creations with national properties. This thesis considers possible manifestations of these properties within Horatio Parker’s Mona, premiered as the first full-scale American opera produced on the Metropolitan Opera stage. Its language is post-Wagnerian, but several elements seem to betray a unique and sometimes American voice. This thesis comprises a dissertation (constituting 65% of the thesis) and performance folio (constituting 35% of the thesis, supplementing the content of the dissertation) that explore Mona and the opera’s musical, cultural and socio-political contexts. It is hoped that this exploration adds nuance and complexity to discussions of European-influenced American opera and national elements in early twentieth-century American operas. The dissertation first considers the early twentieth-century American milieu, describing Parker’s life and career, prominent theatrical and musical trends, and broader socio-political issues. There is then an exploration of aspects of the music and drama of Mona, highlighting the ways in which the opera projects contemporaneous American cultural preferences, anxieties, and prejudices. These includes the integration and extension of European musical and operatic production trends, the narrative’s allusions to imperial occupation (reflecting the US occupation of the Philippines), and the opera’s engagement with issues raised by the women’s suffrage movement. The performance folio, accompanying the dissertation, offers an aural context for the dissertation’s exploration, providing examples of the early twentieth-century audience’s musical environment, including works that had an impact on Mona. It also illustrates aspects of Parker’s compositional trajectory, the music of Parker’s colleagues and students, and subsequent attempts at English-language dramatic text-setting. List of Performance Folio Contents [except where noted, all recordings were Performed by Patrick MacDevitt (Voice) and David Barnard (Piano)]: 1. 3 Songs, Horatio Parker (1882). 1.1. Slumber Song 1.2. Wedding Song 1.3. Goldilocks 2. 7 Songs, Horatio Parker (1909). 2.1. I Shall Come Back 2.2. A Man’s Song 2.3. A Woman’s Song 2.4. Only a Little While 2.5. A Robin’s Song 2.6. Offerings 2.7. Together 3. Opera and Operatic Song. 3.1. Winterstürme, Die Walküre, Richard Wagner (1870) 3.2. Oh, Oh, quest-ce que c’est, Pelléas et Mélisande, Claude Debussy (1902) 3.3. An die Nacht, op. 68, Richard Strauss (1918) 3.4. Then let there be an oath between us, Mona Horatio Parker (1912) 4. British and American Songs—Video. Kade Greenland (Director/Editor) 4.1. 0:00: The Bobolink, 5 Songs, George Whitefield Chadwick (1914) 4.2. 1:38: Midsummer Lullaby, 8 Songs, Edward MacDowell (1893) 4.3. 3:44: Matin Song, 4 Songs, John Knowles Paine (1879) 4.4. 5: 49: Lonely, 12 Songs, Frederic Cowen (1892) 4.5. 10:11: Speak, Music, 2 Songs, Edward Elgar (1902) 4.6. 13:39: My Love’s an Arbutus, Songs of Old Ireland, Charles Villiers Stanford (1882) 4.7. 16:11: The Blackbird, 3 Songs, Amy Beach (1889) 4.8. 17:25: Oh My Luve’s Like a Red Red Rose, 5 Songs, Arthur Foote (1887) 4.9. 19:47: When I am Dead, 12 Songs, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1906) 5. Parlour and Heart Songs 5.1. Parlour Songs. Patrick MacDevitt (Voice) and Ken Murray (Banjo/Guitar) 5.1.1. Maggie By My Side, Stephen Foster 5.1.2. Old Dog Tray, Stephen Foster 5.1.3. If You’ve Only Got a Moustache, Stephen Foster 5.1.4. Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms, Thomas Moore, arranged by Catherina Josepha Pratten 5.2. From Heart Songs, 1909 5.2.1. The Old Arm Chair, Henry Russell 5.2.2. Lull¬aby, Erminie, Edward Jakobowski 5.2.3. To the Evening Star, based on a melody from Tannhaüser, Richard Wagner 5.2.4. Chinese Baby Song, Trad. 5.2.5. The Lost Chord, Arthur Sullivan¬ 5.2.6. Toyland, Babes in Toyland, Victor Herbert 5.2.7. The Rainy Day, William R. Dempster 6. American Experimentalism. 6.1. From 114 Songs, Charles Ives (1922). 6.1.1. In the Alley 6.1.2. The Things Our Fathers Loved 6.2. There is not much difference between the two (Suzuki Daisetz), John Cage (1979)—Video. Patrick MacDevitt (Voice) 7. Arias from Billy Budd, Benjamin Britten (1951). 7.1. I am an old man 7.2. I accept their verdict
-
Item‘Darling Kath’: Benjamin Britten’s music for Kathleen Ferrier( 2018)This thesis examines the career of contralto Kathleen Ferrier (1912–1953), and her collaborations with composer Benjamin Britten (1913–1976). In the late 1940s, Kathleen Ferrier was among the most famous classical singers of her day. Britten was the pre-eminent composer in Britain, composing solos for Ferrier in three major works: the title role in The Rape of Lucretia (1946), the contralto solos in Spring Symphony (1949), and the part of Isaac in Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac (1952). Although their collaboration ceased with Ferrier’s untimely death, Britten’s work with Ferrier was musically and personally significant, and proved influential for the course of Britten’s career and for shaping Ferrier’s legacy. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, and recordings, this thesis examines Britten’s intricate understanding of Ferrier’s voice and ability, the unusual way in which he exploited them, and how Ferrier in turn interpreted and created the premiere performances. In addition, with reference to the writings of J.P.E. Harper-Scott and Carolyn Abbate, this thesis evaluates the nature of the relationship between an influential male composer and the woman who gives voice to a work or role, to address the vexed question whether it is the composer or interpreter who creates that role.