Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemMonophony, Mouvance, and Directionality: Finding Meaning in the Neumed Songs of the Codex Buranus( 2022)Nationalist agendas have favoured the study of vernacular medieval song over that of its Latin counterpart for many years. The result has been the neglect of Latin medieval monophonic song, to the point that there is much that is still unknown about the genre. This dissertation aims to address a part of this neglect by studying the neumed songs of the Codex Buranus (D-Mbs Clm 4660). Focusing on Dic Christi veritas and Bulla fulminante as case studies, I examine the two songs and their staffed, square-notated concordances for evidence of two geographical traditions of transmission, specifically Germanic and non-Germanic. I apply first Paul Zumthor’s concept of mouvance and its ideas of textual fluidity and authorial anonymity to examine and compare the way the songs are presented in each manuscript by reading their layouts as texts. I then provide a non-diastematic analysis of the neumatic notation of the two songs, drawing on Leo Treitler’s concept of directionality to analyse the shape of the melismata in each manuscript version. By applying these two frameworks in new ways, my analysis breaks with previous attempts at studying this repertoire, allowing for specificity through dispensing with the rigidity of fixed scores and false perceptions of diastematic superiority.
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Item“A Thousand Twangling Instruments”: Towards a Functional View of Inner Music( 2023)In the words of Shakespeare’s character Caliban, music can sometimes take the form of inward “humming” about the ears – an experience without external sonic stimulus. However, there are currently too many distinct scholarly terms referring to this experience. This thesis calls for a functional view of inner music to resolve definitional issues in the literature. To address the problem, I explore the topic from psychological and philosophical perspectives, and from the interdisciplinary intersection of these disciplines. My study outlines the available research and investigates an emerging hypothesis in the literature: the music memory corpus. Applying this hypothesis to musical expectations, music recollections, and inner compositions, I propose a functional, interdisciplinary conception of inner music. Such a conception may enlighten the nature of music, which in turn holds significance for theoretical and practical domains in which music is applied. This thesis concludes with key questions for the future study of the topic.
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ItemNotes on Speculative Ethnography in Sound: two case studies( 2023)Speculation has long been part of humankind’s creative repertoire. This dissertation examines sonic speculation, focussing on two case studies whose content sits in dialogue with critical ideas from anthropology. In the 1980s, writer Ursula K. Le Guin and composer Todd Barton collaborated on an album of Music and Poetry of the Kesh to accompany Le Guin’s quasi-ethnographic ‘novel’ Always Coming Home (1985). This collection of thirteen tracks was presented to the audience as literal field-recordings of performances by a hypothetical future society. More recently, Berlin-based sound artist Andrew Pekler released Tristes Tropiques (2016), after the classic fieldwork-memoir of Claude Lévi-Strauss. It responds to the anthropologist’s meditations on cultural loss in Amazonia whilst also critically reflecting on the artist’s own listening tastes. The records diverge in form, function, and (unsurprisingly) technical sophistication. But, as this paper will show, they have key similarities, placing them both within the category of ‘speculative ethnography in sound’. Materially, speculative ethnography in sound is an approach that manipulates and combines synthesised and real-world sounds in often-uncanny ways. Conceptually, it applies a critical attitude towards social and economic relations in the contemporary world to destabilise static, dichotomies like Humanity and Nature, or Self and Other. In the absence of literature dedicated to this topic, the discussion draws on a wide swathe of relevant literature: anti-colonial criticism (including Marxist and indigenous perspectives), ecocriticism, and the ‘reflexive turn’ anthropological theory of the 1970s and 1980s. The dissertation considers the political role of speculative creativity, and proposes areas for further research.
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ItemAsexual and Aromantic Narratives in Musical Works: Towards an Aspec Canon( 2022)Asexual and aromantic (“aspec”) representation in media has grown over the last decade, yet remains limited in the realm of music and music research. By analysing the works of Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 BC)/Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company (1970) and Moses Sumney’s Aromanticism (2017), the numerous ways these communities exist in music can be discussed and recognised. The changing adaptations of the Hippolytus story exposes the narrowing of possibilities for asexual life through the erasure of the titular character’s identity. In Company, an aromantic Bobby explores the challenges of individuality under the pressures of amatonormativity and the expectation of marriage. Finally, Aromanticism creates a space of intentional representation, conceptualising lovelessness as a “sonic landscape.” The growing musical awareness of aspec identity shown through these three case studies may inspire hope for an aspec lens in researching music, as well as the creation of new aspec works in the future.
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ItemIndividual Differences in the Experience of Musically-Evoked Chills( 2022)Research into individual differences has unveiled associations between personality traits and music preferences, however the understanding of individual differences in the experience of Musically-Evoked Chills (MECs) is still in its infancy. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between individual differences and MECs in music listening. A literature review was conducted that scoped current research on personality traits, cognitive styles and MECs. Furthermore, the study investigated Music Recommender Systems (MRSs) and music listening apps that suggest personalised music on streaming platforms. The scoping review revealed positive associations between openness to experience, neuroticism, the music-empathising cognitive style and MECs. These findings have resulted in the proposition of a theoretical model that suspects a link between MECs and music preferences. Future research directions include improving MRSs to account for individual differences, which may enhance their ability to regulate music listeners’ emotional responses, and in turn, may enhance their emotional wellbeing.
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ItemBehind the Photograph: The Portrayal of Chinese and Feminine Elements as Others in 'Nixon in China'( 2022)John Adams and his frequent collaborator Peter Sellars share a growing body of stage works that platform and tell American stories. Their first and most well-known opera, Nixon in China, created with librettist Alice Goodman and premiered in 1986, mythologises the events of the U.S. President Richard Nixon’s 1972 diplomatic trip to China. Working against the backdrop of a long history of antagonistic portrayals of foreign and feminine characteristics in operatic works, does this modern work avoid casting non-American and non-masculine characters as symbolic ‘others’ in a measured portrayal of historical events? Through analysing sections of the score and available recordings of the opera, and discussing interviews given by the creative team over the last thirty years, this thesis seeks to understand the biases inherent to the construction of character in this opera’s second act. Focus will be given to the ballet scene, a parodied fragment of The Red Detachment of Women, and the arias of the two lead female roles Madame Mao and Pat Nixon. This all-American creative team, though aware of the history and difficulties in portraying foreign and feminine elements in operatic works, continue to be constrained by their nationalistic viewpoints and masculine focus. This is due to the limited use and availability of source materials outside of those used to conceptualise masculine characters, and the ethnocentric bias of the creative team which resultantly casts both Chinese and feminine elements as Others. This thesis connects to a growing field of intersectional study on issues in operatic construction both in works created recently and across the history of opera.
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ItemPerforming the undiscovered solo piano works of Italian composer Lucia Contini Anselmi (1876-1913)( 2022)Lucia Contini Anselmi (b.1876-d.? after 1913) was an Italian composer and pianist. Born in Vercelli, Italy, Contini Anselmi wrote over thirty works, mainly for solo piano. Despite the current surge of research into women composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there is little known about Contini Anselmi with no major research to date, compounded by the lack of research into Italian female composers of this time period. Therefore, this study will serve to fill both these gaps in the literature. The goal of this research is to present a performance approach to two of Contini Anselmi’s works, Ludentia Op. 11 (1913) and Sibylla Cumaea Op. 15 (1916) through a practice-led research orientation. This will be realised through the application of the writings in Contini Anselmi’s treatise, Della tecnica per l’esecuzione della musica sul pianoforte e sua interpretazione, a previously unknown document published in 1908.
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ItemThe Song of the Sibyl: from pagan prophecy to contemporary liturgical drama.( 2022)The Song of the Sibyl presents an intriguing case of the preservation and restoration of a medieval Spanish liturgical drama in contemporary society. Listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO (2010), this ancient pagan prophecy of damnation – performed by a vocalist impersonating a Sibyl – was once widespread across Christmas liturgies in Europe. Despite suppression from the Tridentine Council (1545-1563), it was sustained by small communities in Mallorca and Sardinia through rote traditions, and from the 1990s onward, the number of performances across the Catalan regions on the Spanish mainland has flourished. My thesis seeks to understand the many ways this drama can be presented, which results in its preservation and revival. I achieve this through a comparison and analysis of audio and visual source materials, manuscripts, and transcriptions. The manifold reasons for revival include: recovery of primary source documents and reconstructions of manuscripts by 20th century musicologists; the reanimation of Catalan heritage; and a contemporary attraction to the pagan personality of the Sibyl. My research will assist future scholars in understanding the present reception and restoration of this liturgical drama.
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ItemCowboy Bebop and Lupin lll: an investigation of the role of brass in anime opening music( 2021)This thesis identifies and examines the role of brass instrumentation in the opening songs for the anime, Lupin III and Cowboy Bebop. This examination is conducted through an investigation of the impact of Japanese jazz and nostalgia in Japanese culture together with specific influences of Western television. By providing contextual and historical information through this investigation, and using facets of both Western and Japanese culture, I describe how and why brass instruments are being used in the opening sequences for Lupin III and Cowboy Bebop. Through an examination of these two anime, this thesis provides a framework to understanding the interaction between brass and anime opening music. The findings for this thesis were drawn from books, journal articles, various fan sites, and anime cataloguing systems. I used an interdisciplinary approach engaging with resources spanning the literature on Japanese jazz, nostalgia, Western television, and anime. This thesis discusses how through the two anime series, Japanese jazz has come to reflect a point of nostalgia and resistance for Japanese people. This discussion looks at the presence of jazz cafes, the banning of jazz in Japan from around 1937 as a result of hostilities towards the United States, bebop, and jazz fusion. I examine how these facets of Japanese jazz work together to describe the interaction between how brass is portrayed in the anime opening songs, how brass works together with the visual elements of the openings, and the overall themes that each anime represents.
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ItemCurled into the Antihero: An Exploration of the Kinaesthetic and Visual Artefacts of Jaguar Jonze( 2021)This thesis examines the visual and kinaesthetic identities of Brisbane-based musician and artist Jaguar Jonze. It analyses the production of her artefacts as continuing the narratives written in the music and lyrics, and suggests they are an emotional and physical form of expression that powers the cultural memory formed of the artist. A comprehensive visual narrative for a musician is powerful when planned in alignment with the music, creating a multifaceted, multi-platform engagement and identity for the musician that extends beyond a sonic language. Drawing on sensory ethnography, social and cultural studies, psychoanalysis and popular music studies, I argue that Jaguar Jonze is a significant example of a multisensorial design culture and musical identity. Performing myths and folklore, utilising recurring colours, themes and bodily movements, this thesis reads the visual artefacts and movements of Jaguar Jonze as a whole with the music. This thesis contributes to the limited research on the creative practices of emerging contemporary Australian musicians and the merging of their artistic forms in the post-digital music industry.
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