Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
ItemFolio of works( 2019)Master of Music Composition - Folio of Compositions Six original compositions, written from 2016 to 2019, comprising of: - 'On the Inside' for flute, clarinet, cello, and piano. Recording duration of 9 minutes 34 seconds - 'Ode to Damascus' for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Recording duration of 9 minutes 15 seconds - 'The Fate of Phaethon' for soprano, horn, and string quartet. Recording duration of 15 minutes 51 seconds - 'Echo' for soprano and horn. Video recording duration of 4 minutes three seconds - 'Phosphorus' for solo percussion. Video recording duration of 10 minutes 26 seconds - 'Ignition' for orchestra. Recording duration of 9 minutes 47 seconds
-
ItemOpera, publicity, disability: a case study of the public persona of Marjorie Lawrence( 2018)This thesis is an investigation of the public life of the Australian dramatic soprano Marjorie Florence Lawrence (b. Deans Marsh, Victoria 1907 – d. Little Rock, Arkansas 1979). Lawrence, who begun her professional stage career in Monte Carlo in 1932, was permanently paralysed from the waist down in 1941 after contracting poliomyelitis (at the time better known as infantile paralysis, now commonly referred to as polio). Despite the considerable challenges facing performers with disability in the pre-disability right era, Lawrence continued to perform in staged operas, concerts, and troop tours around the world. Lawrence published her autobiography in 1949, several decades before the end of her performing career and several years before the beginning of her first teaching position. Given that the basic biography of the singer is still relatively unknown the thesis starts with a brief outline of Lawrence’s biography, focusing on the years leading up to her paralysis. Chapter 1 examines her position as a role model and ambassador for people with a disability in the United States in the wake of several polio epidemics and an influx of returned servicemen with war injuries. Her affiliation with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is also explored in conjunction with an analysis the solutions Lawrence used to enable her return to the stage. Chapter 2 focuses on the complexity of her public persona and behaviours in the context of the ‘prima donna’ and ‘diva’ categorisations often used in literature concerning the biography of female opera singers. To investigate this, a case study of Lawrence’s interactions with high ranking military and civilian officials during her 1944 troop is used. Chapter 3 is a documentation and reflection on the previously under-researched topic of Lawrence’s role as a university professor at Southern Illinois University, particularly regarding the production of Joplin’s Treemonisha. Research in this thesis is based on archival documents, historical news sources and on new interviews with colleagues and students of Lawrence and family members. This research, conducted in situ across Australia and the United States, allows a more-rounded perspective on perceptions of Lawrence’s career, teaching and personal interactions and introduces Lawrence’s own voice through her letters.
-
ItemMarjorie Lawrence’s Australian and European troop tours, 1944-1946( 2016)In 1944 While the Australian Army battled Japanese troops in New Guinea and the Allied Nations continued the fight against Axis forces in Europe, a performance of German operatic works sung by Marjorie Lawrence was being cheered on at a remote army base in Australia’s Northern Territory. By 1946 Lawrence was singing the same German repertoire in Berlin to an audience of United States, Russian, French and British Generals accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic. This dissertation aims to answer why an opera singer was chosen to entertain one of the biggest military audiences of World War II in Australia, why an Australian was chosen to sing at the highly diplomatic Berlin concert in 1946, why Lawrence was singing Wagner, Richard Strauss and other German composers’ works to Allied forces at all and on both occasions, why Lawrence sang the repertoire she did.
-
ItemThe voice in the darkness: one singer's journey to individuation( 2011)Forces at play in the human psyche often make vocal change difficult for the singer. This challenge is felt not only by the student beginning her vocal journey, but also by the professional singer in the process of technical change. This thesis explores vocal change as a challenge to the archetypal voice, as influenced by the civilisation process, in which, according to Jung, the psyche is divided into ego and shadow. This dualistic quality, as experienced by the human psyche, is common to human endeavour and is manifest in the images of the feminine with which society surrounds itself—from the Disney good/bad girl to manifestations of genital phobias. The polarisation of vocal pedagogy is seen as an extension of this human duality. Warring pedagogical factions engender a culture of one-sidedness and fusion in both the industry and in the individual singer. Lydia Goehr’s methodological tool of doubling is recalled, and used as a model not for resolving pedagogical debate, but rather for finding the creative possibility of equalised antagonistic interplay. Manuel Garcia II’s two-register system, in which the ‘unused voice’ is strengthened in order to equalise the antagonistic forces of registration, is recognised as an exemplary model of doubling. This dialogue is set upon the backdrop of one singer’s journey of vocal change, as inspired by registration dysfunction present in the aria “Dove sono.” Whilst concerned mainly with the feminine (soprano) perspective, the study can be seen not only as microcosm of singers’ universal struggle to achieve vocal security, and therefore artistic freedom, but also as the search for the archetypal voice.