Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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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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ItemAn Analysis of Elisabeth Lutyens's The Valley of Hatsu-Se( 2021)This dissertation is a musical analysis of Elisabeth Lutyens’s The Valley of Hatsu-Se (1965), a setting of ancient Japanese poems for soprano and chamber ensemble. The first part of the dissertation examines the serial language of the work. This includes the intervallic structure and segmentation of the row, textural use of rows, links between rows and serial ‘anomalies.’ The serial analysis concludes with a brief comparison to the mature serial languages of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, as well as to Luigi Dallapiccola, who has a similarly lyrical approach to serialism. The next part of the dissertation addresses non-serial elements, especially exploring the variety of contrasting textures. It focusses on textural devices, such as counterpoint and ostinato, as well as the transformation of motifs and voice-leading. There is also a brief discussion of potential Japanese influences on the work. This dissertation aims to facilitate a greater understanding of the serial language and the array of distinctive textures to enhance an appreciation of The Valley of Hatsu-Se, and bring increased awareness to the music of Elisabeth Lutyens.
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ItemNavigating Kol Isha: Women's Voices in The Australian Jewish Community( 2020)Kol Isha is a religious law that states men should not hear women’s singing voices. This law is most often referred to in synagogue, where women do not take on any ritual roles and sit separately from men. Over the past fifty years, new styles of prayer have emerged that attempt to maintain tradition, whilst allowing women to sing and actively take part in ritual. This dissertation examines how Orthodox Jewish women maintain authenticity as Orthodox Jews and feminists whilst negotiating Kol Isha. It interviews seven self-identifying Orthodox Female Jewish Women, who have attended such congregations about how they negotiate secular and sacred values during prayer. Preliminary findings suggest that women negotiate their authenticity by taking part in current ideological conflicts within their communities. Their standpoints are made public through where and how they use their voices within sacred settings.