Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemMusical Care: Exploring a person-centered caregiver singing protocol in dementia care in South Africa( 2023-10)This thesis includes three studies which aimed to explore the role of a formal caregiver-led singing training protocol in the delivery of person-centered care for people living with dementia, and how this might support caregivers in South Africa. A systematic mixed studies review was conducted to examine literature relating to formal caregiver training in live music for use in one-on-one caring contexts. Nine English, peer-reviewed studies adhered to the inclusion criteria. Integration of thematic analysis and narrative synthesis findings indicated that training caregivers in live music applied during care situations may contribute to significant reductions in dementia symptoms, resistiveness, and elicit mutual experiences of wellbeing and relationship between formal caregivers and residents. This benefitted person-centered care by supporting communication, easing care, and capacitating caregivers to meet the needs of people with dementia. Findings encouraged caregiver training but illustrated gaps in training component details and the lack of music therapists’ involvement. The action research qualitative study aimed to co-design and refine a person-centered caregiver singing (PCCS) protocol. PCCS is defined as singing in a manner that employs various prosodic and empathic musical elements to aid communication and promote feelings of connection, safety, validation and that aims to enhance the delivery of person-centered care. Ten caregivers from two care homes participated in four iterative cycles of: ‘workshop, interview, and amendment;’ an observation phase; and one-on-one interviews. This process culminated in the final version of the PCCS workshop. Thematic analysis findings suggested that PCCS was a helpful, relevant and easy-to-implement resource for caregivers. The Person-Centered Caregiver Singing Model illustrated the interplay between benefits to caregiver capabilities (including self-efficacy); mutual wellbeing; relational mutuality and reciprocity; the environment; and positive caregiving experience. PCCS implementation was not always successful due to residents’ unpredictable moods and caregivers’ perception of their own music skills. The sharing of music therapy-informed skills contribute to the caregivers’ safe and effective application of attuned singing, which may help them better attune to and meet residents’ needs. The third study was a mixed methods study exploring caregivers’ experiences and acceptability of the PCCS protocol. Forty-one formal caregivers from seven care homes attended one PCCS workshop and completed a questionnaire containing a Likert scale and space for written reflections. Findings were integrated inductively using seven components of acceptability. These illustrated the caregivers’ positive caregiving experiences and enhanced capabilities, improvements in residents’ observed wellbeing, empathic connections, and extension of PCCS benefits beyond the one-one-one care situation. Implementation challenges included limited song repertoire and residents’ unpredictability. Nonetheless, PCCS was considered useful, effective, and highly acceptable. Overarching findings suggest that person-centered caregiver singing is a helpful, relevant, highly acceptable resource that may contribute to caregivers’ delivery of person-centered care. PCCS may promote positive aspects of caregiving and highlights the value of caregivers’ own personhood as essential to quality care provision. Findings affirm the significance of inter-disciplinary skills-sharing by music therapists and support the application of PCCS within care homes in South Africa and similar contexts. Recommendations include booster workshops to support appropriate and sustainable application and the inclusion of family members and other staff in PCCS training. Further research could offer insight into cost-effectiveness of PCCS, test PCCS in similar and other contexts, further develop the PCCS questionnaire, and explore outcomes relating to caregiver self-efficacy and PCCS with family caregivers.
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ItemThe Expressive Potential of the Interpretive Edition: A Practice-Led Analysis of the Editions of Beethoven Piano Sonatas by Hans von Bülow and Sigmund Lebert, Donald Francis Tovey and Harold Craxton, Artur Schnabel, and Claudio Arrau( 2023-05)This practice-led project asserts the value of the often-overlooked interpretive edition as an indispensable tool for performers, encouraging them to consider numerous approaches to interpreting a piece of music. The thesis portion of the project will begin with the suggestion that overly textualist readings of urtext scores have limited the potential for creating interpretively exploratory performances. With a focus on selected piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven – in particular his sonata in A flat, Op. 110 – this thesis will contend that great performers play a key role in forging much of the meaning surrounding this music and its place in concert repertoire. A practice-led analysis of selected editions will be used to illustrate this. This will offer a framework to encourage performers to look at the interpretive editions of the great musicians who have gone before them. These are the musicians who gave this music much of its popular meaning, who have faced the same artistic and technical challenges, and presented their various ideas and solutions in these scores.
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ItemThe Mutability of Bach: New Arrangements of J.S. Bach’s Accompanied Violin Music for the Saxophone( 2022-12)Since the invention of the saxophone in the 1840s, the practice of arrangement has played a pivotal role in developing and enriching the instrument’s repertoire. This project explores the repertoire of the concert saxophone, with a special focus on the use of new and existing arrangements of works by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750). Repertoire included in the project follows a tradition of saxophonists of the last century combining original works with arrangements of works for other instruments to add musical variety to their programs and recordings. This performance-based thesis consists of a performance folio of 210 minutes, comprising 75% of the overall project, and a written dissertation of 25,000 words (25%). The folio includes a combination of live and studio recordings presented as three distinct programs: a survey of original saxophone repertoire, existing arrangements of Bach for the saxophone, and the new editions of the five selected works. This practice-led thesis expands the repertory by creating new arrangements of five accompanied violin works by J.S. Bach: Concerto in A minor BWV 1041, Concerto in E major BWV 1042, Sonata in G major BWV 1021, Sonata in E minor BWV 1023, and Fugue in G minor BWV 1026. The process behind the development of these new Bach arrangements for the saxophone is explored in the dissertation, informed by a study of Bach’s own practice as an arranger. Complementary analysis of arrangement techniques utilised by saxophonists and other wind players since the middle of the twentieth century provides further context for the creation of new arrangements. Through this analysis, a set of general arrangement principles are established and employed to resolve areas of significant conflict between the technical capabilities of the violin and the soprano saxophone. Issues of tessitura, multiple stopping, and phrasing and breathing are addressed to ensure the new editions are idiomatic for the saxophone. The complete, notated arrangements are included as appendices to the dissertation.
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ItemExploring the rehabilitative potential of familiar song for paediatric patients presenting with an acute disorder of consciousness( 2023)This thesis includes four studies that contribute to the exploration of the rehabilitative potential of familiar song for children presenting with an acute disorder of consciousness (DoC) following severe acquired brain injury (ABI). A DoC is common sequelae of severe ABI in children, and is the result of a sudden interruption in the complex interplay of arousal and awareness. While evidence supporting the use of music in the assessment and treatment of adults presenting with a DoC continues to emerge, the unique developmental context of paediatric ABI necessitates child specific research. Four discrete studies are included in thesis and contribute to the research agenda of describing the behavioural and neural responses to familiar song of children presenting with an acute DoC. The systematic review ‘The Neurophysiological Processing of Music in Children: A Systematic Review with Narrative Synthesis and Considerations for Clinical Practice in Music Therapy’ included 46 neuroimaging studies describing music processing in neurotypical children aged 0-18 years. The narrative synthesis yielded a timeline of significant developments of musical processing. Further, comprehensive considerations for clinical practice for music therapists working with paediatric neurologic population were developed. The results of the systematic review provide a theoretical foundation for the use of familiar song to support consciousness recovery in children presenting with a DoC. When developing the study to empirically describe the neural and behavioural responses to familiar song of children presenting with an acute DoC, it was necessary to first develop a tool to objectively describe behavioural responses. The Music Interventions in Paediatric DoC Behaviour Observation Record (MBR) was developed and piloted. Results of the pilot established that the MBR has content validity, and sufficient inter-rater-reliability to objectively capture the subtle and idiosyncratic responses of children presenting with a DoC during a music therapy intervention. Subsequent to the completion of the pilot, the MBR was utilised in the collection of behavioural data in the case study of a child presenting with an acute DoC The use of EEG in music therapy research with children presenting with a DoC affords the opportunity to describe responses even in the absence of an observable behaviour. To pilot the use of EEG with children, a feasibility study (n = 4) was undertaken using data pragmatically collected within the acute hospital setting. Unique changes in the underlying frequency components of the EEG were recorded during the song condition that were not observed in either the comparative speech or noise conditions. The study showed feasibility of a uniquely hypothesis driven method of multivariate EEG analysis, and added to the current knowledge base by describing the EEG signal in response to whole song as an ecologically valid music stimulus. The piloting of the MBR and multivariate method of EEG analysis ultimately supported the development of multiple baseline crossover case study, of an 11-year old presenting with an acute DoC, in which the behavioural and neural responses to song were described. For this child, familiar song was found to stimulate a greater behavioural and neural response, indicative of an increase in arousal and awareness, than comparative speech or noise conditions. This study provides foundational evidence supporting the use of familiar song to increase consciousness in children presenting with an acute DoC following severe ABI
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ItemCapturing Transience: Modelling Relationships Between Improvised Music Practice and Recording Processes( 2022)This research examines the relationship between improvised music practice and recording processes, and in doing so develops and tests new analytical models to better understand how improvised music practitioners undertake recording projects. Prior analytical models of music recording demonstrate multiple ways that recordings may be created and considered, but fail to take into account the diversity of practice in improvised music. By considering the varied nature of contemporary improvised music practise, these existing models are synthesised into a new Documentarian/Idealised model, which asks whether improvised music recordings are best considered as documents of performance events, discrete artistic objects, or a combination of both. Findings from interviews with improvised music practitioners are used to test and further develop the Documentarian/Idealised model, resulting in an expanded model better able to represent the diversity of practice found within improvising music recording projects, referred to as the Intention/Process model. Case studies of two improvised music recording projects are conducted as part of this research project, contributing ninety minutes of new improvised music recordings to be considered alongside the written thesis. These two projects reflect markedly different approaches to recording improvised music, and analysis of their creation examines the wide range of practice that occurs within improvised music recording situations. This research demonstrates that while improvised music recording practise is diverse, a number of commonalities are present, and that the intention and motivation of practitioners may be fluid and change during recording projects, as evidenced by a Multi-stage recording model for examining recording projects. In addition to providing multiple analytical models for use in further research, this study significantly informs both our understanding of how improvised music recording projects are undertaken and how they are perceived by practitioners of improvised music. It further contributes to the ontological understanding of improvised music recordings by arguing that improvisational music practice should not be viewed in opposition to composition or recording, but rather as a generative creative practice that can be utilised in tandem with other activities, and by showing that recordings of improvised music do not possess less improvisational qualities due to their fixed and reproduceable nature.
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ItemFinding flow: constraint and the creative process( 2021)The application of constraints during the process of music composition can be creatively stimulating and directive. However, constraint is potentially restrictive when acting as restraint, stifling the spontaneity of musical idea or the instinctual flow of creative process. A creative folio at its core, this research examines how the application and consequent dissolution of constraints during the compositional process affect musical outcome. The dissertation presents an in-depth analysis of select folio works to illuminate how constraints were constructed and implemented, when and why rules were broken, and how this influenced musical outcome. The thesis then examines how use of constraints evolved over the course of the folio, reflecting on the concept of flow and creative process. The work evaluates how the application of constraints aides in resolving compositional problems as well as facilitating a state of flow during the creative act.
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ItemThe Musical Activities of Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1613–1676) as Reflections of Seventeenth-Century Protestant German Court Life( 2020)This thesis aims to demonstrate how an analysis of the musical activities of Duchess Sophie Elisabeth of Braunschweig-Lueneburg (1613–1676) can provide insight into both the cultural life of the Wolfenbuettel court in the middle decades of the seventeenth century and the music-making of seventeenth-century German-speaking consorts at Protestant courts. As duchess consort to Duke August the Younger of Braunschweig-Lueneburg (1579–1666), Sophie Elisabeth had a number of duties and responsibilities associated with her social role. This thesis focuses on two of these responsibilities and how Sophie Elisabeth fulfilled them through her musical activities. First, she was responsible for the devotional life of her family, her court, and the wider populace through maintaining a strong sense of her own personal piety, encouraging piety in others, and interceding with God on behalf of the principality. Second, she played an important role in the artistic representation of her husband, August, as a ruler, and the broader representation of his dynasty, the House of Guelph. While the responsibilities of consorts and the musical activities of Sophie Elisabeth have both been studied in recent literature, their interaction has been hitherto neglected, particularly in musicological scholarship. This thesis addresses this lacuna by proposing that Sophie Elisabeth’s musical activities and her social and political role were not mutually exclusive, and that they constantly interacted with each other. This contention has implications for our understanding of the role of consorts at early modern German-speaking Protestant courts and provides a framework for analysing how music-making, of different kinds, contributed to this role.