Music

In 1895, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a sketch of a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriage; in it, the woman drives the vehicle with an assertive posture, her windblown hair suggesting a sporty pace and her male passenger watching her with surprise and intrigue. This image encapsulates the shift in perspective as women emerged as a new class of vehicular drivers at the turn of the century. Around the same time, wagon makers Studebaker Bros. and Austin, Tomlinson, and Webster Co. developed a novel marketing strategy – they routinely mailed their clients parlor-style sheet music with carriage themes, such as 'The Wagon Carol', 'Wait for the Wagon', and the 'Studebaker Grand March'. This paper argues that these musical, advertising campaigns were not only aimed at women but also provide insight into the transitioning role of women during this period. Drawing from newspapers, journals, and other archival material, I examine the public response to female drivers, particularly focusing on Ladies Four-in-Hand Driving Club in the Hamptons. Though an analysis of the sheet music distributed by carriage makers, I consider how the songs and piano music offered women a chance to envision and act out roles outside the domestic realm. Engaging topics in gender and parlor music studies, this study also presents an early example in which music was used as a targeted marketing strategy to promote a product and a lifestyle. Furthermore, it highlights connections between music, recreation and material culture and, ultimately, illuminates a transitional period when women straddled parlor and reins.

In the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan’s piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.

Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahler, the instrument appears in orchestral textures and songs to signify nostalgia for preindustrial rural life. The history of the coach horn, originally the standard postal instrument used on the British Royal Mail fleets, branched unexpectedly away from this paradigm when it was adopted for recreational use by socialites in urban areas in England, France, and other metropolitan hubs during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to performing the traditional
road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This
case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.

Historians have viewed nineteenth-century music salons in Paris as concert-like environments where performers and audience gathered in a designated music room. Architectural studies and first-hand accounts, however, show that the music salon incorporated multiple reception rooms, and that guests frequently listened to musical performances from adjoining spaces. While conceptual space has been a subject central to salon studies, this project analyses material space, re-evaluating how the architecture of the salon influenced audience structure, listening modes and compositional practices. This architecture was ultimately central to the development of salon opera, which flourished between 1850 and the 1870s and was epitomized by Gustave Nadaud's Le docteur Vieuxtemps (1854).

The Rehearsing in Style article published in 2007 in TEMPO Music Educators' Magazine, discusses the importance of considering style first when rehearsing a band or any other ensemble.  Notes and Rhythms, as well as dynamics, are not the end-all in any level of the ensemble.

During the 1930s, Egyptian and Lebanese composers began to incorporate the piano into their works. Because the piano also brought equal temperament, which is distinctly different than the tuning system used in Arab folk music, this new instrumental combination made a deep impact on the musical structure itself. The story of how the piano was introduced to the Arab World, however, is not well known.
In this dissertation, I discuss the introduction of the piano (and consequently of equal temperament) into Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic music of the 1930s–60s. I also compare Western and Arabic music theory and explore how the piano influenced the composition of Arabic music. The study is in two parts: 1) an analysis of Egyptian and Lebanese music from 1930–60 that features the piano alongside traditional Arabic instrumentalists and vocalists, and 2) a biographical study of musicians that that brought Western elements into Arabic music.
The fusion techniques developed during the period 1930–60 continue to inform compositions created by Arab musicians in the United States and elsewhere. In the
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fourth chapter, I provide an overview of Arabic music in the United States in the 21st century .
My research concludes with an original composition entitled Memories of Homs, for Arabic ensemble and piano. The last chapter is an analysis of this work. This topic is especially meaningful for two reasons: the piano is a dominant element in my musical career, and my Syrian heritage continues to shape my overall musical experience.

This paper uses rhetorical analysis to discuss music. Strong and rhythmic, persuasive and moving: Rhetoric and Music. What makes music compelling? The answer can be found in looking at it in rhetorical terms. Using rhetorical terms such as ethos, pathos, logos, I analyze Chopin's b minor Piano Sonata. This same, analysis can be used to understand any genre of music.

I confess I enjoyed accentuating the character, perhaps as a provocation!" Thus Isabelle Aboulker, a renowned contemporary French composer, justified setting a viciously misogynistic text by Jean de la Fontaine in her song "La femme noyée" (The Drowned Woman). Her comment demonstrates a deliberate strategy for proactively and provocatively engaging with her own problematic cultural history through composition. This is just one of many approaches that contemporary female composers take to the negotiation of gender in their work. This dissertation addresses Aboulker's approach, together with those of Libby Larsen, Caroline Shaw, Pamela Z, and other composers and composer-performers of the current generation to the composition of art songs and vocal music in the twenty-first century. Engaging with musical-textual interpretation, performance studies, and emerging theories of collaborative musicianship, I develop an approach to their work that takes account of both creative musical acts and the social and historical place of the composers in question. My research addresses three central issues in feminist musicological scholarship through the analysis of both notated music and live and recorded performances of art song: first, the relationships and tensions between iii poetic text and musical composition; second, the focus of female bodies in performance as a site for the construction of meaning; and third, the category of the "female composer" as a marked and often derogatory term. Using a variety of examples by women composers with diverse compositional styles, I offer fresh insight into the multifaceted musical experiences of women in performance and composition. My work draws on interdisciplinary methodologies both to destabilize traditional hermeneutic interpretation and to develop a new set of tools for a feminist understanding of musical works by women. Ultimately, I argue, the conventional focus on musical text as the primary object of study is a detriment to more dynamic areas of cultural production. Drawing attention away from the "text," I focus instead on the women and on female body as conduits of composition, performance, listening, and understanding. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a collaborative effort in every sense. I am deeply indebted to my teachers, subjects, colleagues, and family for their invaluable assistance in completing this research. I want to express my most special and deepest thanks to my advisor and mentor, Rebecca Cypess, whose enthusiasm for my preliminary research launched this entire project. I thank her for her thoughtful questions, her skilled editing, and her deep commitment to me and my work. She has the uncanny ability to help me articulate my own ideas more clearly than I ever could alone, and I am so grateful. As a mentor, she has been instrumental in helping shape my entire identity as a musicologist, and heartily supported all my academic endeavors. This dissertation would not exist without her; I am a better scholar for studying with her, and I am a better person for knowing her. I also want to thank the members of my committee for their thoughtful insight into this project. I am grateful to Eduardo Herrera, who encouraged me from my very first year of study to pursue the projects I cared about and provided me with invaluable resources to do so through coursework and discussion; his mentorship has been indispensable. I extend my thanks to Nancy Rao, who helped me enormously to shape and refine the goals and purposes of this research. I am especially grateful to Nina Eidsheim, who graciously agreed to be my outside reader. Her career and writings have influenced me greatly, and her thoughtful insight into my own research was a true gift. I must also express my gratitude to the composers who selflessly agreed to share their work and experiences with me as part of this project: to Isabelle Aboulker, for welcoming me into her home and providing me with the most expert vocal coaching I've ever received; to Caroline Shaw, for her candor, openness, and generosity in sharing her thoughts and her work, v including unpublished manuscripts and private recordings (and also for knowing where to find good coffee); and to Pamela Z, for granting me a most enlightening and moving interview. Many members of the faculty at Rutgers University have assisted me massively with this work. I extend my thanks to Chris Doll, who in his seminars taught me to be a more critical reader, and provided wonderful feedback on the earliest version of my Isabelle Aboulker case study. I am also grateful to the musicology professors with whom I took coursework during my time at Rutgers, for sharing their knowledge and encouraging my independent thought, especially Doug Johnson, Floyd Grave, and Rufus Hallmark. I am grateful to Steve Kemper for his contributions to my case study on Pamela Z, and to Jonathan Sauceda, Performing Arts Librarian, and Kayo Denda, Librarian for Women's Gender and Sexuality studies for their constant support of my research. I started my academic career as a vocal performance major at the University of Connecticut, where I received my Bachelor's and Master's degrees; I was encouraged and prepared for my leap into musicology by the stellar faculty who supported me. I owe a tremendous debt to Alain Frogley, Peter Kaminsky, and Eric Rice, for the education they provided me, and for encouraging me on this path. I owe special thanks to Connie Rock, who as my most excellent voice teacher and mentor provided me with numerous opportunities and made sure I would never stop singing. My colleagues and classmates at Rutgers have been instrumental in helping me to complete the dissertation. With their friendship and support, I have felt a strong sense of belonging, and that is an enormous help during the often isolated period of dissertation-writing. I am grateful in particular to my quals cohort, Mike Ford and Michael Goetjen, for reading the earliest versions of this project. I am thankful to Lynette Bowring for providing an excellent example and answering all my questions. I must also express my thanks to Taylor Meyers for vi suggesting so much wonderful literature for my bibliography, and to Rachel Horner for her supportive presence at my defense. This dissertation was aided by the direct contribution of a number of remarkable individuals. Mark Leuning beautifully translated and transcribed my interview with Isabelle Aboulker, and Valentine Baron served as my interpreter during our meeting, despite my best attempts to improve my French. I am grateful to William Lewis and Frederique Added of the Franco-American Vocal Academy for introducing me to Mme. Aboulker ten years ago, and for encouraging my research today. I extend my deep gratitude to Denise Von Glahn, for her important scholarship on Libby Larsen, and for taking the time to discuss that work with me. I am also very thankful to Lucy Dhegrae, founder of the Resonant Bodies Festival, for speaking with me at length about her work, and for curating the phenomenal 2018 New York Festival, where I conducted my performance analyses for both Caroline Shaw and Pamela Z. This work could not have been completed if not for the gracious and unconditional support of my family; I have been blessed with an embarrassment of riches. I am grateful to the whole Binaco family for their encouragement of my educational pursuits, and to the Lansang family for welcoming me so readily into their lives as I began my PhD program, and also for all the babysitting. I am thankful for the Zrenda family for raising me and empowering me to pursue my interests as just one of a myriad of overachieving children. I am especially grateful to my beloved, departed grandparents: Dorothy Zrenda, for being a model to us all, and Stephen Zrenda, who during his lifetime worked to instill in me both a passion for music, which stuck fast, and a sense of pragmatism, which, despite his efforts, stuck less well. I extend my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to my husband, Michael, who has been my sounding board, my biggest cheerleader, and my help in all things great and small; his support of my doctoral study and his input on this dissertation cannot be overstated. I am also grateful to my daughter, Cecilia, whose vii energy and enthusiasm for life is deeply inspiring; I have gleaned a surprising amount of perspective from a two-year-old. Finally, I offer my most profound gratitude to my mother, Laurie Zrenda, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. There is, of course, no way to sufficiently thank her for the many gifts she has bestowed upon me, and the unconditional love she has provided. Her generosity knows no bounds, and she has supported me physically, financially, and emotionally in ways I could never repay. This work was possible because of all she provided, and I will remain eternally grateful. viii DEDICATION To my mother, Laurie, who taught me that with love all things are easy.

This study examined the effects of vocal hygiene and behavior modification instruction on self-reported behaviors of music teachers. Subjects (N = 76) reported daily behaviors for eight weeks: water consumption, warm-up, talking over music/noise, vocal rest, nonverbal commands, and vocal problems. Subjects were in experimental group 1 or 2, or the control group. Both experimental groups received vocal hygiene instruction. Experimental group 2 also received behavior modification information designed to help teachers individually identify and correct their vocal problems. Results showed experimental group 2 significantly increased vocal rest and significantly decreased reports of vocal problems in the weeks closest to treatment. Although differences provide limited information, the indications stress the importance of behavior modification's inclusion in vocal hygiene programs. Individual variance implies that some subjects have difficulty managing vocal hygiene routines. Additio...

Steven Spielberg's 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is a futuristic reworking of the Pinocchio story that substitutes a robot boy (David) for the wooden puppet as the protagonist. David is given advanced artificial intelligence that enables him to love, but this causes him endless conflict in a human world. The film addresses complex themes about humanity, love, and creation, and the conflicts these themes create between orga (humans) and mecha (lifelike, human-created robots). One of the most important factors in this exploration is the score composed by John Williams. This paper shows how the music explores the dichotomy of 'human'-related subjects and 'artificial'-related subjects present in the story. Williams draws from a plethora of styles and techniques which are organized into signifier categories representing mecha and orga. These signifiers are then examined using in-depth music analysis focusing primarily on the major, recurring themes in the sc...

In this case study, Alta Data Solutions is presented with an order from Burtell Incorporated that will provide a multi-million dollar contract. This potential relationship will not only increase revenue and boost productivity levels for Alta Data--it will also make Burtell Inc. more competitive in the consumer products market. However, due to the difficult economic climate, Burtell Inc. has several reservations in regards to considering a new software service. Vicki Nguyen, the senior sales associate for Alta Data, has been tasked with preparing a presentation for Alta Data that she will present at a meeting with members from Burtell’s purchasing department.