Browsing by Author "Smith, Christopher J."

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DMA recitals
(2017-11-13) Still, Benjamin; Dees, David; Smith, Christopher J.; Fischer, Peter
1. Balafon by Christian Lauba 2. Fuzzy Bird Sonata by Takashi Yoshimatsu 3. Distances Within Me by Jonh Anthony Lennon 4. Duo for alto saxophone and Piano by Walter Hartley 5. Elegie et Rondeau by Karel Husa 6. Movement for two saxophones by Joseph Prestamo 7. Charlas for two alto saxophones by Guillermo Lago 8. Doo-dah for three alto saxophones by William Albright 9. String Quartet No. 3, Op. 65 by Lars-Erik Larsson 10. Nepomuk's Dances from Memory by Marcelo Zarvos 11. Sonata for alto saxophone and piano by William Albright 12. Vocalise (Lentamente-molto cantabile) from 14 Romances, Op. 34 by Sergei Rachmaninoff 13. Concerto for Alto Saxophone (and piano) by Karel Husa 14. Concerto for Alto Saxophone (and large saxophone ensemble) by Karel Husa
Entering the Bal: Strategies of Adoption in a North American Elective Folk-Dance Community
(2019-12) Wharton, Anne; Smith, Christopher J.; Calamoneri, Tanya; Salazar, Lauryn
This thesis argues that embodied experiences are the core of Balfolk. Sensations of connectivity, community, and joy are created through engagement with a distinctive, inclusive, and participatory dance repertoire. In these communities, the act of dancing is not only the focus of events, but more profoundly it is the mechanism which assimilates newcomers, trains musicians, and curates intimate and energetic memories which in turn facilitate retention. Balfolk in North America is my analytical case study, and it reveals physical, psychological, and emotional rewards arising from the accessibility and participatory nature of dancing communities. The methodology for this thesis includes data collection techniques from anthropology, ethnography, dance and music studies, and cognition. Analytical perspectives from these source disciplines inform my interpretation of the physical, cognitive, and emotional experiences of Balfolk communities. This interdisciplinary approach is essential, enabling a thorough and multi-faceted investigation of the experiential data. This document likewise provides methodological models, supporting the integration of discipline-specific tools to capture more sophisticated and multi-valent data and therefore more accurately understand Balfolk communities.
Exploring the Stylistic and Pedagogical Aspects of William Bolcom’s The Garden of Eden
(2024-05) Weng, Yiman; del Pino, Daniel; Cash, Carla Davis; Smith, Christopher J.
This study explores the stylistic elements and pedagogical aspects of Bolcom’s one advanced piano repertoire -The Garden of Eden. A brief stylistic analysis of each piece will be included in this paper. Other researchers have given greater weight to the influences of other composers on Bolcom’s music or have analyzed his ragtime influences; this paper explains less-remarked stylistic elements, including the impact of romantic and neoclassical styles in chapter two. Since no previous research addresses the pedagogical significance of The Garden of Eden, this project holds considerable importance in literature. The main focus of this project is determining whether The Garden of Eden helps students build virtuosic technique and musical skills, such as swing rhythms, contemporary techniques, and traditional pianistic elements. Detailed strategies will be provided in chapter three to help students approach, practice, achieve, and master these skills with ease. The pedagogical sequencing of repertoire related to The Garden of Eden will also be included in chapter three. These materials serve as a guide for piano teachers in teaching Bolcom’s eclectic compositions and, more importantly, to bring attention to pianists to Bolcom’s underrated music.
Female sonorities: Theoretical inquiries on the feminine voice and the musical experience; a study of three women.
(2016-08-10) Pola, Marusia; Smith, Christopher J.; Salazar, Lauryn; Martens, Peter
Patriarchal ideologies and attitudes have obscured, concealed, and devalued women’s music over centuries. However important or vital their engagement, women’s role in music has been submitted to a historical process of invisibility. Either as composers, patrons and teachers, women role in Music history is still going through a historical revisionism that aims to proclaim their historical place within the musical history. Regarding the significant efforts, women creative role in music it is still regarded as something different that deals with problematics of misrepresentation and notions of ‘otherness’. This problematic approach to women-in music raises many questions relevant to my own research and my own role within music. I seek an approach to the study of women in music as a history within which female education, gender power relations and domestication converge, raising issues of colonialism and gender empowering. By looking at female musical bodies as recipients of memory, capable of multiple incarnations, I design an analytical model of the nuances and cultural and creative implications surrounding women’s music work. I aim for a model of female musical identity proceeding from a non-prejudice theoretical frame that considers the multiple bodies implicated in the creative process of female performers and artists. By looking at the multiple strategies and socio-cultural frames used by selected female musicians I developed a scholarly perspective which can examine the creative process to reveal context, content and intention.
Let me hear you testify: Women, cultural power, and music in West Texas
(2019-08) Curry, Cynthia Ann; Smith, Angela Mariani; Smith, Christopher J.; Peoples, Curtis L.
This feminist phenomenological ethnography of West Texas women in Southern Baptist music ministry focuses on Anglo churches in towns within 50 miles of Lubbock with populations between 2500 and 10,000. Nine towns fit those criteria. I have visited, observed, participated, and interviewed the available subjects. Four churches have a woman leading worship on a part-time basis and three have women on an instrument such as piano, organ, or flute. One declined to be interviewed. The data show that women face gender discrimination in terms of leadership roles and monetary compensation. Two women are pursuing a career in music ministry; the other five are performing their service for the church for little or no money. In 1984 the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution during the annual convention supporting women in all forms of ministry except those requiring ordination. According to the New Testament, pastors and deacons are to be ordained. No mention is made of music ministers at all. However, Paul’s admonition to the early church that a woman should not hold authority over a man is voiced as justification for not allowing women to lead music. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 when the mission boards refused missionary appointments to slave-owners, even while Southern apologists of the time justified ownership of slaves based on the New Testament. In 1995 the SBC passed a resolution at convention apologizing for the previous stance on slavery and resolving to eradicate racism in the denomination. The author hopes this thesis will help hasten the day when the SBC passes a resolution to apologize for discrimination against women and resolve to allow women to operate with the gifts they’ve been given for ministry.
On the list: A multi-disciplinary study of the open mic night
(2016-05) Reynolds, Jakob Mark; Smith, Christopher J.; Mariani, Angela; Jordan, Michael P.
One of the most significant contributions to the global culture that the United States has made in the last century has been its musical traditions. American vernacular musics such as rock & roll, blues, hip-hop, jazz, and country can be found almost anywhere in the world that commercially recorded music has travelled. Traditional conceptions of audience-performer identity have been challenged in this music through community-based, participatory events known as open mic nights. During these events, the artistic output of the participants in the community is developed and consumed. Additionally, the physical and cognitive space in which the community ritual of the musical open mic is adapted to better suit the needs of the community. In a national artistic environment in which the traditional boundaries between artistic producers and consumers are changing, it is of utmost importance that academics and both formally trained and amateur musicians gain an understanding of the musical open mic night as a vehicle for American musical community. This paper argues that analysis of musicological, spatial, and ethnographic forces reveals that open mic nights embody the constructed cultural priorities of their participants. Using data-gathering methods from the disciplines of ethnology, anthropology, musicology, and historiography, this paper provides observation and analysis of the dynamics at work within one participatory arts community in Denton, Texas. By doing so, this paper aims to offer a contribution to the academic and professional literature on American vernacular music and provide suggestions for ways they can be used within a wider analytical framework for observing creative communities.
Perspectives on cultural appropriation in classical piano music: A brief analysis of select works spanning the 17th to the early 20th centuries
(2021-05) Johnson, Mikhail; Sukhina, Nataliya; Cash, Carla Davis; Smith, Christopher J.
In the industry of classical music, the discourse surrounding cultural appropriation has been negligible to non-existent or reduced to mere exoticism; a fascination with the ‘Other’. Only in recent years, many of the modern-day composers have been receiving the brunt of reprimand when their acts of appropriation have led to poor cultural advocacy. This paper analyzes of select piano works spanning the 17th (1600) to early twentieth centuries (1910). I will explain where cultural appropriation has occurred in these works, its nuances and repercussions. Reviewing Scarlatti and Spanish flamenco music, Mozart and Turkish Ottoman mehter music, and Debussy with Javanese gamelan and African-American ragtime, we find Scarlatti on the side of good cultural advocacy, Mozart on the poor side of cultural advocacy, and Debussy on both sides of this continuum. Also discussed is how poor cultural advocacy affected minority musicians of the 20th century and beyond. This document reveals that while not all appropriation is bad, it has been occurring for centuries. We must acknowledge appropriation is all its forms and should no longer support the narrative that cultural borrowing is mere exoticism. It must be addressed alongside appropriation. Although we may not be able to change the past, through three thematic principles Acknowledge—Decenter—Care pianists, composers and pedagogues can utilize anti-racist methodology to move forward. Facilitating the dissemination of piano music that is not only of high artistic merit, but most importantly, safeguarding the highest degree of cultural advocacy toward the affiliated cultures.
Prescribing, inscribing, and negotiating Gilded Age musical femininity
(2016-12) Stroman, Elissa; Smith, Christopher J.; Jocoy, Stacey; Martens, Peter; Borshuk, Michael; Warren-Crow, Heather
The Gilded Age in United States history was a dynamic time of contested gender relations. Women were frequently dismissed in print, but this study shows how some were able to negotiate their roles in musical society and find greater success by displaying a concept I call “musical femininity.” This performance of gender did not push boundaries; instead it upheld early nineteenth century ideologies that exemplified gentility, classicism, True Womanhood, and virtuosity. I recognize that gender is a performance and a malleable construct that allows women to heighten and diminish certain expected behaviors as needed in order to negotiate what was expected of them from the male musical establishment. This dissertation is therefore a reception study of extant print sources and ephemera of the Gilded Age. I investigate women who were highly visible in print culture and became “idol[s] of the girls” through their heightened feminine personae. Musical femininity was didactic and prescriptive; it taught women how to be successful female musicians in a rapidly changing society. Through these personae, a dynamic print relationship linked such performances with the women who read and reacted to them. It was because of such primary sources that Gilded Age women learned expected decorum and behaviors of their time, which in turn allowed them to emerge into musical society. I forego compositional and performance intention and instead focus on the language employed by critics and tastemakers of the age, questioning how performances were received at the time. Analyzing performances of musical femininity allow us to articulate a vocabulary of Gilded Age gender signifiers that were expressly created for (and adapted by) the white, middle- and upper- class American women who sought musical education opportunities. The first case study compares the reception literature of Jenny Lind during her popular antebellum American tour and after her death in 1887. The changing status of musical women is illuminated through Lind’s adapted biography. In the Gilded Age, Lind was given greater agency, as well as new focus placed on her domestic responsibilities. The second case study investigates the early foundations of music clubs as seen in periodicals The Etude and The Musician from 1894 to 1903. Women employed magazines as a conduit to promulgate club work information, teaching others club decorum, behaviors, and repertoire, while providing scholars a window into an otherwise under-documented phenomenon. The final case study explores Cecile Chaminade’s 1908 American tour. Reviewers were unable to objectively comment on her performance because of the overwhelming presence of musical femininity manifested in predominantly female audiences and musical selections. This chapter also features an analysis of three Chaminade solo piano works, postulating markers of musical femininity in the music itself. Though musical femininity was not articulated as such in its time, today we see women who had to negotiate societal expectations of public versus private, of technical virtuosity versus amateurism, and of cultivated versus popular musical traditions emerging in the Gilded Age. Such women in this document both prescribed to others and inscribed themselves specific behaviors that allowed others to follow in their footsteps. In the final chapter, I investigate briefly the changes in United States culture that seemingly ended the acceptance of musical femininity, as well as two examples of Gilded Age feminine figures who subverted gender expectations.
Queer Spaces in New York and Chicago: Sound, Style, and Safety
(2024-05) Nichols, Courtney Rae; Smith, Christopher J.; Brinker, Sarai ; Forrest, David
The history of popular music often disregards the pivotal contributions of the queer community despite its profound influence on musical genres and cultural movements. This master’s thesis delves into the intersection of queer-identified spaces in New York and Chicago from the early 1970s onward, exploring how these environments provided fertile ground for musical experimentation and innovation. Through four case studies, the thesis examines the emergence of diverse musical styles and performance aesthetics within queer spaces. Case Study One investigates the utilization of 'camp' by artists like Bette Midler in New York’s Continental Bathhouse, while Case Study Two explores Frankie Knuckles’ pioneering role as a queer EDM DJ in both cities. Case Study Three delves into the development of vogue music within Harlem ballroom culture, while Case Study Four examines how the Brooklyn venue dUMBA fostered the emergence of Queercore in the late 1990s. Existing literature often overlooks the musical aspects of queer spaces, focusing instead on social and cultural elements. This thesis fills this gap by employing a photo-story methodology, drawing on personal accounts and ethnographic insights to analyze the interplay between music and queer spaces. By employing historical-cultural methods, the thesis contextualizes the intentional construction of safe spaces within the LGBTQ+ community, emphasizing their role in fostering creativity and community. Ethnographic approaches further highlight the significance of these spaces in encouraging self-expression and supporting performers’ freedom of sexuality. Queer urban dance spaces not only provide a sense of community and safety but also serve as catalysts for musical innovation, shaping genres like EDM and Queercore. Recognizing and preserving these spaces is crucial for both the well-being of the queer community and the enrichment of artistic creativity on a broader scale. This thesis emphasizes the profound impact of queer spaces on music, culture, and identity.
Teaching Rock Music as Cultural History: a Pedagogical Model
(2023-08) Stallings, Chad S.; Smith, Christopher J.; Forrest, David; Mariani, Angela
College music programs face challenges when integrating popular music studies into their course offerings. The aesthetics, priorities, and procedures of pop and rock and thus their pedagogies differ from those of western classical music in ways that must be considered when designing classes. The demographics, technologies, and cultural contexts of the music must be considered. Diversity of college students should be addressed as well. More diverse and inclusive criteria regarding repertoires and genres when building curricula are required. A culture studies approach is practical because it effectively addresses students from a wide range of both musical and non-musical backgrounds. Popular music history is best understood and taught as a pertinent and rich source of cultural understanding. The course models presented in this thesis use rock music history as an example of how this idea can be executed in class design by emphasizing a topics driven curriculum. In this course, students benefit from an understanding of music and culture while gaining and practicing useful college skills. Instructors benefit from a design that can be adapted to many courses and subjects. College music departments that add popular styles to their programs can adapt this model to many styles and art forms.
The forgotten jazz concerto: A performance guide to Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for Stan Getz
(2022-05) Rice, Jonathan; Dees, David; Jones, Stephen; Smith, Christopher J.
Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for Stan Getz is an important example of crossover or hybrid jazz/concert repertoire for saxophone. Although this concerto uses elements of both classical and jazz style, the lengthy improvised sections are the highlights of the work. Some of these passages feature relatively complex chord changes and odd phrase lengths over floating / implied swing rhythmic textures. Since jazz saxophone inflection, and improvisation are central to this work, this document aims to explore related performance problems including chord changes, strategies for improvisation, articulation, phrasing, and rhythm. Sample solos and suggested vocabulary are provided for each movement.
The Power of Sound: Music and Magic in Pre-Christian Irish Folklore
(2017-11-16) Beltz, Heather Michelle; Smith, Christopher J.; Mariani, Angela; Jocoy, Stacey
My thesis concentrates on the trope of music as a mystical power within pre-Christian Irish folklore. I have emphasized folk tales and songs from four Cycles of Irish folk literature. The Mythological Cycle: these stories are of the former gods and origins of the Irish and are considered to illustrate the Golden Age. The Ulster Cycle (Ultonian Cycle): traditionally set around the first century CE, these stories involve action taking place in the provinces of Ulster and Connacht and are considered to represent the Heroic Age. The King Cycle (Historical Cycle): written by Irish poets and bards, these stories are about the genealogy of kings in Ireland through the combination of mythology and history. And the Fianna Cycle: stories from around the third century CE about Fionn Mac Cumhail and his band of warriors, the Fianna. Generally speaking, there are three categories of music in Irish folklore: geantraí, the music of happiness; goltraí, the music of sadness; and suantraí, the music of sleep and meditation. In the Cycles, these three kinds of music are used in various ways, usually as a way to control people, items, or the outcomes of events through weaponry, sorcery, or beauty. An example of this is a story from the Mythological Cycle called Battle of Magh Tuireadin. In this story, the Dagda (the father deity of the Tuatha Dé Danann) searched for his sacred harp Uaithne, who had been taken by the Fomorians. When the Dagda saw the harp hanging on the wall, he called it and began to use all three types of music. Opening with goltraí, he made the women in attendance weep; continuing with geantraí, he caused the young people to erupt with laughter; and ending with suantraí, to lull the whole assembly to sleep in order to escape with his harp unharmed. Along with excerpted texts from the four Cycles, I employ secondary sources drawing upon literary analysis, folklore scholarship, as well as certain aspects of pre-Christian Irish history and ethnography. My methodology includes close reading and textual analysis. An important source that influenced my methodology is Ann Buckley’s “Music as Symbolic Sound in Medieval Irish Society.” I more completely and concretely demonstrate the use of music as a source of power or magic in Irish folklore, and in turn to demonstrate the importance and status of music and musicians during Ireland’s pre-Christian era.
The “strange affinities”: The figure of Chineseness in Black-themed cultural productions, 1850-1930
(2021-08) Huo, Rod (Yingze); Smith, Christopher J.; Jocoy, Stacey; Mariani Smith, Angela; Gibb, Andrew; Borshuk, Michael
This dissertation, focusing upon archival research and ethnographic studies, provides a new interpretive framework for understanding the racial, musical, and theatrical discourses on the subject of Chinese Immigrant identities and Black cultural productions in the United States from 1850 to 1930. Engaging both regional and national studies, this research strives to reconstruct the cultural interaction between African and Chinese immigrants as it was performed and theatricalized. In this period, the interrelations of these two racial groups experienced simultaneously a geographic migration (from the West Coast to East Coast) and an attitudinal shift (from racial divergence to comparative assimilation). African-Americans and Chinese immigrants, both of which groups had been treated as inferior races in America since the Reconstruction Era, sought to contest and reconstruct the representation of minorities, and this played out in performance as well. This project suggests that the cultural representations pertaining to the racial depictions of Chinese immigrants and African Americans--in particular, musical and theatrical performances onstage in the United States--have been manipulated, misused, and abused.
“Trashy music” in the halls: A cultural-geographical history of music making in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years (1849-1869)
(2020-08) Verbeten, Jonathan E.; Smith, Christopher J.; Jocoy, Stacey; Whealton, Virginia; Gibb, Andrew; Franklin, Catherine
The San Francisco Gold Rush yielded an unusually intense and fast-moving convergence, within a relatively small geographical space, of an immensely diverse population. Each new arrival brought new social, cultural, political, religious, and musical influences, which in turn yielded complex, rich, and multi-valent experiences and perceptions. Such immersions coalesced into a uniquely San Franciscan experience—a quintessentially local story, in a town within which experience was quintessentially transient. This project develops a geospatial picture of musical exchange in San Francisco in the 1850s, focusing on nodes of high activity within specific neighborhoods, especially an area near the waterfront known as Portsmouth Square, and within a particular type of venue, called a melodeon, which came to thrive in that space. Employing a multidisciplinary methodology for analyzing music making in an urban context, this dissertation argues for an understanding of popular amusements in San Francisco as representative of changing perceptions and presentations of whiteness and working-class expression. Such perceptions are contrasted to the efforts of so-called “legitimate” theatres, and in turn are demonstrated to represent the beginnings of an organically developed and localized tradition, as exemplified by the specifics of the variety shows on the melodeon stages. With the aid of theoretical models developed in urban studies, my work attempts to synthesize large-scale data, such as major historical, economic, and geographic events, and interweave these with more nuanced first-person accounts, much gathered through my own archival work. Thus, my emphasis has centered on the physical experiences of individuals moving through an urban environment—what might be understood as a “history of perceptions of the City.” Rather than isolating or merely chronicling the musical history of the City, my project situates musical life (specifically that of so-called “low” and working-class amusements), within a series of parallel transformations, as revealed through historical, cultural, economic, and geographic urban change.
When Spring Became Summer Creating a Musical Discourse Reflecting the Historical Event in Late 1980s China
(2023-05) Zhang, Yucheng; Fischer, Peter; Jolley, Jennifer; Smith, Christopher J.
Thirty-four years have passed since the world was shaken by the demonstration at Tiananmen Square at the turn of spring and summer of 1989. Considering today’s tense political climate between the United States and China, the increasingly important implication of this historic event becomes ever more evident. Yet, there exists a lack of major musical works reflecting it due to political pressure exerted by the Chinese authorities. In this project, I encourage the musical community to represent this topic with greater frequency and direction, enhancing discourse around this critical inflection point in history. My wind ensemble composition, in fact, illustrates such a reflection by quoting several pro-communist melodies. Furthermore, I seek to set a precedent for future composers to expand the repertoire in works reflecting Tiananmen Square, further raising awareness of this historical event.