Solo and Chamber Music of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composers

The Pulitzer Prize in Music, established in 1943, is one of America's most prestigious awards. It has been awarded to fifty-three composers for a "distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American that has had its first performance in the United States during the year." Composers who have won the Pulitzer Prize are considered to be at the pinnacle of their creativity and have provided the musical world with classical music compositions worthy of future notice. By tracing the history of Pulitzer Prize-winning composers and their compositions, researchers and musicians enhance their understanding of the historical evolution of American music, and its impact on American culture. Although the clarinet music of some of these composers is rarely performed today, their names will be forever linked to the Pulitzer, and because of that, their compositions will enjoy a certain sense of immortality. Of the fifty-four composers who have won the award, forty-seven have written for the clarinet in a solo or chamber music setting (five or less instruments). Just as each Pulitzer Prize-winning composition is a snapshot of the state of American music at that time, these works trace the history of American clarinet musical development, and therefore, they are valuable additions to the clarinet repertoire and worthy of performance. This dissertation project consists of two recitals featuring the solo and chamber clarinet music of sixteen Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, extended program notes containing information on each composer's life, their music, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composition and the recital selection, and a complete list of all Pulitzer Prize-winning composers and their solo and chamber clarinet music. Featured Composers Dominick Argento, To Be Sung Upon the Water Leslie Bassett, Soliloquies William Bolcom, Little Suite of Four Dances Aaron Copland, As it Fell Upon a Day John Corigliano, Soliloquy Norman Dello Joio, Concertante Morton Gould, Benny's Gig Charles Ives, Largo Douglas Moore, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings George Perle, Three Sonatas Quincy Porter, Quintet for Clarinet and Strings Mel Powell, Clarinade Shulamit Ran, Private Game Joseph Schwantner, Entropy Leo Sowerby, Sonata Ernst Toch, Adagio elegiaco

Three Voices in the Wilderness: Foote, Bloch, and Korngold in the Early Twentieth-Century America

Barbara Hanning points out in her book Concise History of Western Music, that "Twentieth-century American music was in large measure an extension of European music" (Hanning 1998, 515). My dissertation/perforrnance project features cello works written by three contemporary composers who lived in America but were connected to the European heritage in different ways; each contributed significantly to the development of American classical concert life, music education, and even popular culture. Programs of my performances are intended to illustrate their unique compositional styles. The first recital consists of five cello compositions of Massachusetts-born Arthur Foote (1853 - 1937): Drei Stucke fur Pianoforte und Violoncello, Op. 1; Scherzo, Op.22; Romanza, Op.33; Aubade, Op.77; and Sonata for Violoncello and Piano, Op.78. Foote was influenced by the German-trained John Knowles Paine at Harvard University; he composed music famous for its extensive chromaticism in both harmony and melodic line, and for clearly-defined formal structure. The second recital explores the music of Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (1880-1959): a short Meditation Hebraique, a Suite No. I for Violoncello Solo and the famous rhapsody Schelomo. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, and settling in the United States in 1916, Bloch is a composer deeply influenced by the European late-Romantic tradition and is also well-known for employing "Hebraic" elements into his works. The final performance comprises two other of Bloch's cello works and one cello concerto by the Austrian-American composer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897- 1957). Bloch's Voice in the Wilderness is a symphonic poem for orchestra and cello (accompanied by piano in this performance), consisting of six movements performed without pause. His Suite No.3 for Cello Solo is shorter and has a simpler style than the first Suite. Korngold was recognized as a child prodigy in his native Austria. After a Nazi-induced exile, he immigrated to America and became a film music composer in Hollywood. The Cello Concerto was used in the movie "Deception" (1 946), for which Korngold provided the film score. The impassioned harmonic language and lavish melodic lines inherited from the high-romanticism make this work one of comparative discordant beauty among other compositions of his time.

CIRQUE DE LA VOIX: VOCAL PERFORMANCES FOR THE 21st CENTURY AUDIENCE

This dissertation addresses the growing need to entice people to attend a classical solo vocal recital by incorporating thematic programming, multi-media presentations, collaborations and innovative marketing. It comprises four programs that use the above tactics, creating live performances of classical vocal music that appeal to the attention deficient 21st-century audience. Each program focuses on repertoire appropriate for the male alto voice and includes elements of spoken word, visual imagery and for movement through collaborations with actors, singers, dancers, designers and visual artists. Program one (March 1, 2004), La Voix Humaine: The Life of an Englishwoman in Music, Poetry, & Art, outlines the life of a fictitious Englishwoman through a self-composed narration, spoken by an actress, a Power Point presentation of visual art by 20th-century English artists and musical commentary provided by the collaboration of a vocalist and a pianist. Program two (October 15, 2004), La Voix Thfrmatique: Anima - Music that Moves, is a program of pieces ranging from the 14th- to the 20th-centuries of which half are choreographed by members of the University of Maryland Dance Department. Program three is a lecture recital entitled L 'Haute Voix: Identifying the High Male Voice and Appropriate Repertoire which is presented in collaboration with three singers, a pianist, a harpsichordist and a cellist. Program four, La Voix Dramatique: Opera Roles for the Countertenor Voice, comprises performances of George Frederic Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724) in collaboration with the Maryland Opera Studio and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (Leon Major, director; Kenneth Merrill, conductor). There are two performances each of the title role, Cesare (April 15 & 17, 2005), and his nemesis, Tolomeo (April 21 & 23,2005). All programs are documented in a digital audio format available on compact disc and are accompanied by program notes also available in digital format. Programs two and four are also documented in digital video format available on digital video disc.

BLAZE: Bettering the lives of animals in zoo environments

Gemstone Team BLAZE

FROM THE AETHIOPICA TO THE RENAISSANCE: RECOVERING A STAGE TRADITION OF POSITIVE REPRESENTATION OF AFRICANS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

This dissertation looks at the connection between Heliodorus's fifth-century prose romance, An Aethiopian History, certain Renaissance texts, and how these texts helped influence an alternate representation of Africans in the early modern world. Through their portrayals of Africans, early modern English playwrights frequently give the impression that Africans, especially black Africans, were people without accomplishments, without culture. Previously, however, this was not the case. Africans were depicted with dignity, as a tradition existed for this kind of representation--and Renaissance Europe had long been acquainted with the achievements of Africans, dating back to antiquity. As the source of several lost plays, the Aethiopica is instrumental in dramatizing Africans favorably, especially on the early modern stage, and helped shape a stage tradition that runs alongside the stereotyping of Africans. This Heliodoran tradition can be seen in works of Greene, Heywood, Jonson, Shakespeare, and others in the motifs of crosscultural and transracial romance, male and female chastity, racial metamorphosis, lost or abandoned babies, wandering heroes, and bold heroines. In Jonson's Masque of Blackness and Masque of Beauty, I establish a connection between these two masques and Heliodorus's Aethiopica and argue for a Heliodoran stage tradition implicit in both masques through the conceit of blanching. In The English Moore, I explore how Richard Brome uses the Heliodoran and Jonsonian materials to create a negative quality of blackness that participates in the dramatic tradition of the degenerate African on the English Renaissance stage. With Othello, I contend that it is a drama that can be seen in the Heliodoran tradition by stressing certain motifs found in the play that derives from the Aethiopica. Reading Othello this way provides us with a more layered and historicized interpretation of Shakespeare's protagonists. Othello's nationality and faith make his exalted position in Venice and the Venetian army credible and logical. His nobility and heroic status become more sharply defined, giving us a fuller understanding of the emphasis he places on chastity--both for himself and for Desdemona. Instead of a traditional, compliant, and submissive Desdemona, a courageous, resourceful, witty, and pure heroine emerges--one who lives by the dictates of her conscience than by the constraints of societal norms. Recovering the tradition of positive portrayal of Africans that originated from the Aethiopica necessitated an examination of eleven plays that I contend helped to frame the dramatic tradition under investigation. Six of these plays are continental dramas, and five are English. Although three of the English plays are lost and the other two are seventeenth-century dramas, their titles and names of their protagonists, like those of the six extant continental plays, share the names of Heliodorus's hero and heroine, making an exploration of the continental plays imperative to facilitate their use as paradigms in reconstructing the three lost English plays. These continental dramas show that plays whose titles derive from the Aethiopica itself or reflect the names of its major characters follow Heliodorus's text closely, enabling an investigation of the Heliodoran tradition on the early modern English stage. Recovering the Heliodoran tradition adds to the exploration of racial politics and the understanding of the dramatic tradition that constrained and enabled Renaissance playwrights' representation of race and gender.

Can Cooling Technology Save Many-Core Parallel Programming from Its Programming Woes?

An abstract of this work will be presented at the Compiler, Architecture and Tools Conference (CATC), Intel Development Center, Haifa, Israel November 23, 2015.