FOLK ELEMENTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY HUNGARIAN MUSIC

At the beginning of the twentieth century, composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály collected thousands of folksongs from the rural regions of Hungary. In an effort to preserve a part of their culture that they feared would be lost, they not only transcribed and catalogued these folksongs, but also incorporated the folk traditions they encountered into their own compositional style. This dissertation deals with violin music written by Bartók, Kodály and their Hungarian contemporaries that have in common the use of rhythms, modes, melodies, figurations and playing techniques sourced in folk traditions. The use of the Hungarian folk idiom in classical music was not exclusive to the twentieth century. From the late eighteenth century until the first decades of the twentieth century, composers utilized aspects of a popular eighteenth-century form of Hungarian folk music called verbunkos. What makes the use of folk music unique in the twentieth century is that, thanks to the work of Bartók and Kodály, composers found inspiration in the more authentic “peasant music.” Unlike the popular, urban verbunkos music, peasant music was the product of the more secluded village-music tradition, largely untouched by the influences of city life. In addition to stimulating a new focus on peasant music, Bartók and Kodály fully assimilated the folk idiom into their compositional toolkits, creating a new style of folk-inspired art music that influenced a generation of Hungarian composers. The new style included characteristic elements of both peasant music and the verbunkos tradition, such as ancient modes and scales, accompanimental and melodic rhythmic patterns, ornamentation, and phrase structures sourced in folk song. To demonstrate the implementation of the folk idiom by twentieth-century Hungarian composers, three recital programs were given at the University of Maryland that included works by Béla Bartók, Sándor Veress, Leo Weiner, Zoltán Kodály, Ernő Dohnányi, Zoltán Székely and György Kurtág. The works can be divided into two main categories: settings or transcriptions of folk material (e.g. Bartók’s Hungarian Folksongs) and compositions using classical forms that include the Hungarian folk idiom (e.g. Bartók’s Contrasts). Recital collaborators include Li-Tan Hsu, Evelyn Elsing, Elizabeth Brown, Shelby Sender and Samantha Angelo.

Social Influences of Error Monitoring

Adolescence is characterized by dramatic hormonal, physical, and psychological changes, and is a period of risk for affective and anxiety disorders. Pubertal development during adolescence plays a major role in the emergence of these disorders, particularly among girls. Thus, it is critical to identify early biomarkers of risk. One potential biomarker, the error-related negativity (ERN), is an event-related potential following an erroneous response. Individuals with an anxiety disorder demonstrate a greater ERN than healthy comparisons, an association which is stronger in adolescence, suggesting that pubertal development may play a role in the ERN as a predictor of anxiety. One form of anxiety often observed in adolescence, particularly among girls, is social anxiety, which is defined as anxiety elicited by social-evaluative contexts. In adults, enhancements of the ERN in social-evaluative contexts is positively related to social anxiety symptoms, suggesting that the ERN in social contexts may serve as a biomarker for social anxiety. This dissertation examined the ERN in and its relation with puberty and social anxiety among 76 adolescent girls. Adolescent girls completed a flanker task in two different