Copyright (c) 2013 Dublin Institute of Technology All rights reserved. http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusdiss Recent documents in Dissertations en-us Wed, 15 May 2013 09:27:24 PDT 3600 http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusdiss/2 http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusdiss/2 Wed, 28 Nov 2012 04:46:17 PST This thesis examines and analyses the contents of the Mercer’s Hospital Music
Collection. The collection includes fifty manuscript and seven printed volumes of
music containing works by Handel, Greene, Boyce, Purcell, Corelli, Humfrey, Avison,
Barsanti, Stanley and Festing. Selected works were performed at the Mercer’s Hospital
benefit concerts, established in April 1736 to provide important financial support to the
hospital, which opened on Stephen Street, Dublin in 1734. Mercer’s was the first
voluntary Dublin hospital to initiate a series of benefit concerts. The Mercer’s benefit
concerts attracted the participation of a wide range of Dublin-based performers, both
singers and instrumentalists. The surviving contents of the hospital’s eighteenthcentury
music collection raise several questions in terms of source studies. The
Mercer’s Hospital Music Collection is one of the most significant eighteenth-century
music collections surviving in Ireland and its examination reveals important information
about musical life and performance practice in eighteenth-century Dublin, setting the
contents of the collection within the wider context of extant sources for works by
George Frideric Handel, Maurice Greene and William Boyce.

]]> Tríona O'Hanlon http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusdiss/1 http://arrow.dit.ie/aaconmusdiss/1 Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:40:11 PST This dissertation provides a critical examination of the use of microtonality as an expressive tool for the improvising saxophonist and offers a new method for quarter-tone production drawing on cultural references from European art music, Arabic Maqam and Contemporary Jazz. The thesis is underpinned by an historical, musicological analysis of tuning systems and theory necessary for the performer of microtonal music. The dissertation is presented in three chapters. In Chapter One, a discussion of tuning theory and a history of temperament systems contextualises the current uses of equal temperament and extensions of it including the quarter-tone tempered system. Chapter Two introduces the breadth and influence of microtonal music from European art music, regional folk music and contemporary jazz while specifically analysing two exemplary case studies – the Arabic Maqam system and the music of the contemporary jazz saxophonist, Hayden Chisholm. Chapter Three presents the development of a new method, discussing microtonality as an expressive device for the contemporary saxophonist. This method demonstrates the use of the saxophone in microtonal music, looking at quarter-tone technical issues and the use of quarter tones in improvisation and composition within a jazz context. First, this research proves and demonstrates how the saxophone as an instrument of non-fixed intonation and therefore not confined to a fixed or single temperament system may, through a systemised method to mastering production of microtonal notes, be vastly increased in its expressive and melodic potential. Second, it demonstrates how an understanding of the history and nuance of tuning systems and alternative temperaments provides the required knowledge for effective communication and notation of the duality of contemporary intuitive, improvising performance / composition. Third, it establishes that cross-cultural studies most effectively provide the systematic, underpinning knowledge required to support the contemporary performer, drawing on ancient traditions of microtonality alongside recent innovations in contemporary music. Finally, the dissertation demonstrates that quarter-tone production is a proven viable addition to the contemporary saxophonist’s toolkit, and that it has far reaching implications for the saxophonist leading him/her to a position of greater expressive potential.

]]> Seán Mac Erlaine