The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of Composition, Music Theory and Musicology. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.

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Recent Submissions

  • Crossroads of the Earth 

    Wang, Jiaqi (2024)
    Crossroads of The Earth is a single-movement mixed quartet in five sections, set for flute/piccolo, alto saxophone, violoncello, and piano. My inspiration for this composition stemmed from the environmental awareness film ...
  • Cross-cultural musical encounters: Muslim Mediterranean in the Enlightenment imagination 

    Snyder, Alexandria Lynn (2023)
    The rise of Enlightenment thinking during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries prompted many thinkers to search for new knowledge in varied ways. This shift motivated travelers to journey to places farther outside of ...
  • The Invisible Band: Cultural, Economic, and Societal Issues in Harmoniemusik 

    Pogorelova, Anya (2023)
    The phenomenon of harmoniemusik is unique in that it represents the richest emperors, the old and new aristocracy, and the poorest street beggars of Vienna all at the same time. Employing a harmoniemusik ensemble was so ...
  • This is All It Is for Treble Voice and Fixed Media 

    Hedrick, Katheryn Mae (2023)
    This is All It Is for treble voice and fixed media was born of the composer’s mission to combine her most admired genres of music. All five songs feature homages toward both pop music and electroacoustic traditions, however, ...
  • What Pain Calls to Witness for Mezzo-soprano, Clarinet, Piano, and Fixed Media 

    Caggiano, Gracie Christine (2023)
    What Pain Calls to Witness is an extended song cycle for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, piano, and fixed media, that contemplates aspects of disability. The work sets seven poems from Travis Chi Wing Lau’s Vagaries, which explores ...
  • Dispatches 

    Clay, Jack Henry (2023)
    Dispatches is an eight-movement work that focuses on the very human emotions of love and desire, including the darker side of these, as well as the effects of separation on the heart and mind. Using a small chamber ensemble ...
  • ORATORIO No. 1 

    Baker, Benjamin (2023)
    “ORATORIO NO. 1” is a multimedia polyptych for solo instrumentalist, live electronics, fixed media, short film, and interactive video. This work focuses on confusion of personal identity and the representation of self ...
  • The Autumn Leaves Swirl in Crisp October Wind 

    Lester, Ian (2023)
    The Autumn Leaves Swirl in Crisp October Wind is a programmatic work for wind ensemble consisting of five sections. Each section of the work takes the listener on a journey through my own childhood memories of autumn in ...
  • Ludwig Senfl's Psalm Motets and Their Influence, Use, and Musical Value in Politics and Religious Reformation 

    Roberts, Brittany Grace (2023)
    Within a culture of rapidly shifting religious ideas, music of the German-speaking lands began to slip into obscurity in the sixteenth century. It took the work of a few key players in an often dangerous climate of reformation ...
  • Use of Electronic Music in Brass Solo Literature 

    Hicks, Taylor Houston (2023)
    Brass and electronics is a relatively new performance genre from the late twentieth century that incorporates ever-advancing audio and computer technology. Over the last fifty years, the genre has advanced tremendously, ...
  • The Influence of Foreign-Born Oboists on English Musical Life, 1695-1737: Performers, Composers, and the Development of the Oboe Repertoire 

    Johnson, Timothy Blake (2023)
    After making its way from France in the late seventeenth century, the oboe played a large role in London’s musical life. As the oboe was at this time a fairly new instrument, performers and composers alike were still ...
  • Shattered Music 

    Walters, Martin (2023)
    Shattered Music (2023) is approximately a twenty-minute composition for woodwind quintet. This piece explores my feelings and reflections over the past ten years of composition studies at the collegiate level. I explore ...
  • The Brazilian Flute Topic 

    Ferreira, Rafael Ribeiro (2023)
    This dissertation studies the connection between the flute, in its materiality and function, and ideas on Brazilianness. A question permeates the narrative I propose: why has the flute become an instrument so representative ...
  • Starry Sky, a Concerto for Dizi and Orchestra 

    Liu, Yizhang (2022)
    Inspired by the sky and the universe, this composition is a concerto for the traditional Chinese instrument, the bamboo flute (Dizi in Chinese pronunciation), with the Western orchestra. As a United States-based Chinese ...
  • A Faint Light 

    Shi, Lan (2022)
    My orchestra piece, A Faint Light, has an introduction, five sections (Entering the mountain, The battle of ghosts I, Asking the God of the mountain, The battle of ghosts II, and The answer to the heart), and a coda. It ...
  • Fantasia Nirvana 

    Cao, Shengnan (2022)
    “To see a world in a wild flower, to see yourself like a bodhi in a leaf”, this philosophical reflection springs from writings within the Vimalakirti Sutra. It claims that all phenomena have no root or result, without its ...
  • An Overview of Select Compositional Techniques in David Maslanka's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 9 

    Cole, Brooke Madison (2022)
    American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017) was a well-known wind band composer, who composed nine full-length symphonies, seven for wind band. Though well-known to many performers and conductors, little theoretical ...
  • Jacques Hotteterre's L'Art de Preluder, A Translation and Commentary 

    Boyer, Margareth Anne (University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 1979)
    Jacques Hotteterre (c.1680-1761) is probably best known today for his Principes de la Flute Traversiere, ou Flute d'Allemagne, De la Flute a Bec ou Flute Douce, et du Haut-bois (Paris, 1707), but he was also the author of ...
  • Calming The Waves Double Wind Orchestra 

    Yin, Hao (2022)
    This composition portrays through music the artistic conception found in the Chinese writer Su Shi’s (1037-1101) poem “Calming the Waves.” The poem speaks of the weather in nature as ordinary and indistinguishable, and ...
  • Follow Me! Anna Held, Lillian Russell and Alice Nielsen As New Women Of the Stage At The Turn Of the Twentieth Century 

    Gilmore, Erin (2022)
    At the turn of the twentieth century, singing actresses Anna Held (1872-1918), Lillian Russell (1861-1922), and Alice Nielsen (1873-1943) were conquering the stages of musical comedy and opera. Using their pre-existing ...

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