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Women have been active as performers of instrumental music since the Medieval period, and yet their contributions are often overlooked. This dissertation examines the history of women’s orchestras outside the United States, and explores their development, as well as reasons for existing. Several factors regarding their development are taken into consideration, including time period, country, and culture in which the ensemble is present. The birth of the women’s orchestra is traced from the ospedali of the 18th century Venice to today. All-female ensembles from England, Canada, Cuba, and Afghanistan are profiled, as well as the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz. Two modern-day women’s orchestras – the Allegra Chamber Orchestra in Vancouver, British Columbia, and my recital orchestra at the University of Maryland – were surveyed in an attempt to learn more about the culture of women’s orchestras. This paper seeks to answer the questions “What is the culture of women's orchestras today, and should they continue to exist?”

Carefully preserved in the archives of the Ursuline and Hôtel-Dieu Monasteries of Quebec are several manuscripts containing Canada’s first sacred works for female voices. The manuscripts contain dozens of intricate motets composed in the French Baroque style, a repository of music which has not been sung for hundreds of years. These motets form a neglected part of Canada’s musical heritage which is waiting to be unearthed and explored. Ursuline and Augustinian nuns arrived to the French territories of the New World to educate and evangelize young women. Singing formed a core element of their teaching and worship. For over one hundred years (1639-1760), church music provided a backbone to Canada’s vibrant musical culture. When the French territories were lost to Britain and Spain, musical culture shifted radically and the sacred French music simply faded into obscurity. An overview of the sweeping events of the French Baroque era includes discussion of France’s social conditions, the political and religious climate, the flowering of the arts and the exploration of the New World. In France, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a time of great strife which heralded the massive social changes to come in the nineteenth century. France’s struggles directly impacted the colony of New France, including that of its religious institutions and music. This study traces the musical activities in the Ursuline community of New France as the nuns lived their mission on the frontier, teaching Aboriginal and colonial girls. The evolution of female emancipation stemming from religious evangelism is considered. Examination of a trove of 160 motets located in the female monasteries of Québec City reveals the high caliber of music practiced by the nuns. No interpretive editions for performance purposes exist. Newly transcribed works have been generated from the manuscripts, with period performance guidance for appropriate ornamentation and ensemble requirements. An in-depth discussion of New France Baroque vocal and choral musical styles is provided, with reference to historical records of how it was taught, as described in contemporaneous music treatises and many original documents specific to these religious female communities.

Interest in audio-visual works of art that are performed by a live pianist while integrating projected moving visual images has waxed and waned over a period of almost 300 years. The past twenty years or so has seen a re-emergence of this genre of classical music composition which places extra demands on the pianist performing these works. This dissertation explores the history of this genre, proposes a framework for analysis of these pieces, and examines from both analytical and performance perspectives three contrasting works for this medium: Michel van der Aa’s 'Transit', Nicole Lizée’s 'Hitchcock Études', and 'Surface Tension' by Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby. This research was

Ce mémoire-création porte sur la conception sonore pour le théâtre et la danse contemporaine. Il vise à fournir des connaissances qui puissent faciliter l'intégration du son au sein d'une création scénique. La recherche dont il est question ici se concentre uniquement sur les aspects conceptuels et non techniques, toutes deux intrinsèques au processus de création du son. Me basant sur mon expérience de concepteure sonore, plus précisément à partir de l'étude de mes notes de chantier de création entre 1999 et 2014, je dégage dix principes récurrents qui indiquent des conditions optimales pour concevoir le son. Ce mémoire-création est l'analyse d'une approche personnelle et le processus méthodologique a été autopoïétique et heuristique. L'étude se présente en trois sections. La première s'intéresse aux récits des processus de création où chaque principe émerge à partir de l'expérience qui est racontée. Dans la deuxième section, les principes s'explicitent davantage au travers l'étude de textes sur la conception du son. Un corpus d'auteurs, surtout des praticiens de la création sonore, est déterminé pour cette partie. Un livret compose la troisième section. Il incarne la partie « création » de ce mémoire. Il s'agit encore de préciser les principes, mais cette fois au travers de dix lettres fictives, destinées à des étudiants-es. Chaque lettre, dont le sujet est un problème rencontré en cours de processus de création, vise à expliquer un principe dans un contexte concret. Le titre du livret est La conception sonore selon Nancy Tobin 01. Mon nom apparaît dans le titre pour signifier qu'il est surtout question de mon approche personnelle. La mention des chiffres « 01 » indique que le livret démarre une série où d'autres personnes conceptrices sont invitées à écrire sur leur propre expérience. Peu de textes sur la conception sonore - sur l'expérience concrète du faire - existent. Ce mémoire-création vise à combler en partie cette lacune et à inviter d'autres créateurs à écrire sur leur pratique. L'expression par le sonore est riche et diversifiée. Plus les pratiques seront partagées et diffusées, plus il sera possible de multiplier les possibles de l'espace de l'écoute.

In this study, four sets of songs composed by Violet Archer are examined, all of which were written at different points in her career. Archer studied with Paul Hindemith in 1948 – 49, and his teachings had a tremendous impact on the young composer. The first set of songs to be analyzed, Moon Songs, was written before her time with Hindemith, and will provide a baseline from which her later, post-Hindemith, works can be compared. Following her studies with Hindemith, Archer wrote three songs, “Cradle Song,” “April Weather,” and “First Snow,” all of which show evidence of Hindemith’s influence. Her later, more mature works, Northern Landscape and Caleidoscopio Quatro, demonstrate a refined compositional technique; one in which Archer has created her own style, while maintaining aspects of the approach taught by Hindemith at Yale. This study will elaborate on the aspects of Archer’s music that evolved throughout her compositional career.

Over the course of the last decade the organ works of Canadian composer Rachel Laurin (b. 1961) have gained critical acclaim among professional organists. Her organ music has captured the attention of American and Canadian organists, resulting in a series of commissions for new organ works. To date, there are over thirty-two compositions for organ solo. This document explores stylistic issues in Laurin's compositions for solo organ and for organ with other instruments. Pieces that have been selected for in-depth study include Chromatic Fantasietta, Scherzetto, Toccatarina (to Katarina) and Asian Legend from Twelve Short Pieces, Volume 3, op. 64, Étude Héroïque, Op.38, and the Sonata for Organ and Horn, Op.60, II. On a Painting by Thomson. At the outset of the document an overview of Canadian organ culture is provided, followed by an introduction to Laurin's life and works. Subsequently, a structural and harmonic analysis of Laurin's compositions is presented. As this analysis will reveal, the expressive dimensions of her works embrace elements of Romanticism and Impressionism.

In this thesis I argue that the relationship between the increasing ubiquity of digital audio technologies and the transformation of aesthetic hierarchies in electroacoustic and sound art traditions is not deterministic, but negotiated by producers and policy-makers in specific historical and cultural contexts. Interviews, observations, and historical data were gathered during sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Canadian city of Montreal between 2011 and 2012. Research was conducted and analysed in collaboration with a transnational group of researchers on a programme of comparative research that tracked global changes to music and musical practice associated with digital technologies. The introduction presents Montreal as a rich ecology in which to track struggles for aesthetic authority, detailing its history as a key site of electroacoustic and sound art production, and its local positioning as a politically strategic 'hub' for the Canadian culture industry. Core chapters examine the specific role of digital mediation in the negotiation of electroacoustic and sound art aesthetics from multiple interlocking perspectives: the recursive relationship between technological affordances and theories of mediation; the mobilisation of digital technologies in the delineation of cultural, professional and generational territories; the political contestation of digital literacies and pedagogies; the articulation of the digital's opposition with analogue in the construction of instruments and recording formats; and the effects of the digital on the dynamics of genre and genre hierarchies. The concluding chapter offers a critique of the notion that digital mediation has shifted the balance between the normative and the generative dimensions of genrefication in the scenes in question, and closes by suggesting how a better understanding of this shift at an empirical level can inform an ongoing rethinking of the interaction between technology and aesthetics among scholars, policy makers, and musicians.

Cette thèse est basée sur une approche méthodologique hybride relevant de recherche-création en musique et de musicologie appliquée à l’interprétation. Elle s’intéresse à cette question centrale : « Quels rôles l’interprète-chercheur occupe-t-il dans un contexte de création ou de re-création (ou d’interprétation) musicale » ? Pour y répondre, l’auteure examine et rend compte du processus créateur et re-créateur de deux œuvres significatives dans son parcours en tant qu’interprète, soit Kathinkas Gesang als Luzifers Requiem (1983-1984) de Karlheinz Stockhausen et La Machi, rituel pour flûtes, électronique et regards (2007-2011) d’Analía Llugdar. Le travail de ces œuvres mixtes qui comportent toutes deux une dimension théâtrale tout en mettant en scène des personnages instrumentaux l’amène aussi à traiter des problématiques de l’appropriation de l’œuvre par l’interprète-chercheur et de la liberté de celui-ci face aux œuvres présentant un haut degré de déterminisme notationnel. La première partie situe les contextes disciplinaires et théoriques des recherches de l’auteure. Le premier chapitre permet de comprendre comment s’exerce la recherche de l’interprète en musique et de situer les différentes modalités dans lesquelles ce type de recherche s’effectue. Le deuxième chapitre explique les notions d’interprétation, d’improvisation et de composition et il situe l’interprète par rapport à ces trois champs d’activités. L’auteure y compare aussi les modes créatifs du théâtre à ceux de la musique tout en s’intéressant aux divers types d’authenticité inhérents au travail d’interprétation. Le troisième chapitre pose le principal angle d’investigation et d’analyse adopté dans cette thèse, soit celui du timbre instrumental. La deuxième partie porte sur Kathinkas Gesang de Stockhausen. Le quatrième chapitre présente une chronologie récapitulative des différentes grandes périodes d’appropriation de l’auteure. Le cinquième chapitre présente et met en contexte le symbolisme du cycle Licht, die sieben Tage der Woche (1977-2003), dans lequel Kathinkas Gesang s’insère. Le sixième chapitre est voué à une analyse du symbolisme attribué au timbre des principaux instruments que l’on retrouve dans Licht. Le septième chapitre évalue l’impact de la présence des interprètes dans le processus compositionnel chez Stockhausen tout en traitant de la question du casting dans Licht. Le huitième chapitre s’articule en un lexique timbral présentant une exégèse des techniques de jeu employées dans Kathinkas Gesang pour produire divers types de timbres. La troisième partie porte sur La Machi d’Analía Llugdar. Dans le neuvième chapitre, l’auteure présente la structure générale de l’œuvre et son synopsis et elle traite du rôle qu’elle a joué dans le processus de création de cette œuvre. Le dixième chapitre prend la forme d’un lexique timbral présentant une exégèse des différentes techniques de jeu employées dans l’œuvre pour produire divers types de timbres. Dans la conclusion, trois sphères d’action et six rôles-types de l’interprète-chercheur en création et en re-création musicale sont identifiés. De plus, des réponses aux problématiques de l’appropriation de l’œuvre et de la liberté de l’interprète sont apportées. L’auteure y suggère également des pistes de réflexion pour la recherche- création en musique et elle y présente les principales retombées de la thèse.

The life story of Mrs. Daisy Sweeney, an African Canadian native of Montreal, Quebec, helps fill a void in the historical documentation of Montreal Blacks (especially female elders). Of particular significance is her prominence as a music educator and othermother during her life. The current literature on African Canadian othermothering experiences is not synonymous with both White or African American females and inclusion of their voices in academic, as well as mainstream spaces, is virtually non-existent. This dissertation asks: What did it mean to be a first generation 'Negro' working class bilingual female in a largely hostile White francophone Quebec metropolis in the early 20th Century? How can her narratives help shape and inform life history and African Canadian othermothering research? My sojourn with Mrs. Daisy Sweeney referenced African centered epistemology in my conceptual understanding of herself and community mothering. Capturing her conversations meant engaging with multiple methodologies articulated through African oral traditions, life history, archival canons and interdisciplinary inquiries. It is striking to note that there were not only certain tensions associated with memory loss and physical limitations (prompted by the aging process) that destabilized and enriched our 'interactive' communication, but also revealed a rupture and reversal of the participant/researcher dynamic. In spite of blatant racial discrimination that plagued Montreal's Black communities during that time, Daisy Sweeney fulfilled a life-long dream and taught hundreds of children the canon of classical piano for over 50 years. She lived her voice through her music, finding ways to validate her own identity and empowering others in the process. She used the musical stage as her platform to draw invaluable connections between race, gender, language and social class. Daisy Sweeney's generation of othermothers is dying out and, as the carriers of culture, the urgency to tell their stories must be emphasized. The account respects, reclaims and reflects those voices. It is time to write in African Canadian female elders and diversify the exclusionary genre of life history and archival research.

This study explores text and music relations in Canadian composer Violet Archer's “The Twenty-Third Psalm” by analysing the text of Psalm 23, Fibonacci numbers, melodic contours, motives, and the role of the accompaniment. The text focuses on David's faith in God and his acceptance of God as his shepherd on earth. The four other approaches allow us to examine the work on three different structural levels: background through Fibonacci numbers, middleground through melodic contour analysis, and foreground through motivic analysis and the role of the accompaniment. The measure numbers that align with Fibonacci numbers overlap with some of the melodic contour phrases, which are demarcated by rests, as well as with the most important moments at the surface level, such as the emphasis on the word “death” through recurring and symbolic motives. The piano accompaniment further supports these moments in the text.

My dissertation explores the eclectic singing careers of sisters Eva and Juliette Gauthier. Born in Ottawa, Eva and Juliettte were aided in their musical aspirations by the patronage of Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier and his wife Lady Zoë. They both received classical vocal training in Europe. Eva spent four years in Java. She studied the local music, which later became incorporated into her concert repertoire in North America. She went on to become a leading interpreter of modern art song. Juliette became a performer of Canadian folk music in Canada, the United States and Europe, aiming to reproduce folk music “realistically” in a concert setting. My dissertation is the result of examining archival materials pertaining to their careers, combined with research into the various social and cultural worlds they traversed. Eva and Juliette’s careers are revealing of a period of transition in the arts and in social experience more generally. These transitions are related to the exploitation of non-Western people, uses of the “folk,” and the emergence of a cultural marketplace that was defined by a mixture of highbrow institutions and mass culture industries. My methodology draws from the sociology of art and cultural history, transposing Eva and Juliette Gauthier against the backdrop of the social, cultural and economic conditions that shaped their career trajectories and made them possible.

Ce travail s'inscrit dans une rechcerche interdisciplinaire tendant à faire le point sur l'actualité de la pensée d'Antonin Artaud à travaers l'analyse du texte radiophonique Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu. Ce texte conçu peu avant sa mort réunit tous les éléments propres à la pensée d'Artanud tant au niveau philosophique qu'au niveau formel: le corps sans organes, le concept de jugement, l'idée de dieu mais aussi les «sonorisations», les cris et les «glossolalies» à travers une étude profonde des différents textes d'Artaud ainsi que de ses dessins, de sa voix enregistrée, de ses mises en scènes et des différents aspects de son langage, j'ai élaboré une écriture musicale qui m'a permis de composer une oeuvre qui s'inscrit dans le domaine du théatre musical et qui se veut une lecture personnelle d'Artaud. Ainsi, les éléments de ce nouveau langage ont été incorporés aux oeuvres que j'ai composé postérieurement. Nous aborderons dans le chapitre 1 les sourecs nombreuses et hétéroclites du langage d'Artaud; la lecture de ses différentes manières d'expression artistique sont indispensables à la compréhension et à l'interprétation de sa pensée. Le chapitre 2 présente une analyse approfondie de la pièce résultat de ces recherche: La Faim d'Artaud, oeuvre de théatre musical pour sept instrumentistes, mezzo-soprano, baryton, un comédien et une bande pré-enregistrée. Cette analyse montre différents aspects du langage artaudien, présents dans la musique et dans les choix de mise en scène. Le dernier chapitre est une exemplification de l'influence qu'a exercée le langage développé à travers la composition de La Faim d'Artaud dans d'Autres oeuvres de mon répertoire. Pour démontrer cette influence, j'ai réalisé une analyse sommaire de la pièce Todos los recuerdos presentes envolvìan ese sonido y algo me miró pour orchestre de chambre de quinze instrumentistes.

The object of this dissertation is the meeting of Middle-Eastern and Western music. The dissertation includes an essay and seven original compositions (scores and recordings). The text begins with the exposition of the basics of Middle-Eastern music required to understand my artistic approach. The 'taqasim', a major musical form in the Middle-East and a source of inspiration for my work is presented in more detail. The second chapter deals with the philosophy of aesthetics involved in the intermixing of musical cultures. Concerns about the coherence of commingled languages are exposed. The concepts of intermixing, cultural identity and coherence of a work are submitted for discussion. For a given work, does the notion of coherence retain its essence from one person to the next according to culture and social context? This questioning is directly linked to the creation and generation of the processes of development for the musical material in my compositions. Throughout the chapter, I position my approach in relation to the thinking of authors such as Adorno, but also relative to personal experiences. In chapter 3 I describe the writing processes I have developped in order to create a sound fabric wherein Middle-Eastern music meets that of the West. My work defines processes for treating parameters in order to draw together elements of both Eastern and Western musical expressions into a distinctive language <math> <f> <fr><nu>.</nu><de>7</de></fr></f> </math> the key to this is grasping how one musical element influences another. Using analysis as a starting point for the comparison of musical parameters in each of the languages, I have elaborated new commingling (intermixing) techniques. This chapter is therefore devoted to the cross-relational writing techniques that have been evolved to adequately support my artistic approach. The final chapters of this dissertation feature the detailed analyses of three of my compositions: 'Jet Stream, Algorythme and PLB'. Each piece's form, sections and sub-sections are presented followed by the analysis of its basic musical material and development.

Cette thèse a pour but l’étude sociologique de la musique actuelle au Québec. La musique actuelle est une pratique de création créée en dehors des institutions académiques et des centres de recherche. La professionnalisation de ce milieu artistique est décrite et analysée dans une perspective sociologique en prenant les cas des Productions Supermusique et du label DAME ainsi que du festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’acquérir une connaissance sur la façon dont s’est développé ce milieu musical des années 70 à aujourd’hui.