This study focuses on three songs from stage works of Kurt Weill (1900-1950): “September Song” from Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), “Speak Low” from One Touch of Venus (1943), and “Lost in the Stars” from Lost in the Stars (1949). All from Weill’s time in the United States, these songs are adaptable as solos and have become American standards performed in various arrangements and styles of popular music by many different artists.

The first part of this study is a biographical sketch of Weill’s life and music. It is intended to provide context for the three songs by tracing his beginnings as a German composer of stage works with volatile political messages, to his flight to the United States and his emergence as a composer of Broadway successes.

The second part is a commentary on the composition of the three selected songs. The lyrics and musical content are examined to show how Weill’s settings convey the dramatic mood and meaning as well as the specific nuances of the words. Description of the context of these songs explains how they were textually and musically intended to advance the plot and the emotional arc of the dramatic characters. The popularity of these songs endures beyond their original shows, and so there is discussion of how other artists have adapted and performed them, and available recordings are cited.

Weill’s songs, his little masterpieces, have proven to be truly evocative and so attractive to American audiences that they have undergone myriad adaptations. This study seeks to provide the personal and historical background of Kurt Weill’s music and to demonstrate why these three songs in particular have proven to have such lasting appeal.

The purpose of this research is to assemble a collection of Russian Art song repertoire selected for beginner level training, with an exposition of the criteria for their appropriateness as teaching pieces. This examination defines the scope of vocal, technical, language and interpretive abilities required for the performance of Russian Art song literature. It also establishes the need for a pedagogical approach that is free from Eurocentric cultural biases against Russian language and culture. Intended as a reference for teachers and students to simplify the introduction of Russian Art song into the repertoire of the advanced secondary or beginning undergraduate student, it includes a discussion of learning priorities and challenges particular to native English speakers relative to successful Russian language lyric diction assimilation, with solutions. This study is designed to furnish material for a published edition of songs in the appropriate transpositions for high, medium and low voice including word-for- word and sense translations with IPA transcriptions, along with program notes for each piece. Repertoire is selected from the works of Alyab'yev, Gurilyov, Varlamov, Glinka, Dargomyzhsky, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, as well as a few folk songs. The repertoire is grouped by difficulty and accompanied by English translations, interpretive analyses of the Russian Language poetry, and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions modified for lyric diction. The degrees of difficulty are determined by vocal registration demands, word lengths and rhythmical text setting, as well as the incidences of unfamiliar phonological processes and complex consonant clusters occurring in the text. A scope and sequence chart is included, supplemented with learning objectives and teaching strategies, which organizes the repertoire according the order in which the pieces are to be taught. A palatalization guide is provided, to provide solutions for common pronunciation problems. Included in the appendices are listings of additional recommended Russian art song titles and recommended listening and viewing.

The purpose of this study is to examine and explore Hatha Yoga and how it relates to a practice consisting of singer-friendly yoga postures, how these postures may benefit the singer's mental and physical health, and how these techniques relate to designated research. The study also investigates yogic breathing techniques and how these exercises relate to selected research. Lastly, the paper examines how the voice student and professional singer may alleviate anxiety by introducing a practice of daily yogic mediation of mudra and mantra techniques, and how voice teachers may better understand and assist their students with stage performance anxiety.

Although opera is the last musical genre one typically associates with Latin America, Mexican composer Daniel Catán (1949-2011) found surprising success across the United States and overseas with his opera Florencia en el Amazonas (1996). Catán blends colorful music with literary elements to create a representation of Latin American culture through language, drama, scenery, and music. Among these elements is realism mágico (magical realism), a significant characteristic of Latin American literature. Indeed, the plot of the opera is influenced by Gabriel García Márquez's novel, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera, 1985), as well as the poem "Mariposa de obsidiana" (Obsidian Butterfly, 1951) and the short story "La hija de Rappaccini" (Rappaccini's Daughter, 1953), both by Octavio Paz. To create his protagonist in the opera, Florencia Grimaldi, Catán combines the dramatic qualities of several European soprano heroines. This figure's character development is conveyed largely through her Act I, Scene 2, aria, "Florencia Grimaldi," and her Act II, Scene 17, aria, "Escúchame." An overview of the opera places these two arias into context, and their musical content and text-setting are closely examined in relation to the character of Florencia. Finally, how Daniel Catán creates a soprano heroine from the Latin American perspective is discussed.

The performance of Charles Ives's art songs can be challenging to even the most experienced singers, but to beginning singers, they may be even more so, due to such twentieth-century aspects as polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones. However, Ives used previously existing material, often familiar hymn tunes, as the foundation for many of his art songs. If beginning students first are exposed to this borrowed material, such as a simple hymn tune, which should be well within even the most experienced singer's comfort range, they can then learn this tune first, as a more simplistic reference point, and then focus on how Ives altered the tunes, rather then having to learn what seems like an entirely new melody. In this way, Ives's art songs can become more accessible to less-experienced singers. This paper outlines a method for researching and learning the borrowed materials in Ives's songs that utilize them, and reviews materials already commonly used by voice teachers to help beginning students learn their music. By combining this method, which focuses on the borrowed materials, with standard practices teachers can then help their beginning students more easily learn and perform Ives's art songs. Four songs, from the set "Four Hymn Tune Settings" by Charles Ives are used to illustrate this method.

W.A. Mozart was a masterful creator of music and drama as well as a keen observer of human relationships. Librettists were enamored of his ability to bring their words to life with his music. His truthful portrayal of human relationships, particularly involving women, was highly influenced by his own life experiences. Through these relationships he learned to create characters and music that clearly depict female sibling relationships in the eighteenth century. A review of educational opportunities for women during the eighteenth century, Mozart's personal relationships, as well as selected roles in his operas will help to explain Mozart's portrayal of the eighteenth-century female sibling stereotypes. While Mozart's self-centeredness is well documented in biographies by Cliff Eisen and Ruth Halliwell, and the argument can be made that he surrounded himself with females who fulfilled his needs, he was often drawn to operas in which he could advocate musically for a female character's liberation from the overbearing influence of powerful men. Although Mozart's "musically empowered" women appear in nearly every opera, for the purpose of this paper, I will focus on the characters of Così fan tutte's Fiordiligi and Dorabella, and Le Nozze di Figaro's Countess. First, however, a closer analysis of Mozart's early life and his relationships with his sister and mother is necessary. The ways Mozart set characters created by DaPonte and Beaumarchais cannot be separated from the ways he was taught to appreciate females in his family of origin. Social structure during the eighteenth century dictated a woman's education, responsibility to her family, and therefore, played a fundamental role in defining her life. This situation often created expectations within the birth order that had an impact on sibling relationships as well as individual personalities. Many social and familial influences are represented through the operas of Mozart. Così fan tutte (January 26, 1790) and Le Nozze di Figaro (May 1, 1786) both contain a central female sibling relationship that reflects aspects of Mozart's relationships with women throughout his life.