Graduate Students Complete Thesis Work:
Cathy V. Augustin: A Descriptive Study to Determine the Opinions of Community Band Members Regarding the Effectiveness of Comprehensive Musicianship
Catherine L. Banim: Exceptional Learners in Band: An Examination of Band Directors' Attitudes of Mainstreaming in Select San Gabriel Valley Public Schools
Tara C. Finne: The Effects of the Orff-Schulwerk Approach on Social Listening and Cooperation
Daniel R. Fretland: Comprehensive Musicianship in High School Instrumental Music: A Study of the Thomas Jefferson High School Band Curriculum
Jeffrey A. Gottwig:The Development of Music Education Surveys for the Self-Analyzation of the Music Program of a Growing Rural-Suburban Minnesota School District
Carolyn Neumann: Children¹s and Conductor¹s Perceptions of the Leadership Behaviors that Demonstrate Emotional Intelligence of Female Conductors of Children¹s Choirs
Keri S. Sollitt: Nature and Nurture: Parental Attitudes Regarding the Development of Singing Ability
Dr. Bruce Gleason published Mounted Musicians of the Union Army in the Civil War in the October 2007 edition of North & South, The Official Magazine of the Civil War Society. He is directing the senior choir at Diamond Lake Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and continues to serve as the president of the board of directors of the Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists. He is also pleased to announce that the 2007 (fifth annual) edition of Research and Issues in Music Education was published this fall, http://www.stthomas.edu/rimeonline/.
Dr. Shersten Johnson's "Strange, Strange Hallucination': Dozing and Dreaming in Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice appears in the newly released fifth volume of the Journal of Music and Meaning, an online peer-reviewed journal for multidisciplinary research on music and meaning. The article appears at: http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=4.4 and the journal's homepage is: http://musicandmeaning.net/issues.php
Abstract: In the early moments of Britten's Death in Venice, the protagonist, Aschenbach, walks through a garden in Munich and encounters a Foreign Traveler, who commands him to "see" exotic marvels. The Traveler's aria foreshadows a number of elements that arise from the moment of the hallucination: exotic images, dramatic personae, phonemic sounds, and musical ideas. Critics generally hold that once Aschenbach "awakens" from the hallucination, his trip to Venice and the ensuing events - including his obsession with the boy, Tadzio - comprise waking action (with the exception of the Scene 13 nightmare). Given the multivalent operatic processes that spring from the hallucination, though, we could speculate that Aschenbach never leaves Munich and merely imagines or dreams of the Traveler, Venice, and Tadzio. The music even replicates a state of diminishing awareness not unlike that of falling asleep right before the Traveler appears. From then on, we cross over into an exotic, at times surreal, sound world, leaving behind the consciously manipulated twelve-tone environment of Munich for good.
Several possible readings of the hallucination and ensuing action drive the analysis in this paper. Is the vision a dream or daydream? Is it a fantasy or merely the workings of an artist's imagination in preparation for putting pen to paper? The discussion engages psychoanalytic dream analysis to illuminate the way music reinforces and even guides the condensations and displacements of Aschenbach's imagination. Then it pans out to explore the conceptual commonalities that allow us to hear music simulate altered states of consciousness.
Dr. Bruce Gleason is listed as one of the primary reviewers of the textbook Exploring Research in Music Education and Music Therapy by Kenneth H. Phillips. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. In addition, his comments are printed on the back cover.
"This book would fit beautifully into our graduate program. Phillips has hit the nail on the head by including introductions to research types with actual examples from the literature. I especially like the idea of the Study and Discussion questions (and the foci of the particular ones he has chosen), and the Suggested Activities. I appreciate how Phillips pushes students into new areas without frightening them. I applaud the inclusion of qualitative and action research. I would adopt this text into a music education research course in a second."
- Bruce Gleason, University of St. Thomas
