NZ music theses of 2015

Last year saw postgraduate research into New Zealand music progress steadily. According to my searches of local university library catalogues, at least six doctoral and masters theses were completed in 2015. This number doubles my previous estimate of 2014 completions, although I have since discovered that another 2014 thesis slipped through my net.

Once again it is heartening to find such an interesting range of New Zealand music topics represented across the year’s completions. There was a strong emphasis on Māori subjects last year: two theses on kapa haka (Avery, Papesch), one on taonga pūoro (Tamarapa), and another on composer Alfred Hill’s mediation of waiata for early film soundtracks (Cross).  The remaining theses looked respectively at the presence of French composer Cécile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) music in colonial New Zealand life (Crawshaw) and the history of the Auckland Philharmonia (Tedesco). Here are the references with embedded URL links where downloadable PDFs are available:

• Jonathon Avery, ‘Māori Performing Arts and the Weaving Together of Local, National and International Communities’. MA thesis (Music), Victoria University of Wellington.
• Sandra Crawshaw, ‘The reception of the music of Cécile Chaminade in colonial New Zealand (1894 – 1934) : contexts and institutions’. MA thesis (Music), University of Otago.
• Melissa Cross, ‘The Forgotten Soundtrack of Maoriland: Imagining the Nation Through Alfred Hill’s Songs for Rewi’s Last Stand’. MA thesis (Music), Victoria University of Wellington.
• Te Rita Papesch, ‘Creating a modern Maori identity through Kapa Haka’. PhD thesis (Drama), University of Canterbury.
• Awhina Tamarapa, ‘The role of a museum (Te Papa) in the rejuvenation of taonga puoro’. MA thesis (Museum Studies), Massey University.
• John Tedesco, ‘The value of Beethoven?: the economics and history of the Auckland Philharmonia, 1940 to 2014’. PhD thesis (Music), University of Auckland.

Although not a music studies thesis, another recent work which may be of interest is this study of radio station Kiwi FM:

• Matt Mollgaard, ‘Powerful music: media, culture and the ‘third-way’ in New Zealand: a grounded theory analysis of Kiwi FM’. PhD thesis (Communication Studies), Auckland University of Technology.

Meanwhile, the 2014 thesis that previously escaped my notice is Valance Smith’s study of how contemporary Māori music supports the survival of the Māori language. Appropriately, the thesis is written in te reo Māori:

• Valance Smith, ‘Ka tangi te tītī, ka tangi te kākā, ka tangi hoki ahau: The creative potential of contemporary Māori music in promoting te reo Māori’. PhD thesis (Māori Studies), Auckland University of Technology.

Happy reading!