Good dissertation topics?

[Mystery]

Hi all, I'm about to go into my second year at university and need to write a 7,000 word dissertation on SOMETHING, and I am looking for inspiration! Any ideas of topics where there are 'dots on the page' that I can join up, or something that has not been explored very much that could be interesting and get a good mark?!

I'm mainly interested in Baroque music, and my favourite composer is Bach (though he may be too hard to do a dissertation on?). I am also interested in key associations though I don't know how much has been done on that and how much more there is to write about. Another topic that appeals to me is the relationship between intellectual style and social content.

Any ideas?

[BachQ]

I'm mainly interested in Baroque music, and my favourite composer is Bach (though he may be too hard to do a dissertation on?). I am also interested in key associations

Bach's Art of Fugue in D Minor

[orbital]

I don't know if it is unique to Bach as I am not into religious music, but the musical phrases that Bach uses throughout his cantatas to coincide with the related religious texts might be interesting to explore. Like using rising major scales when the text mentions Ascension and so on.

I don't know how common they are, but they may be quite fascinating.

[The Mad Hatter]

Bach's Art of Fugue in D Minor

Yai! Waaaay too much for a 7000 word dissertation.

Mystery, I'm actually doing something very similar - a mini-thesis for my Masters. Had a lot of trouble settling on a topic, eventually wound up doing Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, and how they compare with earlier music. (The title I chose was 'A Synthesis of Old and New: The Preludes and Fugues of Dmitri Shostakovich'.) I think it's difficult to write a dissertation on music as old as Bach, because there's very little new to write. You could try for something like what I'm doing, though - it's already given me excuses to write about Beethoven and Bach in a thesis that's supposed to be primarily about contemporary music.

[Larry Rinkel]

How about a musico-sociological study of Internet music forums?

[Novi]

I don't know if it is unique to Bach as I am not into religious music, but the musical phrases that Bach uses throughout his cantatas to coincide with the related religious texts might be interesting to explore. Like using rising major scales when the text mentions Ascension and so on.

I don't know how common they are, but they may be quite fascinating.

Oh wow, this sounds fascinating. I remember reading in programme notes on the Matthew Passion about how different sets of verses occur variously one semitone lower or higher to suggest human fallibility, salvation etc. Is this a similar kind of thing?

Hey Mystery, if you end up doing something like this, I'd love to read your paper .

[PSmith08]

Hi all, I'm about to go into my second year at university and need to write a 7,000 word dissertation on SOMETHING, and I am looking for inspiration! Any ideas of topics where there are 'dots on the page' that I can join up, or something that has not been explored very much that could be interesting and get a good mark?!

Deconstructing the argument, in depth, that the moral zoning on the Via dell'Abbondanza between the Forum and Via Stabia (if I recall correctly) in Pompeii, as evinced by the impediments to free wheeled travel, lack of doorways (which is a bigger deal than you'd think), and extremely shallow ruts implies a moral zoning program, broadly conceived, that was physically enforced in Pompeii.

In other words, follow Tom McGinn against Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill. One tack is that Laurence and Wallace-Hadrill are taking modern notions (i.e., Victorian) of moral zoning and reapplying them to Pompeii - finding a drab of evidence that supports them, and then applying it normatively. Much like Amedeo Maiuri did when he took the Fascist notions of moral decay and tried to link it to evidence from the final phase of construction in Pompeii.

I covered this topic, as part of a broader analysis of Roman prostitution for a class this past Spring term, which is why I'm slightly more in-command of the literature than on some other subjects.

[david johnson]

local, historic music venues in your hometown/county.  i was shocked to find an early 1900s photo, by accident, that showed a local 'opera house' (music hall) on main street in my home town.  since then, i have recovered a concert program and photos from another structure in a neighboring community...as well as photos/names of the old county brass bands.  each wide spot in the road had one.

dj

[orbital]

Oh wow, this sounds fascinating. I remember reading in programme notes on the Matthew Passion about how different sets of verses occur variously one semitone lower or higher to suggest human fallibility, salvation etc. Is this a similar kind of thing?

Yes sir.
I came across it in a book I read last year "Evening in the Palace of Reason". A semi-biographical stusy on Bach and Fredrick the Great. There was a whole chapter dedicated to this if you are interested. I ended up buying a Bach Cantatas CD which included some of the ones that the book mentioned. There was particularly a case for BWV 106 IIARC.

[George]

Oh wow, this sounds fascinating. I remember reading in programme notes on the Matthew Passion about how different sets of verses occur variously one semitone lower or higher to suggest human fallibility, salvation etc. Is this a similar kind of thing?

This is referred to by music theorists as word painting.

[Novi]

This is referred to by music theorists as word painting.

Thanks George. My 'something new' for the day .

Yes sir.
I came across it in a book I read last year "Evening in the Palace of Reason". A semi-biographical stusy on Bach and Fredrick the Great. There was a whole chapter dedicated to this if you are interested. I ended up buying a Bach Cantatas CD which included some of the ones that the book mentioned. There was particularly a case for BWV 106 IIARC.

Orbital, I'll see if this is in the library. Cheers.