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What is Music?

Music is one of the most expansive topics in academic study, appearing across disciplines including the arts, humanities, psychology, education, and cultural studies. Students engage with it in courses ranging from music theory and history to sociology and early childhood education. What makes the subject academically rich is its dual nature: music functions as both a formal system of sounds, harmony, and form, and as a deeply cultural force capable of reflecting and reshaping society. Works like William Grant Still's Afro American Symphony and Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, along with philosophical texts such as Plato's Ion and Republic, give students concrete material through which to explore these dimensions.

The papers collected here take a wide variety of approaches. Some are analytical, examining specific compositions like Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe or the theoretical elements of harmony and form. Others are historical and cultural, tracing African American influence on American popular music or the impact of race relations and the civil rights movement on rock and roll. Personal and reflective essays also appear, exploring individual enjoyment of or connection to music. Applied angles include music's role in early childhood movement education, its effects on memory, and its use alongside relaxation techniques for post-surgical pain relief.

A strong essay on music benefits from a clearly scoped thesis that commits to one angle — historical, analytical, psychological, or cultural — rather than treating the subject too broadly. Evidence carries the most weight when it connects specific musical examples, cultural contexts, or research findings to a central argument. A common pitfall is treating music's emotional impact as self-evident; strong writing explains the mechanisms, whether stylistic, cultural, or cognitive, behind that impact.

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Research Paper Doctorate

Postmodern Elements in Rushdie's Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie is one of the most famous authors of the modern era. In the tradition of Gabriel Marquez, Rushdie sweeps the reader up in his novel, Midnights Children, like the book by Marquez that obviously had a great…

History and Evolution of Search Engines Explained

The history and evolution of search engines can be divided into distinct periods. The first period begins from the development of Archie, which was a search engine program launched in 1990 by a group of university students. The Archie program worked by scanning files on scattered servers connected to the Internet and retrieving them for users using FTP protocol. A few years later, Veronica and Jughead search engines were launched that could search and retrieve documents using the Gopher protocol. An important breakthrough took place with the launch of the first robot search tool, the Wanderer.

Essay Doctorate

The Sound of Music (1965): Historical Accuracy Review

"The Sound of Music" is one of the most famous movie musicals in film history. Released in 1965 and garnering 5 Academy Awards, the film purports to be "based on the true story" of the singing von Trapp family. However, an examination of the plot vs. history shows that the movie is highly inaccurate and nearly a betrayal of the family it supposedly portrays. Fortunately, the outstanding score by Rogers and Hammerstein, plus the breathtaking scenery/cinematography overcome the negatives to make this film an enduring part of American culture.

Paper Doctorate

Absurdity and Blues: Camus and Baldwin's Stories Analyzed

Albert Camus was a great existential thinker and philosopher, yet he is most known for his works of fiction; essentially, Camus uses his fictional stories as a way to best put forward his own philosophical treatise.

Research Paper Doctorate

Adolescent Depression: Family-Centered Treatment Approaches

Teen depression is a serous condition that has been largely ignored until recent events in the media focused more attention to the seriousness of the problem. This research examines the attitudes and past research…

Paper Undergraduate

International Style Architecture: Origins, Principles, and Legacy

¶ … International style of architecture was a major style that emerged, and rose in popularity, in the 1920s and 1930s. The term "International Style" stems from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip…

Research Paper Doctorate

Racial Stereotypes and Cultural Biases Against Asian Americans

Cultural Biases in America Against Individuals of Asian Extraction

Research Paper Doctorate

PowerPoint as a Media-Rich Tool for Group Presentations

¶ … media richness where ordinary Word documents can't. While word processing programs permit some embedded graphics, charts, and tables and the use of hyperlinks, PowerPoint adds the potential of including audio and…

Paper Doctorate

Brian Eno and the Studio as a Compositional Tool

This is a 4 page paper about music. Specifically it is about Brian Eno's statement that the studio is a compositional tool. The studio is a compositional tool because it determines how the musician interacts with equipment, which determines what kinds of sounds can be made. The studio also determines the nature of the end results, which include adding texture, layering, and other sonic effects.

Exoticism in 19th and 20th Century Opera: Carmen and Madama Butterfly

Exoticism in 19th and 20th Century Opera Exoticism was a cultural invention of the 17th Century, enjoying resurgence in the 19th and 20th Centuries due to increased travel and trade by Europeans in foreign, intriguing continents. The "West," eventually including the United States, adapted and recreated elements of those alluring cultures according to Western bias, creating escapist art forms that blended fantasy with reality. Two examples of Exoticism in Opera are Georges Bizet's "Carmen," portraying cultural bias toward gypsies and Basques, and Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," portraying cultural bias toward the Far East. Butterfly's "exotic geisha" imagery of the Far East and Carmen's "earthy Spanish gypsy" imagery originating from the Middle East blossomed from escapist original source material that was borrowed and embellished to create some of the finest operas of the modern art world. Though the premieres of both operas were poorly received, both "Carmen" and "Madama Butterfly" survived to become classic, enduring masterpieces.

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