Risa Tonita
Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano (DMA)
Research Topic
The pianist's self: Political action in piano performance as a relational practice
Hedy Law
Associate Professor
Research Classification
Research Interests
eighteenth-century French music; opera; pantomime; dance; gesture; sign; the Enlightenment
Cantonese music; Cantonese opera; Cantonese songs; tone language; global Cantonese music
global music history; gender and sexuality; music and race
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Research Options
I am available and interested in collaborations (e.g. clusters, grants).
I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.
I am interested in working with undergraduate students on research projects.
Research Methodology
archival research; source studies; intellectual history
Recruitment
Master's students
Doctoral students
Postdoctoral Fellows
Any time / year round
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Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
From "a doubtful privilege" to "the solo in every concert" : the oboist's tuning-A in John Corigliano's "Tuning Game" (2023)
In the modern symphony orchestra, it is common practice for the musicians to tune to the principal oboist’s note A– known as the “tuning-A”– at the beginning of a concert. Although tuning the orchestra is widely accepted by orchestral musicians and audiences as an important part of the oboist’s job, there is a lack of academic research on the practice. We do not yet have a clear understanding of why the oboist gives the tuning-A– a practice whose origins Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes call a “mystery” in their well-researched history of the instrument, The Oboe (2004). Further, because the practical knowledge required to successfully play the A has mainly been passed aurally from oboist to oboist, there is little written documentation of the practice. In this dissertation, I begin to document the oboist’s relationship to the orchestral tuning-A from three different perspectives. In Chapter One, using primary historical sources from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, I trace the emergence of the oboist as the orchestral tuner around 1800 in Paris and the continued debates surrounding the oboe’s suitability for tuning into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Chapter Two, I discuss the findings of my original online survey of practicing principal oboists in Canadian professional orchestras, including evidence that oboists see the tuning-A not only as a practical tool, but as an expressive solo. I also address possible reasons for the oboe’s continued role in modern orchestral tuning, including the instrument’s unique timbre and oboists’ ability to adjust pitch. In Chapter Three, I present my analysis of the first movement of acclaimed American composer John Corigliano’s (1938- ) Oboe Concerto (1975), called “Tuning Game,” which the composer describes as “an extension of the preperformance tuning rite into a virtuosic game.” Using Hepokoski and Darcy’s Sonata Theory (2006) as a starting point, my original analysis shows the ingenuity of Corigliano’s use of the tuning-A as a defining compositional feature of “Tuning Game”—a perspective that no scholar has contributed before. Ultimately, I argue that the oboist’s tuning-A is a musical object with rich aesthetic value.
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Ferruccio Busoni's use of the sostenuto pedal: expansion of the pedalling technique (2021)
This dissertation is a comprehensive examination of the use of the sostenuto pedal by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) in the first Appendix of his edition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1894) and Mit Anwendung des III. Pedals (Steinway & Sons Sustaining-Pedal) (1923). Although Busoni notated the use of the sostenuto pedal in these two works, scholars have largely overlooked the significance of his groundbreaking pedalling techniques. To contextualize the historical significance of Busoni’s use of the sostenuto pedal in the history of the piano repertoire, I analyze the use of the sostenuto pedal in Consolation No. 3 and Danse des Sylphes by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), for Liszt was the only major composer who notated his use of the sostenuto pedal before Busoni. I then use these findings to discuss Busoni’s first Appendix and Mit Anwendung des III. Pedals (Steinway & Sons Sustaining-Pedal), which represent Busoni’s extensive use of the sostenuto pedal but has not been discussed fully in scholarly literature. To illustrate Busoni’s impact, I demonstrate that his use of the sostenuto pedal pre-dated similar pedalling techniques employed by twentieth-century composers, including Percy Grainger (1882-1961), Luciano Berio (1925-2003), and George Crumb (1929-). My research findings provide a contextualized explanation of Busoni’s pedalling techniques and identify his contributions to the development of piano playing. Grounded in the most up-to-date and authoritative research, I show that Busoni found new ways to prolong and release tones by using the sostenuto pedal. He developed the use of the sostenuto pedal from merely prolonging a pedal point, as Liszt did, to devising four new pedalling techniques: 1) he altered the customary sequence of sound production of the piano: attack, sustain, and release; 2) he enabled the performance of contrasting articulations and dynamics in multi-layered textures; 3) he prolonged pedal points and increased the clarity of individual layers within multi-layered textures; 4) he formed polychords. Busoni’s use of the sostenuto pedal, I argue, expanded the pedalling technique of the piano.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
Preservation through Performance: Self-Organization and Self-Sustaining of Vancouver and Victoria Chinatown Communities beyond the Cantonese Opera Stage (1920-1939) (2024)
Cantonese opera once flourished in early twentieth-century North America, sustaining numerous theatres and gaining prominence beyond Chinese borders. Scholarship has emerged in recent decades, focusing on the genre’s rise from a rural tradition to transpacific phenomenon. Particularly noteworthy is Nancy Rao’s framework of a transpacific, musical migration network spanning across North and South American port cities in the early twentieth century. While Rao presents a broad framework in her 2017 book, there have been few published scholarly works providing an in-depth examination of Cantonese opera’s multifaceted role in British Columbia’s localized conditions. Rao’s discussion is also limited to the period between the mid-nineteenth century and 1920s. To date, few scholars have engaged exclusively with the genre in its early twentieth-century, British Columbian context in Canada when Chinese communities faced structural discrimination. I further Rao’s research in the Vancouver and Victoria context by analyzing Cantonese opera’s reception history, print and material culture in the 1920s and 1930s. I systematically examine the Chinese Times, a Chinese newspaper published daily in Vancouver from 1914 to 1992. The newspaper encapsulates the genre’s reception history and Vancouver and Victoria Chinatown communities’ attitudes toward social issues that no one has analyzed methodically. In Chapter Two, I examine the 1920s issues of the newspaper because the decade saw the proposal and passing of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act (also known as Chinese Exclusion Act) in Canada, which stopped virtually all Chinese immigration. I argue that Cantonese opera theatres in 1920s Vancouver significantly contributed to the sustaining of the Chinatown community by collaborating in charity initiatives and aiding local and global Chinese communities, such as those in Japan and Mandarin-speaking Northern China. In Chapter Three, I review the 1930s as Chinatown residents faced the Great Depression occurring from 1929-1939. I argue that the decade was characterized by a quiet professional Cantonese opera scene but the rise of amateur performances and organizations sustained Vancouver and Victoria’s Chinatown communities. This thesis provides an anti-victimizing view of Chinatown communities in early twentieth-century British Columbia, where Cantonese opera played a significant sociopolitical role and facilitated Chinatown community formation against legalized racism.
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The queen of African pop: representations of gender, race, and cultural identity in Brenda Fassie's music (2024)
In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them.Fassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie’s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, “Weekend Special” (1983), “Black President” (1990) and “Nomakanjani” (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa. The first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie’s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie’s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life.
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A corpus study of tone-melody correspondence in Cantopop, 2000-2020 (2023)
No abstract available.
The queen of African pop: representations of gender, race, and cultural identity in Brenda Fassie's music (2024)
In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them.Fassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie’s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, “Weekend Special” (1983), “Black President” (1990) and “Nomakanjani” (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa. The first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie’s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie’s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life.
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Current Students & Alumni
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