Emily Vanchella, Ph.D.

 

Emily has completed her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, "Honey Pie, Colors of Dreams, and Inner Light: Stylistic Expertise and Musical Topicality in the Beatles' Mid and Late 1960s Songs," is summarized at the end of this post. Emily also earned her Master's Degree at UCSB, where her major field of study was Music Theory.

Dr. Vanchella has accepted a one-year visiting professor job at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, Texas, where she'll be teaching courses in American Popular Music.  

We were so happy to learn that Emily would be able to participate in a graduation walk (at 1:01:14 and/or in video below) and that we would be able to attend! 

The pins and rings all have special meaning to Emily

One of the historical functions of the hood was alms collection

Regardless of major, the Ph.D. hood is a velvet royal blue. The inside colors are those of the institution granting the degree. Robes are traditionally black, but may reflect an institution color. They have bell-shaped sleeves and velvet stripes on the arms, as well as velvet panels along the front.

I asked Emily to share some of the highlights of her time at UCSB ...

• Teaching many different courses at different levels. "My students and I making each other laugh."
• Walking to campus on winter mornings, watching the sun rise.
• Being in a program where we're encouraged to follow our interests.
• Forums: "I got to meet several significant people in my field, including some who directly inspired my own research, like Drew Nobile and Johanna Frymoyer." 
• The Music Bowl: attending concerts, performing in concerts, and get-togethers / hanging out

Preparing for a lunch concert performance

• UCSB Arts & Lectures: "I saw so many great performers, artists, and performances. Highlights include Michael Giacchino, Anoushka Shankar, The Rite of Spring, Bill Bryson, Black Violin, Jake Shimabukuro, Alan Parsons, and so many more!

Meeting Bill Bryson

• Learning to play sitar with mentor, teacher and friend Dr. Scott Marcus, and playing with the Music of India Ensemble.

2018 Ensemble (click here to go to performances)

Congratulations to Emily!

Dissertation Summary

This dissertation has shown that in their interactions with topicality, the Beatles apply their own stylistic knowledge when creating meaningful references to those styles. Different band members had relatively strong levels of understanding in the three musical styles I focus on: Indian classical music, musique concrète, and the music hall. Though the paths they took to develop their own knowledge varied, the Beatles’ references to these three kinds of music all relied heavily on elements drawn directly from the source music. Examination of the band’s mid and late-1960s songs showed source music characteristics in multiple areas: instrumentation, rhythm, pitch collections and melody, harmony, form, and methods of composition and improvisation. The Beatles’ stylistic experimentation, already considered a hallmark of their music, is much more strongly based in firsthand knowledge than it appears at first listen. The band’s inclusion of knowledge-based referential elements means that their music bears a stronger resemblance to source musics than was the norm during the 1960s and early 1970s.

The Beatles’ interactions with meaningful musical reference, described here as topicality, takes different forms across the three styles examined. George Harrison’s Indian-influenced songs present the first form of topicality: realizing a preexisting topic by expanding on its conventions. The Indian topic in the Beatles, in addition to including previously established features such as instrument presence and stylistic imitation, incorporates elements of Indian classical music. Tal (rhythmic cycles), raga structure and characteristic motions, and sitar performance format can all be seen in Harrison’s Indian-inspired songs. Harrison would not have been able to incorporate these to the extent he did, and with the level of recognizability they have, without having some knowledge of it himself. While the songs do not do much to change the associations of Indian music in the West—spirituality, wisdom, even sensuality—they expand upon how a meaningful reference to India can be accomplished musically. Harrison’s relationship to Indian music, and how his understanding of it influences his compositions, also highlight the complexities that arise when two musical cultures meet.

The Beatles’ interactions with musique concrète present a second form of topicality: contributing to a developing topical field. Songs by both John Lennon and Paul McCartney incorporate several compositional techniques drawn directly from musique concrète: tape speed and direction manipulation, loops and splicing, and unaltered environmental or real-world sounds. These elements of the source music are consistently connected to lyrics describing altered or alternative states of being or consciousness. Lyrics tie the band’s references to musique concrète strongly to a set of methods and characteristics for meaning to be drawn from, one developing around psychedelic experiences during the mid-1960s. Like Harrison and Indian music, McCartney and Lennon drew on their self-developed understanding of and experience with musique concrète to create meaningful stylistic references. I have also given attention in this chapter to producer George Martin and recording engineer Geoff Emerick, who played particularly key roles in realizing the tape-based soundscapes on Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Two of Paul McCartney’s music hall-inspired songs demonstrate a third form of topicality: pressing and even erasing the line between musical reference and song context. While McCartney’s education in the norms of Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs was much more casual, mainly coming through listening exposure and one knowledgeable source (his father Jim), he understood the style’s musical tendencies enough to create recognizable references to it in his own songs. McCartney’s music hall evocations draw, to varying lengths, on instrumentation, melodic design, harmonic tendencies, and lyrical elements of the style. Out of the four McCartney songs examined here, two treat the music hall as a marked and recognizable topic, whereas the other two treat it as the song’s overall context. Which kind of topicality is used in the songs correlates with the kind of parody McCartney engages in: non-satirical parody with blurred boundaries, satirical parody with clearly delineated topics. I argue further that a possible interpretation for the music hall’s two-sided treatment here is a certain level of ambivalence toward the music hall and Britain's cultural heritage. In McCartney’s hands, the music hall and the image of Britain that the music is connected to become something to be both respected and derided. The Beatles’ music hall-inspired tracks in particular demonstrate that stylistic reference and meaning can be surprisingly complex processes.