2021 Friends of the Library Scholarship Winner

Picture of Tim Dennison

Congratulations to Tim Dennison, winner of the 2021 Friends of the Library Scholarship. Dennison is currently at the end of his second year of undergraduate studies at the UMKC Conservatory. He is studying Choral Music Education, being mentored under Dr. Charles Robinson, and he is studying Vocal Performance with Dr. Raymond Feener.

Dennison’s essay was chosen for his response to the following prompt: How did you use library resources and services to complete a project, and what did they add to your work?

You can read Dennison’s winning essay below!

“The UMKC library has been a very important resource during my undergraduate career. It has made navigating college much easier. I have used the library for many purposes. This includes studying for my classes, finding repertoire for my voice lessons, and creating important research projects. One paper with which the library has helped is one that I wrote in Musicianship 3, “Mozart’s Theory of Conformity.” This paper analyzes Piano Sonata No. 12, K. 332 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and compares some of his other works, Piano Sonata No. 2, K. 280 and Le Nozze di Figaro, K. 492 to show how he conforms to the typical sonata form of the Classical Era of music. The library and the resources used added and helped complete this paper.

Because of the pandemic, most of my use of the library this academic year has been virtual, but this has not stopped me from finding important resources. For this research paper in particular, I used the databases IMSLP and EBSCOHost through the library. These helped me find three important pieces of music and one important article to help me write this paper. I used IMSLP to find the pieces of music needed for the paper, and I used EBSCOHost to find the article “The Initial Movements of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas K. 280 and K. 332: Some Striking Similarities” by David Beech.

The article by David Beech, gave an in-depth analysis of Mozart Piano Sonatas No. 2 and No. 12 and compared these two sonatas. This was helpful because it gave useful evidence to support the thesis of my paper. It also helped with my form and roman numeral analysis of Piano Sonata No. 12, which was a big portion of this research paper. The library and EBSCOHost made the access to this important article possible.

My other three sources, Piano Sonata No. 12, Piano Sonata No.2, and the overture of Le Nozze di Figaro, helped with supporting my thesis as well. I did an analysis of these pieces of music to form my own conclusions about these works. With Piano Sonata No.12, the main work analyzed, I was able to make a sonata-form diagram. I also analyzed both Piano Sonata No. 12 and the overture of Le Nozze di Figaro, so I could the compare all three of these works to support my thesis. All three are very similar and in sonata form. The library and IMSLP helped me access these pieces of music.

The library has not only helped me find sources for research papers, but it has also helped me find repertoire for my voice lessons. The library catalog makes finding music scores much easier. Also, the amount of repertoire in the library gives me a lot of ideas for a recital program.

I am very thankful for the library, a spectacular resource. It has helped me with a countless number of assignments, papers, projects, and voice lessons. It is also a great place to have a study session with my peers and colleagues (in a pre-COVID-19 world). If it was not for the library, my college experience would be more difficult.”

This unedited essay is published as it was submitted.

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