Graduate Studies, UNL

 

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

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First Advisor

William McMullen

Degree Name

Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.)

Committee Members

Aaron Holz, John Bailey, Karen Becker

Department

Music

Date of this Version

4-20-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Doctor of Musical Arts

Major: Music

Under the supervision of Professor William McMullen

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 2026

Comments

Copyright 2026, Ruth Moreno Calderon. Used by permission

Abstract

It was not until 1972 that the modern oboe achieved a formally established professional presence in Costa Rica. This does not suggest that the instrument was absent from the country prior to this date; rather, its professional consolidation occurred with the arrival of two foreign oboists (Claudio Bondy and David Busch) and whose activities marked the beginning of systematic performance, pedagogy, and institutional continuity. As a result, the professional history of the oboe in Costa Rica has been established for only a few decades.

A central challenge is the limited size of the Costa Rican oboe repertoire and the absence of a unified catalog of works written for the instrument. Many compositions remain unpublished, scattered, or insufficiently documented. For this reason, the investigation of the history, repertoire, and pedagogical development of the oboe in Costa Rica constitutes not only a musicological task, but also a responsibility shared by Costa Rican oboists committed to preserving and expanding the instrument’s presence within the national musical landscape.

The first chapter of this document provides a brief overview of selected Latin American oboe repertoire, as well as the development of the oboe in academic and symphonic settings in Costa Rica. The second chapter presents an overview of the works discovered during the course of this research, including an analysis of aspects of the serialism and the use of anagrams in the following pieces: Sonata para Oboe y Piano, Op. 625 and, 10 Piezas para Dos Oboes, Op. 647. The third chapter offers a biographical overview of the Costa Rican composer Mario Alfagüell (b. 1948) and a performance analysis of the oboe compositions written for the author of this document. The appendix includes a chronological list of the existing Costa Rican oboe repertoire discovered during this research, the interview conducted with Mario Alfagüell (in Spanish and translated into English), as well as the manuscripts and scores of each of the analyzed works.

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