Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1550142
Philip Eames
The Marching Song of Democracy by Australian-American composer Percy Grainger is an unusual piece, not only in a musical and aesthetic sense but also in its performance and reception history. Accompanied by an ambitious programme espousing metaphorical democracy and symbolic of ‘comradely affectionate athletic humanity’, the Marching Song was frequently singled out for promotion and performance by Grainger throughout his life. This signified its fundamental importance to him as a musical representation of his credo, and is at odds with the work’s present status as a rarely performed Grainger work. Through examining contemporary public responses, this article explores how the failure of the Marching Song to resonate with Australian audiences is linked with Grainger’s deliberate withdrawal of his original compositions from performance in Australia. It is argued that the Marching Song was therefore not only a major composition but also one through which Grainger had envisioned himself to be a prophetic composer of Australian identity. Indeed, even as his bitter attitude began to thaw, this specific work would remain withheld, unlike the more notorious Warriors, his Free Music experiments, or his controversial lecture series. The stark contrasts between the American and Australian receptions of the Marching Song and Grainger’s contradictory efforts of promotion and suppression across the two regions are illuminated to provide a degree of reconciliation between Grainger’s esteem for the work and its relative neglect.
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Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1550738
P. Tregear
If it were not bad enough to find out that the Australian government has over recent years been redistributing Australian Research Council funds away from the humanities (and in particular the creative arts and writing) by a factor of almost two-thirds towards areas it described as being of ‘immediate and critical importance’, we now know that at least two music research projects that were approved in the 2019 grant round were subsequently denied support at the whim of former Federal education minister Simon Birmingham. I doubt many of us were surprised, however. The annual chore of grant writing has felt for some time now to be a Sisyphean one, more a ritual of disciplinary self-abasement rather than self-affirmation given the already dismally low chances of success. Nevertheless there now seems to be clear grounds for Australian Vice-Chancellors and learned academies to protest vigorously about such open prejudice against our discipline. Musicologists should protest too, of course, but perhaps we could also consider how we might better present the case for public support. To that end, the appearance of a book like William Cheng’s Just Vibrations: The Purpose of Sounding Good seems both timely and welcome, for in it Cheng sets himself the task of examining how musicology might ‘renegotiate the means and purposes of careful labor, intellectual inquiry, and living soundly’ (p. 5). Cheng’s endeavour parallels recent work done by a consortium of conservatoire heads (of which I was one) who explored how tertiary music education could be more explicitly understood in terms of its benefits to wider society. Just Vibrations stands out, however, for focusing specifically on musicology and has quickly generated a good deal of online
如果发现澳大利亚政府近年来一直在将澳大利亚研究委员会的资金从人文学科（尤其是创意艺术和写作）中重新分配近三分之二，用于其所称的“直接和关键的重要”领域，我们现在知道，在前联邦教育部长西蒙·伯明翰的心血来潮下，至少有两个在2019年拨款中获得批准的音乐研究项目随后被拒绝支持。然而，我怀疑我们中的许多人是否感到惊讶。一段时间以来，每年的助学金写作都被认为是西西弗式的，更多的是一种纪律性的自卑仪式，而不是自我肯定，因为成功的几率已经低得令人沮丧。尽管如此，澳大利亚副校长和学术学院现在似乎有明确的理由强烈抗议这种对我们学科的公开偏见。当然，音乐学家也应该抗议，但也许我们也可以考虑如何更好地向公众提供支持。为此，像程的《Just Vibrations:the Purpose of Sounding Good》这样的书的出现似乎既及时又受欢迎，因为程在书中为自己设定了一项任务，即研究音乐学如何“重新协商谨慎劳动、智力探索和健康生活的手段和目的”（第5页）。程的努力与一个音乐学院院长联盟（我就是其中之一）最近所做的工作类似，该联盟探讨了如何更明确地理解高等音乐教育对更广泛社会的好处。然而，Just Vibrations因专注于音乐学而脱颖而出，并迅速在网上引起了大量关注
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1486163
J. Carmody
If, as I believe, art is a moral activity then a fortiori this is true of opera, which has a clear theme that (mostly) has been chosen by the composer and (necessarily) a text and narrative structure which—in addition to the music—can declare its artistic and philosophical concerns. It is clear from his very title of National Identity in Contemporary Australian Opera that Michael Halliwell has this same elevated view of opera: ‘identity’ and ‘myths’ are incontestably powerful concepts. Important ones, too: what sort of a society is it in which such questions are not seriously considered and, if not by its artists, then by whom? Neither priests nor politicians can be trusted with asking them, let alone providing answers. Furthermore, it is an intellectually and morally courageous author who ventures to analyse some Australian operatic works under such categories. Certainly, to do so at all—let alone successfully—requires a deep knowledge of the totality of Australian society (by implication, far more comprehensively than simply its opera-going moiety) over the sweep of its history and its regions, but also an insight into what can be considered tractable material for dramatization and a technical and structural grasp of the musical means which a heterogeneous clutch of composers has deployed to achieve worthwhile artistic fruit. Perhaps that last point should be considered first, because I do not think that Dr. Halliwell has touched on it. Far from being, as Dr. Johnson so glibly asserted (and has been remembered for his folly), an ‘irrational’ and ‘exotic’ entertainment, opera poses formidable emotional and intellectual challenges which few composers have managed to vanquish, notably the tripartite tensions between words, music and stage action. Consider the hundreds of thousands of operas that have been composed and the nugatory few that have entered the so-called ‘standard repertoire’, irrespective of whether that term is considered strictly or liberally. The truth is that acquiring the assured compositional technique which is a sine qua non before attempting an opera and—perhaps more importantly—achieving an authentic ‘musical voice’ is so formidable a challenge that few composers have the opportunity, or even the disposition, to learn about the theatre as well: about lighting, costume and makeup, dramatic timing, the importance of movement; about (in short) the ways in which a narrative and its ethical quiddity can be convincingly and comprehensively depicted (with engrossing waxing and waning of dramatic pace and tension) in front of a theatrical
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1480863
Jeffrey Brukman
Premiered in February 2013, Emhlabeni (In this world) a sinfonia concertante for piano and orchestra by South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, highlights the significance of African art music as a tool for understanding and appreciating the differences and similarities between diverse cultures and their music traditions. Situated in the long-established performance medium of Western art music (solo piano with traditional symphony orchestra), Emhlabeni also embraces thematic material derived from South Africa’s African choral tradition and compositional processes drawn from traditional African musicking. Here, African-styled interlocking figures, mbira patterning, pentatonic scales, uhadi chord progressions, and passages that treat the piano like an African mallet percussion instrument are interwoven with elements reminiscent of African jazz (especially Abdullah Ibrahim’s trademark tremolandi). Hence, Ndodana-Breen’s musical language is located largely in the African musical–cultural experience, although it is performed through a Western medium and formulated within the parameters of a Western genre: it represents the essence of African art music. Inspired by a popular African choral work, Bawo Thixo Somandla (‘Father God Almighty’), Ndodana-Breen chose a title that refers to a subsidiary theme in Bawo that contains the text ‘Emhlaben’ sibuthwel’ ubunzima’ (‘On this earth we bear many hardships’). An inspiring composition for those oppressed during apartheid—especially those suffering under the yoke of the brutal Ciskei homeland government, who were mere puppets in the hands of the apartheid regime—Bawo speaks of hope rather than defeatism, although it also reflects on the heavy burdens carried by ordinary citizens. This article emphasizes the artistic dialogue that transpires as Ndodana-Breen appropriates African and Western influences; the article draws attention to Emhlabeni’s political and social significance, especially the irony of a once-‘inferior’ choral work standing alongside the dominant Western art music tradition, and it provides commentary on the value of African art-music practice in a multicultural society.
2013年2月首演的《Emhlabeni (in this world)》是由南非作曲家邦加尼·恩多达纳-布林(Bongani Ndodana-Breen)为钢琴和管弦乐队创作的交响协奏曲，突出了非洲艺术音乐作为理解和欣赏不同文化及其音乐传统之间异同的工具的重要性。Emhlabeni位于西方艺术音乐(传统交响乐团的钢琴独奏)的长期表演媒介中，也包含了来自南非非洲合唱传统的主题材料和来自传统非洲音乐的作曲过程。在这里，非洲风格的环环相扣的人物，安比拉琴的图案，五声音阶，乌哈迪和弦的进展，以及把钢琴当作非洲木槌打击乐器的段落，交织着让人想起非洲爵士乐的元素(尤其是阿卜杜拉·易卜拉欣标志性的颤音)。因此，Ndodana-Breen的音乐语言很大程度上位于非洲的音乐文化体验中，尽管它是通过西方媒介表演的，并在西方流派的参数中形成:它代表了非洲艺术音乐的本质。Ndodana-Breen的灵感来自非洲流行的合唱作品《Bawo Thixo Somandla》(“全能的上帝之父”)，他选择了一个标题，指的是巴沃语的一个次要主题，其中包含“Emhlaben”sibuthwel“ubunzima”(“在这个地球上，我们承受着许多苦难”)。对于那些在种族隔离时期受压迫的人来说，这是一部鼓舞人心的作品，尤其是那些在野蛮的西斯凯家园政府的枷锁下受苦的人，他们只是种族隔离政权手中的傀儡。《巴沃》讲述了希望而不是失败主义，尽管它也反映了普通公民所背负的沉重负担。本文强调了恩多达纳-布林在吸收非洲和西方影响的过程中所产生的艺术对话;这篇文章引起了人们对Emhlabeni的政治和社会意义的关注，特别是对一个曾经“劣等”的合唱作品与占主导地位的西方艺术音乐传统站在一起的讽刺，它提供了对非洲艺术音乐实践在多元文化社会中的价值的评论。
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1480867
John Garzoli, Bussakorn Binson
Despite its centrality to Thai musical thought and practice, Thai and English-language scholars have been reluctant to use the term ‘improvisation’ to describe Thai music. This reluctance stems from a number of interrelated factors, including the incommensurability of terms and concepts in the Thai and Western musical systems, scholars’ lack of familiarity with Thai and/or Western musical structure, and the improvisatory practices associated with them, especially jazz, which is thought to exemplify improvisation, and lack of clarity in understanding the Thai musical concepts of prae, plae, and thang that underpin Thai musical thought and provide the context in which improvisation can, and in some cases must, occur. By laying out some general principles associated with improvisation, especially Pressing’s concept of the ‘referent’, and describing how these relate to Thai musical structure, thought, and practice, we clarify uncertainty about Thai music’s structure and performance processes. We show that in learning to perform, Thai musicians develop intimate knowledge of their musical system and the stylistic qualities of all instruments. Their training teaches them to think in terms that mirror the logic of the musical system and enables them to improvise in stylistically appropriate ways.
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1480866
A. Sutherland
In the nineteenth century, a small number of composers included parts for children’s chorus in their symphonic and choral works. As the twentieth century progressed, more and more composers scored for children’s choirs to perform alongside their adult counterparts. The children’s chorus became an indispensable component of the score, with their voices necessary for delivering texts or portraying roles inappropriate for adult voices. Post-war Europe was enjoying a change in mood, creating art works that embodied hope and renewal, and in many instances it turned to children to reflect this zeitgeist. At the same time, composers were exploring the possibilities of children’s choirs to add to the developing timbral palette available to them. As the repertoire for children’s choirs and adult orchestras increased, so too did the sophistication of the musical demands made upon them. Children’s choirs in the twenty-first century now need to be highly skilled and well trained in order to effectively perform some of the modern compositions. In a response to these trends, symphony orchestras around the world are choosing to have their own ‘in-house’ children’s chorus in order to perform the growing number of works that call for them. In this article, seven works for children’s chorus and adult music ensembles are explored, and compositional and historical trends are discussed. The contrast in musical demands from the earlier works is compared with those of more recent pieces, and the rise of the modern, symphonic children’s chorus is explored.
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2018.1486162
A. Corn, M. Langton
When new books are reviewed, they are normally in circulation and available for purchase. This is not true, however, of Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women & Australian Music by Clinton Walker, which was only recently released by NewSouth Publishing, the publishing arm of UNSW Press, in February 2018, yet withdrawn from sale within weeks due to numerous complaints from the very musicians whose work and achievements it sought to celebrate. Before reaching most bookstore shelves, Deadly Woman Blues was resoundingly condemned by several of the most prominent of those musicians via their social media posts, letters to the editor, and news commentaries. Criticized for the lack of consultation and consent sought by Walker from many of the living musicians it discussed, as well as for the many factual errors and historical distortions found within its pages, NewSouth Publishing (2018) announced that Deadly Woman Blues would be pulped on 5 March 2018 with all corrections to be posted on its website. Walker (2018b) issued his own apology, citing the book’s ‘errors of fact’, that same day. Walker had conceived of Deadly Woman Blues as a generally-chronological biographical encyclopaedia aimed at recognizing the often-overlooked histories and achievements of black women in Australian music. Although not unproblematic, the book did not stop with entries on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians, but also extended to expatriate musicians of the African diaspora and Indigenous communities of other countries. Even so, Deadly Woman Blues was promoted as a sequel to Walker’s earlier book, the highly-successful Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music (Walker 2000a), which had spawned a tie-in documentary film (Nehl 2000), two double-CD albums (Walker 2000b, 2015b) and a stage show (Walker 2016). Deadly Woman Blues would not, however, be received as the triumph that Buried Country had been.
当新书被评论时，它们通常是流通的，可以购买的。然而，克林顿·沃克(Clinton Walker)的《致命女性蓝调:黑人女性与澳大利亚音乐》(Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women & Australian Music)却并非如此，这本书最近才于2018年2月由新南威尔士大学出版社(UNSW Press)旗下的新南方出版公司(NewSouth Publishing)发行，但在几周内就被撤下了销售，原因是这本书试图庆祝的音乐家们的作品和成就遭到了大量抱怨。在进入大多数书店货架之前，《致命女人蓝调》就遭到了几位最杰出的音乐家的强烈谴责，他们通过社交媒体帖子、给编辑的信和新闻评论。由于沃克没有征求许多在世音乐家的意见和同意，以及在其页面中发现的许多事实错误和历史扭曲，新南方出版社(2018)宣布，《致命女人蓝调》将于2018年3月5日出版，所有更正都将在其网站上公布。沃克(2018b)在同一天发表了自己的道歉，引用了这本书的“事实错误”。沃克设想的《致命女性蓝调》是一本大致按时间顺序编撰的传记百科全书，旨在表彰黑人女性在澳大利亚音乐界经常被忽视的历史和成就。虽然并非毫无问题，但这本书并没有止步于土著和托雷斯海峡岛民音乐家的条目，而且还扩展到非洲侨民和其他国家土著社区的外籍音乐家。即便如此，《致命女人蓝调》还是作为沃克早期作品《被埋葬的国家:土著乡村音乐的故事》(Walker 2000a)的续集被推广，后者非常成功，并催生了一部与之相关的纪录片(Nehl 2000)，两张双cd专辑(Walker 2000b, 2015b)和一场舞台表演(Walker 2016)。然而，《致命女人蓝调》并没有像《埋葬的乡村》那样获得成功。
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Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2017.1393149
Dan Newman
Violence and murder have a strong cultural currency, the implications of which should be pursued by those with an interest in law and society, crime, and justice. Murder ballads are songs about death and killing with a history stretching back to the nineteenth century. Drawing out the major themes of this genre can help scholars gain a handle on how murder has been treated in popular culture, thereupon providing an enhanced understanding of the human condition. As an example of such examination, 2016 marked the twentieth anniversary of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads, their most famous and, perhaps, defining album. More than any other Bad Seeds album, Murder Ballads captures the essence of a band at its most comfortable in exploring the dark and the taboo: violence, killing, death. In producing a whole album on murder, the band left a calling card by which the wider public could define them. This article will explore the album by considering its key themes and, in so doing, reflect on the need to understand the use of murder in such popular music. The use of murder and death in popular music has not been properly studied, yet it offers potential social insight for several fields of study such as law, criminology, and psychology. In particular, little considered issues around the treatment of murder in popular culture such as humour are identified, while others that require greater attention such as attitudes to women are also given due consideration.
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Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2017.1392740
S. Macarthur, D. Bennett, Talisha Goh, Sophie Hennekam, C. Hope
This article reports from a two-phase study that involved an analysis of the extant literature followed by a three-part survey answered by seventy-one women composers. Through these theoretical and empirical data, the authors explore the relationship between gender and music’s symbolic and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus is employed to understand the gendered experiences of the female composers who participated in the survey. The article suggests that these female composers have different investments in gender but that, overall, they reinforce the male habitus given that the female habitus occupies a subordinate position in relation to that of the male. The findings of the study also suggest a connection between contemporary feminism and the attitudes towards gender held by the participants. The article concludes that female composers classify themselves, and others, according to gendered norms and that these perpetuate the social order in music in which the male norm dominates.
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08145857.2017.1332976
Erinn Knyt
Percy Grainger’s nearly lifelong fascination with the music of J.S. Bach began when he encountered the Bach interpretations of Louis Pabst in Australia at the age of ten and then subsequently studied the Well-Tempered Clavier and other compositions by Bach with him. Yet it was after a few weeks of studying Bach–Busoni transcriptions with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin during the summer of 1903 that the compositions of Bach took on greater aesthetic and poietic significance for him. Even despite the fact that the relationship eventually ‘soured’, discussions with Busoni in Berlin (and subsequently in London and the United States) reinforced some of Grainger’s burgeoning countercultural aesthetic ideas, especially ones deriving from the music of Bach: scepticism about the concept of ‘originality’, an interest in flexible instrumentation, and an idealization of polyphony. Although several scholars have discussed the Busoni–Grainger relationship, its importance for Grainger’s artistic ideals has yet to be explored in any degree of detail. Through analyses of scores, manuscripts, essays, concert programmes, recordings, and letters, including unpublished documents from the Grainger Museum at The University of Melbourne, this article presents the first detailed exploration of the ways Grainger’s aesthetics, poietics, and interpretations were influenced by Busoni’s vision of Bach. In so doing, the article lends greater insight into the development of Grainger’s unique compositional style, and contributes to current discourse about the role and value of adaptations in the early twentieth century. In particular, it reveals that while participating in an early-twentieth-century fascination with the music of Bach, the ideas Busoni transmitted to Grainger held even wider ranging significance. They represent a move away from the modernist notion of progress into a proto-postmodernist mindset in which appropriation, reuse, adaptation, and reshaping hold as much value as the original and new.
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