{"title":"Review of Jennifer Iverson, Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde (Oxford University Press, 2019)","authors":"M. Mendez","doi":"10.30535/MTO.26.3.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.26.3.15","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49280939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines analytic possibilities afforded by understanding exceptional uses of the subdominant as a hermeneutic signal of the past tense in contemporary Broadway megamusicals. While an emerging consensus in studies of pop music holds that the subdominant chord can comprise a variety of functions beyond its traditional predominant role, to suggest as much already betrays an approach that is steeped in the long shadow of common-practice tonality and the expectations that it entails. Rather than trying to develop a separate syntax from its common-practice antecedents, it is more fruitful to engage with common-practice perspectives in the analysis of certain styles of pop music. Through analysis of examples from Andrew Lloyd Webber'sSunset Boulevardand Boublil and Schönberg'sMiss Saigon, I argue that cases wherein the subdominant receives an unconventional (over-)emphasis might be better understood through the hermeneutics of tonal temporality, rather than through attempts to codify them as an entirely new syntax.
本文考察了在当代百老汇大型音乐剧中，理解亚主词作为过去时的解释学信号的特殊使用所提供的分析可能性。虽然流行音乐研究中正在形成的共识认为，次主音和弦可以包括超出其传统主导作用的各种功能，但暗示这么多已经暴露了一种沉浸在常见音调及其所带来的期望的长期阴影中的方法。在分析流行音乐的某些风格时，与其试图从其共同实践的前因中发展出一种单独的语法，不如从共同实践的角度来分析流行音乐。通过分析Andrew Lloyd Webber的《Sunset Boulevard and Boublil》和Schönberg的《Miss Saigon》中的例子，我认为，通过音调时间性的解释学，而不是试图将其编纂成一种全新的语法，可以更好地理解亚主词受到非常规（过度）强调的情况。
{"title":"Retrospective Time and the Subdominant Past","authors":"Kyle Hutchinson","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.6","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines analytic possibilities afforded by understanding exceptional uses of the subdominant as a hermeneutic signal of the past tense in contemporary Broadway megamusicals. While an emerging consensus in studies of pop music holds that the subdominant chord can comprise a variety of functions beyond its traditional predominant role, to suggest as much already betrays an approach that is steeped in the long shadow of common-practice tonality and the expectations that it entails. Rather than trying to develop a separate syntax from its common-practice antecedents, it is more fruitful to engage with common-practice perspectives in the analysis of certain styles of pop music. Through analysis of examples from Andrew Lloyd Webber'sSunset Boulevardand Boublil and Schönberg'sMiss Saigon, I argue that cases wherein the subdominant receives an unconventional (over-)emphasis might be better understood through the hermeneutics of tonal temporality, rather than through attempts to codify them as an entirely new syntax.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48617690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In response to Maurice Ravel’s puzzling description of Boléro as “orchestral tissue without music,” this article explores how he privileges timbre over techniques traditionally associated with musical development. Even as I acknowledge longstanding perceptions of Boléro as a piece that is characterized by monotony and repetition, I show how Ravel relies on alternating decorative and arabesque melodies to highlight a parallel process of timbral variation. The role played by inward-turning subordinate arabesques is especially expressive given how they establish a timbrally competitive relationship with decorative themes, which escalates towards a moment of melodic disruption and formal collapse. Stylistic connections between Boléro and other contemporaneous works and idioms raise the question of whether, in the absence of music, timbral diversity allows Boléro to function as the orchestration treatise that Ravel failed to complete.
{"title":"Orchestral Tissue, Subordinate Arabesques, and Turning Inward in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro","authors":"G. Bhogal","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.2","url":null,"abstract":"In response to Maurice Ravel’s puzzling description of Boléro as “orchestral tissue without music,” this article explores how he privileges timbre over techniques traditionally associated with musical development. Even as I acknowledge longstanding perceptions of Boléro as a piece that is characterized by monotony and repetition, I show how Ravel relies on alternating decorative and arabesque melodies to highlight a parallel process of timbral variation. The role played by inward-turning subordinate arabesques is especially expressive given how they establish a timbrally competitive relationship with decorative themes, which escalates towards a moment of melodic disruption and formal collapse. Stylistic connections between Boléro and other contemporaneous works and idioms raise the question of whether, in the absence of music, timbral diversity allows Boléro to function as the orchestration treatise that Ravel failed to complete.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43017540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reimagining historical improvisation is a speculative pursuit: like any other aspect of historical performance practice, historical improvisations by living musicians create modern sounds (Taruskin 1995). However, historical notations, treatises, and accounts of performances provide substantial clues for reconstructing historical practices of improvisation (Gjerdingen 2007a; Levin 2009; Sanguinetti 2012; Guido 2017). Gjerdingen (2007a) highlights the role of phrase schemata in eighteenth-century music learning and creativity in composition, improvisation, or anywhere in between. Levin’s live improvisation in the style of Mozart at Cambridge University on October 29, 2012, captured on YouTube, serves as an analytical case study for the significance of conventional schemata in the musicianship of a living, elite-expert historical improviser. I reflect on Levin’s manipulations of schemata, allusions to the original pieces requested by the audience, as well as on interconnections between the various parts of his fantasy. Music analysis thus becomes here a reflection on improvisatory technique. The analysis also outlines the challenging listening horizons for audience members with significant experience in the style. Finally, our age of digital reproduction allows us to turn this ephemeral act of musical communication into an object for speculation, creating analytical “suggestions” for readers (Temperley 1999) or a listening guide for a historically-informed fantasy.
{"title":"Reimagining Historical Improvisation","authors":"Gilad Rabinovitch","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.11","url":null,"abstract":"Reimagining historical improvisation is a speculative pursuit: like any other aspect of historical performance practice, historical improvisations by living musicians create modern sounds (Taruskin 1995). However, historical notations, treatises, and accounts of performances provide substantial clues for reconstructing historical practices of improvisation (Gjerdingen 2007a; Levin 2009; Sanguinetti 2012; Guido 2017). Gjerdingen (2007a) highlights the role of phrase schemata in eighteenth-century music learning and creativity in composition, improvisation, or anywhere in between. Levin’s live improvisation in the style of Mozart at Cambridge University on October 29, 2012, captured on YouTube, serves as an analytical case study for the significance of conventional schemata in the musicianship of a living, elite-expert historical improviser. I reflect on Levin’s manipulations of schemata, allusions to the original pieces requested by the audience, as well as on interconnections between the various parts of his fantasy. Music analysis thus becomes here a reflection on improvisatory technique. The analysis also outlines the challenging listening horizons for audience members with significant experience in the style. Finally, our age of digital reproduction allows us to turn this ephemeral act of musical communication into an object for speculation, creating analytical “suggestions” for readers (Temperley 1999) or a listening guide for a historically-informed fantasy.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47546617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The thematic organization of musical reprises and recapitulations has not received as much attention as that of expositions. One reason for this is the assumption that recapitulations are simply retracings of thematic paths already plotted in the exposition, with their tonal profiles adjusted to remain in the tonic. The present article seeks to complexify this view by devoting analytic and interpretive attention to a handful of refrains, reprises, and recapitulations that feature deletions of some of their referential thematic material. My primary claims are, first, that such recapitulatory compressions afford feelings of temporal and perspectival distortion (such as “too soon” or “too close” or “too large”) to listeners and to virtual protagonists, and second, that they work in concert with aspects of the presented content of the movements at hand—text, topic, mode, and so on—to project complex and multifaceted musical narratives. Examples come from poetry, song, and instrumental music and include Goethe's “Erster Verlust” and Schubert's setting of it (D. 226); Müller's “Täuschung” and “Die Nebensonnen” and Schubert's settings of them (D. 911); and Schubert's Allegro in A minor for Four hands, “Lebensstürme,” D. 947.
{"title":"Recapitulatory Compressions in Some Texted and Instrumental Works by Schubert","authors":"J. Guez","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.5","url":null,"abstract":"The thematic organization of musical reprises and recapitulations has not received as much attention as that of expositions. One reason for this is the assumption that recapitulations are simply retracings of thematic paths already plotted in the exposition, with their tonal profiles adjusted to remain in the tonic. The present article seeks to complexify this view by devoting analytic and interpretive attention to a handful of refrains, reprises, and recapitulations that feature deletions of some of their referential thematic material. My primary claims are, first, that such recapitulatory compressions afford feelings of temporal and perspectival distortion (such as “too soon” or “too close” or “too large”) to listeners and to virtual protagonists, and second, that they work in concert with aspects of the presented content of the movements at hand—text, topic, mode, and so on—to project complex and multifaceted musical narratives. Examples come from poetry, song, and instrumental music and include Goethe's “Erster Verlust” and Schubert's setting of it (D. 226); Müller's “Täuschung” and “Die Nebensonnen” and Schubert's settings of them (D. 911); and Schubert's Allegro in A minor for Four hands, “Lebensstürme,” D. 947.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43427714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina’s music, particularly in terms of the composer’s intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina’s music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, “dissonant” sounds are closer to white noise than “consonant” sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina’s music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances.
在讨论古白杜琳娜的音乐时，经常会提到和谐和不和谐，特别是在作曲家有意将音色与她以黄金分割为导向的形式规划进行对比方面。在这篇文章中，我用不和谐的概念来调和古白杜琳娜音乐的几种相互竞争的理论和更广泛的音色理论。根据她的作曲理论和保罗·萨彻基金会的素描材料，以及她在《Am Rande des Abgrunds》（2002）中的进一步例子，她在巴赫合唱《Vor deien Thron tret’ich hiermit》（1993）中的某些段落被认为是不和谐的。广义上讲，“不和谐”的声音比“辅音”的声音更接近白噪声，这与不和谐感知的实证研究以及幽灵主义的作曲理论相一致。然而，古拜杜琳娜的音乐特别在音乐上使用了这种扩展的不和谐概念；不和谐在作品中具有特定的结构作用，并致力于和谐。
{"title":"Consonance, Dissonance, and Formal Proportions in Two Works by Sofia Gubaidulina","authors":"Noah Kahrs","doi":"10.30535/mto.26.2.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.26.2.7","url":null,"abstract":"Consonance and dissonance are frequently invoked in discussions of Gubaidulina’s music, particularly in terms of the composer’s intentional contrasts between timbres and her golden section-oriented formal planning. In this paper, I use the notion of dissonance to mediate between several competing theories of Gubaidulina’s music and theories of timbre more broadly. Certain passages in her Meditation on the Bach Chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (1993) are identified as dissonant based on her compositional theories and on sketch material from the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and on further examples drawn from her Am Rande des Abgrunds (2002). Broadly speaking, “dissonant” sounds are closer to white noise than “consonant” sounds, aligning with empirical studies of dissonance perception as well as with spectralist compositional theories. However, Gubaidulina’s music uses this extended notion of dissonance particularly musically; dissonances have specific structural roles in a work and resolve to consonances.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46636462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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