The analysis of the structural repercussions of musicians’ strategies has traditionally focused on their handling of timing and dynamics, not only because of the correlation found in performances between hierarchical phrase structure and coordinated decreases in both parameters—usually referred to as phrase arching (".fn_cite($gabrielsson_1988).") or phrase-final lengthening (".fn_cite($todd_1985).
{"title":"Brahmsian Articulation","authors":"Ana Llorens","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.4.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.4.7","url":null,"abstract":"The analysis of the structural repercussions of musicians’ strategies has traditionally focused on their handling of timing and dynamics, not only because of the correlation found in performances between hierarchical phrase structure and coordinated decreases in both parameters—usually referred to as phrase arching (\".fn_cite($gabrielsson_1988).\") or phrase-final lengthening (\".fn_cite($todd_1985).","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47248358","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 music of Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II (1994) entails a procession of discrete gestures that are delineated by moments of repose. The performer’s grasp of the piece lies in its physicality of movement: each gesture and in-between stillness are both heard and felt as an aggregate of velocities, directions, and intentions of the body. Drawing upon Carrie Noland’s concept of “vitality affects,” I take the performative gesture, encompassing both visually accessible movement and inwardly felt kinesthesia, as a starting point for the analysis of Rain Tree Sketch II. Concepts of effort and shape taken from Rudolf Laban’s dance theory provide a framework for creating a new methodology of enhanced trace-forms to analyze gesture and kinesthesia. The analysis of gestures reveals the coexistence of opposite effort qualities and shapes in an expanded corporeal space, resonating with Takemitsu’s ideal of reconciling contradictory sounds, as noted in his collection of essays Confronting Silence (1995). Husserl’s notions of retention and protention, viewed through the lens of embodiment, and Laban’s concepts of effort states and effort recovery are brought to bear on the still moments, showing the piece to have a throbbing, embodied rhythmic structural arc. This new methodology centering on gestural-kinesthetic details provides the tools to articulate structural sensations that are often overlooked but lie at the center of musical experience.
{"title":"Corporeal Musical Structure: A Gestural-Kinesthetic Approach to Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II","authors":"Jocelyn Ho","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.4.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.4.6","url":null,"abstract":"The music of Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II (1994) entails a procession of discrete gestures that are delineated by moments of repose. The performer’s grasp of the piece lies in its physicality of movement: each gesture and in-between stillness are both heard and felt as an aggregate of velocities, directions, and intentions of the body. Drawing upon Carrie Noland’s concept of “vitality affects,” I take the performative gesture, encompassing both visually accessible movement and inwardly felt kinesthesia, as a starting point for the analysis of Rain Tree Sketch II. Concepts of effort and shape taken from Rudolf Laban’s dance theory provide a framework for creating a new methodology of enhanced trace-forms to analyze gesture and kinesthesia.\u0000 \u0000 The analysis of gestures reveals the coexistence of opposite effort qualities and shapes in an expanded corporeal space, resonating with Takemitsu’s ideal of reconciling contradictory sounds, as noted in his collection of essays Confronting Silence (1995). Husserl’s notions of retention and protention, viewed through the lens of embodiment, and Laban’s concepts of effort states and effort recovery are brought to bear on the still moments, showing the piece to have a throbbing, embodied rhythmic structural arc. This new methodology centering on gestural-kinesthetic details provides the tools to articulate structural sensations that are often overlooked but lie at the center of musical experience.\u0000","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49253236","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}
{"title":"Review of Laura Emmery, Compositional Process in Elliott Carter’s String Quartets: A Study in Sketches (Routledge, 2020)","authors":"Peter Smucker","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.4.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.4.11","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45999393","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}
{"title":"Review of John Paul Ito, Focal Impulse Theory: Musical Expression, Meter, and the Body (Indiana University Press, 2020)","authors":"Jonathan De Souza","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.12","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48612819","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 theme of John Cage’s Song Books (1970), according to Cage, is contained in the statement “We connect Satie with Thoreau” (".fn_cite($cage_1970).", 1). Previous studies of Cage’s Song Books have not asked what I feel to be obvious questions: how, precisely, does Cage connect Satie with Thoreau? To what end? And how does Cage connect to Satie and Thoreau (and to the other sources from which he borrows)? I make use of Cage’s sketch materials to seek answers. I examine three of the Solos for Voice from Song Books that make use of the cheap-imitation procedure that Cage had devised for his work of that name in 1969. Because Song Books is a work for vocalists while Cheap Imitation is a work for solo piano, Cage needed to apply analogous processes of textual “imitation” and mixture to the words of Thoreau to accompany the cheap imitations of the music of Satie. This article explores the persistence of compositional choice in Song Books as revealed by the sketches, in so doing exploring themes of duality in Cage’s pursuit of “poetry as I need it” in the music of Erik Satie, the words of Henry David Thoreau, and in the imitation game that he devises to connect them with one another.
{"title":"Cage’s Imitation Game: Cheap Imitation and Song Books through the sketches","authors":"Jeffrey Perry","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.6","url":null,"abstract":"The theme of John Cage’s Song Books (1970), according to Cage, is contained in the statement “We connect Satie with Thoreau” (\".fn_cite($cage_1970).\", 1). Previous studies of Cage’s Song Books have not asked what I feel to be obvious questions: how, precisely, does Cage connect Satie with Thoreau? To what end? And how does Cage connect to Satie and Thoreau (and to the other sources from which he borrows)? I make use of Cage’s sketch materials to seek answers. I examine three of the Solos for Voice from Song Books that make use of the cheap-imitation procedure that Cage had devised for his work of that name in 1969.\u0000\u0000 \u0000 Because Song Books is a work for vocalists while Cheap Imitation is a work for solo piano, Cage needed to apply analogous processes of textual “imitation” and mixture to the words of Thoreau to accompany the cheap imitations of the music of Satie. This article explores the persistence of compositional choice in Song Books as revealed by the sketches, in so doing exploring themes of duality in Cage’s pursuit of “poetry as I need it” in the music of Erik Satie, the words of Henry David Thoreau, and in the imitation game that he devises to connect them with one another.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48685115","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 photographic effect of overexposure is analogous to Michael Finnissy’s technique of selective musical borrowing. Just as a photographer uses the camera to allow an overabundance of light to wash out pictorial details, Finnissy uses his transcriptive pen to allow an overabundance of silence to alter and fragment his borrowed sources. Case studies demonstrate Finnissy’s borrowing of cadential phrases by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner in his solo piano works Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sind (1992) and The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001). Comparing original sources, unpublished sketches, and published autographs reveals the composer’s precise transcriptive mechanisms. Measuring the alteration of tonal function enacted by specific harmonic and rhythmic distortions illuminates Finnissy’s pre-compositional practice while celebrating the sonic experience of his music on its own terms.
{"title":"The Pen as Camera","authors":"R. Beaudoin","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.5","url":null,"abstract":"The photographic effect of overexposure is analogous to Michael Finnissy’s technique of selective musical borrowing. Just as a photographer uses the camera to allow an overabundance of light to wash out pictorial details, Finnissy uses his transcriptive pen to allow an overabundance of silence to alter and fragment his borrowed sources. Case studies demonstrate Finnissy’s borrowing of cadential phrases by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, and Bruckner in his solo piano works Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sind (1992) and The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001). Comparing original sources, unpublished sketches, and published autographs reveals the composer’s precise transcriptive mechanisms. Measuring the alteration of tonal function enacted by specific harmonic and rhythmic distortions illuminates Finnissy’s pre-compositional practice while celebrating the sonic experience of his music on its own terms.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46478858","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 Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum preserves a number of manuscripts of popular songs arranged by members of the Auschwitz I Men’s Orchestra. These songs, written with great care in black ink on Beethoven Papier brand music paper, often bear highly ironic, but also tragically relevant titles, such as “Letters That Never Arrived,” “Hours That One Can Never Forget,” “Sing a Song When You’re Sad.” In this article I describe the complex process of realizing a 2018 concert performance and recording of one of these songs, “Die schönste Zeit des Lebens” (The Most Beautiful Time of Life), based on a manuscript deposited in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 1975. Originally a 1941 popular song composed by the German film composer Franz Grothe with a text by Willi Dehmel, and scored for a jazz ensemble, it was arranged by the Auschwitz I prisoners for four first violins, five second violins, a viola, two clarinets, a trombone and a tuba. Through this dramatic change in orchestration, errors were occasionally introduced; in this article, I detail the analytical processes involved in correcting these errors and making “micro-interventions” in the score.
奥斯威辛-比克瑙州立博物馆收藏部保存了奥斯威辛一世男子乐团成员编排的一些流行歌曲手稿。这些歌曲用黑色墨水小心翼翼地写在贝多芬Papier品牌的音乐纸上,通常带有高度讽刺性的标题,但也带有悲剧性的相关标题,如《从未到达的信件》、《一个人无法忘记的小时》、《当你悲伤时唱一首歌》。在这篇文章中,我描述了2018年音乐会表演和录制其中一首歌曲的复杂过程,《生命中最美丽的时光》(Die schönste Zeit des Lebens),根据1975年存放在奥斯威辛-比克瑙州立博物馆的手稿改编。这首歌最初是一首1941年的流行歌曲,由德国电影作曲家Franz Grothe创作,Willi Dehmel为爵士合奏团配乐,由奥斯威辛一世囚犯为四把第一小提琴、五把第二小提琴、一把中提琴、两支单簧管、一根长号和一个大号编曲。通过这种戏剧性的编排变化,偶尔会出现错误;在这篇文章中,我详细介绍了纠正这些错误和对分数进行“微观干预”所涉及的分析过程。
{"title":"Giving Voice to a Foxtrot from Auschwitz-Birkenau","authors":"Patricia Hall","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.9","url":null,"abstract":"The Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum preserves a number of manuscripts of popular songs arranged by members of the Auschwitz I Men’s Orchestra. These songs, written with great care in black ink on Beethoven Papier brand music paper, often bear highly ironic, but also tragically relevant titles, such as “Letters That Never Arrived,” “Hours That One Can Never Forget,” “Sing a Song When You’re Sad.” In this article I describe the complex process of realizing a 2018 concert performance and recording of one of these songs, “Die schönste Zeit des Lebens” (The Most Beautiful Time of Life), based on a manuscript deposited in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 1975. Originally a 1941 popular song composed by the German film composer Franz Grothe with a text by Willi Dehmel, and scored for a jazz ensemble, it was arranged by the Auschwitz I prisoners for four first violins, five second violins, a viola, two clarinets, a trombone and a tuba. Through this dramatic change in orchestration, errors were occasionally introduced; in this article, I detail the analytical processes involved in correcting these errors and making “micro-interventions” in the score.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49179146","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 article examines computer-based music (ca. 1982–87) created by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. A detailed account of archival materials for an early étude in voice synthesis, Vers le blanc (1982), demonstrates the music-theoretical import of software to Saariaho’s development of a robust compositional method that resonated with the emergent aesthetics of a post-spectral milieu. Subsequent analyses of two additional works from this period—Jardin secret II (1984–86) for harpsichord and tape, and IO (1987) for large ensemble and electronics—serve to illustrate Saariaho’s extension of this method into instrumental settings. Specific techniques highlighted include the use of interpolation systems to create continuous processes of transformation, the organization of individual musical parameters into multidimensional formal networks, and the exploration of harmonic structures based on the analysis of timbral phenomena. Relating these techniques to the affordances of contemporaneous IRCAM technologies, including CHANT, FORMES, and Saariaho’s own customized program, “transkaija,” this article adopts a transductive approach to archival research that is responsive to the diverse media artifacts associated with computer-based composition.
{"title":"Encoding Post-Spectral Sound","authors":"Landon Morrison","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines computer-based music (ca. 1982–87) created by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. A detailed account of archival materials for an early étude in voice synthesis, Vers le blanc (1982), demonstrates the music-theoretical import of software to Saariaho’s development of a robust compositional method that resonated with the emergent aesthetics of a post-spectral milieu. Subsequent analyses of two additional works from this period—Jardin secret II (1984–86) for harpsichord and tape, and IO (1987) for large ensemble and electronics—serve to illustrate Saariaho’s extension of this method into instrumental settings. Specific techniques highlighted include the use of interpolation systems to create continuous processes of transformation, the organization of individual musical parameters into multidimensional formal networks, and the exploration of harmonic structures based on the analysis of timbral phenomena. Relating these techniques to the affordances of contemporaneous IRCAM technologies, including CHANT, FORMES, and Saariaho’s own customized program, “transkaija,” this article adopts a transductive approach to archival research that is responsive to the diverse media artifacts associated with computer-based composition.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44942669","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 this article, I share findings from analysis of first-movement sonata forms composed by Franz Schubert from 1810 to 1828. This work builds on prior studies of nineteenth-century sentences (e.g., ".fn_cite($baileyshea_2002).", ".fn_cite($bivens_2018).", ".fn_cite($broman_2007).", ".fn_cite($vandemoortele_2011).", and ".fn_cite($krebs_2013)."), offering an in-depth investigation of Schubert’s use of expanded sentence forms. I theorize the typical qualities of Schubert’s large-scale sentences and highlight a particularly common type, in which the large-scale continuation phrase begins as a third statement of the large-scale basic idea (i.e., a dissolving third statement). I present four examples of this formal type as representative, drawn from the C Major Symphony (D. 944/i), the C Minor Piano Sonata (D. 958/i), the C Major String Quintet (D. 956/i), and the D Minor String Quartet (D. 810/i). My analytical examples invite the reader to contemplate the negotiation of surface-level paratactic repetitions with deeper hypotactic structures. These large structures invite new modes of listening; exemplify the nineteenth-century shift away from the relative brevity of Classical precursors in favor of expanded forms; and problematize facile distinctions between inter- and intrathematic functions. This formal type would eventually flourish over the course of the nineteenth century, underpinning many composers’ strategies for formal expansion.
{"title":"Schubert’s Large-Scale Sentences","authors":"C. Martinkus","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.2","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I share findings from analysis of first-movement sonata forms composed by Franz Schubert from 1810 to 1828. This work builds on prior studies of nineteenth-century sentences (e.g., \".fn_cite($baileyshea_2002).\", \".fn_cite($bivens_2018).\", \".fn_cite($broman_2007).\", \".fn_cite($vandemoortele_2011).\", and \".fn_cite($krebs_2013).\"), offering an in-depth investigation of Schubert’s use of expanded sentence forms. I theorize the typical qualities of Schubert’s large-scale sentences and highlight a particularly common type, in which the large-scale continuation phrase begins as a third statement of the large-scale basic idea (i.e., a dissolving third statement). I present four examples of this formal type as representative, drawn from the C Major Symphony (D. 944/i), the C Minor Piano Sonata (D. 958/i), the C Major String Quintet (D. 956/i), and the D Minor String Quartet (D. 810/i). My analytical examples invite the reader to contemplate the negotiation of surface-level paratactic repetitions with deeper hypotactic structures. These large structures invite new modes of listening; exemplify the nineteenth-century shift away from the relative brevity of Classical precursors in favor of expanded forms; and problematize facile distinctions between inter- and intrathematic functions. This formal type would eventually flourish over the course of the nineteenth century, underpinning many composers’ strategies for formal expansion.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48442032","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 article traces a largely forgotten history of the 1980s Soviet disco craze by following the work of one of its pioneering figures, the Latvian DJ, musician, and performance artist Hardijs Lediņš (1955–2004). It documents how the movement coalesced amidst creative responses to the gradual opening of the USSR to Western popular culture on the one hand, and to the unique affordances of local political, social, and technological structures on the other. In Lediņš’s case, the response was also shaped by commitments to an ideal of Soviet socialism that persisted despite the grim realities of Brezhnev-era society. Drawing on archival research and oral history, I begin in the loosely monitored space of the Student Club at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, where Lediņš’s talents and ties to elites enabled him to found a wildly popular discotheque in the 1974–75 academic year, one of the first of its kind in the USSR. I follow his increasing investment in a distinctly Soviet form of experimentalist performance art in the early 1980s, in which—inspired in part by local readings of John Cage—the ritualized trek into the countryside became a vehicle for attaining spiritual enlightenment in communion with others. Finally, I consider ways in which his ritual journeys inflected his disco operation in subsequent years, when he reframed his events as experiments in communality—specifically, as means of experiencing, at least for an evening, the enlightening promise of Soviet socialism undelivered by the state itself.
{"title":"Disco Culture and the Ritual Journey in the Soviet 1980s","authors":"Kevin C. Karnes","doi":"10.30535/mto.27.3.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.27.3.8","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces a largely forgotten history of the 1980s Soviet disco craze by following the work of one of its pioneering figures, the Latvian DJ, musician, and performance artist Hardijs Lediņš (1955–2004). It documents how the movement coalesced amidst creative responses to the gradual opening of the USSR to Western popular culture on the one hand, and to the unique affordances of local political, social, and technological structures on the other. In Lediņš’s case, the response was also shaped by commitments to an ideal of Soviet socialism that persisted despite the grim realities of Brezhnev-era society. Drawing on archival research and oral history, I begin in the loosely monitored space of the Student Club at the Riga Polytechnic Institute, where Lediņš’s talents and ties to elites enabled him to found a wildly popular discotheque in the 1974–75 academic year, one of the first of its kind in the USSR. I follow his increasing investment in a distinctly Soviet form of experimentalist performance art in the early 1980s, in which—inspired in part by local readings of John Cage—the ritualized trek into the countryside became a vehicle for attaining spiritual enlightenment in communion with others. Finally, I consider ways in which his ritual journeys inflected his disco operation in subsequent years, when he reframed his events as experiments in communality—specifically, as means of experiencing, at least for an evening, the enlightening promise of Soviet socialism undelivered by the state itself.","PeriodicalId":44918,"journal":{"name":"Music Theory Online","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47687484","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}