Music Commons^™

William Walton: The Evolution Of The Five Bagatelles, Kenneth Kam

The 21st Century Guitar

The distinguished British composer, William Walton wrote his first work involving the guitar in 1960. This is the song cycle Anon. in Love, composed for tenor Peter Pears and guitarist Julian. He wrote his only solo guitar work in 1971, Five Bagatelles, which he dedicated to the composer Malcolm Arnold, and was premiered by Bream in the same year. Walton admitted that he had never thought of writing for the guitar but was encouraged to do so by Julian Bream. This work was written hand-in-hand between Bream and Walton in Ischia, Italy, in which Bream even provided a chart which …

Abstract And Acknowledgments, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

An overview of the contents of the book, plus the author’s acknowledgements.

Soundboard Scholar No. 8: Cover

Soundboard Scholar

Cover image: Ex Libris bookplate for Jane Patterson by Robert Anning Bell. Line illustration from 1893 that appeared in The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art. Private Collection.

Editor's Letter, Jonathan Leathwood

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of Soundboard Scholar, no. 8.

Design, Determination, And Evaluation Of Gender-Based Bias Mitigation Techniques For Music Recommender Systems, Sunny Shrestha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The majority of smartphone users engage with a recommender system on a daily basis. Many rely on these recommendations to make their next purchase, download the next game, listen to the new music or find the next healthcare provider. Although there are plenty of evidence backed research that demonstrates presence of gender bias in Machine Learning (ML) models like recommender systems, the issue is viewed as a frivolous cause that doesn’t merit much action. However, gender bias poses to effect more than half of the population as by default ML systems are designed to cater to a cisgender man. This …

Gilbert Biberian (1944–2023): The Exuberant Heart, Ricardo Iznaola

Soundboard Scholar

A tribute to the guitarist and composer Gilbert Biberian (1944–2023), with emphasis on his pedagogical compositions.

Ethics In Kakadu (1988): Finding Djilile’S “True Tracks”, Natasia T. Boyko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tasmanian-born Peter Sculthorpe (1929 – 2014) was one of Australia’s most iconic modernist classical composers of the twentieth century. Kakadu (1988) seems to have sparked the most controversy of Sculthorpe’s works and has become one of his most well-known pieces. In the program notes provided in the score’s foreword, Sculthorpe asserts that “the melodic material in Kakadu, as in much of my recent music, was suggested by the contours and rhythms of Aboriginal chant.” Sculthorpe attributed this melodic material to the Arnem Land chant, Djilile. Consequently, Sculthorpe has been criticized for extracting Djilile from its authentic context as …

Basic Pitch-Class Set Theory And Twelve-Tone Glossary, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

An explanation of terms and symbols used throughout the monograph, together with an introduction to basic pitch-class set theory.

Tonal-Atonal Equilibrium: Reginald Smith Brindle’S Harmony Of Peace (1979) And El Polifemo De Oro (1956), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Reginald Smith Brindle once claimed that “a whole generation [of composers] dedicated their efforts in one way or another to the exploration of the field between tonality and atonality, and to the integration of serialism into a more accessible language.” But how was such integration actually to be achieved? Chapter 1 addresses this question from a music-theoretical perspective. In an attempt to explain how post-tonal harmonic progressions might “make sense,” Smith Brindle himself formulated theories of tension flow and tonal-atonal equilibrium in his 1966 textbook, Serial Composition. The former theory compares the number of consonant and/or dissonant intervals between …

Toward A Pandiatonic Serialism: Richard Rodney Bennett’S Impromptus (1968) And Sonata (1983), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

One of the characteristic aspects of Bennett’s guitar works is his use of exclusively pandiatonic pc sets, and of his treatment of tone rows as generating complexes rather than as themes. Richard Cohn defines pandiatonicism (after Slonimsky) as “using diatonic scales without triads.” I use the term principally to refer to diatonic, non-triadic sets that are combined in (often freely) chromatic combinations. In the first of the Impromptus, the pandiatonic quality of the row’s constituent sets represents an almost incidental facet of the overall musical argument, which privileges more standard means of post-tonal motivic development. Pandiatonic sets account mostly for …

Bibliography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.

Cover, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

The cover features an untitled painting in cubist style by one of the composers discussed in this monograph, Reginald Smith Brindle (1917–2003). This and other paintings by Smith Brindle can be seen on the website dedicated to the composer. We are grateful to the composer's family for permission to use this image.

Symmetry, Schoenberg, And The Musical Idea: Denis Apivor’S Variations, Op. 29 (1958), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Perhaps guitar composers innovated in the field of twelve-tone composition because they were not really aware of what their colleagues, continental or domestic, were doing? They had latched onto an abstract, theoretical principle, detached from the rich Second-Viennese repertory that had given it life, and then developed it in their own way and for their own ends. Chapter 2 suggests that this narrative would be too reductive. It argues that the opening Poco lento from ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29, demonstrates the composer’s sensitivity to, and detailed understanding of, the ways in which Schoenberg used intervallic symmetry as an ideal that …

Introduction, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

While the history of the formation of a modern British guitar repertoire around the central figure of Julian Bream is known in broad brushstrokes, we lack a thoroughgoing, technical understanding of the particular idiom that Bream’s composers developed. Important in the nascent stages of the guitar’s modernist evolution, for example, was its relationship to twelve-tone serialism. Through close readings of individual works by Reginald Smith Brindle (El polifemo de oro, 1956), Denis ApIvor (Variations, 1958), Thomas Wilson (Three Pieces, 1961; Soliloquy, 1969), and Richard Rodney Bennett (Impromptus, 1968; Sonata, 1983), I map the …

Idiosyncratic Critiques Of Dodecaphony: Thomas Wilson’S Three Pieces (1961) And Soliloquy (1969), Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

Is the history of British twelve-tone guitar music a binary one, characterized by devotee practitioners and their vituperative detractors, or did some British guitar composers experiment with, but ultimately remain ambivalent about, dodecaphony? Chapter 3 argues that the solo guitar pieces of the Glaswegian composer Thomas Wilson might be thought to provide a provisional set of answers to these questions. In a nutshell: they manifest critiques of dodecaphony in the form of musical notation.

Writing at a distance from the modernist centers of British musical fashion, Wilson started to experiment with both guitar composition and twelve-tone serialism in the early …

Conclusion, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

In this book’s conclusion, I argue that the guitar is an eminently portable object, a musical amphibian at home in all manner of styles. Smith Brindle, ApIvor, Wilson, and Bennett wrote music for the instrument that reflected this hybrid spirit: they strove for their music to “make sense,” at the same time as expanding what it meant for music to “make sense” at all. In this way, my narrow selection of repertoire might be seen to open out onto something broader: namely, a much-overlooked, pragmatic, and modest path that one might follow within the rhizomatic network that was twentieth-century modernism. …

Author Biography, Oliver Chandler

GFA Refereed Monographs

No abstract provided.

The Misattuned Music Industry: An Intersubjective Perspective On The Music Industry's Mental Health Crisis, Jonathan Fricke

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Research shows that professional musicians tend to experience higher rates of mental health challenges compared to the general population. While there are a number of underlying factors and historical experiences that may help us to better understand these psychological struggles, I will be examining the relational system between musician and the music industry beginning at the time in which an amateur musician transitions to the professional realm. With this transition comes incredible demand and pressure from the industry. Professional musicians are at the mercy of grueling tour schedules where they spend months away from loved ones, must be "on" at …

Issues In Transcribing German Lute Tablature, Kurt Dorfmüller

Soundboard Scholar

Kurt Dorfmüller's essay is from Le luth et sa musique, a volume of proceedings from the 1957 research symposium of the same name that gathered a number of eminent scholars at the beginning of the modern era of lute scholarship and performance revival. In it, he inquires into the unique nature of German lute tablature, its mostly latent capacity for expressing polyphony, and the types of music for which it is more or less suited. He ends by proposing a set of guidelines for establishing a "mainstream practice" for transcription not only from German tablature but also from tablature …

Carlo Barone (1955–2022), Adrian Walter

Soundboard Scholar

Carlo Barone (1955–2022) was a pioneering performer, researcher, and educator in the nineteenth-century performing practice of the guitar. In this tribute, his friend and collaborator Adrian Walter describes Barone's career.

Le Donne E La Chitarra, James Akers, Romantic Guitar, Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Athénaïs Paulian’S Airs And Variations, Op. 1, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces Airs et Variations, op. 1, by Athénaïs Paulian (Bonn: Simrock, c. 1829), with a brief historical commentary and notes on performance. The commentary includes notes on Paulian's role in the Parisian guitar scene of Sor, Aguado, de Fossa, and others; the Italian soprano Angelia Catalani; and the popularity of the aria "Das klinget so herrlich," from Mozart's Singspiel Die Zauberflöte.

Elsa Just’S Ständchen For Guitar Trio, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces a serenade from an early twentieth-century German guitar magazine. It is for guitar trio and of moderate difficulty. The introductory commentary attributes the piece to Elsa Just (1894–1919) and includes a translation of the entry on Just from Zuth's 1926 Handbuch der Laute und Gitarre.

Rudolph Süss’S Lyrische Suite No. 2, Op. 24, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces the Lyrische Suite no. 2, op. 24, by the Austrian composer Rudolph Süss, with a short introductory commentary. First published in Vienna around 1921, this suite is a fine example of the enthusiasm for the guitar in early twentieth-century Austria and Germany, which resulted in much music that has been overlooked, overshadowed as it was by the emerging Spanish repertoire.

J.N. Bobrowicz’S Grand Polonaise, Op. 24, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article presents an edited version of a Grand Polonaise by the Polish guitarist-composer Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz (1805–81), preceded by a short commentary and notes for performance. The commentary includes a translation of the biographical entry for Bobrowicz in Sowiński’s Les musiciens polonais et slaves (Paris, 1857).

Carlos Pedrell’S Al Atardecer En Los Jardines De Arlaja, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces Al atardecer en los jardines de Arlaja by the Uruguayan composer Carlos Pedrell, preceded by a commentary. Together with Pedrell's other guitar works, this piece enriches our picture of Latin American guitar repertoire in the early twentieth century. In the case of Pedrell, we have a work written by a composer who studied in Paris and who wrote for three of the major guitarists of his time—Segovia, Pujol, and Llobet.

New Information On Sor And Gil Blas, Erik Stenstadvold

Soundboard Scholar

A contemporary London newspaper report clarifies the extent of Fernando Sor's contribution to the operatic drama Gil Blas.

This letter is an addendum to Erik Stenstadvold, "Fernando Sor on the Move in the Early 1820s" Soundboard Scholar, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/10.56902/SBS.2015.1.7.

A Rondo Allegro By François Molino, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article presents an edited version of a Rondo-Allegro from Molino's Grande méthode complette (Paris, c. 1833). The rondo theme bears some resemblance to the famous melody "Das klinget so herrlich" from Mozart's Singspiel Die Zauberflöte. Ophee discusses the many versions of this theme to be found in the guitar's nineteenth-century repertoire, by composers such as Sor, Giuliani, and Paulian, drawing attention to composers' use of both the sung melody and the instrumental introduction.

English And Russian Guitars In Poland: A Summary Of Sources Using Open-G Tuning, From The Nineteenth Century To The Present Day, Wojciech Gurgul

Soundboard Scholar

Polish sources related to the guitar in open-G tuning are a little-explored area of guitar scholarship — one, however, well worthy of introduction. We can distinguish two groups of such sources, according to the period and the type of guitar intended: the first group consists of publications and manuscripts for the English guitar from the first two decades of the nineteenth century; the second consists of publications for the Russian seven-string guitar from the first four decades of the twentieth century. These two instruments were cultivated in Poland contemporaneously with the Spanish guitar. The Spanish guitar, however, garnered a significantly …

Luigi Legnani's Missing Opus 9, Robert Coldwell

Soundboard Scholar

The guitar composer Luigi Legnani (1790–1877) published some 250 works with opus number, most of them for solo guitar. His catalog, however, contains many gaps. This article explores the particular circumstances of the discovery of Legnani's opus 9, focusing on Legnani’s possible contact with the French guitarist Luigi [Louis] Sagrini (1809–74).