Music Commons^™

The Tardy Recognition Of J.S. Bach's Sonatas And Partitas For Violin Solo, Di Su

Publications and Research

J. S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo (BWV 1001-1006) are among the most important masterpieces in the literature of violin music. They are included in standard repertoire for serious violin students; they are frequently performed in solo recitals; they are recorded by numerous virtuosi; and they are required in major violin competitions. The vast amount of editions also indicates the importance of the works. In Edlund’s catalogue, one finds as many as seventy-seven editions ranging from Simrock (1802) to Henle (1987)

However, the Solos did not enjoy such a prominent status in Bach’s own time and even in …

Metrical Theory And Verdi's Midcentury Operas, William Rothstein

Publications and Research

Both historical and recent theories of meter have tended to assume that meter is a single phenomenon, definable in a single (though perhaps complex) way. Most U.S. theories of meter have been based on a limited repertoire: instrumental music by German composers. Examination of Verdi's mid-century operas, from Macbeth through La traviata (1846–53), suggests that different theoretical approaches may be appropriate for different repertoires. National traditions of composition, depending often on national poetic traditions, may require different ways of hearing and counting, and thus different ways of modeling meter. The metrical theories of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, David Temperley, …

Trumpet Professor Known For Giving Inspiration, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Brett Stamps Brings Knowledge, Passion To Jazz, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Stanisław Skrowaczewski, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Stanisław Skrowaczewski is an orchestral conductor and composer.

Mieczysław Horszowski, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Mieczysław Horszowski was a pianist and music educator known especially for his interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Mozart, as well as contemporary composers like Stravinsky and Szymanowski.

Byron Janis, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Byron Janis is a pianist and composer, and whose performing career was interrupted by the effects of psoriatic arthritis. Janis was Vladimir Horowitz's first student.

"India", In "Classical Aesthetic Traditions Of India, China, And The Middle East", Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Ethnomusicology [And Aesthetics], Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Design Collaboration As A Tool For Developing Diversity In The Work Place, Rees E. E. Shad

Publications and Research

Without a doubt the modern workplace is one made up of numerous working professionals graced with an array of varied abilities who work in tandem to meet a common goal. In this article the author recounts his personal journey to embracing the collaborative process and how he has honed and developed the skill set into an important element of design curriculum in order to prepare students for this fundamental market paradigm.

Response To Rice, Kofi Agawu

Publications and Research

Timothy Rice is concerned that ethnomusicology—field, discipline, area of study, constellation of diverse musico-intellectual pursuits—has some “serious problems.” It seems that we have either not been reading each other’s work, or not engaging with it sufficiently. Opportunities to develop some “theoretical muscle” have been missed. Specifically, some seventeen articles broaching the favorite theme of music and identity published in this journal between 1982 and 2005 failed to proceed in cumulative fashion. Rice wants to see ethnomusicology “grow in intellectual and explanatory power,” but this will not happen if subsequent writers refuse to engage their predecessors at a theoretical level. A …

Thumri, Ghazal, And Modernity In Hindustani Music Culture, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

If historians of Indian classical music have been obliged to rely primarily upon a finite and often enigmatic set of treatises and iconographic sources, historical studies of semi-classical genres like thumri and ghazal confront even more formidable challenges. Such styles and their predecessors were largely ignored by Sanskrit theoreticians, who tended to be more interested in hoary modal and metrical systems than in contemporary vernacular or regional-language genres sung by courtesans. It is thus inevitable that attempts to reconstruct the development of such genres involve considerable amounts of conjecture, and in some senses raise more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, …

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

La historiografía musical y la cultura popular nos han legado una imagen de Chopin como un ser débil y asexual. Este tópico incluso ha marcado la obra de pensadores como Sartre en su obra La náusea. Sin embargo, la lectura de la correspondencia del compositor nos brinda el perfil de un ser humano con unas inquietudes sexuales bastante “normales”. En su juventud, Chopin mantuvo una estrecha relación, que algunos definirían como homosexual, con Titus Woyciechowski y años más tarde frecuentó el círculo de Altolphe de Custine, erudito aristócrata de prestigio y reconocido homosexual. La correspondencia –posiblemente fraudulenta– entre Chopin …

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

El protagonista de La nàusea, Antoine Roquentin, té una existència grisa i soporífica a la provinciana i asfixiant ciutat de Bouville. Afortunadament té temps per redactar un diari en el qual anota les poques vicissituds de la seva vida. La falta d'activitats externes es compensa amb temps per reflexionar, rumiar i escriure. Antoine realment no riu sinó que únicament sobre in. Tot i que no li manquen conforts materials, la seva vida no té sentit. Així, anhela una vida amb una existència més plena, una vida que vagi més enllà de l'existència biològica quotidiana.

Composition, Authorship, And Ownership In Flamenco, Past And Present, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Mixing For Parlak And Bowing For A Büyük Ses: The Aesthetics Of Arranged Traditional Music In Turkey, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

In this paper I explore the production aesthetics that define the sound of most arranged traditional music albums produced in the early 2000s in Istanbul, Turkey. I will focus on two primary aesthetic characteristics, the achievement of which consume much of the labor put into tracking and mixing: parlak (“shine”) and büyük ses (“big sound”). Parlak, at its most basic, consists of a pronounced high frequency boost and a pattern of harmonic distortion characteristics, and is often described by studio musicians and engineers in Turkey as an exaggeration of the perceived brightness of the majority of Anatolian folk instruments. Büyük …

Dancecult Bibliography: Books, Articles, Theses, Lectures, And Films About Electronic Dance Music Cultures, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Dancecult is a forum for the electronic dance music culture (EDMC) research network, whose doors opened in April, 2005. Presently, Dancecult manifests as a mailing list and rich informational website. With around 180 members (and growing) worldwide, Dancecult-l is an interdisciplinary mailing list for graduate students, scholars, and other parties interested in the study and documentation of EDMCs from proto-disco through post-rave formations. As a critical information exchange hub, Dancecult-l enables resource sharing and collaboration between international researchers of club cultures, raves, techno, electronica, doof, digital arts and other manifestations of EDMC. Members come from various different disciplines, operating in …

Review Of The T.A.M.I. Show, Michael Adams

Publications and Research

Review of concert film The T.A.M.I. Show: http://www.media-party.com/discland/2010/04/the-tami-show.html

Ron’S Right Arm: Tactility, Visualization, And The Synesthesia Of Audio Engineering, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Most scholarship on audio engineering analyzes practices and practitioners in terms of musical and technical knowledges. The few references to sensory perception typically center on critical listening practices (“golden ears” engineers), audiophilia, and technologies of audition. However, particularly in light of computer-based workflows, the practice of audio engineering features carefully developed synesthesias of critical listening, visualization of digital audio, and tactile manipulations of interfaces, which can’t adequately be explained as cognitive processes or as conscious knowledge.

I draw on literature in the emerging field of sensory scholarship, in particular Brian Massumi’s theorization of synesthesia and affect and Charles Hirschkind’s analyses …

Las Ensaladas (Praga, 1581): Con Un Suplemento De Obras Del Género [Music Review], Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

This new publication consists of three parts: volume 1 comprises a critical study of the music and its composers; volume 2 is a modern transcription of the Prague publication with a supplement including works by Flecha and other composers; and volume 3 is a box set that includes facsimiles of the extant four partbooks (the newly-discovered tiple, alto, tenor, as well as the already-known baxo; the quintus, still missing, had to be reconstructed for the edition).

Desde La Orilla: Fighting For A Queer Identity In The Dominican Republic, Angelina Tallaj

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Flocking In The Time-Dissonance Plane, Adam James Wilson

Publications and Research

This paper describes a technique for the sonification of an idealized model of the flocking behavior of birds, fish, and insects. Flocking agents are represented by pitches that move through time to produce chords of variable dissonance. The objective of each agent is to move toward more consonant chord formations with other agents. The output of the sonification is intended to provide material for use in musical composition.

Transnational Chowtal: Bhojpuri Folksong From North India To The Caribbean, Fiji, And Beyond, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

In mid-February of 2007, I attended some lively sessions of chowtal (Hindi, cautāl), a boisterous Bhojpuri folk song genre, in a Hindu temple in a small town a few hours from Banaras (Varanasi), North India. The following weekend I was singing chowtal, in an identical style, with an Indo-Guyanese ensemble in Queens, New York City. In the subsequent season of the vernal Holi (Hindi, holī) festival, in March 2008, I found myself singing along with a group of Indo-Fijians in Sacramento, California, as they performed a similar version of one of the same chowtal songs. Despite the nearly identical styles …

Cuba: From Contradanza To Danzon, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

If in the last century Cuban music has been known primarily for the mambo, the chachacha and the son that generated salsa, in the nineteenth century by far the most predominant and distinctively national music was the contradanza, in the diverse forms it took over the course of its extended heyday. The contradanza (or "danza," as it was later called) was also the era's most seminal genre, parenting the habanera that graced European opera and music theater, the elegant figures of the tumba francesa's mason dance, and, albeit ultimately, the mambo and the chachacha themselves, which evolved from the danza's …

From Contradanza To Son: New Perspectives On The Prehistory Of Cuban Popular Music, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

While it is often claimed that the Cuban son emerged from rural Oriente and “invaded” Havana in the early 20th century, serious Cuban musicologists have clarifi ed that the true consolidation of the genre took place in Havana after around 1910–1920. Examination of 19th-century sources can help us trace with greater specifi city the origins of the particular musical features that distinguished the traditional son. Editions and descriptions of 1850s–1860s Havana contradanzas illuminate much about urban popular dance music of that milieu. In par-ticular, they reveal the presence of features typically associated with the son, such as melodies in duet …

Playing With A Different Sex: Academic Writing On Women In Rock And Pop, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

This annotated bibliography of academic writing on women in rock in pop should provide an overview of most of the scholarly literature on the topic and reflects my personal interest in methodology. When I returned to graduate school in the late 1990s to study American studies and popular culture, I discovered that academe had changed considerably from my undergraduate days when I studied history of art. Although traditional academic disciplines continue, I found that in the humanities and social sciences, there were no longer neat categories for disciplines and disciplines no longer were isolated from each other.

The topic of …

“Etc. Etc.” Reliquias Y Fragmentos De Una Sonata De Schubert, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

Tomando como ejemplo el caso de Reliquie, Sonata para piano en do mayor D. 840 de Schubert, este ensayo explora los entresijos que generan las obras musicales incompletas. ¿Qué diferencia hay entre un fragmento amputado y uno inacabado? ¿Qué autoridad tienen las reconstrucciones de obras incompletas? ¿Qué opciones tiene el intérprete a la hora de ejecutar esta obra? ¿Por qué nos atraen los fragmentos? La Sonata para piano en do mayor consiste en dos movimientos completos y otros dos inconclusos. Si bien algunos pianistas como Paul Badura-Skoda han grabado esta obra con su propia compleción, Sviatoslav Richter interrumpe su …

Experience And Consciousness: Enhancing The Notion Of Musical Understanding, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Abstract:

Disagreeing with Jerrold Levinson’s claim that being conscious of broad span musical form is not essential to understanding music, I will argue that our awareness of musical architecture is significant to achieve comprehension. I will show that the experiential model is not incompatible with the analytic model. My main goal is to show that these two models can be reconciled through the identification of a broader notion of understanding. After accomplishing this reconciliation by means of my new conception, I will close the paper by discussing some reasons to accept an enhancing notion of musical understanding that includes levels …

Brigadoon: Lerner And Loewe's Scotland, Jennifer Oates

Publications and Research

Since the 1950s, Brigadoon has been accepted as a representation of Scotland. Brigadoon’s Scotland consists of a highland landscape with lochs, mists, castles populated by fair maidens, warlike yet sensitive kilted men and bagpipers. Much of this comes from the invented traditions of Scotland, particularly kilts and clan tartans; late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish literature; Scottish propaganda for tourism following WWII; and Scottish popular culture. In spite of Lerner’s well-written book, Loewe’s charming music, and Agnes De Mille’s exciting choreography, the Scottishness of the work received, and still receives, the most attention. Brigadoon’s inauthentic or dubious depiction of …

Contradance And Quadrille Culture In The Caribbean, Peter L. Manuel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.