Bartók's Notation: Tonality and Modality

Tempo ◽  
1983 ◽  
pp. 4-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Gillies
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Rural Music

Everyone knows that Bartók's compositions were strongly influenced by his work with folk music. For over 70 years commentators have repeated the fact in one form or another. Bartok himself noted shortly before his death: ‘It is almost a truism that contemporary art music in Hungary has Eastern European folk music as its basis. However, there is much misunderstanding and misinterpretation with reference to the relation between our higher art music and our rural music’. That ‘misunderstanding and misinterpretation’ was not entirely the fault of scholars and critics. Bartók's numerous essays on the subject, written between 1911 and 1944, all too often provide the reader with generalities. Where he is specific it is most usually about thematic, or occasionally harmonic, derivations from folk sources. With the exception of portions of the ‘Harvard Lectures’ (1943), however, Bartók avoids any sustained account of how folk music influenced the modal and tonal structures of his compositions. Above all, he never explains the principles behind his characteristic pitch notations, particularly those double sharps and double flats so frequently found in his scores.

Landmarks in the Study of Improvisation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Nettl
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Jazz Improvisation ◽  
Single Model ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Music Making ◽  
History Of

Historically, research on improvisation has been related to the discovery of non-Western musics, folk music, and jazz, and has depended on the development of recording techniques for its principal kinds of data. The concept of improvisation is not unitary, but includes many vastly different kinds of un-notated music-making, which casts some doubt on the efficacy of the term itself. In the history of Western art music, improvisation was originally ignored or seen as craft rather than art, but since ca. 1980 it has occupied increased attention. The association of improvisation with oral transmission has sometimes been misunderstood. The most successful standard research study has been the comparison of performances based on a single model, for example, raga in India, maqam and dastgah in the Middle East, or a series of chord changes or a tune in jazz. Improvisation as a concept—for example, as a metaphor of freedom—has been important in recent research.

Verwendung, Verleugnung, Wiederentdeckung – Ligeti und ethnische Musiken

2016 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Márton Kerékfy
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Late Period ◽  
Ethnic Music ◽  
East European ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
First Time

Regarding György Ligeti’s relation to ethnic music, his oeuvre can be divided into three periods. Until 1956 he used East European folk music in the manner of Hungarian composition of the 1940s and 1950s, but upon leaving Hungary he apparently rejected folkloristic inspiration. In his late period from 1978 on, however, ethnic musics became again central to his creative work, albeit in a basically different way than in his youth. This article provides an overview of Ligeti’s early folkloristic pieces and a brief characterization of his use of elements of Eastern European folklore in Le Grand Macabre, Hungarian Rock, Passacaglia ungherese and the Horn Trio. Finally, it traces back Ligeti’s “lamento melody,” that appears for the first time in the last movement of the Horn Trio, to certain types of the Hungarian folk lament. Ligeti’s references to folklore do not mean an idealization of his past, but are rather signs of an ambivalent attitude toward his own roots, in which nostalgic longing, ironic distancing, and desperate mourning are equally present.

scholarly journals Number 13 / Part I. Music. 10. Communicational Entropy in The Present’s Crisis – Mediation and Community Action through Music Management

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-92
Author(s):  
Oana Balan
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Professional Musicians ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Commodity ◽  
Media Channels

Abstract Present day art phenomena that surround us from all media channels compel us, who have been educated as professional musicians, to find justifications for the sonic abuse that contemporary society is subjected to and to resuscitate, within this vitiated context, the art music meant to re-educate our people, restoring them to the conscience and value of their identity. Educating the public and bringing them closer to contemporary art is a task meant to be fulfilled by music institutions as well, since they should seek to investigate efficient methods of generating connecting bridges to the large masses by transforming music into a shared cultural commodity.

scholarly journals Contemporary art music and its audiences: Age, gender, and social class profile

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Grebosz-Haring ◽  
Martin Weichbold
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Music Festivals ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Motivational Structure

Contemporary art music (CAM) has experienced significant aesthetic changes in recent decades and has acted as a seismograph for socio-cultural movements. New music festivals have had a significant influence on the development and perception of this music by promoting aesthetic pluralism, introducing new concert formats, and expanding to unusual venues. These movements induce changes in the social patterns of CAM consumers and have an impact on the traditional high culture audience profile. This article relies on audience surveys at three European CAM festivals and draws on Bourdieu’s (1984) and Schulze’s (1992) class and lifestyle concepts in order to explore demographic characteristics and social class in CAM audiences. As the results show, consumption of CAM is still a distinctive practice sustained by an exclusive community having considerable education and “musical capital”. Nevertheless, the festivals show heterogeneity in the age structure and motivational structure of attendees as well as in specific patterns regarding knowledge, experience and active involvement with CAM. The analysis shows that aesthetic pluralism can lead to greater social openness regarding social class affiliation.

A Turning Point in the History of Polish Socialism and its Attitude Towards the Jewish Question

2004 ◽  
pp. 111-129
Author(s):  
Moshe Mishkinsky
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Integral Element ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Impact

This chapter describes a turning point in the history of Polish Socialism and its attitude towards the Jewish Question. In dealing with the concept of the Jewish Question, the intention is not, as is often the case, to dwell solely upon the legal status of Jews (emancipation) but to view the problems of Jewish existence in their diversity. According to one view, the dependence upon non Jewish society represents an integral element or, even a determinant, in these problems. In the context of Polish–Jewish relations from the historical perspective of the last hundred years, one may discern six aspects of the subject. These include the development of Socialist thought in its different versions as regards the Jews; the influence of the gradual growth and development of the emerging working class in Polish society; the influence of the relatively large involvement of Jews within the Socialist Labour Movement; the impact of the new processes which matured in the last quarter of the 19th century on the life of Eastern European Jewry in general, and on the Polish–Jewish area in particular; the growth alongside each other, but also in conflict, of two political and ideological movements — Polish Socialism and Jewish labour Socialism; and the tension between the Socialist and the national elements which was common to both yet different in its concrete content.

Bartók as Man of Letters

Tempo ◽  
1972 ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Benjamin Suchoff
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly

Bartok's literary efforts range from books and monographs to shorter essays. According to recent findings, there were no less than 119 extant works. Some of them were written in collaboration with Zoltán Kodály or Sandor Reschofsky; others were originally drafted as lectures which were for the most part given on the radio or at educational institutions.Bartók's first essay apparently appeared in print in Budapest in 1904. It is interesting to note that except in 1907 and 1915, at least one of his writings was published each year of his life, in a considerable number of languages, and frequently in widely-known journals. His essays may be divided, according to their topics, into eight basic categories (although there is some overlapping): I. The Investigation of Musical Folklore; II, National Folk Music; III, Comparative Musical Folklore; IV, Book Reviews and Polemics; V, Musical Instruments; VI, The Relation Between Folk Music and Art Music; VII, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók; and VIII, Bartok On Music and Musicians.

Museum Libraries in France: Their Wealth and Their Influence

1999 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
Nicole Picot
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Folk Art ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
French Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The following words preface Francoise Cachin’s introduction to Marie-Thérèse Cavignac’s Les bibliothèques des musées en Aquitaine: Richness and diversity! Reading this volume demonstrates how wide and varied is the subject matter of the museum libraries in the Aquitaine region, whether it be the library in the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne or in the national museum at the Château de Pau, those in museums specialising in the history of Aquitaine, the Pays Basque or the Périgord, or those in museums dealing with prehistory or contemporary art or seaplanes, the customs service or folk art.This description is just as valid for the rest of France. Considerable effort has been put into the modernisation of French museums during the last twenty years or so and their libraries have benefited from this renewal as well. I would like in this paper to describe some of the strengths of libraries and documentation centres in museums of art, and to try and define their role within their institutions and within the network of French art libraries.

Etude complémentaire de manuscrits des transcriptions et des enregistrements sonores algériens de Béla Bartók

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 323-340
Author(s):  
Mehdi Trabelsi
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Cd Rom ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Research ◽  
First Time

When travelling in and around Biskra, Algeria, in 1913, Béla Bartók recorded almost two hundred melodies on phonograph cylinders. Bartók’s unique research was the subject of my PhD dissertation at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2003. The dissertation was based on about half of Bartók’s Arab collection available at the time at the Budapest Bartók Archives. In the meantime in 2006, the CD-ROM Bartók and Arab Folk Music has made for the first time available all the surviving transcriptions and sound recordings, which represent Bartók’s collection almost in its entirety. The article summarizes new research into the source material which has recently become available and points out the special significance of his study of Arab folk music for ethnomusicological research into the Maghreb.

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