Teaching With ‘Mikrokosmos’

Tempo ◽  
1968 ◽  
pp. 12-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ylda Novik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sight Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Four Score ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Insight Into

In teaching Mikrokosmos to some four score children over a period of several years, I have realized that it serves numerous musical purposes beyond just that of being another series of pieces and studies for pupils. In addition to laying a strong and richly varied foundation for the understanding and performance of twentieth-century music, it presents almost unending varieties of situations for facilitating sight-reading and transposition. The work offers virtually every pianistic and musical problem to the student, and interestingly enough, its use gives him increased insight into music of the past as well as of the present.

scholarly journals Recital I (for Cathy):A Drama ‘Through the Voice’

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-397
Author(s):  
FRANCESCA PLACANICA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Performance Tradition ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Voice ◽  
One Act ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractWork on this article began as a contribution to a wider discussion of twentieth-century music theatre, and in particular a genre in the category of twentieth-century musical monodramas – one-act staged monologues with, or in music for, one performer.1My current research focuses on the genesis and performance tradition of works composed for solo female singer, and raises questions about the creative agency of the performer in the making of such works, reflecting on matters such as subjectivity, voice, and identity.2If this outlook may slightly drift from a conventional narrative springing from the composer's voice, a critical investigation of the collaborative process foregrounding the genealogy of some of these works is compelling, especially since every composer who embarked on this ‘genre’, or compositionaltopos, inflected it in idiosyncratic ways. In works such asErwartung,La Voix humaine,The Testament of Eve,Neither, andLa machine de l’être, the performative voice of the female soloist to whom the work was tailored became a generative element capable of shaping the formal, musical, and dramaturgical material.3Examination of selected case studies, focusing especially on the creative and performative processes surrounding these works, triggers an array of questions about gender politics. More importantly, transversal insight into the making of these works and their performativity reveals the interconnected nature of the two phases of creation and performance. In musical monodrama, more than in larger forms of music theatre, the two processes interweave and depend on each other; reconstructing the performative genealogy of the ‘work’ reveals an intrinsic impasse in the very notion of the musical ‘text’ associated exclusively with the compiled score and its literary sources.

The Macroform in Post-Tonalmusic. Listening and Analysis

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Baroni
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Extreme Points ◽  
Musical Time ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hierarchical Levels ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Recorded Performance ◽  
A Performance

Form in classical music is fundamentally a question of organising musical time in order to facilitate a listening corresponding to author's expectations. In the past this was obtained by coordinating different parameters towards a single goal. In twentieth century music, the more detached relationship between the composer and the listener meant that less importance was given to the idea of “correct” listening and to the coordination of parameters. This article is devoted to one of the extreme points in this process: A quartet by Bruno Maderna composed in 1956 under the influence of the ideologies of Darmstadt. The quartet was examined by three different groups of analysts. The first group examined the score of the quartet, while the third group only had a recorded performance at its disposal; the second group analyzed both the score and the performance. The three groups had to describe the form of the piece in terms of three hierarchical levels: Its microform {i.e. the organisation of minimal units not divisible into smaller parts); its macroform (i.e. its division into the minimum possible number of parts); the medium form {i.e. a collection of minimal units that could also be interpreted as an acceptable division of the parts at a macroformal level). Two basic criteria were used: Segmentation (local parametric discontinuity between two adjacent parts) and similarity (coherence between the parameters within each part). The results of the three analyses were somewhat diverse, thus demonstrating the tendency to relax the sense of form in such a quartet, as well as the presence of different procedures used when listening to a performance and analysing a score.

scholarly journals Nacht, from Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire: a perspective from the ArtSong Theory on the text-music relationships and its unfoldings

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-346
Author(s):  
Achille Picchi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Factor Of Influence

The cycle of melodramas Pierrot Lunaire op. 21 was written and premiered in 1912 and is one of the capital works of Schoenberg’s output as well as of the vocal music in the twentieth-century music. In this article we examine Nacht, the eighth melodrama, first of the second part, due to its relationships on text-music as a factor of influence in the perception and performance of the work. And we also examine the numerical relations that were so dear to the composer.

The Perpetuation of War in U. S. History Textbooks

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth B. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
American History ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Insight Into

American history textbooks, for the better part of the twentieth century, have focused on war as the primary actor. This article investigates the pervasiveness of war in textbooks and considers the e ect of such on students and their role as future policymakers. In the past decade, history textbooks have undergone a total transition toward an emphasis on social history. An examination of what this entails, and what impacts this may have on schoolchildren and society as a whole, lends insight into the e ects the study of history can have. Finally, I argue that a historian must not only choose events that illustrate the past, but also determine how those choices may a ect the future.

Becoming Spiritual: Documenting Osing Rituals and Ritualistic Languages in Banyuwangi, Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hadzantonis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Spirituality And Religion ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Witch Hunts ◽  
Insight Into

Banyuwangi is a highly unique and dyamic locality. Situated in between several ‘giants’ traditionally known as centres of culture and tourism, that is, Bali to the east, larger Java to the west, Borneo to the north, and Alas Purwo forest to the south, Banyuwangi is a hub for culture and metaphysical attention, but has, over the past few decades, become a focus of poltical disourse, in Indonesia. Its cultural and spiritual practices are renowned throughout both Indonesia and Southeast Asia, yet Banyuwangi seems quite content to conceal many of its cosmological practices, its spirituality and connected cultural and language dynamics. Here, a binary constructed by the national government between institutionalized religions (Hinduism, Islam and at times Chritianity) and the liminalized Animism, Kejawen, Ruwatan and the occult, supposedly leading to ‘witch hunts,’ have increased the cultural significance of Banyuwangi. Yet, the construction of this binary has intensifed the Osing community’s affiliation to religious spiritualistic heritage, ultimately encouraging the Osing community to stylize its religious and cultural symbolisms as an extensive set of sequenced annual rituals. The Osing community has spawned a culture of spirituality and religion, which in Geertz’s terms, is highly syncretic, thus reflexively complexifying the symbolisms of the community, and which continue to propagate their religion and heritage, be in internally. These practices materialize through a complex sequence of (approximately) twelve annual festivals, comprising performance and language in the form of dance, food, mantra, prayer, and song. The study employs a theory of frames (see work by Bateson, Goffman) to locate language and visual symbolisms, and to determine how these symbolisms function in context. This study and presentation draw on a several yaer ethnography of Banyuwangi, to provide an insight into the cultural and lingusitic symbolisms of the Osing people in Banyuwangi. The study first documets these sequenced rituals, to develop a map of the symbolic underpinnings of these annually sequenced highly performative rituals. Employing a symbolic interpretive framework, and including discourse analysis of both language and performance, the study utlimately presents that the Osing community continuously, that is, annually, reinvigorates its comples clustering of religious andn cultural symbols, which are layered and are in flux with overlapping narratives, such as heritage, the national poltical and the transnational.

Postmemory

2021 ◽  
pp. 580-594
Author(s):  
Jordana Blejmar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Practical Guide ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Dark Humor ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
And Performance

This chapter addresses the links between memory, politics, and performance in the works of the so-called postmemory generations in Latin America, composed of those who were born or grew up during the dictatorships and internal conflicts that shattered the region during the second half of the twentieth century. It specifically discusses two plays: Villa+Discurso (Villa+Speech), written and directed by the Chilean dramaturge Guillermo Calderón, and Cuarto Intermedio: Guía práctica para juicios de lesa humanidad (Recess: A practical guide for trials of crimes against humanity), directed by the Argentine filmmaker Juan Schnitman and performed by the writer Félix Bruzzone, a son of disappeared parents, and Mónica Zwaig, a French lawyer and actress. Both Villa+Discurso and Cuarto intermedio touch upon Latin America’s bleakest crimes but without solemnity and with (dark) humor, and raise important and uncomfortable questions, such as who decides what to do with the material traces of the painful past, and what is our responsibility, our implication, to shared national traumas. Both plays claim that (post)memory is not merely a familial and private issue but is also a collective effort. Moreover (post)memory is presented here not so much as a representation, a recollection, or even a reenactment of the past, but as concrete actions and political interventions in the present. Thus the focus in this chapter is not only on the content of these plays (how postmemory is represented) but, more important, on the effects, and affects, that they produce on and beyond the stage.

Remaking reality: Echoes, noise and modernist realism in Luigi Nono's Intolleranza 1960

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Harriet Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
Conflicting Discourses ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAfter the premiere of Luigi Nono's Intolleranza 1960 at Venice's Teatro La Fenice in 1961, the critical press began a series of debates and redefinitions in response to what struck them most: how noisy the opera was. Although they agreed that Nono's work was unlikely to be popular with a broad public, many immediately recognized that Intolleranza could serve to recall the horrors of Fascism and the sounds of war – to offer, in other words, a warning call that history must not repeat itself. In a debate in the Communist newspaper L'Unità, the sonic hubbub was interpreted as a new kind of realism, formed in order to use memories of the Fascist regime as an allegory of contemporary oppression. The potency of the opera's noise was seen as in part due to Nono's incorporation of the auditory experiences of cinema and television, thus providing an insight into how traditionally elite genres such as theatre and opera could respond to the emergence and increasing hegemony of new mass entertainments. This article seeks to place Intolleranza within these fraught and conflicting discourses on mid-twentieth-century Italian modernity, and show that postwar reconstruction was as much about a concern for the past as it was with a coming to terms with the present.

Writing About Death, Mourning, and Emotion: Archaeology, Imagination, and Creativity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Trevor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
East Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
The Will ◽  
And Performance ◽  
John Leland

Imagination has informed ‘the writing of the past’ since the birth of European antiquarianism. However, the prominence and reputation of the archaeological imagination has fluctuated greatly through time. Both a product of its times and a force for change, the archaeological imagination has been variously central to the discipline, marginalized, and ridiculed. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, antiquarians such as John Leland, John Aubrey, and William Stukeley referenced druids, proto-Christianity, and classical Rome to creatively people England’s past, producing past worlds that ‘made sense’ in the context of the nationalist politics and religious mores of the time (Daniel 1981; Piggott 1985; Trigger 1989). By contrast, the tendency towards empirical study squeezed imagination to the margins of mid-twentieth-century processual archaeology (Hodder 1989). This chapter picks up some threads of the story of archaeological imagination as it has been ‘written’ during the last few decades, as well as reflecting on some opportunities for the future, specifically in the study of death, mourning, and emotion. In recent years, many archaeologists have experimented with different styles of writing in an attempt to give faces and voices to people in the past. For example, Mark Edmonds (1999) wrote imaginative vignettes of life in Neolithic Britain, while Ruth Tringham (1991) evoked the drama and emotion surrounding the death of people and the burning of houses in Neolithic south-east Europe. These attempts to ‘people the past’ were, at the time, complemented by multi-vocal narratives that sought to give voice to different contemporary interpreters of the past, such as Barbara Bender’s collaborative work on Stonehenge and Leskernick (Bender 1998; Bender et al. 1997). These bodies of work encourage us to think critically about the process ofwriting the past and the ‘will to truth’ in our stories. We are also invited to ask who is writing, whose voices are heard, what types of language are being used, and to what effect. These genres also question the type of past that we wish to write. Narratives may be variously based on power and politics (Parker Pearson and Richards 1999), emotion and bereavement (Tarlow 1999, 2000, 2012), action and performance (Pearson and Shanks 1991; Shanks 2012), material culture and identity (Thomas 1996).

Gazing on the Past (and Being Photobombed by Children)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Crawford ◽  
Katharina Ulmschneider
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Glass Plate ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Many ◽  
Insight Into

Archaeologists often ignore the presence of children as a contributing factor in the archaeological record. However, recent analysis of a number of glass plate and film photographs taken by archaeologists at the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century shows that children were often incorporated into the photograph, either deliberately or inadvertently. These images provide not just a record of ancient sites and monuments, but also of the many local children who appear in the photographs. The children recorded by archaeologists offer an insight into children, their childhoods, their freedoms, and their place in society across a range of cultures in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as well as raising questions about how archaeologists ‘saw’ the human subject in photographs where monuments and sites were the object.

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