The New in Music

Tempo ◽  
1954 ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Jürgen Balzer

In the year 1601 there appeared in Florence a musical work entitled Le Nuove Musiche (The New Music). The composer was Giulio Caccini, one of the leading members of the circle associated with the noble dilettanti who in attempting to revive the Greek drama laid the foundations of a new branch of music—opera. Le Nuove Musiche contains a collection of songs for solo voice to harp or lute accompaniment, of the kind that Caccini, who was singer to the Tuscan Court, had been singing for many years. The work—called not New Music, but The New Music—was a contribution to a current controversy in which the opposing side supported the “old” manner of musical composition, the one in which two or more melodies are woven together to form an elaborate pattern. (This manner of composition is known as polyphony, and in modern times the style has been called after one of its greatest masters, Palestrina). Consequently, Le Nuove Musiche has a long preface in which Caccini expounds the meaning of his songs, declaring, among other things, that the new style considers its principal task to be to interpret the poetry, to give rightful scope to the words by careful enunciation, and to let the tune bring out the phrasing of the poem, an aspect which, in the modernists' view, had been singularly neglected in polyphonic compositions.

Author(s):  
Elia Nathan Bravo

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, it offers a general analysis of stigmas (a person has one when, in virtue of its belonging to a certain group, such as that of women, homosexuals, etc., he or she is subjugated or persecuted). On the other hand, I argue that stigmas are “invented”. More precisely, I claim that they are not descriptive of real inequalities. Rather, they are socially created, or invented in a lax sense, in so far as the real differences to which they refer are socially valued or construed as negative, and used to justify social inequalities (that is, the placing of a person in the lower positions within an economic, cultural, etc., hierarchy), or persecutions. Finally, I argue that in some cases, such as that of the witch persecution of the early modern times, we find the extreme situation in which a stigma was invented in the strict sense of the word, that is, it does not have any empirical content.


2020 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Р.Х. Лаул

Настоящий материал продолжает серию публикаций лекций Рейна Лаула по анализу музыки в Санкт-Петербургской (Ленинградской) консерватории. Шестая лекция завершает обзор приемов разработочного развития музыкального материала. В нее вошли шесть из двадцати пяти приемов в авторской классификации (эпизодическая тема, производная тема, варьирование, полифонические варианты, приемы подвижного контрапункта, полифонические структуры), способствующей систематизации разработочных процессов. В поле зрения автора включены неспецифически сонатные способы преобразования музыкального материала, благодаря чему сонатность предстает в гибком и взаимодополняющем взаимодействии с иными принципами формообразования. Особое внимание уделено специфике применения полифонических средств развития музыкального материала в контексте сонатного формообразования. В ходе детального рассмотрения финала симфонии В. А. Моцарта Юпитер оказываются тесно связанными технологический, композиционно-драматургический и стилевой аспекты становления музыкальной формы. Заключительный раздел, обобщающий содержание лекции в целом, содержит пример практического применения предлагаемой автором методологии. Тем самым доказывается ее целесообразность и высокая эффективность как в аспекте анализа интонационной драматургии музыкального произведения, так и в достижении главной аналитической цели в формировании объективного представления о содержательной сути каждого этапа в развёртывании музыкальной композиции. This material continues the series of publications of R. H. Lauls lectures on music analysis at the Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory. The sixth lecture concludes the review of techniques for developing musical material. It discusses six of the twenty-five techniques in the authors classification (episodic theme, derived theme, variation, polyphonic variants, mobile counterpoint techniques, polyphonic structures), which contributes to systematization of the development processes. The authors field of view includes non-specific Sonata methods of transforming the musical material, so that sonateness appears in a flexible and complementary interaction with other principles of formation. Special attention is paid to the specifics of using polyphonic means of developing musical material in the context of Sonata formation. The detailed examination of the finale of Mozarts Symphony Jupiter, shows that technological, compositional, dramatic, and stylistic aspects of the formation of a musical form appear to be closely related. The final section summarizing the content of the lecture as a whole contains an example of practical application of the methodology proposed by the author, proving its expediency and high efficiency not only in the aspect of analyzing the intonation drama of a musical work, but also of achieving the main analytical goal to form a reasoned judgment about the content of each stage in the deployment of a musical composition.


KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-213
Author(s):  
Christoph Von Blumröder

The term "Neue Musik" was coined for a special concept of fundamental musical innovation within Austro-German music theory of the early 20th century, and it found no terminological equivalent beyond the German language. Established by Paul Bekker with his lecture “Neue Musik” in 1919, composers such as Stockhausen or Ligeti embraced the term with its emphatic claim to innovation and new departures. However, one hundred years on the term "Neue Musik" is often used mainly as a synonym for any type of contemporary music. This article questions whether the term "Neue Musik" is still an appropriate framework for a current theory of musical composition. Not only have the specific musical circumstances changed within the course of the 20th century, but also the political and social conditions have altered drastically after two world wars which had given special impulses to those composers who strove for a new foundation of music after 1918 and 1945 respectively. This article argues that the age of "Neue Musik" has come to an end in the late 20th century, and thus it is now necessary to introduce alternative terminological concepts and methodical directions for music historiography.


2021 ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
ZARINA DENISOVA

The object of the research in this article is associativity as a characteristic feature of 20th century art. The nature, the role of the association in the work of artistic thinking, the principles of its functioning are considered. The subject of the research is the editing form of a musical work of the second half of the 20th century. Particular attention in the article is paid to the consideration of such an important factor influencing the formation of a stable associative connection as repetition. At the same time, it is specified that repetition is caused by a specific life situation. This repetition forms a chain of associations that create an integral content space of a musical work. The work uses general scientific research methods in the framework of comparative and logical analysis, including generalizations and comparisons. The work is based on the analytical method and has a systemic interdisciplinary nature as well. In revealing the specifics of the installation form, the author of the article turns to the theory of compositional ellipsis V. Bobrovsky. The main conclusion of the study is that the importance of associativity in the work of Russian composers in the second half of the 20th century is increasing, reaching the status of a characteristic feature of artistic thinking. The process of expanding associativity manifested itself, in particular, in the emergence in musical creativity of a new type of form creation - editing. The analysis revealed the features inherent in the montage type of construction of a work of art. This is the dismemberment of thematic material, the syntactic isolation of thematic structures, the organization of the form «from the end», the internal unity of the mosaic structure, and others. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that for the first time associativity is considered as a source of montage shaping, in the choice of research methodology, as well as in the identification of special features of the composition, manifested in the conditions of montage drama.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (114) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Tarja-Lisa Hypén

THE BRAND OF THE CELEBRITY AUTHOR IN FINLAND | In the 21st century, the celebrity author has begun to interest researchers not only as a marketing phenomenon, but also as the literary institution’s own phenomenon. In my article, I explore the relationship of the celebrity author to the so-called acclaimed authors of modern times. In Anglo-American research, the celebrity author and the bestselling author are distinguished as separate author types, but in the case of Finnish Jari Tervo, these types combine. For almost 20 years, Jari Tervo has been amongboth the most sold and the most visible celebrity authors in his home country. I examine how the publicity and brand of the Finnish celebrity author are formed. I consider how the brand affects the author’s works on the one hand, and the reception of the works on the other. I point out the limiting effects of the brand, but I also examine how, in combining the high and the low, it affords mobility in the literary fields while it also offers an opportunity to influence society.


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-22
Author(s):  
Dominique Lestel
Keyword(s):  

The hybrids of modern times do not indeed settle anymore between animals and machines, but between so-called living machines and already animalized technologies. One of the most dangerous manifestations of this process (which is also the one most overlooked) is that it takes the form of an insidious spell that leads humans not only to being unable to distinguish animals from artifacts, but also to sincerely prefer the latter to the former.  


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