The Quiet Revolution of a B Natural: Prokofiev's ‘New Simplicity’ in the Second Violin Concerto

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH RIFKIN
Keyword(s):  
Compositional Style ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Musical Narrative ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Quiet Revolution ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Soviet People

AbstractThis essay explores changes in Prokofiev's compositional style that occurred in the mid-1930s, around the time that he was making his decision to return to his homeland. In his diary Prokofiev wrote about a desire for a ‘new simplicity’, a style that featured simple melodies and comprehensible form. Compared to the avant-garde aspirations of his earlier works, his ‘new simplicity’ features a self-conscious return to Classical precedents. Prokofiev believed his new lyricism would be a uniquely modern yet accessible music for the Soviet people. Many of his most popular works, including Lieutenant Kijé (1933), Romeo and Juliet (1935–6), and Peter and the Wolf (1936), are written in the style associated with this ‘new simplicity’. The style is distinctive because of its sudden and markedly trangressive chromatic swerves to distant harmonic areas. By invoking and then thwarting tonal conventions, Prokofiev creates a compelling tension between Classicism and modernism. This essay presents the first movement of his Violin Concerto no. 2 (1935) as an exemplar of his ‘new simplicity’. The fractured musical surface is interpreted as a musical narrative, as an ironic satire of sonata form.

“A composItIon wrItten wIthout creatIve lImItatIons” – Wanda Landowska and concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by ManueL de Falla (1923)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 67-107
Author(s):  
Ines R. Artola
Keyword(s):  
Strict Sense ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
20Th Century Music ◽  
The Third ◽  
Word Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The aim of the present article is the analysis of Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments by Manuel de Falla – a piece which was dedicated by the composer to Wanda Landowska, an outstanding Polish harpsichord player. The piece was meant to commemorate the friendship these two artists shared as well as their collaboration. Written in the period of 1923-1926, the Concerto was the first composition in the history of 20th century music where harpsichord was the soloist instrument. The first element of the article is the context in which the piece was written. We shall look into the musical influences that shaped its form. On the one hand, it was the music of the past: from Cancionero Felipe Pedrell through mainly Bach’s polyphony to works by Scarlatti which preceded the Classicism (this influence is particularly noticeable in the third movement of the Concerto). On the other hand, it was music from the time of de Falla: first of all – Neo-Classicism and works by Stravinsky. The author refers to historical sources – critics’ reviews, testimonies of de Falla’s contemporaries and, obviously, his own remarks as to the interpretation of the piece. Next, Inés R. Artola analyses the score in the strict sense of the word “analysis”. In this part of the article, she quotes specific fragments of the composition, which reflect both traditional musical means (counterpoint, canon, Scarlatti-style sonata form, influence of old popular music) and the avant-garde ones (polytonality, orchestration, elements of neo-classical harmony).

scholarly journals Whose Voices? The Fate of Luigi Nono's Voci destroying muros

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Adlington
Keyword(s):  
Compositional Style ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Female Prisoners ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Music ◽  
Small Orchestra ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Current Reality

Luigi Nono's Voci destroying muros for female voices and small orchestra was performed for the first and only time at the Holland Festival in 1970. A setting of texts by female prisoners and factory workers, it marks a sharp stylistic departure from Nono's political music of the 1960s by virtue of its audible quotations of revolutionary songs, its readily intelligible text setting, and especially its retention of the diatonic structure of the song on which the piece is based, the communist “Internationale.” Nono's decision, following the premiere, to withdraw the work from his catalogue suggests that he came to regard it as transgressing an important boundary in his engagement with “current reality.” I examine the work and its withdrawal in the context of discourses within the Italian left in the 1960s that accused the intellectuals of the Partito Comunista Italiano of unhelpfully mediating the class struggle. Nono's contentious reading of Antonio Gramsci, offered as justification for his avant-garde compositional style, certainly provided fuel for this critique. But Voci destroying muros suggests receptivity on the part of the composer—albeit only momentary—to achieving a more direct representation of the voices of the dispossessed.

TAN DUN'S VIOLIN CONCERTO "THE LOVE" AS A REFLECTION OF STYLISTIC DIVERSITY OF MODERN COMPOSITION

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Xin Xing ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
Peking Opera ◽  
Tan Dun ◽  
Percussion Instruments ◽  
Solo Violin ◽  
Stylistic Diversity

The article analyzes "The Love" Violin Concerto (2009) by the famous Chinese and American composer Tan Dun in contextual, composing and linguistic aspects. Based on the statements of his contemporaries, the author considers the composer's musical and aesthetic views that determine the originality of his style, organically combining avant-garde techniques with elements of traditional Chinese music. Tan Dun's Violin Concerto exists in three versions with different titles ("Out of Peking Opera" 1987, "The Love" 2009, "Rhapsody and Fantasy" 2018), representing different artistic concepts with a new viewpoint on the same intonational material. Three movements of the Concerto "The Love" reflect the evolution of feelings at different stages of human life. The composer manages to combine the idea of "national" (a tendency going back to the version of the Concerto "Out of Peking Opera" 1987) with a philosophical understanding of the category of love. The paper discusses the originality of the dramaturgy of "The Love" Violin Concerto, which assumes the third part as the main center (based on the development of thematic material of the first and second movements), the consolidation of parts of the attacca cycle and the rondality of the musical form. The most important peculiarity of the composition is the mixture of elements belonging to different cultural and temporal layers of music. The stylistic diversity of Tan Dun's Concerto is reflected in the following details: the composer's introduction of a stylized tune from the Beijing Opera erhuang, speech intonations resembling recitatives of Chinese dramas, borrowings from his own film music (the second movement), the use of methods typical for traditional Chinese music, yaoban and sanban, the timbre of oriental percussion instruments in a classical symphony orchestra, as well as dodecaphone techniques, aleatorics and Hip-hop rhythms. Special attention in the article is paid to interpretation of expressive possibilities of solo violin: methods of classical-romantic technique are synthesized with traditions of performance on Chinese stringed instruments.

First-Movement Sonata Forms

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-167
Author(s):  
Joel Lester
Keyword(s):  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Narrative

Chapter 3 studies in detail the first movements of Brahms’s three violin sonatas. Each first movement is cast in sonata form—the most exalted structure of the Classical Era. But Brahms did not fill a “sonata-form mold” with formulaic music. Just like his great predecessors whose music he so dearly loved and esteemed, Brahms adapted the outer aspects of the form and the contents of each section to express that movement’s unique musical narrative. The discussions of each movement explore the traits they all share as well as their individual Romantic features. The A-major Sonata’s first movement also provides an opportunity to explore musical allusions to other pieces and how that might affect our interpretations—both as performers and analysts.

scholarly journals Concertante techniques in Trois images by Ivo Petrić

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
Niall O'Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Frank Martin ◽  
Movement Structure

The large-scale romantic concerto has been reevaluated by many composers of the 20th century. These have included Stravinsky, Honegger and Frank Martin, who have all tended to compose on a much smaller scale. One such work is Ivo Petrić's Trois images, a violin concerto dating from 1972-73. It displays an ambiguous approach to form, the relationships between the soloist and orchestra, the use of musical motives and the idea of the concerto. On the one hand, it has links with tradition in that it uses the title and three-movement structure of the concerto, the traditional relationships of dialogue, solo and accompaniment, development of motives and virtuoso techniques. On the other hand, it breaks with tradition by disguising the contrasts and separation of the individual movements, and transforming traditional concerto techniques for use in the freely coordinated idiom that the composer was using at the time. It proves to be an excellent example of how concerto techniques can be combined with the techniques of the avant-garde.

scholarly journals Five preludes of Mykola Roslavets in the reflection of academic and avant-garde trends of his time

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
Pavlo Minhalov
Keyword(s):  
Piano Music ◽  
Compositional Style ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
Xxth Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Intellectual System ◽  
Mature Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Further Development

The article considers a set of problems related to the study of piano art of the early XXth century and, in particular, the piano work of Mykola Roslavets. It provides the characteristic of the main vectors of piano miniature development, its genre and construction diversity. It emphasizes the composers' creative search in the early XXth century, the desire to embody new, not yet tested compositional techniques. The article notes the influence of traditional and avant-garde trends on the compositional style of that time and their synthesis in a single author's style. It describes five preludes for piano by Mykola Roslavets as one of the most significant achievements of the mature period of the artist's work, which fully reveals the key features of the composer's sense and desire for syntheticity and a new, intellectual, system of sound organization. The five preludes are stated to not have an accidental cycle structure reflecting the influence of many styles and compositional techniques, accumulating the achievements of previous musical epochs and sprouts of the latest, quite important musical trends in piano music. The author notes undoubted influence of Mykola Roslavets' work on the further development of musical art, its relevance and modernity. The proposed analysis should contribute to a more complete understanding of the history of piano music of the first third of the XXth century, elucidate the origins of innovative composers, undeservedly overlooked by musicologists, performers and listeners, and replenish the performing repertoire with piano works by Mykola Roslavets.

scholarly journals “Oppressed by Sensual Delight”: On a Lesbian Relationship with Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Logan Imans
Keyword(s):  
Compositional Style ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Musical Narrative ◽  
Lesbian Relationship ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musical Elements

This paper explores Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata (1919) through the experience of a lesbian relationship—a relationship that extends from the Sonata as experienced by a violist and scholar, to Clarke herself as a performer and composer. Inspired by the work of Suzanne Cusick, I examine the musical elements of the Viola Sonata that invite and enable a lesbian relationship in the music. Such elements include existence outside the phallic economy, porous ego boundaries, and a fluid positioning within the power/pleasure/intimacy triad. A central theme of Clarke’s compositional style is embodiment, which furthers the potential for a lesbian experience of the Viola Sonata through “body-aware” and performer-centric techniques. The poetic inscription for the Sonata, lines from Alfred de Musset’s “La nuit de mai,” serves to further construct a musical narrative of embodiment through the relationship of Poet and Muse. Without claiming that Clarke was a lesbian, this paper sheds light on the Viola Sonata by considering the relationships between performer, composer, and listener in a lesbian musical analysis.

POLARITY OF S. SLONIMSKY'S STYLISTIC GUIDELINES IN THE INSTRUMENTAL CONCERTS "PRIMAVERILE" AND "TRAGICOMEDY"

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Zhang Kailin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Orchestra ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
String Orchestra ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Compositional Approach ◽  
Comparative Description

This article is devoted to the comparative description of two string concerts by Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky (1932–2020): the violin "Concerto Primaverile" (1983), focused on the Romantic style of the XIXth century, and the viola "Tragicomedy" (2005), related to the avant-garde line of the composer's work. Each of the opuses embodies different types of programmaticity: a generalized one in "Concerto Primaverile" for violin and string orchestra, and more concretized one in the concert on "Crime and Punishment" by F. Dostoevsky for viola and chamber orchestra. Thus, Slonimsky also turned to both types of programmaticity in solo compositions for these instruments, for example, figurative specificity becomes the main characteristic in the dramaturgy of the final piece for violin "Legend" (based on the novel by I. Turgenev). On the contrary, the Viola Sonata and Variations for a solo instrument rather address a generalized compositional approach. Comparison of the two concert scores follows the lines of their stylistic difference: programmaticity, specificity of dramaturgy and technical implementation, and in particular problems such as complex melodic figuration, contrapuntal saturation of homophonic monodic texture, the role of micropolyphony, the introduction of third and quarter tones and other non-standard principles of sound production.

scholarly journals Lucas Galon’s Concerto for Violin, Percussion and Strings (2018)

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Alex Palmezano
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Compositional Style ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specific Method ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Second Viennese School ◽  
Other Hand

In this paper, I investigate how the composer searches for his own voice in his violin concerto while using a blend of influences such as Bartok, twelve-tone and Brazilian popular music. Galon argues that composers such as Bartok, Stravinsky and Villa-Lobos followed an independent, more varied compositional style without subscribing to any specific method.[1]On the other hand, the self-proclaimed mainstream of the Second Viennese School established a very structured, particular way of writing music. The composer seems to put into question the mechanization of composition of the dodecaphonic method, but validates its use as a way of refraining his creative impulse.[2]While Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2provides a framework for his piece; the tools he uses to manipulate the musical material are drawn from a free use of serialism and Brazilian contemporary music philosophy and aesthetic.    

Deformed Beauty?

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-37
Author(s):  
Thomas Grey
Keyword(s):  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Narrative ◽  
Formal Procedure ◽  
Formal Design ◽  
Formal Experiment

The last of Felix Mendelssohn’s series of popular and influential concert overtures, the Overture to the Tale of the Fair Melusina of 1835 remains the least familiar of these works. It is also the most unusual with regard to formal design in its purposeful confounding of introduction and sonata-form elements alongside the dialogic relation of clearly gendered thematic materials. Such calculated ‘deformation’ of classic and early Romantic sonata form has been understood as a means of generating a kind of musical-narrative content, though the precise relation of formal experiment to such narrative content has remained elusive. This chapter reconsiders the problematic relation of experimental formal procedure to the narrative dimension and the role this may have played in the composer’s subsequent abandonment of the quasi-programmatic concert overture genre, despite his unparalleled artistic success in the field.

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