Mixing with Mozart: Aesthetics and Tradition in Helmut Lachenmann's Accanto

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97
Author(s):  
ALASTAIR WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Historical Reflection ◽  
German Composer ◽  
Clarinet Concerto

AbstractAccanto (1975–6), for clarinettist and orchestra, constitutes a turn towards historical reflection in the work of the distinguished German composer Helmut Lachenmann, providing a meeting point for the practitioner and the theorist. This article examines how Accanto's dialogue with Mozart's Clarinet Concerto relates to topics such as recording conventions, performance practices, and compositional trends, particularly in the 1970s. It also demonstrates how Lachenmann's conception of musical material is rooted in an understanding of the Western art music tradition, especially with regard to the issue of the ‘language-character’ of music. In doing so, it investigates Lachenmann's aesthetics of beauty in connection with performance practices, sociological models of musical subjectivity, and Adorno's understanding of tradition. In general, the article argues that compositional practice in Accanto is shaped in response to the situation of classical music, especially in the 1970s.

scholarly journals Cover Songs and Tradition: A Case Study of Symphonic Metal

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hillier
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Heavy Metal Music ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Cover Songs ◽  
Musical Canon

This paper examines the role of cover songs in the continuation of tradition, and in the formation of a musical canon. It explores the connections between ‘classical’ and heavy metal music as expressed by musicians of said genres, specifically those who partake in both. Furthermore, I argue that the practice of covering works from the Western art music canon in the metal genre, evinces the consequent development of the symphonic metal sub-genre. An embedded investigation attests to Western art music having inspired numerous metal musicians, who have in turn covered said music as a means to show their respect for the tradition. As such, cover versions are essential to continue one tradition in a new direction. Ultimately, these cover versions of classical works liaise classical music and heavy metal, resulting in the formation of the symphonic metal tradition. Covering music also strengthens a musicians’ position as authentic artists by demonstrating their belonging to two rites, and through their work of synthesizing grounds for the fusion of aforementioned rites. This research provides a further basis for examining the same phenomenon in other genres of music that demonstrate inter- and intra-generic links. It also provides a base for research into how rock and metal bands construct their own notions of tradition, canon, and authenticity through the music that they create and adapt.

scholarly journals Comprehensibility and Ben Johnston’s String Quartet No. 9

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Sinclair Willis
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Analytical Method ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Just Intonation ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
The Way

Ben Johnston’s just-intonation music is of startling aural variety and presents novel solutions to age-old tuning problems. In this paper, I describe the way that Johnston reoriented his compositional practice in the 1980s as evidenced in his musical procedures. Johnston became aware of the disconnect between Western art music composers and their audiences. He therefore set about composing more accessible music that listeners could easily comprehend. His String Quartet No. 9 gives an instructive example of the negotiation between just intonation and comprehensibility. By integrating unusual triadic sonorities with background tonal relationships, Johnston reveals an evolution of just-intonation pitch structures across the work. This paper provides an example of an analytical method for exploring Johnston’s works in a way that moves beyond simply describing the structure of his system and into more musically tangible questions of form and process.

scholarly journals Dr Lecter's Taste for ‘Goldberg’, or: The Horror of Bach in the Hannibal Franchise

2012 ◽  
Vol 137 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Cenciarelli
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Serial Killer ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Goldberg Variations

ABSTRACTThe repeated use of the ‘Goldberg’ Variations in the Hannibal Lecter saga offers a route into the complexities of cinema's appropriation of Western art music. To an extent, the affiliation of Bach with a cannibalistic serial killer rehearses the notion of ‘classical music’ as socially and culturally other. Yet at the same time, from its first appearance in a memorable scene in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), the music is tied to the workings of a mass-media phenomenon. This becomes evident in the sequel, Hannibal (2001), where the ‘Goldberg’ Aria, used as title song, crossing in and out of the diegesis and mixed with sound effects, becomes part of the development of the character into a media franchise, of the romanticizing of his masculinity and the spectacularization of his violence. Thus, in the process of capitalizing on Lecter's success, the saga at once insists on classical music's otherness and blurs its difference from film music.

Like Tereshkova in the Cosmos

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Merchant
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Female Director ◽  
Soviet Nationalism

This chapter examines how women perform post-Soviet nationalism using the canon of European classical music by focusing on a project designed to produce Uzbek Western art music, one that retains prominence in independent Uzbekistan. The project has involved getting composers engaged in the creation of a sense of Uzbek style in composition. In Uzbekistan, from remarkably early in the Soviet period, women have been important figures in the performance and promulgation of Uzbek compositions. The chapter first provides a historical overview of Western art music in Soviet Uzbekistan and compares it with Western art music in independent Uzbekistan. It then considers how women's performances support a construction of national identity that began in the Soviet era and continues today. The chapter features interviews with Dilbara Abdurahmanova, the first female director of the Alisher Navoiy State Opera, and prominent pianist and former conservatory director Ofeliya Yusupova. By far the most pervasive musical style heard in Tashkent, popular music, known as estrada, provides audiences with a glamorous construction of Uzbek femininity.

THE NON-CANONIC STATUS OF MOZART’S CANONS

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEAL ZASLAW
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Dance Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Circle Of Friends ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Peculiar Nature

Mozart's canons are rather inadequately represented in the Köchel catalogue and the Neue Mozart Ausgabe. The same may be said about other music for his immediate circle of friends, colleagues and patrons, as well as his dance music and his contributions to pasticcios. Neglect of these ‘minor’ genres perhaps arises at least in part from anachronistic paradigms, for instance ‘masterpieces for posterity’. And the canons suffer additionally from the peculiar nature of their sources and transmission, from uncertainty about the position of canons in the ‘canon’ of Western art music and probably also from embarrassment over some of Mozart’s texts. Mozart’s canons have been studied not only less often than his operatic, church, chamber and orchestral music, but also less well.

Hearing Film Music Topics outside the Movie Theatre

2021 ◽  
pp. 548-574
Author(s):  
Janet Bourne
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Extraction Method ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Movie Theatre

This chapter describes a cognitively informed framework based on analogy for theorizing cinematic listening; in this case, it tests the hypothesis that contemporary listeners might use associations learned from film music topics to make sense of western art music (WAM). Using the pastoral topic as a case study, a corpus of film scores from 1980–2014 determines common associations for this topic based on imagery, emotion, and narrative contexts. Then, the chapter outlines potential narratives a modern moviegoer might make by listening “cinematically” to a Sibelius movement. The hypothesis is empirically tested through an experiment where participants record their imagined narratives and images while listening to WAM and film music. The meaning extraction method, a statistical analysis for identifying associational themes, is used to analyze people’s responses.

scholarly journals The Evolution of GIM Programming

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Meadows
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Music Programs ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Core ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Music Programming ◽  
Bonny Method

This article traces the origins and evolution of the music programs central to the Bonny Method (also called GIM or BMGIM). These programmed, sequenced western art music selections shape the core experience of GIM, eliciting intra-, inter-, and trans-personal phenomena through a range of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic feelings, images, memories, and metaphoric fantasies. Bonny’s original programs will be described and discussed in relation to GIM, and developments in programming will demonstrate how the Bonny Method programs have been expanded, including adaptations to music programming and selection.

Playing for the Big Time: Musicians, Concerts, and Reputation-Building in Cincinnati, 1872–82

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Civic Leaders ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Significant Achievement ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
High Level

Like many midwestern cities in the nineteenth century, Cincinnati, Ohio, was home to large numbers of German immigrant musicians, among them the founders of the Cincinnati Grand Orchestra in 1872. Their model of musician-based organization eventually ran counter to the prestige-building potential of Western art music, which made it attractive to local civic leaders determined to earn respect for their city at a national level. The successful Cincinnati May festivals beginning in 1873 under the artistic leadership of conductor Theodore Thomas brought the city the desired renown. But the musical monumentality needed for large festival performances could not be obtained locally, leaving Cincinnati's players with opportunities to perform at a high level but without a way to define their performance as a significant achievement in the world of high art. Although their orchestra was ultimately unsuccessful, however, these musicians demonstrated an agency that transcends their historical obscurity and helps incorporate aesthetic and practical aspects of institution-building into the social arguments common to discussions of Western art music in the United States.

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