Italy, Atonally

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Emily Richmond Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Musical Modernism

In König Hirsch, Henze imagined operatic tradition primarily as an Italian inheritance consisting of vocal beauty, formal artificiality, and emotional expression. König Hirsch mediated Henze’s experiences living and listening in Italy through the musical modernism in which he had been trained immediately following the war. Tributes to conventional operaticism included stylized incantations, moments of hysterical coloratura, a villainous Credo, and several instances of folk-music pastiche. A close reading of Henze’s characterization of the musician figure Checco, who expresses himself partly through diegetic “Neapolitan” song, shows the collision between Henze’s modernism and his newfound italianità. The opera’s arias later became emblems of the opera’s expressive excesses; the conductor of the premiere, Hermann Scherchen, subjected them to severe cuts, setting off a fight over the artistic status of traditions of vocalism and emotion that ensured Henze’s definitive break with the avant-garde.

The Gender Troubles of Feofan Prokopovich

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 198-228
Author(s):  
Gary Marker
Keyword(s):  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Dual Codes ◽  
Minimalist Approach ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Gender Trouble

Abstract This essay constitutes a close reading of the works of Feofan Prokopovich that touch upon gender and womanhood. Interpretively it is informed by Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble, specifically by her model of gender-as-performance. Prokopovich’s writings conveyed a negative characterization of holy women and Russian women of power, a combination of glaring silences and Scholastic dual codes that in toto denied the association of womanhood with glory or wisdom. In this he stood apart from other East Slavic Orthodox homilists of his day, even though they too invariably associated virtue with masculinity (muzhestvo). For Prokopovich, wisdom, strength, constancy, etc., were innately masculine. Women, by contrast, were weak, inconstant, non-rational, and guided by emotion. His sermons nominally in praise of Catherine I and Anna Ioannovna were suffused with narrative gestures that, to those attuned to the nuances of Scholastic rhetoric, ran entirely counter to their nominal message. Several panegyrics to Anna, for example, made no mention of her at all, a practice in sharp contrast to his sermons to male rulers, which typically placed the honoree firmly in the foreground. Even more startling is his singularly minimalist approach to Mary, for whom he composed almost no sermons and whose presence he barely mentioned in tracts where one would have expected otherwise. This essay concludes that this attitude reflected both his personal preferences and influence that Protestant Pietism had on his thinking.

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 “Merde Alors!”

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-383
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Umberto Eco ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Deputy Prime Minister

AbstractIn recent history, Italy has repeatedly emerged as a successful laboratory for political experiments. After WWI, Fascism was invented there by Mussolini, and it quickly spread across Europe. In the 1990s, Berlusconi anticipated Trump's entrepreneurial populism. Today, there is a risk that Italy will once again perform the role of a political avant-garde: that it will export to Europe a sovereign populism of a new kind that is nonetheless in continuity with disquieting features of the worst past. The essay performs a close reading of the programmatic speech that Minister of Home Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini delivered in July 2018 at the thirty-second annual gathering of the Lega party. Its aim is to detect the presence in it of the politics of abjection (Judith Butler), a “Fascist archetype” (Umberto Eco) that affects both racialized and non-heterosexual people.

Intersectional Avant-Garde: Paul Leni’s Rebus-Film Series and the Confluence of Experimental Visual Styles

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Erica Tortolani
Keyword(s):  
Modern Art ◽  
Short Film ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Short Films ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on Leni’s eight-part short film series, Rebus-Film (1925-26), and the ways that it relates to various avant-garde art movements of the 1910s and 1920s. Using Rebus-Film Nr. 1 as a starting point, the essay analyses the series’ connections to contemporaneous artistic movements such as Cubism, Futurism, and Dada and to cinematic styles and genres of the time, including Soviet montage and the ‘City Symphony’ films. To supplement this analysis, the essay draws upon reviews, trade magazine articles, and other written records from the period. This chapter sheds light on the ways that critics and audiences received the films and regarded Leni’s use of experimental aesthetic styles. While it is debatable as to whether Leni considered himself a modern art practitioner, a close reading of these short films shows that they are in dialogue with the visual avant-garde. This chapter also discusses the ways that the series fits into, and extends, Leni’s German and American careers.

Goleizovsky (Goleizovskii), Kas’ian Yaroslavich (1892–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Misler
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Sergei Prokofiev ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bodily Movement ◽  
Visual Rhythm ◽  
Music Lessons ◽  
Bolshoi Ballet

A Russo-Soviet choreographer, dancer, and artist, Kas’ian Goleizovsky was exposed to various art forms from early childhood: dance at the Bolshoi ballet school; fine and applied arts at Moscow’s Stroganov Institute; and music lessons with the celebrated violinist David Krein. This broad education enabled him to perceive dance in terms of line and color, to integrate costume and choreography, and to infuse visual rhythm, emotional expression, bodily movement, and musicality into his artistic explorations. His collaborations with avant-garde visual artists such as Petr Galadzhev, Anatolii Petritsky, and Boris Erdman, and with composers such as Boris Ber, Matvei Blanter, and Sergei Prokofiev were always distinguished by strong mutual understanding. A pre-postmodern choreographer, Goleizovsky moved among very different systems and types of dances, including classic, eccentric, variety, ballroom, and music hall.

scholarly journals Trying To Speak: Between Politics and Aesthetics, Darmstadt 1970–1972

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN IDDON
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The West ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
The Press ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
The 1950S

AbstractIn the historiography of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, the 1970s, when they are examined at all, are generally regarded as a period of stagnation, between the fervour of serial activity in the 1950s and the resurgence of the courses in the 1980s under the banner of various inflections of New Complexity. Yet, in a period of political upheaval after 1968, dissent was felt at Darmstadt too, and protests in 1970 and 1972 saw the institution at its most politically volatile. These protest movements caused the courses’ director, Ernst Thomas, to institute wide-scale changes in their structure and content. Key roles in these protests were taken by journalists: indeed, clear parallels can be drawn between the seemingly egalitarian calls from journalists for Mitbestimmung (co-determination) at Darmstadt and the similar demands being made by their trade unions in the West German federation. Thomas’s failure to deal with journalistic pressure and his heavy-handed treatment of individual protesters (notably Reinhard Oehlschlägel) meant that, shrewd and durable though his reinvention of the courses was, it would be only in 1982, with the accession of a new director, that the press would begin to speak positively about the Darmstadt courses once more. A close reading of these two protests shows the sometime ‘citadel of the avant-garde’ at a distinctly precarious moment in its history. At the time, some felt that such protests could lead to the demise of the courses, and it was far from clear whether Thomas’s reforms would be successful. But, even within this period of uncertainty, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse were anything but stagnant.

‘What is a mouth’: Joyce Wieland’s Pierre Vallières (1972) and the politics of the film portrait

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
Bettina Brunner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
French Canadian ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Shirley Clarke

Focusing on Joyce Wieland’s film portrait Pierre Vallières (1972), this article follows the Canadian artist and filmmaker’s practice as it evolved through her engagement with the New York film avant-garde of the 1960s. Through an analysis of Wieland’s collaboration with Shirley Clarke, I will also discuss Pierre Vallières in relation to US-American documentary practices from the same period. Referring to Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967) with its focus on the spoken word as well as Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, I will place Wieland’s film within this line of film portraits engaging with identity and a performative notion of subjectivity. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze, this article concludes with a close reading of Wieland’s film, discussing her use of the close-up as a means of thwarting the linear narrative and logic of its subject’s political speech. Pierre Vallières’ politics thus emerges within an aesthetics that crosses the boundaries of documentary and avant-garde, communicating with audiences beyond the film’s original context of French-Canadian emancipation.

scholarly journals Expressive Emotion and Symphonic Economy: A Note on Recent Works by Uroš Krek

2002 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Niall O'Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
String Instruments ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Motivic Transformation ◽  
Variation Technique

The music of Uroš Krek combines symphonic economy with expressive emotion. Even in the earlier neo-classical and folk music influenced works, this character was evident. Many of these works are written for string instruments for which Krek has a particular interest and affinity. The music of the 1970s contains an extensive use of a highly developed motivic activity which shows his flexible approach. His motives change by rhythm, inversion, reordering, and changing notes. These features are also very evident in more recent works, notably the Streichsextett of 1990 which combines variation technique and motivic transformation in a unique and satisfying way with an intense emotional expression.

Avant-Garde Appearance of Russian Folklore in the Vocal and Instrumental Works of Composers of the Second Half of the ХХth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
N.I. Anufrieva ◽  
◽  
T.A. Lomakina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Sound Environment ◽  
Domestic Culture ◽  
Instrumental Works

in the second half of the twentieth century, when the avant-garde proposed truly revolutionary principles for organizing the sound environment, not only the treasures of ancient Russian church music were rediscovered, but also the interest in Russian spiritual culture as a whole, including musical folklore, significantly increased. Russian society at the end of the century was engulfed in disbelief, disappointment, fatigue. Hence there are images of the “decaying” world, the end of the world. The apocalyptic situation manifested itself not only in the fire of civil wars, but also in the feeling of disharmony of people with themselves and with others. As a result, domestic culture began to return to the fold of universal human values, eternal problems and traditional ideas about peace and good. This article considers the basic principles of the implementation of musical folklore in the vocal and instrumental works of domestic avant-garde composers of the second half of the twentieth century. It is noted that neo-folklorism, which arose in domestic music in the 1980–1990s in connection with the idea of national revival, through the semantics of rite, cult archaic, means of folk musical language, strengthened the Russian roots of domestic culture and strengthened the national philosophical heritage embedded in folk music.

Popular Avant-Garde? Renegotiating Tradition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Western World ◽  
Grateful Dead ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Throughout the history of the Grateful Dead, their musical practice was marked by avant-garde impulses. But the band was also performing rock standards, electrified folk music, cowboy songs, blues, et cetera. The band’s basic aesthetics were formed in this tension between tradition and avant-garde. At the same time, the band was generating a form of counter-public, reminiscent of the communities formed around bluegrass and avant-garde jazz. Self-organization became fundamental both for the band (in the form of improvisation), and for the community-building the band engaged in. In this way, the band also became part of the cultural and political dislocations going on in the Western world of the 1960s.

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