Rewriting Modernism

2019 ◽  
pp. 248-298
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kieffer

By 1910, Debussy occupied a very different position in Parisian musical culture from where he had been at the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902—now the acknowledged patriarch of modern French music rather than its intrepid trailblazer. Debussy’s writings in the decade after the Pelléas premiere, emphasizing the importance of listening and reevaluating the relationship between music and emotion, betray a significant debt to the critical discourse of debussysme. At the same time, debussysme, even for such Debussy stalwarts as Jean Marnold and Louis Laloy, was itself losing its relevance after 1910, overshadowed by other modernist currents that were then taking hold of critics’ attention. As a new music aesthetics defined by logical universals redefined the significance of Debussy’s music, the work of Henri Bergson and Albert Bazaillas inspired a new intellectual-historical relationship between the practice of music criticism and a modern psychology of the unconscious.

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-32
Author(s):  
Michel Duchesneau

This article examines the efforts of French musicologists to create a specialized journal at the turn of the twentieth century that would clearly associate music criticism and musicology. Using as case study a set of music journals, from La Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales to the Mercure musical and the Revue S.I.M. that followed, I establish the connections that brought together the nascent musicological milieu, the musical press and the artistic affinities among the principal actors in their attempt to create a new network of music critics guided by musicological exigencies. Jules Combarieu, Romain Rolland, Louis Laloy, Jean Marnold, Émile Vuillermoz and Jules Écorcheville are some of the musicologists engaged in this project between 1900 and 1914. But historical contingencies make this project a relative utopia, and requirements of the young musicology hardly meet that of a music criticism divided between disciplinary tradition and the necessity to support contemporary music. After the war, with the founding of a new Revue musicale, René Prunières, prudently, would not hire musicologists to develop a music criticism. Instead, he took up the characteristically Republican project of promoting musical culture, and thus responding to the interests of both the cultivated bourgeoisie and the musical, literary and artistic milieus through diffusion of music knowledge.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-163
Author(s):  
Evgenia A. Babak

The article is devoted to the complex path of two prominent representatives of Russian musical culture of the XIX century – V. V. Stasov and A. N. Serov – to understanding music enlightenment as a necessary criterion for the development of national musical art and music education among the broad national masses. The characteristic of the original musical environment in the Imperial School of Jurisprudence is given, which contributes to the disclosure of musical abilities of pupils and stimulates their needs in communicating with music. Special attention is paid to the correspondence of Vladimir Vasilyevich and Alexander Nikolaevich with their contemporaries as a historical document, proving the qualitative changes in their relations after completing joint training at the school of law, and the memoirs of the figures themselves. Is emphasized the value of their contribution to the development of national music criticism and music education. The main milestones in the relationship between A. N. Serov and V. V. Stasov on their difficult creative ascent to the service of art are identified and presented.


Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Zbikowski

This chapter explores the relationship between music and emotion, beginning with a review of research on emotion, followed by a review of research on music and emotion. It is proposed that the connection between music and the emotions reflects music’s capacity to provide sonic analogs for some of the most salient aspects of emotion processes. This proposal is illustrated through analyses of two movements from J. S. Bach’s cantata “Ich habe genug,” which make explicit two important features of musical grammar: syntactic processes and syntactic layers. The chapter concludes with observations about the ways music is used to shape emotional responses within liturgical settings of the kind that motivated and framed Bach’s cantata.


Author(s):  
Robin Björkas ◽  
Mariah Larsson

AbstractSex dolls are a complex phenomenon with several diverse possible emotional, sexual and therapeutic uses. They can be part of a broad variety of sexual practices, and also function as a sexual aid. However, the media discourse on sex dolls first and foremost concerns how we perceive the relationship between intimacy and technology. A critical discourse analysis of the Swedish media discourse on sex dolls reveals six themes which dominate the discourse: (a) the definition of what a human being is; (b) a discourse on the (technological and existential) future; (c) a social effort; (d) a loveless phenomenon; (e) men’s violence against women; and (f) pedophilia. Accordingly, this discourse is very conservative and normative in its view of sexuality, technology, and humanity. Overall, the dominant themes do not provide any space for positive effects of technology on human sexuality, and if they do, it is usually as a substitute for something else.


2020 ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Р.Н. Слонимская

В статье рассматриваются взаимоотношения выдающихся музыкальных деятелей русской культуры Владимира Владимировича Щербачёва и Николая Карловича Метнера. Фактический материал анализируется на основе писем Щербачёва к жене, Марии Илларионовне, написанных в период командировки 1922-1923 годов в Пильниц под Дрезденом. В письмах раскрывается атмосфера музыкальной культуры Германии этого периода (в том числе постановка в Дрезденской опере Бориса Годунова Модеста Петровича Мусоргского). Подробно описывается процесс работы Щербачёва над партитурой монументального симфонического полотна Второй симфонии на стихи Александра Блока и приводится мнение Метнера о ней. Раскрываются музыкально-эстетические позиции Щербачёва и Метнера в отношении разных сторон техники сочинения, педагогики, исполнительского искусства. Одна из ключевых проблем сохранение традиции и радикальное новаторство, вызывавшее у Метнера весьма сложную реакцию. В целом, письма музыкантов дают возможность воссоздать живой и органичный облик двух композиторов разных творческих ориентаций, но искренне переживающих за музыкальное искусство. В конце статьи представлена роль Щербачёва в становлении ленинградской школы композиции. The article considers the relationship of outstanding music figures of the Russian culture VladimirV.Scherbachev and NikolayK.Medtner. The analyzed factual material is based on Scherbachevs letters to his wife Maria Illarionovna, written during a one-year trip to Pilnitz on the Elbe near Dresden 19221923. The letters reveal the atmosphere of musical culture of Germany of this period (including the production of Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky in the Dresden opera house). The author gives a detailed description of the process of Scherbachevs work on the score of the monumental symphonic canvas the Second Symphony on the poems by A.Blok, and Medtners opinion about it. In general, the letters of the two musicians give us an opportunity to recreate living and organic image of the two composers possessing different creative bearings, but sincerely worried about the music art.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Ann Compton

The mid-nineteenth century critical discourse compartmentalized art and industry by crediting each with specific powers. Manufacturing was identified with the development of technologically advanced processes, materials and products, while fine artists were given authority over the aesthetic aspects of industrial design. The idea that the two sectors had separate areas of responsibility has proved extremely enduring, and continues to influence our perceptions of Victorian manufacturing. This article contributes to the wider task of re-evaluating the relationship between art and industry in nineteenth-century Britain by examining the role of design in potteries and art metalworking firms from the manufacturer’s perspective. It shows that contrary to the picture painted by Victorian critics, design was central to the ambitions and commercial operations of manufacturing businesses. Crucially, decisions about the recruitment of design staff were shaped by the close connection between the creation of new products at the drawing board, and their fabrication in the workshop. Since each branch of manufacturing had its distinctive characteristics, there were significant practical, aesthetic and commercial advantages for manufacturers in employing experienced designers who knew the trade, and were fully conversant with production practices. Unless a professional sculptor joined a firm, they were unlikely to have this inside knowledge, which made commissioning one-off designs from artists a riskier proposition. Manufacturers found that one of the best ways to get around this was to make reductions of sculptures, and initial demand for statuettes in Parian suggested they would be profitable for all concerned. In the end, the market did not live up to its early promise, but the publicity given to Parian statuettes compensated manufacturers and sculptors. Overall, it was this increased public exposure for art manufactures that was the prime benefit of the mid-nineteenth century critical discourse for the industrial sector.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1036-1057
Author(s):  
Muireann Prendergast

While the importance of journalism in memory studies has often been overlooked in academic scholarship, media discourses can be considered ‘memory’s precondition’ on both active and passive levels. First, journalists record events as they happen building on narratives and testimonies. Second, sometimes decades later, these can be invoked in legal and social post-dictatorship processes. Applying the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis to memory studies, this research explores the relationship between counter-journalism and counter-memories as a response to and rejection of the ‘echo chamber’ of authoritarian discourse which dominated the mainstream media and promoted official memory during Argentina’s last dictatorship. The methodological approach of the study is mixed, combining qualitative synchronic-diachronic text analysis with a corpus analysis of concordance lines to trace strategies of counter-discourse in two newspapers which opposed the dictatorship. The motivations of their editor-journalists for challenging official discourse and institutional memory in the climate of state terrorism are framed in the context of Margalit’s ‘moral witnessing’.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Megan Ward

<p>Writers on 18th-century musical ornamentation have traditionally focused on the execution of notated ornaments, and on certain disputes arising from ambiguous and contradictory primary sources. Less attention has been given to the addition of ornaments where not prescribed by the composer. Such ornaments can be short, defined, patterns such as trills, turns, and mordents, or larger measured or unmeasured additions known as diminutions, divisions, or passaggi.  Additions of this nature are only in the rarest of cases compulsory. However, the practice of more or less spontaneous embellishment by the performer was so integral to pre-19th-century musical culture that this must have had a significant effect on composition.  The scope of this thesis is loosely defined by its titular composers, covering the period between Georg Muffat‟s later publications in the last years of the 17th century and G.P. Telemann‟s death in 1767. Both lived and worked in the German states, a region which had traditionally looked to Italian models of composition and performance. This period saw a flowering of German composition into its own unique and diverse genre which integrated aspects of various styles, most prominently Italian and French music.  This thesis centres on stringed instruments, but is directly relevant to woodwind players. Many aspects are also transferrable to the keyboard and to vocal music; however, these musicians will find a large volume of more targeted research elsewhere.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-296
Author(s):  
Noémi Karácsony

"French composer and pianist Maurice Delage wrote several significant works inspired by his personal contact with the Orient. His travels to India inspired Delage to use innovative sound effects in his compositions, as well as to require his performers to adapt their vocal or instrumental technique to obtain the sound desired by the composer. His representation of the Orient is not a mere evocation of the Other, as is the case with most orientalist works, rather it reflects the composer’s desire to endow Western music with the purity, strength, and vivid colors which he discovered and admired in Indian music. The present paper presents the historical and artistic background which inspired and influenced Delage, the relationship between France and India in the early 20th century and reveals the composer’s idealistic point of view regarding India, its culture, and its music. The analysis focuses on the mélodie cycle Quatre poèmes hindous, composed between 1912 and 1913, striving to reveal the Indian influences in the work of Delage and the way orientalism is represented in French music from the first decades of the 20th century. Keywords: orientalism, France, India, 20th century, Maurice Delage"


Author(s):  
STEPHEN BANFIELD

Between the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a cultivated relationship with the music of a favoured period in the distant national past was a pervasive aspect of high, and sometimes lower, musical culture in England. This chapter first sketches a general picture of that relationship before presenting some particular case studies. It addresses the following questions: to what extent does Tudorism in music refer to the revival of music itself, to what extent to its stylistic emulation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English compositions? Was it a matter of appealing to the Tudors to set a political agenda for music? Tudorism in English music was many things but also one very definite thing — a conscious modelling of style or atmosphere in musical composition on that of a perceived golden age of national culture. It was in some respects part of the early music movement that Harry Haskell identified as beginning in 1829 with Mendelssohn's revival of J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion, yet not the same thing insofar as that movement was about reviving discarded old music and Tudorism was about creating new music in an earlier image.


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