Bach the Music Director

Bach ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 214-258
Author(s):  
David Schulenberg
Keyword(s):  
Music Making ◽  
The City ◽  
Official Work

At Leipzig Bach held a double position as cantor in the St. Thomas School and music director for the city as a whole. The first was primarily educational; the second included not only composition of cantatas for the two main churches but oversight of all music in the city. This chapter examines Bach’s official work as cantor and music director as well as his growing frustration and conflicts in those capacities (as evidenced in his “Entwurf”)—and the resulting shift toward greater participation in secular music making with the Collegium Musicum. After describing his routines for producing some 150 surviving church cantatas from this period, the chapter examines selected examples, including BWV 105, 78, 103, 56, 82, 51, and 140. Also discussed are secular works, including BWV 201 and the Coffee Cantata, and the motets.

scholarly journals Amateur Piano Music-Making and the Ufa Section of the Imperial Russian Musical Society

ICONI ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Ninel F. Garipova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Piano Music ◽  
Piano Performance ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Musical Education ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Academic Genres ◽  
The City ◽  
In Virtue Of

The geographic position of Ufa, which in the early 19th century was a deep province, was not conducive to the development of musical culture. However, we must consider as an important element in its formation the active spread of household music-making and the wish of amateurs to participate in the city’s concert life. The “Society for Singing, Music and the Art of Drama” was founded in 1885 in Ufa following the wishes of the city residents. The twenty-year-long existence of the Society has left a considerable trace in the development of musical education and the exposure of the public to the academic genres of the art of piano performance; it played a signifi cant role in the development of musical literacy and the musical hearing of the residents of Ufa. In virtue of a number of existing social reasons the Society was closed down, but following the request of the most educated part of the local nobility and intelligentsia the Ufa Section of the Imperial Russian Musical Society (IRMS). Having existed for only a few years, until the revolution of 1917, it was able to lead the art of music to a new, higher level. Professionals with a higher musical education were conducive to the further expansion of promotion of music with their concert performances and teaching lessons in the musical classes and enhanced the development of the art of professional music in Bashkiria.

scholarly journals BUSINESS DOCUMENTATION AS RESEARCH SOURCE OF KYIV MUSIC ENVIROMENT IN LATE 19 — EARLY 20 c.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Olha Musiiachenko
Keyword(s):  
Government Policies ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Music Schools ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Concert Life

The results of the study of Kyiv music environment in the late 19 — early 20 centuries are presented through the analysis of business documentation. The peculiarities of researching the music environment of cities and the experience of using different types of sources when studying the music environment have been examined. The study of archival documents of Kyiv of this period allowed us to determine the specific components of the music environment of the city that were presented in the business documentation in late 19 — early 20 centuries. Our main source is data taken from archival institutions of Kyiv. We have identified blocks of data that reflects the conditions and tendencies of the city’s music life, such as the influence of government policies and censure restrictions on music and concert life and the formation of a contingent of musicians, the coexistence of old guild organization and new global trends in professional music making. The place of guilds in the music environment of Kyiv of late 19 century has been determined. Examples of applications for permission to perform songs in Ukrainian on the open stages of Kyiv and the reasons that prompted the performers or the administration of institutions to ask for such permits have been shown. Restrictions on residence in Kyiv that existed for Jewish musicians and Jewish entrants to music schools in Kyiv, as well as the reasons for the refusals have been presented. Data from reports and programs of educational institutions has been analysed. There are also examples of cases that illustrate the individual episodes of music life and allow to vividly recreate the atmosphere of the city at that time, such as an anonymous complaint of Kyiv citizens about the “obscenities” that took place in the Chateau de Fleur Garden and the Apollo Variety Theater, etc.

scholarly journals Sensing the City - Mapping the Beat. A rhythmanalysis of music-making in Wellington and Copenhagen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katie Rochow
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Meaningful Experiences ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The City

<p>The idea of rhythm has figured as a key conceptual and empirical motif in current research on (urban) space, place and everyday life. Urban spaces are considered polyrhythmic fields, a compound of varied everyday life and spatial rhythms, which produce a particular, but ever-changing, complex mix of heterogeneous social interactions, mobilities, imaginaries and materialities (Edensor 2010). Music-making in the city therefore constitutes and is constituted by a plurality of urban rhythms including the movement between different locations as well as regular temporal patterns of events, activities, experiences and practices as well as energies, objects, flora and fauna which shape the music-maker’s mundane ‘pathways’ through the city. Based on current ethnographic fieldwork in the urban spaces of Wellington (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and Copenhagen (Denmark) this project proposes a way of capturing, understanding and interpreting the multi-faceted rhythmical layout of urban spaces. It will do so by introducing a rhythmanalytical methodology, which draws on interviews, participant generated photographs and mental maps as analytical tools for capturing the interwovenness of socialities, atmospheres, object, texts and images in people’s everyday lives and in this way affords opportunities for attending to the multiple rhythms underlying music-making in the city. The use of cartographic and photographic means of representing these rhythmical dimensions allows us to better attend to an affective register that is often overlooked in studies of music-making. It makes visible some of the ways in which places, from the home to the studio to the performance venue and points in-between form a connective tissue, which anchors the music-makers to the city as well as lends the city its ambience, and, more importantly, its affective charge. As such, the manner in which mood, feeling, a “sense of place,” is evoked through the visual representation of music-makers’ everyday life suggests how the scenic aspects of the city work to simultaneously frame, mediate and facilitate meaningful experiences of place. Consequently, this study documents, through a unique medley of research methods, the way in which music-making serves as a vehicle for the social production of place and the creation of an affective attachment to that place both individual and collective.</p>

Why Berlin? Why Klezmer?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Phil Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Community Music ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Applied Sociology ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
The City

This book begins with an invocation of the sounds and significations that make up the complex of meanings of klezmer music in Berlin, as seen through a new jam session that began in the city in 2013. It underlines the importance of locating the music both historically and in its contemporary urban context—giving a brief but important sense of the past and present geographies of klezmer music, and also signaling exactly where and how the debate has significantly moved on from the anxieties of “virtual Judaism” and cultural appropriation. The chapter lays out the author’s methodology, as well as signposting certain theoretical frameworks that structure the narrative: the urban spatial critique of Lefebvre and de Certeau; British cultural studies work by Stuart Hall and others; the applied sociology of Adam Krims and Mark Granovetter; and the ethnomusicological framing of Mark Slobin and Martin Stokes. The chapter finishes with an appealing ethnographic snapshot of an evening of community music making, “the Night of the Singing Balconies”—an event that sums up several of the themes structuring this book. This collective concert is analyzed as a lively embodiment of contemporary Berlin performative culture: grassroots inclusivity; a firm belief in the power of enthusiasm over the necessity of talent; and a structural and ideological integration into the fabric of the city itself. The engaging observational style with which the Singing Balconies are described not only brings the night to life but also makes clear the book’s overall approach of ethnographic detail underpinned by solid theoretical framing.

Korean Composers in Profile

Tempo ◽  
1995 ◽  
pp. 15-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Babcock
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The People ◽  
Korean Composers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

Ancient, ornately carved palaces in the midst of a megalopolis, the spirituality of delicate green Koryo celadon, an archaic traditional music as pungent (and delicious) as kimchi – once experienced, never forgotten. Add to these the city of Kyongju, called the ‘museum without walls’, the many reminders of a long history of suffering under Japanese oppression and the uninterrupted excellence of its poetry and visual arts, and one begins to feel Korea's special quality. The country is prosperous; education in all fields, including the arts, is given high priority. Contemporary life is vibrant and intense; the people possess a seemingly boundless capacity for hard work as well as for celebration, festivity, ceremony and mourning – and for music-making. Hardly surprising, then, that the compositional scene in the Republic of South Korea is booming, to say the least.

The Colonna, Aristocratic Culture, and the Display of Power in Seventeenth-Century Rome

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-57
Author(s):  
Valeria De Lucca
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The City ◽  
Aristocratic Culture

Patronage of the arts and the sponsorship of events that attracted public attention were essential tools for the Roman elite to negotiate their position within the complex social and political structure of the city. This chapter introduces Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, Maria Mancini, and their cultural milieu in Rome. Their palace in piazza Santi Apostoli became the stage for their support of conversazioni, music-making, and intellectual gatherings. The palace and its collections of paintings, antiquities, arts, and the cycle of frescoes that began to be executed during Lorenzo Onofrio’s life were also essential elements of their self-fashioning and family myth-making.

scholarly journals “THIS COUNTRY OF CHINA IS TOUGH”: NIGERIAN IMMIGRANT MUSIC MAKING IN GUANGZHOU, CHINA

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Manolete Mora
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Nigerian Immigrants ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
The City

This article concerns Nigerian music making in Guangzhou, one of China’s leading manufacturing and trading centres, and where the largest groups of Africans in China, more generally, are concentrated. Nigerians are the largest community of Africans in Guangzhou and, like other Africans traders, practice what has been referred to as “low-end globalisation” (Mathews and Yang 2012). Beyond entertainment, music making among Nigerians, and Africans in China more generally, has a significant role in not only maintaining a sense of belonging but also in communicating key social concerns, aspirations and sentiments that stem from the experience of living and working in Guangzhou. This article describes how these experiences unfold in specific songs composed by two Igbo Nigerian immigrants whose aspirations and efforts to live and work in the city resulted in different outcomes.

scholarly journals Sensing the City - Mapping the Beat. A rhythmanalysis of music-making in Wellington and Copenhagen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katie Rochow
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Meaningful Experiences ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The City

<p>The idea of rhythm has figured as a key conceptual and empirical motif in current research on (urban) space, place and everyday life. Urban spaces are considered polyrhythmic fields, a compound of varied everyday life and spatial rhythms, which produce a particular, but ever-changing, complex mix of heterogeneous social interactions, mobilities, imaginaries and materialities (Edensor 2010). Music-making in the city therefore constitutes and is constituted by a plurality of urban rhythms including the movement between different locations as well as regular temporal patterns of events, activities, experiences and practices as well as energies, objects, flora and fauna which shape the music-maker’s mundane ‘pathways’ through the city. Based on current ethnographic fieldwork in the urban spaces of Wellington (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and Copenhagen (Denmark) this project proposes a way of capturing, understanding and interpreting the multi-faceted rhythmical layout of urban spaces. It will do so by introducing a rhythmanalytical methodology, which draws on interviews, participant generated photographs and mental maps as analytical tools for capturing the interwovenness of socialities, atmospheres, object, texts and images in people’s everyday lives and in this way affords opportunities for attending to the multiple rhythms underlying music-making in the city. The use of cartographic and photographic means of representing these rhythmical dimensions allows us to better attend to an affective register that is often overlooked in studies of music-making. It makes visible some of the ways in which places, from the home to the studio to the performance venue and points in-between form a connective tissue, which anchors the music-makers to the city as well as lends the city its ambience, and, more importantly, its affective charge. As such, the manner in which mood, feeling, a “sense of place,” is evoked through the visual representation of music-makers’ everyday life suggests how the scenic aspects of the city work to simultaneously frame, mediate and facilitate meaningful experiences of place. Consequently, this study documents, through a unique medley of research methods, the way in which music-making serves as a vehicle for the social production of place and the creation of an affective attachment to that place both individual and collective.</p>

Teaching the Ethics of Free Improvisation

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Rose Lange
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Traditional Teaching ◽  
Educational Setting ◽  
School Students ◽  
Free Improvisation ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The City ◽  
The Ideal

The factors that motivate some improvising musicians to teach include the music’s profound ethical dimensions, the ideal that egalitarianism should be a core principle in music-making, and the belief that this music enables the musician’s full self to flower. Using an ethnographic approach, this essay argues that pedagogies, as cultural systems, encompass ambiguity, so that improvisers’ ideals work irregularly in an educational setting. The MECA improvisation ensemble, a group for middle and high school students in Houston, Texas, was a voluntary organization that attracted members from a variety of backgrounds. Its leader, an improviser, utilized traditional teaching dynamics, but the alternative arts setting and the premises of free improvisation enabled the students to cross barriers within the city and between each other.

Voicing Silence: The Legend of Buddy Bolden

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John and Joanne Saul
Keyword(s):  
New Orleans ◽  
Michael Ondaatje ◽  
Jazz Improvisation ◽  
Music Making ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Mike Davis ◽  
The City

This article focuses on the legendary Buddy Bolden, a putative godfather of jazz improvisation in the very earliest days of jazz-like music–making in New Orleans. We first seek to position him both within the New Orleans of his time and within the broader tradition of jazz’ development to which he is deemed to have made such a singular contribution. But we soon discover that, despite his legendary status, we have in fact no aural record of Bolden’s actual playing and only fragmentary, often contradictory, accounts of his life. It becomes necessary to “improvise the improvisor” – to, in effect, give voice to Bolden’s silence. We then examine several efforts to imagine Bolden both as player and as person: by Michael Ondaatje, on the printed page, in his highly regarded “novel” Coming Through Slaughter and on disk, aurally, by players like Jerry Granelli and Malachi Thompson. We conclude that Bolden’s rather shadowy person and performance make him especially available, in both song and story, for the kinds of improvisation of person we have pinpointed. Indeed, this may again prove true as those in post-Katrina New Orleans who may wish to rebuild the city in the terms of its own history find they must once more “talk back” to power, to those who now choose merely to further (in Mike Davis’ chilling phrase) the “killing of New Orleans.”

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