Alban Berg

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Adhesion Strength ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Alban Berg ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Stefan George ◽  
Strength Tests ◽  
Parallel Texts

When Austrian composer Alban Berg was working on his opera Lulu, he wrote three Baudelaire songs as a Konzertaria entitled Der Wein. Premiered in 1930, Der Wein is a large-scale work for voice and orchestra. Berg uses a German translation by Stefan George, but the published score is in parallel texts, accommodating the French verse line. The chapter also considers a ‘hidden’ Baudelaire setting from Berg’s 1926 Lyric Suite for string quartet. The analysis covers: (a) the context of composition; (b) the connections established between selected poems; (c) the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and (d) how the data shape an evaluation of Berg’s settings of Baudelaire. Evidence suggests that Berg’s settings of Baudelaire are loosely entangled; the highly prescriptive score affects syntax, semantics, and prosody. Yet, because Der Wein has stood the test of time, the settings are deemed loosely accretive.

Louis Vierne

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Adhesion Strength ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Strength Tests ◽  
Poetic Vision

Organiste-titulaire of Notre-Dame de Paris for nearly forty years, Louis Vierne composed over sixty songs, including a set of five Baudelaire songs, Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire, published in 1921. This analysis covers: (a) the context of composition; (b) the connections established between selected poems; (c) the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and (d) how the data shape an evaluation of Vierne’s settings of Baudelaire. Findings reveal how the poetic line is minimally disrupted in these songs, as the vocal line remains very independent of the piano. As a result, the bonds between poem and music are largely abhesive, which means it is possible to recover the poem intact from the song score. As complex mélodies, the lack of interference with the fabric of Baudelaire’s versification, together with limited musical-semantic interpretation, means that Vierne’s music remains attentive towards Baudelaire’s poetic vision, offering an accretive outcome overall.

Gustave Charpentier

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Adhesion Strength ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Social Conscience ◽  
Strength Tests ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal

Known for his 1900 opera, Louise, Gustave Charpentier also published seven Baudelaire songs: four as a set called Les Fleurs du mal; three alongside settings of other poets in Poèmes chantés, a collection of sixteen songs. Charpentier’s Baudelaire songs stand out, and challenge their status as melodies, for their use of refrains for female mini-chorus. The analysis covers: the context of composition; the connections established between selected poems; the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and how the data shape an evaluation of Charpentier’s settings of Baudelaire. The findings reveal highly intermingled bonds between poem and music. Despite this close connection, the songs themselves are not always stable, creating an uncertain (sometimes dilutive, sometimes accretive) outcome. This indicates a composer attempting to develop new text-setting techniques, alongside an expansive aesthetic agenda informed by a social conscience, as he sought to open up musique savante to wider audiences.

Berg and modernity: Ambivalence, synthesis, and remaking of tradition in the String Quartet op. 3

2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Benedict Taylor
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Alban Berg ◽  
Second Viennese School ◽  
Radical Innovations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gradual Shift ◽  
The Relationship

Alban Berg has long been seen as the most conservative member of the Second Viennese School, a ‘moderate modernist’, an accessible throwback to Romanticism for audiences afraid of the supposedly more radical innovations of Schoenberg or Webern, and hence for much of the 20th century has suffered from the stigma of a perceived lack of progressivism. Yet recent decades have witnessed a gradual shift in critical opinion on this issue, coinciding with a loosening of the claims of high modernity and arguably a move to a more ‘postmodern’ outlook. This paper explores further the relationship between the historical tendency in Berg’s music and the complex notion of modernity through an analysis of the early String Quartet op. 3, his first large-scale atonal composition, focusing on the idea of synthesis between old and new, conservative and progressive — the nature of the modernity which arises out of his music’s relationship with the past. This is the most problematic category in relation to advancing Berg’s credentials as a modernist but thus possibly the most interesting, and also useful since it can ultimately allow a critique of the whole notion of the modern imperative.

Anton Webern: The Man and his Music

Tempo ◽  
1946 ◽  
pp. 258-260
Author(s):  
Willi Reich
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Anton Webern ◽  
A Cappella ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Alban Berg ◽  
Stefan George ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Mixed Choir

Non multa, sed multum. How happy I would be, could this saying be applied here!” With these words, Anton Webern dedicated the score of his Op. 9, the six Bagatelles for string quartet, to his friend Alban Berg. Each of these pieces, though lasting only a few seconds, contains a truly remarkable wealth of musical expression. But this old Latin adage may also very suitably be applied to the whole of Webern's work. The published list commences with a large composition for orchestra, the Passacaglia Op. 1 (1908), written after a long and strict study with Arnold Schönberg. It shows the twenty-five-year-old composer in complete command of all the traditional means of his art. Even this work, clearly influenced by Brahms's late style, betrays a peculiar originality, wrestling for its own means of expression in its melodic invention and its endeavour to expand tonality to the uttermost. Also the next work, a double Canon for mixed choir a cappella to words by Stefan George, strives for a certain conciliation between conventional ways of writing and the new presentation of a clearly conceived tone-world. The early tendency to marshal and arrange even the boldest and freest musical thoughts by orthodox musical form-laws (passacaglia, canon), remains characteristic also of Webern's latest compositions.

Alexander Gretchaninov

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Adhesion Strength ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Russian Translation ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Strength Tests ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Fleurs Du Mal ◽  
The Way

After training at the Moscow Conservatory, Alexander Gretchaninov studied composition under Rimsky-Korsakov in St Petersburg, where he developed his vocal writing technique. In 1911, he published a set of five Baudelaire songs entitled Les Fleurs du mal. They are printed in parallel text, with the French alongside a Russian translation, and include a motif recurring across the set. The analysis covers: (a) the context of composition; (b) the connections established between selected poems; (c) the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and (d) how the data shape an evaluation of Gretchaninov’s settings of Baudelaire. Analysis reveals that the songs are highly entangled through the way Gretchaninov deforms the fabric of Baudelaire’s verse. Yet the songs are also accretive, because the flexible approach to text-setting enables Gretchaninov to respond to emotive aspects of the poem. These are songs whose complexity suggests that they were designed for highly trained musicians.

Maurice Rollinat

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Abbott
Keyword(s):  
Adhesion Strength ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Strength Tests

Poet, musician, and Chat noir cabaret artist Maurice Rollinat set Baudelaire to music a number of times during the 1880s. This chapter analyses two key sets of songs published in 1892: Six Poésies de Baudelaire and Six Nouvelles Poésies de Baudelaire. The analysis covers: (a) the context of composition; (b) the connections established between selected poems; (c) the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and (d) how the data shapes an evaluation of Rollinat’s settings of Baudelaire. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the settings are neither particularly disruptive nor especially cohesive (adhesion strength: loosely intermingled). A relatively high proportion of unexpected accentual stresses in the poetic line is mitigated by regular phrase lengths and breathing spaces. Rollinat’s settings demand a free approach to interpreting the printed score to achieve an accretive song; if the score is followed to the letter, it may create a dilutive song.

scholarly journals Experiencing Time in Brian Cherney’s String Quartet No. 4 (1994)

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-142
Author(s):  
Christoph Neidhöfer
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
Temporal Proportions

Brian Cherney’s Fourth String Quartet (1994), in one movement lasting half an hour, is striking for its formal coherence and diversity of materials. The work achieves large-scale cohesion not only through an intricate interplay of three simultaneously unfolding “main structures”—four attacca movements in one, on one level, seven sections forming certain temporal proportions, on another, and four cycles of “breathing rhythms” derived from the same proportions on a third level, as documented in the manuscript sources—but also through the continually fluctuating tension we experience throughout the movement between ontological and psychological time. Pierre Souvtchinsky’s notion of a “counterpoint” between “ontological time” (i.e., clock or real time) and a particular music’s inherent time shaped by “the material and technical means by which [the] music is expressed” is referenced to demonstrate how in Cherney’s quartet fixed proportions and slow, stable polyrhythms active in the background afford space for foreground activity that has its own sense of time. The article further explores the notion of time in a second, metaphorical dimension, as concerns intertextual allusions in the quartet.

A Structural Test Frame with Automatic Loading

1949 ◽  
Vol 53 (466) ◽  
pp. 997-1008
Author(s):  
F. W. Page ◽  
J. C. King
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Material Testing ◽  
Test Equipment ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Standard Material ◽  
Structural Test ◽  
Strength Tests ◽  
Test Frame ◽  
Automatic Loading

The Design of test frames of all types owes a great deal to the pioneer work of the Structures Department, Royal Aircraft Establishment. This particular frame contains some novel features and has been subjected to some unusual overall calibration tests, particularly in relation to the entirely automatic and centralised control gear.The choice of apparatus for testing large scale structural components may be influenced by many factors. In the present case, the choice of a test frame rather than other types of equipment was governed by the following considerations.In an industrial establishment it is essential that test equipment should be put to maximum use. Unlike a central testing establishment such as the R.A.E., major strength tests are relatively infrequent and therefore the equipment should also be suitable for as much as possible of the development and research testing which cannot be undertaken on standard material testing machines.

Topic in Music: An Empirical Study of Memorability, Openness, and Emotion in Mozart's String Quintet in C Major and Beethoven's String Quartet in A Minor

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol L. Krumhansl
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Real Time ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Psychological Reality ◽  
String Quintet ◽  
A Minor

This study examines possible parallels between large-scale organization in music and discourse structure. Two experiments examine the psychological reality of topics in the first movements of W. A. Mozart's String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K. 515, and L. van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Listeners made real-time judgments on three continuous scales: memorability, openness, and amount of emotion. All three kinds of judgments could be accounted for by the topics identified in these pieces by Agawu (1991) independently of the listeners' musical training. The results showed hierarchies of topics. However, these differed for the three tasks and for the two pieces. The topics in the Mozart piece appear to function as a way of establishing the musical form, whereas the topics in the Beethoven piece are more strongly associated with emotional content.

RECUPERATION, TRANSFORMATION AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF MAJOR OVER MINOR IN THE FINALE OF HAYDN’S STRING QUARTET OP. 76 NO. 1

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLOYD GRAVE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
A Site ◽  
Tonal System

ABSTRACTWhen the French critic Bernard Germain Lacépède identified minor harmony with inner pain, restlessness and torment (La poétique de la musique, 1785), he was recognizing what had evolved as a lopsided dichotomy within the tonal system: rather than viewing major and minor as equivalent, mutually defining opposites, later eighteenth-century musicians often viewed the latter as a site of disturbing associations and thus potentially problematic as the foundation for large-scale instrumental compositions. Against this backdrop, it is notable that Haydn ended most of his later minor-key works in major, and in the finales of his quartets Op. 76 Nos 1–3 he exploits modal reversal as a special theme by having each begin in minor before undergoing an artfully contrived switch to major. Because the tonality of two of these quartets was major to begin with, Nos 1 in G and 3 in C, this entailed a double reversal: from major to minor as the finale began, from minor to major at a crucial moment prior to the end. The finale of Op. 76 No.1 surpasses the others of this group in tonal range, intricate play of symmetries and palpable connections to its preceding movements. Crowning it is a coda that turns the movement’s stark opening unison into a cheerful rustic tune. Thus opening theme and coda, although diametrically opposed in topic and imagery, are heard to share the same underlying identity. The result may be read as a vividly evoked musical subject whose vicissitudes trace a path from darkness to light, from turmoil and confusion to a state of pastoral joy and contentment.

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