Beyond synchronization

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-188
Author(s):  
Laura Bishop ◽  
Carlos Cancino-Chacón ◽  
Werner Goebl
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Ensemble Performance ◽  
Visual Interactions ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Music Tradition

In the Western art music tradition, among many others, top ensembles are distinguished on the basis of their creative interpretation and expressivity, rather than purely on the precision of their synchronization. This chapter proposes that visual cues serve as social motivators during ensemble performance, promoting performers’ creative engagement with the music and each other. This chapter discusses findings from a study in which skilled duo musicians’ use of visual cues (eye gaze and body motion) was examined across the course of a rehearsal session. Results show that performers are driven to interact visually: (1) by temporal irregularity in the music and (2) by increased familiarity with the music and their co-performer. Synchronization success was unimpaired during a “blind” performance where performers could not see each other. Ensemble musicians thus choose to supplement their auditory interactions with visual cues despite their visual interactions offering no apparent benefit to synchronization.

Towards a Phenomenology of Musical Borrowing

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (02) ◽  
pp. 174-183
Author(s):  
Sean Russell Hallowell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Borrowing ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
The Right ◽  
Musique Concrete ◽  
Music Tradition

In discourse on the topic, the question of what constitutes a musical ‘borrowing’, if raised at all, is usually restricted in scope and framed as one of terminology – that is, of determining the right term to characterise a particular borrowing act. In this way has arisen a welter of terms that, however expressive of nuance, have precluded evaluation of the phenomenon as such. This is in part a consequence of general disregard for the fact that to conceive of musical borrowing entails correlative concepts, all of which precondition it, yet none self-evidently. Further preclusive of clarity, the musico-analytic lens of borrowing is typically invoked only in counterpoint to a quintessentially Western aesthetic category of composition ex nihilo. As a consequence, the fundamental role played by borrowing in musical domains situated at the periphery of the Western art music tradition, specifically pre-modern polyphony and twentieth-century musique concrète, has been overlooked. This article seeks to bridge such lacunae in our understanding of musical borrowing via phenomenological investigation into its conceptual and historical foundations. A more comprehensive evaluation of musical borrowing, one capable of accounting for its diverse instantiations while simultaneously disclosing what makes all of them ‘borrowings’ in the first place, is thereby attainable.

Carrillo (Trujillo), Julián (1875--1965)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro L. Madrid
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Music Tradition

Julián Carrillo is recognized as one of the first microtonal composers in the Western art music tradition. His experiments with microtones (intervals smaller than the half tone), which he called Sonido 13 (The Thirteenth Sound), were an attempt to expand the melodic possibilities of the Western art music tradition’s language; the first work to crystalize these ideas was Predulio a Colón (1925). He composed music in quarter-, eighth-, and sixteenth-tones and built special instruments that could play these intervals. He also patented a series of pianos that could play third-, quarter-, fifth-, sixth-, seventh-, eight-, ninth-, tenth- eleventh-, twelfth-, thirteenth-, fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-tones. He developed a numerical system of music notation in order to deal with the increasing number of pitches in the scales generated by these subdivisions of the half tone. Carrillo also contemplated the possibilities that the systematic serialization of these new scales might have on theorizing rhythm.

ARE YOU SERIOUS? ANALYSING EXAGGERATION IN RICHARD AYRES'S NO. 37B

Tempo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (294) ◽  
pp. 24-37
Author(s):  
Lewis Coenen-Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Compositional Effect ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Rational Character ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Music Tradition

ABSTRACTExaggeration as a deliberate aesthetic device has seen increased popularity with composers working in the western art music tradition in the last few decades. Their music promotes a feeling of excessiveness as an intentional compositional effect, worthy of being taken seriously. This would seem to encourage the development of analytical techniques for understanding how it works, but almost by definition exaggeration tends to be resistant to analysis, its transgressive, anti-rational character appearing incompatible with the systematic approaches associated with this discipline. This article analyses the forms of exaggeration employed in Richard Ayres's orchestral piece No. 37b (2006) and the techniques used to achieve them, developing a framework for how we might attempt to analyse exaggeration in a manner that is rigorous but sensitive to the nature of musical exaggeration. The article finishes by making the case for how exaggeration can be interpreted as sincere as well as ironic and why deliberate exaggeration has become an appropriate and attractive device for composers in the last few decades

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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