ERIC NATHAN (b. 1983)Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-167
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Musical Style ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Less Is More ◽  
French Music ◽  
American Composer ◽  
The Voice

This chapter discusses American composer Eric Nathan’s Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011). This hauntingly lovely setting is simple enough to be tackled by beginners, but all singers will find it a rewarding vehicle. Nathan demonstrates conclusively that ‘less is more’. With admirable economy of language and structure, he captures and matches the pith and essence of the succinct texts with unerring musicality, so that every phrase tells. The voice is given every chance to hone each fragment to perfection, monitoring every morsel of sound, paying close attention to colour, nuance, and subtly graded dynamics. The musical style, a fluent and intuitive fusion of past and present, is reminiscent of late romanticism, evoking in particular the rarefied atmosphere of French music.

CHARLOTTE BRAY (b. 1982)Sonnets and Love Songs (2011)

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Technical Skill ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Fernando Pessoa ◽  
The Voice

This chapter assesses British composer Charlotte Bray’s Sonnets and Love Songs (2011). Bray’s musical style is cohesive, fluent, and evocative, with a strong harmonic sense and tonalities occasionally reminiscent of the English Romantics, albeit with a modernist ‘take’. The texts are by the distinguished Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who revered Shakespeare as his model. They concern complex philosophical issues and dilemmas of life and love—three of the poems are actual sonnets. The composer has assembled her selection to describe a clear trajectory: from musings on innocence, through turbulence, to eventual liberation—an ambitious, bold concept, achieved with assurance. There is no getting away from the fact that the cycle demands a singer of exceptional accomplishment—the wide compass might indicate a bass-baritone, but the upper range is exploited mercilessly. Indeed, notes frequently have be held high in the voice, and many end with diminuendos, requiring technical skill in travelling through register changes.

LYELL CRESSWELL (b. 1944)Eight Shaker Songs (1985)

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-71
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Musical Style ◽  
Charles Ives ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Voice

This chapter introduces works by Lyell Cresswell. His use of the voice as showcased in this chapter is highly imaginative and often demanding. The refreshingly uninhibited musical style defies easy categorization, but displays signs of an iconoclasm developed by Charles Ives. Cresswell achieves its effect by relatively simple means, including repetition. All the songs are brief yet sharply contrasted, and they convey a heady religious fervour that carries all before it. The third perhaps requires the most vocal virtuosity, and the sixth needs considerable stamina to bring it off, especially in some crucially loud spoken (shouted) passages. The final movement is a test of quick rhythmic articulation. The piano’s contribution is brimming with energy and drama, responding and adapting adroitly to the texts’ changing moods.

RODNEY LISTER (b. 1951)Songs to Harvest (2006)

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-143
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Medium Range ◽  
American Composer ◽  
Voice And Piano ◽  
The Voice

This chapter focuses on American composer Rodney Lister’s Songs to Harvest (2006). As shown in this attractive cycle, Lister has a distinctive and fascinating way of writing for voice and piano. The voice projects succinct, shapely phrases, while linear piano parts weave a tapestry of sinuous counterpoint, frequently in two parts only, often with three-against-two rhythms. When the voice stops, the piano continues, its luminous texture ebbing and flowing. Ingeniously, it seems to give a subliminal commentary as well as an irresistible propulsion to the music. The prime test of the songsmith is to set words so that they can be heard easily, and Lister passes this with flying colours. A predominantly medium range guarantees comfortable articulation—the highest note occurs only once, fleetingly. The cohesive musical idiom is discreetly contemporary, disciplined, and carefully modulated. Pitching should be relatively unproblematic—there is a good deal of doubling with the piano, and plenty of time to plot each interval cleanly.

JONATHAN PITKIN (b. 1978)Feather-Small and Still (2010)

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-185
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Great Sensitivity ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Prize Competition ◽  
Nature Imagery ◽  
Classic Form ◽  
The Voice

This chapter addresses Jonathan Pitkin’s Feather-Small and Still (2010). Pitkin was commissioned to make a setting of this evocative poem by Sophie Stephenson-Wright, following its commendation in a prize competition for young poets. Its subject is that mysterious bird, the nightjar. The composer has succeeded admirably in capturing the text’s intriguing, distinctive flavour, responding to its nature imagery and heightened language with great sensitivity. Vocal lines are tellingly clear and simple, and it is left to the piano to amplify and illustrate the words to haunting effect, with solo passages bridging the gaps between vocal fragments, always colouring and enriching the sound world. The poem is a villanelle, a classic form in which repetitions of the first and third lines recur throughout. The composer has not adhered strictly to the format in his music, but, by subtle brush-strokes, he manages to preserve traces of reverberation, and his fluent, cohesive musical style enables him to expand and contract textures, often leading off into fresh territory. Though tightly constructed, the piece flows naturally and should prove enjoyable to perform. The voice part is especially suitable for a young singer, and not at all taxing.

Marga Richter

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Mirchandani
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Chamber Ensemble ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
American Composer

This is the first full-length introduction to the life and works of American composer Marga Richter (born 1926), who has written more than a hundred works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance, opera, voice, chorus, piano, organ, and harpsichord. Still actively composing in her eighties, Richter is particularly known for her large-scale pieces performed by ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and for other pieces performed by prominent artists including pianist Menahem Pressler, conductor Izler Solomon, and violinist Daniel Heifetz. Interspersing consideration of Richter's musical works with discussion of her life, her musical style, and the origins and performances of her works, the book documents a successful composer's professional and private life throughout the twentieth century. The book covers Richter's formative years, her influences, and the phases of her career from the 1950s to the present. Drawing extensively on interviews with Richter herself, the book also provides detailed descriptions of Richter's scores and uses reviews and other secondary sources to provide contexts for her compositions, including their relationship to modern dance, to other musical styles, and to 1970s feminism.

Yma Sumac: The Extraordinary Peruvian Singer and Her Paradoxical Career

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoila S. Mendoza
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Artistic Career ◽  
The Voice

Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo (1922–2008), best known by her artistic name, Yma Sumac, startled the world with her unique voice, beauty, and exotic persona. The Peruvian singer became a legend and an icon, while her life and career were filled with controversy and paradox in and outside of her native country. She first emerged as an acclaimed folk singer in the midst of the development of Peruvian national identity in the early 1940s and soon became recognized for her folk art in Latin America. By the end of the decade and as part of a trio directed by her manager and husband, Moisés Vivanco, she started a career in the United States that would lead to radical changes in her musical style and to the creation of a series of fantasies about her origins and identity. A prodigious live performer, she traveled around the world tirelessly, her recordings reached far and wide, and her first album, The Voice of Xtabay, has never been out of print. Yma Sumac participated in two major Hollywood films in the 1950s, and in 1960 her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled. In 2016 Sumac was posthumously honored with a Google Doodle. One of the most internationally known Peruvians, she had a problematic relationship with her own country, but fortunately, two years before her death, she was properly honored and recognized by her native country. She had a long artistic career, performing into the 1990s, but her fame reached its peak in the 1950s when she became known as the “Queen of Exotica,” performing a style of music popular in the United States after World War II.

A Child Disappears

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-245
Author(s):  
Veena Das
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Child Witness ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Voice

Focusing on a case in which an eight-year-old girl is abducted, forcibly confined, and raped, this chapter analyzes the judgment of the court sessions. Paying close attention to the grammatical structure of both written and oral statements, the chapter shows the different kinds of splits that happen within these statements. The judge’s pronouncements show a doubling of voice—one voice through which she converts the narrated events into objects recognizable to the law, and a second voice in which the law speaks through the voice of the judge. Similarly, the child witness is shown to be split into the witness, one who saw the various acts of horrifying violence done to her, and second, the victim who experienced these events on her body. Finally, the chapter reads the minor contradictions that were papered over in the court to take the reader to the life of the law outside the court into the neighborhood where the everyday harassment by police officers, the bribes and the scandals, are the stuff of everyday experiences. The notion of ordinary realism helps in the analysis to anchor the contradictory affects in which the law embodies both threat and promise.

The Origin of the Olive: On the Dynamics of Plato’s Menexenus

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-57
Author(s):  
Paul O Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Internal Dynamic ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Athenian Democracy ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Radical Nature ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Philosophical Matter

Plato’s Menexenus is a persistent puzzle for interpreters, in the main because of its obscurity of purpose and apparent lack of philosophical matter. This article argues that, while no doubt an elusive piece, it can be counted quite definitely a sdialogue of philosophical import, as well as one of its author’s most subtly accomplished works. The article focuses on two portions of Aspasia’s oration—the account of the earliest Athenians and the exhortation to the living in the voice of the dead—to demonstrate the radical nature of the speech. Close attention to its subtle internal dynamic reveals not only the range of philosophical themes touched upon, but also its outrageous aspects and the strength of its indictment of the Athenian democracy. The article also affirms the consistency of this critique with Plato’s reservations regarding that regime as expressed with most force and clarity in Republic and Gorgias.

KATHERINE SAXON (b. 1981)Sea Fever (2008)

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-203
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Space Time ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Balance Problem ◽  
American Composer ◽  
Voice And Piano ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter discusses American composer Katherine Saxon’s Sea Fever (2008). In this piece, the musical style is straightforward, uncluttered, and accessible, with elements of neoclassicism, and the four songs are well contrasted. The second has space-time notation, but the others are written conventionally, with key and time signatures. The relationship between voice and piano is well gauged, but there may be a few balance problem for lighter voices, especially when lines are low-lying. Verbal clarity is a crucial requirement. Words and music teem with watery images, and the sonic palette of John Masefield’s resonant poetry, full of alliteration and onomatopoeia, is a gift for composers, to which Saxon responds with empathy and panache. Some very fast articulation is called for, especially in the last song. The composer’s succinct instructions for mood and character are always pertinent.

Geographical Morality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Human Intervention ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Moral Aspect ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Here, the depth imbued in Herodotus’ landscape is enhanced by the element of human intervention, which lends a moral aspect. Characters in the narrative, particularly the holders of despotic power engaging in monumental projects, are seen to manipulate the natural world in ways that can be viewed positively or negatively. This chapter explores this apparent contradiction in terms of context, contrast, and varied focalizations, which combine to encourage the reader to see similar actions in different lights. Close attention is paid to the ‘voice’ in which judgements are cast, resulting in a subtle interpretative framework. The division between water and land is explored as particularly fertile ground for exploring human interaction with the landscape in Herodotus’ narrative. The crossing of continental divisions introduces the relationship between individual projects and wider imperial aims, and the sequence of transgressive river crossings is explored as precursor to Persia’s campaigns against Greece.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document