IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971)The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (1966)

2020 ◽  
pp. 300-302
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Igor Stravinsky ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Final Work

This chapter studies Igor Stravinsky's final work, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat. With typical sly relish, Stravinsky seems to be mocking any pomposity in his admirers, confounding everyone by leaving the stage with a brief, light-hearted coda to his cherished large-scale achievements. This well-loved nonsense verse by Edward Lear was the first poem his wife Vera got to know, and the piece is dedicated to her. This chapter reveals that the song has a strong connection between English and Russian schools of absurdist humour. To add to the fun, Stravinsky even here adheres to a strict twelve-tone system, affectionately lampooning the method he favoured for his last works.

MEDIUM/FORM RELATIONS IN BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH'S FOURTH STRING QUARTET

Tempo ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (261) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Klaus Lippe
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Niklas Luhmann ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Final Work

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to re-describe Brian Ferneyhough's compositional practice as an arrangement of medium/form relations in the sense of system theorist Niklas Luhmann. The production process of an artwork is understood as a procedure by which ‘a form is changed for another’, or rather: by which a form becomes a medium for further form distinctions, such that the contingency of the beginning is transformed into the necessity of the final work of art. Based on the preliminary ‘large-scale form’, the fundamental steps in the composition of the first movement of the Fourth String Quartet are observed as recursive operations in a self-referentially closed process of gaining form. Despite its formal closure, the final score's potentiality becomes a medium for further performative and perceptive actualizations. The artwork establishes itself on the level of second order observations, as a difference between the possible and the actual: between medium and form.

Tonality or Atonality in Bartók’s Sonata for Violin and Piano no. 2? From Folk Modalities to a Twelve-tone Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-69
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Pitch Organization ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Stylistic Elements ◽  
Scale Levels ◽  
Violin And Piano

Abstract External political circumstances as well as Bartók’s personal activities in the early 1920s were decisive in contributing to the expansion of the basic principles of his musical language. Bartók’s Second Sonata for Violin and Piano (1922) may be considered a focal point in his evolution toward ultramodernism. Concomitant with this tendency, both Sonatas for Violin and Piano of this period have become paradigmatic of the controversial notion set forth by certain scholars regarding the existence of an atonal Bartók idiom. Within the ultramodernist style of the Second Sonata, the essence of Eastern-European folk music is still very much in evidence. The intention of this article is to show how Bartók’s move toward synthesis of varied folk and art-music elements in this work produces a sense of an organic connection between atonality and tonality. The close connection between these two principles was suggested by Bartók in an essay of 1920. I intend to show how both contradictory principles are conjoined within a highly complex polymodal idiom based on the tendency toward equalization of the twelve tones. Within the stanzaic structure of the Romanian “long song,” stylistic elements of recitation, improvisation, and declamation are essential in the gradual unfolding between these two contrasting concepts of pitch organization. Despite tonal ambiguity on both local and large-scale levels, the sense of polymodal tonality is ultimately established as primary.

Marriage as Prostitution in Berg's Lulu

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-182
Author(s):  
Silvio Joséé dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Frank Wedekind ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Final Scene ◽  
Otto Weininger ◽  
Sociocultural Issues

Abstract Writing to Schoenberg on August 7, 1930, Berg explained the differences between the libretto for his new opera and the original plays by Frank Wedekind, and in particular the return of Lulu's ““victims”” (her husbands) as her clients in the final scene of the opera. While Berg sought to create a large-scale symmetry with this return, he also posited a link between marriage and prostitution that did not exist in Wedekind's texts. Significantly, Berg was not alone in equating these two institutions; numerous Victorian writers had already made arguments in this regard. In fin-de-sièècle Vienna this issue was widely debated and reflected some prevailing views of female sexuality, including those expressed in the influential works of Otto Weininger and Karl Kraus. Indeed, as is well documented, Berg was keenly engaged in these issues. The association of marriage with prostitution was a crucial element in Berg's conception of the opera. Evidence found in the autograph manuscripts and the finished work confirms that Berg represented these institutions as essentially the same at several levels of the work. This is revealed in his musical portrayal of Lulu, the Prince, the Man servant, and the Marquis, as well as in such musical choices as his borrowing of Wagner's wedding march from Lohengrin and his use of Wedekind's Konfession, a song about prostitution. Indeed, the representation of the two institutions is directly linked to the opera's musical language, particularly the transition from tonal to twelve-tone structures in the final act. Most importantly, this representation reflects Berg's construction of identities for the main characters in the opera and, by extension, the sociocultural issues portrayed in this seminal work.

scholarly journals Listening to the Music Itself

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sallmen
Keyword(s):  
Long Range ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Outer Shell ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Elliott Carter

In “Music and the Time Screen” (1976), Elliott Carter outlines rhythmic procedures in several of his pieces, and then indicates that he has discussed only “the outer shell” and remained silent on “the issues and visions most important and significant during the act of composing.” Following up on these comments, I present a two-part analysis of his “In Genesis” from In Sleep, In Thunder (1981). Part I (“The Shell”) focuses on techniques emphasized in Carter’s writings—large-scale polyrhythms, metric modulations, notated accelerandi and all-interval twelve-tone chords. Part II (“Breaking Through”) deals with other topics: pitch relationships involving the perfect fifths that articulate the large-scale polyrhythms and notated accelerandi, focal pitches that encapsulate the divinity/humanity dichotomy in the poem, motivic unity in the vocal line, and other spontaneous interrelationships that contribute local and long-range coherence.

Transformation Chains, Associative Areas, and a Principle of Form for Anton Webern’s Twelve-tone Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-243
Author(s):  
Brian Moseley
Keyword(s):  
Long Range ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Formal Principle ◽  
Associative Organization ◽  
Tonal System ◽  
Serial Composition

Abstract Much of Webern’s twelve-tone music relies on conventional formal types to structure extended composition and long-range compositional strategy. This article describes how these forms were absorbed into his personal twelve-tone style through an exploration of three entwined techniques. His techniques of serial row chaining and associative organization create a deep musical hierarchy that is frequently navigated by a formal principle of large-scale complementation. The analyses appearing here are drawn from across Webern’s twelve-tone period and are elucidated through spatial representations that describe compositional potential and musical realization. In addition to providing a means for analytical interpretation, the analyses reveal how Webern’s fusion of form and twelve-tone technique resemble characteristics of the tonal system while amplifying basic axioms of serial composition.

scholarly journals Finland, a Vocal Symphony for Soprano, Tenor and Large Orchestra

ICONI ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 100-111
Author(s):  
Anton А. Rovner ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Romantic Poet ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hand Writing

My composition Finland is a vocal symphony for soprano, tenor and large orchestra set to the text of the early 19th century Russian Romantic poet Evgeny Baratynsky. The main idea behind this composition involves the combination of two contrasting approaches to musical composition: composing an abstract, independent musical work built on purely musical laws of structure and development and, on the other hand, writing a dramatic, programmatic work, the aim of which is to express emotions, to interpret and depict the subject matter of the literary text. The musical composition consists of six movements, following the poem’s six unequallength stanzas. Each movement is divided into a purely orchestral section and a vocalorchestral section, the latter featuring alternately the solo soprano and tenor. The work is written in the twelve-tone technique and involves references to a late Romantic musical language, emphasis on new textures and sonorities for the orchestra, occasional implications of tonality, and incorporation of serial rhythm in several of the work’s sections. The article gives a short account of Baratynsky’s biography and poetic writings and then proceeds to analyze the composition Finland in terms of both the large-scale structure and the details within the individual movements.

Of Modell-Typen and Modell-Typen: Berg, Schoenberg, F. H. Klein, and the Concept of Row Derivation

1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arved Ashby
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Large Scale Structure ◽  
Personal Epistemology ◽  
Scale Structure ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
History Of ◽  
Music Examination

With the assistance of sources from the Berg Nachlaß at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, this study readdresses a practice cited by those declaring Berg's twelve-tone techniques peripheral to a history of modernism: his use of more than one twelve-tone row in a composition. This technique, vital to Berg's work but proscribed by Schoenberg and the unity so often idealized in Schoenberg's writings, is found to have originated with the composer and theorist Fritz Heinrich Klein (1892-1977). Documentary evidence indicates that Klein's op. 14 Variationen proved especially significant as Berg developed a personal epistemology of twelve-tone music. Examination of Berg's debt to Klein illuminates the large-scale structure of Berg's Lyric Suite, impels exploration of the correlations that allow one to speak of an organic relationship between "row forms," and encourages clarification of Schoenberg's, Berg's, and Hauer's historical relevance to the origins of dodecaphony.

Some comments about observations and image processing of comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1

1999 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 243-248
Author(s):  
D. Kubáček ◽  
A. Galád ◽  
A. Pravda
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Harvard College ◽  
Oak Ridge ◽  
Large Scale Structures ◽  
Short Period Comet ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Scale Structures ◽  
Harvard College Observatory ◽  
Period Comet

AbstractUnusual short-period comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 inspired many observers to explain its unpredictable outbursts. In this paper large scale structures and features from the inner part of the coma in time periods around outbursts are studied. CCD images were taken at Whipple Observatory, Mt. Hopkins, in 1989 and at Astronomical Observatory, Modra, from 1995 to 1998. Photographic plates of the comet were taken at Harvard College Observatory, Oak Ridge, from 1974 to 1982. The latter were digitized at first to apply the same techniques of image processing for optimizing the visibility of features in the coma during outbursts. Outbursts and coma structures show various shapes.

Evolution of Large-Scale Coronal Structures

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
P. Ambrož
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Field Line ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Coronal Magnetic Field ◽  
Source Surface ◽  
Solar Cycles ◽  
Characteristic Relationship ◽  
The Magnetic Field ◽  
Coronal Structures

AbstractThe large-scale coronal structures observed during the sporadically visible solar eclipses were compared with the numerically extrapolated field-line structures of coronal magnetic field. A characteristic relationship between the observed structures of coronal plasma and the magnetic field line configurations was determined. The long-term evolution of large scale coronal structures inferred from photospheric magnetic observations in the course of 11- and 22-year solar cycles is described.Some known parameters, such as the source surface radius, or coronal rotation rate are discussed and actually interpreted. A relation between the large-scale photospheric magnetic field evolution and the coronal structure rearrangement is demonstrated.

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