1. Art Music in a Global Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-28
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Global Context

Fred Hersch at the Village Vanguard: The Sound of Jazz Heritage at New York's Oldest Jazz Club

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-476
Author(s):  
KIMBERLY HANNON TEAL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art Music ◽  
First Century ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Village

AbstractA small basement in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood, an area known for its bohemian values, is home to what is now one of jazz's oldest and most significant venues, the Village Vanguard. Although its very name, geography, and twentieth-century countercultural context define the Village Vanguard, a haven for experiment, its unequaled historical significance and current status as a major landmark within worldwide jazz culture have led to a twenty-first-century reality in which the club not only features but also plays an important role in defining the music that constitutes the most widely accepted subgenre of contemporary jazz, an improvisatory, small-group tradition rooted in the philosophical and musical heritage of bebop. Through an examination of performances both at the Vanguard and in other contexts by pianist Fred Hersch, a performer regularly featured at the club, this article argues that the cultural role of the Village Vanguard, both in spite of and because of the way its longtime owner Lorraine Gordon retained mid-twentieth-century appearances and practices, has shifted from its former purpose as a space for avant-garde experiments to become a powerful force in defining mainstream jazz. Hersch tailors his performances to suit the culture of the Vanguard at multiple levels, including his choice of personnel and ensemble type, the repertoire he does and does not play there, and the musical details of his improvisatory practices. Due to the venue's fame and prevalence as a recording space, choices like these by Hersch and other musicians shape the music widely understood to be at the center of the “jazz tradition,” marking a shift in the nature of the Vanguard that parallels changes in both its local and global context over the past half century as Greenwich Village has undergone substantial gentrification and jazz has gained an ever-stronger foothold as an institutionally recognized art music.

On Chinese Aesthetics: Interpretative Encounter between Taoism and Confucianism

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Wangheng Chen ◽  
Jun Qi ◽  
Pingting Hao
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Chinese Aesthetics ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
Artistic Image

Abstract Chinese aesthetics mainly derives from Confucianism and Taoism. This essay attempts to revisit the main theories that run through Confucian and Taoist aesthetics in order to make them comprehensible within a broader global context. Aesthetics in Confucianism pertains to fields as various as literature, art, music and the natural environment. It holds the idea of ren 仁 (human-heartedness) as the essential attribute of beauty. In comparison, Taoist aesthetics emphasizes the centrality of tao 道 (way), which transpires through naturalness, and, as such, considers natural forms to offer the highest degree of beauty. In order to understand variations of representation and interpretation in Confucian and Taoist aesthetics, the essay discusses accordingly the three fundamentals of Chinese aesthetics: beauty, feeling of beauty, and artistic image. This comparative study will hopefully bring to light differences and similarities between two traditions, which may also resonate within the wider context of modern global aesthetics.

Prime Proportion Affects Masked Priming of Fixed and Free-Choice Responses

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 360-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glen E. Bodner ◽  
Rehman Mulji
Keyword(s):  
Decision Process ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Previous Trial ◽  
Target Response ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Sequential Trial

Left/right “fixed” responses to arrow targets are influenced by whether a masked arrow prime is congruent or incongruent with the required target response. Left/right “free-choice” responses on trials with ambiguous targets that are mixed among fixed trials are also influenced by masked arrow primes. We show that the magnitude of masked priming of both fixed and free-choice responses is greater when the proportion of fixed trials with congruent primes is .8 rather than .2. Unconscious manipulation of context can thus influence both fixed and free choices. Sequential trial analyses revealed that these effects of the overall prime context on fixed and free-choice priming can be modulated by the local context (i.e., the nature of the previous trial). Our results support accounts of masked priming that posit a memory-recruitment, activation, or decision process that is sensitive to aspects of both the local and global context.

Lyric Cousins

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Early History ◽  
Sight Reading ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Way

Today, poetry and art music occupy similar cultural positions: each has a tendency to be regarded as problematic, ‘difficult’, and therefore ‘elitist’. Despite this, the audiences and numbers of participants for each are substantial: yet they tend not to overlap. This is odd, because the forms share early history in song and saga, and have some striking similarities, often summed up in the word ‘lyric’? These similarities include much that is most significant to the experience of each, and so of most interest to practitioners and audiences. They encompass, at the very least: the way each art-form is aural, and takes place in time; a shared reliance on temporal, rather than spatial, forms; an engagement with sensory experience and pleasure; availability for both shared public performance and private reading, sight-reading, and hearing in memory; and scope for non-denotative meaning. In other words, looking at these elements in music is a way to look at them in poetry, and vice versa. This is a study of these two formal craft traditions that is concerned with the similarities in their roles, structures, projects, and capacities.

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