scholarly journals “My” “Musical” “Language” ?

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Rafał Augustyn
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
Wind Quintet

Abstract The problem associated with the musical “language” of a particular composer can be understood either literally, i.e. with some possible analogies to natural language, or metaphorically, as a substitute of style, technique, or manner. I try to combine both usages. In fact, my approach to composing music is not so much - to develop a consistent language ready for use in multiple instances and thus to attain a recognisable personal style, but rather - to try to build a tool for use in one particular composition on many levels of musical “grammar”. Another basic problem is the proportion between impulse and design as defined in a well-known book by Andrzej Panufnik. The examples discussed illustrate some core problems of the music creation process, such as the deliberately incomplete ‘‘monadic’’ form (Gamma from String Quartet No. 3); the evolution of style in the process of composition and its dependence on the medium (Rondeau for wind quintet); and purely intuitive composition (Con tenerezza from Cinque pezzi diversi).

Formal and informal meaning from documents through skeleton sentences

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Marcoux ◽  
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen ◽  
Claus Huitfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Logical System ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
Structured Document

In [Sperberg-McQueen et al. 2000a], Sperberg-McQueen et al. describe a framework in which the semantics of a structured document is represented by the set of inferences (statements) licensed by the document, that is, statements which can be considered to hold on the basis of the document. The authors suggest that an adequate set of basic inferences can be generated from the document itself by a fairly simple skeleton sentence and deictic expression mechanism. These ideas were taken up and developed in various ways and contexts in later work (see for example [Sperberg-McQueen et al. 2002]) and came to be called the “Formal tag-set description” approach (FTSD). The approach is independent of any particular logical system, and the possibility that the statements licensed by a document be in natural language has been mentioned and exemplified, though not to a large extent. With a different set of preoccupations in mind (namely, providing semantic support to an author during the document creation process), Marcoux introduced in [Marcoux 2006] intertextual semantics (IS), a framework in which the meaning of a document is entirely and exclusively represented by natural language segments. In this paper, we compare the IS and FTSD approaches, and argue that the insights into the meaning of a document supplied by the two approaches actually complement each other. We give a number of concrete examples of increasing complexity, including the set of formal and informal statements derivable in each case, to substantiate our claim.

Some trends among younger composers

Tempo ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
János Kárpáti
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Wind Quintet ◽  
Gyorgy Kurtag ◽  
After Effect ◽  
Voice And Piano ◽  
Creative Effort ◽  
Opposite Extreme

The composers in Hungary who have come to maturity after the mid-1950s have been more fortunate than their seniors in several respects. Not only are they farther out of the shadow of Bartók and Kodály, but their formative development has not been interrupted or impeded either by war or by the ideological problems that faced composers in the early 1950s. At the upper end of this group is György Kurtág (b. 1926), who after completing his studies in Budapest, and writing a number of successful prentice works, spent a year in Paris (1957–58), and put ‘Op. 1’ only to the string quartet which was the outcome of his experience there. Of autodidactic inclination, he was influenced less by particular major figures than by the general creative atmosphere around him, but became a disciple of Webern, not so much in technique as in his asceticism and self-discipline, his concentration on intensity of content and creative effort rather than on its extent. He has never been prolific, and his output since 1958 is remarkably slender—five works in ten years. Besides the string quartet these consist of a wind quintet, a series of piano pieces, a set of duos for violin and cimbalom, a piece for unaccompanied viola, and most recently an extended cantata for solo voice and piano, on texts by the 16th-century Hungarian writer Péter Bornemisza, which was performed at Darmstadt last year. This is a taxing virtuoso work for both performers, of exceptional range and force of expressive utterance. At the opposite extreme stand the delightful duos for violin and cimbalom, terse and unassuming, yet absorbing in content and distinctive in character, brilliantly exploring the possibilities of the unusual medium without any reliance on curiosity value or striving after effect.

‘THE BRIGHT PLACES OF LIFE AS CLEARLY AS THE DARK’: THE MUSIC OF LINDA BUCKLEY

Tempo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (284) ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Christopher Fox
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Large Ensemble ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
String Trio ◽  
Orchestral Work ◽  
Irish Traditional Music

AbstractLinda Buckley is one of the leading figures in the thriving Irish new music scene, a composer whose work draws together many different elements, from spectralism, to ambient electronica, to minimalism and Irish traditional music. This article uses five works created in the last decade as lenses through which to examine a creative practice in which these apparently disparate elements have become increasingly integrated. From the 2008 string trio, Fiol, to the orchestral work Chiyo (2011), to Torann for large ensemble and electronics (2015), and finally to two works with string quartet, ó íochtar mara (2015) and Haza (2016), these works represent stages within the evolution of a highly distinctive musical language.

scholarly journals Heaps' Law and Vocabulary Richness in the History of Classical Music Harmony

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Serra-Peralta ◽  
Joan Serrà ◽  
Álvaro Corral
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Vocabulary Richness ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Highly Correlated

Abstract Music is a fundamental human construct, and harmony provides the building blocks of musical language. Using the Kunstderfuge corpus of classical music, we analyze the historical evolution of the richness of harmonic vocabulary of 76 classical composers, covering almost 6 centuries. Such corpus comprises about 9500 pieces, resulting in more than 5 million tokens of music codewords. The fulfilment of Heaps' law for the relation between the size of the harmonic vocabulary of a composer (in codeword types) and the total length of his works (in codeword tokens), with an exponent around 0.35, allows us to define a relative measure of vocabulary richness that has a transparent interpretation. When coupled with the considered corpus, this measure allows us to quantify harmony richness across centuries, unveiling a clear increasing linear trend. In this way, we are able to rank the composers in terms of richness of vocabulary, in the same way as for other related metrics, such as entropy. We find that the latter is particularly highly correlated with our measure of richness. Our approach is not specific for music and can be applied to other systems built by tokens of different types, as for instance natural language.

London, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden: Lorin Maazel's ‘1984’

Tempo ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (234) ◽  
pp. 45-45
Author(s):  
Martin Anderson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Opera House ◽  
World Premiere

I have had occasion to be sniffy about Lorin Maazel's music in these pages before (Tempo No. 218), not least because of its sheer lack of profile, of any hint of individuality. So it was with exceedingly modest expectations that I took my seat for his first opera, 1984, the world-première run of which began on 3 May. Even so, I was disappointed: no ditchwater is as dull. The basic problem is the absence of any discernible personality in what Maazel writes: the musical language of1984 is a thin gruel boiled up from left-over Prokofiev, Copland, Bartók, Ravel, Janáček, whatever was lying around the mid-20th-century chopping-board of Maazel's memory as he put the piece together. Add a secondary deficit: there's absolutely no sense of dramatic tension – the work unfolds at the same plodding pace throughout. Now sprinkle with the kind of mistakes you might expect from a rookie operatic composer. The opening ‘Hate’ chorus, for example, revealed instantly what was going to be a recurrent difficulty: the scoring and an over-ambitious tempo combine to make the sung text difficult to understand. Maazel repeatedly doubles vocal lines in the orchestra, sacrificing their clarity.

The Perception of Tone Hierarchies and Mirror Forms in Twelve-Tone Serial Music

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol L. Krumhansl ◽  
Gregory J. Sandell ◽  
Desmond C. Sergeant
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Classification Accuracy ◽  
Large Individual ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Music Training ◽  
Probe Tone ◽  
Wind Quintet ◽  
Serial Music ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
Invariant Structures

Four experiments are reported in which the materials are derived from two 12-tone serial compositions (Schoenberg's Wind Quintet and String Quartet, No. 4). Two experiments use the probe tone method (Krumhansl & Shepard, 1979) to assess factors contributing to tone prominence in serial music. The contexts in Experiment 1 are musically neutral statements of the complete or incomplete tone rows; the contexts in Experiment 4 are excerpts from the two pieces. Two experiments use a classification task to evaluate whether the prime form of the row is perceived as similar to its mirror forms (inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion). The materials are neutral presentations of the forms (Experiment 2) or excerpts from the pieces (Experiment 3). Large individual differences are found. A subgroup of listeners, with more music training on average, show the following effects in the probe tone experiments: low ratings for tones sounded more recently in the contexts and high ratings for tones not yet sounded; low ratings for tones fitting with local tonal implications; similar patterns for the neutral contexts and the musical excerpts. The remaining listeners show the opposite effects. Classification accuracy of mirror forms is above chance and is higher for the neutral sequences than the musical excerpts; performance is correlated with music training. The experiments show that some, but not all, listeners can perceive invariant structures in serial music despite mirror transformations, octave transpositions of tones, and variations of rhythm and phrasing.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Levy
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Karl Popper ◽  
Fine Line ◽  
Wind Quintet ◽  
Historical Awareness

In lectures and essays, Ligeti stressed the role of memory and historical conditioning in the conception of form and meaning in music. His sketches frequently mention music from Couperin to Mahler as a model for different features of his own. These, in turn, become the basis for expressive gestures, referencing elements of traditional music as well as familiar types from Ligeti’s own oeuvre. While it is tempting to look at the titles of works like Clocks and Clouds (after Karl Popper), San Francisco Polyphony, and Three Pieces for Two Pianos (Monument, Selbstportrait, Bewegung) as starting to build toward the expressive ends of the opera, Le Grand Macabre, this trend can actually be found in works with more abstract titles, including his String Quartet no. 2 and Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet. This historical awareness, essential to Ligeti’s music, positions him on a fine line between the modernist and postmodernist eras.

scholarly journals Heaps’ law and vocabulary richness in the history of classical music harmony

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Serra-Peralta ◽  
Joan Serrà ◽  
Álvaro Corral
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Vocabulary Richness ◽  
Different Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Highly Correlated

AbstractMusic is a fundamental human construct, and harmony provides the building blocks of musical language. Using the Kunstderfuge corpus of classical music, we analyze the historical evolution of the richness of harmonic vocabulary of 76 classical composers, covering almost 6 centuries. Such corpus comprises about 9500 pieces, resulting in more than 5 million tokens of music codewords. The fulfilment of Heaps’ law for the relation between the size of the harmonic vocabulary of a composer (in codeword types) and the total length of his works (in codeword tokens), with an exponent around 0.35, allows us to define a relative measure of vocabulary richness that has a transparent interpretation. When coupled with the considered corpus, this measure allows us to quantify harmony richness across centuries, unveiling a clear increasing linear trend. In this way, we are able to rank the composers in terms of richness of vocabulary, in the same way as for other related metrics, such as entropy. We find that the latter is particularly highly correlated with our measure of richness. Our approach is not specific for music and can be applied to other systems built by tokens of different types, as for instance natural language.

scholarly journals A Poor Concept Script

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartley Slater
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Set Theory ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Lambda Calculus ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Elementary Level

The formal structure of Frege’s ‘concept script’ has been widely adopted in logic text books since his time, even though its rather elaborate symbols have been abandoned for more convenient ones. But there are major difficulties with its formalisation of pronouns, predicates, and propositions, which infect the whole of the tradition which has followed Frege. It is shown first in this paper that these difficulties are what has led to many of the most notable paradoxes associated with this tradition; the paper then goes on to indicate the lines on which formal logic—and also the lambda calculus and set theory—needs to be restructured, to remove the difficulties. Throughout the study of what have come to be known as first-, second-, and higher-order languages, what has been primarily overlooked is that these languages are abstractions. Many well known paradoxes, we shall see, arose because of the elementary level of simplification which has been involved in the abstract languages studied. Straightforward resolutions of the paradoxes immediately appear merely through attention to languages of greater sophistication, notably natural language, of course. The basic problem has been exclusive attention to a theory in place of what it is a theory of, leading to a focus on mathematical manipulation, which ‘brackets off ’ any natural language reading.

Compositional Flourishing (1967–70)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Levy
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
New Combinations ◽  
Wind Quintet ◽  
Chamber Concerto ◽  
The 1960S

Having codified a repertoire of personalized techniques, Ligeti deployed them in many new combinations in an extremely productive period at the end of the 1960s. Works composed in this period include Continuum, Two Études for Organ, String Quartet no. 2, Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, Ramifications, and the Chamber Concerto. This chapter looks at the contrapuntal techniques that built on the composer’s previous practice as well as those derived from harmonic networks. The latter allowed Ligeti to move away from the cluster-based harmonic palate characteristic of his earlier works. In these works Ligeti looked for diverse means of expression and presentation, and he founds ways of composing transitions between techniques, putting patterns derived from harmonic procedures into polyphonic combinations and deriving static harmonic fields from material generated as a melody.

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