Clara Schumann's Interiorities and the Cutting Edge of Popular Pianism

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 697-765
Author(s):  
Alexander Stefaniak
Keyword(s):  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Robert Schumann ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Variation Sets ◽  
Music Market ◽  
Critical Responses ◽  
Drawing Room ◽  
Variations On A Theme

In her contemporaries’ imaginations Clara Schumann transcended aesthetic pitfalls endemic to virtuosity. Scholars have stressed her performance of canonic repertory as a practice through which she established this image. In this study I argue that her concerts of the 1830s and 1840s also staged an elevated form of virtuosity through showpieces that inhabited the flagship genres of popular pianism and that, for contemporary critics, possessed qualities of interiority that allowed them to transcend merely physical or “mechanical” engagement with virtuosity. They include Henselt's études and variation sets, Chopin's “Là ci darem” Variations, op. 2, and Clara's own Romance variée, op. 3, Piano Concerto, op. 7, and Pirate Variations, op. 8. Her 1830s and early 1840s programming offers a window onto a rich intertwining of critical discourse, her own and her peers’ compositions, and her strategies as a pianist-composer. This context reveals that aspirations about elevating virtuosity shaped a broader, more varied field of repertory, compositional strategies, and critical responses than we have recognized. It was a capacious, flexible ideology and category whose discourses pervaded the sheet music market, the stage, and the drawing room and embraced not only a venerated, canonic tradition but also the latest popularly styled virtuosic vehicles. In the final stages of the article I propose that Clara Schumann's 1853 Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 20, alludes to her work of the 1830s and 1840s, evoking the range of guises this pianist-composer gave to her virtuosity in what was already a wide-ranging career.

scholarly journals Cultural Hegemony Portrayed in Cutting Edge Pre-Intermediate Textbook

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-57
Author(s):  
Héctor Javier Caro ◽  
Diana Andrea Caro
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Publishing Houses ◽  
Foreign Language Skills

The use of textbooks in the EFL classroom is a trend that shapes the way language teachers teach and how students learn. Teachers design and use a great deal of materials for teaching and developing foreign language skills, but in terms of culture, they usually prefer to trust publishing houses for the cultural content included in their textbooks. What we do not know is that most of these textbooks promote hegemony and standardization of cultures under the conscious or unconscious ideology of the colonization of being. Teachers need to learn how to analyze and unveil the hidden mechanisms of colonization that are portrayed in some textbooks, a process which can be carried out through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis.

Pelléas et Mélisande and the Aesthetic of Sensation

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-135
Author(s):  
Alexandra Kieffer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Pelleas Et Melisande ◽  
Critical Responses ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Exclusive Focus

The premiere of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in late April 1902 occasioned a maelstrom of critical responses in the Parisian press—more than a hundred reviews over the course of a few months and eighty-eight in the month of May alone. A flashpoint of French modernism, the Pelléas premiere catalyzed a rethinking of the nature of music in this critical discourse, as prominent critics, such as Pierre Lalo and Robert Godet, shifted their account of music away from the Revue wagnérienne’s exclusive focus on sentiment and interiority and toward an aesthetics of noise, materiality, and outer sensation. While it was not uncommon for critics to compare the music of Pelléas to Impressionist painting or Symbolist poetry, such comparisons only served to highlight an overriding preoccupation with a specifically musical problem: how to negotiate the demands of musical convention and historicity against the nature of music as material sound.

John McCabe CD round-up

Tempo ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 58 (229) ◽  
pp. 53-54
Author(s):  
Paul Conway
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Chamber Orchestra ◽  
Fibonacci Sequence ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Wind Quintet ◽  
String Trio ◽  
Old City ◽  
Variations On A Theme

JOHN McCABE: Concerto for Piano and Wind Quintet; Musica Notturna; Fauvel's Rondeaux; Postcards for wind quintet. The Fibonacci Sequence. Dutton CDLX 7125.‘Old City New Image’. McCABE: String Trio; String Quartet No. 2. DAVID ELLIS: Trio for violin, viola and cello; String Quartet No. 1. Camerata Ensemble. Campion Cameo 2027.McCABE: Piano Concerto No. 2; Concertante Variations on a theme of Nicholas Maw; Six-Minute Symphony; Sonata on a Motet. Tamami Honma (pno), St Christopher Chamber Orchestra c. Donatas Katkus. Dutton CDLX 7133.‘Tenebrae’. McCABE: Variations; Intermezzi; Sostenuto (Study No. 2); Capriccio (Study No. 1); Aubade (Study No. 4); Tenebrae; Scrunch (Study No. 8); Evening Harmonies (Study No. 7). Tamami Honma (pno). Metier MSV CD92071.

D-Minor Concertos and Symphonies of the Brahms–Schumann Circle in the 1850s: Cross-Relationships and the Influence of Beethoven

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Sholes
Keyword(s):  
Johannes Brahms ◽  
Robert Schumann ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
The Social ◽  
Violin Concertos ◽  
Social Intimacy ◽  
Joseph Joachim ◽  
Symphonic Work

This article examines cross-relationships and mutual influences in the D-minor symphonies and concertos written in the 1850s by a close-knit circle of composers: Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, and their friends Joseph Joachim, Julius Otto Grimm and Albert Dietrich. Outlining the overlapping compositional timelines of Brahms's First Piano Concerto (at one point a candidate to become his first symphonic work), the violin concertos of Joachim and Schumann, and the symphonies of Grimm and Dietrich, it demonstrates that the pieces were shared among the composers during their periods of composition and explores musical correspondences indicating mutual influences both among the composers and from other specific works. The musical choices involved in this group of pieces seem to point to an underlying backdrop of Beethovenian influence involving specific works from Beethoven's body of orchestral music, an oeuvre concluding with an unforgettable symphonic work in D minor—to which the younger generation's collection of works may relate symbolically. This study not only emphasizes the central role that Beethoven played in the minds of these composers in the mid-1850s, but also underscores the musical intimacy that extended from the social intimacy of the composers in the Brahms–Schumann circle.

Plastic Deformation in Microtomed Sections

1971 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 458-459
Author(s):  
J. Temple Black
Keyword(s):  
Plastic Deformation ◽  
Plastic Strain ◽  
Applied Stress ◽  
Elastic Strain ◽  
High Strain ◽  
Tool Material ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
Geometrical Constraints

The output of the ultramicrotomy process with its high strain levels is dependent upon the input, ie., the nature of the material being machined. Apart from the geometrical constraints offered by the rake and clearance faces of the tool, each material is free to deform in whatever manner necessary to satisfy its material structure and interatomic constraints. Noncrystalline materials appear to survive the process undamaged when observed in the TEM. As has been demonstrated however microtomed plastics do in fact suffer damage to the top and bottom surfaces of the section regardless of the sharpness of the cutting edge or the tool material. The energy required to seperate the section from the block is not easily propogated through the section because the material is amorphous in nature and has no preferred crystalline planes upon which defects can move large distances to relieve the applied stress. Thus, the cutting stresses are supported elastically in the internal or bulk and plastically in the surfaces. The elastic strain can be recovered while the plastic strain is not reversible and will remain in the section after cutting is complete.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document