W. de Wicumbe's Rolls and Singing the Alleluya ca. 1250

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-709
Author(s):  
Karen Desmond
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Early Date ◽  
Monastic Communities ◽  
And Performance

Abstract A set of thirteenth-century parchment fragments, including the remnants of two rolls and one manuscript codex, preserves a largely unstudied repertoire unique to medieval England. In addition to a single motet and a setting of a responsory verse, the Rawlinson Fragments preserve twelve three-voice Alleluya settings. While polyphonic Alleluyas are well known from the continental Magnus liber repertoire, these insular Alleluya settings are quite different. Most significantly, while composed on the text and pitches of plainchant, they include newly composed texts in at least one voice—that is, they are polytextual chant settings. Aspects of their musical style certainly draw on other polyphonic genres—organum, conductus, and motet. This article presents the paleographical and codicological evidence that corroborates an early date for these fragments (in the 1240s), confirms their connection to Reading Abbey, and situates their repertoire within a broader context. My analysis points to intriguing points of overlap with both the plainchant prosula tradition and the Magnus liber organa and motets. It reopens broader questions about the copying and performance practices of liturgical polyphony, including previous suggestions that motet texts may have been sung within the performance of the Magnus liber organa, regardless of the scribal copying conventions that separated organum and motet in the surviving Magnus liber manuscripts. The article also considers the role of the Rawlinson Fragments’ main scribe, Benedictine monk W. de Wicumbe, who was active within the monastic communities of Leominster and Reading as a composer of plainchant and polyphony, and as precentor, most likely in charge of his community's musical life.

A taxonomy of musical gesture in African American gospel music

Popular Music ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Legg
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Conventional Notation ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
And Performance

AbstractAfrican American gospel music seems without obvious parallel as a musical and social phenomenon of the twentieth century. It is a powerful musical and ‘spiritual’ expression that is to a larger extent defined by the musical style, vocal techniques and performance practices of one of its central figures: the gospel singer. Although these originally African American gospel vocal techniques and practices have now also significantly influenced the development of contemporary popular music and the broader gospel vocal style, the specific terminology used to describe them lacks precise definition, and also highlights the failure of conventional notation in successfully capturing or representing them.This article seeks then to firstly define and annotate some of the key descriptive terms commonly applied to African American gospel singing techniques in order that greater consistency and clarity can be achieved in relation to their usage within contemporary popular music research. Secondly, it will also introduce an analytical notational system, accompanied by a series of annotated musical transcriptions, that forms the basis of the author's taxonomy of musical gesture for African American gospel music, and which may provide a framework for comparative analytical research within the field of gospel-inspired contemporary popular music.

JOHANN SIGISMUND COUSSER, WILLIAM III AND THE SERENATA IN EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DUBLIN

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-39
Author(s):  
SAMANTHA OWENS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Compositional Style ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
And Performance ◽  
William Iii

ABSTRACTAmong the holdings of Hamburg’s Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky is an anonymous fifty-two-page score headed ‘Serenata à 4’, described in the corresponding catalogue entry by its former owner, German musicologist Friedrich Chrysander (1826–1901), as a ‘cantata for the funeral of the English king William III of Orange, 1702’. But both the work’s text and the recent identification of the manuscript as being in the hand of Johann Sigismund Cousser (1660–1727) call for a reassessment of this serenata’s provenance, situating it in either England or Ireland between Cousser’s arrival in London on Christmas Day 1704 and the end of Queen Anne’s reign in 1714. Over the course of the two decades he resided in Ireland, from 4 July 1707 until his death, Cousser was responsible for the composition and musical direction of one ode and more than twenty serenatas, the majority of which were commissioned by the viceregal court at Dublin Castle for state celebrations of the reigning monarch’s birthday. Taking printed librettos, contemporary newspaper reports, Cousser’s own commonplace book and two further surviving manuscript scores as its primary evidence, this study seeks to establish a likely location and occasion for the performance of the ‘William III’ serenata within Dublin’s musical life during the early eighteenth century. In their choice of terminology, compositional style and performance practices, Cousser’s serenatas, which may have incorporated elements of theatrical staging and dancing, reveal his extensive Continental experience, and they can be seen to have functioned in part as an operatic substitute, presumably reflecting the limited financial resources of Dublin high society.

THE CARDINALS’ MUSIC: MUSICAL INTERESTS AT THE PAPAL CURIA C. 1200–1304

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 97-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Musical Interests ◽  
Polyphonic Music

AbstractThe papacy and cardinalate in the period between Innocent III (1198–1216) and Benedict XI (1033–1304) can be shown to have had a wide range of musical interests. Papal inventories, testamentary legacies, chronicles and understudied visual evidence allow the piecing together of a lively and wide-ranging concern with music, liturgy and performance. The development of polyphonic music, the growing popularity of bells, and a lively interest among artists in portraying liturgical ceremonies and musical performance at the behest of their ecclesiastical clientele allow us to form a far more nuanced picture of the musical life of thirteenth-century Rome.

scholarly journals Das kyōgen-Stück Rōmusha (Die alten Krieger)

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-325
Author(s):  
Sven Schürkes
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Premodern Japan ◽  
And Performance

Abstract This paper presents a translation of the kyōgen play Rōmusha based on the text from the Toraakibon of the Ōkura (mid seventeenth century) school. It features the role of a boy acolyte within the homoerotic tradition of Buddhist temples in premodern Japan. Those boys were usually termed chigo. While there is already a considerable amount of research done on the historic circumstances and literary conventions in other genres, their appearance in kyōgen theater may add fruitful insights and also shed some light on their function in the comical arts. In the recent years Rōmusha has been performed again several times and it offers a vivid, realistic and erotic atmosphere which is rare to be seen in classical kyōgen. The paper aims to illustrate the structure of the play. While the focus is on the role of the chigo, comical aspects of the drama, references to nō theatre and different interpretations and performance practices will also be mentioned.

Influence, Hybridity and How the Past is a Foreign Country

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Edna Lim
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Foreign Country ◽  
Hybrid Films ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One

This chapter discusses two ways that films from the golden age could be considered Singapore films. First, when viewed within the context of its time, the golden age is a cinema of hybrid films produced by a culturally heterogeneous and transnational industry and country. The hybridity of the films is apparent in the narrative, musical style and language which reveal a diversity of influences ranging from other cinematic conventions such as Hollywood and Bollywood cinemas and performance practices like bangsawan theatre. Second, watching these films now creates a ‘consciousness of doubling’ between the Singapore in the films and the one materially present today. It is precisely because we see (an)other Singapore being performed at each viewing that the films from the golden age can be considered Singapore films.

ORCHESTRATION AND PITCH PRECISION IN THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC OF MARC SABAT

Tempo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (295) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Taylor Brook
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Just Intonation ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Unique Manner ◽  
And Performance ◽  
High Degree

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between orchestration and microtonality in the music of Marc Sabat through a score-based analysis of two recent works, Asking Ocean (2016), for string quartet and large ensemble, and The Luminiferous Aether (2018), for large orchestra. Excerpts from these two compositions are discussed to highlight the challenges of composing for orchestral forces in a musical style that demands a high degree of microtonal pitch precision. Through retuning, alteration, and a sensitivity to the construction, techniques and performance practices of orchestral instruments, Sabat has developed a unique manner of orchestrating that is at once timbrally rich and uncompromising in pitch precision. After a brief introduction to the extended just intonation framework that Sabat employs, his concepts of ‘fixed microtonal pitches’ and ‘tuneable intervals’ are discussed and connected to orchestration in his scores. Drawing upon this analysis, connections are made between the microtonal system with orchestration and musical aesthetics broadly.

scholarly journals TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SABAR DRUMS: INNOVATIONS IN ORGANOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE PRACTICES IN SENEGAL AND THE DIASPORA

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Patricia Tang
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
South African ◽  
First Century ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Jazz Performance ◽  
Oral History Interviews

This article contributes to the substantial body of publications on South African jazz with information on jazz performance and performers in New Brighton, a township adjacent to Port Elizabeth noted for its vibrant jazz scene and outstanding jazz musicians. The article covers several decades from the heyday of swing bands in the 1940s–50s through the 1960s–70s when New Brighton’s premier jazz combo, the Soul Jazzmen, were at the height of their artistry. The role of swing bands in New Brighton and surrounding communities as the training ground for members of the Soul Jazzmen and other local musicians of note is discussed, as well as how the Soul Jazzmen in turn were tutors for musicians of the next generation who became widely recognized artists, composers and arrangers. This is followed by a focus on the Soul Jazzmen and compositions by its members that protested against the apartheid regime in the 1960s–70s. The article is informed by historic photographs, newspaper clippings and information from oral history interviews that richly document how jazz was performed in service of the anti-apartheid struggle in New Brighton.

Re-Making the English Organ: Musical and Liturgical Contexts, 1830–1870

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-93
Author(s):  
Nicholas Thistlethwaite
Keyword(s):  
Performance Practice ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Organ Music ◽  
Classical Form ◽  
Preliminary Discussion ◽  
Liturgical Practice ◽  
And Performance

The article describes the evolution of the English organ under the influence of changes in musical style and liturgical practice between 1830 and 1870. A preliminary discussion of the Georgian organ and the performance conventions of its players provides a benchmark against which to measure the ensuing changes. S.S. Wesley is taken as a case study with reference to changes made to the Hereford Cathedral organ in 1832; it is argued that these reflect Wesley's musical priorities, a point that is further illustrated by a consideration of the registration markings found in the original manuscripts of ‘The Wilderness’ (1832) and ‘Blessed be the God and Father’ (1834). They also demonstrate an innovative use of the pedals.In the following section the influence of Mendelssohn is discussed. His performances of Bach in England during the 1830s and 1840s promoted a radical change is organ design and performance practice; the C-compass organs with German pedal divisions built by (among others) William Hill were ideal instruments both for Bach's organ music and for Mendelssohn's own organ sonatas which combined classical form with a romantic sensibility.The concluding section reviews developments in the years 1850–70. It considers changes in console design and the growing taste for orchestral registers, even in church organs. Choral accompaniments also became more orchestral in character, and a number of representative examples from Ouseley's Special Anthems (1861, 1866) are discussed. Liturgical changes after 1850 are also considered, together with their impact on the role of the organ in worship.

Trace nanoanalysis

1994 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 940-941
Author(s):  
D. E. Newbury ◽  
R. D. Leapman
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Detection Efficiency ◽  
Volume Element ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Trace Constituents ◽  
Secondary Ion ◽  
Concentration Levels ◽  
Structure Properties

Trace constituents, which can be very loosely defined as those present at concentration levels below 1 percent, often exert influence on structure, properties, and performance far greater than what might be estimated from their proportion alone. Defining the role of trace constituents in the microstructure, or indeed even determining their location, makes great demands on the available array of microanalytical tools. These demands become increasingly more challenging as the dimensions of the volume element to be probed become smaller. For example, a cubic volume element of silicon with an edge dimension of 1 micrometer contains approximately 5×1010 atoms. High performance secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) can be used to measure trace constituents to levels of hundreds of parts per billion from such a volume element (e. g., detection of at least 100 atoms to give 10% reproducibility with an overall detection efficiency of 1%, considering ionization, transmission, and counting).

The Relation Between Financial Incentives, Motivation, and Performance

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaïs Thibault Landry ◽  
Marylène Gagné ◽  
Jacques Forest ◽  
Sylvie Guerrero ◽  
Michel Séguin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Work Performance ◽  
Autonomous Motivation ◽  
Compensation Plans ◽  
Work Settings ◽  
Path Analyses ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performance Results

Abstract. To this day, researchers are debating the adequacy of using financial incentives to bolster performance in work settings. Our goal was to contribute to current understanding by considering the moderating role of distributive justice in the relation between financial incentives, motivation, and performance. Based on self-determination theory, we hypothesized that when bonuses are fairly distributed, using financial incentives makes employees feel more competent and autonomous, which in turn fosters greater autonomous motivation and lower controlled motivation, and better work performance. Results from path analyses in three samples supported our hypotheses, suggesting that the effect of financial incentives is contextual, and that compensation plans using financial incentives and bonuses can be effective when properly managed.

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