Berio’s Duetti per due violini: An introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 175-184
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Luciano Berio ◽  
Specific Technique ◽  
Pierre Boulez ◽  
Twentieth Century Music

Abstract This article is the summary of a workshop on the violin duets of Béla Bartók and Luciano Berio, and the pedagogical implications of the works. Bartók’s Forty-Four Duos are based on folk melodies, and in this workshop, we explored how the text of certain melodies are recreated using tone-painting in the music. Luciano Berio’s 34 Duetti were inspired by the Duos of Bartók, and each duet focuses on a specific technique or concept in twentieth-century music. Like Bartók did with his Duos, Berio also intended his pieces to be performed by children as well as professionals. In addition, Berio’s duets are each inspired by a person, story, or event. All duets refer to a person with their surname, including Béla [Bartók] (no. 1), Pierre [Boulez] (no. 14), Edoardo [Sanguinetti] (no. 20), Vinko [Globokar] (no. 22), Igor [Stravinky] (no. 28) or Lorin [Maazel] (no. 33). In this workshop we explored how Berio recreates these inspirations in his music.

scholarly journals Boulez's orientation towards understanding the beginnings of contemporary music: 'Mahler - our contemporary?'

New Sound ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 20-27
Author(s):  
Anja Lazarević
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Gustav Mahler ◽  
Pierre Boulez ◽  
Twentieth Century Music

The central part of Orientations - the collected writings of Pierre Boulez is based on Boulez's mostly short texts about composers whom he considered relevant for his oeuvre and contemplations of music. In addition to other texts, in the part of the book entitled "Examples", Boulez wrote three chapters on the composer Gustav Mahler. Besides Orientations, Boules often spoke about Mahler in his interviews and at lectures he gave. His idea of Mahler was in fact the idea of the beginnings of contemporary music. Considering Boulez's sharp sentences, we come across a wealthy network of judgments about Mahler and his wide influence on twentieth-century music, and we acquire a better understanding of Mahler, who, according to Boulez's statements, could be understood only from the perspective of contemporary music.

The Music of Béla Bartók. A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-Century Music

1987 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Philippe A. Autexier ◽  
Elliott Antokoletz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Twentieth Century Music

The Doctor Faustus Dossier

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Daub
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Doctor Faustus ◽  
Public Lives ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
The Impact

Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, two towering figures of twentieth-century music and literature, both found refuge in the German-exile community in Los Angeles during the Nazi era. This complete edition of their correspondence provides a glimpse inside their private and public lives and culminates in the famous dispute over Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. In the thick of the controversy was Theodor Adorno, then a budding philosopher, whose contribution to the Faustus affair would make him an enemy of both families. Gathered here for the first time in English, the letters are complemented by diary entries, related articles, and other primary source materials, as well as an introduction that contextualizes the impact that these two great artists had on twentieth-century thought and culture.

Queering Musical Biography in the Writings of Edward Prime-Stevenson and Rosa Newmarch

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-118
Author(s):  
Kristin M. Franseen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Benjamin Britten ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Music Research ◽  
Symphonic Music ◽  
Biographical Knowledge

Beginning with the “open secret” of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears's relationship and continuing through debates over Handel's and Schubert's sexuality and analyses of Ethel Smyth's memoirs, biography has played a central role in the development of queer musicology. At the same time, life-writing's focus on extramusical details and engagement with difficult-to-substantiate anecdotes and rumors often seem suspect to scholars. In the case of early-twentieth-century music research, however, these very gaps and ambiguities paradoxically offered some authors and readers at the time rare spaces for approaching questions of sexuality in music. Issues of subjectivity in instrumental music aligned well with rumors about autobiographical confession within Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) for those who knew how to listen and read between the lines. This article considers the different ways in which the framing of biographical anecdotes and gossip in scholarship by music critic-turned-amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson and Tchaikovsky scholar Rosa Newmarch allowed for queer readings of symphonic music. It evaluates Prime-Stevenson's discussions of musical biography and interpretation in The Intersexes (1908/9) and Newmarch's Tchaikovsky: His Life and Works (1900), translation of Modest Tchaikovsky's biography, and article on the composer in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians to explore how they addressed potentially taboo topics, engaged with formal and informal sources of biographical knowledge (including one another's work), and found their scholarly voices in the absence of academic frameworks for addressing gender and sexuality. While their overt goals were quite different—Newmarch sought to dismiss “sensationalist” rumors about Tchaikovsky's death for a broad readership, while Prime-Stevenson used queer musical gossip as a primary source in his self-published history of homosexuality—both grappled with questions of what can and cannot be read into a composer's life and works and how to relate to possible queer meanings in symphonic music. The very aspects of biography that place it in a precarious position as scholarship ultimately reveal a great deal about the history of musicology and those who write it.

Exploring Twentieth-Century Music

1971 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-123
Author(s):  
Henry Leland Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century Music
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