scholarly journals 13. Transfigurations and Interferences of the Ballad Master Builder Manole with the Opera Genre. Choral Polychromies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
Consuela Radu-Țaga
Keyword(s):  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Mixed Choir ◽  
Romantic Music ◽  
Romanian Literature ◽  
Master Builder

Abstract One of the fundamental myths of the Romanian literature, Master Builder Manole had various approaches in the opera genre. On individual stylistic paths as musical language and show formula, Alfred Mendelssohn, Gheorghe Dumitrescu, and Sigismund Toduță reinterpreted the myth of the human sacrifice, in an extremely nuanced approach of the transfiguration of the ancient folklore. The choral inserts are polychromatic, having different forms and formulas: men choir, female choir, mixed choir, choral conglomerations. The three composers wrote a romantic music, in terms of content, and a classic one, in terms of the formal elements themselves.

Dante’s Models in Romantic Music

2021 ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
K.V. Zenkin
Keyword(s):  
Divine Comedy ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
The World ◽  
Romantic Music ◽  
Interdisciplinary Methodology ◽  
The Given

Dante’s impact on music has been studied completely enough, but so far mainly in an empirical and descriptive way. The article examines the works of romantic composers of the 19th - early 20th centuries, based on the plot of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: Liszt’s fantasy-sonata “After reading Dante” and the “Dante-Symphony”, the “Francesca da Rimini” by Tchaikovsky (symphonic fantasy) and Rachmaninoff (opera). The author analyses compositional and stylistic models of the romantic music inspired by Dante’s poetry as a system, which is relevant for modern musicology, in particular, for the theories of musical language, style, and musical meaning. Along with the traditional musicological methods of analysis of form and intonational dramaturgy, an interdisciplinary methodology is applied, associated with the coverage of the entire system of musical compositional prototypes as a structuring of meaning. This has a pronounced narrative poetic nature in romantic music. The results of the study demonstrate a system of structural and semantic invariants (secondary, musical models) conditioned by Dante’s figurative world and manifested in melody, harmony, fret organization, composition. The conclusions of the article reveal the roles of Dante’s models of the world in the works considered in the following aspects: in the process of extreme intensification of the contrasts of romantic music in the semantic coordinates of “Hell – Paradise”; “Love – Death”; in the approval of the concept of Liebestod; in the creation of new, extreme expressive possibilities for the given style, which significantly expanded the idea of the boundaries of beauty and caused transformations in musical sound (harmony, texture, melody); in the formation of stable idioms of romantic music from Liszt to Rachmaninov; in the modification of the structures of a one-part sonata, of the cyclic symphony, and of opera, which have received the quality of a vectorial dramaturgical process and open dramaturgy.

scholarly journals Կոմիտասին և հայոց ցեղասպանությանը նվիրված Տիգրան Մանսուրյանի երկերը

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-24
Author(s):  
Աննա Արևշատյան
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Orchestra ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
String Orchestra ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Special Position ◽  
The Past ◽  
Armenian Music ◽  
Mixed Choir ◽  
The 1960S

Among the works, dedicated to Komitas and the Armenian Genocide, the oeuvre of the outstanding contemporary Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian (born 1939) holds a special position. T. Mansurian addressed this topic back at the end of the 1960s. Most notable are, however, his large-scale compositions, created over the past decade, such as Concerto No. 4 for cello and string orchestra, "Where is thy brother Abel?" (2010), Requiem for soloists, mixed choir and chamber orchestra (2011), Sonata da chiesa for viola and piano (2015). The musical language and stylistic peculiarities of the above works testify to the fact that T. Mansurian is a direct successor to Komitas' creative traditions and an innovator, too, whose works have largely enriched contemporary Armenian music, imparting a new quality to the Armenian compositional thought.

"EPIGRAPH BY COUNT TOLSTOY TO HIS NOVEL "ANNA KARENINA" BY R. SHCHEDRIN: PARADIGM OF POLYPHONIC THINKING

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-67
Author(s):  
N. V. Koshkareva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Main Idea ◽  
Compositional Style ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
A Cappella ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Anna Karenina ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Mixed Choir

Rodion Shchedrin's choral work represents the most interesting area of modern musical culture. The object of the analysis is the composition "Epigraph by Count Tolstoy to His Novel "Anna Karenina" for mixed choir a cappella as a demonstration of the key feature of Rodion Shchedrin's compositional style — polyphonic thinking. This aspect becomes an argument for the relevance of the topic. Through the synthesis of research methods, the parameters of musical composition are studied: literary source, musical form, texture, and melody. In addition, the author reveals the "Russian theme" in the choral work of R. Shchedrin, identifies the specifics of the composer's individual choral style, and defines the aspects of polyphonization of the means of musical language. The "Epigraph" explains the main idea of L. Tolstoy's novel and concentrates on the most important contextual continuum development of all the events that take place. A wide semantic field of textual basis becomes an impulse for polyphonization of all musical expressive means. Polyphony as an idiom of R. Shchedrin's composer's handwriting is born, among other things, in the fusion of artistic trends and styles. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the literary basis of the "Epigraph", woven from historical, theological, philosophical, artistic and poetic layers, required a synthesis of traditional and innovative musical expressive means — "a new polyphonic word" in the author's expression of the main paradigms of the Russian theme by R. Shchedrin.

Music of Tragedy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Instrumental Accompaniment ◽  
And Performance

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Drawing on the ancient conception of mousikē, in which words, song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment were closely linked, Naomi Weiss emphasizes the interplay of performance and imagination—the connection between the chorus’s own live singing and dancing in the theater and the images of music-making that frequently appear in their songs. Through detailed readings of four plays, she argues that the mousikē referred to and imagined in these plays is central to the progression of the dramatic action and to ancient audiences’ experiences of tragedy itself. She situates Euripides’s experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousikē within a broader cultural context, and in doing so, she shows how he both continues the practices of his tragic predecessors and also departs from them, reinventing traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage.

The Musical Language of Kindertotenlieder No. 2

1983 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Kofi Agawu
Keyword(s):  
Musical Language

Thresholds of Time and Space

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-28
Author(s):  
Susan Milbrath
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Cardinal Directions ◽  
Death Imagery

Analysis of the iconography in a directional almanac on Codex Borgia pages 49–52 invites comparison with almanacs in a related set of divinatory manuscripts known as the Borgia Group, but one aspect of the Codex Borgia almanac remains unique. It records real-time dates employing the central Mexican system of year dates that help identify the images as year-end rituals. These fifteenth-century dates correlate with the last twenty-day “month” in the year, known as Izcalli in the Valley of Mexico and neighboring Tlaxcala. Izcalli rituals in February involved drilling a new fire, the erection of sacred trees, and animal sacrifice, all of which appear on Borgia 49–52. During Izcalli, human sacrifice was performed only every fourth year, a pattern like that seen in the Codex Borgia and the Codex Cospi, where death imagery and decapitated humans appear prominently on the fourth year-bearer page, associated with the southern direction. Borgia Group codices also depict trees and birds representing the four cardinal directions. These are most prominent on Codex Fejérváry-Mayer page 1 in a cosmogram representing two different calendar formats, like those seen in the Borgia almanac. The 5 × 52-day format was used to measure the solar year and Venus cycle, and a second set of day signs appears in a 4 × 65-day pattern useful in calculating the fifty-two-year cycle and the Venus cycle. This provides a subtext for understanding the dates represented on Borgia 49–52 and the extension of the almanac on page 53, where the Venus almanac begins.

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