scholarly journals Reimagining Historical Improvisation

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilad Rabinovitch
Keyword(s):  
Performance Practice ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
Listening Guide ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Digital Reproduction ◽  
Historical Practices ◽  
Musical Communication

Reimagining historical improvisation is a speculative pursuit: like any other aspect of historical performance practice, historical improvisations by living musicians create modern sounds (Taruskin 1995). However, historical notations, treatises, and accounts of performances provide substantial clues for reconstructing historical practices of improvisation (Gjerdingen 2007a; Levin 2009; Sanguinetti 2012; Guido 2017). Gjerdingen (2007a) highlights the role of phrase schemata in eighteenth-century music learning and creativity in composition, improvisation, or anywhere in between. Levin’s live improvisation in the style of Mozart at Cambridge University on October 29, 2012, captured on YouTube, serves as an analytical case study for the significance of conventional schemata in the musicianship of a living, elite-expert historical improviser. I reflect on Levin’s manipulations of schemata, allusions to the original pieces requested by the audience, as well as on interconnections between the various parts of his fantasy. Music analysis thus becomes here a reflection on improvisatory technique. The analysis also outlines the challenging listening horizons for audience members with significant experience in the style. Finally, our age of digital reproduction allows us to turn this ephemeral act of musical communication into an object for speculation, creating analytical “suggestions” for readers (Temperley 1999) or a listening guide for a historically-informed fantasy.

scholarly journals Piping Sung: Women, Canntaireachd and the Role of the Tradition-Bearer

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Joshua Dickson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Performance Practice ◽  
Flexible Tool ◽  
Performance Style ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The 19Th Century

Canntaireachd (pronounced ‘counter-achk’), Gaelic for ‘chanting’, is a complex oral notation used by Scottish pipers for centuries to teach repertoire and performance style in the courtly, ceremonial ceòl mór idiom. Its popular historiography since the 19th century suggests it was fixed and highly formulaic in structure and therefore formal (as befitting its connection to ceòl mór), its use the preserve of the studied elite. However, field recordings of pipers and other tradition-bearers collected and archived since the 1950s in the School of Scottish Studies present a vast trove of evidence suggesting that canntaireachd as a living, vocal medium was (and remains) a dynamic and flexible tool, adapted and refined to personal tastes by each musician; and that it was (is) widely used as well in the transmission of the vernacular ceòl beag idiom - pipe music for dancing and marching. In this paper, I offer some remarks on the nature of canntaireachd, followed by a review of the role of women in the transmission and performance of Highland, and specifically Hebridean, bagpipe music, including the use of canntaireachd as a surrogate performance practice. There follows a case study of Mary Morrison, a woman of twentieth century Barra upbringing, who specialised in performing canntaireachd; concluding with a discussion on what her singing of pipe music has to say about her knowledge of piping and the nature of her role as, arguably, a piping tradition-bearer.

Musical communication in scaffolding young learners’ expressive agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-309
Author(s):  
Shinko Kondo
Keyword(s):  
Video Observation ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Children's Music ◽  
Physical Motion ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
Teacher Researcher ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Musical Understanding ◽  
Musical Communication

In a qualitative study of the nature of musical communication during scaffolding music learning, the most important themes to emerge reflected the role of musical communication in blossoming young learners’ expressive agency. The study focused on two different groups of young piano learners (aged 4–9) during collaborative (listening, creating, and performing) problem-solving experiences. Working as a teacher-researcher in the context of my own studio piano classes, I documented verbal and nonverbal interactions that occurred during the lessons. Data were collected primarily through video observation, field notes and a reflective journal. Analysis included the construction of narrative vignettes from these data. Analysis revealed that the children’s music learning was a creative process of transformation, as they negotiated and renegotiated their own meaning and that of others through musical communication. Possessing their own communicative musicality, learners exhibited ability to share a range of musical understanding and sensitivities through both sound and physical motion. Findings suggest that children’s music learning is not only located in individual minds but is anchored in a communicative landscape and when learners are engaged in musical scaffolding their expressive agency is enabled.

scholarly journals Musemes in affect. Philip Tagg’s model of music analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-105
Author(s):  
Stefania Zielonka
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Musical Communication

The paper is an attempt to synthesize the most important aspects of a model of popular and film music analysis proposed by British musicologist Philip Tagg. Tagg, using the category of musemes – universal meaning units, isolated from the musical structure of the composition on the basis of criteria established for every given case – examines selected pieces using multi-level semiotic analysis. In his model Tagg takes into account both the importance of the broadly understood cultural context and the intertextuality of the piece. He also emphasizes the role of affect in musical communication, which is necessary to fully understand the meaning of a musical work.

Inclusion of a music learner with ASD through play-full intersubjectivity

2020 ◽  
pp. 1321103X2093520
Author(s):  
Lauri A Hogle
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Choral Ensemble ◽  
Education Experience ◽  
Peer Scaffolding ◽  
Entire Ensemble

Through a case study of Jad (pseudonym), a music learner with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), I sought to understand his experiences as he engaged in peer scaffolding activities of a choral ensemble. The study illuminated the role of intersubjectivity (or shared understanding) in socially mediated music learning within an environment of inclusion. Through inclusive, play-full, intersubjective attunement of younger children to Jad, he increasingly took on a role as an empathetic teacher-helper, initially with his younger sister, then with other young children, then with the entire ensemble. Jad also increasingly displayed musical agency through physical movement during music-making, contributing to others’ understanding and musical agency. The findings describe intersections of play with intersubjectivity, focusing on learner attunement to affect and emotion in fostering an inclusive music education experience. Making space for peer scaffolding and playfulness within this music learning environment fostered shared understanding and empathy among all learners, including one with ASD.

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.

The role of multiplicity in a cult: A case study

1987 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Worrall ◽  
Ann W. Stockman
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document