scholarly journals Meditations for organ: parallels to musical creativeness

Author(s):  
Darina Kupina

The purpose of the article is to determine genre parameters of meditation for the organ on the example of the pieces of composers of the early 21st century. It is proposed to concretize the prerequisites of meditation for organ as an independent genre and to compare the strategies of reading the genre by representatives of different national schools of composition (Italy, Ukraine, Brazil). Among the research methods there were used: historiographic (restoring the historical retrospective of genre formation), the method of genre analysis (confirming the genre status of meditation), the method of style determination in combination with the comparative method (comparing the strategies of reading the genre by composers of different nationalities). The novelty of the proposed topic lies in the identification of the genre status of meditation for the organ and the introduction into the musicological discourse of works that have not previously come to the attention of Ukrainian researchers. Conclusions. Meditations “Shiva” by K. Ferrari, “And there was night, and there was morning, and there were quiet heavenly flutes...” by M. Shukh and Prelude-Meditation by F. Costa make it possible to define meditation as an independent genre of organ art with a constant set of stable indicators. Meditation for the organ is a concert piece that belongs to the genres of cult-ritual music and is characterized by an introverted structure of the communicative act. All works with a similar genre name are united by a single semantic field of religious contemplation. The compositional foundations of meditation as a genre consist in the multiple repetition of structures (of different scales) with a clear “looseness” of the form, which guarantees the tightness of the same sound environment and the monochromatic text. Stylistic characteristics became variable components of the meditation: the meditative profile of “Shiva” by C. Ferrari is emphasized by the using of techniques of minimalism, in the piece by M. Shukh the emphasis is transferred to the timbre of the organ with appeal to the intonation of oriental music, and in the Prelude-meditation by F. Costa attempts to build a new sound universe, as extended scale of the overtone series.

Author(s):  
Maksim N. SHEVCHENKO

This article follows the discussion that developed in the Russian historiography around the postulates formulated by the founders of “historical phenomenology”. The author attempts to identify the most controversial topics of discussion and to form an idea of its role in the development of theoretical and methodological principles of the Russian medieval studies in the early 21st century. The study of the problem has required using historical-genetic and historical-comparative research methods. This article shows an extremely polarized attitude of the Russian researchers to the theoretical and methodological postulates of the “historical phenomenology”. The Russian historians have already addressed this problem, but their writings made no attempt to generalize the criticism or sum up the discussion. The new works, similarly to the previous ones, are written in the genre of criticism of the research program by A. L. Yurganov and A. V. Karavashkin and only multiply works of this nature. The author believes that the time has come to define the results of the controversy, to highlight the key ideas criticized by researchers, and thus, to determine the most controversial topics of the theoretical and methodological legacy of the Russian medieval studies in the early 21st century. Based on the intensity of critical comments, this paper identifies three of the most controversial positions of “historical phenomenology”. Special attention is paid to the problem of “explaining” and “understanding” the research methods, the idea of the “supra-historical” unity and the principle of “non-referentiality” in research analysis. This paper concludes that during the discussion, the Russian researchers clarified their views on the essence of a number of terms and concepts. The polemics initiated by A. L. Yurganov and A. V. Karavashkin allowed drawing clearer lines of demarcation both in the theory and practice of humanities research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
T Dowling ◽  
Somikazi Deyi ◽  
Anele Gobodwana

While there have been a number of studies on the decontextualisation and secularisation of traditional ritual music in America, Taiwan and other parts of the globe, very little has been written on the processes and transformations that South Africa’s indigenous ceremonial songs go through over time. This study was prompted by the authors’ interest in, and engagement with the Xhosa initiation song Somagwaza, which has been re-imagined as a popular song, but has also purportedly found its way into other religious spaces. In this article, we attempted to investigate the extent to which the song Somagwaza is still associated with the Xhosa initiation ritual and to analyse evidence of it being decontextualised and secularised in contemporary South Africa. Our methodology included an examination of the various academic treatments of the song, an analysis of the lyrics of a popular song, bearing the same name, holding small focus group discussions, and distributing questionnaires to speakers of isiXhosa on the topic of the song. The data gathered were analysed using the constant comparative method of analysing qualitative research.


2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan R. Heier ◽  
A. Lee Gurley

On January 26, 1983, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) announced that it would require all railroads under its regulatory jurisdiction to change from Retirement-Replacement-Betterment (RRB) accounting, to a more theoretically sound depreciation accounting for matching revenues and expenses. The change was needed because RRB did not allow for the recapture of track investment, leaving the railroads with limited capital to replace aging track lines. Over the previous three decades, it had become painfully obvious to everyone that the industry's economic woes were the result of archaic accounting procedures that lacked harmony with the rest of American accounting standards, but the ICC was reluctant to change until new tax legislation in the early 1980s forced the issue. The decision was a culmination of a debate that started in the mid-1950s when Arthur Andersen, with the help of the securities industry, began an effort to harmonize railroad and industry standards using arguments that mirror those supporting the international accounting harmonization efforts of the early 21st century.


Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 1543-1579
Author(s):  
Paula Rodríguez-Abruñeiras

AbstractThis article discusses the diachronic development of the Spanish multifunctional formula en plan (with its variant en plan de, literally ‘in plan (of)’ but usually equivalent to English like). The article has two main aims: firstly, to describe the changes that the formula has undergone since its earliest occurrences as a marker in the nineteenth century up to the early 21st century. The diachronic study evinces a process of grammaticalization in three steps: from noun to clause adverbial and then to discourse marker. Secondly, to conduct a contrastive analysis between en plan (de) and the English markers like and kind of/kinda so as to shed new light on the potential existence of a universal pathway of grammaticalization in the emergence of discourse markers.


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