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.

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.

scholarly journals Hybridity in Transition

Te Kaharoa ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie Madril
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Artist Educator ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Authentic Voice ◽  
Traditional Performance

In 1923 a paper was written to describe the traditional Hopi ceremonial ways. The phrase “hybridity in transition” was a descriptor of their process. This was a time when many aspects of Indigenous traditions including language, were illegal or prohibited in many ways. This paper and performance explores the evolution of pseudo-traditional performance practices over the past century. How can a culture maintain its core-values and essence, explicitly or embedded within new forms of presenting and representing its identity and authentic voice? Using empirical evidence, we journey through the transition from an art form a child participates in, the lifelong dancer, and to the artist-educator in order to justify creative modifications to traditions. How can cultural traditions be maintained and celebrated during times of suppression? How and why is tradition important to each generation as it faces major social influences? What is the value and power of collaborative work between tradition and modernity? How can an Indigenous culture explore, decolonize and empower its future thorough performance?

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 A FIRST THROW OF THE STONE: A PILOT OF REDESIGNED CO-OP WORK TERM REQUIREMENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Gwyn ◽  
Joel B. Frey ◽  
Leo Spalteholz
Keyword(s):  
Student Engagement ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

This paper describes the progress made over the past year on UVic’s project to redesign their co-op work term requirements. The new requirements are intended to increase the amount of instruction and assessment of higher-level Graduate Attributes in the program, to improve student engagement with and performance on work term requirement, and to replace a final year technical writing course that does not seem to be achieving its intended outcomes. A pilot of the one component of this project will run from May – August 2019. In this paper we will describe the material that has been developed for the pilot. We will also discuss the process by which the material was developed and the details of organizing the pilot.  

Hymn for a Sunday Evening

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Maslon
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Broadway Musical ◽  
Primetime Television ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Variety Show ◽  
The Town ◽  
Sunday Evening

Ed Sullivan dominated Sunday night primetime television for a quarter of a century with his extremely popular and inclusive variety show (first called Toast of the Town, then The Ed Sullivan Show). A former (and concurrent) Broadway columnist, Sullivan adored the mythology of Broadway and promoted its history—in song and performance—on practically every broadcast. Expanding on the reach of radio, television allowed for millions of Americans to get their first glimpse of Broadway magic through Sullivan’s promotion of current shows and tributes to giants of the past. The musical Bye Bye Birdie paid homage to the great impresario of the television age by writing him into the show. Sullivan’s domination of the airwaves also nearly parallels the so-called Golden Age of the Broadway musical.

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.

The Many Pasts of Detective Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Thomas Leitch
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Public History ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Detective Novels ◽  
The Many

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.

Al-Rasm al-ʿUthmānī: Towards Correct Pronunciation and the Preclusion of Ambiguity

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-171
Author(s):  
Nāṣir Al-Dīn Abū Khaḍīr
Keyword(s):  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Correct Pronunciation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The ʿUthmānic way of writing (al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī) is a science that specialises in the writing of Qur'anic words in accordance with a specific ‘pattern’. It follows the writing style of the Companions at the time of the third caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, and was attributed to ʿUthmān on the basis that he was the one who ordered the collection and copying of the Qur'an into the actual muṣḥaf. This article aims to expound on the two fundamental functions of al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī: that of paying regard to the ‘correct’ pronunciation of the words in the muṣḥaf, and the pursuit of the preclusion of ambiguity which may arise in the mind of the reader and his auditor. There is a further practical aim for this study: to show the connection between modern orthography and the ʿUthmānic rasm in order that we, nowadays, are thereby able to overcome the problems faced by calligraphers and writers of the past in their different ages and cultures.

Sea Urchins and Circuses: The Modernist Natural Histories of Jean Painlevé and Alexander Calder

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Sea Urchins ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The One ◽  
Natural Historian

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.

‘Newness which never perishes’? Schoenberg’s ambivalent reception of Haydn

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-224
Author(s):  
Alexander Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
Music Tradition

This paper explores Arnold Schoenberg’s curious ambivalence towards Haydn. Schoenberg recognized Haydn as an important figure in the German serious music tradition, but never closely examined or clearly articulated Haydn’s influence and import on his own musical style and ethos, as he did with many other major composers. This paper argues that Schoenberg failed to explicitly recognize Haydn as a major influence because he saw Haydn as he saw himself, namely as a somewhat ungainly, paradoxical figure, with one foot in the past and one in the future. In his voluminous writings on music, Haydn is mentioned by Schoenberg far less frequently than Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven, and his music appears rarely as examples in Schoenberg’s theoretical texts. When Schoenberg does talk about Haydn’s music, he invokes — with tacit negativity — its accessibility, counterpoising it with more recondite music, such as Beethoven’s, or his own. On the other hand, Schoenberg also praises Haydn for his complex, irregular phrasing and harmonic exploration. Haydn thus appears in Schoenberg’s writings as a figure invested with ambivalence: a key member of the First Viennese triumvirate, but at the same time he is curiously phantasmal, and is accorded a peripheral place in Schoenberg’s version of the canon and his own musical genealogy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document