scholarly journals The Experimental Composition Improvisation Continua Model: A Tool for Musical Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alister Spence
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
John Coltrane ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The One ◽  
Spiral Staircase

Among improvisers and composers today there is a resurgence of interest in experimental music (EM) practices that welcome contingency; engaging with unforeseen circumstances as an essential component of the music-making process, and a means to sonic discovery. I propose the Experimental Composition Improvisation Continua (ECIC) as a model with which to better understand these experimental musical works. The historical Experimental Music movement of the 1950s and 60s is briefly revisited, and the jazz tradition included as an essential protagonist; both being important historical movements leading to the formulation of ideas around contingent musical practices. The ECIC model is outlined as providing a means to observe the interactions and continua between composition and improvisation on the one hand and more or less experimentally conceived music on the other. This model is applied as an investigative and comparative tool to three distinctive works in order to illuminate the presence or otherwise of various experimental interactions within them. The works are: “Spiral Staircase” – a composition by written by Satoko Fujii in late 2007, John Cage’s 4′33″, and a performance of “My Favorite Things” by the John Coltrane Quartet. Further possible applications of the ECIC are suggested in the conclusion.

The Taubman/Golandsky Approach to the Violin

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Sophie Till
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Technical Approach ◽  
Piano Technique ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

Three years ago Sophie Till started working with pianist Edna Golandsky, the leading exponent of the Taubman Piano Technique, an internationally acclaimed approach that is well known to pianists, on the one hand, for allowing pianists to attain a phenomenal level of virtuosity and on the other, for solving very serious piano-related injuries. Till, a violinist, quickly realized that here was a unique technical approach that could not only identify and itemize the minute movements that underlie a virtuoso technique but could show how these movements interact and go into music making at the highest level. Furthermore, through the work of the Golandsky Institute, she saw a pedagogical approach that had been developed to a remarkable depth and level of clarity. It was an approach that had the power to communicate in a way she had never seen before, despite her own first class violin training from the earliest age. While the geography and “look” on the violin are different from the piano, the laws governing coordinate motion specifically in playing the instrument are the same for pianists and violinists. As a result of Till’s work translating the technique for violin, a new pedagogical approach for violinists of all ages is emerging; the Taubman/Golandsky Approach to the Violin. In reflecting on these new developments, Edna Golandsky wrote, “I have been working with the Taubman Approach for more than 30 years and have worked regularly with other instrumentalists. However, Sophie Till was the first violinist who asked me to teach her with the same depth that I do with pianists. With her conceptual and intellectual agility as well as complete dedication to helping others, she has been the perfect partner to translate this body of knowledge for violinists. Through this collaboration, Sophie is helping develop a new ‘language’ for violinist that will prevent future problems, solve present ones and start beginners on the right road to becoming the best they can be. The implications of this new work for violinists are enormous.”

There Are No Such Things As Theories

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven French
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The One ◽  
Realism Debate

What is a scientific theory? Is it a set of propositions? Or a family of models? Or is it some kind of abstract artefact? These options are examined in the context of a comparison between theories and artworks. On the one hand, theories are said to be like certain kinds of paintings, in that they play a representational role; on the other, they are compared to musical works, insofar as they can be multiply presented. I shall argue that such comparisons should be treated with care and that all of the above options face problems. Instead, I suggest, we should adopt a form of eliminativism towards theories, in the sense that a theory should not be regarded as any thing. Nevertheless, we can still talk about them and attribute certain qualities to them, where that talk is understood to be made true by certain practices. This shift to practices as truth-makers for theory talk then has certain implications for how we regard theories in the realism debate and in the context of the nature and role of representation in science.

Making Music, Building Roads

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-72
Author(s):  
Penny Harvey
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
British Broadcasting Corporation ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Engineered Systems ◽  
The One ◽  
Relational Capacities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sixtieth Anniversary

This chapter explores how the analyses of audible infrastructures presented in this volume connect to the established and growing body of literature on civic infrastructures from scholars in the humanities and social sciences. There are clearly convergent interests between those who work on roads, water, and energy systems, on the one hand, and those who study the production, circulation, and reproduction of sound, on the other. To analyze the materialities of music making, as with civic infrastructures, is to investigate the relational capacities of the materials from which things are made, the diverse types of labor through which these materials become integral to their emergent forms, and the uneven distribution of access to the wider structures that underpin the circulation and reproduction of such forms. In particular, the chapter focuses on how the relationship between the hardware of engineered systems and the software of sociality creates new possibilities for thinking about the politics of infrastructure. The chapter explores these resonances between audible and civic infrastructures by considering the M1 Symphony, a work commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the opening of Britain’s first long-distance motorway. The example provokes reflection on the relationship between media and infrastructure, between composition and improvisation, and between ontological experiment and artful design.

scholarly journals Modernism and Reification in the Music of Frank Bridge

2016 ◽  
Vol 141 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-402
Author(s):  
Ben Earle
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Ralph Vaughan Williams ◽  
Musical Modernism ◽  
The One ◽  
Vaughan Williams

ABSTRACTDrawing on the tradition of Formenlehre, this article puts forward a methodological historicism as a means of mediating between the disciplinary expectations of musical analysis, on the one hand, and philosophical aesthetics, on the other. Stylistic developments in the later music of Frank Bridge, perhaps British music's best claim to a high modernist of the generation of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, are illuminated by means of Theodor W. Adorno's notion of musical ‘reification’. A comparative analysis of the complementary modernism of Bridge's contemporary Ralph Vaughan Williams is also put forward, and a critical light shone on recent writing on British musical modernism in general.

scholarly journals Ecological Constraints of Timescales, Production, and Perception in Temporal Experiences of Music

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
Rolf Inge Godøy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Ecological Constraints ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Musical Imagery ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Order ◽  
At Will

In trying to structure our discussions of temporal experience in music, it could be useful to have a look at some basic ecological constraints of timescales, produc­tion, and perception of music. This may hopefully help us to distinguish between on the one hand readily perceived features of sound and music-related body motion, i.e. con­crete sonic, kinematic, and proprioceptive features, and on the other hand, more generic, amodal, and abstract elements in musical discourse, manifest in various symbolic representa­tions such as notation, numbers, and diagrams. Given easily accessible music tech­nologies, it is actually possible to experiment with different editions of musical works, i.e. concatenate fragments in different order and then evaluate the emergent contex­tual effects in listening experiments. Also, given the faculties of musical imagery (de­fined as our ability to mentally re-experience musical sound and body motion in the ab­sence of physically present sound and body motion), we can at will recombine chunks of music in our minds and mentally scan through large musical works. The contention here is that such recombination in actual re-editing of musical sound or in musical im­agery, will still be related to the basic ecological constraints of the timescales, production and perception in music.

The Empire Samples Back

2021 ◽  
pp. 61-92
Author(s):  
M.I. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Sampling Techniques ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

Chapter 3 moves to the other end of the sonic and acoustic spectrum through a close listening to two well-known tracks from the group, Asian Dub Foundation (ADF). This group has been at the forefront of sampling as a decolonizing musico-cultural practice for some decades. Their music making, and how they deploy the full repertoire of sampling techniques, draw on the Club/DJ cultures of the 1990s on the one hand and, on the other, Jamaican Reggae and Dub, musicalities that played a formative role in the emergence of Rap and Hip-Hop (Chapter 6). ADF made their mark as part of the “Asian Underground” generation of British Asian musicians. Their sampling practices straddle classical Indian music, “Bollywood” soundtracks, Rap vocals, Reggae rhythms, and Dub bass lines for tracks that are not only danceable but also explicitly political, in ways that go beyond the lyrics. ADF’s collaborative, and technologically mediated “crossover” compositions decolonize Western pop music idioms as their musicking evokes contemporary and historical narratives of social injustice and racism, in the UK and around the world.

Imaging Music: Abstract Expressionism and Free Improvisation

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 29-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Sansom
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Abstract Expressionism ◽  
Music History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Free Improvisation ◽  
Abstract Expressionist ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One

The author defines free improvisation, a form of music-making that first emerged in the 1960s with U.K. composers and groups such as Cardew, Bailey, AMM and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The approach here considers free improvisation as creative activity, encompassing its artistic agenda on the one hand and the process-based dynamic of its production on the other. After considering the historical location of free improvisation within Western music history, the article explores free improvisation as analogous with Abstract Expressionist art. This comparison enables a fuller understanding of the activity's conceptual basis and the creative process it engenders.

Disabling Music Performance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Howe
Keyword(s):  
Social Performance ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Invisible Disabilities ◽  
Musical Scores ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The One ◽  
Normal Performance

When a performer’s disability directly affects the execution of a musical script, the “dual performances of music and disability” (Straus 2011) are intertwined, so that one directly influences the other. This chapter uses the termsaudibleandsilent disabilitiesas aural analogues to the more commonly used termsvisibleandinvisible disabilities. In music performance, aural disabilities stem frommusical impairments, which emerge from conflicts with three interrelated sets of conventions associated with musical instruments, performance practices and musical scores (in nonimprovised performances), and ideological expectations of a societal audience. Just as curbs, stairs, and door handles constitute part of the “constructed normalcy” of social performance, so do these three musical conventions propose and construct anormal performance bodythat real bodies must strive to match. Conversely,disablist music(like the one-hand piano repertoire) subverts the normal performance body by accommodating aurally disabled performers excluded from conformational musical practices.

Acoustics of the Everyday: Between Growth and Conflict in 1960s Japan

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIKI KANEDA
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

AbstractFocusing on a multimedia practice labelled ‘intermedia art’, this article shows how experimental musical practices complicate popular characterizations of the idea of politics in 1960s Japan that are polarized by their focus on extraordinary economic growth, on the one hand, and radical protest, on the other. Like their counterparts in art, experimental musicians and artists such as Shiomi Mieko, Kosugi Takehisa, and Yuasa Jōji took an interest in everyday sounds, spaces, and technologies as sites for artistic exploration. However, their musical approaches did not share the overtly political engagement with the scenes of protest playing out in the public sphere that played a central role in the visual arts. Through an investigation of the notion of ambiguity in the acoustics of intermedia, the article seeks to re-examine understandings about the role of sound in shifting perceptions about political participation.

scholarly journals Sacred-Musical Work of Authorship: the Genre’s Specifics

2015 ◽  
pp. 89-93
Author(s):  
Andrey B. Kovalev
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
The Other ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The article examines the genre specifics of the sacred-musical works of authorship; on the one hand, they belong, directly or indirectly, to the Orthodox Church, on the other hand, they are connected with the composer’s individual creative thinking, which makes them exceed the bounds of the church choir up to the concert sphere. Thus, a phenomenal feature of the sacred-musical works of authorship is their predominant tendency toward either liturgical or concert performance environment. The specifics of the sacred-musical works, in the context of one or another performance environment, are considered in terms of the four aspects: ontological, of the rites of divine service and the concert program realization, communicative, and compositional.

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