Stravinsky's Music Library in the Context of His Biography and Work (Based on Archival Materials From PauL Sacher Foundation)

10.34690/148 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 38-77
Author(s):  
Татьяна Баранова-Монигетти
Keyword(s):  
Compositional Process ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Music Score ◽  
Process Music ◽  
Personal Library

В статье представлены результаты исследования нотной коллекции из личной библиотеки И. Ф. Стравинского, хранящейся в Фонде Пауля Захера (Базель). Собрание это представляет особый интерес как творческая лаборатория Стравинского - композитора, пианиста, дирижера. Многие экземпляры содержат дарственные надписи и пометки на полях. Издания произведений самого Стравинского с корректурами и примечаниями автора дают ценную информацию об особенностях его композиционного процесса. Нотные источники рассмотрены в статье в контексте биографии и творчества композитора, с привлечением сведений из мемуаров, корреспонденции, музыковедческой литературы. Разделы статьи отражают структуру собрания. This article presents the results of a study of the music score collection from Stravinsky's personal library, which is kept at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. This collection is of particular interest as the creative laboratory of Stravinsky-a composer, pianist, conductor. Many copies have dedications, inscriptions and marginalia. The scores of Stravinsky's own works, with corrections and notes by the author, provide important information about his compositional process. Music scores from Stravinsky's library are considered in the context of his biography and work, using information from correspondence, memoirs and secondary literature. The sections of the article reflect the specifics of Stravinsky's collection.

scholarly journals The Composer's Hand: An Analysis of Selected String Orchestral Works by Arvo Pärt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mark Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Methods ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Process Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Compositional System ◽  
Analytical Approaches

<p>Arvo Pärt’s music has received little attention from theoretical scholars, in part, because it is often labelled as minimalist or process music. This is due primarily to his use of limited sets of musical materials and predetermined repetitive melodic and rhythmic procedures. In this sense, it is implied that authorial decisions play little role in the compositional process of his music. In addition, the confluences of multiple M-voice/T-voice pairings, which create a rich array of harmonically non-functional chord progressions, do not lend themselves to traditional approaches to musical analysis, thus acting as a further deterrent to analysts and theorists.  This investigation postulates that the presence of the ‘composer’s hand’ is much more significant in Pärt’s music than has been previously realised by those who label his music as minimalist or process music; and by engaging in a multimodal methodology, this thesis demonstrates that Pärt’s music does, in fact, respond to post-tonal analytical approaches. It also shows that a non-traditional application of post-tonal analytical techniques can yield valuable and productive insights into Pärt’s compositional system, and that there is actually much for theorists and analysts to discover in his music.  The approach to the investigation is based on drawing from and combining several post-tonal analytical methods, any one of which would be insufficient on its own, given the uniqueness of Pärt’s sound world and the fact that such approaches have been developed to enlighten very different repertoires. The methodology incorporates the following post-tonal analytical methods: descriptions of the ‘musical fabric’ of each work; a detailed analysis of how each composition appears to have been constructed; new approaches to visualising the relationships between the pitch classes of particular works; and mappings of each work’s pitch-class and interval-vector content.  This investigation demonstrates, through multimodal analysis of six selected string orchestral works by the composer, that hidden beneath the seemingly ‘minimal’ surface layers of Pärt’s music are carefully crafted musical constructions that result from intersecting procedures and multifaceted rules, as well as what appear to be intentional exceptions to those rules – thus revealing the composer’s hand. An awareness of these hidden constructions and the careful craftsmanship that went into their creation can provide the informed listener with the critical foundation from which the aesthetic value of Pärt’s music can be assessed and appreciated.</p>

scholarly journals The Composer's Hand: An Analysis of Selected String Orchestral Works by Arvo Pärt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mark Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Methods ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Orchestral Works ◽  
Process Music ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Compositional System ◽  
Analytical Approaches

<p>Arvo Pärt’s music has received little attention from theoretical scholars, in part, because it is often labelled as minimalist or process music. This is due primarily to his use of limited sets of musical materials and predetermined repetitive melodic and rhythmic procedures. In this sense, it is implied that authorial decisions play little role in the compositional process of his music. In addition, the confluences of multiple M-voice/T-voice pairings, which create a rich array of harmonically non-functional chord progressions, do not lend themselves to traditional approaches to musical analysis, thus acting as a further deterrent to analysts and theorists.  This investigation postulates that the presence of the ‘composer’s hand’ is much more significant in Pärt’s music than has been previously realised by those who label his music as minimalist or process music; and by engaging in a multimodal methodology, this thesis demonstrates that Pärt’s music does, in fact, respond to post-tonal analytical approaches. It also shows that a non-traditional application of post-tonal analytical techniques can yield valuable and productive insights into Pärt’s compositional system, and that there is actually much for theorists and analysts to discover in his music.  The approach to the investigation is based on drawing from and combining several post-tonal analytical methods, any one of which would be insufficient on its own, given the uniqueness of Pärt’s sound world and the fact that such approaches have been developed to enlighten very different repertoires. The methodology incorporates the following post-tonal analytical methods: descriptions of the ‘musical fabric’ of each work; a detailed analysis of how each composition appears to have been constructed; new approaches to visualising the relationships between the pitch classes of particular works; and mappings of each work’s pitch-class and interval-vector content.  This investigation demonstrates, through multimodal analysis of six selected string orchestral works by the composer, that hidden beneath the seemingly ‘minimal’ surface layers of Pärt’s music are carefully crafted musical constructions that result from intersecting procedures and multifaceted rules, as well as what appear to be intentional exceptions to those rules – thus revealing the composer’s hand. An awareness of these hidden constructions and the careful craftsmanship that went into their creation can provide the informed listener with the critical foundation from which the aesthetic value of Pärt’s music can be assessed and appreciated.</p>

‘Family Romance’ and the Oedipalization of Freudian Psychoanalysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Herman Westerink ◽  
Philippe Van Haute
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Difference Family ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Family Romance ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Informative Text

Although Freud's ‘Family Romances’ from 1909 is hardly ever discussed at length in secondary literature, this article highlights this short essay as an important and informative text about Freud's changing perspectives on sexuality in the period in which the text was written. Given the fact that Freud, in his 1905 Three Essays, develops a radical theory of infantile sexuality as polymorphously perverse and as autoerotic pleasure, we argue that ‘Family Romances’, together with the closely related essay on infantile sexual theories (1908), paves the way for new theories of sexuality defined in terms of object relations informed by knowledge of sexual difference. ‘Family Romances’, in other words, preludes the introduction of the Oedipus complex, but also – interestingly – gives room for a Jungian view of sexuality and sexual phantasy. ‘Family Romances’ is thus a good illustration of the complex way in which Freud's theories of sexuality developed through time.

"Nécessité d'une orientation esthétique": Techniques of Development in the Music of Boulez

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-129
Author(s):  
Catherine Losada
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Base Materials ◽  
Compositional Approach ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Open Work ◽  
Additional Level ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The 1960S

The latter part of the 1950s saw a major change in Boulez's compositional approach: Instead of creating extensive pre-compositional sketches, he increasingly reused previously composed materials as the basis for new works. The shifting aesthetics that characterized this period had a significant influence on Boulez. His works from the late 1950s explore the ideas of mobility embedded in the open work. Balancing the concept of mobility with the ideals of control that form the basis of his compositional ideology led to an economy of means and an associated emphasis on the concept of development in his compositional process. Both facilitated the creation of new works from a more limited array of base materials.<br/> Tracing the concept of development in a sample of Boulez's sketches and works from the late 1950s through the 1960s, this essay presents a preliminary typology of recurring pitch and temporal developmental techniques. By taking a bird's-eye view, I add an additional level of interpretation, emphasizing their formal function, association with aspects of middleground structure and studying their implications in terms of perception. In this way, I present a new perspective on the association between these techniques and the practice of derivation from a limited amount of material that characterizes these works.

Pragmatics for Latin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Devine ◽  
Laurence D. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

Latin is often described as a free word order language, but in general each word order encodes a particular information structure: in that sense, each word order has a different meaning. This book provides a descriptive analysis of Latin information structure based on detailed philological evidence and elaborates a syntax-pragmatics interface that formalizes the informational content of the various different word orders. The book covers a wide ranges of issues including broad scope focus, narrow scope focus, double focus, topicalization, tails, focus alternates, association with focus, scrambling, informational structure inside the noun phrase and hyperbaton (discontinuous constituency). Using a slightly adjusted version of the structured meanings theory, the book shows how the pragmatic meanings matching the different word orders arise naturally and spontaneously out of the compositional process as an integral part of a single semantic derivation covering denotational and informational meaning at one and the same time.

John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Iddon ◽  
Philip Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Piano Solo ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Compositional Practice ◽  
Similar Basis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

The book is a comprehensive examination of John Cage’s seminal Concert for Piano and Orchestra. It places the piece into its many contexts, examining its relationship with Cage’s compositional practice of indeterminacy more generally, the importance of Cage’s teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, on the development of his structural thought, and the impact of Cage’s (mis)understanding of jazz. It discusses, on the basis of Cage’s sketches and manuscripts, the compositional process at play in the piece. It details the circumstances of the piece’s early performances—often described as catastrophes—its recording and promotion, and the part it played in Cage’s (successful) hunt for a publisher. It examines in detail the various ways in which Cage’s pianist of choice, David Tudor, approached the piece, differing according to whether it was to be performed with an orchestra, alongside Cage delivering the lecture, ‘Indeterminacy’, or as a piano solo to accompany Merce Cunningham’s choreography Antic Meet. It demonstrates the ways in which, despite indeterminacy, the instrumental parts of the piece are amenable to analytical interpretation, especially through a method which exposes the way in which those parts form a sort of network of statistical commonality and difference, analysing, too, the pianist’s part, the Solo for Piano, on a similar basis, discussing throughout the practical consequences of Cage’s notations for a performer. It shows the way in which the piece played a central role, first, in the construction of who Cage was and what sort of composer he was within the new musical world but, second, how it came to be an important example for professional philosophers in discussing what the limits of the musical work are.

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