scholarly journals Early Music Recordings as Mythography: Monteverdi and the ‘Other’ Vespers

Muzyka ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 84-104
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Gembicki

In 1989, at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, John Eliot Gardiner conducted and recorded Claudio Monteverdi’s Marian Vespers, published in 1610. Despite the print’s dedication to Pope Paul V, the three-year gap between the print being issued and Monteverdi taking up the post of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s and the considerable stylistic diversity of the pieces contained in that print, Gardiner considers Monteverdi’s Vespers as one coherent whole, for which the Venetian basilica was the target venue. Gardiner’s project has undoubtedly played a major role in how present-day audiences conceive of the 1610 Vespers. It has thus made a permanent mark on contemporary musical culture, as evidenced by the numerous reissues of the 1989 album and, most of all, productions by other musicians that associate the 1610 Vespers with St Mark’s. This article discusses the concept of ‘Monteverdi’s Vespers’ as represented in contemporary record releases of the composer’s works. This concept refers both to Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, published in 1610, and to various modern compilations of his works which musicians, musicologists and producers refer to as ‘Vespers’. The great wealth of Vespers-related pieces held in libraries and archives still considerably outweighs the number of performances and recordings of those works. Monteverdi’s Vespers, on the other hand, make up the majority of existing recordings of seventeenth-century polyphonic Vespers and thus constitute a key point of reference. I analyse around 500 albums (not only with Vespers music) released between 1952 and 2019, focussing on their iconographic and typographic content, as well as their graphic designs, in an attempt to show how the modern vision of this repertoire came to be formed and what persons and places are associated with this current in the history of early music recording.

Author(s):  
Lala Huseynli

This article is devoted to the study of the evolution of the lyrical image in the ballets of Azerbaijani composers. The presented article emphasizes that the Azerbaijani ballet on the extension of the history of the Azerbaijani school of composition functioned indefinitely as an important component of the Azerbaijani musical culture. The theme of this article is actualized in the aspect of the historical approach, as each ballet of Azerbaijani composers, on the other hand, reflected the significant features of the artistic, historical and cultural context. On the other hand, the study of the evolution of the lyrical image in the Azerbaijani ballets reflects the dynamics of the development of the Azerbaijani school of composition. Moreover, the figurative system in Azerbaijani ballets represents the slender line of artistic connections of Azerbaijani culture. The purpose of the research is to study the role of the lyrical image in the evolution of the Azerbaijani ballet. The research methodology is based is based on the use of a historical approach to determine the basic definitions of the study. The expediency of the historical method is due to the fact that the development in the space of historical time should be based on certain basic categories that would reflect the school of composition, its national specifics. The scientific novelty of the research is that for the first time the peculiarities of the evolution of the lyrical image in Azerbaijani ballets – from its origin to modern functioning – are analyzed; the nuances of style creation in the Azerbaijani school of composers in the specified aspect are considered, and also certain art processes are systematized. Conclusions. It is proved that the combination of deep lyricism with dramatic emotions is characteristic of the transfer of lyricism in the drama of ballets at all historical stages of development, in different stylistic contexts. Lyrical images in the ballets of Azerbaijani composers have similar features and are due to the specific content of the national worldview.


Popular Music ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Lancashire

The term ‘world music’ usually conjures up images of musics from ‘remote’ corners of the world. However, that remoteness is not always geographical and can, for example, be chronological. Tôgi Hideki, a former musician from the Imperial court in Japan, has sought to introduce court music - gagaku - to a wider audience through the reworking of traditional gagaku pieces and new compositions for gagaku instruments. Gagaku boasts a history of over 1,200 years and its esoteric nature inhibits popular interest. Tôgi Hideki’s popularised gagaku, on the other hand, has found a new audience for gagaku, and his music serves as a bridge introducing Japanese back to a remote part of Japanese musical culture.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Smith

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy?


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Freidin ◽  
Juan Uriagereka ◽  
David Berlinski

The following remarks attempt to place Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik more centrally within the history of modern generative grammar from its inception to the present.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Skiles

This article examines the nature and frequency of comments about Jews and Judaism in sermons delivered by Confessing Church pastors in the Nazi dictatorship.  The approach of most historians has focused on the history of antisemitism in the German Protestant tradition—in the works, pronouncements, and policies of the German churches and its leading figures.  Yet historians have left unexamined the most elemental task of the pastor—that is, preaching from the pulpit to the German people.  What would the average German congregant have heard from his pastor about the Jews and Judaism on any given Sunday?  I searched German archives, libraries, and used book stores, and analyzed 910 sermon manuscripts that were produced and disseminated in the Nazi regime.  I argue that these sermons provide mixed messages about Jews and Judaism.  While on the one hand, the sermons express admiration for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity, an insistence on the usage of the Hebrew Bible in the German churches, and the conviction that the Jews are spiritual cousins of Christians.  On the other hand, the sermons express religious prejudice in the form of anti-Judaic tropes that corroborated the Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews and Judaism as inferior: for instance, that Judaism is an antiquated religion of works rather than grace; that the Jews killed Christ and have been punished throughout history as a consequence.  Furthermore, I demonstrate that Confessing Church pastors commonly expressed anti-Judaic statements in the process of criticizing the Nazi regime, its leadership, and its policies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (128) ◽  
pp. 401-417
Author(s):  
Paul van Tongeren

Is friendship still possible under nihilistic conditions? Kant and Nietzsche are important stages in the history of the idealization of friendship, which leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that only something like friendship can save us in our nihilistic condition, but on the other hand that precisely friendship has been unmasked and become impossible by these very conditions. It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well to Nietzsche's claim that only "the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith" will be able to cope with nihilism.


1898 ◽  
Vol 63 (389-400) ◽  
pp. 56-61

The two most important deviations from the normal life-history of ferns, apogamy and apospory, are of interest in themselves, but acquire a more general importance from the possibility that their study may throw light on the nature of alternation of generations in archegoniate plants. They have been considered from this point of view Pringsheim, and by those who, following him, regard the two generations as homologous with one another in the sense that the sporophyte arose by the gradual modification of individuals originally resemblin the sexual plant. Celakovsky and Bower, on the other hand, maintaint the view tha t the sporophyte, as an interpolated stage in the life-history arising by elaboration of the zygote, a few thallophytes.


1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (95) ◽  
pp. 327-340
Author(s):  
Francis Thompson

The Irish land act of 1881, it is generally agreed, was a victory for the Land League and Parnell, and nationalist policy with regard to the act and the attitude of southern tenants towards it have been many times subjected to detailed examination by historians of this period. In these analyses of the events of 1880–81, however, little reference is normally made to the part played by the different parties and interests in the north of the country. It is often assumed, for example, that the Ulster tenants held aloof from the campaign for reform, lending no more than occasional vocal support to the agitational efforts of tenants in the south and west. Indeed, they were later excoriated by William O'Brien, Michael Davitt and others not only for giving no support to the land movement but also for sabotaging Parnell's policy of testing the 1881 act by precipitately rushing into the land courts to take advantage of the new legislation: ‘that hard-fisted body of men, having done nothing themselves to win the act, thought of nothing but turning it to their own immediate use, and repudiating any solidarity with the southern and western rebels to whom they really owed it’. If, however, northern tenants were harshly judged by nationalist politicians in the years after 1881, the part played by the northern political parties in the history of the land bill has been either ignored or misunderstood by historians since that time. The Ulster liberals, for example, are rarely mentioned, the implication being that they made no contribution to the act even though it implemented almost exactly the programme on which they had been campaigning for much of the previous decade. The northern conservatives, on the other hand, are commonly seen as leading opponents of the bill, more intransigent than their party colleagues in the south, ‘quick to denounce any weakening of the opposition’ to reform, and ‘determined to keep the tory party up to the mark in defending the landlord interest’


1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Helberg

The book of Amos contains many undertones of threat, except in the epilogue which, according to many scholars, is redactional The question thus comes to the fore whether this characteristic implies that God is seen by Amos as a God of threat for whom one can only have fear. This article, however, points out Amos’ moral justification of God's deeds. Israel's actions, on the other hand, display a self-centredness and a lack of theocentric and personal approach. Within this framework the history of salvation, especially the exodus and the conquest of the land, as well as the election, covenant and the idea of the remnant, is fossilised and God is made a captive of space, time and relations. However, Amos' proclamation implies that in reality God cannot be made captive - neither of such a religion nor of a theology of threat. Amos envisions a situation in which everything will comply with the real aim set for it/him.


Author(s):  
Hanna Karas ◽  

The purpose of the section is to clarify the place of Ukrainian diaspora composers’ paraliturgical works of the XXth century and, in particular, the works of Mykhailo Hayvoronsky (1892–1949) in the spiritual musical culture of Ukrainians. Paraliturgical works include spiritual songs and chants performed outside the church’s Christian canonical rite. In the works of composers it is: a series of chants from Pochaiv’s «Bogohlasnyk», arrangements of koliadkas, songs of the Virgin and Resurrection, prayers to the King of Heaven, communions. Paraliturgical music of diaspora composers testifies to a strong connection with traditions: here we have the influence of «part-song», and the achievement of the «golden age» of Ukrainian music, and creative achievements in this genre of older contemporaries – M. Lysenko, M. Leontovych, K. Stetsenko. On the other hand, there is a close connection of this music with folklore sources, first of all, in the field of melody, texture, principles of musical material development. The sacral-aesthetic element of M. Hayvoronsky’s spiritual music is expressed by the figurative content of these works (bright, contemplative mood, sorrowful-focused prayer spirit, joyful exaltation, mood spirit), aesthetic categories (sublime, beauty, harmony, aesthetic ideal). Due to its genre and stylistic features, the paraliturgical music of diaspora composers became an integral part of the national school of composers development and contributed to the establishment of its identity.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document