scholarly journals Out of Africa: The Cakewalk in Twentieth-Century French Concert Music

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Out Of Africa

Boulez, Pierre (1925-2016)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Going Public ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Pierre Boulez ◽  
History Of ◽  
Listening Habits

French composer Pierre Boulez was one of the most influential composers of the second half of the twentieth century. His personal development mirrored the history of Western concert music. An essential figure in the history of artistic modernism, he was perceived as a leader of the musical avant-garde since 1945. In addition, through his international career as a conductor, he sought to change the listening habits of the concert-going public by initiating them, through concerts and recordings, into the classics of modernism from the first half of the twentieth century (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Berg, etc.). From serialism, open forms, the interface between instrument and machine, the concern with perceptibility, Boulez’s catalog forms a rich and varied corpus. Although Boulez dispensed with total serialism after a brief but decisive period, his concern with the formal unity of a work of art remained a central concern throughout his career.

Debussy's Legacy and the Construction of Reputation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Wheeldon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
To Come ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Reputation Building

This book examines the vicissitudes of Debussy’s posthumous reception in the 1920s and early 1930s and analyzes the confluence of factors that helped to overturn the initial backlash against his musical aesthetic. In tracing this overarching narrative, this study enters into dialogue with research in the sociology of reputation and commemoration, examining the collective nature of the processes of artistic consecration. Key in this regard is identifying the networks of influence that had to come together and act in several spheres—textual, performative, material—to safeguard the composer’s legacy. Today, Debussy’s position as a central figure in twentieth-century concert music is secure: this book examines how and why this seemingly inevitable state of affairs came about. Although this study focuses on one particular instance of reputation building, its scope is also broader in that it addresses the more general processes by which reputations are constructed, contested, and consolidated. And by analyzing the forces that came to bear on the formation of Debussy's legacy, this book contributes to a greater understanding of the interwar period—the cultural politics, debates, and issues that confronted musicians in 1920s and 1930s Paris.

‘Ces nymphes, je les veux perpétuer’: the post-war pastoral in space-age bachelor-pad music

Popular Music ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Leydon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Pastoral Mode ◽  
Space Age ◽  
Post War ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Mode A

Juan Garcia Esquivel's compositions and band arrangements of the late 1950s and early 1960s – his so-called ‘space-age bachelor pad music’ – feature exotic and futuristic instruments, dazzling stereo effects, textless vocalisations, and an array of colourful harmonic resources. This paper situates Esquivel's music within the venerable tradition of the Pastoral mode, a specialised narrative mode met in certain literary and musical works. I begin with an account of the musical pastoral, illustrated with reference to Renaissance madrigals, opera libretti, and especially French concert music from the turn of the twentieth century. In the music of ‘impressionist’ composers, pastoral conventions include a preponderance of ‘slithery’ sounds such as tremolo, trills, glissandi, gauzy timbres, colouristic harmonies and, especially, an over-abundance of motivic material. The steady parade of new themes, with little repetition, and rapidly changing orchestral colours impart a hedonistic atmosphere, consistent with the ‘fantasy of plenitude’ associated with the literary Pastoral. Esquivel's music, I claim, represents a transposition of this bucolic style, in which the ephemeral sounds of the flute and harp are transformed into their space-age counterparts: theremin, vibraphone, buzzimba, and the ‘zu-zu-zu’ of the Randy Van Horne Singers. Esquivel's music, I argue, reconstitutes the particular erotic configurations of classic pastoral: in place of fauns and nymphs are suave bachelors and their dates. The paper concludes with a discussion of representations of the ‘leisurely bachelor’ in other contemporaneous media.

scholarly journals Musical Tradition and Cultural Vision in Langston Hughes’s Poetry

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
Lekha Nath Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Musical Tradition

In American music, Langston Hughes is one of the literary figures that hold a place similar to the aforementioned luminaries. In the literary field, Hughes is respected as one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. With the rise of African American Studies as an academic field in the 1970s, his life, writing, and influence has received frequent attention. What has not been documented in more specific terms is his importance to America’s musical culture in the twentieth century. Whether directly or indirectly, Langston Hughes has been a fixture in American musical culture, both popular and concert music, since the 1920s. In addition to his personal affinity for blues, jazz and other specifically African American musical forms such as gospel music, his vast contribution to American music specifically and American music culture in a broader sense can be separated into four general categories.

Afrocubanismo in Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Rey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Cultural Reconstruction ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Financial Decline ◽  
Cultural Features

Afrocubanismo was an esthetic trend in art music during the first half of the twentieth century focusing on African cultural features in Cuban society. The movement gained expression in the works of a seminal group of composers whose artistic production reflected neo-nationalistic musical concerns, thus emphasizing the manipulation of timbral and rhythmic elements in a modern harmonic vocabulary. These musical experiments marked a significant juncture in the evolution of Cuban concert music and forged an inclusive representation of race in the reformation of national cultural identity. Responding to a period of political turbulence and financial decline, a group of progressive intellectuals, journalists, and members of the artistic community committed to cultural reconstruction established the Grupo Minorista in Havana in 1923. Well aware of Cuba’s ambivalent attitudes towards its African heritage, the circle sought to explore the roots of Cubanness in order to forge a more inclusive, decolonized revision of Cuban cultural history.

Summary and Assessment

2020 ◽  
pp. 277-316
Author(s):  
Henry Martin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
What Works ◽  
Traditional Understanding

Chapter 10 pulls together information from the analytical chapters and provides a summary via a series of tables. These tables include the Parker contrafacts based on “Honeysuckle Rose” and rhythm changes; Parker’s works enumerated by category, key, contrafact, and primary line; Parker’s attitude toward revisions and adaptations; what tunes Parker liked to call on the bandstand; and what works might be excluded from a list of Parker compositions, if a more traditional understanding of composition is assumed. The chapter concludes with discussions of Parker’s tendencies toward quotation and self-quotation, his interest in twentieth-century concert music (an ambition he was unable to fulfill), and his overall compositional legacy.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Doering
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American History ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Management Company ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century America

This concluding chapter explains how Arthur Judson was a towering figure in American concert music in the twentieth century. He managed the leading orchestras and artists of his time, built the most successful music management company in American history, and pioneered ideas that still inform the music industry today. James Buswell characterized it best, calling Judson “an elephant.” No manager before or since acquired the portfolio or the power that Judson amassed during his sixty-year career. Judson's successes were intertwined with, and fed by, an expanding audience for classical concert music in early-twentieth-century America. Although that audience would eventually shrink, Judson's development as a manager was fueled by the sense that America was brimming with classical music listeners.

The Origin, Evolution, and Epidemiology of HIV-1 and HIV-2

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Jeffrey T. Kirchner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Simian Immunodeficiency Virus ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Aids Pandemic ◽  
Immunodeficiency Virus ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Hiv 1

Upon completion of this chapter, the reader should be able to • Explain how HIV evolved from cross-species transmission of strains of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) to humans (viral zoonosis), spread out of Africa in the early twentieth century, and ultimately resulted in the global AIDS pandemic...

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