Szymanowski, a Hafiz ‘Grablied’, and the ‘Translation’ of Nietzsche

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-46
Author(s):  
Stephen Downes

Szymanowski’s two cycles of ‘Love Songs of Hafiz’ (1911 and 1914), settings of paraphrases by Hans Bethge, are often considered crucial steps in the composer’s shift from a style which openly displays its debts to Wagner and Strauss to a more personal idiom. He discovered Bethge’s Hafiz while tiring of the Straussian idiom but remaining an enthusiastic Nietzschean. Bethge’s translations of Hafiz offered Szymanowski a seductive vehicle for ‘translating’ what he wished to preserve of Nietzsche into the spirit of his new compositional style. The ‘Grablied’ was a particularly important idea in this creative re-thinking. In Nietzsche’s Zarathustra the ‘Grablied’ has a crucial function in overcoming past seductions (Wagner) and present enemies. Bethge’s poem, ‘Das Grab des Hafis’ is replete with echoes of Nietzsche. Szymanowski’s setting (1914), in the same key (B minor) as Strauss’s Zarathustra ‘Grablied’, introduces an ‘Urmotiv’ of exotic cut, as the musical equivalent of perfume rising from the grave. It offers distance from the style of Austro-German modernism while retaining transformed traces of its legacy. In this song Szymanowski ‘translates’ his ‘German’ musical idiom and key aspects of the Nietzschean ‘Grablied’ into a new language evocative of ‘Persian’ regeneration.

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
John David Dixon

Percy Grainger’s compositions during the early twentieth century represent a unique blend of traditional functional harmony and newer musical techniques. This blending produces a distinct compositional style associated with Grainger, featuring simple forms and textures, melodies inspired by traditional folk songs, extended tertian harmony, and an emphasis on voice leading. Grainger’s works often cross genres and explore various instrumentations and stylistic choices. This paper attempts to further define and explain Grainger’s style by analyzing two of his original works that were arranged for the military band setting, namely Children’s March: Over the Hills and Far Away and Colonial Song. Examining these two works through the lens of harmony, melody, form, texture, and rhythm reveals key aspects of Grainger’s early compositional style. Several stylistic choices were found to recur, including Grainger’s use of counterpoint, voice leading, descending chromaticism, specific patterns of articulations, and tension created by increased note density.


2017 ◽  
pp. 79-112
Author(s):  
Paola Ramassa ◽  
Costanza Di Fabio

This paper aims at contributing to financial reporting literature by proposing a conceptual interpretative model to analyse the corporate use of social media for financial communication purposes. In this perspective, the FIRE model provides a framework to study social media shifting the focus on the distinctive features that might enhance web investor relations. The model highlights these features through four building blocks: (i) firm identity (F); (ii) information posting (I); (iii) reputation (R); and (iv) exchange and diffusion (E). They represent key aspects to explore corporate communication activities and might offer a framework to interpret to what degree corporate web financial reporting exploits the potential of social media. Accordingly, the paper proposes metrics based on this model aimed at capturing the interactivity of corporate communications via social media, with a particular focus on web financial reporting. It tries to show the potential of this model by illustrating an exploratory empirical analysis investigating to what extent companies use social media for financial reporting purposes and whether firms are taking advantage of Twitter distinctive features of interaction and diffusion.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Wendy Pojmann

Migrant women’s associations in Italy did not simply emerge from informal networks. The Filipino and Cape Verdean women’s associations in Rome are examples of the results of multiple factors that contributed to the strategy of self-organization established by migrant women with the intention of empowering themselves. An awareness of their unique position as women from mostly-female migrant groups, a lack of institutional bodies prepared to assist them, and the leadership of individual women were key aspects in the formation of the first migrant women’s associations in Rome. Gender and nationality were the main components of migrant women’s organizing in the first mostly-female migrant groups. 


Author(s):  
Debbie Zimmerman

In this response to Michaela Chamberlain's article, I engage with some of the key aspects of her thinking in her exploration of the concept of the secure base and how the theory of its "provision" is tested by her lived experience of working with patients whose attachment-related trauma has compromised their capacity to experience her as a secure base. In particular, I explore the idea of the secure base as a two-person relational construct. I use an attachment lens to consider the complexities and challenges in facilitating attachment security when working with disorganised attachment. I explore the question of the need for an earlier "holding" phase as a precursor to the capacity to relate to a secure base and consider the expansion of the concept of the term secure base to incorporate this earlier "holding" dimension. I also question the possibility and desirability of "complete holding" in working towards attachment security, engaging with Winnicott's theories to explore the ideas of the transitional space of illusion and disillusion, of "good-enough", and of internalisation in the therapeutic process of building attachment security. Finally, I consider the parallel process of the therapist's development of their internal secure base.


The key aspects of the process of designing and developing an information and cartographic control tool with business analytics functions for the municipal level of urban management are considered. The review of functionality of the developed tool is given. Examples of its use for the analysis and monitoring of implementation of the program of complex development of territories are given. The importance of application of information support of management and coordination at all levels of management as an integral part of the basic model of management and coordination system of large-scale urban projects of dispersed construction is proved. Information and map-made tool with business intelligence functions was used and was highly appreciated in the preparation of information-analytical and presentation materials of the North-Eastern Administrative District of Moscow. Its use made it possible to significantly optimize the list of activities of the program of integrated development of territories, their priority and timing.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Neimoyer

1924 was one of the most demanding years of George Gershwin’s career. In addition to the wildly successful premiere of the Rhapsody in Blue that led to numerous additional performances of the work throughout the year, he wrote the music for three hit musicals, all of which opened during that year. Given this context, a manuscript notebook in the Gershwin Collection at the Library of Congress dating from March and April 1924 is particularly intriguing. Because this notebook contains the earliest known sketch of “The Man I Love” (one of Gershwin’s best-loved popular songs), it has been acknowledged in passing by Gershwin scholars. “The Man I Love,” however, is only one of nine short pieces in the notebook and is the only entry written in what is now defined as Gershwin’s compositional style. This article briefly addresses the entire contents of this “March–April 1924 notebook,” exploring the possibilities of what Gershwin’s purposes in writing these undeveloped works might have been. Were they unused stage music, ideas for the set of piano preludes he was writing off and on during this era, or were they exercises focused on correcting weaknesses in compositional technique uncovered while writing the Rhapsody in Blue? Whatever their purpose, the pieces in this notebook provide clues as to what Gershwin’s creative priorities may have been, as well as further insights into how Gershwin honed his musical craft.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Robert Pustoviit ◽  

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emőke Tari Solymosi

Abstract Bartók's influence on his outstanding Hungarian contemporary, László Lajtha (1892–1963) remains as yet largely unresearched. Lajtha studied with Bartók at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music and went on to become a composer, folk music researcher, versatile teacher, international cultural ambassador, and member of the French Academy. The two men's friendship and mutual respect lasted throughout Bartók's life. Among the leading musicians of the time, it was Bartók who first expressed his high opinion of the younger composer's talent. Bartók's influence can be observed in almost every field of Lajtha's work. For example, it was Bartók who recommended that Lajtha choose Paris as the place to complete his studies, which fostered in turn Lajtha's orientation toward Latin culture. Following in Bartók's footsteps, Lajtha became one of the greatest folk music collectors and researchers in Hungary, and this music also exerted a significant effect on his compositional style. Bartók recommended that the director Georg Hoellering commission Lajtha to write film music, which became an important new genre for the latter. A large number of documents — especially the unpublished letters from László Lajtha to John S. Weissmann, one of his former students — offer proof that Bartók's inspiration and practical assistance were of paramount importance to the development of Lajtha's career, oeuvre, and aesthetics.


Author(s):  
Eleanor Heisey

Johannes Brahms’s deep engagement with the past contributed to his compositional style in many ways. This article considers Brahms techniques that look back to and expand on those of Renaissance composers, in particular metric conflict and cadences, voice displacement, changes in proportion, rhythmic augmentation and diminution, and the hocket. Examples are taken from Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture, Variations On A Theme By Haydn, Piano Quartet in A Major, and Symphony No. 3 in F Major.


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