Research System of the Origin of a Musical Work: Case Study of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto K622

This thesis presents a novel music-technology project, the HypeSax, which affords new roles to the saxophone and enhances its sound capacities. This document presents a discussion of the musical ideas and design criteria behind the development of this new instrument, addressing issues of embodiment that arise from the use of new technologies, and of what this new medium means in the discussion of the ontology of the musical work. This project is intended to research the medium through a case study, in which the medium becomes the central focus of my compositional decisions. As part of this project, a body of new musical works, associated with the HypeSax, was created. These compositions and the creative process from which they originated are analysed in relation to the HypeSax, questioning if the musical work is limited to the composition or if other processes such as the development of the medium, which in this case is the HypeSax, can be considered part of its ontology. The desire to understand and define the ontology of the musical work has led musicians, musicologists and philosophers to formulate multiple propositions that observe perspectives of creation and reception, as well as different ways in which these interact. This thesis proposes the integration of a new element in the conversation of the work-concept: the medium. The argument presented is that, in light of compositional practices in the twenty-first century, the creative work begins when musicians design instruments, software, audio setups, and other new technologies, actively transforming the medium through which their work works are created. Despite the fact that the medium has always been in close relation with the composition, performance and reception of the work, it has not been considered an element in the ontology of the work. Nevertheless, it becomes impossible to ignore the importance of the medium as new technologies facilitate its manipulation as a part of the creative process. New works featuring the HypeSax are discussed, as well as how this novel medium provides the affordances and possibilities that allow the creation of said works. This case study serves to demonstrate the importance of the medium in the context of a new tripartite model of the work-concept where score, performance and medium are integrated, in a non-hierarchical structure, as one inseparable reality of music.

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Sensory Dissonance feature extraction: a case study

10.29007/qnsj ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Anna Terzaroli

Keyword(s):

Feature Extraction ◽

Software Tool ◽

Musical Work ◽

Notation System ◽

Music Signal ◽

Audio Feature ◽

Musical Feature

An audio feature can become relevant as a musical feature. This paper focuses on the “Sensory Dissonance” audio feature and its use as a musical parameter useful to analyze and compose music of all genres. It is possible by developing a software tool able to detect the presence of dissonance understood as Sensory Dissonance, to quantify the dissonance and then to draw a graphic function of the traced dissonance. This function is placed under the sound which it relates, while the music signal may be written according to the western notation system. The obtained curve does not only provide information concerning the degree of dissonance: it also allows a deeper reading of the entire analyzed musical work.

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Dancing the Symphonic: Beethoven-Bochsa's Symphonie Pastorale, 1829

19th-Century Music ◽

10.1525/ncm.2003.27.1.25 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 25-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

J. Q. DAVIES

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Musical Performance ◽

Musical Work ◽

The Moment ◽

Contextual Meaning ◽

Musical Forms

Abstract . On 22 June 1829, the legendary French harpist, convicted forger and escaped felon, Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa performed his most infamous musical offense: a rendition of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony with stage action. Since Grove, this surprisingly early reworking of the Sixth as a ballet-pantomime has not gone down well in the literature. As the twentieth century unfurled, the moment steadily receded into obscurity, losing all cultural and contextual meaning to the point where it is now remembered (if at all) as a lesson in the rogue potential of performance——a pockmark on the historical map. This article will reverse the general slide into amnesia by first excavating this vanished but important moment of the musical past, and then recuperating its seriousness. Enough evidence from the 1820s and 30s suggests that Bochsa's Symphonie (performed at London's King's Theatre) was representative of much more than itself. Far from historically inexplicable, it can be read as an extreme manifestation of a strongly defined ballet-concert exchange that characterized the artistic trends of the late 1820s. By taking on abstract and ““musical”” forms, dance was becoming more concertlike. Concerts, meanwhile, were developing balletic traits in their increasing use of picturesque effects, and their growing fascination for the visual or bodily aspects of musical performance. A rapprochement took place that reshaped the nature of listening and figured the emerging concept of the musical work in a curiously plastic, objective way——as the case study exemplifies.

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Music, phenomenology, and the ‘natural attitude’: Analysing Sibelius, thinking with Husserl, reflecting on Dennett

Music and Consciousness 2 ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198804352.003.0009 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 143-169

Author(s):

David Clarke

Keyword(s):

Edmund Husserl ◽

Formal Analysis ◽

Transcendental Phenomenology ◽

Natural Attitude ◽

Musical Work ◽

Violin Concerto ◽

Jean Sibelius ◽

Fertile Ground

This chapter explores the intersection of music and phenomenology as potentially fertile ground for the study of consciousness. Taking the philosophy of Edmund Husserl as a touchstone, and the Violin Concerto, Op. 47 of Jean Sibelius as a case study, the chapter considers how phenomenological concepts such as epoché, noesis, eidos, and the transcendental subject all find resonances within a formal analysis of this musical work. The chapter also juxtaposes Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and his critique of the ‘natural attitude’ against Daniel Dennett’s physicalist account of consciousness and Wilfrid Sellars’ concept of the ‘scientific image’. In negotiating a pathway between these positions, the chapter considers whether music—and its determination of an autonomous aesthetic sphere—may offer a productive alternative perspective to the often competing claims of philosophy and science in our understanding of consciousness.

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Determination of Structure

Performing Knowledge ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190653545.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 35-58

Author(s):

Daphne Leong

Keyword(s):

Musical Work ◽

Function Form ◽

Written Text ◽

Left Hand ◽

Tonal Function ◽

Performance Issues ◽

Performance Considerations ◽

And Performance

How can a performer’s voice complement that of a theorist in the analysis of a musical work? This chapter takes the opening cadenza of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand as a case study. Certain performance considerations—embodied facets, instrumental affordances, and affective implications—comprise warp and weft not only of the Concerto’s execution and interpretation, but also of its structure and meaning. The chapter explores the cadenza: visual and kinesthetic aspects, rhetorical and tonal function, form and structure, rhythmic features and performance issues. The analysis is informed by the authors’ experiences of performing the Concerto and by historical recordings of the work. Video performances and audio examples complement the written text.

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The Self-Organising Work of Music

Organised Sound ◽

10.1017/s1355771811000148 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 192-199 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Phivos-Angelos Kollias

Keyword(s):

Systems Thinking ◽

Open System ◽

Graphical Model ◽

Second Order ◽

The Self ◽

Algorithmic Composition ◽

Musical Work ◽

Self Organisation ◽

The Difference

In this paper, I will focus on the musical work as a self-organising entity within a systemic framework. In particular, two significant and inter-related systemic concepts will be mentioned: self-organisation and open system. Firstly, I shall explain the two concepts within the context of systems thinking with reference to a graphical model of second-order cybernetics. This section will conclude with a discussion of the difference between natural and artificial self-organising systems. I will then extend the systemic perspective, describing what I call self-organising music, and discussing my algorithmic composition Ephemeron as a case study.

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Beyond the Candelabra: The Liberace Show and the Remediation of Beethoven

Journal of the Society for American Music ◽

10.1017/s1752196318000512 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 27-53

Author(s):

EDGARDO SALINAS

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Classical Music ◽

Pop Culture ◽

Musical Work ◽

Piano Sonata ◽

Audiovisual Media ◽

Piano Repertoire ◽

Archaeological Analysis ◽

Tv Show

AbstractLiberace entered the sprawling scene of US pop culture in 1952 emceeing a TV show that initially garnered higher ratings than I Love Lucy. The Liberace Show presented staples of the classical piano repertoire in abridged versions that cut the “dull parts” and liberally added orchestrations. Liberace's heterodox practices outraged prominent music critics, who soon deemed him the very incarnation of kitsch. Turning from aesthetic criticism to an archaeological analysis of media, I discuss the show's presentation of classical music, taking as its main case study Liberace's iconoclastic rendition of Beethoven's “Tempest” sonata, and examine it through the theory of remediation advanced by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin. Analyzing archival videos, I show how the alterations exerted on the musical text were inextricably tied to the telegenic mise-en-scènes staged for each episode while situating them in the new media landscape that emerged in the 1950s. The show remediated not only the pieces Liberace performed but also his own TV persona to nurture an intimate bond with home viewers who became captivated by the host's enchanting presence. I contend that Liberace's remediations drastically collapsed the specificity of performance medium that modern critics construed to be immanent to the musical work. This collapse entailed a proliferation of musical and audiovisual media that afforded Liberace's devoted viewers an alluring experience of immediacy and ultimately retrieved the domestic intimacy that had been integral to the genealogy of the piano sonata.

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The Role of China’s Teaching Research System in Promoting Evidence-based Reform in Education: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province

Best Evidence of Chinese Education ◽

10.15354/bece.21.or067 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 1227-1241

Author(s):

Shike Zhou

Keyword(s):

Professional Community ◽

Jiangsu Province ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Research System ◽

Teaching Research ◽

Education In China

Teaching research system is a unique professional community of education and teaching research in China. It is an important driving and leading force in promoting evidence-based reform in education in China. Using fifteen-year exploration of evidence-based reform in education in Jiangsu Province as a case, this paper presents the ways and characteristics of evidence-based reform in education in China, with a focused analysis of the role of teaching research system in the reform. Despite its uniqueness, China’s evidence-based reform in education can still contribute experience to its world counterpart.

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Composer-composer collaboration and the difficulty of intradisciplinarity

Airea Arts and Interdisciplinary Research ◽

10.2218/airea.5042 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 23-35

Author(s):

Martin Scheuregger ◽

Litha Efthymiou

Keyword(s):

Communication Technology ◽

Practice Research ◽

Collaborative Partnerships ◽

Musical Work ◽

Compositional Process ◽

Collaborative Process ◽

Research And Practice ◽

The Arts ◽

Composition I

Research and practice involving parties from different disciplines is of increasing importance in many fields. In the arts, this has manifested itself in both increasing attention on established collaborative partnerships – composers, for example, collaborating with writers, choreographers and directors – and a move towards more overtly cross-, multi-, inter- and/or trans-disciplinary forms of working – a composer working with a physicist, philosopher or psychologist. Composer-composer partnerships are far less common, meaning intradisciplinary collaboration is little explored in relation to practice research in music. This article takes the collaborative music theatre composition I only know I am (2019) created by the authors – Litha Eftythmiou and Martin Scheuregger – as a case study, outlining the issues and opportunities that arise through combining two compositional practices in an effort to create a single artistic output. Ways in which the composers managed this process are detailed in the context of communication, technology, and the issue of tacit knowledge (of both individual compositional process and the working of intradisciplinary collaboration). In particular, reflections on their experience during a week-long residency, in which they collaborated on a single musical work, is discussed in order to understand to what extent two aesthetic approaches can be reconciled to create work satisfactory to both parties. Notions of composition as an inherently collaborative process are used to contextualise the means by which composer-composer collaborations might be understood. The authors reflect on an understanding of intradisciplinarity in the context of their practice as composers in order to draw conclusions that will allow them, and others, to approach composer-composer collaboration in an informed manner.

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