Yugoslav Rock Opera Gubec-beg (1973–1984) – Theatrical Spectacle and Cultural Diplomacy

The paper shows how the first Yugoslav rock opera Gubec-beg was created, how its spectacular stage production made its way into the repertoire of Zagrebʼs Komedija Theatre and the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb, how important it was for Yugoslav culture at home and cultural diplomacy abroad and for public opinion regarding this performance. The paper is written on the basis of documents from the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Diplomatic Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, the domestic press and periodicals (entertainment, music, daily, youth, political, musicological, theatre), and academic and scholarly literature.

CINEMA CONCERT HALL "UKRAINE" IN KHARKIV. FEATURES OF CREATION AND MODERN STATE

Today, researchers' interest in the architecture of the USSR during the late 50s and early 70s of the 20th century is growing rapidly, since these years have left behind an outstanding architectural heritage. Many aspects of industrial architecture are being studied, one of which is the phenomenon of the emergence of atypical author's public buildings. The paper discusses the features of the creation and the current state of the Cinema and Concert Hall "Ukraine" – one of the unique objects of the early 1960s, built in Kharkiv. To achieve the goal, the authors formulated the following research objectives: to consider literary sources that provide general information about the CCH "Ukraine"; find and analyze authors' articles and publications written by a design team of architects, as well as experts in various fields; to classify and summarize the received material; analyze the current state of the structure. The article describes the design site in the city garden named after T. G. Shevchenko, on the site of which there was a summer open-air musical stage, in need of restoration due to the impossibility of its use. Presented is a group of architects who developed the project for the new building, and under whose leadership the construction was carried out. The author's concept of the design solution and the stages of its implementation are considered. The main purpose of the project was showing films, holding concerts of symphonic music, performing by pop groups and soloists, as well as organizing rallies and meetings. The features of space planning (composition, functional zoning) and architectural (interior, external design) solutions of the investigated object are revealed. An innovative, for that time, constructive solution of the structure was analyzed in detail and described – hanging cable-stayed structures of a saddle shape. A brief history of this constructive system is given. Particular attention is paid to the current state of the CCH "Ukraine", since on August 12, 2021, the facility was opened after a long reconstruction. Presented and described are the project proposals for reconstruction, made by the Ukrainian architectural bureau.

Imre Waldbauer, an Important but Little-Known Violinist Partner of Béla Bartók

Imre Waldbauer (1892–1952) attained his greatest stature as a performer in his position as the first violinist of the Waldbauer–Kerpely Quartet, named after him and cellist Jenő Kerpely. This ensemble premièred Bartók's String Quartets nos. 1, 2 and 4 and his early Piano Quintet. Although Waldbauer's name is mostly mentioned in the Bartók-literature primarily because of his quartet, he was also important for Bartók as a “standalone” violinist as well. Waldbauer and Bartók played numerous sonata recitals from the 1910s to the 1930s, and Waldbauer also played the first performance of important violin works by Bartók: the “One Ideal” from the Two Portraits, (première: Budapest, 12 February 1911), the Violin Sonata no. 2 (première: Berlin, 7 February 1923) and nos. 16, 19, 21, 28, 36, 42, 43, 44 from the Forty-Four Duos (concert hall première: Budapest, 20 January 1932). Although Waldbauer seems like an individual of special importance, very little is known about his relation to Bartók and about his life in general (unlike his violinist contemporaries, e.g. Joseph Szigeti or Zoltán Székely). The present paper focuses on the relationship between the composer and the violinist, using materials from the yet unexplored Waldbauer legacy held in the Budapest Bartók Archives (recent donation from the Waldbauer family).

Glenn Gould in six scenes

Glenn Gould’s legacy revolves around his retirement from the concert hall in 1964. Studies of his artistry often reflect on that by following a particular impulse: to seek out the rational underpinnings of this decision and to explain them in terms of a larger technological or aesthetic vision. Drawing in particular on the work of Virginia Held and Sara Ahmed, this article conceptualises Gould’s abandonment of the concert hall as an act of self-care, a mechanism for coping with the increasingly intrusive and exploitative celebrity musical culture into which he was catapulted as a young musician. Thus, this article frames Gould’s self-care in terms of six overlapping scenes, as he performed in the concert hall and recording studio, in interviews and essays, and in front of the camera as photographic subject and television actor, culminating with a case study based on an excerpt from Bruno Monsaingeon’s documentary Glenn Gould: The Alchemist. The study concludes by suggesting that Gould’s artistic choices (and achievements) had much more to do with cultivating caring relations that allowed him to thrive than they did with an individual pursuit of a grand musical philosophy.

Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2021

Darmstadt was a bit different this year. The original 1946 courses had 120 registered participants in situ; I was told that the number this time around was larger (around 140), but only just. As an announcement for the final post-concert wrap stated, these were the COVID-19 courses. So: much smaller, much more concentrated, with almost every performance streamed online, and every other seat in the concert hall marked off with a weird sort of police tape with the Darmstadt logo on it. It's difficult to write about these things without lapsing into world-historical rhetorical posturing, as if the best lens to view the series of overlapping catastrophes we are living through is a biannual summer course for what, for better or worse, continues to be referred to as new music.

Aesthetics of Turntable Art

This article explores the transitional and liminal nature of the author's work and examines the diverse theoretical foundations that inform his creative practice. The particular work discussed here, Wow&Flutter, explores the intermedial relationships between “quotation,” “remediation” and “plunderphonics” within turntable art using acetate vinyl. This work was presented in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and the National Concert Hall, Ireland (NCH), between 2014 and 2018.

Shocking Intimacy: Techniques, Technologies, and Aesthetics of Amplification in Clara Iannotta’s “Intent on Resurrection”

“Certain sounds, even when they are loud or heard from close by, conjure small sources.” Small sounds, as Chion (2016) describes them in this quote, usually appear in intimate or contained settings, where their relatively low strength will not be spoiled by the masking effects of a noisy public sphere. What happens, however, when they are shared with an audience in a concert venue? Privileging a distributive understanding of agency, I explore the interactions of instruments, techniques, and processes through which the composer Clara Iannotta (b. 1983) brings small sounds to the public space of the concert hall in the first minute of her composition Intent on Resurrection – Spring or Some Such Thing (2014). By articulating the technological means harnessed to allow for the qualities of small sounds to emerge, I reveal the conditions that are required for sound to be recognized and experienced as intimate. Along the way, I draw connections between the amplification aesthetics of Iannotta’s work and Hyperrealist art, and theorize the concept of the “grain of the instrument” drawing on ideas from Roland Barthes, Pierre Schaeffer, and Brian Kane.

Shoe Box: An Analysis of the Concert Hall and its Adaption to Small-Scale Music Performance Space

<p>In the first 150 years after 1600, western music was traditionally performed in palace ballrooms which were mostly rectangular in shape. In the following two centuries a change in social conditions led to the first halls especially built for public concerts. Although the audience capacity of these halls had increased exponentially, those that derived from the rectangular plans and dimensions of the ballrooms in the century before proved to have particularly favourable acoustics. The proportions of which are roughly that of a double cube, 1:1:2. Today this rectangular form is widely ascribed throughout acoustic literature as the shoebox. Although the shoebox has proven a popular paradigm in all time periods, until the late nineteenth century little was known of the scientific reasoning for its acoustic success. Therefore much of the contemporary literature regarding the model has focused on the large-scale designs of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Comparatively, less is written about the adaption of these design concepts to smaller-scaled concert facilities with audience capacities up to 400 persons. This thesis analyses a number of highly celebrated large-scale concert halls, with audience capacities between 1,500-3,000, and tests the application of their design principles to small-scale concert spaces with capacities ranging between 100-350 persons. The aims of this thesis are applied to a design project, which seeks to adapt the traditional shoebox archetype to a series of small-scale concert spaces, initiated by a design brief for the New Zealand School of Music (NZSM). The design project relocates the NZSM to an existing building on a disused site in central Wellington. Acknowledging the programmatic need for acoustic performance in conjunction with the social component inherent to the occupation of an urban territory, this thesis investigates two strands of design logic: technical and contextual. One strand investigates the acoustic performance of the concert hall; the other investigates its response to site context. The findings from this thesis are substantiated through a method of proportionate variation whereby the acoustic principles of large-scale concert halls are adopted to small-scale music halls. In addition, the findings established from a site analysis of contemporary large-scale concert halls are then downscaled to inform the integration of the NZSM programme with the proposed inner city site.</p>