Instrumental Music and Urban Gravitas

Bands, chamber ensembles, and (especially) orchestral societies acted as indicators of the musical maturity of urban centers. Together with conservatoires and opera houses, orchestras formed centers of gravity often overseen by town councils as an interconnected unit or as a set of overlapping units. A relative lack of state regulation resulted in less focus on centralization and more on internal organization (including dealing with the progressive unionization of musicians), rivalries between concert societies, and distinctive patterns in repertory selection and programming. Nevertheless, a strong touring circuit for composer-conductors, the soft power of Parisian institutions (notably the Concerts Populaires of Jules Pasdeloup), and town council demands for standard repertory rather than new music, meant that regionalist particularism had little part to play. Angers, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nancy, and Toulouse provide case-studies of the intersections of local politics, concert administration and orchestral professionalization; Lyon, Lille, and Strasbourg emerge as centers with an especially distinctive mix of chamber and orchestral music, especially during the Third Republic.

Choral Voices

Discussion of why choral and instrumental concerts were only lightly regulated by the state provides a springboard for examining the freedom the French provinces enjoyed and the considerable expansion of concert life that was based on individual and collective initiative. Core institutions such as the orphéon, “concerts populaires” and reconstituted cathedral choir schools (maîtrises—some of them state-subsidized) complemented private clubs and chamber ensembles in a bourgeois musical economy that often displayed a varied mix of high and low genres in comparison with Paris. Local administrative machinery aided a “democratizing” shift from private to public (accessibility). Parisian modes of choral and orchestral concert life are introduced as a prelude to discussion in chapters 3 and 4 of the distinctiveness of provincial centers. Discussion touches on provincial attitudes to touring ensembles from Paris and the increasing extent of soft power exerted by the capital.

Developing Musicianship through Chamber Ensembles: A Sequential Unit Design

Shifting school schedules, small class sizes, and unpredictable instrumentation resulting from the global pandemic necessitated a creative approach to teaching ensemble music classes this year. In response to that challenge, I constructed a curriculum for developing independent musicianship through chamber music. Part independence, self-evaluation, communication skills, and practice strategies were key focuses during the term. This sequential approach to introducing chamber music can be transferred beyond a “pandemic schedule” with any ensemble regardless of experience level or instrumentation.

Metrical Ambiguity in the Scherzo of Brahms's String Sextet, Op. 18

This article explores the metrical and hypermetrical ambiguities present in the Scherzo of Brahms's String Sextet in B♭ major, Op. 18 (1859–60). Drawing upon Lerdahl and Jackendoff's metrical preference rules, Mirka's parallel multiple-analysis model, and Ito's fractional notation, I argue that each hearing of material from the opening phrase (at the beginning, during its first repeat, after the Trio, etc.) affords the possibility of a different hypermetrical experience. Furthermore, rather than the metrical structure becoming increasingly clear over time, there are a number of hypermetrical irregularities that can lead listeners to question their previous interpretations. The article concludes with suggestions on how chamber ensembles can utilize metrical analyses of this movement to inform their performances and create varied listening experiences.

Development of the Accordion Chamber Compositions in Bulgaria in 80`s - 90`s of XX c. - Georgi Mitev`s Rore for their Approval in Music Performing Art and Pedagogical Practice

The report reflects the problems related to the development of accordion pedagogy in Bulgaria at the end of the XX century and the accordion chamber performing art. Reveals part of the pedagogical and creative versatility of Georgi Mitev / Assoc. Dr. at AMTII "Prof. A. Diamandiev" - Plovdiv /, as head of the "club of accordion chamber ensembles". Keywords: Accordion, Accordion Pedagogy, Arranging for Accordion Chamber Ensembles

The Rockefeller Foundation, the University New Music Center, and “Foundation Music”

This chapter focuses on the Rockefeller Foundation’s support of university new music centers and contemporary chamber ensembles, offering new insights into a commonly understood historiography of U.S. twentieth-century music: the dominance and prestige of experimental music and serialism at universities. Most notably, composers at Columbia, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and Mills College served dually as outside experts and commissioned artists and performers. Milton Babbitt, Otto Luening, and Vladimir Ussachevsky benefited greatly from their involvement at Rockefeller and the Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center. The composers and performers justified their work initially through the Soviet threat and rivalries with European studios, and later with innovation and creativity. The new music ensembles solidified a musical circuit that crisscrossed the country, making stops at many Rockefeller-funded centers. The foundation revealed ways it was both an advertent and inadvertent patron of what New Yorker critic Winthrop Sargeant pejoratively referred to as “foundation music.”

Musical idioms in Șerban Marcu’s Toccatas

The present research focuses on the toccata in a contemporary stylistic context, as a revival of the Baroque toccata in the creation of a Romanian composer from Cluj-Napoca, Șerban Marcu. He is a representative of the mature school of composition, studying under the tutorship of the celebrated Romanian composer Cornel Țăranu. His style unveils a series of constant traits, such as the programmatic feature and the preference towards musical forms and genres pertaining to the Western musical tradition, among them the madrigal, the song, the bagatella, the variations, the suite, the étude, the tone poem, the ballet or even the opera. He wrote five toccatas over the span of a decade. The toccata – understood both as a musical genre and a composing technique – is to be found in his output either as a movement in a mini-suite (Free Preview, 2008), or as an autonomous work, written for solo instruments as the piano (Toccatina, 2017), the organ (Balkan Toccata, 2018), as well as for various chamber ensembles, each featuring, among other instruments, the piano (tocCaTa brevissima, 2014, Toccata impaziente, 2018). The analysis unfolds by taking as focal point a series of keywords that have circumscribed the term toccata within the musicological literature. These core concepts are further placed in relationship with various techniques – neo-baroque as well as modern ones – which are to be identified in Șerban Marcu’s output of toccatas. The analytical procedures focus on highlighting the tradition/innovation binomial and are layered by taking into discussion the parameters of the musical discourse, namely the form, the musical language, the idiomatic instrumental writing, the compositional techniques, as well as aesthetic aspects such as the playfulness, the comic, the irony, the bizarre, the caricature and the paraphrase.

Jazz Influences in Chamber Musical Works created by Composers from Iaşi at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Chamber Music has always been a genre predefined to a certain audience. At the merge of the 20th and 21st Centuries, the interest for this genre has grown exponentially, from Romanian and Bessarabia composers alike. Because the concept of Chamber Music has evolved during the ages and has always offered the possibility for experimentation, it has managed to infiltrate into present day Ensembles, by associating timbre and constructive heterogenic instruments. The search for new ways of expressing oneself, new sounds and new stylistic methods and the desire to use new types of sound emission represent a continuous motivation for the composers, whose contribution to the Chamber Ensembles is frequently enrichened. Thus, the Jazz influence has a significant role inside the works of Sabin Pautza, Romeo Cozma (Romania) and Oleg Negruța (Republic of Moldova). The article is focused on Chamber Music compositions with Jazz influences, written by Iași authors. The purpose is to create a general presentation and also a structural-interpretive analysis of some works from my personal repertoire, which was actually one of the main criteria of selection. The objects of the research are: highlighting the particularities of the genre and style of contemporary works; presenting the interpretive aspects of the compositions and proposing some personal suggestions and tips. Although the selected works have been initially composed for different instruments and have been played to live audience, they have not presented themselves, so far, as a research subject, and thus have not been analyzed. Taking into consideration this deduction, the novelty and the personal contribution are visible in the scientific research that deals with the autochthonous compositional patrimony. The aspects presented in this article can be used for pedagogical processes and, at the same time, they can behave as a practical method in managing the chosen repertoire.

Collective Efficacy Belief, Within-Group Agreement, and Performance Quality Among Instrumental Chamber Ensembles

We examined collective efficacy beliefs, including levels of within-group agreement and correlation with performance quality, of instrumental chamber ensembles (70 musicians, representing 18 ensembles). Participants were drawn from collegiate programs and intensive summer music festivals located in the northwestern and western regions of the United States. Individuals completed a five-item survey gauging confidence in their group’s performance abilities; each ensemble’s aggregated results represented its collective efficacy score. Ensembles provided a video-recorded performance excerpt that was rated by a panel of four string specialists. Analyses revealed moderately strong levels of collective efficacy belief and uniformly high within-group agreement. There was a significant, moderately strong correlation between collective efficacy belief and within-group agreement ( rs = .67, p < .01). We found no relationship between collective efficacy belief and performance quality across the total sample, but those factors correlated significantly for festival-based ensembles ( rs = .82, p < .05). Reliability estimates suggest that our collective efficacy survey may be suitable for use with string chamber ensembles. Correlational findings provide partial support for the theorized link between efficacy belief and performance quality in chamber music settings, suggesting the importance for music educators to ensure that positive efficacy beliefs become well founded through quality instruction.