Expressing and Interpreting

Proclamations of the great emotional power of music are etched deep into artistic culture. During great performances, the emotions seem to flow directly from the hearts of musicians. Listeners are not, of course, privy to the hours of work and shaping that performers can devote in preparation. Research has shown that expressive musicians craft the details of sound parameters—timing, loudness, timbre, pitch—to make their music sound alive and human. This chapter shares insights afforded by psychological research on musical expression that can directly assist performing musicians. It explains that the expressive features applied by performers originate from several basic sources related to the structural characteristics of the music they are performing and to their own humanness. The artistic enterprise of interpretation is explained as the selection and combination of expressive ideas applied across an entire piece of music. Musical communication is successfully accomplished when performers—usually through explicit planning and artistic decision-making—stimulate listeners to experience emotions or feelings that match the musicians’ intentions.

Transformations of drum rudiments in jazz performances

<p>A significant part of the training of many performers on the drum set during the last 100 years has involved mastery of drum rudiments and military-style cadences. Consequently, many jazz drummers have built upon such training to develop an individual style that makes use of some of the techniques and rhythms found in these rudiments and drum cadences but which have often been changed or modified in ways that made these rudimental military - style drumming excerpts suitable for their own stylized musical expression. Research Question: Is there evidence in the improvised drum solos of jazz drummers Philly Joe Jones and Steve Gadd to suggest that the rhythmic vocabulary, stickings and techniques they used had their origins in rudimental snare drum cadences, method books and published snare drum solos? If so, how has this content been adapted by each drummer in their musical context(s) to the purpose of communicating their individual approach on the drum set? Method: To propose answers to this question, I have examined representative solos by each of the drummers in my sample and examined those solos for evidence of rudimental content derived from renowned method books, etudes and published solos. Having identified these rudiments (or rudiment-derived ideas) I have sought to identify the possible origins of the rudiments and their transformation to each drummer’s soloing vocabulary. Representative Solos: To select representative solos, I auditioned many recordings by Jones and Gadd. I finally settled on Asiatic Raes, Jazz Me Blues and Joe’s Debut as performed by Philly Jo Jones; Crazy Army and The 11th Commandment as performed by Steve Gadd. These solos, (as I explain in my analysis), are usefully representative of the approaches adopted by the respective drummers and offer a useful window onto the issues this exegesis examines.</p>

Transformations of drum rudiments in jazz performances

<p>A significant part of the training of many performers on the drum set during the last 100 years has involved mastery of drum rudiments and military-style cadences. Consequently, many jazz drummers have built upon such training to develop an individual style that makes use of some of the techniques and rhythms found in these rudiments and drum cadences but which have often been changed or modified in ways that made these rudimental military - style drumming excerpts suitable for their own stylized musical expression. Research Question: Is there evidence in the improvised drum solos of jazz drummers Philly Joe Jones and Steve Gadd to suggest that the rhythmic vocabulary, stickings and techniques they used had their origins in rudimental snare drum cadences, method books and published snare drum solos? If so, how has this content been adapted by each drummer in their musical context(s) to the purpose of communicating their individual approach on the drum set? Method: To propose answers to this question, I have examined representative solos by each of the drummers in my sample and examined those solos for evidence of rudimental content derived from renowned method books, etudes and published solos. Having identified these rudiments (or rudiment-derived ideas) I have sought to identify the possible origins of the rudiments and their transformation to each drummer’s soloing vocabulary. Representative Solos: To select representative solos, I auditioned many recordings by Jones and Gadd. I finally settled on Asiatic Raes, Jazz Me Blues and Joe’s Debut as performed by Philly Jo Jones; Crazy Army and The 11th Commandment as performed by Steve Gadd. These solos, (as I explain in my analysis), are usefully representative of the approaches adopted by the respective drummers and offer a useful window onto the issues this exegesis examines.</p>

‘I was listening … but did not succeed in hearing you’: Flann O’Brien, Ralph Cusack, and the Absurdities of Silent Musical Experience

The notion of soundless music seems contradictory, even absurd: the concept of soundless musical experience less so. In this article, I explore two quite different descriptions of this kind of experience as set out in two mid-twentieth-century Irish novels. In one, Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, the narrator watches one of the titular sergeants enjoy music that he – the narrator – cannot hear. In the second, Ralph Cusack's Cadenza, the narrator watches as a village priest mimes playing the piano on a café table, a performance he ‘hears’ and appreciates. Speculatively combining and extending these episodes, and using the figures of the philistine and the aesthete in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory as a key, I suggest that an anxiety about music and musical expression characterized the newly independent Ireland, an anxiety linked to wider concerns often read as ‘postcolonial’.

Concierto de Aranjuez for modern classical guitar and symphony orchestra by Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre: stylistic and genre features

Concierto de Aranjuez for classical guitar and symphony orchestra written by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre in 1939 is in the author’s spotlight. The traditional tripartite structure with the tempo correlation Allegro con spirito-Adagio-Allegro gentile fits perfectly into the genre canons of a classical concert: not coincidentally this concert is considered an eloquent example of Spanish Neoclassicism. The particular significance is the sound concept of the second movement based on the melodic legitimacy of saelta, a religious song appeared as an imitation of the psalmody of the canonical religious service. The texts of saelta reflect events and emotions of the Holy Week. Thanks to the fact that a genre of secular music involves the concepts and means of musical expression of a religious genre, adds to the second part an enormous depth and sensitivity, provoking a very strong emotional reaction of the listener. We mention in parentheses that Concierto de Aranjues is one of the most performed concerts for modern classical guitar in the world, while the second part is very often performed as an autonomous creation.

Universal skill of saxophonist as phenomenon modern of musical-creative practice

The purpose of the article is to select practice-approved ways to the combinatorial presentation of the componentі of the musical expression, in which, on the base of the general beliefs about music-rhetorical base inventio tax ways of the joining to speech liberty of the combinatorial use the music material. The methodology consists of riverbed intonation approach that is to say by means of beliefs about the unity of process factors in music and speech, as this bequeathing in works of B.Asafiev and his followers in Ukraine, unrolled specified interdisciplinary generalization, on example text books A.Losev, R.Ingarden, E.Nazaykinkij, E.Markova and others. The scientific novelty of the work is based on original and the practically-creative approved the idea of joining in mechanism rhetorical inventio, practical persons, combinatorial collation fragment and holistic music that-image, which the sequence forms the speech continuum of the music. Conclusions. The made analysis of the theoretical life lengths from the theory of the improvisation and theoretical positions of the rhetoric has allowed formulating the concrete operations cortical music operations of inventio as a way of the semantic join generalising value that-symbol with author's and out author’s thematic acquisition in straightening of acquisition "spoken creation of the music". The last one meets the terms modern performance art with his "neo-gothic style" discharge from priority to composer activity.

Evolution of musical means in piano "symphonies" by S.Yarunsky

The purpose of the article is to investigate in the piano work of the Ukrainian composer S.Yarunsky in his four symphonies for piano, a new type of figurative content and innovative means of musical expression. Methodology. The method of complex analysis is applied: the figurative content and musical form of four “symphonies” for piano are analyzed and their stylistic features are revealed. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, the Four Symphonies for Piano by S.Yarunsky have been analyzed in detail and conclusions have been drawn based on this analysis. Conclusions. Four “symphonies” for piano by S.Yarunsky in Ukrainian music of the 1990s were indeed a new and important word. At that time, the composer formed his position regarding this genre: the use of the term “symphony” is associated with the author's desire to expand the timbre palette of the instrument, to orchestral multi-timbre thinking. S.Yarunsky is constantly looking for new themes and subjects, including those related to the era of pre-Christian Russia. The artist significantly expands the scope of the maticism to create specific images, looking for new means of musical expression and compositional schemes. A little time has passed since the appearance of S.Yarunsky's “symphonies”, but they managed to enter the creative process of modern Ukrainian music and performing practice.

Sacred foundations of A. Scriabin's fret system in relation to O. Messian's modality

The purpose of the article is to understand the archetypal root of the whole-tone constructions of Fret structures of A. Scriabin and A. Messian in reflecting the detachment from the harmonic system that is relevant for the twentieth century in favor of a linear-melodic approach, determined by the archaic structures of the Indo-Iranian melodic basis. The methodology of the research is a cultural and historical concept in the traditions of A. Losev, in which certain means of expressing art are tested by the cultural genesis and cultural ideas of the time. We use analytical, comparative-historical, and genre-nominative musicological approaches based on aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical positions. The hermeneutical lines of the intonation approach in musicology in the traditions of B. Asafyev and B. Yavorsky in Ukraine, which are in contact with the verbal-centrist approach to music in the French tradition and are clearly expressed by J.-J. Rousseau and his followers of the level of Y. Kristeva, are also important for the work. The scientific novelty is determined by the primacy of the author of the study in the statement of the origins of the sacred determination of Fret thinking and O. Scriabin, and O. Messian in the cultural incentives of Indo-Iranian archaism. This stimulated "scythism" in the Slavic art world of the early twentieth century and Celtic-eastern references to the developments of C. Debussy, determining the Indo-philosophical orientation of Fr. Messian's franciscanism. Conclusions. Cultural and social sources of interval-fret constructions by A. Scriabin and A. Messian point in both cases to the Iranian-Indian basis of European archaism, which in the French composer finds a frank bias towards Hindu-philosophical and rhythmic borrowing. IN O. Scriabin paradoxically closes the search for Scythian-Iranian roots of archaic semantic positions, multi-vector discussed in the circles of Russian Futurists (led by N. Kulbin) and Polish Symbolists. The semitone-whole-tone melodic basis, which encourages support for the quart in A. Scriabin and K. Debussy, fueled the discovery of a new modality of A. Messian, which established in the vanguard of the second wave Scriabin's "nerve" as a mysterious and liturgical interpretation of the musical expression in "Light" by K. Stockhausen, the memorial symbolism of L. Nono and absurdist abstractionism of the works of P. Boulez, others.