Interdisciplinary Interaction between Music Education and History: Shaping the Musical Preferences in Classical Music of the 20th Century

The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether an experimental programme, based on interdisciplinary interactions between music education and history and the implementation of arts and cultural education objectives, could influence pupils’ interest in Western classical music of the 20th century. The programme was designed on the basis of collaborating with music education and history teachers at two Slovenian primary schools and a Slovenian composer. Classes of pupils, aged fourteen and fifteen, were divided into an experimental and a control group. According to the outcome, the pupils in the experimental group showed a higher level of interest in contemporary classical music after the experiment than their peers in the control group. Furthermore, the pupils in the experimental group reported having listened on their initiative, to more classical compositions after the experiment than the pupils in the control group had.

All-Stars

In 1992, Bang on a Can launched their own in-house ensemble, the All-Stars, an amplified sextet designed to take the spirit of the festival on the road. Along with building a new audience via national and international tours, the All-Stars also unlocked a new source of earned income for Bang on a Can amidst an era of declining government support. The sound and image of the extroverted ensemble facilitated a pivot in Bang on a Can’s identity, from strongly emphasizing the overcoming of stylistic divides within new music (as epitomized by the uptown–downtown binary) to instead emphasizing the blurring of genre boundaries between contemporary classical music and rock. The All-Stars also instantiated a division of labor between composers and performers that was unusual in the history of new-music ensembles and led to some significant tensions, tied to how Bang on a Can carefully positioned their new group toward the marketplace.

Kaija Saariaho and Her Laterna Magica

Nowadays Kaija Saariaho is one of the most successful composers in the field of contemporary classical music. A former student of Tristan Murail, she works in the direction initiated by socalled spectral composition, composing extremely colourful and poetic pieces that are highly appreciated by music critics. One of her orchestra compositions, Laterna Magica, based on the memoirs by Ingmar Bergman and commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchestra, premiered in 2009 and became a hit — it was performed more than thirty times after the premiere. This successful piece is the main object of the analysis which is performed according to ideas of Saariaho expressed in her theoretical articles. One of the most interesting ideas about music form proposed by the composer is the idea of “polyphony of processes”, which means that different parameters of composition are realized in different schemes that do not intersect but act as separate phenomena creating an impression of both independence of the parameters and their interaction at the same time. Such parameters as rhythm, melodic ideas, application of text, tempos, textures and their combinations as well as orchestration and harmony have their own profile and are constructed according to different schemes. Besides music itself, a text by Saariaho written for the premiere of the piece is analysed and interpreted as a special case of a “composer’s vision” which shows specific angles in the author’s perception.

Art School Manifestos, Classical Music, and Industrial Abjection: Tracing the Artistic, Political, and Musical Antecedents of Punk

This chapter charts and explores the complex cultural origins of punk in Britain through three different case studies, beginning with an exploration of the influence of the Situationist International (SI) on the punk ethos and aesthetic around the Sex Pistols. Second, it looks at the musical and artistic trajectory of the anarcho-punk band Crass and, in particular, the contemporary classical music tradition that informed the work of Penny Rimbaud et al., from the late 1960s to the formation of Crass in the 1970s. Third, the chapter turns to the artistic influences of Neil Megson, later to be known as Genesis P-Orridge. Here, emphasis is placed on a timeline of artistic and political activities by P-Orridge, from his time in school, through his forming of COUM Transmissions in the early 1970s, to the early days of the innovative musical ensemble Throbbing Gristle (TG), formed in 1975. The case studies contribute to a wider understanding of the richer cultural references, practices, and traditions that early punk drew on.

Village life and Concert Hall: Is There a Connection?

Ukrainian folk music has been embedded into much of the classical music we hear. Mykola Leontovych and Peter Wilhousky are credited for the ever-famous piece Carol of the Bells, an arrangement of a Ukrainian Epiphany carol called Shchedryk (Щедрик). Despite the applicability of Ukrainian folk-inspired music in our society, people are generally unaware of its origin. In fact, researcher Yakov Soroker provides evidence of Ukrainian folk inspiration in various classical pieces being misclassified as Russian, Polish, and/or Hungarian. Ukrainian classical music, for many reasons pertaining to its unstable history, is not well known outside Ukraine and, therefore, is rarely discussed. This has limited potential insights it might bring to those who have interest in its place in Western music. My research explores the influence that Ukrainian folk traditions have had on contemporary classical music. My research has come from gathering and sifting through historical literature about the origins of classical, Ukrainian classical, Ukrainian folk, and other folk music works. I have also listened to selected works and examined the critiques of experts to form conclusions about how composers today have been influenced, knowingly or otherwise, by Ukrainian folk music. Going one step further, in order to provide a deeper, practical insight into the creative process of composers who have been influenced by Ukrainian folk music, I have composed a piece of my own influenced by Ukrainian folklore.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD: TOUCH AND THE VINYL RESURGENCE

This article reviews a recent wave of literature on the resurgence of vinyl records, examining what it has claimed about vinyl's capacity for tangibility and the contrast to digital media, associated with intangibility. These claims are explained with reference to other literatures on touch, and it is suggested that vinyl's haptics mediates and embodies the emotionally rewarding production of a sense of self. The apparent contrast of vinyl aesthetics with classical music aesthetics is also discussed, and the presence of contemporary classical music within the vinyl resurgence is considered.