Vocal and Choral Symphonies and Considerations on Text Representation in Music

The article examines the genres of the vocal and the choral symphony in connection with the author’s vocal symphony Finland for soprano, tenor and orchestra set to Evgeny Baratynsky’s poem with the same title. It also discusses the issue of expression of the literary text in vocal music, as viewed by a number of influential 19th and 20th century composers, music theorists and artists. Among the greatest examples of the vocal symphony are Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie. These works combine in an organic way the features of the symphony and the song cycle. The genre of the choral symphony started with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and includes such works as Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, Scriabin’s First Symphony and Mahler’s Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies. Both genres exemplify composers’ attempts to combine the most substantial genre of instrumental music embodying the composers’ philosophical worldviews with that of vocal music, which expresses the emotional content of the literary texts set to music. The issue of expressivity in music is further elaborated in examinations of various composers’ approaches to it. Wagner claimed that the purpose of music was to express the composers’ emotional experience and especially the literary texts set to music. Stravinsky expressed the view that music in its very essence is not meant to express emotions. He called for an emotionally detached approach to music and especially to text settings in vocal music. Schoenberg pointed towards a more introversive and abstract approach to musical expression and text setting in vocal music, renouncing outward depiction for the sake of inner expression. Similar attitudes to this position were held by painter Wassily Kandinsky and music theorist Theodor Adorno. The author views Schoenberg’s approach to be the most viable for 20th and early 21st century music.

‘The Art of Agony’: Aspects of Negativity in Grainger’s Music

Throughout his life, Grainger claimed that he sought to put his music at the service of ‘the complicated facts & problems of modern life’, a task he thought required engaging his audience in a ‘pilgrimage to sorrow’. On the whole, however, audiences and critics alike have tended instead to associate Grainger with the works of his that sound anything but downbeat. Nevertheless, Grainger’s self assessment was genuine. He had a painfully ambivalent relationship to many of the emerging features of modernity, a state of mind for which he found a fellow-traveller in Rudyard Kipling. Both men found a means to express elements of this ambivalence via an unusually strong interest in both local and foreign vernacular cultures. Grainger’s original text settings and folksong arrangements alike do not merely celebrate the global reach of the British world or try to preserve the dying folk music traditions of rural England and Scandinavia, but instead are an attempt to express what he considered to be particular fissures in the modern psyche, not least his own. He believed that any lasting accommodation with the emerging features of modern life required us to confront what we had lost along the way.

Chained Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen steering inequalities with improved visibility

It is known that the linear [Formula: see text]-setting steering inequalities introduced in [D. J. Saunders, S. J. Jones, H. M. Wiseman and G. J. Pryde, Nat. Phys. 6 (2010) 845.] are very efficient inequalities in detecting steerability of the Werner states by using optimal measurement axes. Here, we construct chained steering inequalities that have improved visibility for the Werner states under a finite number of settings. Specifically, the threshold values of quantum violation of our inequalities for the [Formula: see text] settings are lower than those of the linear steering inequalities. Furthermore, for almost all generalized Werner states, the chained steering inequalities always have improved visibility in comparison with the linear steering inequalities.

The Musical Impact of Multicultural London English (MLE) Speech Rhythm

There is evidence that an emerging variety of English spoken by young Londoners—Multicultural London English (MLE)—has a more even syllable rhythm than Southern British English (SBE). Given findings that native language rhythm influences the production of musical rhythms and text setting, we investigated possible musical consequences of this development. We hypothesized that the lower vocalic durational variability in MLE and (putatively) less salient stress distinctions would go along with a preference by MLE speakers for lower melodic durational variability and a higher tolerance for stress mismatches (the non-coincidence of stress/beat strong-weak patterns) compared to SBE speakers. An analysis of two popchart song corpora by MLE and SBE artists confirmed that durational variability was lower in the MLE songs, and that there were more stress mismatches. In a follow-up experiment, MLE and SBE participants read four short English sentences and then rated text settings in pairs of specially constructed song fragments with and without stress mismatches. MLE participants’ speech showed the expected lower variability in vocalic duration and syllabic prominence compared to SBE participants’ speech, while their text setting ratings showed a greater tolerance of stress mismatches.

Air de Cour

The air de cour (courtly song) is a genre of secular vocal music produced in France during the late 16th and first half of the 17th century. The term first appeared in a collection of twenty-two solo vocal pieces with lute accompaniment published in Paris in 1571 by Adrian Le Roy. Le Roy stated that the origins of the new genre lay in the courtly appropriation of a popular vocal form, the vaudeville, and contrasted its lightness and simplicity with the “arduous” chansons of Orlande de Lassus. These and subsequent airs de cour are marked by brief, usually bipartite forms, limited vocal ranges, homophonic textures, strophic texts, syllabic text settings, and the elevated, serious tone of poetry. Unlike Le Roy’s airs, however, most 16th-century examples are for four or five voices without lute accompaniment. Some also exhibit rhythmic features suggestive of musique mesurée à l’antique. The genre peaked in both production and popularity during the reign of Louis XIII (1610–1643). Many of the era’s preeminent composers contributed to the genre, including Pierre Guédron, Antoine Boësset, and Étienne Moulinié. Airs de cour of the 17th century appeared in three forms, all published by the Ballard firm: four- or five-voice polyphony; arrangements of polyphonic airs de cour for solo voice with lute or guitar accompaniment (the most popular form); and solo voice without accompaniment of any kind. The poetic texts of airs de cour are usually anonymous, and they most often treat themes of love with a limited and precious vocabulary then current among courtly circles. A number of 17th-century editors also produced sacred parodies of popular airs de cour. Amateur musicians were the primary audience of airs de cour, but professional singers performed them as well, often with improvised ornaments and diminutions. Around mid-century the air de cour began to lose ground to new vocal genres in France, in particular the air sérieux, which featured more regular meters and basso continuo accompaniment intended for theorbo or harpsichord. Despite its disappearance from French music publishing, the reserved melodies, conservative harmony, and poetic language forged in the air de cour continued to undergird French vocal music throughout the 17th century and into the 18th. This bibliography limits itself to the air de cour proper, excluding both the air sérieux and the minor vocal genres (such as the chanson à boire, chanson à danser, and récit de ballet) contemporaneous with the air de cour.