1727 oder 1729?

The parody relation between two outstanding works by J. S. Bach has not been satisfyingly explained: the Funeral Music for Leonhard of Sachsen-Anhalt for Köthen (BWV 244a) and the St Matthew Passion (BWV 244). The scanty documented evidence does not allow us to decide unequivocally the precise year of the first performance of the St Matthew Passion (1727 or 1729). However, a detailed comparison of the text-music relationship makes it possible to discern which of Picander's texts of those ten movements which are potentially related as parodies, either those of 244a or 244, were originally first composed for the music of the early Passion version (BWV 244b). In five movements the music was almost certainly composed to Passion texts, in four movements the Funeral texts seem to have generated the music of BWV 244b. In one movement the choir part was very likely composed to the Funeral text, the soloist part to the Passion text. Therefore it seems likely that the St Matthew Passion was composed and performed in 1728/29 simultaneously with the Funeral Music, a unique instance in Bach's parody technique which merits further investigation.

Signs of music, intertextuality, and narrative strategy

The musical culture of modern Europe has produced numerous extra-linguistic elements which constitute a kind of code making transmission of content possible between sender and receiver. These elements also permit a kind of narrative strategy which organizes this communication. One of the codes most important for this field of European culture is musical rhetoric, made up of dozens of signs such as rhetorical figures or the symbolism of musical keys. I demonstrate the functioning of these elements on the example of funeral music, whose topoi, signs, and codes have developed in European culture for several centuries, along with characteristic musical and literary genres, and their mutual interactions. My methodological approach is mainly based on the tools of cultural and musical semiotics, and of narratology combined with analyses of musical rhetoric, supported by elements of literary analysis. I discuss this subject using the example of Karol Kurpiński’s Elegy on the Death of Tadeusz Kościuszko (1818), which perfectly illustrates the signs typical of European culture in the first half of the 19th-century and of nascent Romanticism, with its complex nationalisms and its quest for signs typical of a given nation or region, as well as for individual solutions. All of my analyses point to the power and versatility of cultural semiotics, which allows us to study human creativity in a highly comprehensive manner, exploring areas which are inaccessible to other research methodologies.

Time to Say Goodbye?: A Study on Music, Ritual and Death in the Netherlands

In Time to Say Goodbye? A Study on Music, Ritual and Death in the Netherlands, Janieke Bruin- Mollenhorst explores attitudes towards death in the Netherlands through the lens of music during contemporary funeral rituals. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the author stud-ies the interplay between music facilities, musical repertoires and funeral rituals from 1914 to present; the functions of contemporary funeral music; and the use of religious expressions in contemporary funeral music. She shows that continuing bonds play an important role in the ways people in contemporary Dutch society deal with death. In this innovative study, the lens of funeral music sheds new light on the socio-cultural context of death-related practices and ideas. It demonstrates the relevance of music, both in funerary practices and in the academic fields of death studies and ritual studies.

Recognition

This chapter describes Barber’s close relationship with Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Barber would frequently visit the conductor in his home, most days ending with music. This friendship resulted in Toscanini requesting that Barber write a work for the newly formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. This was a rare privilege, as Toscanini in the past had ignored American composers. His broadcasts were received with much enthusiasm from audiences. Toscanini further advanced Barber’s career by bringing his music to Latin America, with Barber being the first American composer whose work reached those shores. For Toscanini, Barber composed Essay for Orchestra and arranged the second movement of his earlier string quartet as the Adagio for Strings, which brought him international fame and became, as it were, the national funeral music of the United States, associated with the deaths of such famous names as Albert Einstein, Franklin Roosevelt, and Grace Kelly and with the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The chapter also covers Barber’s unaccompanied choral works.

Sound, Movement, and Emotion: An Historically-informed Performance at a Viking Burial Site

Launched in 2014, the aim of the Funeralscapes project is to explore the interplay between landscape, music and emotion by conducting re-enactment fieldwork at pre-modern burial sites in Scotland. In 2014 re-creations of aspects of a Viking funeral at an archaeologically attested Viking burial site was conducted with adult and primary school aged community volunteers on the Isle of Eigg. The aim was to investigate how Viking Age funeral music and movement (such as processions) could have worked in their immediate environment, and what emotional responses the modern-day participants had to the landscape and music. Following a brief outline of the site and performance choices, this paper draws upon fieldwork and interviews conducted with the participants following the re-enactments. It particularly comments upon the dramatic performance of heritage as a method through which the past is taught and remembered.

TRADICIJA LJUDSKIH PESMI V GLASBI SODOBNIH POGREBNIH SLOVESTNOSTIMANUSCRIPT SONGBOOKS: BETWEEN RELIGIOUS AND FOLK

Po ugotovitvah terenske raziskave pogrebne glasbe v sodobni Sloveniji ostaja ljudska pesem glavna spremljevalka slovesa od pokojnih. Iz pisnih virov in pogovorov z glasbeniki, ki na pogrebih nastopajo več desetletij, izvemo, da je bila na pogrebih v preteklosti ljudska glasba v izvedbi moških pevskih skupin tradicionalna glasbena praksa. Terenska raziskava je pokazala, da se danes ta tradicija dopolnjuje z uporabo različnih zvrsti glasbe od klasične do popularne v izvedbi vokalnih ali inštrumentalnih skupin in solistov.***The field research of funeral music in today's Slovenia indicates that traditional songs are often employed to accompany the process of bidding farewell to a deceased person. From written sources and in conversations with musicians performing at funerals for decades, we find out that traditional music performed by male vocal groups was a traditional musical practice at funerals in the past. Field research revealed that this tradition is complemented by the use of various types of music from classical to popular, performed by vocal and instrumental soloists and groups.

Music at Funeral Ceremonies in Today’s Slovenia

This doctoral dissertation provides an insight into funeral music as an ethnomusicological, anthropological, economic and cultural phenomenon, which has so far in Slovenia not attracted appropriate scholarly attention. It focuses on the role and importance of music at funerals in the context of the symbolism associated with death, departure and the concept of transience, and on the causes of different choices of music as an integral part of the leave–taking of the deceased, in conjunction with aspects of historical, social and cultural diversity.