The impact of literature-centric concepts on the development of the symphonic creativeness of Boris Tishchenko in the 1960s

The research subject is the symphonic creativeness of an outstanding Russian composer of the late 20th century Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939 - 2010). The author studies his works of the 1960s inspired by classical and modern Russian poetry. The author focuses on such issues as the interrelation between music and poetry in Tishchenko’s orchestra compositions, and the significant influence of literature concepts on the development of his symphonic style. Special attention is given to the four outstanding works of the composer: “The Twelve”, a ballet based on A. Blok’s poem (1963), Symphony No.2 Marina to M. Tsvetaeva’s lyrics (1964), Requiem to the poem by A. Akhmatova, and a dramatic music “The Death of Pushkin” (1967). The author arrives at the conclusion that the most part of Tishchenko’s symphonic creativity was based on his love of literature, words, artistic image begotten by literature and poetry. The author’s special contribution to the research of the topic is a detailed study of large symphonic works by Tishchenko of the 1960s based on poetry. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that literature-centric works by Tishchenko are being for the first time considered in the context of the development of his symphonic creativeness; the article detects a close connection between the author’s style and the composer’s language and the non-music confluence on his creative thinking.   

“A Darkness Which Might be Felt”

This chapter considers Handel’s invention of the English oratorio in relation to its Italian antecedents and seeks to demonstrate how Samson (1743) in particular reimagines the Italian oratorio as an English genre. Samson’s engagement with and emancipation from the ordinances of Italian opera and oratorio connect Handel to Fux, whose biblical oratorio La fede sacrilega nella morte del Precursore, San Giovanni Battista (1714) is examined in detail in order to define the axis that lies between generic servitude (in this work) and imaginative autonomy (in Samson). The comparative analysis of both works is contextualized by an appraisal of Handel’s reputation as an “entertainer,” a reputation which has eclipsed his radical transformation of genre and his liberation of English dramatic music from the servitude of Italian opera, an enslavement of which his contemporaries had long complained.

Traditional Japanese Music in Contemporary Times

Music in Japan is richly varied and includes documented genres dating back more than 1000 years. From classical court music known as gagaku, to the dramatic music plays in kabuki, to contemporary J-pop (subgenre of popular music), educators can find a sound to suit every instructional need. The focus here will be on considerations of three traditional instruments used in Japan: the koto (zither), shakuhachi (bamboo flute), and shamisen (three-stringed instrument), and a unique educational experience for those interested in studying these traditions. The learning program is offered through a koto school in Tokyo that is more than a century old, and they now offer a course in English every other summer. Also offered are suggestions for incorporating traditional Japanese music into elementary and secondary general music settings.

Listening, Touching, Meaning: On Translating Musical Experience, Answering the Call of Art, and Aesthetic Subjectivity in Baudelaire and Proust

This essay examines the way Baudelaire and Proust respond to music in terms of trying to account for being ‘touched’ or ‘struck’ by it. I contrast dramatic music, as it figures in Baudelaire’s writing on Wagner, with the newly emergent notion of ‘absolute music’, as it manifests itself in the fictitious chamber music of Vinteuil in Proust’s novel. The essay thereby demonstrates how emptying music of referential meaning allows writers to fill up that blank space with a verbal reply to the call of music, which itself becomes an act of aesthetic creation. Such an approach to listening, which emerged in the nineteenth century, still resonates with contemporary accounts by scholars working between musicology and literary studies, and shapes their account of aesthetic subjectivity.

Don’t Choose the Nightingale

“I Pini del Gianicolo,” the third movement of Ottorino Respighi’s Pini di Roma (1924), is the first symphonic composition to feature a phonograph record alongside more conventional orchestral instruments, a peculiar innovation debated by both early listeners and more recent scholars. This chapter seeks to capture Respighi’s use of a pre-recorded nightingale within a wide interpretive net, considering the status of orchestration and signification in early twentieth-century instrumental and dramatic music; the medial history of Respighi’s nightingale; as well as other attempts to combine the animal, mechanical, and musical in the months around the work’s premiere. Birdsong—real, represented, and recorded—might prompt further reflection on the peculiar materiality of timbre, whose mysteries, this chapter suggests, could also be considered the subject of Respighi’s work.

Loyalties

This chapter studies Wilder's music in the 1960s. Continuing to follow trends he had begun at the end of the preceding decade, he wrote volumes of concert music for groups of all sizes in the 1960s, for wind ensembles and chamber orchestras and small groups and soloists with piano. He also wrote piano music, dramatic music of diverse kinds, and a handful of new songs, following traditional popular or art-song models. Also extending earlier trends, Wilder's loyalties to his artistic and ideological roots found musical expression through the efforts of loyal friends. As his travels and residencies and friendships multiplied, so did his catalog of original compositions perfectly suited for a faculty ensemble or senior recital or informal gathering in a college practice room or dormitory basement.