Music as Formal and Signifying Feature in García Márquez’s Mature Fiction

Music has played a varying role in García Márquez’s work since the passing reference to traveling troubadour “Francisco el Hombre” in One Hundred Years of Solitude and the novel’s concealed presence of Colombian vallenato song. In The Autumn of the Patriarch music becomes more prominent, with such musical traits as romantic bolero formulas, quotations from folk tunes, children’s jingles, and allusions to Caribbean pop rhythms. These musical insertions help provide markers to the relentless verbal flow of the work. In addition, the larger form of the novel is, by admission of the author, modeled after the string quartets of Bela Bartok. Classical music, moreover, contributes some black humor, as in the refined, cultured thug José Ignacio Sáenz de la Barra’s attachment to Mozart and Bruckner. A vallenato serves as the epigraph to Love in the Time of Cholera and also foreshadows crucial events. Musical references, moreover, furnish chronological and character markers in that novel, with Florentino and Juvenal employing music to captivate Fermina, the first communicating directly with his self-trained violin playing and the other hiring a professional to perform on a grand piano under her balcony. During their one encounter, the two men turn from the economic issue at hand to a discussion of music. García Márquez’s last novel fuses Florentino and Juvenal into a modernist musical voice in his narration of Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Punctuating his recollections with “high art” musical allusions, he also communicates directly by singing a medieval Spanish ballad to his sleeping beauty.

Grand Piano-the Audiovisual Hero of the Soviet Cinema Screen

Статья посвящена особым случаям использования фортепиано в советской киномузыке: не только в составе партитуры, но и как непосредственного «участника» экранного действия. Обычно это происходит в фильмах революционной и исторической тематики, а также в экранизациях русской классики. Среди множества картин, где рояль появляется на экране, нужно выделить ряд шедевров, в которых введение его отмечено уникальными решениями. В статье рассмотрены примеры из фильмов «Новый Вавилон» (музыка Д. Шостаковича), «Строгий юноша» (музыка Г. Попова), «Веселые ребята» (музыка И. Дунаевского). The article is devoted to special cases of the use of the piano in Soviet film music: not only as part of the score, but also as a direct “participant” of the screen action. This usually happens in films with revolutionary and historical themes, as well as in film adaptations of Russian literary classics in scenes of home music. However, among the many films where the instrument appears on the screen, it is necessary to note a number of absolute masterpieces in which the use of the piano is marked by unique solutions. The article considers examples of this kind from the films “New Babylon” (music by D. Shostakovich) “A Strict Young Man” (music by G. Popov), “Funny Guys” (music by I. Dunaevsky).

The French grand piano

The first pianos, built by Cristofori in Florence near the turn of the eighteenth century, were already ‘grand’ pianos, their shape derived from that of the harpsichord. The invention gradually began to spread across the continent, and by the mid-1780s grand pianos were common instruments in London. This pan-European development stands in stark contrast to the grand piano’s reception in France, where the harpsichord reigned supreme. Indeed, until the 1760s, the piano—regardless of its size or shape—was almost completely absent from the French musical scene, and it was not until around 1810 that the grand piano became a frequently used instrument in France. Without a sonorous instrument capable of projecting an interesting palette of nuanced effects in a moderate to large space, it was difficult to develop an independent repertoire for the piano. The eventual adoption of the grand piano in France was largely due to the efforts of the Erard brothers, who were familiar with this type of instrument from their contacts with the Silbermanns in Strasbourg and English builders in London. The Erard grand piano responded to an increasing desire on the part of French musicians for pianos with a stronger tone, undoubtedly to better balance other string and wind instruments which were also evolving towards more sonorous models.

Erard

Sébastien Erard’s (1752–1831) inventions have had an enormous impact on instruments and musical life and are still at the foundation of piano building today. Drawing on an unusually rich set of archives from both the Erard firm and the Erard family, Robert Adelson shows how the Erard piano played an important and often leading role in the history of the instrument, beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing into the final decades of the nineteenth. The Erards were the first piano builders in France to prioritise the more sonorous grand piano, sending gifts of their new model to both Haydn and Beethoven. Erard’s famous double-escapement action, which improved the instrument’s response while at the same time producing a more powerful tone, revolutionised both piano construction and repertoire. Thanks to these inventions, the Erard firm developed close relationships with the greatest pianist composers of the nineteenth century, including Hummel, Liszt, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn. The book also presents new evidence concerning Pierre Erard’s homosexuality, which helps us to understand his reluctance to found a family to carry on the Erard tradition, a reluctance that would spell the end of the golden era of the firm and lead to its eventual demise. The book closes with the story of Pierre’s widow Camille, who directed the firm from 1855 until 1889. Her influential position in the male-dominated world of instrument building was unique for a woman of her time.

Mendelssohn and the Erards

One of the musicians who benefited from the Erard pianos made in London was Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47). Mendelssohn became close friends with Pierre and Céleste Erard, and may have been one of the few people familiar with Pierre’s homosexuality. Mendelssohn was not an immediate convert to Erard pianos, but developed a more favourable opinion of them on his 1829 tour of the British Isles and especially during his trips to Paris and London in 1832. In 1832, Pierre gave a gift of a grand piano to Mendelssohn and this piano had an important influence on Mendelssohn’s compositions and concert activity. A precious trace of Mendelssohn’s genius was carefully preserved by the Erard family in the form of an autograph manuscript of Mendelssohn’s Andante in A major, published as the fourth piece in the first volume of Lieder ohne Worte, op. 19b [MWV U 73].

The Multi-Tuned Piano: Keyboard Music Without A Tuning System

A physical synthesis instrument, such as one of Pianoteq's series of grand pianos, unlike a physical grand piano, is not necessarily constrained at any moment to a single tuning system. The article discusses why a system using discrete piano pitches (not sliding pitches) chosen freely amongst the audible pitch continuum presents interesting musical and expressive possibilities. Audio and video of compositions and an improvisation exploiting the system demonstrate its potential and a performing interface for it.

Joseph Beuys und die Musik

Joseph Beuys expanded his concept of art to include listening and conceived of sound as sculpture. Musical material runs through his work from early drawings to late performances. This book breaks down what the acoustic elements in Beuys' works, notations, symphonies and scores are all about. What does Beuys himself do at the grand piano, what are "Erdklavier" and "Innenton"? Beuys worked with John Cage, Nam June Paik and Henning Christiansen, felt close to Erik Satie. At the time, Sigrun Hintzen laid the foundation for research into Joseph Beuys' music. This unpublished manuscript is finally being made accessible to all those who want to get to know and understand "music as an inner disposition" in Beuys' work.

Multibody-Based Piano Action: Validation of a Haptic Key

A piano key prototype actuated by a custom-made linear actuator is proposed to enhance the touch of digital pianos by reproducing the force feedback of an acoustic piano action. This paper presents the design and the validation of the haptic device. The approach exploits a multibody model to compute the action dynamics and the corresponding force on the key in real time. More specifically, a grand piano model that includes the five action bodies, its geometry and the specific force laws, is computed in the haptic device. A presizing step along with Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis produced an especially made actuator satisfying the design requirements, in particular the highly dynamic nature of the force to be transmitted. Force peaks, up to 50 (N) in less than 20 (ms), are reachable with low power consumption. Compared to previous solutions: (i) the key physical characteristics are preserved; (ii) the feedback is based on a real-time multibody model that is easily configurable and interchangeable; (iii) an experimental validation of the actuator within the prototype is developed and demonstrates its feasibility. The results confirm that the voice coil can produce suitable haptic feedback. In particular, rendering a grand piano action within the device shows promising haptic force profiles.