‘Empfindsamer Stil’ And Its Literary Connections: A Cue To Music Instruction

Empfindsamer Stil is a German expression whose meaning has historically been debated as either a “human emotional disposition” or “a musical style”. This descriptive bibliographic study seeks to investigate the historical development of Empfindsamer Stil, its application in musical contexts, as well as its nexus with literacy works, to inform music instruction. Given the COVID-19 pandemic research environment, most of the data were collected virtually and reported thematically. Findings indicate that Empfindsamer Stil is characterized by an emphasis on the expression of a variety of deeply felt emotions within a musical work, with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach being the principal exponent. The study also reveals that historians of philosophy across time failed to agree on the meaning of the term Empfindsamer Stil. It was therefore concluded that language is dynamic and evolving. Music educators must ensure to explore the history-contextual significance of musical terminologies, especially those that may be alien within the specific musico-cultural milieu of the learner. Also, in teaching, applying, and assessing lessons involving terminologies, music teachers must take a cue from specific historical epochs and cultures to maximize relevance and fairness. Future studies in music history, in correlation with modern psychology and literary works, will therefore help clarify further whether the term Empfindsamer Stil is best explained as a phenomenon of human emotional disposition or a musical style. Also, more research will better explain the interdependent coexistence of music and various literary works.

Music in Central America

This chapter presents a history of music genres in Central America and chronicles Indigenous music and dance, the arrival of European music, and West African influence. An awareness of music history of the region frames the repertoire within a larger cultural context and can inform how this repertoire is presented to students....

The Decade of the Violin Concerto: New Music and the Performer in the 1930s

The 1930s saw an unusually rich harvest of violin concertos. An examination of this group of works provides a singular and seldom-considered angle from which to view the music history of the interwar period. In spite of the widely divergent styles and personal approaches, the works are united by certain factors that result from the choice of genre, with an attendant set of historical and technical constraints. In addition, the violinists who commissioned and performed the concertos influenced the compositions to a greater extent than often realized; therefore, in order to understand the works, we must take into consideration the artistic personalities of the respective performers as well. Many of the concertos were written for a new type of soloist, mostly from the younger generation, who had made a firm commitment to new music – something that some superstar violinists were unwilling to do. The concertos offer good opportunities to study the relationships between composer and performer, still a somewhat neglected topic in musicological studies.

„In naives Plaudern“ geraten?

Kurt Pahlen’s activities in the Ibero-American region from 1939 to approximately 1970 were based on his musicological studies and musical activities in Vienna until 1938. Certificates of his studies at the university or press reports on his engagements in Vienna’s musical life shed light on Pahlen’s formation before his emigration to Switzerland, Argentina and Uruguay. In exile, he transmitted his knowledge of classical music to the Spanish-speaking world via articles and books on music history or radio and television broadcasts. His writings were commercially successful and, after their first edition in Latin America, they were often translated into German. As a result, Pahlen acted as translator between cultural contexts, audiences and media. An analysis of selected paragraphs of the books demonstrates, however, that he mainly transmitted his particular view of music, which was extremely time-bound and lost its relevance in later reprints. The reason for the divergent opinions of Kurt Pahlen’s work Spanish- and German-speaking scientific communities can be found in his rejection of academic musicology as he had got to know it in Vienna, and the increasingly superficial and subjective prose in his German reeditions. (Vorlage)

Spiritual concert in the work of Ukrainian composers

The last decades in the post-Soviet space are characterized by spiritual searches, growing interest in spiritual heritage, in musical art – the blossoming of spiritual creativity, in music science – by increasing attention to genres of spiritual music. The relevance of the problem stated in the article is caused by the need to highlight the development of the genre of spiritual choir concert as an exceptionally important and illustrative for Ukrainian musical art. The purpose of the research is to reveal evolutional tendencies of the genre archetype throughout its history of presence in Ukrainian music art. The leading method of this investigation is a genre-style method, which provides detection of different levels of transformations of genre invariant, connected to historical and style conditions and peculiarities of individual styles of composers. The results of the study can be useful to researchers of choral art and choral conductors, can be used in the pedagogical process – in educational courses on music history, choral literature, music culturology.