armanm01
Joy
Composer: Stephen Chatman Text author: Sara Teasdale Publisher: E.C. Schirmer Music Co. Abstract: This piece is a fast, joyous outburst with the initial lines “I am wild, I will sing to the trees” setting the jubilant tone. The perpetual motion of the syllabic stepwise vocal lines is punctuated by staccato chords and, eventually, high arpeggio figures in the […]
Listen, I Love You
Composer: Stephen Chatman Text author: Sara Teasdale Publisher: E.C. Schirmer Music Co. Abstract: The opening lines, “Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face / Nor touch me” reflect the somber feelings encompassing Sara Teasdale’s poem. Paired voices initially express contrapuntal melodic lines enhanced by underlying harmony and slow syncopation in the piano accompaniment. The middle and […]
Love Me
Composer: Stephen Chatman Text author: Sara Teasdale Publisher: E.C. Schirmer Music Co. Abstract: This setting of Sara Teasdale’s whimsical poem pertaining to a brown-thrush, love, and kisses emulates the meaning, strict rhythm, rhyme, and strophic structure of the text. The soft rolled chords of the harp-like piano accompaniment highlight the lilting 6/8-meter, folk-like melody, and consistent homophonic choral […]
The Mystery
Composer: Stephen Chatman Text author: Sara Teasdale Publisher: E.C. Schirmer Music Co. Abstract: This expressive setting of Sara Teadale’s poem The Mystery, which depicts deep lasting love, begins with a unison melody, supported by modulating harmonies in the piano accompaniment, and evolves toward four-part voices. The middle section, featuring rising vocal lines in imitative counterpoint, precedes a return to the […]
How Many Kinds of Rhythm Are There?
Author: Tenzer, Michael Publication details: The Philosophy of Rhythm: Aesthetics, Music, Poetics, edited by Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison, 199-215. New York: Oxford, 2019. Weblink: https://oxfordscholarship.com Abstract: The universe of possible rhythms comprises a timescape with a timescape embedded within it; that is, the full complement of rhythms that can be imagined engulfs […]
Music for Woodwind Choirs
Composer: Christopher Tyler Nickel (BMus’01) Featured UBC artists: Roger Cole (oboe), Beth Orson (oboe), Christie Reside (flute), Paolo Bortolussi (flute) Recording details: Centrediscs, Nov 15, 2019 Link
Timely Negotiations: Formative Interactions in Cyclic Duets
Author: Roeder, John Publication details: Analytical Approaches to World Music 7, no. 1 (2019) Weblink: https://aawmjournal.com Abstract: Susanne Fürniss’s (2006) magisterial survey of Aka polyphony analyzes a remarkable duet in which each singer draws material from a regularly repeating cycle but varies it on the fly to complement her partner’s likewise varying repetitions. This texture […]
Music and the Book of Nature: Vincenzo Galilei on the Conundrum of Musical Consonance
Author: Konoval, Brandon Publication details: I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 22, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 93-119. Weblink: https://journals.uchicago.edu Abstract: Few figures have drawn more scholarly attention to the relationship between Renaissance musical humanism and early modern science than Vincenzo Galileo (c.1520/30–1591). From the Dialogo della Musica Antica et della Moderna (1581) through to […]
That’s All It Does: Steve Reich and Balinese Gamelan
Author: Tenzer, Michael Publication details: Rethinking Reich, edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn, 303-322. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Weblink: https://oxfordscholarship.com Abstract: Though integral to his formation as a composer, Steve Reich’s studies of Balinese gamelan have been overlooked. In part this is because of a certain redundancy: features of Balinese overlap […]
Life in the Universe
Composer: Thomas Beckman (MMus’16) Producer: Thomas Beckman Performers: Thomas Beckman viola, Borealis Quartet, Jarrett Plett percussion, Christopher Blaber vibraphone Recording details: Redshift Records, April 2019 Link Life in the Universe by Thomas Beckman