Publication details: “Reference and Mosaic Form in Peter-Jan Wagemanss Opera Legende.” Tijdschrift Van De Koninklijke Vereniging Voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 59, no. 2 (2009): 157-84.
Abstract: The three pillars of Wagemans’s aesthetic, as he outlined in a 1994 publication by Donemus, are recollection, association and quality. In Adorno’s view, expression had become a commodified cliché in music aesthetics of the late nineteenth century, a far cry from music’s actual capacity to express. For Schoenberg, expression could only regain meaning by pushing the musical material beyond the borders of tonality. However for Wagemans, the extension of this idea to its logical conclusion by the total serialists of the post-war years meant that the technique had yet again lost touch with what had sparked it in the first place: expression.
Abstract: “Repeated borrowing” refers to the incorporation of elements of a preexisting work in several new compositions. While various studies have focused on songs that have been frequently borrowed, such as “L’homme armé” and “Apache,” they have not considered what the numerous uses of those songs say about the practice of borrowing. This article discusses quotations of the chorale “Es ist genug” in Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935), Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s “Ich wandte mich und sah an alles Unrecht, das geschah unter der Sonne”: Ekklesiastische Aktion (1970), David Del Tredici’s Pop-Pourri (1968), and Christopher Rouse’s Iscariot (1989). As these works illustrate, repeated borrowing enhances aspects of borrowing. In repeated borrowing, borrowing becomes prolific and increasingly referential. Works not only borrow the same melody but also borrow from the ways in which other works use that melody. The works by Zimmermann, Del Tredici, and Rouse, for example, refer to the way Berg’s concerto connects a chorale to a twelve-tone row or a secret program. They also expand upon various aspects of borrowing that are emphasized by the concerto: the importance of the cultural meanings of a borrowed work (in the case of “Es ist genug,” associations of death); the internal and external dimensions of borrowing (whether it operates at a deep structural level or appears as an outside element); and the declamatory power of borrowing, which emerges when a borrowing disrupts a work with such force that it seems to be announcing a particular image or idea.
Publication details: “Rossini’s Operas in Vienna and the Politics of Translation, 1816-1822.” In Gioachino Rossini 1868-2018: La musica e il mondo, edited by Ilaria Narici, Emilio Sala, Emanuele Senici, and Benjamin Walton, 337-55. Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 2018.
Crazy moves T. Patrick Carrabré squarely into the new world of indie classical. Pulling together influences from post-modernism and alternative music, the five-song cycle Crazy runs the gamut from lyrical beauty to driving dance beats. Following Pat’s two-year stint as the weekend host of CBC Radio 2’s The Signal, his music evolved beyond the dark intensity of his post-romantic symphonic works to embrace more fluid melodies and a warmer harmonic pallet. His use of electronics also allows for a grittier sound. Pat explores the edges of beauty in these songs—that place where darkness meets light and inspiration can lead to obsession.
Abstract: The tapping paradigm has played an important role in formulating beat induction models. However, experimental studies that make use of actual music as source materials to investigate pulse finding mechanisms in complex rhythmic sequences are lacking. The present study proposes to use the concept of mensural determinacy, that is, the emergence of temporal expectations that may or may not be realized (Hasty, 1997), to explore the relative salience of an implied beat in two contrasting rhythmic sequences extracted from Elliott Carter’s 90+ for piano (1994), and test the influence of style-specific expertise on listeners’ spontaneous tapping performance. The results of the experiment were consistent with the hypothesis that familiarity with the style represented by the source materials contributes to a more stable tapping period. In addition, although accent was found to have a main effect on tapping behavior, it also interacted with global temporal structure and a number of musical parameters and participant characteristics, including gender. Exploratory analyses of several additional musical parameters and participants’ characteristics are also suggestive of how experimental methods could be complemented by post-hoc score analysis to investigate the contributions of specific factors to the relative influence of first- and second-order periodicity on musicians’ beat percepts.
Ensemble: Orchid Ensemble Composers: Dorothy Chang, Farshid Samandari Featured works:
Dorothy Chang From a Dream (2010)
Farshid Samandari Ghosts of the Living (2008) Recording details: Independent, November 2018 Link
Description: Vladimír Úlehla (1888-1947) uses his expertise in the biological sciences to perform an in-depth and ecologically situated study of folk songs from his native Czechoslovakia. His posthumous magnum opus Živá Píseň (Living Song, 1949) chronicled the musical traditions of Strážnice, a small town at the western hem of the Carpathian Mountains at the Moravian-Slovakian border. Informed by four decades of ethnographic inquiry, transcription, and several music-analytical methods, in Chapter VI Úlehla considers the songs from Strážnice as living organisms, links them to their ecological environs, and isolates musical characteristics that he believes correspond to stages of their evolution. He discusses modulation, vocal style, ornamentation, melodic and poetic structure, and identifies a diverse array of musical modes—evidence that he uses to refute the prevailing assumption of the day that folk music was derivative of art music.
