Publication details: Martin Bresnicks Piano Compositions: An Analysis and Performance Guide, MTNA e – Journal, Cincinnati Vol. 14, Iss. 4, (Apr 2023): 37.
Excerpt of abstract: This document is intended to be a practical tool for those interested in performing, researching and developing a deeper understanding of Martin Bresnick’s keyboard music. As one of György Ligeti’s pupils, the practice of micropolyphony is prevalent in his music, and influences from Schumann, Bach, Beethoven, Webern and others are discussed. The document presents brief biographies of Bresnick and his wife, the pianist Lisa Moore, and contextualizes each piano composition.
TRANSFORMATION presents three interactive piano + multimedia works written in collaboration with Megumi Masaki that reimagine the piano and pianist’s artistic expression through new technologies, and transform the listener’s concert to an immersive, theatrical, and cinematic experience. These works explore new models of interaction between sound, image, text and movement to augment the piano and its surrounding space as a visual as well as musical instrument. This album also includes a documentary film about the inspiration and collaborative journey between Megumi Masaki, T. Patrick Carrabré, Keith Hamel and Bob Pritchard. TRANSFORMATION hopes to engage a wide audience in impactful and transformational experiences that motivate dialogue and action.
Publication details: The Museum of Renaissance Music: A History in 100 Exhibits, edited by Vincenzo Borghetti and Tim Shephard, 351-6. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023.
Description: In the charged religious context of post-Reformation Germany, debate ensued about the power of weather bells to disperse the thunderstorms traditionally thought to be the work of demons and witches . Catholics and Protestants alike inherited medieval notions of demonic agency in the atmosphere, but they differed on the appropriate remedy . Protestant critics ridiculed the consecration of bells as a corruption of baptism and rejected their sonic agency as a violation of God’s providence, retaining weather bells as a compulsion to the collective prayer that alone could assuage God’s wrath . Defenders of Catholic practice, however, rehearsed medieval arguments for bell apotropaism and insisted on their efficacy against storms, appealing variously to their consecration or to the prayer they compelled . If published Catholic opinion shifted markedly against apotropaic sound in the Enlightenment, local populations continued to hear weather bells in traditional ways, and to posit bells as powerful deterrents against demonic listeners
Abstract: In this article, I argue that deafness is not a deficit for musical experience; rather, it is a source of musical ability. I do so by summarizing some of the different techniques used by Deaf musicians who create music in a signed language. I focus on how signing musicians use different types of movement to create rhythm, and use the movement of their bodies through space to create a sense of melody. Rhythm in signed music is created in a visual-tactile medium, rather than a sonic one. Specifically, it is created through movement of the hands, body, face, and head. Melody in signed music involves the directed, purposeful movement of the body through the signing space, which uses movements and holds to create dynamic, kinetic lines. I explore these concepts using examples from signed rap music by the artist Sean Forbes, and an asl cover of Carrie Underwood’s song Blown Away by Rosa Lee Timm.
From publisher: Finding the Beatexplores humankind’s ability, propensity, and enjoyment in finding the beat in live and recorded experiences of music-making through the lens of entrainment, the human capacity to perceive a beat and to synchronize to it. Anyone who has attended a concert, gone to a club, or watched a sporting event has witnessed and/or participated in tapping, clapping, or dancing along with a piece, song, or chant. It doesn’t matter who or where you are in the world-as humans we spend a lot of time taking pleasure in matching our bodily movements with a perceived beat.
Publication details: In Italian Opera in Vormärz Vienna: Bartolomeo Merelli, Gaetano Donizetti, and Habsburg Cultural Politics in the mid-1830s: Re-Imagining Italianità, ed. by Axel Körner and Paulo Kühl, 96–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Description: Through musical analysis of compositions written in the first half of the twentieth century, Analytic Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1900-1960 celebrates the achievements of eight composers: Alma Mahler-Werfel (1879-1964), Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Ruth Crawford (1901-53), Florence B. Price (1887-1953), Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006), J. M. Beyer (1888-1944), and Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-90). Written by outstanding music theorists and musicologists, the essays provide thought-provoking in-depth explorations of representative compositions, often linking analytical observations with questions of meaning and sociohistorical context. Each essay is introduced by a brief biographical sketch of the composer by editors Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft.
This collection – Volume 2 in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical studies on music by women composers – is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thoughtful analytical essays can open new paths into unexplored research areas in the fields of music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered in these essays to include new works in music theory and history courses at both graduate and upper-level undergraduate levels, or in courses on women and music. Finally, for soloists, ensembles, conductors, and music broadcasters, these detailed analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners.
