Journal articles on the topic 'Choruses, Sacred, with piano'

This article investigates the musical thought and stylistic evolution of the American modernist composer Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) in her formative years. It shows the relationship of style and idea to what she termed "spiritual concept": the core of her transcendental modernism. The sources of Crawford's spiritual aesthetics are Theosophy, Eastern religious philosophy, nineteenth-century American Transcendentalism, and the imaginative tradition of Walt Whitman. Thus Crawford drew on an eclectic legacy of ideas that had been linked in American intellectual life since the turn of the century. Documentation of her thought is based on unpublished diaries, poems, and correspondence. The mediation between style and idea is discussed in terms of the influence of two composers, Scriabin and Dane Rudhyar, and specific compositional procedures, such as: (1) the local referential gesture, exposed through expressive terminology like "mystic," "veiled," and "religioso"; (2) the hidden program, in which an untitled work is revealed to have an extra-musical context; and (3) the free, imaginative recreation of Eastern sacred chant. Music discussed includes the Sonata for Violin and Piano, the sixth and ninth prelude for piano, and the Chants for Women's Chorus.

CECILIE ØRE: A. – a shadow opera. Joachim Calmeyer, Anneke von der Lippe, Tilman Hartenstein, Henrik Inadomi, Lakis Kanzakis, Rob Waring (voices). Aurora ACD 5034.BETH ANDERSON ‘Swales and Angels’: March Swale1; Pennyroyal Swale1; New Mexico Swale2,1,3; The Angel4,1,5,6,8; January Swale1; Rosemary Swale1; Piano Concerto6,1,7,3,8. 1Rubio String Quartet, 2Andrew Bolotowsky (fl, picc), 3David Rozenblatt (perc), 4Jessica Marsten (sop), 5Joseph Kubera (vc, pno), 6André Tarantiles (hp), 7Darren Campbell (bass), c. 8Gary M. Scheider. New World 80610-2.RAGNHILD BERSTAD: Anstrøk for violin and cello1; Krets for orchestra9; Respiro for clarinet and tape2; Zeugma for ensemble3; Toreuma for string quartet4; Verto for voice, cello & percussion5,6,7; Emutatio for voice, chorus and orchestra5,8,9. 1Kyberia, 2Lars Hilde (cl), 3Affinis Ensemble, 4Arditti String Quartet, 5Berit Ogheim (voice), 6Lene Grenager (vc), 7Cathrine Nyheim (perc), 8Oslo Chamber Choir, 9Norwegian Radio Orchestra c. Christian Eggen. Aurora ACD 5021.TAILLEFERRE: Works for piano. Cristiano Ariagno (pno). Timpani 1C1074.‘Sweetly I Rejoice: Music based on Songs and Hymns from Old Icelandic Manuscripts’ by HILDIGUNNUR RÚNARSDÒTTIR, MIST THORKELSDÒTTIR, THÒRDUR MAGNÚSSON, JÒN GUDMUNDSSON, ELÍN GUNNLAUGSDÒTTIR and STEINGRÍMUR ROHLOFF. Gríma Vocal Ensemble. Marta Gudrún Halldórsdóttir (sop), EThos String Quartet. Instrumental Ensemble c. Gunnstein Òlafsson. Smekkleysa SMK31 (2-CD set).‘I Start My Journey’: Sacred music by Anon, SMÁRI ÓLASON, ELÍN GUNNLAUGSDÒTTIR, STEFÁN ÓLAFSSON, JAKOB HALLGRIMSSON, BARA GRÍMSDÒTTIR, HRÒDMAR INGI SIGURBJÖRNSSON, GUNNAR REYNÍR SVEINSSON. Kammerkor Sudurlands c. Hilmar Örn Agnarsson. Smekkleysa SMK17.‘New Zealand Women Composers’. DOROTHY KER: The Structure of Memory. JENNY McLEOD: For Seven. GILLIAN WHITEHEAD: Ahotu (O Matenga). ANNEA LOCKWOOD/Lontano: Monkey Trips (1995). Lontano c. Odaline de la Martinez. LORELT LNT116.SPAIN-DUNK: Phantasy Quartet in D minor. BEACH: String Quartet in one movement. SMYTH: String Quartet in E minor. Archaeus String Quartet. Lorelt LNT114.SAARIAHO: Du cristal…a la fumée1–3; Nymphaea4; Sept Papillons2. 1Petri Alanko (alto fl), 2Anssi Karttunen (vlc), 3Los Angeles PO c. Esa-Pekka Salonen, 4Kronos Quartet. Ondine ODE 1047-2.

Ancient Song Recovered: The Life and Music of Veljo Tormis, by Mimi S. Daitz. Pendragon Press, $54.00/£36.00.The Works of Eduard Tubin: Thematic-Bibliographical Catalogue of Works by Vardo Rumessen. International Eduard Tubin Society/Gehrmans Musikförlag, E.57.TORMIS: ‘Vision of Estonia’ II. The Ballad of Mary's Land; Reflections with Hando Runnel; Days of Outlawry; God Protect Us from War; Journey of the War Messenger; Let the Sun Shine!; Voices from Tammsaare's Herdboy Days; Forget-me-not; Mens' Songs. Estonian National Male Choir c. Ants Soots. Alba NCD 20.TORMIS: ‘Vision of Estonia’ III. The Singer; Songs of the Ancient Sea; Plague Memory; Bridge of Song; Going to War; Dialectical Aphorisms; Song about a Level Land; We Are Given; An Aboriginal Song; The Estonians' Political Parties Game; Song about Keeping Together; Martinmas Songs; Shrovetide Songs; Three I Had Those Words of Beauty. Estonian National Male Choir c. Ants Soots. Alba NCD 23.TAMBERG: Cyrano de Bergerac. Soloists, Orchestra and Chorus of Estonian National Opera c. Paul Mägi. CPO 999 832-2 (2-CD set).ROSENVALD: Violin Concerto Nos. 11 and 2, Quasi una fantasia2; Two Pastorales3; Sonata capricciosa4; Symphony No. 35; Nocturne6. 1,2Lemmo Erendi (vln), Tallinn CO c. Neeme Järvi, 2Estonian State SO c. Jüri Alperten; 3Estonian State SO c. Vello Pähn; 4Valentina Gontšarova (vln); 56Estonian State SO c. Neeme Järvi. Antes BM-CD 31.9197.DEAN: Winter Songs. TÜÜR: Architectonics I. VASKS: Music for a Deceased Friend. PÄRT: Quintettino. NIELSEN: Wind Quintet. Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, with Daniel Norman (tenor), c. Hermann Bäumer. BIS-CD–1332.TULEV: Quella sera; Gare de l'Est; Adiós/Œri Ráma in memoriam; Isopo; Be Lost in the Call. NYYD Ensemble c. Olari Elts. Eesti Raadio ERCD047.ESTONIAN COMPOSERS I: MÄGI: Vesper.1 KANGRO: Display IX.2 SUMERA: Shakespeare's Sonnets Nos. 8 & 90.3TAMBERG: Desiderium Concordiae.4 TULEV: String Quartet No. 1.5 EESPERE: Glorificatio.6 TORMIS: Kevade: Suite.71Estonian National SO c. Aivo Välja; 24NYYD Ensemble c. Olari Elts; 3Pirjo Levadi (soprano), Mikk Mikiver (narrator), Estonian National Boys' Choir, Estonian National SO c. Paul Mägi; 5Tallinn String Quartet; 6Kaia Urb (sop), Academic Male Choir of Tallinn Technical University c. Arvo Volmer; 7Estonian National SO c. Paul Mägi Eesti Raadio ERCD 031.ESTONIAN COMPOSERS II: TULVE: Traces.1 TALLY: Swinburne.2 KÕRVITS: Stream.3 STEINER: Descendants of Cain.4 KAUMANN: Long Play.5 LILL: Le Rite de Passage.6 SIMMER: Water of Life.71,5,6NYYD Ensemble c. Olari Elts; 2Ardo-Ran Varres (narrator), Iris Oja (sop), Alar Pintsaar (bar), Vambola Krigul (perc), Külli Möls (accordion), Robert Jürjendal (elec guitar); 3Virgo Veldi (sax), Madis Metsamart (perc); 4The Bowed Piano Ensemble c. Timo Steiner; 7Teet Järvi (vlc), Monika Mattieson (fl). Eesti Raadio ERCD032.ESTONIAN COMPOSERS III: GRIGORJEVA: Con misterio;1On Leaving. SUMERA: Pantomime; The Child of Dracula and Zombie. 1Tui Hirv (sop), 1Iris Oja (mezzo), 1Joosep Vahermägi (ten), 1Jaan Arder (bar), Hortus Musicus c. Andres Mustonen. Eeesti Raadio ERCD 045ESTONIAN COMPOSERS IV: KRIGUL: Walls.1 JÜRGENS: Redblueyellow.2 KÕRVER: Pre.3 KOTTA: Variations.4 SIIMER: Two Pieces.5 KAUMANN: Ausgewählte Salonstücke.6 AINTS: Trope.7 STEINER: In memoriam.81,6New Tallinn Trio; 2Liis Jürgens (harp); 3,8Voces Musicales Ensemble c. Risto Joost; 4Mati Mikalai (pno); 5Mikk Murdvee (vln), Tarmo Johannes (fl), Toomas Vavilov (cl), Mart Siimer (organ); 7Tarmo Johannes (fl). Eeesti Raadio ERCD 046.BALTIC VOICES 2: SISASK: Five songs from Gloria Patri. TULEV: And then in silence there with me be only You. NØRGÅRD: Winter Hymn. GRIGORJEVA: On Leaving (1999). SCHNITTKE: Three Sacred Hymns. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir c. Paul Hillier. Harmonia Mundi HMU 907331.SCHNITTKE: Concerto for Chorus; Voices of Nature. PÄRT: Dopo la vittoria; Bogoróditse Djévo; I am the True Vine. Swedish Radio Choir c. Tõnu Kaljuste. BIS-CD-1157.PÄRT: Es sang vor langen Jahren; Stabat Mater; Magnificat; Nunc Dimittis; My Heart's in the Highlands; Zwei Sonatinen; Spiegel im Spiegel. Chamber Domaine; Stephen de Pledge (pno), Stephen Wallace (counter-ten), Choir of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh c. Matthew Owens. Black Box BBM1071.

Much of the spirituality peculiar to African Christians bears traces of the influence of African Traditional Religions (atr). Prayer traditions like incantations, melodious choruses and appeal to spirits, typical of atr, have infiltrated the religious life of African Christians both at home and in Diaspora, amongst Christians in the mainline churches as well as in the African Independent Churches. Though the flow of African spiritual heritage into Christianity happened in the early history of Christianity, it accelerated in the lives of slaves in diaspora in the West Indies, the Americas and Europe. Today, the process continues amongst African migrants fleeing the unbearable political and economic strangulations in Africa; they migrate with their culture and spirituality and impact on Christianity worldwide. It is the intent of this paper therefore to explore how the African mystic sentiment, frenzied excitement and spirit-laden spirituality, which combine the sacred and the secular in practical life, influenced Christian worship and thought down the ages and, in recent times, contributed to the emergence of the Pentecostal and charismatic spirituality.

The motif of three women sharing the same mantle is pictured on about a dozen vases dating from the first half of the sixth century BCE. Among these vases, the so-called “François Vase” and a dinos signed by Sophilos (now in London, British Museum) are of particular interest. The wedding of Thetis and Peleus is pictured on both vases. This theme is well-adapted to the representation of a procession of deities in which the Charites, Horai, Moirai, and Muses take part. The main feature of these deities is a shared mantle, which covers and assembles them, emphasizing that these deities are plural by definition. The main study on this iconographical theme remains that by Buchholz, who documented most of the depictions of the “shared-mantle” in ancient Greek vase-painting and small terracottas. The shared-mantle motif has been interpreted successively as a reference to the sacred peplos (in relation to the wedding), a simplification from the painter to avoid painting all the mantles, a sign of emotional/sexual union, a religious gesture, and a depiction of choruses. The present study aims to consider in more detail the “shared-mantle” as an iconographic sign that involves the idea of community, shared identity, and emotional bond.

Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949) wrote a diverse collection of piano pieces at his “Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man” at the Chateau du Prieuré d’ Avon at Fontainebleau near Paris in a unique collaboration with pupil Thomas de Hartmann, a Ukrainian composer. This music was composed most intensely between the years 1925 and 1927, after Gurdjieff’s near-fatal car accident of 1924 when all work on his “Movements” or “sacred dances” had ceased. Thus this music was not written for the Movements but for other spiritual purposes. Gurdjieff would whistle, sing, and tap Eastern-sounding melodies and rhythms, and de Hartmann was required to immediately transform these indications into written Western notation, adding suitable harmonies. Like Gurdjieff’s teaching overall, the piano music is best described as a blending of Eastern and Western elements. In Gurdjieff’s lifetime this music was not published or recorded, and was mostly performed within his circle of pupils, as is appropriate within an initiatory and personally transmitted spiritual teaching. This article explores the Gurdjieff—de Hartmann music and its relationship to Gurdjieff’s overall esoteric teachings. There will also be an examination of how Gurdjieff groups and musicians continue to keep alive this music today, and it will be shown that the large number of recordings released represent its greatest cultural penetration into wider society. Currently hundreds of these recordings are available though, interestingly, most “Work” members are critical of them, arguing that the music only has value when experienced live and in a Work context.

On 1 September 1887, the Musical Times printed a list of pieces published during the previous month by Novello, Ewer and Co. As Novello's house journal, with a wide circulation across Britain, the Musical Times regularly listed new publications in the knowledge that such advertisements would reach a large and enthusiastic readership. In this particular issue, one of the pieces advertised was an anthem titled Hear my cry O God, composed by Dr C.G. Verrinder (see Fig. 1, highlighted). To anyone unfamiliar with Verrinder, his name blends in with the other composers on the list – one of the now largely forgotten majority of Victorian composers trying to make a living through writing sacred works or parlour music. The most renowned figure here is probably Ignaz Moscheles (listed here as ‘J. Moscheles’), whose work Domestic Life featured posthumously in one of Novello's collections of piano pieces; another name of note is that of Rosalind F. Ellicott, one of the era's more prominent female composers and particularly striking here among so many men.

Introduction. In the article the cycle of children’s choruses of S.Rachmaninov is considered, his characteristic features in subjects, figurative disclosure, the special role of lofty spiritualized lyric poetry; for the first time the appearance in the choral works of the composer of the themes “Dies irae”, “katabasis”; the spiritually-aesthetic value of Rachmaninov “Six Choruses” for secular children’s choral singing and performance is revealed. “Six choirs for children’s or women’s voices” op. 15 were written by S. Rachmaninov in 1895, the date of which he indicated in a letter to B. Asafiev on April 13, 1917. By the time the cycle was created, S. Rachmaninov was already the author of a considerable number of works. In the fall of 1894, he was employed by the Mariinsky Women’s School as a teacher of music theory and an accompanist of the choir. Specially for the choir of students, “Six choirs for children’s or women’s voices” were written: 1) “Glory!”, Words by N. Nekrasov; 2) ”Night”, words by V. Ladyzhensky; 3) “Pine”, words by M. Lermontov (from G. Heine); 4) “The waves dozed off”, words by K. Romanov, 5) “Captivity”, words by N. Tsyganov; 6) “Angel”, words by M. Lermontov. The features of S. Rachmaninov’s musical and artistic thinking, which researchers usually note in his romances – the significant role of accompaniment and a simple 3-part form, having their own historical archetype in the baroque three-part aria da capo (Antipov, 2014: 9) – can be found in “Six choirs”. The enormous artistic role of the piano accompaniment, its developed texture and organic unity with the score should be especially paid attention to. The vivid imagery of the cycle owes much to the instrumental part, which the composer not only went far beyond the accompaniment, but often has independent significance too. At first glance, the choral score of the cycle is uncomplicated – mainly with diatonic two-voice. But behind seeming simplicity, inexhaustible performing tasks for the choir and piano part are in favor. The extreme choral plays frame the cycle with themes of deep ethical and spiritual content that had not previously been encountered in children’s choral music. The middle rooms are dominated by bright lyrics, youthfully light sadness, and harmony between the pictures of nature and the states of the human soul reigns. No. 1 “Glory!” – the character of the work conveys pathetic, prayer (appeal to the Almighty for blessing) and lyrical-patriotic feelings. In the 3rd section of the miniatures, the accompaniment fills the music with fanfare intonations, in the last 6 beats, the dynamic tension within the framework of one tonic harmony is steadily increasing, and in the bass of the piano the bell ringing and ceremonial drum beat are imitated, completing the picture of the celebration. In No. 2 “Night”, the author embodies a dreamy-contemplative mood with the help of the choral cantilena. Frettonal ambiguity of the extreme parts (major-minor), functions languidly lasting for several measures, delicate harmonic colors, flexible ligature of figures, masterful techniques of sound-visualization contribute to a special refinement of moods and miniature images and are associated with impressionist music. No. 3 “Pine” – S. Rachmaninov chose M. Lermontov’s translation as the theme of loneliness and dreams of happiness, giving contrast to the musical images of northern Pine and southern Palma. No. 4 “The waves dosed off” – to convey the state of spiritual harmony and dreamy peace S. Rachmaninov found a set of expressive compositional techniques. Here we emphasize the special independence of the piano part, which does not contain a choral theme, but plays an important soundvisual role, enriching the narration of the choir. No. 5 “Captivity” – the image of a gentle bird, imprisoned in a golden cage, is widespread in fairy tales and poetry of the peoples of the world, as well as in choral music. In N. Tsyganov’s verses, the denouement is optimistic – the nightingale is set free. S. Rachmaninov relies intonationally on the Russian peasant cry-lamentation. The melody has a touching colour, the miniature is distinguished by a bright national color. No. 6 “Angel”. The poem tells of the great sacrament of conception in the spiritual world of a new person’s life. The Angel carries this person’s soul from heaven to earth to connect it with the body of the unborn child. In flight, an Angel sings a song about celestial gardens to this yet unincarnated Soul. The composer weaves a fragment of the motive-symbol “Dies irae” into Angel’s theme, entrusting it to a part of the alto and veiling from above the unrecognizabl third major second part of the soprano. The smoothly descending theme of the Soul can be described in this context as “katabasis”. This symbolism gives the miniature a deep philosophical meaning. S. Rachmaninov was the first Russian composer to create an example of concert purpose in The “Six choirs”. He raised to a new level the theme of children’s works, characteristic of the genre of that time. And that is education of a spiritually rich personality. The author revealed the extraordinary rhythmic and intonational richness of musical speech, the mastery of texture, harmony, the sophistication of technical techniques, and the tonal color scheme were rare for children’s choral music of that time. The richness of colors and the layering of the piano part bring it closer to the orchestra. In The “Six choirs for children’s or women’s voices” S. Rachmaninov revealed a new example of children’s choral music for concert purposes, which has high artistic merits, a deep substantive theme, and an aesthetic and educational orientation. The composer first attracted high poetry, revealed a spiritual and moral subtext. The theme of Faith, reflected in the first and last miniatures, “rings” the cycle, like Alpha and Omega, giving special semantics and significance to its figurative content. The essay reflected important artistic principles and writing techniques, characteristic of his subsequent opuses, but new to the children’s genre. Like the First Symphony (1895), created in the same year as the cycle, the “Six choirs” for the first time include the theme “Dies irae” symbolic for S. Rachmaninoff’s art, which further permeates his work up to “Symphonic dances”, as well as the theme “katabasis” revealing the spiritual and philosophical meaning of the work. This cycle was S. Rachmaninov’s only experience in children’s choral music, in which first for the genre he embodied high spiritual and ethical ideas of a romantic artist, his Christian picture of the world, the eternal themes of love for the Fatherland, life and death, good and evil, also actual for modern society and children of the XXI century. Prior to S. Rachmaninov, children’s choral music did not know such a depth of content, mastery of embodiment, aesthetic pleasure. The unsurpassed beauty of “Six choirs for children’s or women’s voices” made them a phenomenon of perfection in musical art for children, which is timeless, of course.

AbstractAugusta Browne Garrett composed at least two hundred piano pieces, songs, duets, hymns, and sacred settings between her birth in Dublin, Ireland, around 1820, and her death in Washington, D.C., in 1882. Judith Tick celebrated Browne as the “most prolific woman composer in America before 1870” in her landmark study American Women Composers before 1870. Browne, however, cast an enduring shadow as an author as well, publishing two books, a dozen poems, several Protestant morality tracts, and more than sixty music essays, nonfiction pieces, and short stories. By means of her prose publications, Augusta Browne “put herself into the text—as into the world, into history—by her own movement,” as feminist writer Hélène Cixous urged of women a century later. Browne maintained a presence in the periodical press for four decades in a literary career that spanned music journalism, memoir, humor, fiction, poetry, and Christian devotional literature, but one essay, “The Music of America” (1845), generated attention through the twentieth century. With much of her work now easily available in digitized sources, Browne's life can be recovered, her music experienced, and her prose reassessed, which taken together yield a rich picture of the struggles, successes, and opinions of a singular participant and witness in American music of her era.

Abstract In the iconography of nineteenth-century female education, the centralfigure is a woman at the piano. This figure embodies a form ofeducation, the female "accomplishments" — music, art, modern languages, literature, and the natural sciences — which was widespread in Britain by the end of the eighteenth century and which spread rapidly throughout the English-speaking world. Yet this form of education has been overlooked or dismissed by both mainstream and feminist historiography. This paper considers the rise of the accomplishments curriculum as a precursor to the emergence, late in the nineteenth century, of the “worthwhile education” of women. This earlier development, in the author's view, requires a reconsideration of that sacred cow of feminist theory, the man/culture, women/nature dichotomy. A study of the female accomplishments also illustrates the earlier rise of the enduring and oppressive myth that there is a natural affinity between the humanities and the female mind — with its equally enduring implication that there is a natural affinity between science and the male mind. Historians of the Edwardian period have noted that the rational, scientific frame of mind, which underpinned the capitalist exploitation of the natural world, was considered to be a "natural" male predilection. Feminist historians have rightly exposed the use of this pseudo-science as a justification of the contemporary intellectual subjugation of women. They have, however, failed to note that intellectual attitudes which were evident more than a century earlier, and which underpinned the emergence of the female accomplishments, ensured that women would be excluded from the great intellectual adventure of the twentieth century.

Background. The political and cultural movement of the “Sixtiers” in XX century opened wide horizons for Ukrainian composers to search for a new artistic and imaginative sphere, for new means of expressiveness, stylistics, form etc. The aspirations of young Ukrainian composers for concert genre renewal are realized through a rethinking of reality, intellectual and philosophical searching and psychologism in creativity. One of the brightest creative assets of this time is the First Piano Concerto by Ivan Karabyts, the talented Ukrainian composer, the outstanding representative of Ukrainian musical art of the last third of the 20th century. Among the studies of the last five years, and also of all the scientific research of the 21st century, we, unfortunately, cannot find any scientific study devoted to one of the largest conceptual works of the early period of creativity by I. Karabyts, which is the First Piano Concerto, and, therefore, this research can be called a unique one in modern musicology. In 1983, H. Yermakova provided only the general description of the Concerto in her small monograph. The author says about emotional tension and explosiveness that are the main features of the Concerto. The objectives of this article is to identify the model of the First Piano Concerto as a typological structure in terms of the renewal of the concert genre in Ukraine in the 1960s, through the analysis of embodiment of stylistic patterns and intonational dramaturgy of the work. Research methodology is focused on the interrelation of specific ways of analysis: functional, structural, intonational, genre, stylistic. Results. The First Piano Concerto was created by the 23-year-old composer in 1968 and was dedicated to B.Liatoshynskyi, reflecting the Teacher’s professional pedagogical credo. The First Piano Concerto based on emotional and imaginative contrasts and becomes a clear expression of dramaturgy development. The work’s concept carries the traces of experiments used by the young composer, which is reflected on the use of serial writing, cinematic editing (kaleidoscopic change of the thematic material “on the dramatic circles” of the two-part cycle), dissonance harmony. One of the basic principle of thinking is polyphonic development: imitations, canons, counterpoints, fugato, the principle of “countermovements” of voices, chorals are widely used. The two-part Concerto vividly presents the early work of I. Karabyts, highlights his distinctly individual style. The monumental purpose of this cyclical composition and its conceptualism strikes with its depth reflecting the collision of good and evil, sublime and earthly The First Movement exposition represents the main themes alternation, which extends from the theme-epigraph and the main soloist part in the beginning; bridge and its episode of fugato, second theme and closing area are highlighted also. The compositional features analysis of developing part shows the composer’s desire for a certain emotional quality of the thematic material, the main figurative lines are revealed from the very beginning. Each of themes gets the development of its material and its progressive dynamization, which process being often interrupted at its peak. Meaningful is the Coda of the First Movement, which fully implements the idea of “black-and-white palette” of the cluster chords, which can be interpreted as the idea of dualism of the world picture, embodying, for example, in Eastern philosophy as the sacred symbol of “Yin-Yang”. It can be said that the main meaning of the Code is to identify and understand the fundamental model of being, which is constantly changing and complementary. The Interlude, as a link between the first and second movements of the Concerto is fully consistent with the idea of continuation of the process and justifies smooth transition from one state to another. The Finale of the Concerto after the impromptu Interlude perceives as a vivid sketch in folk spirit connected with the traditions of folk genre principles reproduction and emerges as proof of life extension. The texture of the basic material is presented in a toccata manner, due to the alternation of weak and strong micro- and macrobeats in both parts of pianist’s hands. The middle part of the Finale is created in three-part format. The main section sets a certain rhythmic pulse. The introduction of quintuple (5/8) is innovative. The middle section of the middle part represents the choral is bringing us back to medieval music origins. Conclusions. The composer’s style of early I. Karabyts is distinguished by the scale and integrity of the artistic concepts of works that is typical of the entire Ukrainian national school, the use of variant and polyphonic techniques for the development of thematism, the timbre-orchestral and texture diversity. The First Piano Concerto of the composer is endowed with rich thematicism and vivid contrast of images, marked by the activity of the dramatic process based on dialogicity, due to the general philosophical concept of the work – the confrontation of the spiritual and anti-spiritual. Along with the conflict line, the Concerto presents the sphere of contemplatively dreamy, sensual lyrics. The First Movement in the dramaturgy of the cycle reveals the philosophy of life, its deep spirituality in coexistence with the forces of evil that bring destruction, accompanying the hero’s life path from birth to death, with all its collisions and intentions. The Finale is the continuation of being, movement (it represents the toccata material). The composer creates a concertо of a conflict-dramatic type, the dramaturgy of which is realized as an interaction of dramatic, lyrical and epic-dramatic principles. Conceptuality is revealed through the interaction of objective and subjective plans, where genre allusions acquire a certain semantic meaning (the introduction of a waltz and choral episodes, the toccata manner in “perpetuum mobile” image). The impulsive rhythmic development, the richness of harmonious sound, the wide timbre palette of the piano and orchestra make the Concert emotionally intense, romantic. The Concert uses a full register spectrum of pianos and a wide arsenal of its techniques, which allows the soloist to embody his performing abilities and recreate the concept of composer’s concept. The First Concerto embodies the philosophical theme, which is revealed through the procedural model of the endless circle “life-death-life”, continuing the line of the symphonic instrumental concerto, vividly presented in Ukrainian music of the 20 century by B. Liatoshinskyi, with allusions to Baroque genres (toccata, chorale) and with active use of polyphonic methods of development (in particular, the introduction of the episode of fugato).

Thisarticle offers a comprehensive overview of the “saxophonejazzimprovisation” phenomenon. It was noted that in the contemporary jazz studies, the components of this notion are, as a rule, not combined but studied separately. This work is the first study that proposes to combine them based on the textureandsyntaxparameters. For that purpose, a number of perceptions already developed in academic music studies have been corrected in this work, including the perception of the instrument’s textural style (A. Zherzdev), specifics of its reflection in improvisation, syntax as a “system of anticipations” (D. Terentiev), which has its own specifics in saxophonejazzimprovisation. Being one of the style “emblems” of jazz, saxophone combines the specifics and universalism of its aggregate sound, which makes its sound image communicatively in-demand. It was emphasized that the methodology and methodic of the topic presented in this work need to be concretized on the example of saxophone jazz styles, which offers prospects for further studies of this topic. The theory of jazz improvisation inevitably includes the question of instrument (instruments, voices) used to make it. At this point, we need to tap into information about the instrumental-type style (style of any types of music according to V. Kholopova) available in jazz practice in both of its historical forms: traditional and contemporary. Saxophone becomes one of the key objects of this study, being an instrument of new type capable of conveying the entire range of jazz intoning shades represented in such origins of jazz as blues, ballad, religious chants, popular “classical music”, academic instruments. To generalize, it is worth noting that information about saxophonejazzimprovisation is concentrated in two areas of study: organological (jazz instruments and their use: solo, ensemble, orchestral) and personal (portraits of outstanding jazz saxophonists made, as a rule, in an overview and opinionbased style). The historical path of saxophone as one of the most in-demand instruments of jazz improvisation was quite tortuous and thorny. The conservative public considered this instrument “indecent” and believed that its use in jazz does not meet the requirements of high taste (A. Onegger). It was emphasized that specifics of jazz saxophone sound indeed lay in the instrumentalization of expressive vocal and declamatory intonations originating from blues with its melancholy and “esthetics of crying”. It is manifested especially vividly, and with even greater share of shock value than in jazz, in the use of saxophone in rock music, which exerted reverse influence over jazz that gave birth to it (V. Ivanov). The timbre-articulatory diversity found in saxophone is identified when taking its organological characteristics out of the dialectics of the pair of notions “specifics – universalism”, where the deepening of the former (specifics) means overcoming thereof towards the latter, universalism (E. Nazaikinskyi). As a result, we have a textural style of saxophone based on melodic nature of this instrument, its specific timbre enriched by the influence of other instrumental sounds, including trumpet, piano, and later, electric guitar. Among the existing definitions of texture in music, there are three key, determinant parameters of the approach to the study of texture style of saxophone in jazz. The first of them is spatial-configurative (E. Nazaikinskyi), the second is procedural-dynamic (G. Ignatchenko), and the third is performance-based (V. Moskalenko). On aggregate, the textural style of jazz saxophone is defined in this article as the synthesis of the instrument’s “voice” and the “voice” of the improviser saxophonist. The former defines the typical in this style, and the latter defines the individual, unique. The specifics of texture in jazz, including saxophone jazz, are special, because this improvisation art does not have the component of final “finishing” of musical fabric. The formulas existing in saxophone jazz texture are divided into three types: specific (typical for jazz itself), specifized (stemming from the folklore and “third” layers), and transduction-reduction (according to S. Davydov, borrowed from the academic layer). The syntactic composition of saxophone jazz improvisation correlates by the textural one, taking the shape of textural-structural components (a term by G. Ignatchenko) – units of the first scaled level of the perception of form, which are related to the one and the other. The mechanism of anticipation – a forestalling perception of the next segment of the process of improvisation, and the intuitionallogical orientation of an improviser saxophonist toward the number “7” have great significance (E. Barban). Like in academic practice, syntax in jazz improvisation is built on the basis of “stability” and “instability” semantics (D. Terentiev), forming a complex system of paradigms and syntagmas (the former are typical for traditional jazz, the latter for contemporary one). The rules of jazz improvisation semantize, because the most important thing for a jazz musician is the process, not the result. At this point, the aspect of temporal distance from the “cause” to the “effect” becomes especially distinguishable: the farther they are from each other the less predictable improvisation becomes, and vice versa. The process of improvisation is largely structured by choruses, which represent sections of a form related to variant reproduction of a theme (standard theme or author’s theme). In addition, improvisation (including saxophone improvisation) may contain elements of general forms of sound used as the bridges connecting sections inside choruses.

Background. The children’s opera in all its diversity has undergone a rapid path to its formation and development, responding to changes in the art and aesthetic space of musical culture. The active being and the practical use of this phenomenon only emphasize the gaps in musicology science more acutely. Some researchers combine with the notion of «children’s opera» both works that involve children to participate in the performing process, and those which are aimed at a certain age audience. Other authors put the term «opera for children» as universal, but use it to describe various works. However, if the information about this genre is contained in the scientifi c literature, research on opera for children-performers analogue, children’s operetta which was formed and used by considerable demand in the late 19th – in the fi rst half of the 20th century in the English-speaking countries, is practically absent. This determines the relevance of the chosen subject. Objectives. The objective of this study is to consider the features of the libretto, the compositional and dramaturgical properties of the children’s operetta by J. L. Gaynor The House that Jack Built as one of the English-language samples of the genre. Methods. So far these methods were been applied: historical, structural and functional, comparative. Results. It is diffi cult to indicate the exact date of the children’s operetta emergence. It is known from available literature that it became widespread in the 1880s. In the following decades, the popularity of children’s operettas does not fade, rather, it only grows. The school authorities even were worried about such an intensity of extracurricular work. However, this fact did not affect the number of performances. There are books containing instructions and guidance, tips on probable diffi culties that could be faced by fi rst-time directors. In particular, it was recommended to divide responsibilities between school departments and draw up a general plan of action. Attention was paid to organizing an advertising campaign to attract as many viewers as possible. With such performance enthusiasm, there was a certain lack of repertoire written specifi cally for children and adolescents. Not surprisingly, the music teachers sought to replenish it. Among them was an American piano and harmony teacher Jessie Lovel Smith Gaynor (1863–1921) who composed The House that Jack Built (1902). This is not the only sample of children’s operetta in the heritage of J. L. Gaynor, she wrote a few more works, mostly after fairy tales: The Lost Princess Bo-Peep (its plot matches Jack’s one), The Toy Shop, Snow White, The Magic Wheel, Three Wishes, The Return of Proserpina, and On Plymouth Rock. The libretto of The House that Jack Built, written by A. G. D. Riley, is compiled on the basis of nursery rhymes, which are an integral part of the English-speaking countries culture. The operetta includes 24 folklore texts (full or fragmented): poems, two counters, and a ballad. To organize the plot, the librettist used the «stringing» method, or the cumulative principle, joining each subsequent element to the previous one with the help of the Mother Goose’s recitative lines. She is the key character, who greets and introduces new guests at her party. This principle is refl ected in the organization of the whole operetta. Mother Gooses’ cues are a refrain similar to the poem The House that Jack Built. Each character is not related to the previous one or the next, they are united only by belonging to the images of folk poetry. Since the libretto is mainly based on miniatures (with one or two verses), there are many participants of the performance: 43 characters, 21 thrushes, and collective characters, the number of which is not specifi ed precisely. There is no plot in common sense – as a series of related events built in accordance with certain principles – in The House that Jack Built. Rather, it reminds the carnival procession, in which characters are appearing one by one. They have bright, sometimes extravagant costumes, which vary with the speed of the pattern in the kaleidoscope. The structure of the operetta is simple and clear. It consists of two acts, divided into 19 big numbers (9 in the fi rst action, 10 in the second), which are often built in the form of a suite. The balance among solo-ensemble and choral numbers in The House that Jack Built is unequal. The choruses prevail in the operetta (there are about 20 of them). It is diffi cult to name the exact number because the author does not always clarify the exact cast. Solo and ensemble numbers are 4 times fewer; in addition, there are 2 numbers in the 2d act, in which the soloist and choir sing together. To achieve compositional and dramatic unity, there was a need to involve additional means in addition to the cross-cutting image of Mother Goose, since the Jack’s plot is deprived of the consistent development of events. This function is performed by several themes: «fairy tale» (in the future it is associated with the appearance of fairies and elves), «pastoral» (its emergence is marked by the remark Andante Pastorale), the theme of Jack, the dance motive, and the theme of King Cole. They are exhibited in the overture for the fi rst time. When the act begins, they are joined by the themes of Mother Goose and Thrushes. For the fi rst time, most of the themes are conducted in the overture. This determines the suite character of its structure: 6 episodes that contrast with each other by tempo. The piano part plays an important role in the operetta. It presents the leading themes, the main image-bearing and poetic motives, and supports the performers in the vocal appearances. The revealed signs give grounds to consider the English-language children’s operetta a national model of opera for children-performers. Conclusions. In the English-speaking countries, particularly in the USA, at the end of the 19th – in the fi rst half of the 20th century the tradition to perform operettas at schools was formed. This works from their form and contents were similar to compositions which were called children’s operas (operas for children-performers) in Europe. An analysis of The House that Jack Built by J. L. Gaynor allows us to interpret the author’s genre name in its original linguistic meaning – «small opera». A signifi cant number of such works still remain beyond the attention of scholars and require a thorough study both in historical and in theoretical directions.

Background. Choral work of American composers of the second half of the XX century is characterized by new qualities that have appeared because of not only musical but also non-musical factors generated by the system of cultural, historical and social conditions. Despite of a serious amount of scientific literature on the history of American music, the choral layer of American music remains partially unexplored, especially, in Ukrainian musical science, that bespeaks the science and practical novelty of the research results. The purpose of this study is to discover and to analyze the peculiarities of the historical formation and identity of American choral art of the second half of the twentieth century using the the works of famous American artists as examples. The research methodology is based on theoretical, historical and analytical methods, generalization and specification. Results. The general picture of the development of American composers’ practice in the genre of choral music is characterized by genre and style diversity. In our research we present portraits of iconic figures of American choral music in the period under consideration. So, the choral works of William Dawson (1899–1990), one of the most famous African-American composers, are characterized by the richness of the choral texture, intense sonority and demonstration of his great understanding of the vocal potential of the choir. Dawson was remembered, especially, for the numerous arrangements of spirituals, which do not lose their popularity. Aaron Copland (1899–1990), which was called “the Dean of American Composers”, was one of the founder of American music “classical” style, whose name associated with the America image in music. Despite the fact that the composer tends to atonalism, impressionism, jazz, constantly uses in his choral opuses sharp dissonant sounds and timbre contrasts, his choral works associated with folk traditions, written in a style that the composer himself called “vernacular”, which is characterized by a clearer and more melodic language. Among Copland’s famous choral works are “At The River”, “Four Motets”, “In the Beginning”, “Lark”, “The Promise of Living”; “Stomp Your Foot” (from “The Tender Land”), “Simple Gifts”, “Zion’s Walls” and others. Dominick Argento’s (1927–2019) style is close to the style of an Italian composer G. C. Menotti. Argento’s musical style, first of all, distinguishes the dominance of melody, so he is a leading composer in the genre of lyrical opera. Argento’s choral works are distinguished by a variety of performers’ stuff: from a cappella choral pieces – “A Nation of Cowslips”, “Easter Day” for mixed choir – to large-scale works accompanied by various instruments: “Apollo in Cambridge”, “Odi et Amo”, “Jonah and the Whale”, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”, “Te Deum”, “Tria Carmina Paschalia”, “Walden Pond”. For the choir and percussion, Argento created “Odi et Amo” (“I Hate and I Love”), 1981, based on the texts of the ancient Roman poet Catullus, which testifies to the sophistication of the composer’s literary taste and his skill in reproducing complex psychological states. The most famous from Argento’s spiritual compositions is “Te Deum” (1988), where the Latin text is combined with medieval English folk poetry, was recorded and nominated for a Grammy Award. Among the works of Samuel Barber’s (1910–1981) vocal and choral music were dominating. His cantata “Prayers of Kierkegaard”, based on the lyrics of four prayers by this Danish philosopher and theologian, for solo soprano, mixed choir and symphony orchestra is an example of an eclectic trend. Chapter I “Thou Who art unchangeable” traces the imitation of a traditional Gregorian male choral singing a cappella. Chapter II “Lord Jesus Christ, Who suffered all lifelong” for solo soprano accompanied by oboe solo is an example of minimalism. Chapter III “Father in Heaven, well we know that it is Thou” reflects the traditions of Russian choral writing. William Schumann (1910–1992) stands among the most honorable and prominent American composers. In 1943, he received the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for Cantata No 2 “A Free Song”, based on lyrics from the poems by Walt Whitman. In his choral works, Schumann emphasized the lyrics of American poetry. Norman Luboff (1917–1987), the founder and conductor of one of the leading American choirs in the 1950–1970s, is one of the great American musicians who dared to dedicate most of their lives to the popular media cultures of the time. Holiday albums of Christmas Songs with the Norman Luboff Choir have been bestselling for many years. In 1961, Norman Luboff Choir received the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Chorus. Luboff’s productive work on folk song arrangements, which helped to preserve these popular melodies from generation to generation, is considered to be his main heritage. The choral work by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) – a great musician – composer, pianist, brilliant conductor – is represented by such works as “Chichester Psalms”, “Hashkiveinu”, “Kaddish” Symphony No 3)”,”The Lark (French & Latin Choruses)”, “Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide)”, “Mass”. “Chichester Psalms”, where the choir sings lyrics in Hebrew, became Bernstein’s most famous choral work and one of the most successfully performed choral masterpieces in America. An equally popular composition by Bernstein is “Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers”, which was dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy, the stage drama written in the style of a musical about American youth in searching of the Lord. More than 200 singers, actors, dancers, musicians of two orchestras, three choirs are involved in the performance of “Mass”: a four-part mixed “street” choir, a four-part mixed academic choir and a two-part boys’ choir. The eclecticism of the music in the “Mass” shows the versatility of the composer’s work. The composer skillfully mixes Latin texts with English poetry, Broadway musical with rock, jazz and avant-garde music. Choral cycles by Conrad Susa (1935–2013), whose entire creative life was focused on vocal and dramatic music, are written along a story line or related thematically. Bright examples of his work are “Landscapes and Silly Songs” and “Hymns for the Amusement of Children”; the last cycle is an fascinating staging of Christopher Smart’s poetry (the18 century). The composer’s music is based on a synthesis of tonal basis, baroque counterpoint, polyphony and many modern techniques and idioms drawn from popular music. The cycle “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, created by a composer and a pianist William Bolcom (b. 1938) on the similar-titled poems by W. Blake, represents musical styles from romantic to modern, from country to rock. More than 200 vocalists take part in the performance of this work, in academic choruses (mixed, children’s choirs) and as soloists; as well as country, rock and folk singers, and the orchestral musicians. This composition successfully synthesizes an impressive range of musical styles: reggae, classical music, western, rock, opera and other styles. Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) was named “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts (2006). The musical language of Lauridsen’s compositions is very diverse: in his Latin sacred works, such as “Lux Aeterna” and “Motets”, he often refers to Gregorian chant, polyphonic techniques of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and mixes them with modern sound. Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” is a striking example of the organic synthesis of the old and the new traditions, or more precisely, the presentation of the old in a new way. At the same time, his other compositions, such as “Madrigali” and “Cuatro Canciones”, are chromatic or atonal, addressing us to the technique of the Renaissance and the style of postmodernism. Conclusions. Analysis of the choral work of American composers proves the idea of moving the meaningful centers of professional choral music, the gradual disappearance of the contrast, which had previously existed between consumer audiences, the convergence of positions of “third direction” music and professional choral music. In the context of globalization of society and media culture, genre and stylistic content, spiritual meanings of choral works gradually tend to acquire new features such as interaction of ancient and modern musical systems, traditional and new, modified folklore and pop. There is a tendency to use pop instruments or some stylistic components of jazz, such as rhythm and intonation formula, in choral compositions. Innovative processes, metamorphosis and transformations in modern American choral music reveal its integration specificity, which is defined by meta-language, which is formed basing on interaction and dialogue of different types of thinking and musical systems, expansion of the musical sound environment, enrichment of acoustic possibilities of choral music, globalization intentions. Thus, the actualization of new cultural dominants and the synthesis of various stylistic origins determine the specificity of American choral music.

Background. In Ukraine both musicologists and performers (in particular the choirs conducted by well-known choirmasters) do much for the further development of the home Bach studies. For instance, the direction of the ‘choral bahhiana’ was actively developed by the leading choirmasters of that time professor M. Berdennikov (Kiev), Y. Kulik (Kharkiv) in the 60’s and 70’s. It is known that future students of the choral conducting departments first learn the choral heritage of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, as a rule, at the piano lessons at children musical schools and secondary schools. Unfortunately, their choral works aren’t often sounded today in the concert halls of musical academies and universities of arts. This music seemed to move from the concert stage to the classrooms. Analysis of publications according the topic. Among the researches that highlight the problems of the style of the sacred works of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, it is necessary to point out the fundamental studies of I. Givental and L. Gingold, M. Druskin, T. Livanova, V. Protopopov, A. Schweitzer, articles of modern authors by K. Berdennikova, N. Inutochkina, Y. Lyashenko, V. Semenuk, G. Skobtsova. However, the questions of the specifics of choral vocal technique remain, as a rule, outside the attention of scholars and they constitute the topic’s relevance of the article. Methods. The usage of the historical method contributed to the research of the educational choral performance at the present stage. It is involved structural-functional and intonational methods for establishing dramatic works’ features and concretization of their spiritual content. The comparative method is used to determine the differences between vocal style of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel’s works and the technique of working with them. Objectives. The main goal is systematization of theoretical and practical observations with the performance of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel’s choral works by the choir of the Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts students. The article is devoted to highlighting the problems of the performing process and the specifics of the choir practice of students with compositions by J. S. Bach (Cantata No. 140, ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’ and Magnificat) G. F. Handel (Dettingen Te Deum in D major, HWV 283). Results. The holding of the 22nd International Music Festival “Kharkiv Assemblies” devoted to the J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel’s oeuvre in 2015 was a significant event not only for Kharkiv but also the whole Ukraine’s musical life. The choir of the Kharkiv National Kotlyarevsky University of Arts students traditionally participated in it as in previous years (art director – Honored Art Worker of Ukraine, professor S. Prokopov, choirmasters – laureate of the all-Ukrainian competition H. Savelyeva, award winner of the all-Ukrainian competition O. Fartushka). The choir performed Magnificat and Cantata No. 140 by J. S. Bach ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’, fragments from the Dettingen Te Deum in D major, HWV 283 by G. F. Handel (the last two works are Kharkiv premieres). The work with them took place in short order and so it caused of some vocal technique difficulties and the problems of performative concept and performative style. Complaxities were intensified by the lack of necessary acoustic accumulation and the practical experience of performing the music of the Baroque by many young choirmasters, members of the choir group. The importance of studying the musical heritage of composers of genius in order to make a conductor-choirmaster personality is emphasized in the article. The main difficulties of learning choral scores due to the lack of performing experience, certain acoustic accumulation of choral music of the late baroque period which students of choral conducting specialization have. The approximation to the true understanding of the performing style of choral music by J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel may be provided with conditions of a thorough in-depth studying their works. The main tasks of the performative choices are described: appreciation of the entire depth of the spiritual content of J. S. Bach’s and G. F. Handel’s music by young performers, the correlation between vocal and instrumental principles, rational and emotional ones. One of the main tasks of the choir practice of students with J. S. Bach’s cantata No. 140 «Watchet auf, ruft uns die Stimme» was an adequate presentation of composer’s style. The composer treats the human voice as equal to the orchestra. Therefore, the vocal-instrumental nature of Bach’s choral style needs another way of sound-building, a greater unity of voices than our home choral music needs. They consider specific methods and techniques of work on such executive factors as tempo-rhythm, strokes. The questions of choral vocal technique, in particular, vocal intonation (significance of timbre expression, usage of different types of respiration, clear diction, active articulation) are raised. J. S. Bach’s interpretation of voice as an instrument, demands from performers a great deal of its mobility, almost virtuosity, especially in contrapuntal sections. As for the vocal style of G. F. Handel, the influence of the operatic style, which is felt in his oratorios and cantatas is emphasized. Conclusions. The choir practice of students and performing by the student choir of German composers’ genius works, the communication of young performers with outstanding conductors, singers (including foreign ones) became for them the true school of craftsmanship, promoted the professional growth of the choir group, revealed its new performance capabilities. Choral music of J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel should move from the educational audiences of universities and academies to the specific halls. The works of genius need to include in student choral groups’ repertoire.

Genre of the piano concert holds a prominent place in the works of contemporary Chinese composers. The interest is due to the integration of Chinese culture into the Western music world, the awareness of piano versatility for national musical material adaptation. Article analyses for the first time one of the most recently written works of the contemporary Chinese- American composer Chen Yi – the piano concert “The Four Spirits” (2016). The purpose of the article is to determine the effect of ancient Chinese mythology on the content and structure of the piano concert “The Four Spirits”, written by Chinese composer Chen Yi. The methodology uses musical and theoretical analysis method to study work’s musical drama and program basis.The concert analysed combines organically pan-European and national features, when the national dominates over the European. This is manifested in the concert at the content level, through Chinese mythology images, as well as in the musical language, by stylizing and quoting folk melodies common in various regions of China. Referring to the basics of Chinese mythology, Chen Yi reproduces in the 4-part cycle of the suite type the imagination of four sacred animals, symbols of Chinese culture: dragon, xuanwu (a combination of turtle and snake), tiger and phoenix. The composer stylizes in the lyrical and energetic music of the first part of the concert the Chinese folk songs from Central China. Mysterious mood and imagery of the second part are reproduced by the sonorous orchestral recording and spatial layers in the piano-solo part. Dramatic images of the third part, which is a link to the final, arise due to collisions of piano registers emphasized by means of orchestration. The fourth part is lively and energetic; the thematic material is borrowed from the folk melody of Southern China. The piano and orchestra are transformed in each part into an organic whole, symbolizing the spirit of Chinese culture. The unique national traditions, in particular the ancient mythology of the Chinese people, became the source of the original musical ideas and their original embodiment by the modern Chinese composers.

Three outstanding music works have been presented in the article – “Polish Requiem” for 4 solo voices, mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki, “Panachyda za zmarłych z głodu” [A memorial service for those who died of hunger] for soloists, two mixed choruses, a reciter and symphonic orchestra by Jewhen Stankowycz, as well as Ocalały z Warszawy [A Survivor from Warsaw], a melodrama, op. 46, for a reciter, male chorus and orchestra by Arnold Schönberg. The works exemplify the idea of a composer's synthesis, present a programme of important, quite often tragic fates constituting the area of common ups and downs of Central Europe - Poles, Germans, Jews and Ukrainians. For that reason, the author has deemed it necessary to include these works in the school’s music curriculum, as an inter-cultural project, intentionally preparing the young for a dialogue and meetings. The thesis has been divided into two parts: The first one included a meaning and content-related analysis of music works in their mutual relations and differences in treating the language of artistic statement, similarity of topics formulated as a symbolic and narrative programme, as well as in references to religion and understanding the sacred sphere. The second part expresses pedagogic contributions which, during the musical education process, may constitute inspiration for the artistically-oriented inter-cultural education achieved by making the artistic activity available for the young. From among the trends, the following didactic and educational conceptions have been distinguished: a) Music educating by stimulating the cultural memory, b) Religious music in the “pedagogy of remembrance” trend, c) Music of martyrdom in the inter-cultural educational programme in the process of dialogue and assimilation.

Every act of art is able to reveal, balance and revive the relations between a territory and its inhabitants (François Davin, Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue)Introducing the Understory Art in Nature TrailIn February 2015, a colossal wildfire destroyed 98,300 hectares of farm and bushland surrounding the town of Northcliffe, located 365 km south of Perth, Western Australia (WA). As the largest fire in the recorded history of the southwest region (Southern Forest Arts, After the Burn 8), the disaster attracted national attention however the extraordinary contribution of local knowledge in saving a town considered by authorities to be “undefendable” (Kennedy) is yet to be widely appreciated. In accounting for a creative scene that survived the conflagration, this case study sees culture mobilised as a socioeconomic resource for conservation and the healing of community spirit.Northcliffe (population 850) sits on a coastal plain that hosts majestic old-growth forest and lush bushland. In 2006, Southern Forest Arts (SFA) dedicated a Southern Forest Sculpture Walk for creative professionals to develop artworks along a 1.2 km walk trail through pristine native forest. It was re-branded “Understory—Art in Nature” in 2009; then “Understory Art in Nature Trail” in 2015, the understory vegetation layer beneath the canopy being symbolic of Northcliffe’s deeply layered caché of memories, including “the awe, love, fear, and even the hatred that these trees have provoked among the settlers” (Davin in SFA Catalogue). In the words of the SFA Trailguide, “Every place (no matter how small) has ‘understories’—secrets, songs, dreams—that help us connect with the spirit of place.”In the view of forest arts ecologist Kumi Kato, “It is a sense of place that underlies the commitment to a place’s conservation by its community, broadly embracing those who identify with the place for various reasons, both geographical and conceptual” (149). In bioregional terms such communities form a terrain of consciousness (Berg and Dasmann 218), extending responsibility for conservation across cultures, time and space (Kato 150). A sustainable thematic of place must also include livelihood as the third party between culture and nature that establishes the relationship between them (Giblett 240). With these concepts in mind I gauge creative impact on forest as place, and, in turn, (altered) forest’s impact on people. My abstraction of physical place is inclusive of humankind moving in dialogic engagement with forest. A mapping of Understory’s creative activities sheds light on how artists express physical environments in situated creative practices, clusters, and networks. These, it is argued, constitute unique types of community operating within (and beyond) a foundational scene of inspiration and mystification that is metaphorically “rising from the ashes.” In transcending disconnectedness between humankind and landscape, Understory may be understood to both culturalise nature (as an aesthetic system), and naturalise culture (as an ecologically modelled system), to build on a trope introduced by Feld (199). Arguably when the bush is cultured in this way it attracts consumers who may otherwise disconnect from nature.The trail (henceforth Understory) broaches the histories of human relations with Northcliffe’s natural systems of place. Sub-groups of the Noongar nation have inhabited the southwest for an estimated 50,000 years and their association with the Northcliffe region extends back at least 6,000 years (SFA Catalogue; see also Crawford and Crawford). An indigenous sense of the spirit of forest is manifest in Understory sculpture, literature, and—for the purpose of this article—the compilation CD Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests (henceforth Canopy, Figure 1).As a cultural and environmental construction of place, Canopy sustains the land with acts of seeing, listening to, and interpreting nature; of remembering indigenous people in the forest; and of recalling the hardships of the early settlers. I acknowledge SFA coordinator and Understory custodian Fiona Sinclair for authorising this investigation; Peter Hill for conservation conversations; Robyn Johnston for her Canopy CD sleeve notes; Della Rae Morrison for permissions; and David Pye for discussions. Figure 1. Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests (CD, 2006). Cover image by Raku Pitt, 2002. Courtesy Southern Forest Arts, Northcliffe, WA.Forest Ecology, Emotion, and ActionEstablished in 1924, Northcliffe’s ill-founded Group Settlement Scheme resulted in frontier hardship and heartbreak, and deforestation of the southwest region for little economic return. An historic forest controversy (1992-2001) attracted media to Northcliffe when protesters attempting to disrupt logging chained themselves to tree trunks and suspended themselves from branches. The signing of the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement in 1999 was followed, in 2001, by deregulation of the dairy industry and a sharp decline in area population.Moved by the gravity of this situation, Fiona Sinclair won her pitch to the Manjimup Council for a sound alternative industry for Northcliffe with projections of jobs: a forest where artists could work collectively and sustainably to reveal the beauty of natural dimensions. A 12-acre pocket of allocated Crown Land adjacent to the town was leased as an A-Class Reserve vested for Education and Recreation, for which SFA secured unified community ownership and grants. Conservation protocols stipulated that no biomass could be removed from the forest and that predominantly raw, natural materials were to be used (F. Sinclair and P. Hill, personal interview, 26 Sep. 2014). With forest as prescribed image (wider than the bounded chunk of earth), Sinclair invited the artists to consider the themes of spirituality, creativity, history, dichotomy, and sensory as a basis for work that was to be “fresh, intimate, and grounded in place.” Her brief encouraged artists to work with humanity and imagination to counteract residual community divisiveness and resentment. Sinclair describes this form of implicit environmentalism as an “around the back” approach that avoids lapsing into political commentary or judgement: “The trail is a love letter from those of us who live here to our visitors, to connect with grace” (F. Sinclair, telephone interview, 6 Apr. 2014). Renewing community connections to local place is essential if our lives and societies are to become more sustainable (Pedelty 128). To define Northcliffe’s new community phase, artists respected differing associations between people and forest. A structure on a karri tree by Indigenous artist Norma MacDonald presents an Aboriginal man standing tall and proud on a rock to become one with the tree and the forest: as it was for thousands of years before European settlement (MacDonald in SFA Catalogue). As Feld observes, “It is the stabilizing persistence of place as a container of experiences that contributes so powerfully to its intrinsic memorability” (201).Adhering to the philosophy that nature should not be used or abused for the sake of art, the works resonate with the biorhythms of the forest, e.g. functional seats and shelters and a cascading retainer that directs rainwater back to the resident fauna. Some sculptures function as receivers for picking up wavelengths of ancient forest. Forest Folk lurk around the understory, while mysterious stone art represents a life-shaping force of planet history. To represent the reality of bushfire, Natalie Williamson’s sculpture wraps itself around a burnt-out stump. The work plays with scale as small native sundew flowers are enlarged and a subtle beauty, easily overlooked, becomes apparent (Figure 2). The sculptor hopes that “spiders will spin their webs about it, incorporating it into the landscape” (SFA Catalogue).Figure 2. Sundew. Sculpture by Natalie Williamson, 2006. Understory Art in Nature Trail, Northcliffe, WA. Image by the author, 2014.Memory is naturally place-oriented or at least place-supported (Feld 201). Topaesthesia (sense of place) denotes movement that connects our biography with our route. This is resonant for the experience of regional character, including the tactile, olfactory, gustatory, visual, and auditory qualities of a place (Ryan 307). By walking, we are in a dialogue with the environment; both literally and figuratively, we re-situate ourselves into our story (Schine 100). For example, during a summer exploration of the trail (5 Jan. 2014), I intuited a personal attachment based on my grandfather’s small bush home being razed by fire, and his struggle to support seven children.Understory’s survival depends on vigilant controlled (cool) burns around its perimeter (Figure 3), organised by volunteer Peter Hill. These burns also hone the forest. On 27 Sept. 2014, the charred vegetation spoke a spring language of opportunity for nature to reassert itself as seedpods burst and continue the cycle; while an autumn walk (17 Mar. 2016) yielded a fresh view of forest colour, patterning, light, shade, and sound.Figure 3. Understory Art in Nature Trail. Map Created by Fiona Sinclair for Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue (2006). Courtesy Southern Forest Arts, Northcliffe, WA.Understory and the Melody of CanopyForest resilience is celebrated in five MP3 audio tours produced for visitors to dialogue with the trail in sensory contexts of music, poetry, sculptures and stories that name or interpret the setting. The trail starts in heathland and includes three creek crossings. A zone of acacias gives way to stands of the southwest signature trees karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor), jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata), and marri (Corymbia calophylla). Following a sheoak grove, a riverine environment re-enters heathland. Birds, insects, mammals, and reptiles reside around and between the sculptures, rendering the earth-embedded art a fusion of human and natural orders (concept after Relph 141). On Audio Tour 3, Songs for the Southern Forests, the musician-composers reflect on their regionally focused items, each having been birthed according to a personal musical concept (the manner in which an individual artist holds the totality of a composition in cultural context). Arguably the music in question, its composers, performers, audiences, and settings, all have a role to play in defining the processes and effects of forest arts ecology. Local musician Ann Rice billeted a cluster of musicians (mostly from Perth) at her Windy Harbour shack. The energy of the production experience was palpable as all participated in on-site forest workshops, and supported each other’s items as a musical collective (A. Rice, telephone interview, 2 Oct. 2014). Collaborating under producer Lee Buddle’s direction, they orchestrated rich timbres (tone colours) to evoke different musical atmospheres (Table 1). Composer/Performer Title of TrackInstrumentation1. Ann RiceMy Placevocals/guitars/accordion 2. David PyeCicadan Rhythmsangklung/violin/cello/woodblocks/temple blocks/clarinet/tapes 3. Mel RobinsonSheltervocal/cello/double bass 4. DjivaNgank Boodjakvocals/acoustic, electric and slide guitars/drums/percussion 5. Cathie TraversLamentaccordion/vocals/guitar/piano/violin/drums/programming 6. Brendon Humphries and Kevin SmithWhen the Wind First Blewvocals/guitars/dobro/drums/piano/percussion 7. Libby HammerThe Gladevocal/guitar/soprano sax/cello/double bass/drums 8. Pete and Dave JeavonsSanctuaryguitars/percussion/talking drum/cowbell/soprano sax 9. Tomás FordWhite Hazevocal/programming/guitar 10. David HyamsAwakening /Shaking the Tree /When the Light Comes guitar/mandolin/dobro/bodhran/rainstick/cello/accordion/flute 11. Bernard CarneyThe Destiny Waltzvocal/guitar/accordion/drums/recording of The Destiny Waltz 12. Joel BarkerSomething for Everyonevocal/guitars/percussion Table 1. Music Composed for Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests.Source: CD sleeve and http://www.understory.com.au/art.php. Composing out of their own strengths, the musicians transformed the geographic region into a living myth. As Pedelty has observed of similar musicians, “their sounds resonate because they so profoundly reflect our living sense of place” (83-84). The remainder of this essay evidences the capacity of indigenous song, art music, electronica, folk, and jazz-blues to celebrate, historicise, or re-imagine place. Firstly, two items represent the phenomenological approach of site-specific sensitivity to acoustic, biological, and cultural presence/loss, including the materiality of forest as a living process.“Singing Up the Land”In Aboriginal Australia “there is no place that has not been imaginatively grasped through song, dance and design, no place where traditional owners cannot see the imprint of sacred creation” (Rose 18). Canopy’s part-Noongar language song thus repositions the ancient Murrum-Noongar people within their life-sustaining natural habitat and spiritual landscape.Noongar Yorga woman Della Rae Morrison of the Bibbulmun and Wilman nations co-founded The Western Australian Nuclear Free Alliance to campaign against the uranium mining industry threatening Ngank Boodjak (her country, “Mother Earth”) (D.R. Morrison, e-mail, 15 July 2014). In 2004, Morrison formed the duo Djiva (meaning seed power or life force) with Jessie Lloyd, a Murri woman of the Guugu Yimidhirr Nation from North Queensland. After discerning the fundamental qualities of the Understory site, Djiva created the song Ngank Boodjak: “This was inspired by walking the trail […] feeling the energy of the land and the beautiful trees and hearing the birds. When I find a spot that I love, I try to feel out the lay-lines, which feel like vortexes of energy coming out of the ground; it’s pretty amazing” (Morrison in SFA Canopy sleeve) Stanza 1 points to the possibilities of being more fully “in country”:Ssh!Ni dabarkarn kooliny, ngank boodja kookoorninyListen, walk slowly, beautiful Mother EarthThe inclusion of indigenous language powerfully implements an indigenous interpretation of forest: “My elders believe that when we leave this life from our physical bodies that our spirit is earthbound and is living in the rocks or the trees and if you listen carefully you might hear their voices and maybe you will get some answers to your questions” (Morrison in SFA Catalogue).Cicadan Rhythms, by composer David Pye, echoes forest as a lively “more-than-human” world. Pye took his cue from the ambient pulsing of male cicadas communicating in plenum (full assembly) by means of airborne sound. The species were sounding together in tempo with individual rhythm patterns that interlocked to create one fantastic rhythm (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Composer David Pye). The cicada chorus (the loudest known lovesong in the insect world) is the unique summer soundmark (term coined by Truax Handbook, Website) of the southern forests. Pye chased various cicadas through Understory until he was able to notate the rhythms of some individuals in a patch of low-lying scrub.To simulate cicada clicking, the composer set pointillist patterns for Indonesian anklung (joint bamboo tubes suspended within a frame to produce notes when the frame is shaken or tapped). Using instruments made of wood to enhance the rich forest imagery, Pye created all parts using sampled instrumental sounds placed against layers of pre-recorded ambient sounds (D. Pye, telephone interview, 3 Sept. 2014). He takes the listener through a “geographical linear representation” of the trail: “I walked around it with a stopwatch and noted how long it took to get through each section of the forest, and that became the musical timing of the various parts of the work” (Pye in SFA Canopy sleeve). That Understory is a place where reciprocity between nature and culture thrives is, likewise, evident in the remaining tracks.Musicalising Forest History and EnvironmentThree tracks distinguish Canopy as an integrative site for memory. Bernard Carney’s waltz honours the Group Settlers who battled insurmountable terrain without any idea of their destiny, men who, having migrated with a promise of owning their own dairy farms, had to clear trees bare-handedly and build furniture from kerosene tins and gelignite cases. Carney illuminates the culture of Saturday night dancing in the schoolroom to popular tunes like The Destiny Waltz (performed on the Titanic in 1912). His original song fades to strains of the Victor Military Band (1914), to “pay tribute to the era where the inspiration of the song came from” (Carney in SFA Canopy sleeve). Likewise Cathie Travers’s Lament is an evocation of remote settler history that creates a “feeling of being in another location, other timezone, almost like an endless loop” (Travers in SFA Canopy sleeve).An instrumental medley by David Hyams opens with Awakening: the morning sun streaming through tall trees, and the nostalgic sound of an accordion waltz. Shaking the Tree, an Irish jig, recalls humankind’s struggle with forest and the forces of nature. A final title, When the Light Comes, defers to the saying by conservationist John Muir that “The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes the heart of the people is always right” (quoted by Hyams in SFA Canopy sleeve). Local musician Joel Barker wrote Something for Everyone to personify the old-growth karri as a king with a crown, with “wisdom in his bones.”Kevin Smith’s father was born in Northcliffe in 1924. He and Brendon Humphries fantasise the untouchability of a maiden (pre-human) moment in a forest in their song, When the Wind First Blew. In Libby Hammer’s The Glade (a lover’s lament), instrumental timbres project their own affective languages. The jazz singer intended the accompanying double bass to speak resonantly of old-growth forest; the cello to express suppleness and renewal; a soprano saxophone to impersonate a bird; and the drums to imitate the insect community’s polyrhythmic undercurrent (after Hammer in SFA Canopy sleeve).A hybrid aural environment of synthetic and natural forest sounds contrasts collision with harmony in Sanctuary. The Jeavons Brothers sampled rustling wind on nearby Mt Chudalup to absorb into the track’s opening, and crafted a snare groove for the quirky eco-jazz/trip-hop by banging logs together, and banging rocks against logs. This imaginative use of percussive found objects enhanced their portrayal of forest as “a living, breathing entity.”In dealing with recent history in My Place, Ann Rice cameos a happy childhood growing up on a southwest farm, “damming creeks, climbing trees, breaking bones and skinning knees.” The rich string harmonies of Mel Robinson’s Shelter sculpt the shifting environment of a brewing storm, while White Haze by Tomás Ford describes a smoky controlled burn as “a kind of metaphor for the beautiful mystical healing nature of Northcliffe”: Someone’s burning off the scrubSomeone’s making sure it’s safeSomeone’s whiting out the fearSomeone’s letting me breathe clearAs Sinclair illuminates in a post-fire interview with Sharon Kennedy (Website):When your map, your personal map of life involves a place, and then you think that that place might be gone…” Fiona doesn't finish the sentence. “We all had to face the fact that our little place might disappear." Ultimately, only one house was lost. Pasture and fences, sheds and forest are gone. Yet, says Fiona, “We still have our town. As part of SFA’s ongoing commission, forest rhythm workshops explore different sound properties of potential materials for installing sound sculptures mimicking the surrounding flora and fauna. In 2015, SFA mounted After the Burn (a touring photographic exhibition) and Out of the Ashes (paintings and woodwork featuring ash, charcoal, and resin) (SFA, After the Burn 116). The forthcoming community project Rising From the Ashes will commemorate the fire and allow residents to connect and create as they heal and move forward—ten years on from the foundation of Understory.ConclusionThe Understory Art in Nature Trail stimulates curiosity. It clearly illustrates links between place-based social, economic and material conditions and creative practices and products within a forest that has both given shelter and “done people in.” The trail is an experimental field, a transformative locus in which dedicated physical space frees artists to culturalise forest through varied aesthetic modalities. Conversely, forest possesses agency for naturalising art as a symbol of place. Djiva’s song Ngank Boodjak “sings up the land” to revitalise the timelessness of prior occupation, while David Pye’s Cicadan Rhythms foregrounds the seasonal cycle of entomological music.In drawing out the richness and significance of place, the ecologically inspired album Canopy suggests that the community identity of a forested place may be informed by cultural, economic, geographical, and historical factors as well as endemic flora and fauna. Finally, the musical representation of place is not contingent upon blatant forms of environmentalism. The portrayals of Northcliffe respectfully associate Western Australian people and forests, yet as a place, the town has become an enduring icon for the plight of the Universal Old-growth Forest in all its natural glory, diverse human uses, and (real or perceived) abuses.ReferencesAustralian Broadcasting Commission. “Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests.” Into the Music. Prod. Robyn Johnston. Radio National, 5 May 2007. 12 Aug. 2014 <http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/intothemusic/canopy-songs-for-the-southern-forests/3396338>.———. “Composer David Pye.” Interview with Andrew Ford. The Music Show, Radio National, 12 Sep. 2009. 30 Jan. 2015 <http://canadapodcasts.ca/podcasts/MusicShowThe/1225021>.Berg, Peter, and Raymond Dasmann. “Reinhabiting California.” Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California. Ed. Peter Berg. San Francisco: Planet Drum, 1978. 217-20.Crawford, Patricia, and Ian Crawford. Contested Country: A History of the Northcliffe Area, Western Australia. Perth: UWA P, 2003.Feld, Steven. 2001. “Lift-Up-Over Sounding.” The Book of Music and Nature: An Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts. Ed. David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. 193-206.Giblett, Rod. People and Places of Nature and Culture. Bristol: Intellect, 2011.Kato, Kumi. “Addressing Global Responsibility for Conservation through Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Kodama Forest, a Forest of Tree Spirits.” The Environmentalist 28.2 (2008): 148-54. 15 Apr. 2014 <http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10669-007-9051-6#page-1>.Kennedy, Sharon. “Local Knowledge Builds Vital Support Networks in Emergencies.” ABC South West WA, 10 Mar. 2015. 26 Mar. 2015 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/03/09/4193981.htm?site=southwestwa>.Morrison, Della Rae. E-mail. 15 July 2014.Pedelty, Mark. Ecomusicology: Rock, Folk, and the Environment. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2012.Pye, David. Telephone interview. 3 Sep. 2014.Relph, Edward. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion, 1976.Rice, Ann. Telephone interview. 2 Oct. 2014.Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996.Ryan, John C. Green Sense: The Aesthetics of Plants, Place and Language. Oxford: Trueheart Academic, 2012.Schine, Jennifer. “Movement, Memory and the Senses in Soundscape Studies.” Canadian Acoustics: Journal of the Canadian Acoustical Association 38.3 (2010): 100-01. 12 Apr. 2016 <http://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/2264>.Sinclair, Fiona. Telephone interview. 6 Apr. 2014.Sinclair, Fiona, and Peter Hill. Personal Interview. 26 Sep. 2014.Southern Forest Arts. Canopy: Songs for the Southern Forests. CD coordinated by Fiona Sinclair. Recorded and produced by Lee Buddle. Sleeve notes by Robyn Johnston. West Perth: Sound Mine Studios, 2006.———. Southern Forest Sculpture Walk Catalogue. Northcliffe, WA, 2006. Unpaginated booklet.———. Understory—Art in Nature. 2009. 12 Apr. 2016 <http://www.understory.com.au/>.———. Trailguide. Understory. Presented by Southern Forest Arts, n.d.———. After the Burn: Stories, Poems and Photos Shared by the Local Community in Response to the 2015 Northcliffe and Windy Harbour Bushfire. 2nd ed. Ed. Fiona Sinclair. Northcliffe, WA., 2016.Truax, Barry, ed. Handbook for Acoustic Ecology. 2nd ed. Cambridge Street Publishing, 1999. 10 Apr. 2016 <http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundmark.html>.

The loop is one of the primary means of structuration for electronic music from mainstream to avant-garde styles. Indeed, during forums at the recent 2002 AD Analogue 2 Digital event, organised as part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, many practitioners of electronic music gathered together and, often, quizzed each other about the loop: why does everybody seem to be using it and just how useful is it? With very few exceptions, the loop was considered to be an important if not essential tool for electronic music, and it is perhaps easy to understand why if one considers the "one-man band" nature of the majority of purely electronic music. Moreover, the loop is a trope common in many forms of contemporary music such as disco, minimalism, funk and hip-hop, all of which, as David Toop writes, "explor[e] entrancing elaborations and variations on repetition" (92). While Western musical forms have, for many centuries, been characterised by recurring elements (pedal notes, refrains, choruses, variations and so on are all musical tropes that rely on the recurrence of repetitive elements), there is perhaps a difference in the kind of repetition that is deployed in many of these musical forms and that deployed in consumer-driven and much avant-garde electronic music. When looping elements return in many pre-electronic (or non-electronic) compositions they present an elaborated form of the original iteration of that element, whereas it can be argued that the break in hip-hop or the loop employed by electronic music forms a stable basis on which other changing, shifting, modulating and developing elements are laid. (It should not of course be surmised from this that all hip-hop uses breaks nor that all electronic music uses loops.) Rather than presenting an active repetitive element creating difference in itself, the kind of looping employed in much electronic music proposes a banal, Platonic form of repetition in which, as Deleuze states, "the model is supposed to enjoy an originary superior identity [...] whereas the copy is judged in terms of a derived internal resemblance" (126-127). In the terms of our discussion, then, the sampled fragment of music or break (the "original" which some take endless pleasure in trying to identify) constitutes an originary identity which is repeated or looped in a form identical to itself to create an absolute internal resemblance across a contiguous whole. This reading of looping in electronic music finds extension in Jean-Charles François's criticism that electronic music produces only trigger timbre. François argues that in electronic music, the "performer is reduced to a triggering device, and does not participate in any real physical production of the sound" as opposed to the dynamic timbre of "traditional" acoustic instruments which can be varied by the performer in an interpretation of a work ("Fixed Timbre" 113). Trigger timbre, then, signals the exact reproduction (or, rather, a copy with internal resemblance, for an exact reproduction is an impossibility for a number of reasons, some philosophical, some temporal, some physical) of a prior moment, an originary identity, a movement analogous to that created by the looped element in electronic music. The problem with this in regards to musical production as artistic creation is that such modes of structuration are, according to François and Deleuze, eminently un-artistic or un-musical. For François, trigger timbre "strikes our ears like a symbol and threatens the essence of pure music" ("Fixed Timbre" 116), whilst for Deleuze a model employing banal repetition such as the repetition of a decorative motif "is not how artists proceed in reality. They do not juxtapose instances of the figure, but rather each time combine an element of one instance with another element of a following instance" (19). It might then be argued that electronic music is doubly prone to a Platonic mode of production removed from artistry, devoid of the desire with which, for Deleuze, all artistic creation is necessarily injected. To do so, however, is to propose a technologically determinist argument which maintains that electronic music is shaped by the very technology available to the artist, and emphasises the role of the engineer over the artist (even when the engineer and the artist are one and the same person, as is often the case in such music). That such a technologically determinist view might be levelled against electronic music is, nonetheless, perhaps not surprising since whilst most composers of any genre using acoustic instruments essentially have a set of instruments to draw on that has been relatively stable for a number of years (how many years will depend on the genre), it might be suggested that many electronic artists remain within the bounds of their tools' immediate and obvious possibilities because they do not have time fully to master them because the technology behind electronic music is still developing at an exponential rate. Whilst this is in many respects a gross overgeneralisation that neglects composers from both acoustic genres such as Luigi Russolo and Harry Partch who invented new instruments to broaden their sonic palette as well as electronic artists such as Kraftwerk or Aphex Twin who built or radically modified / deconstructed their own instruments, I do not think it entirely unfair given the technophile nature of many electronic artists, eager to keep abreast of the latest developments and software or hardware releases, and believe that it goes some way towards explaining the rate at which "movements" arise and disappear in contemporary electronic music. None of this would be of the least concern, of course, if this did not imply that the music made by many electronic artists is created as much by the hands of the engineer (and by engineer I refer not simply to a recording engineer but anyone involved in the development or programming of the hardware or software used for electronic) as in those of the artist. Even for those artists who serve as their own engineer, then, it is sometimes the case that their productions' bounds of possibility are determined not only by the artist's imagination but also by the very hardware and software used. Electronic music can, then, fall prey to technological determinism, can function in a Platonic manner, relying on a priori principles encoded in its tools and deploying banal repetition, and can be negatively critiqued in the terms of François's argument. This does not imply by any means, however, that it must be so. Indeed, in both her workshop and performance at the 2002AD conference, Kaffe Matthews proposed ways in which this quandary might be broached. Matthews takes her samples not from pre-existing recordings or intricately programmed "timbre objects" ("Fixed Timbre" 114), but from the "live" environmental sounds of the venue in which she is playing or the surrounding area. In this way, Matthews does not merely produce an exact repetition of an historical or prior moment (the sentimental potential of recorded media and electronic music which, according to François, explains their seductive power and thus popularity (François 1990, 114)), rather ensuring that every performance will indeed be an interpretation, a live performance which has no originary identity to refer back to or repeat. To build a complete musical text from fragments such as this, Matthews does rely on the loop, but one of the primary means that she uses to create her loops does not rely on the pattern of banal repetition observed above. Rather, Matthews places microphones around the venue in which she is playing and into which, therefore, her work is being amplified, so that the work itself is looped back into itself, each successive iteration of the loop being altered by the shifting acoustics of the environment into which it is emitted. In this manner, the entire venue is used as the "resonant cavity", the "giant membrane", the "environment", the "atmosphere" that render possible a discursive structure and that, for François, are the preserve of true timbre which cannot be produced by electronic technology ("Writing" 16). This is not, of course, the first time that such loops have been used in experimental music: the notion of the loop is very frequent in the work from the 1960s and 1970s of Steve Reich, who lets series of loops fall into and out of phase with each other, Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros. Perhaps the most significant precursor to Kaffe Matthews's approach, however, is Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room (1969). For this piece, the performer chooses the room whose musical qualities are to be evoked, then reads a text in that room. The recording is played back through a loudspeaker in the room, the playback itself recorded and amplified again with the original recording, the process being repeated over a number of generations. Lucier's piece and, indeed, all of the pieces employing loops by the aforementioned composers, use analogue tape technology in order to create their loops, however, which is to say that a deliberate manipulation of the hardware that rips it from its normalised and intended use is required for that hardware to create loops. This is not to say that the misuse of technology at one's disposal is particularly revolutionary; indeed, one might claim that it is a very common feature among avant-garde or progressive artists of the past and present in all musical genres using both digital, analogue, electro-acoustic and acoustic instruments — should Oval do that to compact disks? isn't that the wrong direction for a record to spin? did anyone really intend Hendrix to play a guitar like that? did Cage actually know how a piano should be played? does Jim Denley actually know how to play the flute? What this does suggest, however, is that the use of loops in the work of these artists in the 60s and 70s was the result of a willed aesthetic decision and not a mode of construction dictated by the bounds of the immediately possible hardwired into the technology being used. If the loop used as one of the primary means of structuration in electronic music is to escape the technologically determinist arguments seen above, then, its coming into being must similarly be the result of a willed aesthetic decision and not merely a symptom of the technology used to produce it; it must, in other words, be infused with an artistic sensibility. Much electronic music being pumped out of bedrooms and studios at an alarming rate, however, is not infused with this kind of artistic sensibility, a situation which, although I oversimplify once more in saying so, would only appear to be aggravated the closer one moves to the mainstream (hence phenomena such as "the Balearic sound"). By its nature more prone to banal Platonic repetition (because of the primacy of the loop) and the a-dynamism (and, by inference, stultification) of trigger timbre, those sections of the electronic music scene who are content merely to remain within the obvious uses of the music-making technology, whether their démarche is born of a desire to pander to market forces or an inability or unwillingness fully to master the technology offered because of the speed at which it is moving, consequently produce songs which are themselves little more than banal copies of each other. Constructing music around loops within a technological domain that no longer requires hardware manipulation for the creation of loops since the loop is encoded within it, Matthews, however, by integrating into this realm the kind of compositional démarche noted in Lucier, liberates electronic music from these pitfalls. More than this, however, her approach also allows for an improvisational and dynamic aesthetic which is uncommon even in the avant-garde of electronic artists who do extend the possibilities of the technology they use. For the majority of artists who can be included in this group generally rely, when processing samples in real time, on a bank of pre-recorded samples, regardless of how these were created, through the use or misuse of technology. In using the very space in or around where she is performing as a live sample bank and processing those samples in real time as they are looped and transformed by the very setup she has defined, Matthews simultaneously surrenders and reclaims her creation, reinstating an authorial presence into the absence around which Cage's 4'33" is based (his "silent" piece in which the ambient sounds of the audience, venue and surrounding space constitute the only sound matter), seeming, like the performer of 4'33" who merely marks off time in three movements, not to be involved in the physical production of sound that François deems necessary for dynamic musical production ("Fixed Timbre" 113), only to reassert her presence in the text as a physical and dynamic entity. Acknowledgement With thanks to Kaffe Matthews and M/C's reviewers and editors. References Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. London: The Athlone Press, 1994. François, Jean-Charles. "Fixed Timbre, Dynamic Timbre." Perspectives of New Music 28.2 (1990): 112-118. François, Jean-Charles. "Writing without Representation." Perspectives of New Music 30.1 (1992): 6-20. Toop, David. "HIPHOP: Iron Needles of Death and a Piece of Wax." Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. Ed. Peter Shapiro. New York: Caipirinha Productions, 2000: 89-101. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hainge, Greg. "Platonic Relations" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php>. Chicago Style Hainge, Greg, "Platonic Relations" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Hainge, Greg. (2002) Platonic Relations. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/platonic.php> ([your date of access]).

As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. 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