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1
Chamberlain, David. Melodic forms: The sculpture of David Chamberlain. Edited by Wolfson Pamela and Pucker-Safrai Gallery. Boston: D.R. Godine, 1990.
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2
Wilde, Denis Gerard. The development of melody in the tone poems of Richard Strauss: Motif, figure, and theme. Lewiston, N.Y: E. Mellen Press, 1990.
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3
Klee, Paul. Paul Klee: Melodie und Rhythmus. Edited by Baumgartner Michael 1952-, Amiet-Keller Marianne, and Zentrum Paul Klee. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2006.
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4
Ceccucci, Piero, ed. Fiorenza mia…! Firenze e dintorni nella poesia portoghese d'oggi. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/978-88-8453-329-6.
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In the Portuguese imagination Florence is justly considered the cradle of modern western civilisation. Seen and admired from the Renaissance on as the new Athens, for the Portuguese it has always represented not only a model of culture and civilisation to take as inspiration, but also and above all the locus amoenus of spiritual and intellectual harmony and balance, dreamed-of and unattainable, that floods and pervades the soul with a vague, nostalgic sentiment of admiration. Evidence of this, now as in the past, are the serried ranks of poets who for centuries have sung its praises and raised it to the rank of myth. This brief anthology proposes only a few of them, among the most renowned of recent generations. In a truly original way these poets have managed to convey to the hearts and minds of their compatriots their own stunned vision of the city, illustrating emotions that cannot fail to move even the Florentines and, in a broader sense, we Italians as a whole. Thus what is offered in these pages, in fine Italian translation, is this mesh of voices, an intimate and enthralling polyphony of city, poet and reader, unfurling in an evocative melody and proposing the legend of Florence in a new light – possibly more authentic and illuminating.
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Schmuckler, Mark A. Components of melodic processing. Edited by Susan Hallam, Ian Cross, and Michael Thaut. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199298457.013.0009.
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Melody is the most ubiquitous form of musical structure, with which listeners come into contact on a daily basis. Mirroring the prevalence and importance of melody, research in music cognition has focused extensively on the processes involved in perceiving and remembering melodic structure. Despite these years of study, however, our understanding of pitch structure in melody can be described simply, with respect to the two components of tonality and pitch contour. Although the importance of these two components has been recognized over the years, it is only recently that workable models of these components have been proposed. This article describes such models of tonality and melodic contour, and discusses the role of these components in listeners' perceptions of and memory for melody.
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Thomas, Oliver. Music in Euripides’ Medea. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794462.003.0005.
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This chapter argues that a tricky passage of Athenaeus, about Euripides’ use of melodic responsion in the play’s odes (453c–454a), is worth taking seriously. The reasons for doubting its information are not overwhelming, and moreover the effects of such responsion tie in excellently with what a number of the characters within the play (especially the chorus in the first and third stasima) have to say about music. In testing the hypothesis that Euripides employed ‘melodic responsion’ in the Medea, the chapter shows that melodic structure could have reinforced the odes’ semantics and themes, but also that it would have been a crucial element in the characterization of the chorus. This use of melody is also examined in the context of existing scholarship on Euripides’ adoption of various ‘New Musical’ forms later in his career.
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D’Angour, Armand. The Musical Setting of Ancient Greek Texts. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794462.003.0003.
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This chapter discusses the relationship between melody and language in Homer, the musical fragment of Euripides’ Orestes, and the ‘Seikilos Song’. Readings of Homeric passages draw on statistical analysis of the pitch-structures of the hexameter to show how melody may have been used to mark significant junctures, bridge syntactically conjoined verses, and demarcate the narrative. The musical scores of the two later texts demonstrate the interaction of semantic meaning with melodic and rhythmical patterns, and contextualizes these interactions against the backdrop of wider developments in Greek performance culture. The (probably) Euripidean melody on the Vienna papyrus should be seen in relation to the techniques of the ‘New Musicians’, and viewed as a move towards a more emotionally ‘programmatic’ melodization. The chapter also argues for an overall continuity of techniques for creating musical effects from ancient Greek to later traditions of Western music.
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Psaroudakes, Stelios. Mesomedes’ Hymn to the Sun. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794462.003.0006.
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This chapter investigates the relationship between the lyrics and the music of Mesomedes’ Hymn to the Sun. There are many instances of word painting in music. The chapter argues that Mesomedes’ Hymn to the Sun is a piece of music well thought through by the composer. The song’s melodic contours reflect and accentuate the meaning of the words, which can affectively be brought forth in sound if the performer is musically sensitive and is aware of the word-melody relationships. It is argued that the song was most probably composed for monodic performance.
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Waters, Keith. Postbop Jazz in the 1960s. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190604578.001.0001.
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Innovations in postbop jazz compositions of the 1960s occurred in several dimensions, including harmony, form, and melody. Postbop jazz composers such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, along with others (Booker Little, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw) broke with earlier tonal jazz traditions. Their compositions marked a departure from the techniques of jazz standards and original compositions that defined small-group repertory through the 1950s: single-key orientation, schematic 32-bar frameworks (in AABA or ABAC forms), and tonal harmonic progressions. The book develops analytical pathways through a number of compositions, including “El Gaucho,” “Penelope,” “Pinocchio,” “Face of the Deep” (Shorter); “King Cobra,” “Dolphin Dance,” “Jessica” (Hancock); “Windows,” “Inner Space,” “Song of the Wind” (Corea); as well as “We Speak” (Little); “Punjab” (Henderson); and “Beyond All Limits” (Shaw). These case studies offer ways to understand the works’ harmonic syntax, melodic and formal designs, and general principles of harmonic substitution. By locating points of contact among these postbop techniques—and by describing their evolution from previous tonal jazz practices—the book illustrates the syntactic changes that emerged during the 1960s.
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Maloy, Rebecca. Songs of Sacrifice. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190071530.001.0001.
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Songs of Sacrifice argues that liturgical music—both texts and melodies—played a central role in the cultural renewal of early Medieval Iberia. Between the seventh and eleventh centuries, Christian worship on the Iberian Peninsula was structured by rituals of great theological and musical richness, known as the Old Hispanic (or Mozarabic) rite. Much of this liturgy was produced during the seventh century, as part of a cultural and educational program led by Isidore of Seville and other bishops. After the conversion of the Visigothic rulers from Arian to Nicene Christianity at the end of the sixth century, the bishops aimed to create a society unified in the Nicene faith, built on twin pillars of church and kingdom. They initiated a project of clerical education, facilitated through a distinctive culture of textual production. The chant repertory was carefully designed to promote these aims. The creators of the chant texts reworked scripture in ways designed to teach biblical exegesis, linking both to the theological works of Isidore and others, and to Visigothic anti-Jewish discourse. The notation reveals an intricate melodic grammar that is closely tied to textual syntax and sound. Through musical rhetoric, the melodies shaped the delivery of the texts to underline words and phrases of particular liturgical or doctrinal import. The chants thus worked toward the formation of individual Christian souls and a communal, Nicene identity. The final chapters turn to questions about the intersection between orality and writing and the relationships of the Old Hispanic chant to other Western plainsong traditions.
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Lasky, Simon. 100 Classic Melodies: A Collection of the World's Most Beautiful Themes for Saxophone. Kevin Mayhew Ltd, 2000.
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Mel Bay 100 Classic Melodies Flute (A Collection of the world's most beautiful Themes). Mel Bay Publications, Inc., 1998.
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13
Platte, Nathan. Gone with the Wind, Part IIThe Music of “Max Steiner and Co.”. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199371112.003.0008.
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References to the music of Gone with the Wind usually acknowledge two facets: the use of Civil War melodies and the reliance upon recurring themes, particularly the inevitably “swelling” Tara theme. Drawing upon original analysis, this chapter addresses the history behind the Tara theme—which was neither entirely new nor entirely the work of one composer—and the score’s gendered and racialized attributes (as well as the triumph of Mammy’s theme over both). In addition, the collaborative (and sometimes rejected) efforts of Max Steiner, Hugo Friedhofer, Adolph Deutsch, Heinz Roemheld, and Lou Forbes are assessed to revise our understanding of the score’s function within the film.
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Mirchandani, Sharon. Blooming. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252037313.003.0007.
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This chapter focuses on Marga Richter's works during the 2000s, a period that saw her compose emotionally charged music. Since the year 2000, Richter has composed music of a more intimate nature, employing a simpler harmonic and melodic language but still embodying her distinctive voice. These works include several song cycles, some of a humorous nature, a variety of chamber music, a return to solo piano music, and two unaccompanied woodwind pieces (clarinet and oboe). Almost all of them were commissioned, and all have been performed. Richter has also learned to use a computer music-notation program (Sibelius), and in 2011 she established her own Web page, margarichter.com. This chapter first considers Richter's humorous works, including Erin Odyssey and Bye-Bye Bake Shoppe, before discussing her serious songs such as Testament and Dew-drops on a Lotus Leaf. It also examines her chamber and solo pieces, along with her compositions after moving to a new house.
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Gussenhoven, Carlos. On the Intonation of Tonal Varieties of English. Edited by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola, and Devyani Sharma. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199777716.013.29.
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Varieties of English with substrate tone languages are tone languages. Detailed descriptions of sentence-wide tone structures in Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Cantonese English show that British English words with initial stress have H-tone melodies, while other words have MH or LH melodies. These languages vary in the use of final intonational boundary tones and the extent to which phonological downstep on H-tones is triggered by non-overt (floating) low tones (Nigerian and Ghanaian English) or by overt tones only (Cantonese English). The analyses of Nigerian English and Cantonese English are supported by the results of production and perception experiments run on location with native speakers. While the structural differences deprive these languages of the many intonation contrasts that characterize British English, two structural contrasts that British English lacks are identified in the tonal varieties.
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Schelle, Johann. Six Chorale Cantatas. Edited by Mary S. Morris. A-R Editions, 1988. http://dx.doi.org/10.31022/b060-61.
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Schelle's six chorale cantatas are presented in a modern edition, four of them for the first time in print. Reflecting various treatments of chorale texts and melodies, all are excellent examples of the compositional style of this Thomaskantor. The cantatas are scored for soloists, SSATB chorus, strings, winds, and continuo.
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Temperley, David. Scales and Key. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653774.003.0002.
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Rock is generally assumed to be “tonal,” meaning that every song has a tonal center around which other pitches are organized. A wide variety of scale structures have been proposed for rock; the current chapter takes a corpus-based approach to this issue. It is proposed that rock as a whole uses a global scale containing all twelve scale degrees except for flat-2 and sharp-4—the “supermode.” Individual songs tend to use subsets of this scale; most often these subsets are “compact,” containing a set of adjacent scale degrees on the line of fifths. Further analysis shows that scales in rock songs reflect something like the major/minor distinction of classical music, but with significant differences. The identification of key in rock seems to rely on the distribution of pitch classes, the emphasis of melodic tones, and the metrical placement of harmonies.
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Amico, Stephen. Music, Form, Penetration. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252038273.003.0002.
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This chapter explores the relationship between Russian gay men and both Western and Russian popular musics by focusing on specific harmonic and melodic musical attributes that contribute to a Russian “sound.” In particular, it considers the link between sound and listener to experiences of (pleasurable) penetration. It shows that Russian homosexuality imparts a certain prestige (marked by modernity, style, and internationality) upon a cultural product. It also reveals that Russian gay men professed a preference for Western popular music and Western music in general, even as many of them also admitted a connection to Russian popular musics. Finally, it examines the connections between music, penetrations, and the homosexual body in the context of politics. The chapter suggests that lived experience—apprehended, in part, as a porosity of borders and operating as both a material and conceptual dynamic—inflects the interaction between Russian gay men and audible culture.
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Burstein, L. Poundie. Journeys Through Galant Expositions. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190083991.001.0001.
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Through much of the eighteenth century, commentators often described musical form in relation to a type of journey leading toward a set of specific tonal/harmonic/melodic/rhythmic goals, punctuated along the path by a standard series of resting points. Partly in reaction to developments witnessed in music composed during the high Classical era onward, since around the nineteenth century descriptions of musical form have tended to combine or even replace these “journey” metaphors with those that rely more heavily on architectonic analogies. When dealing with works composed around the middle of the 1700s, however, there are advantages for viewing musical form as it unfolds, much in the manner described by those who composed, improvised, listened to, and performed at the time. Taking as its focus the part of the movement now known as the exposition, this study analyzes the form of sonata-form works from Galant era by applying concepts and methodologies that stem from the eighteenth century, particularly those proposed by Heinrich Christoph Koch. It argues that analyzing this music through such a vantage point provides a valuable opportunity for understanding its form in a down-to-earth manner that can directly inform practical aspects of listening and performance.
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Rodgers, Stephen, ed. The Songs of Fanny Hensel. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190919566.001.0001.
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Fanny Hensel is arguably the most gifted female composer of the nineteenth century—a composer of over 450 works, including 249 songs, who created some of the most pathbreaking music of her era. As much as Hensel has finally moved out from behind the shadow of her more famous brother, however, and as much as we now know about her life, there is one aspect of this astonishing composer that still remains understudied: her music. This book focuses on Hensel’s contributions to the genre of song, the art form that she said “suits her best,” where her gifts as a composer are especially evident. Its twelve chapters consider such topics as Hensel’s fascination with certain poets and poetic themes; her innovative harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and textual strategies; her connection to larger literary and musical trends; her efforts to break free the constraints placed on her as a woman; and her place in the history of nineteenth-century Lieder. No matter their particular topics of inquiry, the authors are guided by the conviction that the best way to honor Hensel’s achievements as a composer and to appreciate her historical importance is to thoroughly examine what she wrote within its many diverse contexts, be they biographical, historical, cultural, or musical.
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Vogler, Georg Joseph. Pièces de clavecin (1798) and Zwei und dreisig Präludien (1806). Edited by Floyd K. Grave. A-R Editions, 1986. http://dx.doi.org/10.31022/c024.
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Abbé Vogler reveals a complex and adventurous personality in these two sets of keyboard music. While Pièces de clavecin features textural novelty in variations on melodies purportedly of Scandinavian, Russian, African, and Chinese origin, Zwei und dreisig Präludien (designed for either organ or piano and supplied with optional pedal parts) blends echoes of current chamber and theater styles with far-reaching excursions into realms of chromatic harmony and motivic elaboration.
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Truckenbrodt, Hubert. Focus, Intonation, and Tonal Height. Edited by Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.44.
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This article explores the effects of F-marking (focus) on intonation and on tonal height in intonation, with particular emphasis on German and Mandarin Chinese. It begins with a discussion of the role of stress in the sentence melody and how focus leads to changes in the stress pattern that affect the sentence melody. It then considers the effects of focus on tonal height and suggests that they are really effects of stress on tonal height, triggered because focus attracts stress; focus leads to destressing in non-focused parts of the sentence. It also presents the results of Féry and Kügler (2008) regarding the effects of focus on tonal height in German, showing that there is a further tonal height effect of focus that relates to stress, namely the cancellation of height-subordination due to stresses on earlier elements (‘upstep’).
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Nobile, Drew. Form as Harmony in Rock Music. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190948351.001.0001.
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This book offers a theory of form aimed at rock and pop songs of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The core claim is that rock form derives from the interaction between thematic design and harmonic structure. Many aspects of a rock song—lyrical structure, instrumental texture, melodic design, etc.—ultimately trace back to the relationship between harmonic trajectory and formal layout. The book begins with a theory of rock harmony rooted in an adaptation of Schenkerian analysis and proceeds to demonstrate that rock music is based on a small set of formal-harmonic patterns used consistently across genres and decades. It is these formal-harmonic patterns—not generic successions of sections—that define rock’s individual forms. These forms provide a backdrop framing interpretations of specific songs, a lens through which we may comprehend their particular lyrical narratives, timbral signifiers, and broad expressive content. Though broadly theoretical in scope, this book is deeply analytical, demonstrating the value and utility of close reading of rock songs. Ultimately, the book defends a structural approach to rock analysis, arguing not only that such an approach is an important and valuable mode of engagement for rock but also that rock’s structural aspects deeply affect the way we perceive and interact with the repertoire.
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Levy, Benjamin R. Compositional Flourishing (1967–70). Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199381999.003.0007.
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Having codified a repertoire of personalized techniques, Ligeti deployed them in many new combinations in an extremely productive period at the end of the 1960s. Works composed in this period include Continuum, Two Études for Organ, String Quartet no. 2, Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, Ramifications, and the Chamber Concerto. This chapter looks at the contrapuntal techniques that built on the composer’s previous practice as well as those derived from harmonic networks. The latter allowed Ligeti to move away from the cluster-based harmonic palate characteristic of his earlier works. In these works Ligeti looked for diverse means of expression and presentation, and he founds ways of composing transitions between techniques, putting patterns derived from harmonic procedures into polyphonic combinations and deriving static harmonic fields from material generated as a melody.
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Auerbach, Brent. Musical Motives. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197526026.001.0001.
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Motives, the small, recurring shape elements primarily identified by their pitch and rhythm profiles, are near-ubiquitous in music. Yet despite their long-standing prominence in composition and in past and present discourse on music, motives have resisted systematic treatment. The present work, Musical Motives, establishes a methodology for identifying and labeling motives and for assembling viable, meaningful analyses with them. The book opens with a general introduction to motives and a review of their history in Western music. The body of the work prescribes a two-tiered system for working with motives: basic motivic analysis (BMA) concerns monophonic motives composed of pitch and rhythm, while complex motivic analysis (CMA) concerns polyphonic motives that present as a richer network of elements drawn from many domains, including but not limited to pitch, rhythm, counterpoint, harmony, texture, and articulation. In support of these methods, the book offers a generous set of tools to advance this analytic subdiscipline. One tool is a universal system of motivic nomenclature proposed to facilitate dialogue among analysts. Another is a technique for melodic reduction, rooted in principles of salience, that allows analysts to posit motives that admit flexibility without sacrificing methodologic rigor. Most significant, the work details specific procedures for creating, interpreting, and presenting motivic analyses that range in length from just a few measures to entire pieces. Extensive demonstrations of all points and procedures are given in the form of analyses of selections and full works by composers as diverse as Beethoven, Handel, Chopin, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Cécile Chaminade, Marvin Hamlisch, Aretha Franklin, John Philip Sousa, and Radiohead.
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Witherow, Jacqueline. Parading Protestantisms and the Flute Bands of Postconflict Northern Ireland. Edited by Jonathan Dueck and Suzel Ana Reily. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199859993.013.19.
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This chapter examines the Protestant parading tradition in Northern Ireland with particular focus on the dominance of the flute band scene within it. It provides an in-depth discussion into the central characteristics of each flute band type, namely, blood and thunder, melody and part-music, through an ethnographic analysis of five flute bands. The social, political and religious orientations of each band are examined, as well as their choices in instruments, uniforms and symbolism. An understanding of these orientations indicates how the musical choices and symbolic choices of these bands are linked to the ways in which they construct and articulate their notions of Ulster Protestantism in postconflict Northern Ireland.
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Browning, Birch P. Subject Matter of Music. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928200.003.0004.
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The chapter surveys the variety of important roles that music plays in society and for members of society. At its core, music is sound that is organized around five basic components: rhythm, timbre, melody, harmony, and form. These various components are perceived from the environment, and then the mind extracts and applies meaning to the sounds. The concept of the sound envelope, consisting of attack, decay, sustain, and release, is illustrated. Effective musical artists understand this meaning-making process and consciously design musical experiences to communicate meaning to listeners.
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Hensel, Fanny. Songs for Pianoforte, 1836–1837. Edited by Camilla Cai. A-R Editions, 1994. http://dx.doi.org/10.31022/n022.
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The piano pieces Fanny Hensel composed in 1836 and 1837 represent a landmark in her development as a composer, because for the first and only time she sought to publish a major collection of music under her own name. These pieces are an important type of nineteenth-century music written not for the public concert hall but for private gatherings of connoisseurs. The expectations of this style are as particular and exacting as those of the concert hall. These fairly short pieces—with appealing melodies, but also with sections of sharp contrast and technical display—are intended not only to appeal to the emotions but to dazzle with their brilliance. This first edition of Hensel's piano music written in 1836–37 makes available a significant body of her work and thus broadens our knowledge of her style.
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Palackal, Joseph J. The Survival Story of Syriac Chants among the St. Thomas Christians in South India. Edited by Jonathan Dueck and Suzel Ana Reily. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199859993.013.31.
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This chapter explores the Syriac chant traditions among the group of South Indian churches, collectively referred to here as the “St. Thomas Christians.” These churches, which encompass a variety of denominational communities in Kerala, trace their origins to the apostolic and Chaldean/East Syriac sources of West Asian Christianity, later articulating also with the Antiochene liturgy and Orthodox Christianity in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They have defended their linkages with the Syriac liturgical and musical traditions against the incursions of foreign Catholic and Anglican missionaries, and later a wider variety of Catholic and Protestant movements within India. The chapter suggests that they accomplished this, in part, by only selectively accepting musical, liturgical, and theological elements that arrived with each of these missions. But more recently they have accomplished this by retaining Syriac chant melodies even as churches began to sing in vernacular languages such as Malayalam.
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Goertzen, Chris. George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels and the History of American Fiddling. University Press of Mississippi, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496814272.001.0001.
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George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels (1839) was the first collection of southern fiddle tunes and the only substantial one published in the nineteenth century. Knauff's activity could not anticipate our modern contest-driven fiddle subcultures. But the fate of the Virginia Reels pointed in that direction, suggesting that southern fiddling, after his time, would happen outside of commercial popular culture even though it would sporadically engage that culture. This book uses this seminal collection as the springboard for a fresh exploration of fiddling in America, past and present. It first discusses the life of the arranger. Then it explains how this collection was meant to fit into the broad stream of early nineteenth-century music publishing. The book describes the character of these fiddle tunes' names (and such titles in general), what we can learn about antebellum oral tradition from this collection, and how fiddling relates to blackface minstrelsy. Throughout, the book connects the evidence concerning both repertoire and practice found in the Virginia Reels with current southern fiddling, encompassing styles ranging from straightforward to fancy—old-time styles of the Upper South, exuberant West Virginia styles, and the melodic improvisations of modern contest fiddling. Twenty-six song sheets assist in this discovery. The book incorporates performance descriptions and music terminology into his accessible, engaging prose. The book presents an extended look at the history of southern fiddling and a close examination of current practices.
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Gann, Kyle. The Vessel of the Eternal Present. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252035494.003.0002.
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This chapter situates Robert Ashley's formative years in his home state of Michigan. Born on March 28, 1930 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ashley would grow up in the musically prestigious shadow of the University of Michigan, where many famous composers have taught, although he would never teach there himself. Ashley earned his bachelor's degree from that university, however, and later worked on a doctorate there, which he never completed. On and off, the town remained his center of activities for 39 years, and he even referred to it as “Headquarters.” To some extent, he thinks of his operas as drawn from the melody of the distinctive southeastern Michigan accent. Ashley would spend the early part of his creative life in Ann Arbor as co-founder and co-director of the ONCE festivals.
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Martin, Henry. Charlie Parker, Composer. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190923389.001.0001.
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Charlie Parker, Composer is the first assessment of a major jazz composer’s oeuvre in its entirety. Providing analytical discussion of each of Parker’s works, this study combines music-theoretical, historical, and philosophical perspectives. A variety of analytical techniques are brought to bear on Parker’s compositions, including application of a revised Schenkerian approach to the music that was developed through the author’s prior publications. After a review of Parker’s life emphasizing his musical training and involvement in composition, the book proceeds by considering the types of Parker pieces as categorized by overall form and harmony and the amount of preplanned music they contain. The historical circumstances of each piece are reviewed, and, in some cases, sources of the ideas of the most important tunes are explored. The introduction includes a discussion of the ontology of a jazz composition. The view is advanced that the Western concept of a music composition needs to be expanded to embrace practices typical of jazz composition and forming a significant part of Parker’s work. While focusing on Parker’s more conventional tunes, the book also considers his large-scale melodic formulas. Two formulas in particular are arguably compositional, since they are extensive and sometimes appear in subsequent improvisations. As part of the research for this book, all of Parker’s copyright submissions to the Library of Congress were examined and photographed. The book reproduces the four of them that were copied by Parker himself.
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Schmetkamp, Susanne, and Magdalena Zorn, eds. Variationen des Mitfühlens. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.25162/9783515122863.
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Empathie ist in den vergangenen Jahren zu einem der zentralen Begriffe in Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft geworden. Steht er für die einen für das Vermögen von Personen oder gar einer ganzen Gesellschaft, fremden Perspektiven, Erfahrungen und Gefühlen sensibel und nachfühlend zu begegnen, ist Empathie für die anderen ein leerer Begriff oder ein fehlgeleitetes Prinzip. In diesem Band wird "Empathie" kritisch, historisch und semantisch aus ästhetischen Blickwinkeln betrachtet: Untersucht werden die Funktion und der Wert der Empathie in unserem Umgang mit Musik, Literatur, Film und Sprache. Braucht es Empathie, um sich in Klänge, Melodien, Performer einzufühlen? Gehen wir empathisch mit fiktionalen Charakteren mit? Wie reagieren wir empathisch gegenüber Sprache und ihren Rhythmen? Was genau heißt in all diesen ästhetischen Kontexten eigentlich Empathie? Der Band enthält eine differenzierte Zusammenstellung aus aktuellen wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Perspektiven zum Thema.
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Mordden, Ethan. The Invention of the Satiric Musical. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190651794.003.0006.
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This chapter recounts the history of the musical satire and how it has found its place in American theatre. It also considers how elements of this genre are to be found in the musical adaptation of Chicago. In doing so, the chapter shows that the English-speaking musical has been critical of the establishment and its protocols right from the start, not least in its protection of minorities. From its first century (starting roughly in the 1860s) songs from American musicals were the national melody and seemed perfectly innocuous at first glance. Yet, as the chapter shows, there was an underlying subversive character interwoven into the genre, and Watkins’ Chicago was no different.
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Temperley, David. Strategies. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190653774.003.0009.
Full textAbstract:
Strategies are recurrent structural patterns that combine the musical dimensions explored in previous chapters—key/tonality, harmony, melody, rhythm/meter, phrase structure, timbre, form—for structural or expressive effect. One set of strategies concerns the boundary between the first VCU (verse-chorus unit) and the second; here there often seems to be an effort to balance continuity and closure. Another set of strategies involves the IV chord, which is used in rather specific ways to achieve cadential effects. VCUs often reflect an overall trajectory of tension, either “middle-peaking” or “end-peaking,” through increased rhythmic density, phrasal irregularity, and emphasis of non-tonic harmonies. Other strategies may be used to shape the energetic or tensional trajectory of a song as a whole. Finally, shifts in scale or tonal center can contribute greatly to the expressive impact of a song.
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Olsen, Dale A. Conclusion. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252037887.003.0015.
Full textAbstract:
This chapter summarizes the points of the book and synthesizes many of the attitudes, concepts, and events seen in flutelore. It addresses the question: What is singularly distinct or unique about flutes, flute playing, and flute players in a world context? The first and perhaps foremost reason why flutes are powerful is the direct use of the musician's breath to produce a sound, and breath is the source of life itself, as told to us by many storytellers from many cultures across time. The second reason why flutes are powerful is that whistle sounds are aural characteristics or phenomena not found in normal human speech, song, or chant discourses. The third reason why flutes have power is the pleasing quality of the “beautiful” melodies produced on them. A fourth reason why flutes have power is that they seem to provide a simple but important mythological bond among people, animals, and spirits throughout the world.
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Weiss, Susan Forscher. When the Little Bluebird Starts to Sing. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252040092.003.0002.
Full textAbstract:
This chapter follows the trajectory of Porter's musical formation, starting from his first known composition that he wrote in 1901 at the age of ten and dedicated to his mother, a programmatic work for piano entitled “The Song of the Birds.” His compositions can be described as an amalgam of styles, combining his early classical training and exposure to opera, ballet, ragtime, popular music, and jazz. He had an innate gift for mimicking the sounds around him, breezily absorbing the idioms and nuances of the speech and melodies he heard. His social skills provided a network of influential friends and artists who provided him with ideas and feedback. By the late 1920s Porter had given up on the idea of becoming a serious classical composer and instead concentrated on writing sophisticated, witty lyrics, molding them to his signature musical style just for listeners who wanted to enter his world and share his encounters with elegance and artistry.
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Whitmore, Aleysia K. World Music and the Black Atlantic. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190083946.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
In the mid-twentieth century, African musicians took up Cuban music as their own. They claimed it as a marker of black Atlantic connections and of cosmopolitanism untethered from European colonial relations. Today, Cuban/African bands popular in Africa in the 1960s and ’70s have moved into the world music scene in Europe and North America, and world music producers and musicians have created new West African–Latin American collaborations expressly for this market niche. This book follows two of these bands, Orchestra Baobab and AfroCubism, and the industry and audiences that surround them—from musicians’ homes in West Africa, to performances in Europe and North America, to record label offices in London. This book examines the intensely transnational experiences of musicians, industry personnel, and audiences as they collaboratively produce, circulate, and consume music in a specific post-colonial era of globalization. Musicians, industry personnel, and audiences work with and push against one another as they engage in personal collaborations imbued with histories of global travel and trade. They move between and combine Cuban and Malian melodies, Norwegian and Senegalese markets, and histories of slavery and independence as they work together to create international commodities. Understanding the unstable and dynamic ways these peoples, musics, markets, and histories intersect elucidates how world music actors assert their places within, and produce knowledge about, global markets, colonial histories, and the black Atlantic. This book offers a nuanced view of a global industry that is informed and deeply marked by diverse transnational perspectives and histories of transatlantic exchange.
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Butler, Gregory. The Choir Loft as Chamber. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252040191.003.0005.
Full textAbstract:
This chapter examines concerted movements written by Johann Sebastian Bach from the mid- to late 1720s and how he adopted a “choir loft as chamber” approach to organ performance—performing different versions of the same concerted instrumental movements for the chamber and for the church. Bach worked as composer and performer not only for the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, but also for its principal churches. In addition to parodying secular vocal compositions, transforming them into church cantatas, however, Bach was also adapting for church performances preexisting instrumental concerted movements, using obbligato organ as solo melody instrument in various sinfonias, arias, and choruses. Using the Concerto in E Major for harpsichord and strings, BWV 1053, as reference, this chapter demonstrates the connection between two spheres of activity that occurred after late May 1725, when the steady flow of new cantata compositions by Bach ceased: the secular arena of the ordinaire and extraordinaire performances of the Collegium, especially during the Leipzig fairs, and the weekly performances of concerted vocal music at the Haupgottesdienst in Leipzig’s St. Nicholas and St. Thomas Churches.
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Meconi, Honey. Hildegard of Bingen. University of Illinois Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252033155.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The book provides a short but thorough introduction to twelfth-century composer and visionary St. Hildegard of Bingen, creator of seventy-seven plainchant melodies (her Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum) as well as a complete play set to music, the Ordo virtutum. Six chapters chronicle her eventful life, incorporating information about her compositions in the Dendermonde and Riesencodex manuscripts as appropriate: enclosure at the monastery of Disibodenberg; the catalytic vision that spurred her multifaceted creativity; her founding of the convent at Rupertsberg; preaching tours and exorcisms; clashes with priests, prelates, popes, and the Holy Roman Emperor; punishment by interdict; and final vindication. These chapters also explore her many nonmusical creations (three major theological treatises, Gospel homilies and smaller religious writings, scientific and medical works, two hagiographies, an invented language and accompanying alphabet, and her extensive correspondence). A seventh chapter traces continued awareness of her achievement after her death, her canonization and recognition as Doctor of the Church, and the belated rebirth of her music. The final three chapters are devoted to her music, beginning with a general overview and followed by a chapter each on shorter and longer genres, with the former providing basic liturgical information. Ancillary material includes a dozen illustrations (including several iconic images), a works list, and a selected bibliography and discography.
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Berg, Christopher. The Classical Guitar Companion. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190051105.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The Classical Guitar Companion is an anthology of exercises, études, and pieces organized according to technique or musical texture. Students are encouraged to work in multiple chapters, simultaneously depending on advice from a teacher or their own assessment of what they need. The author’s dual perspective, as an active performing artist and as a teacher who has trained hundreds of guitarists, results in a combination of pedagogical thoroughness and artistic insight. The book opens with a large section devoted to establishing a thorough knowledge of the guitar fingerboard through a systematic and rigorous study of scales and fingerboard harmony, which will lead to ease and fluency in sight-reading and reduce the time needed to learn a repertoire piece. The chapters cover scales exercises and studies, repeated notes, slurs, harmony, arpeggios, melody with accompaniment, counterpoint, and florid/virtuoso studies. Each section contains text and examples that connect material to fingering practices of composers and practice strategies to open a path to interpretive freedom in performance. Exploring advice found in the standard pedagogical literature for guitar that effectively places constraints on a student’s long-term development, the book offers information designed to help students recognize and overcome these constraints. When the book presents the simple version of a technique, it does so through consideration of the technique’s advanced version. Many guitar composers are represented but there are also transcriptions of relevant lute music that expand the scope of the book. The book is designed to serve as a companion for years of guitar study.
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Gagliano, Marco da. Madrigals, Part 4. Edited by Edmond Strainchamps. A-R Editions, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.31022/b221.
Full textAbstract:
Il quarto libro de madrigali a cinque voci, the fourth of six books of madrigals by the Florentine composer Marco da Gagliano, was published in 1606. The book is distinguished by the excellence of its music as well as by its varied settings of texts by some of the most celebrated poets of the day. Five of the madrigals use texts by Giovanni Battista Guarini, three by Giambattista Marino, one each by Gabriello Chiabrera, Cosimo Galletti, and Alsaldo Cebà, and a final two-part madrigal for six voices sets a sonnet by the great fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarca. In addition to fourteen madrigals by Gagliano, the book contains three by guest composers Luca Bati and Giovanni and Lorenzo Del Turco. Gagliano's madrigals in book 4, in contrast with those of his earlier books, are lighter and show the clear influence of the contemporary canzonetta, which is manifested in their brevity; the discrete sectioning of the music, frequently with concurrent rests in all the voices that separate the presentation of individual poetic lines; the omnipresent syllabic setting of words; and the simpler and shorter motives that are most often presented in a homophonic texture. In some of these madrigals, motives shaped by the melody and rhythm of spoken language might serve well in monodies. Indeed, in his magisterial study of the madrigal, Alfred Einstein went so far as to suggest that some of these madrigals have the effect of polyphonic, imitative arrangements of Florentine monodies.
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Phillips, Tom, and Armand D'Angour, eds. Music, Text, and Culture in Ancient Greece. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794462.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
This book explores the interaction between music and poetry in ancient Greece. Although scholars have long recognized the importance of music to ancient performance culture, little has been written on the specific effects that musical accompaniment and features such as rhythmical structure and melody would have created in individual poems. The chapters in the first half of the volume engage closely with the evidential and interpretative challenges that this issue poses, and propose original readings of a range of texts, including Homer, Pindar, and Euripides, as well as later poets such as Seikilos and Mesomedes. While they emphasize different formal features, they argue collectively for a two-way relationship between music and language. Attention to the musical features of poetic texts, insofar as we can reconstruct them, enables us to better understand not only their effects on audiences, but also the various ways in which they project and structure meaning. In part two, the focus shifts to ancient attempts to conceptualize interractions between words and music; the essays in this section analyse the contested place that music occupied in Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and other critical writers of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. Thinking about music is shown to influence other domains of intellectual life, such as literary criticism, and to be vitally informed by ethical concerns.
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McAllister, Rita, and Christina Guillaumier, eds. Rethinking Prokofiev. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190670764.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
More than sixty-five years after the composer’s death and almost thirty years since the demise of the Soviet Union, it is high time not only to take a fresh, balanced look at the output of Sergei Prokofiev, but also to probe some of the important but less studied aspects of his music. Many of his works are twentieth-century classics, but some are less familiar; others still, because of the times in which he lived, are controversial, or misunderstood, or simply unexplored. Commissioned from both established experts and younger researchers in the field, Rethinking Prokofiev is a new compendium of essays that examine the background and context of Prokofiev’s music: his relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions; to the Silver Age and Symbolist composers and poets; to the culture of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s; and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. It investigates his reception in the West and his return to Russia, and analyzes the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. His early, experimental piano and vocal works are explored, as well as his piano concertos, his operas, the film scores, the early ballets, and the late symphonies. The main focus of the book is the nature of the music itself. Prokofiev’s work is utterly distinctive, yet it defies easy analysis. By uncovering the contents of his sketchbooks, however, and through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures, these chapters reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius, his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.
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Smith, Steven C. Music by Max Steiner. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190623272.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th-century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to establish and codify the language of film music. Composers today like John Williams use the same techniques perfected by the classically trained Steiner, in his scores for such motion pictures as Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and more than two hundred other titles. Steiner’s private life was as tumultuous as the films he scored. Born into an Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid composers. But he was constantly in debt, due to financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son. Steiner ended his career in triumph: at age 71, although practically blind, he wrote what Billboard called the most successful instrumental single of the era: “Theme from A Summer Place.” Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by a quick wit and an instinctive gift for melody, as he met and worked with a Who’s Who of artists: Johann Strauss Jr., Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, David O. Selznick, Frank Sinatra, Frank Capra, and many more. This first full biography of Steiner brings to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art form (and multimillion-dollar industry), while writing many of the greatest scores in cinema history.
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Pearson, David. Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197534885.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
At the dawn of the 1990s, as the United States celebrated its victory in the Cold War and sole superpower status by waging war on Iraq and proclaiming democratic capitalism as the best possible society, the 1990s underground punk renaissance transformed the punk scene into a site of radical opposition to American empire. Nazi skinheads were ejected from the punk scene; apathetic attitudes were challenged; women, Latino, and LGBTQ participants asserted their identities and perspectives within punk; the scene debated the virtues of maintaining DIY purity versus venturing into the musical mainstream; and punks participated in protest movements from animal rights to stopping the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal to shutting down the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting. Punk lyrics offered strident critiques of American empire, from its exploitation of the Third World to its warped social relations. Numerous subgenres of punk proliferated to deliver this critique, such as the blazing hardcore punk of bands like Los Crudos, propagandistic crust-punk/dis-core; grindcore and power violence with tempos over 800 BPM, and So-Cal punk with its combination of melody and hardcore. Musical analysis of each of these styles and the expressive efficacy of numerous bands reveals that punk is not merely simplistic three-chord rock music, but a genre that is constantly revolutionizing itself in which nuances of guitar riffs, vocal timbres, drum beats, and song structures are deeply meaningful to its audience, as corroborated by the robust discourse in punk zines.