Sequenza XIII (Chanson) - The Accordion Transfiguration, from Popular Music to Erudite Recognition

Steve Reich (b. 1936) is an American composer who, alongside Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, is considered an originator of musical minimalism. His compositions consist primarily of instrumental pieces for various ensembles, ranging from solo instruments with prerecorded tape to pieces for full orchestra. The most frequent configurations make prominent use of melodic percussion instruments, attesting to his training as a percussionist. Reich engaged periodically with disparate musical traditions throughout his early career—technological experimentalism in the 1960s, African drumming and Hebrew cantillation in the 1970s—and has since forged a compositional idiom distinguished by its attention to pattern and pulsation. Born and raised primarily in New York City, Reich studied philosophy at Cornell University and music at Juilliard before moving across the country in 1961 to study at Mills College with Luciano Berio. Moving within the Bay Area’s experimental art scenes, Reich discovered the process of phasing when working with tape loops, leading to his first acknowledged pieces: It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). After relocating to downtown New York in 1965, Reich translated this phasing process into instrumental music, resulting in works such as Piano Phase and Violin Phase (both 1967), as well as his influential manifesto, “Music as a Gradual Process.” In the early 1970s, Reich’s palette expanded to encompass new timbres and processes of pattern and repetition. The large-scale Drumming (1970–1971) and Music for 18 Musicians (1974–1976)—both conceived for his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians—are exemplars of his mature minimalist style and helped establish his reputation both within and outside of the classical music world. By the early 1980s, Reich’s music began a process of legitimation within academia and performance institutions: Tehillim (1981) and The Desert Music (1983), for instance, were composed for major orchestras. Both reveal a rekindled interest in voice, text, and speech which found new expression in Different Trains (1988), a string quartet which utilized speech fragments of Holocaust survivor testimonies as generative melodic and harmonic material. Reich continued to explore this technique in large-scale documentary music video theater works (The Cave [1990–93] and Three Tales [2000–03]), as well as chamber works such as City Life (1995) and WTC 9/11 (2010). By the end of the millennium, Reich was widely regarded as America’s foremost living composer; his Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Double Sextet (2007) seemed a belated affirmation of this perspective.

The article is devoted to the choral music of Mauricio Kagel from the years 1958–1982, presenting an example of one of the most radical phenomena in choral music of the second half of the 20th century. Most of the attention is focused on examination of the vocal techniques which determined the composer’s choral writing. The article examines the complex of the utilized vocal techniques (singing, Sprechgesang, declamation), the regulators of vocal soundproduction (the character of vibrato, the indicators of the scale of the phonatory exhalation); provides a characterization of the main articulatory techniques: both traditional ones for 20th century choral music (singing with closed mouth, falsetto, whisper), as well as innovative ones, which demonstrated themselves for the first time in Kagel’s compositions (singing with clenched teeth, singing with closed mouth while simultaneously pronouncing the text in a trembling voice). The questions regarding Mauricio Kagel’s work with separate phonemes are highlighted. As part of the analysis of the work “Anagrama” used the first attempt in Western European music of applying quasi-serial procedures to work with a verbal text, stipulating the appearance in the score of signs of tables of the International Phonetic Association. The present composition is examined as the first example of a new vocal genre – phonemic composition. Study of compositions written by the composer during the first two decades of his life in Germany makes it possible to come up with the conclusion about a consistent solution by the composer of a particular goal – the search for a new choral sound capable of enabling choral music to continue its development, to lead it away from a state of stagnation, in which, according to the composer, contemporary choral culture was existing. The publication is prepared within the framework of scholarly project No. 16-04-50011, supported by the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research (RFFI). Keywords: Mauricio Kagel, Luciano Berio, Luigi Nono, choral music, post-war avant-garde, vocal timbral patterns, phonemic composition.

Schaeffer's analyses demonstrate unequivocally the intention to generalize his research originating from studio-based experiences and apply its principles to all music, instrumental or electroacoustic. Schaefferian theory acknowledges that the studio environment and its practices challenge the instrument's status. However, the materiality of sound still encourages (and perhaps even demands) an elaboration and assimilation of instrumental thought rather than its outright rejection. The three elements of Schaefferian ‘instrumental analysis’: ‘timbre’, ‘registers’ and ‘play’ can transcend physical source and action. This article uses Schaefferian ‘instrumental analysis’ to investigate the multi-instrumental potential of a solo instrument: the trombone in Luciano Berio's ‘Sequenza V’. The ‘genre’ for Schaeffer clarified the tension between the general ‘timbre’ displayed by an instrument and the particular ‘timbre’ of each individual sound. The ‘genre’ groups sounds together on the basis of common perceived characteristics. Thus, an instrumental ‘timbre’ can comprise many distinct ‘genres’ each with its own registers.

Musical quotation, as a technique of using the pre-existing materials in the music composition, has an important significance in both quantitative and qualitative aspects since the late 20th century, as can be seen from works of Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Luciano Berio, Mauricio Kagel, Alfred Schnittke, George Rochberg, George Crumb. In terms of aesthetics, the musical quotation is closely related with postmodernism as the technique deviates from the aesthetics of originality and reveals musical diversity. In this respect, it can be said that ›musical quotation‹ is an important keyword which describes the late 20th century. In this paper, by extending this perspective into the East Asia with a particular focus on South Korea, the musical quotation was investigated. Since the Western music was first introduced into South Korea in the late 19th century, various types of it have been combined in the country to produce works with a wide variety of musical forms and styles. Among these, works of Na, Un Young (1922–1993), Kang, Unsu (*1960), and Chung, Tae Bong (*1952) who employed the technique of musical quotation in their compositions were examined in detail here. Through this study, quotations in Korean music were found to play a semantic role in revealing the cultural context, similar to the West. However, several differences were found as well. First of all, there are only a few works with the quotation technique employed by Korean composers, probably due to the prevailing influence of the modernist aesthetics yet in Korea. Moreover, it is noteworthy that in Korean works, quoted targets were often selected from musical elements which were very familiar to Korean cultural ones. In this respect, the quotation technique which has been shown to embody not only culture and human, but also history and society, plays a significant role in reflecting the identity as a Korean composer.

The fortnight-long celebration Omaggio to the late Luciano Berio, held 15–30 April 2004, explored the post-modern passion and exuberance of the composer's musical personality, from the experimental daring and fun of the era of new music of the 1960s to the more searching multi-cultural tapestries of the final decades and his last works. Large audiences drawn from all ages enjoyed a wide range of Berio's works at the South Bank Centre and the Royal Academy of Music, including several UK premières including Stanze, his last work, as well as seminal pieces such as Sinfonia, Laborintus II, the fourteen Sequenzas, and electronic music, performed by leading virtuosi and ensembles. Overall, the festival represented a significant and memorable tribute to one of the leading figures of new music in the second half of the 20th century.

Surprisingly, since 1950, at least 500 works connected to the madrigal, and among them at least 454 madrigals, have been written. Unfortunately, a comprehensive musicological or theoretical-musical approach to that issue has been lacking so far. Using the genre studies perspective, the article aims to show how some composers working in the second half of the 20th–century and in the 21st–century respond to the early madrigal in terms of one of the most important madrigal characteristics – its polyphonic scoring and texture. That aspect, criticised by theorists at the end of the 17 th century, became the source of diverse musical reinterpretation in contemporary pieces by, among others: Luciano Berio, Christophe Bertrand, Harrison Birtwistle, George Crumb, Beat Furrer, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Paul Hindemith, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur, Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil, John Rutter, Johannes Schöllhorn, Salvatore Sciarrino, Marek Stachowski, Alfred Schnittke, Pēteris Vasks, Agata Zubel. A number of aspects of polyphony are taken into consideration: type of polyphonic means (canons, fugue, passacaglia, etc.), their function (structural, semantic, emotional, etc.), and their meaning (c.f. their role in the process of constructing the subject of given works).

Blue Mountain is a 35-minute work for two actors and orchestra. It was commissioned by the Ultima Festival, and premiered in 2014 by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. The Ultima festival challenged me – being both a composer and writer – to make something where I wrote both text and music. Interestingly, I hadn’t really thought of that before, writing text to my own music – or music to my own text. This is a very common thing in popular music, the songwriter. But in the lied, the orchestral piece or indeed in opera, there is a strict division of labour between composer and writer. There are exceptions, most famously Wagner, who did libretto, music and staging for his operas. And 20th century composers like Olivier Messiaen, who wrote his own poems for his music – or Luciano Berio, who made a collage of such detail that it the text arguably became his own in Sinfonia. But this relationship is often a convoluted one, not often discussed in the tradition of musical analysis where text tend to be taken as a given, not subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny that is often the case with music. This exposition is an attempt to unfold this process of composing with both words and music. A key challenge has been to make the text an intrinsic part of the performance situation, and the music something more than mere accompaniment to narration. To render the words meaningless without the music and vice versa. So the question that emerged was how music and words can be not only equal partners, but also yield a new species of music/text? A second questions follows en suite, and that is what challenges the conflation of different roles – the writer and the composer – presents? I will try to address these questions through a discussion of the methods applied in Blue Mountain, the results they have yielded, and the challenges this work has posed.

As a result of its liberalization, the European gas market is organized as an entry-exit system in order to decouple the trading and transport of natural gas. Roughly summarized, the gas market organization consists of four subsequent stages. First, the transmission system operator (TSO) is obliged to allocate so-called maximal technical capacities for the nodes of the network. Second, the TSO and the gas traders sign mid- to long-term capacity-right contracts, where the capacity is bounded above by the allocated technical capacities. These contracts are called bookings. Third, on a day-ahead basis, gas traders can nominate the amount of gas that they inject or withdraw from the network at entry and exit nodes, where the nominated amount is bounded above by the respective booking. Fourth and finally, the TSO has to operate the network such that the nominated amounts of gas can be transported. By signing the booking contract, the TSO guarantees that all possibly resulting nominations can indeed be transported. Consequently, maximal technical capacities have to satisfy that all nominations that comply with these technical capacities can be transported through the network. This leads to a highly challenging mathematical optimization problem. We consider the specific instantiations of this problem in which we assume capacitated linear as well as potential-based flow models. In this contribution, we formally introduce the problem of Computing Technical Capacities (CTC) and prove that it is NP-complete on trees and NP-hard in general. To this end, we first reduce the Subset Sum problem to CTC for the case of capacitated linear flows in trees. Afterward, we extend this result to CTC with potential-based flows and show that this problem is also NP-complete on trees by reducing it to the case of capacitated linear flow. Since the hardness results are obtained for the easiest case, i.e., on tree-shaped networks with capacitated linear as well as potential-based flows, this implies the hardness of CTC for more general graph classes.

The article was based on a fragment of the author’s doctoral dissertation entitled The birth of cello as a solo instrument – instruments, practice, and selected literature examples (Academy of Music in Łódź, chapter The evolution of cello in the 17th century) and consists of two parts. The first part outlines of the evolution of cello from its birth in the 16th century to the 18th century (the text is supplemented with illustrations), whereas the second part describes the role and use of cello in music of that period. The introduction to the article includes a critical reference to the list of academic and popular science publications therein, in Polish and other languages, touching on the cello issue in the 17th and 18th centuries. The historical part touches on the circumstances of how the violin family emerged with a special attention paid to bass representatives of that group of instruments. Following a detailed analysis of preserved instruments, their reliable copies, luthier publications, illustrations and treatises from that period, the author discussed the construction of the earlies cellos. Apart from data concerning sizes and scale length of these instruments, the article includes information about their body, neck, fingerboard (with slope angle), bridge and tailpiece, materials they were made of, and types and gauge of strings used at that time. It also describes cello tuning methods. Moreover, the author mentions different types of cello (piccolo, da spalla, basse de violon) and different ways of how it was held. A separate issue are the bows, especially types of bows, their evolution and ways of holding. This part of the article is concluded with a list of different names of bass variants of the violin used in the 16th and 17th centuries before the name cello/violoncello finally settled. The second part of the article elaborates on the most important functions of cello: as a consort instrument, a universal continuo instrument or a solo instrument. Cello (along with viola da gamba or dulcian/bassoon) managed especially well as a melodic instrument co-rendering the continuo parts, and the result was that the basso continuo became the most important domain of cello in the Baroque, having a significant influence on the shape of playing technique and performance practice of that instrument. As one of melodic bass instruments, cello performed an important role in shaping the concertante style, along with the violin, shawm/oboe, cornet or flute. It was that practice combined with the improvisation practice developed simultaneously (which also influenced the development of the instrument itself) that the idea to write first autonomous compositions for the cello (solo, chamber or with basso continuo) emerged from at the end of the 17th century. Continuation of this article, which shall be devoted to Baroque works for the cello and their composers, will be published in the following issue of “Notes Muzyczny”.

An instrument with remarkable stylistic range and timbral affordances, the violoncello (referred to in this Bibliography by its common English and German abbreviation, “cello”) is a bowed lute that is fretless, has four strings usually tuned in fifths (C-G-d-a), and is played between the legs. As the lowest member of the violin family, the cello serves a bass function in many standard ensembles, including string quartets and piano trios. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the instrument was a cornerstone of many continuo sections, and treatises attest that accompanimental playing was a foundational skill for any aspiring cellist. In 19th- and 20th-century orchestral writing, it filled a variety of roles, switching between bass and middle lines, punctuated by moments of melodic prominence. The cello is also prized as a solo instrument, due in part to its middle and upper registers, which are celebrated for their sweet tone and emotional immediacy. Attempts to establish the origins of the cello are complicated by the highly regional terminology used to describe a number of similar bass bowed lutes that proliferated throughout the late 16th and 17th centuries. The first use of the term “violoncello” was by Giulio Cesare Arresti in a publication from 1665, and by the beginning of the 18th century, the term was in frequent use. By the mid-18th century, the cello had become the dominant instrument of its kind and range throughout most of Europe. It found earliest success in Italian- and German-speaking lands, but was slower to infiltrate France, where there was competition from the basse de viole through the 18th century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the cello was frequently employed as a solo instrument in concerti and sonatas, while still functioning as a bass instrument in chamber and orchestral ensembles. Research on its function outside the Western classical tradition is quite scarce and deserves further development; however, the cello has found a growing place in many styles, including jazz, popular, and non-Western musical traditions.

20. yüzyıl, müzik anlayışının değiştiği, geliştiği aynı zamanda da farklı arayışlara gidildiği bir dönemdir. Klasik müzik, caz ve blues gibi birçok müzik türünde, enstrümanlar üzerinde farklı teknik denemeler ve çalışmalar yapılmaya başlanmıştır. Küreselleşme ve teknolojinin de gelişimi ile birlikte değişen ve gelişen müzik anlayışı ile birlikte birçok yeni çalışma ortaya çıkmış, besteciler eserlerinde fark yaratmak için popüler tekniklerin yanı sıra farklı ve sıra dışı yöntemler geliştirmiş, bunları deneme amaçlı eserlerinde kullanmışlardır. Müzik tarihinde klasik enstrümanların birçoğu için repertuvar yüzyıllara yayılarak, hemen her müzik döneminde yazılmış eserlere rastlanabilmektedir. Bununla birlikte, trombonun orkestraya diğer enstrümanlardan sonra eklenmiş olması ve yakın zamana kadar solo enstrüman olarak görülmemiş olması 20. yüzyıl öncesindeki müzik dönemlerinde kısıtlı bir trombon repertuvarı oluşmasına neden olmuştur. 20. yüzyıla kadar trombon repertuvarı az sayıda solo esere sahipken, 20. yüzyıldan itibaren solo enstrüman olarak kullanımının artmasıyla birlikte besteciler tarafından bu enstrümana çok sayıda eser yazılmıştır. 20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında ise, trombon repertuvarında ve trombon tekniğinde aşağıdaki bölümlerde açıklanacağı üzere bir yön değişikliği yaşanmıştır. Teknolojinin gelişimi ile birlikte trombonun çalış limitlerini zorlayan besteciler artmış ve bu nedenle trombon üzerinde uygulanabilecek yeni teknikler ortaya çıkmıştır. Makalede 20. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında yazılmış eserler üzerinden “trombon ve ses”, “multifonik ve mikroton”, “trombon ve elektronik” başlıkları altında bir inceleme sunulacaktır. Ayrıca trombon sanat dalında kariyer arayan icracı ve eğitimcilerin modern solo trombon çalışmaları hakkında derinlemesine bilgi sahibi olmalarının avantajları değerlendirilerek yenilikçi eserlerin literatüre, eğitime ve müzikal kültüre olan katkıları incelenecektir.

The frigate was the most common type of ship constructed on Rhodes Island in the 19th century. We know that these ships were generally constructed by the administrators of the region, which were necessary for the navy for Istanbul. The ships constructed for Istanbul had to be finished and sent in a certain period of time. For this reason, it was requested in the documents to complete the shipbuilding as soon as possible. Undoubtedly, the most important person involved in shipbuilding was the Mütesellim Murâbıtzâde Captain Hasan. The state trusted this person, who also carried out several duties with him, and he was very useful in the construction of galleons and frigates for the Mütesellim Yusuf Bey served at the state level after the Mütesellim Murâbıtzâde Captain Hasan, we also see that this person had successfully completed the construction of many frigates. These people, who were personally responsible for the construction of many ships in different periods, had the ships constructed for the army. In article, which we wrote using archival documents, how the change in ship technology was reflected in shipbuilding; with the help of the aid received from Istanbul, we tried to trace the archival documents, under which conditions the shipbuilding took place at the maximum capacity that could be done on the island of Rhodes, which was a large-scale island, and how the people had a significant economic power with this business capacity created on the island.

The lifeblood of Lemnos Island is the small shipyard located just at the entrance of the port. In this shipyard, Istanbul's frigate and galleon needs were met. Permanent workers were provided to be employed in shipbuilding on the island. Together with these workers, the timber necessary for shipbuilding material was provided from the forests in the Rumelia Sanjak; iron and nails were provided from Istanbul. Together with this shipyard, the region revived economically. The most common types of ships constructed on the island of Lemnos were the galleon and the frigate, which was a medium-sized warship. The two most important elements for shipbuilding were the personnel to be employed and the materials to be used in the construction of the ship. These two important issues were intertwined with each other. The captain of the ship was held responsible for carrying out these two works. If the ships that were constructed were not finished and sent in a certain time, there was a situation that the ship's material would perish. If the ship could not be finished within the specified time, the material could not. It was constantly mentioned in the documents to bring the materials as soon as possible and to provide the workers. While some of the ships belonging to the navy in Istanbul were constructed as shares, we see that most of them were constructed by the tax collector and voivode, who were in charge of the island administration. The influential factor in the region, who was personally responsible for shipbuilding on the island, was the Voivode Abdulkerim Ağa. Ağa, who was personally responsible for the construction of seven ships in different periods, successfully completed his duties. In our article, the relationship of dependency on Istanbul, which started to change especially in the provincial shipbuilding dockyards during the 18th century, was examined. To the extent possible with archival documents, due to the proximity of Lemnos Island to Istanbul, with the support of the aid received from the capital, the construction of medium-sized ship that the navy needs and the maximum capacity that could be done tried to be explained.

XVth International Conference on Calorimetry in High Energy Physics (CALOR2012)

The present text is the second instalment of the cycle of articles based on its author’s doctoral dissertation entitled The birth of cello as a solo instrument – instruments, prac-tice, and selected literature examples (Academy of Music in Łódź, 2017). It is an at-tempt to systematise the knowledge about the first cello literature creators and their compositions. The text includes descriptions (characterisations) of the first pieces writ-ten for the cello as early as in the 17th century along with short biographical sketches of their composers. The article characterises the main centres of development of cello mu-sic, such as Bologna and Modena, the places of work of Giovanni Battista Vitali, Do-menico Gabrielli, Petronio Franceschini, Giuseppe Jacchini, Bononcini brothers, Gio-vanni Battista Degli Antoni, Domenico Galii, Giuseppe Colombi, and others. These composers mainly focused around Bologna’s Accademia Filarmonica and Basilica of San Petronio, as well as the court of Francesco II d'Este in Modena. The article also pays attention to the circumstances in which the first attempts to write cello pieces were made. Moreover, it mentions singular historical items of early cello literature written in such centres as Rome, Venice or Naples, where Carlo Fedeli, Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier, Nicola Francesco Haym or other composers worked.