Verdi

Reviewed by: Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music by Brian Morton Cameron Pyke Shostakovich: A Coded Life in Music. By Brian Morton. London: Haus Publishing, 2021. [220 p. ISBN 978-1-913368-43-2. £9.99] The appearance of the first paperback edition of this 2006 volume is to be welcomed. Morton presents a clear overview of the composer's life while navigating and synthesising the key contours of the considerable scholarly literature. He draws upon a broad cultural understanding: there are perceptive references, for example, to Olivier Messiaen and Arnold Schoenberg as well as to Arshile Gorky and Boris Pasternak. While the author acknowledges that he is not a musicologist, a significant number of key works are discussed in terms of their music, as well as underlying meaning: this is particularly the case with the symphonies, which Morton identifies as 'the form in which his essence as a composer would be expressed' (p. 40), acknowledging that some works are 'capacious enough to sustain any number of contradictory interpretations' (p. 46). Morton's discussions of the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Symphony No. 8 are particularly sensitive. Reporting the composer's excitement at the film version of Lady Macbeth (released in 1966–1967 as Katerina Ismailova), Morton comments that it was 'as if his entire musical history were somehow embedded in that great work's narrative of cultural paucity, betrayal, defiance, violence, and imprisonment' (p. 202). In contrast, Symphony No. 8 is viewed as 'a meditation on the whole idea of symphonism … a return to the modernist experiment of the equally unloved Fourth Symphony' (p. 124). Both arguments could be extended: the sympathetically drawn Katerina re-emerges in the tragic figure of Loreley in Symphony No. 14, while the composer's wider tendency to subvert symphonic form, as in the 'problematic' Symphony No. 6 (p. 105) culminates in Symphony No. 15, in the final coda of which, as the late Alexander Ivashkin argued, symphonic syntax is itself eroded. Morton himself notes 'a steadily deepening absorption in sound itself' in some of the late period works (p. 189). Morton correctly identifies the key characteristics of the composer's genius: his ability to write music, often under considerable psychological pressure, which could operate on different levels; his sardonic exploitation, drawn from Gustav Mahler and Nikolai Gogol, of the full potential of juxtaposition; his profound sense of social and ethical duty; and his stature 'among the very greatest exponents – and perhaps the last greatest exponent – of what we still uneasily call classical music' (p. 24). In presenting 'a straightforward narrative of the composer's life and the evolution of his music' (p. 22) and emphasising 'a basic consistency of attitude' (p. 14), more could have been made of what Edison Denisov called the 'arch' between the early and late works: for example, the 'unexpected revival' (Denisov) of percussion in the coda of the Cello Concerto No. 2 and subsequently. Indeed, the discussion of the 'late period' works is more cursory than that of the earlier and middle-period scores. Moreover, while Morton earlier acknowledges the 'intermingling of major works in his mind with smaller-scale works' (p. 150), it is in these final works that the cross-referencing becomes a significant stylistic feature in itself, as if the composer increasingly sought to create a personal narrative on his entire creative output, towards much of which he seems to have felt a profound dissatisfaction. I would not, then, agree that the works of the last decade are 'less obviously encrypted' (p. 199), particularly when one considers the chamber music, and notwithstanding the composer's partial return to word setting. I would also have valued acknowledgement of the influence of Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov (on Symphony No. 4) and of Mieczysław Weinberg (on the later string quartets). [End Page 347] The book is written in an accessible style, though on occasion sensationalist phrasing sits uneasily with its erudition and seriousness of purpose, and some will also find references to Shostakovich's numerology more convincing than others. The lack of footnotes and an index likewise do not do justice to the range and clarity of the book's cultural reference. Shostakovich's visit...

IN THE LIVES OF great artists, the late or last works are often considered to be the greatest, the flowering or crowning of all that came before. This phenomenon, the valuing of “late” creations, artistic creations in particular, is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in connection with Beethoven. The late works, especially the late quartets, late piano sonatas, and the last symphony (the Ninth), are much discussed, much performed, and highly prized. In the case of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826), this canonization is everywhere apparent. The work is not only firmly a part of the scholarly canon, the performing canon, and the pedagogical canon, but also makes its presence felt in popular culture, notably in film (for example, ...

This study has been based on the researcher’s requestioning the results of the a/r/tographic autobiography study with students on Arnold Schönberg and his works, which was carried out between 2017-2021. In the research the aim was to observe the effects of thinking through atonal music and its reflections on visual arts education as well as the cognitive skills and sensual awareness of the participants. The requestioning of the autobiographic outputs of the researcher with her students within an a/r/tographic perspective was considered important in terms of creating new meanings and actions in visual arts education. The study was carried out with the researcher and 16 undergraduate and 1 graduate student from Kırıkkale University Faculty of Fine Arts in the academic year 2021-2022 Spring semester over a work from Schönberg. There were 6 applications in total, each application lasted 4 hours. The data of the study consist of video and voice recordings, photographs, art works, poems, student opinions, observation notes, student diaries, performance activities, personal communications, Schönberg's String Quartet No. 4 Op. 37 composition and the 39 paintings that the researcher made for this composition. The data was interpreted through a/r/tographic inquiry. At the end of the study it was observed that the application of musical thinking with atonality acts to visual arts applications brought forth skills such as making deep interpretations, developing theories, solving problems, thinking critically, self inquiry, and the use of senses in a intuitive perspective within personal experiences.

This interview with Elliott Carter, conducted on 30 May 2012, is among the last that he gave. Carter talks candidly about his past, the present, and what his legacy will be. While discussing his latest works – a series of short epigrams and a new setting of Wallace Stevens poems – Carter explains how each composition is a unique musical adventure; consequently, he does not repeat himself. Innovation is the essence of Carter's oeuvre, clearly manifested in his string quartets, which Carter still views as his grandest musical statements. He speaks openly about the difficulties of getting these and other works performed well, the lack of performances of his compositions on the West Coast, and the current trends and direction of composition today. Carter recalls important experiences and events in his life involving Nadia Boulanger, Ives, Cage, Boulez, and Stravinsky.

In the course of his artistic career, which has lasted for more than fifty years now, Vladan Radovanovic (b. Belgrade, 1932) has created works in the domains of electroacoustic music, mixed electronics, metamusic, visual arts artifugal projects, tactile art, literature, drawings of dreams, polymedial and vocovisual projects, as well as art theory. Central to his poetics is the theme of synthesic art. Based on a synthesis of the arts and a fusion of media, the flow of his opus disturbs the limitations of art. His synthesis of media-lines is neither a product of rational decision, nor is it inspired by the works of other artists. Its initial form appears in the mind of the artist as a sensation or a representation that emerges from sleep and dream or from his exploration of the mysteries of his inner being. In an attempt to create a classification of the arts that would suit his understanding of the nature of art, Radovanovic has suggested a basic division into single-media and multi-media arts. Single-media arts include music, poetry and painting, whereas the remaining arts belong to the multi-media group. The latter contains works created by an expansion of mixed forms such as theatre, opera and ballet, but in which the media involved accomplish greater integrity - mixedmedia (for example: happening, fluxus etc) multimedia (opera, film, environment) and intermedia (a term which possesses two meanings: a new media that is in-between media, or a new media in which all the elements are equal and integrated). Radovanovic prefers the second meaning, but he uses the term polymedia for such works. This term is analogous to polyphony, because Radovanovic has aimed to create a polymedia form in which separate media lines would be treated in counterpoint, in order to remain complementary and mutually dependant. In 1957, Radovanovic began to sketch his theoretical thesis, initiated by his concrete artistic output. Although he had distinguished his diverse artistic output according to formal and designative characteristics, later he subordinated his work to the term synthesis art. Synthesic art is, according to Radovanovic, one of the models of multi-medial arts. We have analyzed the works of Vladan Radovanovic, which do indeed belong to the category of synthesic art, on many levels. First of all we tried to locate his opus in the context of Serbian and European art. Radovanovic's avant-garde poetics was born in the context of Serbian art in the second half of the 20th century, which was dominated by 'moderate modernism'. His works did not fit into the existing world of art, and therefore were marginalized and underestimated. Despite his innovative spirit, hunger for novelty, and aim to transcend the materiality of materials, which are all characteristics of high-modern avant-garde poetics, Radovanovic claims autonomy. His latest works do not fit into the current world of art either, because he does not want to place his poetics in the domain of contemporary post-modern poetics and theories. His intentional evasion of fashionable currents is a product of his conscience, which asks that he remain faithful to himself and his inner artistic vision. Another theoretical challenge when addressing the works of this artist was to locate his synthesic art within the larger historical and contemporary manifestations of the total world of art, especially where his works compare with Richard Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk. Radovanovic believes that his concept of synthesic art is similar to Gesamtkunstwerk, but in no way equal. Therefore, we have examined all the controversies about the usage of the term Gesamtkunstwerk, as well as different theoretical approaches to this concept and its evolution; then, we have analyzed it in terms of the theoretical and practical realization of synthesic art. By formulating in detail his theory of synthesic art, Radovanovic has given us a key for the understanding and analysis of his works of art. For example, we have analyzed several of his earlier multi-media works (Dreams, vocovisual works Desert (Pustolina), Polyaedar, Ball, Change and Vocovisual omages, and polymedia projects Electrovideoaudio, Building of Rooms-Signs, The Great Sounding Tactyzone, Polim 2, Polim 3, video-work Variations for TV) as well as one of his latest synthesic works, Constellations, in order to describe the practical realization of his theory, and to demonstrate how his poetic model is equally precise and flexible. Radovanovic both realizes and recognizes his artistic output and theoretical thought as a united product as they were both created in his synthesic mind.

One of the great advantages of Schenkerian theory for the analysis of sonata-form expositions is its focus on the comparatively few fundamental structural patterns that govern the vast majority of Classical sonata movements. By recognizing these pervasive patterns, the analyst is able to relate unique foreground and middleground features of an individual exposition to the relatively uniform background procedures. One thus gains insight both into the features that make a given exposition original and into those that tie it to the sonata-form genre. In this paper I shall study expositions from the first movements of three late Haydn works: the Symphony No. 96 (1791), the String Quartet op. 74/3 (1793), and the String Quartet op. 76/2 (1797). My aim is to demonstrate how the voice-leading of the foreground and middleground is related to structural patterns operating in the background, and how the different structural levels interact with the movements' formal organization.

One of the great advantages of Schenkerian theory for the analysis of sonata-form expositions is its focus on the comparatively few fundamental structural patterns that govern the vast majority of Classical sonata movements. By recognizing these pervasive patterns, the analyst is able to relate unique foreground and middleground features of an individual exposition to the relatively uniform background procedures. One thus gains insight both into the features that make a given exposition original and into those that tie it to the sonata-form genre. In this paper I shall study expositions from the first movements of three late Haydn works: the Symphony No. 96 (1791), the String Quartet op. 74/3 (1793), and the String Quartet op. 76/2 (1797). My aim is to demonstrate how the voice-leading of the foreground and middleground is related to structural patterns operating in the background, and how the different structural levels interact with the movements' formal organization.

The essay is devoted to characterizing a trend opposed to the onslaught of contradictions, disharmony and various destructive influences brought along by the new century in the Russian musical art of the early 20th century. This trend was embodied in the composers’ turn to the humanistic traditions of the past, as well as in the constructive and positive aspirations of modernity. The desire to defend the principles of humanism was mainly associated with the spiritual values of the Classical era. In particular, the author provides insight into the formation of neoclassicism in Russian musical art starting with the late works by P. Tchaikovsky (the orchestral suite “Mozartiana” (1887)). Special attention is paid to the works by S. Taneyev (the cantata “At the Reading of a Psalm” (1912-1915)), N. Myaskovsky (String Quartet No. 4 (1909-1910)), S. Prokofiev (Symphony No. 1 (1917)), Z. Paliashvili (the operas “Abesalom da Eteri” (1910-1919) and “Daisi” (1919-1923)). As a result, it is concluded that the sphere of humanism and harmony, despite being hardly a central trend in the context of the musical and artistic process of the 1910s, was, however, undoubtedly significant, clearly reflecting the reaction to the deforming trends of modernity. The fundamental shift in worldview that occurred in the 1910s – the first half of the 1920s was expressed in the weakening of the considered trend, the growth of contradictions.

A new reading of the finale of Beethoven's String Quartet in C# Minor, op. 131, taking as point of departure the theme in "doublet" form introduced in mm. 22-29. This theme recalls (or retrieves) the fugue subject of the first movement in peculiar ways, analyzed here in perhaps painstaking detail. Over the course of the movement the peculiarities dissipate; the theme recurs in different forms until, in a beautiful passage near the end, it seems less uncanny than reconciliatory, an authentic return at the end of the quartet to the ethos of the great fugue that began it. Meanwhile as the doublet theme develops and grows more expressive, the finale's "heroic" first theme decays. Yet the finale is the only movement in op. 131 to follow sonata-like procedures, strikingly evocative of the "Burnham canon" of middle-period works. Sonata-form narrative is undercut here by a counter-narrative tracing the transformations of the doublet theme, suggesting an overall cyclic rather than teleological dynamic. For Adorno, critique of the heroic ideal was at the heart of Beethoven's late style. Although Adorno did not think so, critique is more explicit in the finale of op. 131 than in many other late works, it is suggested, and more vivid, because the heroic accents of the symphonic style are evoked so deliberately within the movement itself.

It would seem that the string quartet as a genre is not central to Nielsen’s oeuvre, at least if we consider the F major Quartet op. 44 as his only mature work for the medium. But this picture changes as soon as we count not merely his early apprentice works but also the three further quartets to which Nielsen himself assigned opus numbers and which he had published. After the early quartet studies, in which his familiarity with the classical repertoire may be seen, the following quartets – op. 13, op. 5 and op. 14 – show a progressive emancipation from tradition, which is particularly evident in their harmonic relationships. As the texture becomes far more complex, so the harmonic language achieves an increasing differentiation, going as far as bitonal passages in the E flat Quartet op. 14 (1897-98). The F major Quartet op. 44, composed in 1906, appears as a logical consequence, in that it unites the transparency of the early studies with the fluctuating tonality that thereafter becomes the basis for Nielsen’s output. From this perspective the string quartets acquire a central position, since they reflect his development more clearly than other genres. Moreover, they occupy a unique position when viewed not just against the background of Nielsen’s late works but in the context of the general history of the genre before 1900.

I. String Quartet II In the summer of 1996, the Kronos Quartet was scheduled to present Morton Feldman’s String Quartet II (1983) at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. The performance was being promoted as the centerpiece of a much larger Feldman tribute and retrospective that was to go on for several days. Feldman’s legendary quartet had never before been given in its entirety, which, if faithfully done would last, uninterrupted, around six hours. Shorter versions had been performed in the 1980s—in Toronto, in Darmstadt—abridged by Feldman himself to fit specific programs, or to accommodate the pleas of musicians, but the composition in all its intended dimension had not been heard. Like a well-concealed object, the complete string quartet’s non-performance seemed only to heighten the anticipation and the uniqueness of the upcoming event, the silence surrounding this monumental piece contributing to its growing aura. No one had heard it, and yet much had been heard about it. More than any other contemporary composer, Feldman over the years had become known for the length of so many of his pieces, their extreme duration seen as both a compositional strategy and a recognizable signature statement of his late work. Asked about it, he would sometimes cryptically justify the unusual length of his music as his way of adding “a little drama” to the work, or that he was “tired of the bourgeois audience” and their conventional expectations, or, more seriously perhaps, he would quote Varese’s comment that people “don’t understand how long it takes for a sound to speak” (Give My Regards 44). And though much of Feldman’s music of the late 1970s and 1980s ranged from one hour to four (breaking what he saw as the stale durational mold of

On his way home from Paris in July 1958, György Kurtág stopped in Cologne for two days to meet his friend György Ligeti. Ligeti introduced him to Karlheinz Stockhausen and played him a recording of Stockhausen’s Gruppen for three orchestras (1955–1957), as well as his own latest work, Artikulation for magnetic tape (recorded March 1958). Thirty-five years later Kurtág said, ‘these two days [had been] musically far richer and more meaningful for me than the entire year in Paris’, and that in the String Quartet op. 1 (1958–1959) ‘[I strived] to formulate in my own language something similar to what I had experienced with Artikulation in Cologne’. Beyond pointing out specific similarities, both technical and aesthetic, between these two works, this article shows that another work by Ligeti—String Quartet No. 1 ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’—made a much more direct influence on Kurtág’s Op. 1. I argue that not only Bartók and Webern (influences often mentioned by analysts) but also Ligeti served as a model for Kurtág’s quartet.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The View from the Interior: The New Body Scholarship in Renaissance/Early Modern Studies

The aims of this study were to investigate the associations among personality traits, perceived creation stress, and life satisfaction in visual artists, as well as examine the mediating role of perceived creation stress. We recruited 201 visual artists in Beijing's Songzhuang art colony to participate in this study and used the Mini International Personality Item Pool-Five-Factor Model measure, the Perceived Creation Stress Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Extraversion and conscientiousness positively predicted life satisfaction, and conscientiousness was negatively associated with creation stress. Positive U-shaped curvilinear relationships between personality traits and life satisfaction (neuroticism, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness) characterized the nonlinear relationship model. Meanwhile, perceived creation stress mediated the relationship between conscientiousness (both linear and quadratic) and life satisfaction. Our findings highlighted the dark-side traits (e.g., neuroticism, introversion, low agreeableness, and conscientiousness) associated with visual artists' subjective well-being.