Contemporary Composers Research Articles

Toccata and toccata style in Yurii Reshetar’s piano works

Toccata and toccata style in Yurii Reshetar’s piano works

Coloristic Means of Expression in Contemporary Composers’ Works for Guitar Quartets

Coloristic Means of Expression in Contemporary Composers’ Works for Guitar Quartets

Sonatinas for Piano in the Context of Mao-Shuen Chen’s Composer and Pedagogical Activities

Sonatinas for Piano in the Context of Mao-Shuen Chen’s Composer and Pedagogical Activities

Stylization of Baroque genres in the Ukrainian violin miniature of the early 21st century: specifics of musical consciousness formation

Stylization of Baroque genres in the Ukrainian violin miniature of the early 21st century: specifics of musical consciousness formation

About the embodiment of humanistic values in the G. Presgurvic’s musical “Romeo and Juliet”

About the embodiment of humanistic values in the G. Presgurvic’s musical “Romeo and Juliet”

Comparison of modern and contemporary composers' accompaniment in China - based on the romantic theory

Comparison of modern and contemporary composers' accompaniment in China - based on the romantic theory

„Tote Aber Leben Länger“. The Second Viennese school and its place in the reflections of selected composers from the second half of the twentieth century (Lutosławski, Ligeti, Lachenmann, Harvey)

The juxtaposition of classicism and actuality is a good description of the ambiguous position occupied by the Second Viennese School not only in the eyes of the scholars who research it, but also of composers who can be regarded as its successors. However, in the works and writings originating from the Second Viennese School we find a concentration of problems encountered by contemporary composers, especially the modernist ones. The aim of this article is to examine the role played by the representatives of the Second Viennese School in the reflections of selected twentieth-century composers, concerning their place in music history, the expressive categories present in their work, and their ambiguous attitude to tonality. A separate subject to be explored is the discourse used by contemporary composers to describe the music of their predecessors, full of both analytical categories and vivid metaphors. The quoted composers (Witold Lutos?awski, Gy?rgy Ligeti, Helmut Lachenmann and Jonathan Harvey) may be identified with more-or-less radical modernist views. This article is guided by the thinking of Gianmario Borio and the idea of ?historical appropriation?, according to which analysis of the works of the past helps composers to create their own artistic identities and to define their own place in the history of music.

Lutosławski's Worlds ed. by Lisa Jakelski and Nicholas Reyland

Reviewed by: Lutosławski's Worlds ed. by Lisa Jakelski and Nicholas Reyland Daniel Elphick Lutosławski's Worlds. Edited by Lisa Jakelski and Nicholas Reyland. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2018. [xix, 402 p. ISBN 9781783271986 (hardcover), £60; ISBN 9781787442214 (ebook), price varies.] Figures, tables, music examples, list of contributors, acknowledgements, bibliography, index. Some composers' legacies are haunted by their biographies. Discussion of figures like Dmitrii Shostakovich frequently center around issues of their political ties or the supposed meanings hidden within their works. This has led to recent calls from scholars including Pauline Fairclough and David Fanning, who have moved to a return to that most problematic of concepts, "the music itself." Such is not the case for all composers, of course; indeed, the world of Witold Lutosławski studies has, until very recently, had almost exactly the opposite problem. As the composer died relatively recently (in 1994), many scholars had personal ties with the man, which inevitably affected the way that they wrote about his music. Familiar Englishlanguage studies on the composer include those by Charles Bodman Rae (The Music of Lutosławski [London: Faber, 1994]) and Steven Stucky (Lutosławski and his Music [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981]) and edited by Zbigniew Skowron (Lutosławski Studies [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001]). Beyond these, there are numerous books of conversations as well as collections of documentary sources. Even in some of these cases, scholars replicated Lutosławski's own viewpoint that his music should be understood in isolation from his biography. The composer went further than this and often denied that any links existed at all. For a Shostakovich scholar, this state of affairs seemed almost idyllic, with no tedious debates where Cold Warriors might bicker. As it turns out, the grass isn't always greener, and many Lutosławski scholars have long yearned for a closer intertwining of life and works. Lutosławski's Worlds, a culmination of talks following the Lutosławski centenary in 2013, makes for provoking reading. Lisa Jakelski and Nicholas Reyland introduce the volume with a call for "nothing less than a wholesale rethinking of the interrelationships between Lutosławski's life and works" (p. 2). The book is the product of an innovative 2015 conference, where papers from Polish, American, and British scholars were shared in advance rather than "presented" in the traditional format. The contributors then met to discuss and debate their essays, with an eye to revising texts for publication in the present volume. The result is an exciting and provocative collection, which is made all the more insightful for the spirit of debate and discussion that led to its production. While there are five groupings, the essays roughly divide along the lines of documentary studies, analysis, politics and biography, and legacy. Several essays here throw light on previously under-explored aspects of the composer's output. For instance, Danuta Gwizdalanka explores how Lutosławski wrote popular songs under the pseudonym "Derwid," partly to supplement his income. Gwizdalanka provides a thorough overview of the surviving songs and their contexts. Such songs were revived in the 2013 centenary; the composer would, presumably, have been displeased. A similarly under-explored body of work is highlighted in Wioleta Muras's catalog of Lutosławski's sizeable output for theater and radio. Based on impressive archival work, Muras helps to plug a gap in historical knowledge of the composer and features a good number of music examples from long-forgotten [End Page 131] scores. A further trio of essays illuminates particular treasures from the archive of the composer. Stanisław Bȩdkowski focuses on a wide array of documents in the Lutosławski Correspondence Collection in the Paul Sacher Stiftung (Basel, Switzerland), piecing together tiny snippets of critical commentary on contemporary composers. While this falls short of "Lutosławski as critic," it does present a previously unknown aspect of the composer. Zbigniew Skowron focuses on a single extraordinary document, the composer's "artistic diary." Skowron shows how this small diary illustrates the composer's artistic development over several years, and Skowron's insightful commentary shows that the diary provides a unique illustration of Lutosławski's changing ideas on music. (The full text of the...

Vocal Piano Accompaniment: A Constant Research Towards Emancipation (2)

This is the second and last article in the series dedicated to the investigation of the evolution of vocal piano accompaniment through history and the role-played by the piano in its relationship with the voice. If the previous chapter focused from the beginnings of piano accompaniment to Franz Schubert, this one will take up again the analysis of the piano part from the last lieder of Franz Schubert to Arnold Schoenberg. The research method used continues to be based on the musical analysis of the piano part, addressing both issues of the piano itself and its link with the text and the vocal part. By means of musical examples of different composers, the article investigates all those aspects that provide evidence of the change in the role of the piano in the correspondence of the piano with the voice and its repercussion on the final result of the work. In this way, we will look at the history of piano accompaniment for voice and see how the influence of Schubert's conception of vocal piano accompaniment materializes in contemporary and later composers, as well as the crucial change in the history of the piano as an accompanying instrument introduced by Schubert. The results and conclusions drawn from the evolution presented in these two articles are presented at the end of the article, based on the different aspects involved in the musical event, such as rhythm, harmony or texture.

Vocal Piano Accompaniment: A Constant Research Towards Emancipation (1)

This article represents the first one in a series of two that investigate the evolution of vocal piano accompaniment through history and the role of the piano in its relationship with the voice. The research method used is musical analysis focused on the piano part, both in itself and its link with the text and the vocal part. The research method used is musical analysis centred on the piano part, both in itself and its link with the text and the vocal part. Initially, some preliminary questions necessary to establish a starting point around the piano accompaniment are addressed. Then, by means of musical examples of different composers following a chronological order, the article investigates all those aspects that provide evidence of the change in the role of the piano in the correspondence between the piano and the voice. In this way we will observe the trajectory of piano accompaniment to the voice and we will see how Schubert conceived the piano in vocal works with piano accompaniment. This new conception will influence both contemporary and later composers. The treatment of this influence will be dealt with in the second article. In the present article we will establish the basis of the functioning of piano accompaniment in compositions prior to Schubert, starting from the Ancient Italian aria (the beginnings of piano accompaniment) to his first lieder. We will observe the different dialogue between voice and piano that starts from the dependence of the piano in the beginnings towards its participation in the final result of the work with a decisive role. Schubert will articulate this drift, as will be seen. However, the results and conclusions, taking into account the whole evolutionary perspective of piano accompaniment, will be presented in the second article.

Franz Kafkas akustische Welten by Rüdiger Görner

Reviewed by: Franz Kafkas akustische Welten by Rüdiger Görner Peter Höyng and Jessie Zhao Rüdiger Görner, Franz Kafkas akustische Welten. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 156. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019. 183 pp. Franz Kafkas akustische Welten is a short, tightly organized guide to the role of sound in Kafka's oeuvre. Ever since sound studies have become established within the last decade, this particular angle seems ripe for analysis. However, scholars and biographers have long recognized Kafka's peculiar relationship to noise and music, and in recent years Görner's book has been joined by two others: Jürgen Daiber's Kaßca und der Lärm: Klanglandschaften der frühen [End Page 109] Moderne (2015) and Kata Gellen's Kafka andNoise: The Discovery of Cinematic Sound in Literary Modernism (2019). It should be noted that all three books focus on the same texts, and for good reason. The sensitive animal figures in "Josefin die Sängerin," "Der Bau," and "Forschungen eines Hundes" are prominent features, as is the enticingly incomprehensible fragment "Das Schweigen der Sirenen" and the consequences of advances in technology during Kafka's lifetime like telephones and earplugs. With its three parts Franz Kafkas akustische Welten is straightforwardly structured: after its extensive introduction entitled Befunde, the two major sections are called Bereiche and Beziehungen. Each subsection of parts two and three roughly corresponds to one text, the analysis of which usually takes no more than a few pages, and hence tends to be relatively superficial, particularly when it comes to the aforementioned texts with animals and technology. These texts would benefit greatly from a more radical and specific approach rather than summaries of sound's presence within a single text, with relatively little connection to others. By separating each story so cleanly and avoiding bigger questions about Kafka's relationships to sound, Görner's analysis overlooks many of the potentially fascinating cracks in the narrative facades on which Kafka thrives. In part three of Beziehungen, some subsections deal with texts by other writers, and while insightful, the strength of the connection between Kafka and the texts chosen varies wildly. It is hard to find a place for Joyce's Ulysses, written five years after "Das Schweigen der Sirenen," with vastly different circumstances and goals in mind (whatever they were), in a text that is ultimately about Kafka's particular usage of sound. However, it is easy to see how Kafka's decision to use intelligent dogs to interrogate human society could have been inspired by the Cervantes story "Dialogue of the Dogs" via E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Nachricht von den neuesten Schicksalen des Hundes Berganza," or why sirens in Rilkes poetry are worth comparing to his contemporary's parables. Yet Görner's choice of György Kurtág's large Kafka Fragmente cycle (1985-1987) as his only example for Kafka's texts attracting contemporary composers seems arbitrary. In his best moments Görner manages to situate Kafka in a literary tradition and a living, breathing world where writers share their peers' concerns, without jumping to conclusions about the uniqueness of Kafka, as so many scholars do. Another helpful feature of this book is the way Görner clearly sets out four goals in his first part, Befunde, offering more insight into the reason why [End Page 110] certain arguments are made and certain texts are featured. The goals combine relatively uncontroversial ideas (that sound plays a major role in Kafka's work and is related to Kafka's tendency for manipulating illusions) with bolder ones (that the idea of the "Kafkaesque" can be primarily understood as an auditory phenomenon). Of note is the idea of an "Acousticon," which is proposed as a unit for describing repetitive acoustic events (for instance, knocking on a door in Der Prozeß). Unfortunately these "acousticons" do not play a very large role in Görner's overall argument and as a result their usefulness for analysis has not been fully tested. The other aspects of Görner's theoretical approaches are set up and proven without much friction. Depictions of sound in a soundless medium like literature will by their nature have a...

Operas on Gogol’s plots in the compositions of contemporary composers: from libretto to the problem of plotology

Research objective is to identify the genesis of opera creativity based on Gogol’s plots in the context of defining and substantiating the historical conditions and theoretical parameters of the phenomenon of plotology. This necessitated the development of a typological aesthetic approach to opera plotology, typological criteria for the study of thematic opera content. The methodology of the work is determined by the interaction of theoretical and historical approaches to opera plotology; musicological analytical, aesthetic-psychological, historical, semiological and textological approaches are noted as presenters. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that it offers a comprehensive description of operas based on Gogol’s plots as an actual trend in musical art. Along with this, the article examines the problem of an artistic plot in the light of opera issues and in projection onto the structural and compositional logic of the opera text. Conclusions. The embodiment of N. Gogol’s works in the opera genre is becoming an established trend in the development of this genre sphere in the context of the evolution of world opera. The creative heritage of N. Gogol has attracted and still attracts the attention of representatives of various national composing schools and different generations. Today, the history of the development of musical gogoliana has more than a century and a half, and we can confidently speak of its significant influence on artistic and cultural trends and the musical and historical process in general. On the basis of the analysis of literary studies devoted to the issues of plot and plotology, the interdependence and dependence of the artistic plot on the compositional principles of constructing the composition becomes indisputable. It should be noted that this interdependence can take different forms in different types of art, at the same time it also has common dominant artistic and ontological features, which are most pronounced in literary and musical works. These forms and their dominant features should be understood as a system of functioning of iconic complexes and the principle of organizing individual parts as part of a whole composition, including a comparison of plot episodes, and the order of reporting the course of events, and the distribution of these events in time.

Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age ed. by David Hebert and Mikolaj Rykowski

Reviewed by: Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age ed. by David Hebert and Mikolaj Rykowski Siel Agugliaro Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age. Edited by David Hebert and Mikolaj Rykowski. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. [xlviii, 383 p. ISBN 9781527503939 (hardcover), £64.99.] Music examples, illustrations, index. Music has played an important part in the history of the term glocalization. After all, it is Akio Morita, the founder and CEO of Sony, one of the world's largest music and entertainment corporations, who receives credit as the inventor the word in 1990. The company's managers originally intended glocalization to signify the practice of diversifying global marketing schemes to better respond to the different cultures and social conditions existing in specific geographical regions. By 2008, this diversification strategy was so successful that the managers of Sony Music Entertainment [End Page 440] decided to trademark the expression "go glocal" as a business slogan (Wayne Visser, The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business [Chichester: Wiley, 2011], 257–58]. In the same years, glocalization entered scholarly discussion. While its use was initially confined to the field of economics, the social sciences later adopted the concept to better understand how individuals acting and living in local contexts are affected by or respond to global financial or social forces. In spite of its historical origin in the music industry, the concept has found a relatively limited use in music studies, whereas cognate terms such as diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and transnationalism are more commonly employed to examine the impact of the global circulation of ideas and musical products on specific cultural contexts. Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age, edited by David Hebert and Mikolaj Rykowski, is the first collection on music topics to explicitly deal with the concept of glocalization. The book originates from two conferences held in 2014 and 2015 at the Academy of Music in Poznan, Poland, titled "Music from the Perspective of Globalization." The volume consists of fifteen essays, an introduction, and a conclusion, and is articulated in four sections. The first portion of the book gathers five chapters tackling issues of music and globalization from a theoretical perspective. David G. Hebert's opening essay describes glocalization as no less than "a defining aspect of the contemporary human condition" (p. 6) and examines the multiple roles assigned to music in this context, from its use as an omnipresent soundtrack of our everyday lives to the crucial significance for the music industry of data mining individual musical preferences by online services such as Amazon, Pandora, YouTube, and Spotify. In the following essay, cultural theorist Krzysztof Moraczewski indicates sound-recording technology as the preliminary condition for the current global dissemination of music and as the cause of the growing interaction between Western art music and "previously-oral music cultures" (p. 29) whose sonic products can be archived and preserved in time and space. In his contribution, David Kozel builds upon Jungian psychology to trace a parallel between the archetypal desire of the collective unconscious for unifying myths and the "nullification of differentiation and indigenousness" (p. 46) fostered by the global circulation of music. The two final contributions to the first section connect discourses on globalization with specific examples of composers. In the first, eminent Chopin scholar Mieczysław Tomaszewski considers the influence of Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian cultural heritage on the music of five nineteenth-century Polish composers (Staniszław Moniuszko, Juliusz Zarębski, Mieczysław Karłowicz, Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Karol Szymanowski) who were born and raised within the so-called Polish Kresy, a territory in Eastern Europe that was once part of the Polish state. In the second, Victor Nefkens draws upon philosophers Alain Badiou and Gianni Vattimo to "reframe" Richard Wagner's Gesamkunstwerk as an antitotalitarian aesthetic device, in opposition to Theodor W. Adorno's notorious conceptualization of Wagnerian music drama (and of leitmotifs in particular) as a numbing technique that, like modern advertising jingles, is designed to impair the audience's critical thought. The second group of essays focuses on four contemporary composers to consider the different strategies they have adopted to assert their...

Contemporary composer Vladimir Jovanović and his role in the renewal of church Byzantine music in Serbia from the 1990s until today

This work focuses on the role of the composer Vladimir (Vlada) Jovanović in the renewal of church Byzantine music in Serbia from the 1990s until today. This multi-talented artist worked and created art in his native Belgrade, with creativity that exceeded local frames. This research emphasizes Jovanović’s pedagogical and compositional work in the field of Byzantine music, which mostly took place through his activity in the St. John of Damascus choir in Belgrade. The author analyzes the problems in implementation of modal church Byzantine music, since the first students did not hear it in their surroundings, as well as the responses of the listeners. Special attention is paid to students’ narratives, which help us perceive the broad cultural and social impact of Jovanović’s creative work.

УКРАЇНСЬКІ ЖНИВАРСЬКІ ПІСНІ У ФОКУСІ ЗАЦІКАВЛЕНЬ ДОСЛІДНИКІВ ТА КОМПОЗИТОРІВ

Мета статті – розглянути українські жниварські пісні як об’єкт дослідницької уваги та специфіку їх використання композиторами. Методологія дослідження ґрунтується на застосуванні етномузикознавчого, мистецтвознавчого, культурологічного підходів, що дало змогу проаналізувати основні засади критеріїв наукового підходу до жниварських пісень, інтенсивність звернення до них сучасних композиторів, накреслити історичну перспективу їхнього побутування з урахуванням зміни календарно-обрядового циклу. Така методологія дала змогу акцентувати на сучасному етапі наукового опрацювання жниварських пісень та їх використання митцями у творах різних жанрів і форм як фольклорного первня. Наукова новизна полягає в постановці дослідницького вектора в пошуку наявного корпусу джерел з обраної тематики та в розширенні уявлень про причини актуалізації жниварської проблематики серед учених та митців, а також в акцентуванні важливості збереження цього сегмента фольклору для наступних генерацій. Висновки. Констатується мала кількість розвідок, присвячених вивченню українських жниварських пісень, порівняно з іншими календарно-обрядовими піснями. Встановлено, що серед їхніх дослідників були З. Доленга-Ходаковський, Леся Українка, К. Квітка, Я. Зуїха, Г. Танцюра, Ф. Колесса, Н. Присяжнюк, Ю. Круть, І. Клименко та ін. Виявлено, що в деяких регіональних збірках взагалі відсутні записи жниварських пісень, на відміну від значної їх кількості, збережених на Волині. З’ясовано, що в творчості композиторів жниварські пісні використовувалися радше спорадично; у різних жанрах та формах їх застосовували М. Лисенко, М. Леонтович, Я. Степовий, Ф. Колесса, М. Вериківський, Г. Верьовка, П. Козицький, Л. Ревуцький, В. Барвінський, Ю. Іщенко, Л. Дичко та ін. Виявлено, що серед композиторів, які звернулися до жниварських пісень нещодавно, виділяється набуток Миколи Ластовецького, у двох збірниках якого міститься 49 обробок.

Italian opera stars of the Kharkiv stage: the 80s of the 19th – early 20th centuries

Italian opera stars of the Kharkiv stage: the 80s of the 19th – early 20th centuries

Оlexandr Litvinov – the founder of professional jazz education in Kharkіv (milestones in life and career)

Оlexandr Litvinov – the founder of professional jazz education in Kharkіv (milestones in life and career)

Genre of variations for piano in the context of stylish plurality of F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's creativity

The purpose of the article is to determine the genre and stylefeatures of the piano cycle „Serious Variations” by F. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The round of specific methods is due to the use of empiricalscientific approaches of observation and generalization. The methodsidentified form a pronounced practical component of the proposedscientific intelligence. The structural and analytical approach allows you toform a sequence of presentation of scientific material, and draw theappropriate conclusions on the features of „Serious Variations”. Using thehistorical-typological approach, the sequence of the development processof the variation genre as a whole is revealed. The novelty of the proposedtopic is determined by the fact that the first analysis of the piano cycle„Serious Variations” by F. Mendelssohn was carried out in the context ofthe historical development of the genre of variations and its stylisticdetermination. Conclusions. Variations for piano occupy a rather modestplace in Mendelssohn’s music compared to the work of other composers.The piano series „Serious Variations” was created by Mendelssohn inaccordance with romantic trends in contemporary composer in a dialoguewith the stylistic features of the Baroque and classical era. The styleguidelines for creating the cycle was the work of L. Beethoven andI.S. Bach. The texture of the work is very “pianistic”, although itinfluences both the orchestral writing and Mendelssohn’s organ music.The dramaturgy of „Serious Variations” is organized in such a way that itclearly senses the movement from Baroque to classical stylistics,manifesting the essence of style modulation within the cycle. The mainfeature of „Serious Variations” on the implementation of which thepianist’s efforts should be aimed at working on this cycle is the stylemultiplicity, which is the main characteristic of musical material and theways of its presentation.

Interview with Charles Wuorinen

Dear readers of the journal “Problemy muzykal’noj nauki / Music Scholarship”! The editorial board of the journal “Problemy muzykalnoj nauki / Music Scholarship” is happy to present an interview with the famous American composer Charles Wuorinen. At the present time Wuorinen is the most well-known composer of twelve-tone music in the USA. He was born in New York City in 1938, studied at Columbia University in New York, and subsequently taught at many universities and conservatories in the USA, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music (New York), Princeton University and Rutgers University (New Jersey), New England Conservatory (Massachussetts), etc. In 1970 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his electronic composition Time’s Encomium, composed with the use of the RCA Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In his music Wuorinen adheres to the musical traditions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky (especially the latter’s late period), and asserts that he was most influenced in his music by American composers Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt and German emigre to the United States Stefan Wolpe. The composer was also inspired by the fractal theories of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Similar to Babbitt, Wuorinen has incorporated serial rhythm, in many cases projecting the latter onto the formal structures of entire compositions, following his own invented system. From 1962 to the mid-2010s, along with composer and performer Harvey Solberger, he was one of the leaders of the concert series, the Group for Contemporary Music, devoted to performance of works by contemporary composers. In the 1970s Wuorinen wrote an orchestral composition A Reliquary for Igor Stravinsky, in which he incorporated the last musical sketches of the great master. Wuorinen is the author of a book on serial music, titled Simple Composition, which he characterizes as a manual for composers, meant to teach them how to compose music, and not a music theory book analyzing already composed works. Wuorinen’s music is well-known in the USA and in the countries of Western Europe, where there are frequent premiere performances of his new compositions, among which it becomes proper to name his eight symphonies, his trilogy of ballets based on the theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy, compositions for chorus and orchestra on Biblical themes: Genesis and A Celestial Sphere, music for piano, various chamber ensembles, percussion ensembles and several operas. Music lovers in Russia have yet to discover for itself the music of this intriguing composer (see website www.charleswuorinen.com), and we hope that this interview, which is the first publication about the composer in this country, shall serve as an impetus for further popularization of his music in Russia.

Stylistic features of the choral concerto “Witchery songs” by M. Shukh.

Stylistic features of the choral concerto “Witchery songs” by M. Shukh.