Instrumental Ensemble Research Articles

Dvorak to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots (review)

Reviewed by: Dvořák to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America’s Music and Its African American Roots Susan Key Dvořák to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America’s Music and Its African American Roots. By Maurice Peress. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [viii, 254 p. ISBN 0-19-509822-6. $30.] Music examples, illustrations, index, bibliography, discography. In the afterword to Dvořák to Duke Ellington: A Conductor Explores America's Music and Its African American Roots, Maurice Peress sums up his point of view: "All the stories in my book are about the transfer of the center of creative power from Europe to America, Dvořák being the prophet and Ellington its fulfillment" (p. 191). This formulation may strike some readers as both overreaching and, in its focus on the importance of African American music, obvious: it is surely no great insight that American music owes much to African and African American sources. Nor that American music has been shaped by crossover styles that have sometimes infuriated the American musical establishment. Nor that Antonín Dvořák inspired a significant cultural dialogue. Yet Peress's book makes a fair claim to originality in the way it exposes the number and strength of the connections between the Bohemian symphonist and the American jazz icon, along the way filling in a number of blanks in both musical and cultural history. Peress is well situated to write such an account; he is both a conductor and a researcher whose credits include working with Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein as well as reconstructing historical concerts from the early twentieth century. The importance of this role is highlighted in the book's subtitle: "a conductor explores." All the major figures he discusses—Antonín Dvořák, James Reese Europe, George Gershwin, Will Marion Cook, George Antheil, Leonard Bernstein, and Duke Ellington—are ones whose music he worked on, and whose debts to African American musical roots shaped his perspective. His conducting also informs his specific approach: "I was often struck by the conscious search for, and development of, an African American instrumental voice" (p. 199). The process by which African American style was translated into western instrumental ensembles beyond the European symphony orchestra is one that Peress clearly understands from direct experience. Peress's involvement with the music he discusses yields a book very different from most musicological works, as he also turns to fellow performers—conductors, orchestrators, band members, etc., to enhance his analysis. A particularly effective example is Peress's analysis of a recording of George Gershwin conducting a tryout session of orchestrations for Porgy and Bess (p. 75). Or his insights into Rhapsody in Blue gleaned from reconstructing the original performance (pp. 94–96)—including instrumental timbres and the effect of contemporary sound systems on style. Perhaps his experiences in the musical world are also responsible for Peress's sensitivity to the connections among people—students, copyists, orchestrators, etc., and the sometimes-unintended effects these relationships have for larger trends in music. His work on Dvořák's African American students is intriguing, as is the way he links nineteenth-century African American minstrel James Bland directly to David Mannes, founder of the Mannes School of Music. There are many more: the plethora of connections Will Marion Cook had in both classical and [End Page 1025] popular worlds. Or the "nuts and bolts" details of putting together Bernstein's Mass. Dvořák to Duke Ellington is organized in two parts, both roughly chronological. First is Peress's self-described "idiosyncratic take on African American music and musicians from the first half of the twentieth century, with Dvořák as splendid guide" (p. 79), exploring the question he poses at the beginning: "Are the main themes of America's black music history—the slave gatherings, camp meetings, minstrelsy, and jubilees—connected by some common thread?" (p. 10). Then he takes the reader through his experiences with the music he researched and prepared for concert performance: Paul Whiteman's 1924 Aeolian Hall concert during which Rhapsody in Blue was premiered; James Reese Europe's 1912 Clef Club concert at Carnegie Hall; George Antheil's 1927 Carnegie Hall concert featuring Ballet...

A Comparison of Successful and Unsuccessful Strategies in Individual Sight-Singing Preparation and Performance

High school singers ( N=198) individually sang two melodies from notation, with and without a 30-second practice opportunity. Overall accuracy scores were significantly higher with preparation time. The less accurate singers, however, did not benefit from practice time. Analysis of videoed tests indicated that high scorers tonicized (vocally established the key), used hand signs, sang out loud during practice, physically kept the beat, and finished practicing the melody within 30 seconds significantly more frequently than did low scorers during practice. Similar strategies were used during performance, with the addition of tonicizing before singing. Sight-singing system used made no significant difference. Characteristics appearing significantly more often among high scorers included: region/state choir, private voice or piano lessons, playing an instrument, membership in instrumental ensemble, sight-singing individually outside class, and director giving individual sight-singing tests. Results are discussed in terms of strategies for teaching individual sight-singing and recommended areas of future research. August 11, 2004 January 18, 2005.

Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Claudel et le Groupe des Six: Rencontres poetico-musicales autour des melodies et des chansons (review)

Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul et le Groupe des Six: poetico-musicales autour des melodies et des chansons. By Catherine Miller. (Collection Musique Musicologie.) Liege: Pierre Mardaga, 2003. [284 p. ISBN 2-87009-852-9. euro29.] Music examples, illustrations, discography, bibliography, index. Cocteau, Apollinaire, et le Groupe des Six is a revision of Catherine Miller's doctoral thesis at l'Universite catholique de Louvain. Despite the potentially misleading word order of its title, it is in fact a straightforward historical survey of the contributions of Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre to the genre of the French art song: la melodie or Ie chanson. The book is richly illustrated with numerous photos of the composers and poets in various groupings and a few musical autographs, and there are enough typeset musical examples to keep the narrative from collapsing under the weight of documentary detail-of which there is an impressive amount synthesized from a wide range of sources. The book falls into three parts. Part 1, Groupe des Six et la litterature, systematically attends to each composer in turn, narrating their Rencontres litteraire, providing an annotated list of their et chansons, including those where the accompaniments are for instrumental ensemble rather than piano, and mapping out an appropriate Parcours melodique. Detours are provided in the first three chapters to assess, respectively, Milhaud's approach to l'expression poetique, Poulenc's own views of how his songs should be interpreted, and Honegger's personal method of text setting. Part 2, Collaboration des poetes et des musiciens, devotes chapters to Paul Claudel, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Jean Cocteau (in that order). These discuss each poet's general attitude towards music and his specific relationships and collaborations with the composers. There is much of interest in the chapter on Claudel, whose own views on music were a challenge to Milhaud, with whom he worked on many occasions; in the composer's words, Claudel et la musique? Probleme complexe (p. 117). In the case of Apollinaire, who died in 1918 and hence whose role was somewhat different from those of and Cocteau, Poulenc clearly saw him as one of his major muses, setting thirty-five of Apollinaire's poems. Catherine Miller singles out, quite rightly, three events around which the histories both of the individual composers and of Groupe des Six turned: Parade et l'esprit nouveau, where, with responses to the collaboration between Erik Satie and Apollinaire, the public origins of Six can be located; Le Coq et l'Arlequin, which acted as a public front for their activities, albeit unreliably and controversially; and Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel, which, even though it took place in 1921, three years before the official demise of the group, nevertheless marked the beginning of the end and revealed much about internal tensions within Six, Durey refusing to take part in it because of Cocteau's (predictably) derogatory remarks about Maurice Ravel and la Legion d'honneur. Part 3, Melodies et Chansons du Groupe des Six, contains two chapters. The first chapter, Melodie ou chanson?, is mercifully short, dealing as it does with the apparently vexing question of genre: what was meant by the various titles used by Six: poeme, melodie, chant, cantate, cantatille, and so on; and what did they imply about formal, stylistic, and generic constraints? Its second half, though, does begin the important task of assessing the national significance of the genre across, from, and alongside the heavy history of German lied composition. The other chapter in part three, Facteurs enjeu dans les melodies et les chansons, is more interesting, and starts to assess the vast output of Six. Its two final sections, on the accompaniments and on the vocal writing and prosody, contain some interesting observations. …

Development of a laser Raman spectrometer for deep-ocean science

We have extensively modified and successfully used a laser Raman spectrometer (DORISS, deep-ocean Raman in situ spectrometer) for geochemical studies in the deep ocean. The initial instrument, from Kaiser Optical, was separated into three components: an optical head, a laser-power supply telemetry unit, and the spectrometer. These components were modified to fit into custom designed pressure housings, and connected by deep-sea cables and optical penetrators designed to minimize signal loss. The instrument ensemble has been field deployed on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for a variety of experiments and observations, with successful operation at 1.6°C, 3600 m depth. Power supply, instrument control, and signal telemetry are provided through the ROV tether, which contains copper conductors and single mode optical fibers. The optical head is deployable by the ROV robotic arm for sample analysis; the remaining components are fixed within the vehicle tool-sled. Challenges of system calibration at depth, temperature and pressure artifacts, and system control through over 4 km of cable were successfully overcome. We present exemplary spectra obtained in situ of gas, liquid, and solid specimens, and of the ubiquitous signal of sea water itself. Future challenges include weight and size reduction, and advances in precise beam positioning on mineral targets on the sea floor.

Japanese Noh and Heike katari

Although literature specialists tend to classify Noh and Heike katari differently (Noh with a representational dimension that renders it more a hybrid), a student of oral tradition will find in them many common elements. Central to both is narrative recitation and a commitment to the expressive potential of the voice. Both show oral traditional characteristics, but early on, both also assigned a central role to libretti that performers work from. The co-presence of chanting and instrumentation is another defining characteristic. Heike katari have been traditionally performed by blind minstrels, who accompany their own solo recitations on the biwa (lute). Noh actors have performed to an instrumental ensemble of drums and flute. Both of these arts, which continue to be practiced today (Noh more widespread than Heike katari), rely on audience foreknowledge of traditional materials, making them both potential resources for examining how performances may be “re-keyed” over time to adjust to changing reception.

An acoustic study of the Brazilian cuica

The cuica is a friction drum of African origin played in the batucada (an ensemble of instruments used for the samba) during the Brazilian carnival. It is played by rubbing a bamboo rod which is connected to the center of a drum head, giving a rhythmic grunting sound. Pitch is changed by applying pressure to the membrane. This paper discusses several acoustic aspects of a folk cuica (made of a gourd) including the waveforms, spectra, and time envelopes produced. Rubbing the bamboo rod gives a primitive saw-toothed excitation, similar to a bowed violin string. This is connected to the center of a membrane which modifies and radiates the sound. The body of the cuica contributes little to the sound.

Choral composition: a handbook for composers, arrangers, conductors, and singers

Preface Music Examples Introduction Choral Notation Text and Textual Devices Choral Composition Devices Choral Part Writing, Voicings, Accompaniments and Forms Types of Choruses Soloists with Chorus Keyboard Instruments Chamber and Instrumental Ensembles with Chorus Orchestra with Chorus and Soloists Chorus in Opera, Operetta, Musical Comedy and Music Theater Publication Bibliography Index

L'Amphion Anglicus de John Blow : anglicismes et cosmopolitismes musicaux à l’orée du XVIIIème siècle

John Blow (1649-1708) was an essentially religious composer, except for his opera Venus and Adonis and several odes and occasional vocal pieces such as his famous Ode on the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell. Although Amphion Anglicus was not so successful, it is all the same fundamentally interesting. The number of voices and duration of the piece cannot but call to mind the «airs de cour » written in France during the previous fifty years. The themes of numerous pieces belong to the same tradition as antique pastoral poetry, such as it is exemplified in the works of the French «précieux » poets and of some Italian ones. Transparent minuet patterns can recall simple French dance songs, while some instrumental ensembles are reminiscent of Italian trio sonatas. But if such influences are inevitable, a genuinly British idiom is nevertheless largely relevant in most pieces. The poems given by his friends, in the introduction, together with the various texts set to music in the book are tokens of a definite nationalism — not to say ‘ chauvinisme ’ — typical of a certain Englishness. But most of all, it is in the general conception of the book and above all in the free, almost rhapsodic declamation that a highly original style is revealed, possibly derived from a certain kind of Italian recitative, but at all events wonderfully matching the English language and wit.

Learning processes in the nanguan music of Taiwan1

Focusing on the instrumental ensemble genre of nanguan, as played in contemporary Taiwan, I first discuss the experiences of ten musicians in entering this tradition to show changes in the learning environment over the past three generations. Second, I examine how beginners study singing prior to the acquisition of instrumental experience, looking also at the roles of memorization, enculturation and socialization. Meanwhile, in order to balance generalization and individuality, I use my personal experience as a case study to illustrate how learning processes develop from the day‐to‐day interactions of musicians.

Trends in the Price of Music Monographs and Scores as Reflected in Notes, 1995-99

This article is the second in a series of annual price trend analyses based on data drawn from the Book Reviews, Recently Published, Music Reviews, and Music Received features in Notes. The first article in this series presented analyses of data from 1987 through 1994.(1) This second installment brings the data to currency by including prices from 1995. While eight years of retrospective data were addressed in the first article, only data from the past five years are presented here - a pattern that will continue in future installments. The data are organized into eleven categories developed to accommodate the various bibliographical forms represented in the data set. These categories are: monographs, monographic series, monumental editions, keyboard solos, instrumental solos, instrumental ensembles, vocal solos, vocal ensembles, full scores, vocal scores, and miniature scores. Each category is defined below. Sets of parts for bands, orchestras, and choirs are excluded from the data set. Monographs: Books that are not issued as installments in a publisher's continuation under a distinctive series title. Monographic Series: Books that are issued as installments in a publisher's continuation under a distinctive series title. Monumental Editions: Critical editions of scores usually representing specific ethnic, national, geographical, or chronological repertories, or the compositions of a particular individual. Such scores are often placed in special sections of library classification schemes, as in classes M 2, M 3, and M 3.5 of the Library of Congress Classification. Keyboard Solos: Scores for unaccompanied organ, piano, harpsichord, clavichord, electronic keyboard, and similar instruments. Instrumental Solos: Scores for a principal instrument, unaccompanied or accompanied. In the case of unaccompanied works, a single instrument that is not a keyboard; for example, a work for one unaccompanied violin. In the case of accompanied works, a single principal instrument featured with a keyboard instrument usually constrained to a subordinate role throughout the composition; for example, a sonata for violin with piano accompaniment, a concerto for violin with the orchestral accompaniment condensed and arranged for piano, or - similarly - a piano concerto with the orchestral accompaniment condensed and arranged for a second piano. Instrumental Ensembles: Scores for any combination of two or more instruments where no single instrument is featured prominently throughout the composition. Examples include a sonata for two pianos, a string quartet, a piano trio, or a sinfonia concertante for violin and viola with the orchestral accompaniment condensed and arranged for piano. Vocal Solos: Scores featuring a vocal line to be performed by one singer, with or without accompanying instrumental forces of any number or type. Vocal Ensembles: Scores featuring multiple vocal lines to be performed by two or more singers, with or without accompanying instrumental forces of any number or type. Full Scores: Scores presenting the notation for all the performing forces required by a composition simultaneously, by means of vertical and horizontal alignment and placement upon each page. Vocal Scores: Scores presenting the text and notation for all the vocal lines required by a composition, but presenting the notation for the accompanying instrumental forces condensed and arranged for a single keyboard instrument - typically a piano or organ. Miniature Scores: Scores identical to full scores, but reduced in size - typically to a height of around nineteen centimeters. Though both foreign and domestic publications are represented, all prices are reported in U.S. dollars. The data presentations that follow include tables for each category showing the number of items in the category (Items), the total price of the items (Total), the arithmetic mean of the total (Mean), the highest price encountered (High), the lowest price encountered (Low), and the standard deviation (S. …

Effects of Tone-Quality Changes on Intonation and Tone-Quality Ratings of High School and College Instrumentalists

We investigated the effects of variations in tone quality on listeners' perception of both tone quality and intonation. University music and nonmusic major instrumentalists and high school students participating in instrumental ensembles served as listeners ( N = 116). High-quality digital samples of clarinet, trumpet, and trombone tones were used. The original tone quality of each instrument was manipulated to produce experimental stimuli of “bright” and “dark” relative to the unaltered tone quality. Results indicated that the more inexperienced instrumentalists rated stimuli that were relatively “brighter' in tone quality as sharper in intonation, and conversely, stimuli of relatively ”darker' tone quality were judged to be flatter in intonation. For the brass instruments, listeners judged the unaltered and bright tones as better in tone quality than tones that were relatively dark. However, for the clarinet tones, the bright tone quality was judged to be worse than unaltered or dark-quality stimuli.

Popular Music and the Instrumental Ensemble

Popular Music and the Instrumental Ensemble

Johannes Thesselius in njegova zbirka plesov za petglasni inštrumentalni sestav

Johannes Thesselius in njegova zbirka plesov za petglasni inštrumentalni sestav

'Silk and Bamboo' Music in Shanghai. The Jiangnan Sizhu Instrumental Ensemble Tradition

This is a study of one of China's most influential regional musical traditions, the Jiangnan sizhu - string and wind music - of Shanghai. The in-depth approach adopted reveals much about Chinese musical culture.

"Silk and Bamboo" Music in Shanghai. The Jiangnan Sizhu Instrumental Ensemble Tradition

"Silk and Bamboo" Music in Shanghai. The Jiangnan Sizhu Instrumental Ensemble Tradition

Observations of a Terrain-Forced Mesoscale Vortex and Canyon Drainage Flows along the Front Range of Colorado

Abstract Observations taken during the February 1991 Atmospheric Studies in Complex Terrain (ASCOT) Winter Validation Study are used to describe the wind field associated with a terrain-forced mesoscale vortex and thermally forced canyon drainage flows along the Front Range of northeastern Colorado. A case study is presented of the night of 6/7 February 1991 when a weak vortex formed and propagated through the ASCOT domain. The NOAA/ERL Environmental Technology Laboratory Doppler lidar, one of an ensemble of instruments participating in the ASCOT field experiment, obtained high-resolution measurements of the structure of both the vortex and the canyon drainage flows. The lidar observations documented the kinematic and structural changes in the cyclone and their relationship to a drainage jet exiting a nearby canyon. Lidar analyses clearly show the layering and stratification present during this case, specifically the drainage jet flowing under the cyclone. A period of strong intensification of the drainag...

Choral Music in Montreal Circa 1900: Three Composers

Concerts devoted to the staples of the European choral-orchestral repertoire (Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn) were a feature of Canadian musical life in the era between Confederation and the First World War. Typically the chorus was a local one comprising 150 to 400 voices, while in the absence of any local instrumental ensemble of sufficient size and competence the orchestra more often than not was brought in from Boston or Pittsburgh or Chicago. Toronto had three or four societies thriving on this sort of operation, and is often cited as one of the main centres of choral-music cultivation in North America during the period. But similar activities prevailed in Hamilton, Ottawa, and other Canadian cities—including the country's largest city at the time, Montreal.

Towards a Model of Effective Communication: A Case for Structured Teaching of Conducting

Recent teaching with PGCE secondary music students has revealed that conducting ensembles is a musical activity in which they have variable knowledge, skills and experience. It is a general expectation, nevertheless, that music teachers still conduct choral and instrumental ensembles as part of their job in schools, and some may also undertake such roles in the wider community. This paper seeks to identify from research literature aspects of effective conducting that warrant greater attention. This forms part of a research project which is exploring definitions of effective conducting and making an analysis and case for more structured teaching in this area within higher education.

Transients of Attack and Hybrid Sounds: Toward a New Mixity

This article aims to explain the compositional principles of the author’s Prefixes (1991), for instrumental ensemble and MIDI clavier. For him, this composition represents a new “mixity” between direct sound and loudspeaker sound that has come out of computer synthesis. “Mixity” is a term specific to the author’s music that differs from both “mix” and “mixture” through its reference to this combination of electrically amplified and non-amplified sound. Prefixes is the logical outcome of the author’s development of the principle of hybridised sound. Hybridisation affects the transients of attack: the neuralgic and decisive moment from which instrumental sound surges. The theory of mixity concentrates on the hybridisation that results from fixing signaling particles to the initiative of a sonorous, acoustic entity.

South Indian Instrumental Ensemble

South Indian Instrumental Ensemble