Music Examples Research Articles

Delius and the Sound of Place by Daniel M. Grimley

Reviewed by: Delius and the Sound of Place by Daniel M. Grimley Helen Faulkner Delius and the Sound of Place. By Daniel M. Grimley. (Music in Context.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xxiii, 312 p. ISBN 978-1-108-47039-1. £75] This Cambridge University Press series has a broad mission "to illuminate specific musical works, repertoires, or practices in historical, critical, socio-economic or other contexts . . . and to extend the conceptual framework of musicology into other disciplines or into new theoretical directions". In his contribution to the series, Daniel Grimley, professor of music at Oxford University and a fellow of Merton College, has added significantly to Delius scholarship by boldly tackling the difficult issue of where Frederick (Fritz) Delius sits in terms of his cultural identity. Born in England to German parents, Delius's first language was German. He was schooled in Yorkshire before transferring at age sixteen to a progressive International College on the outskirts of London. In 1884, aged twenty-two, he went to Florida, to work as an orange planter and there had his first composition lessons from an American, Thomas Ward. After a period in Danville, Virginia, where he decided to make his living from music, Delius returned to Europe in 1886, this time to the Leipzig Conservatoire where he met Grieg, who was to have a profound influence on his life and music. An avid traveller to Scandinavia, he then moved on to Paris before finally settling in the artistic colony of Grez-sur-Loing near Fontainebleu, with his German wife, Jelka. Delius was firm in stating that he did not claim to be a British composer, though the folk music of the country of his birth was one of many important influences on his music. The difficulty in pinning Delius down is undoubtedly one of the factors that has resulted in, to date, there being no single substantial monograph on his entire [End Page 313] musical output. Grimley's book is not a consideration of all Delius's music—inevitably, it has a bias towards works of a programmatic nature—but it certainly fills gaps in the existing published literature. A great strength of the book is that it has been researched largely from primary musical sources, including the unpublished Negro Songs, which only came to light in 2001. Grimley has visited the places which most inspired the music he considers, drawing new insights from his visits and research. This is perhaps most vividly demonstrated in his discussion of the Southern U.S. where he addresses the issue of how "black music", hitherto generally treated as a single, defined influence on Delius's music, is in reality needful of an infinitely more subtle study, which he characterises as "a fraught and difficult task"; a task he nevertheless tackles fearlessly. The book is organised into seven thematic chapters, "Place", "Idyll", "River", "Drift", "Village", "Hill", and "Garden". The first chapter, "Place", is both an introduction to the framework on which Grimley's method rests and an analysis of perhaps Delius's most performed work, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. The following chapters centre on specific works or groups of works in a loosely chronological arrangement. Finally, "Garden" demonstrates vividly Grimley's assertion that "Place refers not only to a specific geographical site . . . but also to matters of identity, presence, and behavior". Significantly, this chapter examines a work, the Double Concerto, which is not, at first sight, programmatic, but which crystalises what "place" can signify. Handsomely produced, with copious musical examples, this book has one significant failing, for which Daniel Grimley cannot be blamed. The index is a shamble, a particular drawback in a book that is unlikely to be read at a single sitting. Musical works are assigned to the wrong composers—Appalachia and Brigg Fair being credited to Delius's sister Clare, The Song of the High Hills indexed under Percy Grainger and Eric Fenby, but not Delius, and other similar errors. The Negro Songs escape the index entirely, even though they are illustrated in facsimile within the text. In a book with a cover price of £75, Cambridge University Press really should issue a corrected index, compiled by someone who understands...

Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven: A Film Score Guide by Mariana Whitmer

Reviewed by: Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven: A Film Score Guide by Mariana Whitmer Paula Musegades Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven: A Film Score Guide. By Mariana Whitmer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. [xiii, 159 p. ISBN 9781442281790 (paperback), $35; ISBN 9781442281806 (e-book), $33.] Music examples, bibliography, index. The culminating volume of the Film Score Guide series, Elmer Bernstein's "The Magnificent Seven," by Mariana Whitmer, explores one of Bernstein's most celebrated film scores. Using historical, cultural, and musical lenses, Whitmer reveals there is much more to John Sturges's well-loved 1960 Western than the classic battle of good versus evil. Indeed, Whitmer provides the reader with an understanding of the score's role in the film, its impact on the Western genre, and its influence on the American audience's understanding of national identity. Presented in a concise and accessible writing style, Whitmer's close study of the score, narrative, and surrounding historical context of The Magnificent Seven will make an engaging text for students studying film music and is a captivating read for music and film scholars alike. Chapter 1, "Elmer Bernstein and 'Authentic American Music,'" begins with Bernstein's early years. Given the scarce information on Bernstein's biography, this valuable section helps fill in the gaps, providing details about both his background and training. Whitmer reveals the early influences on Bernstein's compositional style: the music of American composer Aaron Copland; Bernstein's studies with Israel Citkowitz, Roger Sessions, and Stefan Wolpe; and his longtime fascination with American folk music. Filled with direct quotations from Bernstein, who saw American music as "part of [his] musical heritage" (p. 4) and credited Aaron Copland for having "created … a sensibility based upon American folk music" (p. 3), chapter 1 highlights the many formative people and experiences that helped shape Bernstein's career and compositional style. As Whitmer explains, however, it was Bernstein's first film scores in the Western genre, as well as his early work in television, where he fully established his own "Americana" sound. In chapter 2, "Bernstein's Westerns," Whitmer investigates the movies Battles of Chief Pontiac (1952), Drango (1957), The Tin Star (1957), and Saddle the Wind (1958), as well as the television series Riverboat (1959–60). She traces Bernstein's stylistic development from one consisting primarily of industry convention, filled with "modal sonorities for the Indians [and] triplet rhythms for galloping horses" (p. 17), to the more recognizably Bernstein "Americana," as discussed in chapter 5. With Bernstein scholarship in its early stages, chapter 2, in addition to providing background for Whitmer's close analysis of The Magnificent Seven, also delivers necessary insight into the composer's early career as he developed his now-familiar Western sound. On reaching chapter 3, "The Critical/Historical Context of The Magnificent Seven," the reader better understands how the film fits within an increasingly globalized society. The Magnificent Seven was adapted from the popular Japanese film Seven Samurai (1954) by director Akira Kurosawa. Whitmer offers a behind-the-scenes look at the adaptation process, the challenges and benefits of filming in [End Page 495] Mexico, battles with the production code, and the postproduction process. Such a background provides essential information regarding the film's place within early 1960s American culture. Whitmer carefully maps out the film's commentary on the United States' shifting relationships with other countries, which critics, too, had noticed. As one reviewer observed, Sturges "eloquently gets across the themes that man must take a strong stand against evil" (p. 54). Indeed, one of the most compelling moments within this rich chapter is Whitmer's discussion of The Magnificent Seven's critical reception both inside and outside of the United States. Noting the significant disparity between its popularity overseas and the general lack of interest in America, Whitmer explains how The Magnificent Seven fell into the category of "the new 'adult' Western, which was perceived to be too introspective and philosophical, while lacking in action" (p. 52). Despite disinterest from the critics, however, nearly everyone celebrated Bernstein's music. Drawing connections to Jerome Moross's score for The Big Country (1958) and the strength and force of Aaron Copland's music generally...

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema by Frank Lehman

Reviewed by: Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema by Frank Lehman Alex Bádue Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. By Frank Lehman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. [xvii, 292 p. ISBN 9780190606398 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9780190606404 (paperback), $39.95; also available as e-book (ISBN and price vary).] Music examples, bibliography, index, companion website. When composer Dimitri Tiomkin won an Oscar for the score of The High and the Mighty in 1955, he accepted it stating, "I would like to thank Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, [and] Rimsky-Korsakov" (quoted in Thomas Maremaa, "The Sound of Movie Music," New York Times, 28 March 1976). Tiomkin was finally acknowledging the roots of twentieth-century Hollywood music in nineteenth-century symphonic music. Indeed, in the hands of several composers like Tiomkin, Hollywood film music began to gradually outgrow its roots and form its own aesthetics, functions, and style. It is this musical independence that Frank Lehman defines and investigates in Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. His focus, implied in the title, is on chromatic harmony and its ability to "sculpt mood and structure narrative" (p. 10). He defends the treatment of harmony that creates the effect of sounding "like film music" to contemporary listeners (p. 7). His "goal is to help listeners understand film scoring practices better" (p. 9) by demonstrating that through the maneuver of harmony, Hollywood composers moved away from nineteenth-century music's influence and established Hollywood music's own sonic principles. Lehman establishes three main theses. First, he argues that the use of consecutive consonant triads characterizes Hollywood music. Second, he suggests that film-music analysis should center on how pitch design (chords, scales, progressions, and keys) is "interdependent with narrative, visuals, and editing" (p. 8). Third, he asserts that chromatic harmony in Hollywood music results from the negation of tonal norms of centricity, diatonicity, and functionality to triads. Richard Cohn called this "pan-triadic" tonality, or "pantriadicism" (Richard Cohn, Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Consonant Triad's Second Nature [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], xiv). Lehman devotes his study to demonstrating that Hollywood composers have resorted to the succession of nonfunctional, noncentral, and non-diatonic triads as their chief tonal idiom to achieve expressivity and drama. Therefore, Lehman's methodology relies heavily on music theory. Hollywood Harmony employs roman-numeral analysis and Schenkerian graphics. Transformational theory, however, occurs more prominently in the book, especially through neo-Riemannian theory (NRT), a branch of transformational theory that expands the triadic [End Page 303] transformations that Hugo Riemann postulated in the late nineteenth century. If film music is indebted to late romantic music, then NRT—a theory created to analyze this repertoire—should be a resourceful tool. Lehman demonstrates that NRT can reveal musical meaning and dramatic structures in pantriadic music and proves that Holly-wood practices have derived pantriadicism from romantic models. The author does not claim the combination of film music and transformational theory/NRT to be groundbreaking, but he brings his voice to the scholarship by proposing a broader spectrum than used in previous studies: he does not confine his book to just one composer, filmic genre, or time period; he treats Hollywood film music as a genre. Thus, his theses and methodology serve not only within the limits of the book but also to widen the borders between film-music studies and both music theory and musicology. The book moves from general conventions on how chromatic harmony interacts with narrative in Hollywood films to more specific approaches to pantriadicism and NRT. Chapter 1 demonstrates how Hollywood film music conforms to and distances itself from romantic European art music. Harmony "contributes most substantially to the tonal habits of Hollywood" (p. 20), and Lehman discusses practices of chromatic harmony and tonality that exemplify these habits. Chapter 2 furthers the study of chromaticism and tonality as generators of drama. Lehman first discusses a few unique harmonic techniques in Hollywood films and subsequently the expressive effects and dramatic functions of pantriadic harmony in Hollywood films, introducing the reader to the basics of NRT and marking the borders between NRT's own aesthetics and that of other theories, such...

Narratives of Here and of Elsewhere in Scottish-Jewish Music: Meyer Fomin and Isaac Hirshow

This article analyzes the role of music in the negotiation of Scottish-Jewish identity in early twentieth-century Glasgow through the lives and work of Isaac Hirshow (1883-1956) and Meyer Fomin (1888-1960), cantors of Garnethill and South Portland Street synagogues, respectively. Both men were born in Vitebsk Guberniya, both established their reputations in Warsaw, and both moved to Glasgow in the early 1920s, remaining there for the rest of their lives. An analysis of these men's parallel journeys suggests a fruitful dialogue between their own backgrounds and the varied identities of their Scottish congregations. Drawing on archive materials, newspaper reports, and musical examples, I therefore explore the ways in which these cantors and their music were both metonymic of a real and known Eastern Europe for immigrant populations, but also metaphoric of an (often fondly) imagined Eastern Other to those for whom roots were often multiple. I then discuss in detail a number of musical texts created by the two men after their arrival in the United Kingdom: a series of commercial recordings made by Fomin in 1922, and a cantata written by Hirshow as part of his 1938 BMus degree. These texts capture a perspective that looks two ways at once—to the “tradition” and history of Eastern Europe, and to the modernity of the West and the acculturation of an immigrant experience. They thus speak to a moment of transition, simultaneously framing and problematizing discourses of authenticity as expressed through material cultural production.

The Music of Central Asia ed. by Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova

Reviewed by: The Music of Central Asia ed. by Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova Sunmin Yoon The Music of Central Asia. Edited by Theodore Levin, Saida Daukeyeva, and Elmira Köchümkulova. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. [xxii, 676 p. ISBN 9780253017512 (hardback), $40.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, glossary, index, accompanying website. [End Page 524] Central Asian culture is unique and complex, distilled from the surrounding diverse languages, religions, and geographical environments, yet only a very few works have been produced on musical and cultural studies of the region. Since Mark and Greta Slobin's translation of Viktor Belı͡aev's Central Asian Music: Essays in the History of the Music of the Peoples of the U.S.S.R (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1975), this is the first volume to cover the music of several Central Asian countries using contrasting approaches and perspectives. Strongly based in the nomadic lives of the people and in the worldview that reflects their geographical environment, music and musical performance in Central Asia have also been influenced by the Islamic tradition, as revealed in each nation's similar yet contrasting ways of understanding and making musics. The Soviet Union's political and cultural ideology, which left deep footprints in the process of modernization, affected all the nation states in this region during the twentieth century. Now in the post-Soviet twenty-first century, their cultural transformation has diversified and become more innovative. With thirty-five chapters by twenty-seven authors (including a comprehensive overview of each section by Theodore Levin), this book is rich in case studies by contemporary scholars—both insiders and outsiders—of the current world of Central Asian music. One particular strength of this book comes from the voices that describe lived experiences, both cultural and musical. As Levin explains in his introduction, "none of the contributors are 'armchair' scholars whose knowledge comes exclusively from written sources, whether primary or secondary. Rather they are music ethnographers, performers, educators, and cultural entrepreneurs—typically a combination of these—whose experience of music, whether as creators or consumers, has been direct and un-mediated" (p. x). Through a combination of native scholars and practitioners, and including outside researchers who work closely with local musicians, this volume presents an abundance of oral traditions and practices that have rarely been made available until now. The book is divided into four sections: part 1, "Music and Culture in Central Asia," introduces Central Asian musical tradition; part 2, "The Nomadic World," focuses on the countries that have stronger nomadic musical traditions, and their orality; part 3, "The World of Sedentary Dwellers," deals with those areas that have a stronger musical tradition linked to the practice of Islam; and part 4, "Central Asian Music in the Age of Globalization," uses case studies of how hybrid forms of musical practice are being influenced by the globalization of cultural exchanges in the urban spaces of Central Asia. Within these divisions, the book does not proceed by geographical region, as is the case with most other area-studies books. Rather, each chapter has its specific focus: genres, instruments, musicians, performance practices, related social issues, and so forth. In this way, the chapters cover similar genres but from various angles—through illustrations from different authors and regions and also from diverse perspectives and focuses. For this reason, the entire volume might at first appear to be repeating information, but this is not the case. For example, the genre of epic is explained across several chapters (chaps. 3–7), but each chapter illustrates a different facet of the topic. Chapter 3 offers an overall explanation of Central Asian epic characters. Chapter 4 focuses only on Kyrgyz epic, chapter 5 on Kazakh epic, chapter 6 on Karakalpak epic, and chapter 7 addresses the epic in Turkmenistan, with each of these four chapters presenting an overview of their respective countries. At the same time, chapter 5 uses written narratives of [End Page 525] musicians' biographies by an author who is also a practitioner of the tradition, while chapters 6 and 7 focus on the role of the masters who carry on and pass down the cultures. Later, chapter 8 looks at the...

Secunda pars breviarii

This paper reports the recent discovery of a 13th-century notated breviary of Esztergom (Strigonium, Gran) in the Metropolitan Library of the Archbishopric of Zagreb (Metropolitanska knjižnica Zagrebačke nadbiskupije). The codex was found in 256 fragments that had been glued to the covers of 126 books printed between the 15th and 17th centuries. These books were bound at the end of the 17th century on the order of Aleksandar Mikulić (1688–1694), the bishop of Zagreb. The fragmented codex is the missing sanctorale part, i.e. the second volume of the “Breviarium notatum Strigoniense” (BNS), now kept in the Strahov Library of the Premonstratensians in Prague (Strahovská knihovna) under the shelf mark DE I 7. Only these two volumes preserve the 13th-century office of Esztergom Cathedral with musical notation. Both of them are notated by two masters, who used the so-called “Esztergom notation”, which had been developed in that particular city by the end of the 12th century. The sanctorale consists of the offices of saints celebrated from January to December, the common of the saints and the common of the dedication of a church; it lacks, though, the office of the dead and the calendarium. (The first volume, on the other hand, contains the temporal feasts from Advent to the Sundays after Pentecost.) The reconstruction of what had been the sanctorale codex from its fragments was a complex task. In the paper I use a new iterative method based upon a careful analysis of the contents of the fragments and a comparison with the breviary of Esztergom as printed in 1484. Using the preliminary liturgical sequence of parchment-pieces that resulted, and taking into consideration the bookbinding process, I was able to identify the original fascicles of the manuscript and to determine the identity of the ambiguous fragments. The end result was more precise than that of the preliminary content-based reconstruction. I also show that four fragments kept in the University Library, Budapest, surprisingly belong to the BNS sanctorale. Although, I have been able to reconstruct a considerable part of the manuscript from its ruins, the longest lacuna remains from the 1st to the 15th of August. The codex constitutes the earliest-known record of the legend of Saint Ladislaus, the king of Hungary (1077–1095), and offers insight into the 13th-century readings for the matins of Saint Stephen, the first king of Hungary (1000/1001–1038). The antiphons and responsories venerating Saint Andrew Zoerard and Saint Benedict, the hermits of Mount Zobor, in the BNS sanctorale, are the earliest-known musical examples of the 11th-century office for these holy men. A section of a very rarely documented legend of Saint Francis of Assisi, the so-called “Vita brevior” of Thomas of Celano, was also discovered. We might possibly find a few other books bound with the fragments of the BNS sanctorale in other libraries in Zagreb.

Bedřich Smetana: Myth, Music, and Propaganda by Kelly St. Pierre

Reviewed by: Bedřich Smetana: Myth, Music, and Propaganda by Kelly St. Pierre Sebastian Bolz Bedřich Smetana: Myth, Music, and Propaganda. By Kelly St. Pierre. (Eastman Studies in Music, no. 139.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017. [ 166 p. ISBN 9781580465106, $90; ISBN 9781782049364 (e-book), $90.] Music examples, bibliography, index. Filling a peculiar research gap, Kelly St. Pierre's study is a welcome and concise contribution to the field. Despite the popularity of Bedřich Smetana's music, no author of a substantial book-length piece has taken the task to reevaluate his life and work in a while. St. Pierre mentions John Clapham's monograph (Smetana [London: Dent, 1972]) as a last milestone written in English, and while German scholarship has otherwise been quite productive concerning Czech music in the last two decades, Smetana continues to be a desideratum for further research. Partaking in the discourse on the construction of national and cultural identity in terms of music, St. Pierre does not need to establish genuine methodological or theoretical accounts; instead she draws on concepts such as Benedict Anderson's "imagined communities" (p. 112; Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [London: Verso, 1991]), thus contributing to the discussion of ideological overtones that has become prominent for Czech music (e.g., Miloš Zapletal, "From Tragedy to Romance, from Positivism to Myth: Nejedlý's Conception of the History of Modern Czech Music," in Nationality vs Universality: Music Historiographies in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Sławomira [End Page 489] Żerańska-Kominek [New castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016], 99–124). In the face of the undeniable language barrier for every scholar interested in Czech music culture, it is of high worth that St. Pierre brings together a wide range of published sources, such as articles and edited correspondences in translation (mostly her own). Future research will have to deal with archival material in order to extend or specify our understanding of Smetana's position in the construction of Czech national music, whereby labels like "Czech" or "German" generally appear as markers of self- or nonidentification and "as a mode of reception, not as analyzable fact" (p. 111). St. Pierre's study is chronologically structured in two parts. While the first three chapters deal with Smetana's role in the early phase of the Czech national movement up to the late nineteenth century, the last two examine twentieth-century scholarship and its protagonists up to the present. St. Pierre starts with what is generally called the "national rebirth" (p. 8) and the clubs (most importantly the "Umělecká beseda") that backed and furthered it, drawing the picture of a heterogeneous, conflict-ridden milieu that sought to establish a community before "building" a genuine "Czech tradition" (p. 19). Within the overlapping circles of politics and arts that became somewhat indistinguishable, the study's overall argument follows a double perspective on Smetana. Over the course of the first three chapters, it becomes clear that arts, such as composing and writing, actively aimed at creating a cultural identity, while the artists and their products were declared as "national symbols" (p. 2), thus being objects of a sociocultural attribution. Chapters 2 and 3 situate Smetana in a European context and trace the intricacies of the composer's relations with Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner in their functions as musical authorities (who can be called on in terms of establishing new canonic formations) and figures of national monumentalization at the same time. Through "inflections of, engagement with, and contrasts to German genres and ideas" (p. 26), the rhetoric of the Wagner-reception was particularly wedged in what St. Pierre characterizes as a "mixed message" (p. 57). Critics celebrated Smetana's Wagnerian aspirations (in his opera Dalibor) as an emblem of Czech cultural relevance but denied Czech music's dependence on Wagner as the prototypical German composer. One aspect that makes these chapters particularly intriguing is their perspective on music history (and its making) as media history, recognizable not only by the range and character of journals like Dalibor and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, but also by the language of "poetic paraphrase...

Beyond "Innocence": Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem by Shzr Ee Tan

Reviewed by: Beyond "Innocence": Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem by Shzr Ee Tan Nancy Guy (bio) Beyond "Innocence": Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem. Shzr Ee Tan. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012. 312 pp. + 1 CD-ROM, photographs, map, musical examples, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN: 978-1-4094-2436-9 (hardcover), $96.00. The Amis people, of Austronesian descent, are one of Taiwan's 16 officially recognized indigenous groups. Very little scholarly work has been published in English on Taiwan aboriginal music; publications in Chinese have been uneven in quality. Beyond "Innocence" is especially welcome because of its comprehensive nature and because it allows an international readership to access information about this rich musical culture. As the title of the book indicates, Tan proposes that Amis song be best understood as an ecosystem. Aiming to eschew the limits of linear analysis, she crafts her study to illuminate the crisscrossing, multidimensional network of the complex relationships involved in Amis musical creativity and, by extension, to that of Taiwan aboriginal song generally. She does this over six chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction begins with an overview of the infamous "Return to Innocence" case in which the voice of Amis singer Difang was sampled in the megahit released by the European [End Page 123] New Age pop group Enigma in 1993. The musical and social repercussions of "Return to Innocence" led Tan to investigate what Difang was singing, how the song would have been sung in the village context, and if his performance was representative of aboriginal song culture as a whole. This case (which was Tan's original inspiration for taking up the study of Amis music) led her to frame Amis musical culture as an ecosystem comprising "different interacting dimensions of traditional and contemporary singing activity" (7). Chapter 1 sets up the study by giving a brief overview of mentions of aboriginal music activities in Chinese written records from the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) to Qing governance in the eighteenth century. Beginning with the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945) through to the early 2000s, this overview focuses on the documentation of aboriginal musical culture (primarily photographs and sound recordings) by anthropologists and music scholars and their resultant publications. The remainder of the chapter introduces Amis society, social units, ethnic identity, and Tan's primary field site, the village of Fafokod (or Tunghe in Mandarin) in the southeastern county of Taitung. Tan recalls the story of her introduction to village life. Here, and throughout the book, she demonstrates the closeness of her relationships with those whose musical activities she took pains to collect and analyze. Through her actions, and importantly, her sensitivity in matters related to terminology and naming, Tan demonstrates her respect for her interlocutors. Sadly, this level of regard has not always been practiced by Han Chinese ethnomusicologists, some of whom, for example, have advanced their careers through publications of ill-gotten field recordings of aboriginal music. In chapter 2, the scholarly reason for Tan's close attention to language and terminology becomes clear. There is no official Amis term for "music," though Chinese and Japanese words for music are often applied to some forms of music making. There is, however, an Amis term, ladhiw, applied to a specific type of vocal activity. Through analysis of word usage, interviews, observation of numerous social situations in which singing is present, and melodic analyses, Tan aims to unpack and identify ladhiw. Though ladhiw and "music" sometimes intertwine in Amis creative practice, and may even be present within the same song, ladhiw has certain characteristics, such as its spontaneous nature and its being strongly connected to natural phenomena and the physical environment. Chapter 3 is dedicated to music in ritual. The annual harvest festivals of aboriginal groups are known to both foreign and local tourists in Taiwan, who sometimes join in the festivities. Variations in the ceremonies of different Amis villages are noted; however, detailed discussion, which is richly informed by Tan's interlocutors' descriptions and emic analyses, takes the ritual practice in Fafokod as its focus. Half of this chapter is devoted to the music of [End Page 124] Christian religious...

George Szell's Reign: Behind the Scenes with the Cleveland Orchestra by Marcia Hansen Kraus

Reviewed by: George Szell's Reign: Behind the Scenes with the Cleveland Orchestra by Marcia Hansen Kraus Robert Adelson George Szell's Reign: Behind the Scenes with the Cleveland Orchestra. By Marcia Hansen Kraus. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. [x, 233 pp. ISBN 9780252041310 (cloth), $34.95; ISBN 97802520999-5 (e-book), $30.] 33 black-and-white photographs, one music example, bibliography, index. It is impossible to overstate the significance of the tenure of George Szell (1897–1970) as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1946 until his death in 1970. Having inherited an ensemble honed by his predecessors Nikolai Sokoloff (1886–1965), Artur Rodzinski (1892–1958) and Erich Leins dorf (1912–1993), the Hungarian conductor became the quintessential [End Page 500] authoritarian orchestra builder, firing sixteen musicians in his first year alone. Szell went on to recruit many players who are now recognized as some of the outstanding orchestral musicians of the twentieth century, including concertmaster Josef Gingold (1909–1995), principal cellist Lynn Harrell (b. 1944), flutist Maurice Sharp (1908–1986), oboists Marc Lifschey (1926–2000) and John W. Mack (1927–2006), clarinetist Robert Marcellus (1928–1996), bassoonist George Goslee (1916–2006), and horn player Myron Bloom (b. 1926). By the early 1950s, his orchestra had taken on a unique sound and an interpretive personality, blending the brilliance and precision characteristic of the best American ensembles with the warmth and refinement of central European orchestras. The two principal accounts of Szell's tenure in Cleveland remain Michael Charry's George Szell: A Life of Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011) and Donald Rosenberg's The Cleveland Orchestra Story: Second to None (Cleveland: Gray, 2000). Both authors had first-hand knowledge of Szell and his musicians: Charry was one of Szell's conducting assistants, and Rosenberg was a Cleveland music critic. Charry's biography also treats Szell's life prior to coming to Cleveland, while Rosenberg's book is a history of an orchestra, of which the Szell years are only a part, albeit the central one. Marcia Hansen Kraus's George Szell's Reign does not duplicate the work of Charry or Rosenberg, although it frequently cites these texts. Her opening chapter summarizes Szell's early years in Europe, and the second chapter retraces the first thirty years of the Cleveland Orchestra's existence, but the book is neither a biography nor an archival history of an institution. Kraus's focus is instead on the relationship that developed between Szell and his musicians, which also happens to be the subject of yet another recent book, the equally gossipy Tales from the Locker Room: An Anecdotal Portrayal of George Szell and His Cleveland Orchestra (Cleveland: ATBOSH Media, 2015) by Lawrence Angell (a bassist who played for fifteen years under Szell) and Bernette Jaffe. Inevitably, these books often recount many of the same anecdotes, but there are also numerous differences that reflect the perspectives of the authors. Charry is more concerned with Szell's conducting technique and Rosenberg with the orchestra's concerts at Severance Hall and its recorded legacy. Kraus's principal source of information was her late husband Felix Kraus (1930–2006), oboist in the Cleveland Orchestra for seven years during Szell's tenure. As a result, she gives great attention to the role of woodwind players during Szell's reign. Most notable is her analysis of the contributions made by Lifschey, who played principal oboe under Szell from 1950 until 1965, with the exception of the 1959–60 season, when he was temporarily lured away by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra following a bitter dispute with Szell. Kraus argues that Szell built the Cleveland sound around Lifschey's beautiful tone and expressive phrasing and that Lifschey's resignation left Szell utterly forlorn. Given the space she allots to Lifschey, it is curious that Kraus never mentions one of the curious features of his playing (discussed by Rosenberg): the snorting and sniffing sounds that are audible on countless Cleveland Orchestra recordings. Kraus creates an unnecessary aura of mystery surrounding another oboist hired by Szell as acting coprincipal to succeed Lifschey in 1965 but who did not remain in the orchestra for very long. Kraus recounts numerous anecdotes...

"Timbeando en Nueva York": Cuban Timba Takes Root Abroad

Abstract Timba came of age during Cuba’s 1990s economic crisis and soon traveled farther afield. In New York City today, diverse musicians reproduce, experiment with, and transform its sound with cover songs, new compositions, and reconfigured formats. This article examines three musical examples in ethnographic context, revealing tensions and overlap between local and cosmopolitan music practices, and sheds light on a popular dance culture that serves as the meeting ground for oral traditions and conservatory training. Through grounded and detailed investigation, it highlights blurred boundaries between musical practices, social spaces, and disciplinary approaches and explores their methodological and narrative implications.

Is it me or the music? Stress reduction and the role of regulation strategies and music

Music is a common resource for the regulation of emotions, moods, and stress. This study aimed at determining the individual and relative impact on stress reduction of two of the main factors involved in musical affect regulation: regulation strategies and music itself. The current study took place in an experimental setting and followed a factorial within-subjects design. First, the participants ( n = 34) filled in an online survey where they identified their self-perceived “adequate”/“inadequate” music examples for the purpose of reducing stress and self-perceived “adequate”/“inadequate” strategies for the same purpose. In the lab they went through a stress induction procedure and then were instructed to calm down. They did so by listening to their “adequate”/“inadequate” music and employing the “adequate”/“inadequate” strategy, depending on the experimental condition. The primary outcome measure was self-reported tension, complemented by self-reported energy and valence, skin conductance levels (SCL), startle blink amplitudes, and risk aversion. The results showed that both music and strategy had a strong significant effect on the self-reported tension. Additionally, music had strong significant effects on energy, valence, SCL, and risk aversion. Pairwise comparisons revealed that the condition “adequate strategy-adequate music” was consistently more beneficial for stress reduction than condition “inadequate strategy-inadequate music”. However, it did not outperform all the other conditions, nor did the “inadequate strategy-inadequate music” underperform all the others. Moreover, close inspection of the results showed a larger impact of music on the short-term outcomes of self-regulation in comparison to strategy. These findings suggest that successful affective regulation depends on the adequacy of the chosen strategies and music, but that music is more determinant for the affective outcomes in the short term. The results are discussed considering previous research and the implications for the understanding of musical affect regulation are explored.

Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tess Knighton and Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita

Reviewed by: Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tess Knighton and Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita Lynette Bowring Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Tess Knighton and Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. [428 p. ISBN 9782503579597 (paperback), €65.] Illustrations, music examples, tables, bibliography, index. Many tantalizing glimpses of civic soundscapes have survived in primary sources, but scholars have only recently started to piece these together into detailed sonic histories. Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe provides a welcome forum for the scholars working in this field. The foundations for this substantial essay collection were the international workshop "Hearing the City: Musical Experience as Portal to Urban Soundscapes" (Barcelona, 2015), organized by the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), and the subsequent Marie Curie Foundation research project "Urban Musics and Musical Practices in Sixteenth-Century Europe." Emerging from these projects is a varied intellectual landscape that cultivates many new insights through its interdisciplinary breadth. This volume makes a significant contribution to the fields of urban sound studies and urban musicology through its twenty-one essays that include research from many major scholars. "Urban musicology" is a concept rich in potential; as Joachim Kremer notes in his contribution to the volume, it provides a way to acknowledge and access the rich diversity of musical experiences that were generated by the stratified social hierarchies of early modern societies (p. 146). The idea of an "ur ban soundscape" opens this volume to a still wider range of both enriching and disruptive sonic experiences in the early modern city. Such concepts draw heavily on the groundbreaking work of Reinhard Strohm, who showed the potential of the term "soundscape" in Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), and Tim Carter, who delineated the field of urban musicology in his "The Sound of Silence: Models for an Urban Musicology" (Urban History 29, no. 1 [May 2002]: 8–18); the essay by Dinko Fabris helpfully situates the current volume in relation to this scholarly lineage (pp. 53–56). The essays display a loyalty to this disciplinary heritage, creating a unifying intellectual undercurrent in a volume that otherwise spans a vast geographic and temporal space. These concepts provide many opportunities for unexpected intersections of different disciplines and viewpoints. Geography and architecture, which are frequently depicted as passive containers for musical traditions, become active forces that shape and guide the sounds of urban spaces. Networks of individuals, social strata, and communication allow for the incorporation of personal and societal perspectives, bringing value to both subjective and collective aural experiences. Insights from ethnographic studies of modern [End Page 91] societies cast new light onto the soundscapes of the past, and "connected histories" (p. 73) allow for sounds to resonate through intercultural exchanges. In the introduction to the volume, "Listening to Music in Early Modern Italy" (pp. 25–49), Tim Carter draws together many of the main themes. Through Carolyn Abbate's notions of drastic and gnostic ("Music—Drastic or Gnostic?" Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 [Spring 2004]: 505–36), Carter argues that a "drastic" approach to listening may bring a closer understanding of how early modern soundscapes were heard at the time and how we may today experience those sounds in a historically informed way. His case studies for such drastic listening, Giovanni Gabrieli's In ecclesiis (from the Symphoniae sacrae) and Battista Guarini's poem Mentre vaga Angioletta (and Claudio Monteverdi's duet setting), demonstrate how close readings of the music and texts may guide a modern listener into a more intimate understanding of past listening and appreciation practices. In support of his approach, Carter connects drastic and gnostic impulses to geographic, social, and ethnographic insights in a range of primary source vignettes to show that, although listening practices were by no means uniform, there is still much here that can add to the modern experience of this music. A number of essays expand this methodological basis further and seek intersections between the different fields represented in the book; the first group of essays, entitled "Crossing Boundaries," opens new perspectives by blurring these disciplinary boundaries. Fabris assesses the interdisciplinary expansion of soundscape studies; from this viewpoint, he uses...

Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky by Kevin Bartig

Reviewed by: Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky by Kevin Bartig Terry L. Dean Sergei Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky. By Kevin Bartig. (Oxford Keynotes.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. [161 p. ISBN 9780190269562 (hardcover), $74; ISBN 9780190269579 (paperback), $14.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index, companion website. A product of collaboration between Sergei Eisenstein and Sergey Prokofiev, the film Alexander Nevsky [Aleksandr Nevskĭ] (1938) boasts a rich sociopolitical and cultural history. Those acquainted with the film are likely familiar with its status as an artifact of Soviet propaganda. With regard to Eisenstein, discussions of Nevsky, which was his first film in nearly a decade and his first contribution to the medium of sound film, often recount creative challenges experienced by the director that led to his complicity in propagating Party ideology as well as his role in helping to foster Joseph Stalin's association with heroic figures of Russia's distant past. Similarly, the discourse surrounding Prokofiev's role in the project frequently focuses on his efforts to cultivate a nationalist style appropriately accessible for Soviet audiences. Consequently, it is easy to perpetuate an overly simplified understanding of Alexander Nevsky founded on stereotypical images of the Soviet artist working under the burden of socialist realism. Fortunately, however, Kevin Bartig's Sergei Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky," which appears as part of the publisher's new Oxford Keynotes series, offers a more nuanced understanding of Prokofiev's music for the film in a multitude of new contexts. Having written previously about Nevsky in Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Bartig returns to and expands upon a number of topics in his new monograph. Among these are Prokofiev's concerns about the legitimacy of film music as serious art as well as its role in establishing a type of "light-serious" music (p. 18) [End Page 657] that would resonate with broad audiences. As a newly repatriated Soviet composer, Prokofiev was bound by the aesthetic demands of socialist realism, at the heart of which was a call for accessibility. Although his music had already undergone a process of simplification during the 1920s, ultimately yielding what he referred to as his "new simplicities," Prokofiev continued to weigh questions about whether he wanted to be identified with such music well into the next decade. Bartig underscores the fact that the lucrative potential offered by film indeed motivated the composer's continued interest in such projects as well. Eventually, Prokofiev came to terms with the idea of a "light-serious" style and carefully shaped the narrative surrounding his simplified musical style. Bartig reveals, however, that Prokofiev's concerns were consistent with and shared by other composers of the time. Citing the writings of Kurt Weill, Carlos Chávez, and Aaron Copland in particular, Bartig contextualizes the simplification of Prokofiev's compositional style as part of a greater trend among composers of the time. While individual motivations varied, he asserts that efforts of composers to cultivate an "accessible musical style was a common concern" during the period leading up to Alexander Nevsky and as such contributed to the work's "broad international resonance" (p. 20). In doing so, Bartig effectively redresses our understanding of Nevsky (and Prokofiev's Soviet works in general) as something other than political pandering. Bartig also revisits Prokofiev's creation of a sonic backdrop for Alexander Nevsky. Throughout much of the film, the composer employs a sound palette that evokes various nineteenth-century Russian classics, in particular works by Mikhail Glinka, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and Aleksandr Borodin. Such a strategy is easily understood as a response to the expectations of socialist realism, especially when considered in conjunction with the ideological conservatism that followed the infamous admonishment of Dmitrĭ Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District [Ledi Makbet uezda] in Pravda in January 1936. Bartig demonstrates, however, that rather than surrendering to the precepts of socialist realism, Prokofiev's music for Alexander Nevsky is consistent with Eisenstein's intentions. A patriotic film such as Nevsky requires music of a correspondingly patriotic nature. In the absence of historically appropriate models, Bartig points out that "as images of the thirteenth century flashed on...

Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna by Nancy November

Reviewed by: Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna by Nancy November Elizabeth Kramer Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna. By Nancy November. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2017. [x, 258 p. ISBN 9781783272327 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781787440739 (e-book), $24.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna by Nancy November is worth serious consideration by individuals who love and think deeply about music as historical and cultural phenomena and by libraries serving such patrons. In a clear, sophisticated, and carefully crafted narrative, the book takes on three paradigms that November argues have distorted our understandings of the genre: the "near-exclusive focus" on Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven; the overlooking of other composers' music—except perhaps for their string quartets—and then judging them by narrow aesthetic ideals; and the presentation of instrumental chamber music as "'au tonomous,' cut off from social situations and meanings" (p. 2). The challenge of responding to such familiar tropes is in confronting audiences and writers who have been more or less accepting of the general narrative for the past century. Her account, which unfolds through eight chapters and an epilogue, involves critiquing wider concepts of "public" and "private" and of Beethoven's place in the history. She also mines period definitions of chamber music to engage readers in a story of "culturally determined" ideals being "radically renegotiated" (p. 5). These ambitions noted, November launches into chapter 1 and a definition of chamber music in the early nineteenth century with foci on genre, [End Page 271] the dominance of the string quartet, and masculine music making. Along the way, she contrasts history's subsequent generic focus on chamber music instrumentation with the performance parameters that originally defined the genre and, in the process, looks at early nineteenth-century visual metaphors for chamber music and addresses the category of class. The chapter concludes with a subsection in which she engages Wilhelm Windelband's "idiographic" approach, which Eduard Hanslick adopted as he worked toward what he called "eine lebendige Geschichte des neueren Wiener Konzertwesens" (a living history of Viennese concert life; p. 20). She freely reformulates—"following Hanslick's methodology in spirit, although not to the letter" (p. 22)—his path into a twenty-first-century approach of "snapshots and statistics" (p. 20), the latter of which she further nuances as "'sampling,' taking snapshots, or cutting cross-sections" (p. 21). This is perhaps the first major example of her creative approach of seeking life in historical constructs from looking at the past through a historicist's lens. Embarking on her first snapshots in chapter 2, "Celebrating Haydn, Cultivating Opera," November discusses the influence of Haydn, vocal music, and the theater in Beethoven's Vienna, and she surveys the careers of Paul Wranitzky, Emanuel Aloys Förster, and Adalbert Gyrowetz, drawing on her scholarly expertise in these areas. She seizes this opportunity to discuss musical markets, compositional careers, and the generally "outward-looking character" of Viennese chamber music and stresses that ideals such as homogeneity or "purity" were "not yet shaping aesthetics of chamber music" (p. 59). The third chapter, "Selling String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna," features short subsections containing her analysis of publishing catalogs from the earliest years of the nineteenth century, which provide a nice contrast to the expository detail of the previous chapter. Her chapter conclusion again engages larger themes: the role of publishers in selling "stability" and "sociability"— themes that will reappear later in the book—and an acknowledgment that string quartets in Vienna around 1800 have perhaps been overemphasized. Her energetic dedication to a close historical reading of chamber music through the book makes this latter point hard not to accept even by readers who might have been guilty of a more complacent approach to the genre. Chapter 4, "Locating String Quartets in Beethoven's Vienna," paints a cultural landscape of early nineteenth-century Viennese quartet "homes," from music making in actual homes and salons to public concerts and the emergence of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. In her sketch, she makes copious reference to primary sources (including those outside of music) and secondary source citations. (For example, she expands on her reference...

Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England ed. by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Reviewed by: Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England ed. by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler Chelsey Belt Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England. Edited by Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. [xiv, 317 p. ISBN 9780253024794 (hardback), $80; ISBN 9780253024824 (paperback), $18; ISBN 9780253024978 (e-book), $17.99.] Music examples, illustrations, selected bibliography, index. The boundaries called into question by these fifteen essays range from societal constructs (class, gender, religion, profession, genre) to concepts of media (aural/oral, manuscript, print) and space (home, stage, court, church, street). As a collection, the book provides a broad survey of ways in which music and musicians in England negotiated these boundaries circa 1550–1800. In their introduction, Linda Phyllis Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler discuss how this project developed partly out of frustration with the application of anachronistic dichotomies, such as public/private and professional/amateur, in historical narratives of early modern English music. These and other categorical dichotomies become specific boundaries that the contributing scholars collaboratively blur. This volume draws another aspect of its unity from a metamethodology of systematically testing and adjusting scholarly definitions; in this vein, the editors devote part of their commentary to a series of themes—chiefly space (residential and theatrical), community (in acts of musicking), and the musical work (written/unwritten/oral/aural)— treated in various and complementary ways by the contributors. Essays appear in chronological order, which precludes thematic or boundary-specific grouping, but the editors' larger sense of purpose has produced a selection of chapters that complement each other interchangeably. Read selectively or in full, Beyond Boundaries equips scholars of sixteenth-through eighteenth-century English music to question their field's established categories. Perhaps more importantly, this work will encourage any scholar of Western early modernity to rethink the capabilities of binary language to adequately represent historical trends. In the first chapter, Katherine Steele Brokaw positions the music of Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, a 1553 play in which choirboy-actors parody a variety of church music practices, as one playwright's plea for a "hybridized musical liturgy" (p. 14) while Mary Tudor, Queen of England, reestablished Catholicism at the state level. Jane Flynn's chapter 2 also addresses Catholic practice but from the perspective of clandestine Jesuit evangelism following Elisabeth I's return to public Protestantism. Brokaw considers the interaction of theatrical and sacred spaces, while Flynn highlights that of residential and sacred spaces. In both cases, music enables spatial transformation and reinforces politico-religious identity. In chapter 5, John Milsom discusses the "Cries of London" repertory as a dramatic genre that demands believable acting of its performers. Whereas such works are often characterized as learned parodies of street society, Milsom's assessment is that the essential art of the "Cries" lies in their facilitation of boundary crossing: "Noise becomes art; outdoors becomes indoors; social classes are traversed; and the genres of consort song and verse anthem, conventionally sites for serious thoughts, are quite literally dragged down to the level of the streets" (p. 76). [End Page 253] The fishwife and boatman cannot emerge from their polyphonic backdrops if the singer does not make an adequate transformation, and so their characters are represented rather than patronized. Beyond the categories that the works themselves juxtapose, Milsom uses the repertory to challenge the historiographic dichotomy of high and low culture. Several essays evaluate boundaries of gender. Flynn's study of music in recusant Catholic communities pays special attention to the participation of women. Chapter 6 contains Katherine R. Larson's analysis of a later musical-theater example: Richard Brome's The Northern Lasse (1629). While song plays a structural role in the drama, it also acts as "a powerful mechanism for spatial and sociocultural meditation" (p. 80) for the female protagonists, whose final "positioning" eludes boundaries of "spatial or social containment" (p. 93). In the final chapter, "Education, Entertainment, Embellishment: Music Publication in the Lady's Magazine," Bonny H. Miller considers the public packaging of music for female consumption in Georgian residential spaces. The diverse origins of repertoire disseminated by this periodical complicate assumptions of...

The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece by Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye

Reviewed by: The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece by Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye Melissa Cummins The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece. By Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. [xvii, 565 p. ISBN 9781442260832 (hardcover), $130; ISBN 9781442260849 (paperback), $75; ISBN 9781442260856 (e-book), $71.] Music examples, illustrations, chronology, discography, filmography, videography, appendices, index. During his lifetime, Jacques Offenbach composed more than 120 musical stage works. As was his habit, he altered and amended each opérette and opera multiple times during the rehearsal process and even expanded or completely reworked them years after their premieres. This penchant for revision, and the fact that Offenbach died before the last rehearsal, left his final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann, without a definitive version. In his essay on the various productions, George Loomis describes the problem presented by Offenbach's untimely death: "Hoffmann is perhaps unique among operas by having a performance tradition that has conditioned audiences to expect to hear unauthentic music that they are reluctant to be without" (p. 123). In their book The Real "Tales of Hoffmann": Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece, Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye do not attempt to solve the issue by constructing an authentic version of the work. Rather, they provide background information, Offenbach's own rewrites, and past production details that allow conductors choosing performance editions to make informed decisions. As the authors state in their joint introduction, "little is available in English regarding Offenbach and Les contes d'Hoffmann," adding, "sadly, there is not even a decent scholarly biography of the composer in English" (p. xiii). Giroud himself is one of the few authors to address these subjects; his book French Opera: A Short History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010) contains a brief overview of Offenbach's career (pp. 188–94) and includes a two-page summary of how Hoffmann was altered from the composer's original intent (pp. 193–94). In the note that ends the chapter, Giroud alludes to the then-forthcoming Kaye and Jean-Christophe Keck edition of the opera (Mainz: Schott, 2006) that became the foundation of The Real "Tales of Hoffmann" (p. 328n120). In this subsequent book, Giroud expands on the ideas initially presented in his brief summary and, along with the other authors invited to contribute essays, describes a more complete background of the opera's genesis and evolution. Three essays by Giroud, four by Kaye (and one coauthored), one by Charlie Richards, and one by George Loomis form the first part of the book. They [End Page 673] begin with a background of E. T. A. Hoffmann himself and the impact of his writings in France before Jules Barbier and Michel Carré wrote the play that influenced Offenbach's opera. The next three essays, by Giroud and Kaye, detail the creation and reception of the play and offer a brief biography of both Barbier and Carré. Musical versions of Hoffmann that predated Offenbach's rendering are discussed in Kaye's next essay, ending with a description of the composer's unrealized opéra-féerie version of material later worked into the full-length opera. Essays 6 and 7, by Richards and Giroud, respectively, describe how Barbier turned his play into a libretto and altered the text to fit couplet form. The concluding essays, by Kaye, Loomis, and Giroud, detail chronologically how, when, where, and by whom the opera was performed. These essays also describe changes in the work by the various conductors who staged Hoffmann and their divergence from Offenbach's original intentions. The final essay of this section provides a summary of changes in the opera over time and makes a case for Kaye's critical edition, which is based on the extant Offenbach sketches for the unfinished parts of Hoffmann. As stated above, the authors do not intend this edition to be the "definitive text" but rather aim "to provide all the necessary information so that opera theaters can make the best possible informed decision about what version they wish to stage" (p. 139). Part 2 of the book includes...

Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Eva Schlotheuber, Susan Marti, and Margot Fassler, eds., Liturgical Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300–1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, 2 vols. Münster: Aschendorff for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2016. Pp. xii, 781, 634; many color figures, 1 map, 6 tables, and

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsJeffrey F. Hamburger, Eva Schlotheuber, Susan Marti, and Margot Fassler, eds., Liturgical Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300–1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, 2 vols. Münster: Aschendorff for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2016. Pp. xii, 781, 634; many color figures, 1 map, 6 tables, and many musical examples. $229. ISBN: 978-3-402-13072-8.Cynthia J. CyrusCynthia J. CyrusVanderbilt University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 94, Number 1January 2019 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700828 Views: 50Total views on this site Copyright 2019 by the Medieval Academy of America. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Arvo Pärt's White Light: Media, Culture, Politics ed. by Laura Dolp

Reviewed by: Arvo Pärt's White Light: Media, Culture, Politics ed. by Laura Dolp Thomas Robinson Arvo Pärt's White Light: Media, Culture, Politics. Edited by Laura Dolp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. [xiv, 268 p. ISBN 9781107182899, $99.99; ISBN 9781316874011 (e-book), $80.] Figures, tables, music examples, bibliography, index. Researching living musicians and their music has its share of both difficulty and opportunity. There is no benefit of hindsight, no long span of reception history, but there is a chance for scholars to grasp the music as it first comes to life, finding meaning in its time and space. Composer Arvo Pärt is very much alive and also quite popular, [End Page 497] but fame has a way of perpetuating misconceptions. This diverse collection of essays from a team of Pärt scholars, led by Laura Dolp, strongly advances the understanding of Pärt's music while filling gaps in current scholarship and grappling with the various, often erroneous, perceptions of the composer and his music. While each contribution is distinct in emphasis and in methodology, four common themes seem to recur throughout. Cliché. Nearly every contributor takes note of the popular tropes surrounding Pärt's music, personality, and image: "timelessness" (p. 21), "spirituality" (p. 122), "mysticism" (p. 98), and so forth. For some, they form a central theme. Michael Palmese connects Pärt's struggles in 1960s Soviet Estonia to the composer's post-2006 protests against corruption and repression in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Disputing the stereotypical impression of Pärt's compositions as "holy relics" (p. 155) and instead understanding the composer as fully engaged in geopolitical events and culture, Palmese surveys events, from the banning of Pärt's Collage teemal B-AC-H and his eventual forced emigration to the arrests and murders of critics of the Russian government. He situates the Fourth Symphony as a protest work and analyzes it for musical instances of dissidence (and dissonance). Lamentate, Pärt's compositional contribution to a multidisciplinary installation at London's Tate Modern gallery, was widely received as a turn away from the "ritualistic style" of tintinnabulation (p. 76). Sander van Maas explores this apparent shift and the piece's resultant narrative potential. In an intriguing twist, he argues that the music is best understood in the context of something often seen as antithetical to Pärt's ethos: technology. Investigating neutrality, Palmese researches Pärt's comments on interval signals (radio transmissions—ranging from mechanical tones to orchestrated melodies—that maintain a broadcaster's presence on a particular frequency in the absence of content) and how the premiere of Lamentate directly engaged the specific resonating frequency of a nearby electrical transformer, humming within earshot of the Tate. Meaning. Film and television have introduced Pärt to new audiences and have shaped the music's meaning along the way. Observing "consistent and repeated cinematic patterns" (p. 29) in the use of Pärt's music in television and film, Maria Cizmic identifies a common "empathy trope" (p. 23). She describes how music from the early tintinnabuli style often plays following a traumatic event (on screen or implied), thus highlighting not the violence itself but its response or consequences. The listener may be compelled by the music and its setting to identify in some instances with the victims of the trauma, in others, its perpetrators. Engaging recent work in empathy studies, psychology, and film scholarship, Cizmic adduces three specific examples, demonstrating not only how this trope works but also how specific compositional aspects of Pärt's works directly assist the listener in the empathetic process. She also astutely raises the possibility of a "closed semiotic loop" (p. 22), whereby the success of Pärt's music in underscoring particular scenes is due, in part, to its similar use in previous films. The meaning, then, may not rest entirely in the music but may develop tautologically, over time, in the ears of music supervisors as well as moviegoers. Robert Sholl contemplates active and introspective meaning-making on the part of viewers confronted by the static nature of Pärt's music, especially when it is deliberately foregrounded in film. Building...

Czech Music around 1900 by Křupková, Jiří Kopecký et al.

Reviewed by: Czech Music around 1900by Křupková, Jiří Kopecký et al. Albrecht Gaub Czech Music around 1900. By Lenka Křupková, Jiří Kopecký, et al.. (Studies in Czech Music, no. 6.) Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2017. [vi, 324 p. ISBN 9781576473023 (hardcover), $75.] Illustrations (including facsimile plates), music examples, charts, index, authors' biographies, bibliography. "We get a fascinating kaleidoscope … around the question of Czech music by some of the leading scholars in the field, much of which has never before been available in English" (p. 13). These words from Michael Beckerman's article "Flowers in the Graveyard, Tombstones in the Garden" aptly sum up the achievement of this generously illustrated book. Its main beneficiaries are four Czech composers born after Leoš Janček, who so far have received comparatively little attention by Western musicologists: Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951), Víteˇzslav Novák (1870–1949), Josef Suk (1874–1935), and Otakar Ostrčil (1879–1935). This publication, made possible by a grant from the Czech government, unites nineteen essays by nine authors. No editor is identified, but two people named on its title page—both professors at Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic—are the de facto editors, as they sign the "Introductory Remarks on the Conception of this Book." Two more generalizing articles follow: Beckerman's highly personal commentary, with musings on Czechness and the devastating impact its implementation had on the ethnic minorities of the country, and Marta Ottlová's "The 'Other World' of Music at the Turn of the Century," which, written for an exhibition in Amsterdam in 1999, surveys the Czech music scene around 1900 and places it in the context of the philosophical and ideological debates of the time. The remaining articles are grouped under three headings—"In the Footsteps of Tradition: The Spirit of Romanticism," "Czech Music at the Heart of European Music round [ sic] 1900," and "The Clash with Compositional Issues in European Music"—but this categorization seems rather arbitrary. The following description ignores it. Bedrˇich Smetana was long dead by 1900, but his music was very much alive. Kopecký's "1892: The International Success of Smetana's The Bartered Bride" traces the history of this opera's reception and how it defined notions about Czech opera in general. David R. Beveridge's "A Rare Meeting of Minds in Kvapil's and Dvorˇák's Rusalka" (Jaroslav Kvapil was the librettist) is a highly elucidating case study originally written in 2009 for a program booklet of the National Theater in Prague. I was particularly impressed with the discussion of the quotation in Rusalka, hitherto unnoticed, from Antonín Dvořák's [End Page 274](p. 67). "Tchaikovsky, Charpentier and the Formation of Janáčěk's Mature Operatic Style" by the late John Tyrrell, based on his Janáčěk: Years of a Life(vol. 1, The Lonely Blackbird[London: Faber and Faber, 2006]), draws fascinating parallels between Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's Pikovaıa dama[The Queen of Spades], Gustave Charpentier's Louise, and Janáčěk's operas. In "čapek's Feminism and Janáčěk's Femme fatale: Notes on Traditional Opera Aesthetics in Janáčěk's Opera The Makropulos Case," Křupková convincingly argues how Janáčěk turned the work's protagonist into a larger-than-life operatic heroine by downsizing the male characters from Karel Čapek's play and following operatic convention in the musical setting. But is it really true that Literaturoper(literary opera) gravitates towards the lieto fine(happy ending; p. 96)? "Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Lyrical Opera Evaand the Tradition of the French Drama[ sic] lyrique" by Kopecký, the only article in the collection dedicated to this composer, explores French influences. Zdeněk Nouza (who died before publication) contributed "Josef Suk, Dvořák's Favorite Pupil," which constitutes a comprehensive survey of the composer and his music. "Josef Suk's Ripeningand the Birth of the Czechoslovak Republic" by Judith Fiehler provides a wealth of information on this work, arguably Suk's masterpiece, alongside Asrael, and includes facsimile pages from the score. Both Suk articles come with extensive quotations from source texts, especially from correspondence. Two of Křupková's seven (!) articles on Novák...

Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies ed. by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, and Jennifer Shaw

Reviewed by: Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies ed. by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, and Jennifer Shaw Dimitris Exarchos Music's Immanent Future: The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies. Edited by Sally Macarthur, Judy Lochhead, Jennifer Shaw. Abingdon, Oxon, Eng.: Routledge, 2016. [xx, 240 p. ISBN 9781472460219 (hard-cover), $160; ISBN 9781315597027 (ebook), $28.98.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. [End Page 529] Music's Immanent Future is a kaleidoscopic collection that reflects on aspects of music studies today, drawing on concepts by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancy, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault, among others. The collection, subtitled The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies, includes seventeen chapters grouped into five parts that explore themes such as music studies in higher education ("The Academic Music Machine"), musical practices ("Deleuzian Encounters"), composition ("Materialities of Sounding"), listening ("Immanent Listening"), and ontology ("Deleuzian Ontologies"). In addition to an overall introduction to the book, there are introductory chapters to each part—"folding" chapters that serve to connect the different strands of the contributed chapters in each part. The Deleuzian concept of the fold indexes the possibility of space that is opened up each time, avoiding the single-view perspective that "leads to privileging the identity of the author." The book's main ambition is to move beyond a typical account of music, conceived to have "an essence, surface, and depth," and achieve a multiplicity of types of engagement, both by its authors and by its readers (p. 2). Such multiplicity (a central Deleuzian concept, whereby difference is privileged over identity, and relationship in is privileged over relationship to) is evident by the editors' choice of approaches. (It should be noted that the book originates in two symposia at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, in 2012 and 2013.) Not all chapters employ a Deleuzian approach, properly speaking. Two out of three contributing authors in part 1 make no explicit reference to Deleuze. This is also true of the entirety of part 3, in which composers discuss their approach to music making. Similarly, the two contributing authors of part 4, and the sole contributed chapter of part 5, make no substantial Deleuzian analysis either (except for brief references). This seems to suggest that a turn to a Deleuzian mode of thought has been underway in music studies, even when scholars do not engage with Deleuzian or Guattarian concepts. The implicit conclusion might be drawn then that there is something Deleuzian in the way authors employ concepts by Nancy, Kristeva, Foucault, or others. The editors, however, do not warn readers away from concluding that these authors should be categorized as "Deleuzian." I doubt that this was the intention of the editors or contributors, and to say the least, that conclusion would have very little connection to Deleuze's thinking. This decision to include such diverse approaches is counteracted by the introductory chapters to each part, thus providing a Deleuzian perspective (without which parts 3 and 5 would seem out of context). If a Deleuzian turn has been underway even with no explicit reference to Deleuze, then of what does this turn consist? The keyword immanent in the title suggests that all authors favor an approach to music that is not representational, which would entail subsuming things to the already-known. Rather, "Immanent listening … is a continual openness to the not-yet-known." The practice of listening is central to all activities—including composing, analyzing, and performing—as it enables thinking beyond traditional boundaries: "Immanent listening seeks to dissolve all boundaries, and the categorisations that divide the self from the other, and the self from sound object" (p. 9). All the above practices are explored in the book, including those of education and the formation of musical canons, as for example in the chapter by Susan McClary, whose pedagogical practice supersedes the dichotomies of [End Page 530] Western/non-Western, art/popular, and so forth. Nonetheless, the book is mainly preoccupied with Western art composition, with references in the chapters by McClary and Bruce Crossman to other kinds of music precisely as others. For instance, the book lacks discussion of improvised music (Western or not, jazz, traditional...