Music Examples Research Articles

Investigation of the Peculiarities of the Metrorhythmic Organization of Onegin's Vocal Part in P.I. Tchaikovsky's Opera "Eugene Onegin"

The main attention of the author of the work focuses on the study of temporal structures in the solo episodes of Eugene Onegin. In this work, based on the research of theorists and musicologists, a detailed analysis of metric systems and rhythm formulas in the musical material of the protagonist is carried out. Special attention is paid to the study of the hidden meaning of leit rhythms as means of artistic expression, independent of the melodic-harmonic component of the musical fabric. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as accentuation and "broad three-lobe", polyrhythm and polymetry, elements of polyfurcation and fractal processes of shaping, shift of the clock line and higher-order bars. Special attention is paid to the influence of the metrorhythmic side on the figurative and artistic component of the process of creating and developing the plot of an opera performance. The main conclusion of the study is the need to study the regularities of metrorhythmic constructions in vocal parts. This will allow performers to more deeply and comprehensively penetrate deep into the semantic musical structures, get additional opportunities to control the performing apparatus while working on creating an artistic image. This approach is relevant and quite new in terms of the originality of the research perspective, since so far this topic has not been presented in a similar way in the scientific literature. The presence of musical examples, quotations from scientific literature, tables and diagrams turns the work into a visual and easy-to-study scientific material.

The Specifics of the Timbral Embodiment of the Figurative & Emotional Sphere in Dmitri Shostakovich's 'Viola Sonata'

The object of the study is the Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 by Dmitri Shostakovich—a work rightfully considered autobiographical and as a farewell. The subject of the study was the specificity of the timbral embodiment of the composition’s figurative and emotional sphere. In the proposed reading, the first part of the sonata is an image of the world to which the composer sends a farewell glance, the second is a sarcastic sketch of bright collective images of the vices of humanity, and the finale is a penetration beyond reality. The author of the article, in detail, referring to specific musical examples given in the text, examines the specific instrumental techniques used by the composer, which made it possible to embody the mystical concept of the sonata. The novelty of the research lies in the identification of three main figurative lines of the composition: eternity, the voice of the soul, and the world, which correspond to different timbral characteristics of the viola, which received their definitions through the use of specific expressive techniques. Eternity is the dispassionate sound of the viola, which is characterized by some programming, inexorability (an allusion to the "knock of fate”), monotonous figuration, and long double notes in the lower part of the range. The voice of the soul is detached, with the dark, gloomy coloring of the sound: melodica, devoid of "beautiful" intonations, sentimental singing, "Beethoven" trio in new refraction, acting as the personification of the otherworldly. The world is a tearing and sharp sound and sarcastic caricature of colors: glissando with access to the flageolet, short caustic foreshocks, exaggeratedly sharp staccato, ascending parallel quarts in sixteenth, illustrating a hysterical burst of laughter. The main figurative spaces coexist throughout the composition, presenting in the sonata genre a new specific characteristic of the viola for the first time, which interprets the world of unreal images in many ways. Shostakovich's sonata is defined as the starting point of the formation of the leading figurative direction of the viola repertoire of the last third of the twentieth century, which secured the viola the role of a guide to the world of the beyond—a kind of Virgil.

Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form by Richard C. Jankowsky

Reviewed by: Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form by Richard C. Jankowsky Rachel Colwell Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form. Richard C. Jankowsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2021. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. xix + 244 pp., 9 figures, 10 tables, 20 musical examples, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9780226723334 (hardcover), $95.00; ISBN: 9780226723471 (paperback), $27.50; ISBN: 9780226723501 (e-book), $26.99. Accompanying website: https://sites.tufts.edu/ambientsufism/. Richard Jankowsky’s much-anticipated monograph, Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches and the Social Work of Musical Form, delivers an impressive, in-depth examination of an array of Tunisian ritual musics considered from within a framework of musical ecology. It constitutes the first substantial literature on several of the genres described, especially in the English language. It is the first book of its kind to critically address complex political subjects like race and musical timbre in Tunisia and to discuss the place of music in contemporary conflict between Sufis, Islamic extremists, and the state. This book is at once a valuable resource for scholars specializing in Tunisian or Sufi musics and an approachable introduction for novices interested in learning about Tunisia’s sacred musical traditions and the religious, social, historical, and political elements with which they are intertwined. The central unifying concept of the text is “ambient Sufism,” Jankowsky’s term for the sacred topography of Sufi saints—remarkable historical figures whose shrines punctuate Tunisian cities and countryside—that resonates, however differently, in the musical practices of many Tunisian ritual communities. Ambient Sufism speaks to the palpable ways that this sacred-sonic complex serves as a shared resource and common structure that undergirds the interconnected sounds, practices, and ideas of various groups. Each religious ritual community uses these resources in their own way, applying aesthetics, timbres, and textures particular to their practice. Jankowsky shows how musical form and sonic mechanisms such as intensification do social work negotiating tensions around similarity and difference among neighboring religious communities. Ambitious not only in musical scope but also in its range of theoretical inquiry, the book also provides analyses of reflexivity, hospitality, alterity, and convergence in Tunisian ritual musics. [End Page 151] In a gesture toward poetics, the book’s organization mirrors the formal structures described in its text, the large-scale musical forms of the silsila and ḥaḍra. Each chapter examines a single case study, allowing for focus on the musics of each community, comparisons among the practices, and a cumulative effect across the book as a whole. The ritual musics discussed are (1) the ḥaḍra of the ‘Īsāwiyya, a widely known Sufi order, (2) the silsilas of the Mannūbiyya, a women’s Sufi healing troupe, (3) sṭambeli, a trance healing music developed by Tunisians of sub-Saharan descent, and (4) rebaybiyya, a healing music practiced by Tunisian Jews. Following the introduction and four case-study chapters, Jankowsky explores the recontextualization of Tunisian ritual musics today—the remnants of Jewish rebaybiyya in the mezwid genre and the staging of Sufi ḥaḍra in concert-like settings. The careful arrangement of the book’s chapters also affords synthesis across two important themes: the ritual and social work undertaken through the musical forms of the ḥaḍra and silsila and contemporary Tunisians’ concerns regarding major contextual shifts in performance. Jankowsky provides ample evidence for the importance of sonic intensification, foregrounding and attending to musical phenomena that have previously been overlooked as trivial and mundane (for example, repetition, consistency, and gradually increasing tempo and volume). He demonstrates the value, complexity, nuance, and potential that are alive in these sonic elements, how they influence each other, and how they enhance the ritual at hand. Ambient Sufism supplies a veritable toolbox of useful terms for the ethnomusicologist’s study of intensification including discrete, sequential, and global forms that operate through tempo, texture, density, timbre, and volume. The text is complemented by high-quality audio, video, and photographic materials, which are available online on the accompanying website. Its rich multimedia resources lend the text well to teaching, whether for an area-studies course or one focused on Sufism, sacred musics, musics and healing, or musics and...

Piąta część "Villanelle" Pawła Szymańskiego w świetle teorii mieszanin pojęciowych

Conceptualization, that is, the recognition of cognitive intuitions in concepts, is one of the basic topics of cognitive science. One of the most popular theories of this type is the conceptual blending theory by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. The aim of this article is to present the main assumptions of this theory and to interpret in its light one work by Paweł Szymański, namely the fifth movement of Villanelle for countertenor, two violas and harpsichord to the poem by James Joyce. Interpretation has several stages. At the beginning, two sets of concepts necessary for creating blends are established: the first relating to the poetic layer of the work, and the second ‒ to its musical layer. Next, the author discusses three intra-musical stylistic blends. The first is characterized by a clear dominance of concepts concerning baroque devices over modernist ones, the second ‒ by inverse proportions of devices, and the third is a similar kind of polystylism as the first. Finally, the subject of consideration are the extra-musical blends leading to the creation of three main meanings of the work. They can be summarized as the following story about the poetical and musical Persona: he begins by practising some form of love ritual in mythical/sacred time; after a fairly long time in a lethargic state, he comes closer to reality and thinks about love from the perspective of his own body and clarity; finally, he drowns in a previously performed ritual within mythical/sacred time. The article is supplemented by the poem, the table with the characteristics of the three episodes, two musical examples and four diagrams with networks of integrated concepts.

FOLK TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS REFLECTED IN AN ELECTRONIC MUSIC TEXTBOOK FOR THE 7TH GRADE OF THE GENERAL EDUCATION SCHOOL IN BULGARIA

A person gets attached to things that are intrinsic to him, close, understandable and tends to reject what isunfamiliar and incomprehensible to him. The rapid technical development has brought not only enormous, but alsoconstantly accelerating change into our lives - ever greater and pleasant reliefs, which, however, increasinglydistance us from the traditional folk way of life, from the customs, holidays, beliefs, and rites of the people. We getsomething comfortable and irrevocable, but we lose something of our own, beautiful and also necessary - ourstarting point, our roots. Fortunately, this trend is being recognized by more and more people who are looking forways to counteract it without depriving ourselves of modern technical achievements. Since the knowledge of thetraditions, way of life, customs, and rites of our people are part of the culture forming the national self-awareness ofevery Bulgarian, such information should be studied. In the music textbooks for our general education school byProf. Penka Mincheva at al., the topic of Bulgarian is present from the 1st grade and continues throughout thecourse, with the study of folk customs, traditions and holidays. This topic is widely developed in the 7th gradeeducational set. In order to prove this, I will examine the materials included in the electronic textbook for the 7thgrade, which I am the author of and which is part of the educational set of the author's collective led by Prof. PenkaMincheva. In the electronic textbook, the information on the topic of Bulgarian traditions and customs is presentedthrough two photo galleries, it is also the basis of creative activities and various tasks. The taught material is richlyillustrated with pictures and sound examples. For the performance of these musical examples, which are onlyincluded in the electronic textbook, I selected young performers who have proven themselves at national andregional competitions - colleagues and students from the folklore specialties of the Academy of Music, Dance andFine Arts, where I work. The analysis of electronic resources (main method in the present study) on the topic ofBulgarian folk traditions - holidays, customs, rites and way of life highlighted the following results: - Electronicresources are closely related to the Electronic resources are diverse, thereby contributing to maintaining the interestof adolescents; - The electronic resources are compiled in such a way as to provide additional information; -Electronic resources are directly related to the creation of listening habits among students; - A significant part of theelectronic resources are organized as creative tasks, which is beneficial for the development of the creativity ofseventh graders; - Electronic resources are related to enriching the musical culture of young people; - Habits arecreated in seventh graders also for putting themselves in the other person's place, their empathic abilities aredeveloped. I am proud to share that the electronic materials of the Prosveta publishing house (Prosveta plus, whereour educational set is published, is one of the publishing brands of the Prosveta publishing house) have beenawarded the special prize for the best electronic aids of the BELMA (Best European Learning Materials Awards ) for2021. This is a serious recognition and at the same time authoritative proof of the effectiveness of Prof. Mincheva'ssystem of musical education and of our textbooks, including the electronic textbook for the 7th grade of secondaryschool.

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Company

Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Company

The Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt): ubimus perspectives on artificial scarcity, virtual communities and (de)objectification

Part of the recent developments in Ubiquitous Music (ubimus) research involve the proposal of the Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt) as an expansion and complement to the Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT). The transition from IoMusT to IoMuSt entails a critique of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as technologies for allotment, disciplination and regimentation of formerly open and freely accessible artistic web content. In brief, the replacement of the operative concepts constructed around “things” with strategies based on “stuff” highlights the underlying interconnected processes and factors that impact interaction and usage, pointing to resources that become disposable and valueless within an objectified and monetized musical internet. This conceptual and methodological turn allows us to deal with distributed-creativity phenomena in marginalized spaces, highlighting the role of resources that are widely reproducible, fluid and ever-changing. In this paper, we address IoMuSt-based responses to issues such as the artificial production of scarcity associated with the application of NFTs. The selected musical examples showcase the meshwork of dynamic relationships that characterizes ubimus research. In particular, we focus on a comprovisation project involving VOIP visual communication through Skype, Meet and Zoom, a ubimus experience involving a Telegram chatbot and a set of musical experiments enabled by an online tool for remote live patching.

Finding Music: Writings = Schriften, 1961–2018 by Tom Johnson

Reviewed by: Finding Music: Writings = Schriften, 1961–2018 by Tom Johnson Twila Bakker Finding Music: Writings = Schriften, 1961–2018. By Tom Johnson. Edited by Gisela Gronemeyer and Raoul Mörchen. Köln: MusikTexte, 2019. [532 pp. ISBN 9783981331950 (paperback), €29]. Music examples, illustrations, list of works, index. Finding Music by the composer Tom Johnson is a concurrently bilingual volume (English and German on facing pages), divided into three broad sections: (1) “Writing Music” presents an overview of Johnson’s compositional journey, recounting his experiences as a Yale student and as a composer in New York and subsequently in Paris; (2) “Writing about Music” highlights some of Johnson’s important work as a music critic; and (3) “Introductions” provides a wide-ranging selection of introductions and program notes to Johnson’s compositional oeuvre. The text consists almost entirely of previously published materials; the convenience of having them collected between two covers is a key attraction of the current volume, as some of the articles are out of print or, after being presented in a lecture format, were published only on Johnson’s website. Their publication here adds a level of permanence and reproducibility that those articles were previously lacking. By way of an introduction we have the composer in his own words via a retrospective conversation with Libby Van Cleve—a document previously accessible only at Yale University’s Oral History of American Music (OHAM; Tom Johnson interview by Libby Van Cleve, 4 June 1997, OHV 252a–f). Understandably, the OHAM interview covers some of the same content as Bernard Girard’s 2011 interview; however, Van Cleve’s interviewing style, or perhaps the fact that the conversation was conducted in English, results in much longer responses from Johnson than the clipped dialogue of Girard’s interview (Bernard Girard, Conversations avec Tom Johnson [Château-Gontier: Aedam Musicae, 2011]; in English as “Conversations with Tom Johnson,” trans. Christine Lucia, Contemporary Music Review 39, no. 4 [2020]: 289–460). Johnson and Van Cleve’s conversation provides an excellent overview of both the life events and compositional choices that have helped shape Johnson’s career. The experience of reading the first section, “Writing Music,” was akin to visiting a composer friend in their studio. The content is varied, and although largely organized by the original publication date of the texts, the compositional ideas are not presented in a fixed chronology. One could imagine Johnson shuffling papers in his studio to bring forth a particular music example or letter from a collaborator to illustrate a specific point of interest. It is in this section where Johnson’s dogged interest in the inherent logic of mathematics shines most brightly as the nucleus of his compositional raison d’être. It is unnecessary to understand the mathematics to appreciate how it figures into Johnson’s compositions, and at times it even seems to be an intuitive discovery by Johnson of a fundamental truth. Furthermore, this first section presents an overall image of the context for Johnson’s composition, demonstrating the interconnectedness of his network of composers, performers, philosophers, and particularly mathematicians. This shows the interdependency of these occupations, putting to rest the idea of a solitary composer hidden away from the world with his art, and replacing it with a collaborative, supportive, and connected individual seeking to find his own musical voice. Unlike the first section, which includes short texts written about Johnson’s own music, the second section [End Page 219] deals primarily with the work of others. “Writing about Music” contains some of Johnson’s most easily accessible English writings, namely selections from his articles for the Village Voice, many of which had been previously collected and published (The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982 [Eindhoven: Apollohuis, 1989]; digital ed., 2002, rev. 2014, https://editions75.com/tvonm [accessed 1 June 2022]) and are offered in Finding Music in German translation. These articles, however, amount to approximately 6 percent of the text of Finding Music, and this second section is supplemented with further reflections on John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, Morton Feldman, Charles Ives, and Robert Ashley that do not appear in the Village Voice articles. With this section also begins in earnest the reader...

Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination, by Braxton D. Shelley

<i>Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination</i>, by Braxton D. Shelley

Dilla Time

<i>Dilla Time</i>

Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in Twentieth-Century Music by Florian Scheding

Reviewed by: Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in Twentieth-Century Music by Florian Scheding Tristan Paré-Morin Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in Twentieth-Century Music. By Florian Scheding. (Music in Society and Culture.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2019. [x, 196 p. ISBN 9781783274611 (hardback), $95; ISBN 9781787446601 (e-book), price varies.] Music examples, bibliography, index. No single book could possibly account for the diversity of responses to migration and displacement and to their impact on twentieth-century music. The careers of prominent figures at the center of countless standard music histories (Igor Strav insky, Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, etc.) were shaped by their experiences as migrants. In Musical Journeys, Florian Scheding has chosen to focus on three comparatively unfamiliar composers—Hanns Eisler (1898–1962), Mátyás Seiber (1905–1960), and István Anhalt (1919–2012)—to address what he considers a lack of attention, in musicology, to migratory communities and to the act of migration itself. In the introduction, Scheding describes his project as “a humble and, in some ways, unambitious book that tells little stories and works outwards from them, linking them with wider themes” (p. 7). The reader should not be fooled by the author’s modesty: the “wider themes” are thoughtful, detailed, and provocative reconsiderations of the migratory experience, mobility, place and space, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, identity, and memory. One of the main purposes of Musical Journeys is to continually problematize the dialectics of individuality versus collectivity. Although the book builds on the experiences of three migrants, Scheding discusses their individual identities as part of larger networks of musicians, while making sure to present these networks as heterogeneous in order to avoid essentializing migrant communities. The theoretical framework of the book is for the most part very much grounded in migration studies, with regular references to recent and classic texts, in particular the writings of Hannah Arendt and Edward W. Said. In chapter 1, “Angels in Paris,” Scheding draws from Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to highlight the cultural spaces of displacement and of migratory networks as heterogeneous spaces. He examines the genesis of Hanns Eisler’s Deutsche Sinfonie in the context of mid-1930s Paris (as “migrant capital”) and draws similarities to the works of other migrants: Klaus Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Walter Benjamin, who highlight heterotopia and mobility as central to the migratory experience. Scheding shows how Eisler resisted immobility in his travels and his music. Despite its title, the Deutsche Sinfonie is paradoxically a highly mobile work that transcends the national and that presents German culture as diasporic. For instance, Scheding positions Eisler’s use of dodecaphony as an “effectively displaced and profoundly migratory idiom” (p. 34). Such analyses of particular musical techniques as part of migratory culture are recurrent in Musical Journeys, as Scheding illustrates how composers adapt and reflect on national styles and on styles of fellow migrants (such as Schoenberg). Scheding presents migration as “a process that may transcend national borders, but not engagement with the national itself” (p. 47). Chapter 2, “Facing the Nation,” shows Mátyás Seiber’s evolving engagement with the Hungarian nation and nationalism. Scheding writes a fascinating account of Seiber’s long migratory journey from his native Budapest, where his integration of elements from Hungarian folklore was influenced by the guidance of Zoltán Kodály, to Frankfurt in the Weimar Republic, where Seiber’s promotion of [End Page 225] jazz was met with attacks amidst growing anti-Semitism and calls for ethnic purity, up to his migration to England in 1935, where the dichotomy between traditionalist and progressive currents in Seiber’s music reached its peak. Scheding’s discussion of characteristic works for each stage of Seiber’s migration illustrates the influence on his music of changing national politics. As Scheding shows, even when Seiber eschewed folklorist elements, and decades after his departure from Hungary, responses to his music remained marked by xenophobia and nationalism. The chapter then shifts back to Eisler. Challenging the idea that the composer’s move to East Berlin was a return home after years of migration, Scheding argues that his artistry remained that of a migrant, and that works such as Eisler’s 1949 anthem for the...

Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South by Candace Bailey

Reviewed by: Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South by Candace Bailey Michele Aichele Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South. By Candace Bailey. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. [ix, 292 p. ISBN 9780252085741 (paperback), $30; ISBN 9780252043758 (hardcover), $125; ISBN 9780252052651 (e-book), price varies.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. Candace Bailey’s Unbinding Gentility is an important examination of women’s musical practices in the southern United States from 1830 to 1880. It expands on Bailey’s previous publications, Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) and Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriet Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019), by including nonelite White women as well as Black women, both free and enslaved, in the South. The title Unbinding Gentility plays on the main type of source Bailey used: bound volumes of music, known as “binder’s volumes,” collections of individually published or copied sheet music that were bound together. Such collect ions allowed women to demonstrate their class status and were markers of gentility. “A binder’s volume standing on a piano desk or even lying on a piece of furniture,” Bailey observes, “proclaimed that a young woman had been properly brought up” (p. 12). Many of the more than fifteen-hundred binder’s volumes Bailey investigated include annot ations with notes from friends and family, dates, ornaments, fingerings, and translations of foreign-language songs, all of which demonstrate that the music was used. Studies of women’s music-making practices in the nineteenth century are becoming more common, and the inclusion of Black women in this study begins to fill a huge gap in music studies. With this scholarship, Bailey demonstrates how the performance of gentility varied across race, class, and time, showing the complex social changes in Southern women’s lives from before the Civil War through Reconstruction. The introduction contextualizes Bailey’s research in nineteenth-century histories and studies of music. Bailey dispels notions of strict binaries in musical practices to show a wide spectrum of practices and social change. Her goal is “to recover silent voices and position them within the social world of which they were so much a part” (p. 1). Unbinding Gentility is divided into five [End Page 236] parts: the first three focus on the ante-bellum period, part 4 examines musical practices during the Civil War, and part 5 discusses the changes in performances of gentility and music in the Reconstruction period. Part 1, “Social Diversity among Amateur Women Musicians,” consists of two chapters that set up the musical practices of amateur White women and women of color. While chapter 1 re-hashes some familiar material about White women performing gentility at the parlor piano, the inclusion of women of color performing gentility at the piano in their own parlors provides further nuance to how ideals of feminine gentility crossed racial lines. Due to the scope of Bailey’s research, she cannot provide us with all the details we would want, but she encourages future scholars to continue her work and interrogate the meaning and agency of Black feminine genteel performances at the piano. In part 2, “Repertory,” Bailey examines the common repertoire included in binder’s volumes in the antebellum period, demonstrating the variety contained within the term parlor music. The most common genres include English ballads, arrangements of theater and operatic works, arias from contemporary operas, dance music, and variations on popular and operatic melodies. The main differences in repertoire between classes had to do with the difficulty of the arrangements. Some elite women, who had ample time and resources to dedicate to their music studies, owned technically difficult arrangements and variations and sang bel canto arias in their original keys and languages. Women without as much means played simplified versions of similar music and typically sang English translations of arias. Contrary to what we usually assume in US music history, the songs of Stephen Foster and minstrelsy barely make appearances in these binder’s volumes. When minstrelsy pieces did appear, dialect and...

Vocal duet in pop and jazz music: some aspects of interpretative activity

In this article, some aspects related to the interpretive activity of vocal duets in pop and jazz music are examined. The vocal duet occupies an intermediate position between solo and ensemble performance: on the one hand, it is a collective consisting of two participants, and on the other – an association of soloists, each of whom is, as a rule, an artistic personality pursuing a career standalone stage. The authors emphasize some basic aspects of the vocal duet activity, such as the mutual coordination of the parties, the psychological compatibility of the partners, their interaction in the process of stage performance, the manifestation of artistry, without which there is no duet’s artistic dialogue. A special attention is paid to the formation of the repertoire, which in pop and jazz music has a special specificity, compared to academic music. The nominated aspects are of major importance both for singers and for teachers working with vocal duets in music education institutions. Some theoretical theses are confirmed by musical examples, taken from the repertoires of duets in the country and abroad, as well as from edited pieces.

Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon by Alexander Stefaniak

Reviewed by: Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon by Alexander Stefaniak April L. Prince Becoming Clara Schumann: Performance Strategies and Aesthetics in the Culture of the Musical Canon. By Alexander Stefaniak. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. [xiii, 308 p. ISBN 9780253058294 (hard-cover), $75; ISBN 9780253058287 (paperback), $20; also available as e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Tables, music examples, endnotes, bibliography, index. Alexander Stefaniak opens his recent monograph with the always astonishing details of Clara Schumann’s musical life: over a thousand concerts performed across sixty years, international acclaim, collaborations with some of the most important musicians of her era, admiring critics, undeniable compositional prowess, and pedagogical acumen. By 1877, the fifty-eight-year-old was at the pinnacle of her career. That same year, the critic L. K. reflected on Schumann’s trajectory in an article for Leipzig’s Signale für die musikalische Welt. L. K. had first heard the performer in 1833. While her earlier performances relied on music that they considered “wild and chaotic,” Schumann’s concerts were now grounded in Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (p. 2). The critic celebrated these programmatic transformations: “The change between ‘Clara Wieck’ and ‘Clara Schumann’ signifies the marriage of the old virtuosity with the classical garb and Verseistigung [spiritualization] of the new” (p. 2). This “marriage” of sorts—between Clara Schumann and the Austro -German canon—guides Stefaniak over the course of his excellent new study. In the past several decades, Clara Schumann scholarship has evolved in exciting trajectories. Current studies show fresh, critical perspectives on all aspects of Schumann’s life. (See Joe Davies, “Introduction: Clara Schumann in the Musicological Imagination,” in Clara Schumann Studies, ed. Joe Davies [Cambridge: Cambridge University [End Page 233] Press, 2021], 1–12.) Stefaniak’s Becoming Clara Schumann situates itself firmly within this community. Engaging eloquently with wide-ranging scholarship, pluralistic primary source materials, concert touring strategies, and programming and compositional practices, Stefaniak offers a fascinating, holistic look into Clara Schumann’s canonical legacy. An important complement to his previous examination of Robert Schumann’s nineteenth-century virtuosities, this new monograph shifts to investigate how Clara Schumann similarly navigated the perils of empty virtuosity and authentic revelation by “inherently infus[ing] pianism with interiority” (p. 11). (See also Alexander Stefaniak, Schumann’s Virtuosity: Criticism, Composition, and Performance in Nineteenth-Century Germany [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016].) Positioning Schumann as both a pragmatic “strategist” and a musical “idealist,” Stefaniak asks us to recognize how performers—perhaps even more so than composers—profoundly shaped canonic ideologies. To be sure, “Schumann invites us to view the canonic tradition not only as a body of musical works but as a dynamic, evolving reality in the everyday professional lives of performers” (p. 281). Organized largely chronologically, each chapter examines a distinct issue related to aspects of Schumann’s career and canonic status. Traversing from her earliest concertizing to her time as a professor in Frankfurt at Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium, Stefaniak keeps several threads front and center: “canon formation, concepts of interiorit y, Schumann’s gendered public image, and the ways in which she and other performers exercised creative agency” (p. 15). In the first two chapters, Stefaniak examines Schumann’s early concert programming and her 1840s transformation into an authentic interpreter. While this period is sometimes positioned as antithetical to the development of the canonical ideal, Stefaniak guides the reader through compelling music analyses and argues that Weick’s showpieces by Frédéric Chopin, Adolf von Henselt, and Sigismond Thalberg shaped her approaches to resplendent virtuosity. Her strategies were undeniably successful, as relatively quickly “critics heard interiority in the very sound Clara Schumann produced at the piano, regardless of what repertoire she played” (p. 36). Greater attention to aesthetic debates grounds the second chapter, as Stefaniak focuses on the ways Schumann expanded and ratified this association to interiority. Undeniably, her marriage to Robert Schumann positioned her as a crucial part of a composer–interpreter partnership—a musical partnership that was quite calculated in its alignment with the practices of canonic formation. As Robert transformed his compositional approach to gain critical...

Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk

Reviewed by: Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk Albrecht Gaub Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times. By Patrick Zuk. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2021. [xlviii, 533 p. ISBN 9781783275755 (hard-back), $99; ISBN 9781787448155 (e-book), price varies]. Illustrations, music examples, maps, index, bibliography. During the gestation of Patrick Zuk’s long-awaited biography of Russian/Soviet composer Nikolaĭ , Gregor Tassie anticipated Zuk and published a biography, Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). Zuk dismisses the earlier work in his preface: “Tassie’s [book] contains little original research and relies heavily on standard Soviet publications of the composer” (p. xxx n. 33)—and ignores it thereafter. While Tassie’s book is problematic in many ways (see my review in Notes 72, no. 3 [March 2016]: 558–61), it does contain a fair amount of original research. Tassie, on his part, does not mention Zuk’s earlier articles at all, seminal though they are. Be this as it may, although Zuk’s book is in no way a response to Tassie’s, I could not help comparing the two as I read along. Like Tassie’s book—or even more so—Zuk’s is a biography focused on one composer and his environment. Unlike Tassie’s, Zuk’s is well written and competently edited, even though there are a few glitches, such as the consistent misspelling of Berkeley as “Berlekey.” Zuk does acknowledge literature in languages other than Russian and English, but when he elaborates on surveys of Soviet music by Western authors (pp. xxvii–xxix), Dorothea Rede-penning’s monumental and relatively recent Geschichte der russischen und sowjetischen Musik, vol. 2: Das 20. Jahrhundert (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2008) goes unmentioned; if Zuk considers it insignificant, he should say so. Another no less striking omission is the collection of essays Neizvestnyĭ Nikolaĭ : d iz XXI veka ([The Unknown : A View from the Twenty-First Century], ed. Elena Dolinska [Moscow: Kompozitor, 2006]). Neither book appears in the bibliography. The narrative unfolds in strict chronological order. Identifying and correcting myths handed down from the Soviet [End Page 239] era is one of Zuk’s goals. This becomes apparent already in his description of the prerevolutionary St. Petersburg Conservatory (or “Conservatoire” in the uncompromisingly British style of his book) as a fossilized institution stifling creativity, with Anatoly Konstantinovich Lyadov receiving particularly harsh treatment. Trained as a military officer before studying music, was mobilized during the entire First World War and saw action on the front in Galicia. This chapter of Zuk’s narrative is most gripping, but the map on page xlviii should show the historical borders rather than the modern ones. The Fifth Symphony (1918), performed and printed in 1922, initiated the brief vogue that the composer internationally enjoyed in the 1920s and early 1930s. ’s contract with Universal Edition in Vienna, signed in 1925, was seminal in this, even though always remained distrustful of the “businesslike ways” of the publisher, represented by Abram Dzimitrowski, and of “the West” in general (pp. 240–44). Zuk’s description of the first fifteen Soviet years is bleak. Material need and hunger were pervasive, with only some relief during the time of the New Economic Policy (1924–29), and musical life in Moscow, where had settled in 1918, was accordingly meager. Zuk demonstrates that the famous Association for Modern Music, in which figured prominently, originated as some kind of Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen, and its outreach remained always limited (pp. 214–18)—unlike that of its antagonist, the Russian Association for Proletarian Music, which was one of the driving forces of the 1928–32 Cultural Revolution. The German invasion of Russia in 1941 caused new turmoil. While Soviet historiography paints a heroic picture of the composers in trans-Caucasian and, later, Central Asian evacuation, Zuk exposes the dire conditions under which the composers existed. Zuk sheds new light on ’s circle of friends. Soviet literature idealizes his lifelong friendship with Sergey Prokofiev; Zuk takes a more nuanced view. While the much older was a mentor to the rebellious prodigy during the early years, their relationship was reversed after resumption of contact in the 1920s...

Sources of Jewish Music: Active and Passive Assimilation Revisited

Sources of Jewish Music:Active and Passive Assimilation Revisited Jonathan L. Friedmann (bio) General theories are scarce in the current field of Jewish music research. Most attempts at all-encompassing rules or principles have proven untenable due to the complexity of the terms involved—"Jewish" and "music"—as well as the overwhelming historical and regional diversity of Jewish music cultures. Past efforts to draw maps or timelines connecting the various forms, styles, and contexts have invariably led to what Israeli musicologist Edwin Seroussi calls "unfortunate overgeneralizations."1 According to Seroussi, the central flaw of such theories—whether they seek to connect various strands of musical expression to a single, long-ago source (commonly the Second Temple) or search for a "stable," "unilinear," or "authentic" musical expression—is the "ontological notion of 'tradition,'" which "assumes the existence of unambiguous boundaries separating sonic spaces" while ignoring the complex roles of individual contributors, performance contexts, cross-cultural contacts, shifting tastes, historical circumstances, and other shaping forces.2 The elusiveness of a stable or definable tradition speaks to challenges in musicological inquiry more generally, where attempts at empirical or objective claims often clash with the experiential and subjective nature of the subject matter.3 [End Page 389] Part of the problem is that theories of Jewish music tend to be prescriptive, concerned with how things ought to be, rather than objective frameworks derived from meticulous a posteriori observation. Jewish music scholars of the past, virtually all of whom were Jewish themselves, approached the subject with vested cultural, aesthetic, and religious interests.4 As a result, their theories more closely resemble statements of ideals or principles than scientifically acceptable schemes or systems of facts.5 What Hannah Arendt identified as a flaw in political theory also applies here: the very concept of "theory" assumes that the theorist is detached from the object instead of an active participant in a "phenomenon" involving a web of relationships "from which the theorist cannot extricate herself."6 Eric Werner's theory of active and passive assimilation is among the few far-reaching concepts of Jewish music to have largely evaded scrutiny. The theory, which he proposed in 1949 and repeated for decades thereafter, categorizes musical examples based on the presence (active assimilation) or absence (passive assimilation) of a "Judaizing" process as communities absorb foreign musical elements.7 It acknowledges the reality of musical sharing between Jews and their neighbors, as well as the existence of musical mainstreams or minhagim ("customs") that mix indigenous developments and outside influences. For Werner, the theory served as an academic leitmotif, appearing at semiregular intervals and with almost repeated language in a half dozen publications between 1949 and 1981. It was an unusually consistent and durable concept for an author whose voluminous writings can be difficult to parse, alternating as they do between elitism, polemics, speculation, music theory, and historical analysis—sometimes in the same work—and connected as they were to his activist work in Jewish professional and educational settings.8 Werner presented the active and passive categories as objective and incontestable labels applicable to examples from any region, period, or population; musical elements filtered through an existing Jewish mainstream are actively assimilated, while elements that enter unchanged [End Page 390] are passively assimilated. Like other twentieth-century theories in the field, however, active and passive assimilation are basically dressed-up extrapolations of Werner's own standards and principles. Beneath the clean definitions are prejudices, distortions, and value judgements rooted in his biography. Born near Vienna in 1901, Werner graduated from Berlin's Hochschule für Musik in 1924 and earned a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg in 1928. After lecturing at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau from 1935 to 1938, he sought refuge from the Nazis at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, succeeding famed musicologist Abraham Z. Idelsohn, who had recently passed away. In 1948, Werner oversaw the establishment of the School of Sacred Music at the HUC campus in New York, the first cantorial school in the United States and a locus of Jewish musical authority in the post-Holocaust period. A proud Central European and aggressive defender of his own musical tastes, Werner used his position to...

Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk

Reviewed by: Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times by Patrick Zuk Anthony Gritten Zuk, Patrick. Nikolay Myaskovsky: A Composer and His Times. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2021. xlvii + 533 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Music examples. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Indexes. £60.00; £19.99 (e-book): $99.00; $24.99 (e-book). This huge book sets itself three huge tasks: to introduce Miaskovskii's music and life to English-speaking listeners; to rehabilitate his reputation in the musical West; and to situate him in relation to the discourse of Socialist Realism. These three tasks it fulfils with care, thoroughness and plenty of musical insight. This weighty tome is well worth the cost. Miaskovskii's music is still largely unknown in English-speaking music circles; unknown rather than forgotten, despite the work done on CDs by performers. This speaks to the dominance of a certain set of assumptions [End Page 755] about what music — particularly instrumental symphonic music — should do, be, express and tell us. Miaskovskii's music, one might read between the lines, tells us things about ourselves in relation to our musical traditions and our pat assumptions that might be uncomfortable to ponder — about what self-expression is, what public artistic communication might be, about the limits of public debate through art, and so on. And if the Soviet era was a set of times and places in which these sorts of topics were not debated transparently and equitably but certainly were subject to discussion, then it might be concluded from this new book that Miaskovskii's music and his life each provide litmus tests for what music qua public art was, is, and might be. Miaskovskii's own reputation has existed until now in the West largely in relation to the discourse of Socialist Realism (and in relation to histories of the symphony). This book does a lot to disentangle his reputation from his political milieu — or at least, to show where they run parallel but are not the same thing. Zuk's evidence consists of a deep immersion in the music and a huge trawl of the composer's correspondence and a wealth of other archival sources, many of which remain unpublished and untranslated. His narrative sets aside space for several things: patient analyses of works that highlight the musical challenges that Miaskovskii set himself; details of the contexts that we need to acknowledge in relation to his choice of texts when these seem at first glance not to be those demanded by the regime; pertinent comparisons with works by relevant predecessors (Chaikovskii looms large, of course; pp. 54–55, 80, 85–86, 105, 180, 219, 419, 455); and, perhaps most challenging for a musicological study on this scale, an assessment of the ways in which Miaskovskii's works and performances might be judged today. Zuk is not afraid to make value judgements about specific works, and these will be a helpful start to anybody following him into the music. Thus, the Sixth Symphony is rated highly, as are the Thirteenth, Twenty-First, and Twenty-Seventh (p. 455), whereas the Second is criticized in detail. Similarly, the Second Cello Sonata is rated more highly than the Violin Sonata (p. 454). Zuk dismisses Soviet biographies of the composer for axe grinding and lacking correct information, and he writes at length about how various works were only tangentially or problematically examples of Socialist Realism (e.g. pp. 388–89, 434). He also provides detailed explanations of why Miaskovskii's creative responses to Socialist Realist doctrine — dictats that were nervously defined and individually self-justifying — need to be evaluated individually in relation to each separate work. Socialist Realism evolved chaotically, and so did the ways in which it was evaluated in public by those in power, as with, for example, the events of January 1948 during which Miaskovskii seems to have received the lion's share of the blame for the wider problems of a whole generation of composers, possibly for the simple reason that he had taught [End Page 756] many of them (pp. 436–37), but probably also because he had been the recipient of several Stalin prizes, which probably created jealousy and accusations of...

The Art of Mbira: Musical Inheritance and LegacyMbira's Restless Dance: An Archive of Improvisation, Vols. 1 &amp; 2

The Art of Mbira: Musical Inheritance and LegacyMbira's Restless Dance: An Archive of Improvisation, Vols. 1 &amp; 2

The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging

The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging

Performance Chronotope in the Piano Sonatas by Beethoven (op. 27 No. 2) and Schubert (D. 958)

The article examines the specifics of the performance chronotope (time-space) of two masterpieces written by outstanding composers-contemporaries, whose lifetime is characterized by a gradual transition from the classical to the romantic style. Its essential characteristics and the significance of their awareness by the pianist-performer in the practice of working at a musical piece are highlighted. The “performance chronotope” is one of the parameters involved in the field of contemporary music-performance interpretation (Nikolaievska, 2020: 144). This publication is related to our previous work, where space-time characteristics of clavier sonatas by D. Scarlatti, С. Ph. E. Bach, J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, and M. Clementi were revealed from the viewpoint of a piano performer (Tarabanov, 2021). Some parameters of the performance chronotope that have been outlined before – interaction and mutual balance of statics and dynamics, organizing function of performance time in sound musical form, metrorhythmic performance inertia, continuity of space-time and performance prediction (anticipation) – are supplemented by others, such as performance understanding of the form through working at details, and psychological space-time of the performer (as one of the components of the performance chronotope of the work). This is attributable to new interpretative tasks of the pianist in Beethoven’s and Schubert’s Sonatas under consideration. These works have not yet been the subject of analysis from the standpoint of performance chronotope characteristics, which, along with the use of an experimental research method (with the involvement of the author’s experience in concert performance of the considered works10), determined the scientific novelty of the presented study. The results of the study are supposed to be helpful for piano performers in their learning of these works and similar ones. It is especially relevant, because the greatest composer of piano sonatas, Ludwig van Beethoven, is in the spotlight all the time. His so-named “Moonlight” Sonata (op. 27 No. 2) continues to attract new generations of listeners, performers, and researchers (Rosen, 2002; Waltz, 2007; Gordon, 2017, and others). Beethoven’s direct successor, Franz P. Schubert created no less fascinating works in the genre of piano sonata. Among them is the Sonata D. 958 in C minor, where Beethoven’s influence is observed to a great extent. As in the case with concrete musical examples analyzed in the article, the piano performer can realize on practice their own interpretative searches connected with the use of timespace characteristics. In particular, a method of “expanding the performance chronotope” is recommended, which should significantly facilitate the mastering of complicated technical episodes.