Modern Music Research Articles

“Let Us Create a Modern Lithuania!” Confrontations of National Identity with Modernity in the Lithuanian Music Modernisation Discourse of the 1930s

Abstract The project of modernisation, which emerged as the central idea in the course of 20th-century Lithuanian music, predetermined many creative orientations and discoveries by Lithuanian composers of various generations, as well as critical reflection on their works. At the root of Lithuanian projections of musical modernism lies a central concern with questions of national identity, affected by crucial historical changes and political processes. In this paper, I explore issues of relationship between construction of national identity and the modernity, focusing in particular on public discussions concerning national and modern elements in music, which appeared in the musical press of the 1930s and became emblematic of subsequent Lithuanian music history. Among the most active participants of the debates were young composers and musicians who had set up the Society of Progressive Musicians in 1932 and the iscM Lithuanian Section in 1936: Vytautas Bacevičius, Jeronimas Kačinskas, and Vladas Jakubėnas. Their opinions marked a significant turning point in the national music discourse, updating and expanding the understanding and use of the concepts of modern and national music in Lithuania. The interwar polemical observations, insights and statements were effectively elaborated in later reception and served as basis for a reinterpretation and revision of the Lithuanian music modernisation discourse.

Inter-artistic theory of modernism: reflections on the book by Elena Korchova "Musical modernism as terra cognita"

The purpose of the article is to analyze the theoretical aspect of the concept of musical modernism O. Korchova, to identify debatable aspects important for the creation of the inter-artistic theory of modernism. Methodology: used historical, cultural, and comparative methods, with the involvement of philosophy and psychology. The scientific novelty of the study is that the musicological concept of modernism is compared with the literary, which proves the need to create an inter-artistic theory of modernism, necessary in the practice of stylistic analysis of modernist works. Conclusions. An important achievement of O. Korchova's research is the search for a "stylistic formula" of each composer of the epoch. The artist is looking not just for a consonant style or form, but for himself and his style. Individual style does not arise from simple combinations of borrowed. Styles of modernism conflict with each other, to combine them, to avoid eclecticism, you need to find a way and a reason to combine. The way to find your style is never purely artistic, it is always vital. Modernists, putting art in the first place in aesthetics, discovered the concept of life creation, which distinguishes the modernist from the artists of previous eras. Life-creation is a special way of an artist into art, movement simultaneously in two dimensions, external and internal, their constant coordination and gradual transformation of oneself, with life and works together, into a cultural phenomenon. And if this happened - then something unique was formed, unique, completely individual, and at the same time universal, something original and holistic, something that will become a value for contemporaries and descendants, that is, the author's style. Just as it is not easy for every artist to find his style, so it is not easy for a researcher to find a formula for this style. But without such a goal, the study of creativity will be historiographical, descriptive, and rhetorical. It is important for every scholar who studies specific texts of culture to understand the trends of the era and the psychology of the creative process, all the laws that unite.

A Loose Affiliation of Alleluias

This article is written from our perspectives as a performer and a composer, focusing on our violin concerto, “a loose affiliation of alleluias”, which we created and premiered in 2019. Making this concerto was an exercise in excavating the material histories that guide our creative practice. Our purpose in doing so was to work towards a clear and necessarily complex appraisal of how our current practices are motivated by, and reproduce, historically-determined knowledge, authority, and cultural attitudes. We think through our own reproductions of historical knowledge via Ben Spatz’s exegesis of “technique”, and via Edward Said’s notion of “affiliations” as the networks which build up cultural associations and cultural authority. With this theoretical frame, we contextualize some of the musical techniques and tropes engaged in our concerto—for instance polyphony, ornamentation, and the concerto soloist as heroic subject. 
 We contextualize our reflections next to critical positions staked circumscribed by what Ben Piekut calls “elite avantgardism”—an analytical category which we see ourselves as operating within. We discuss, for instance, the critical gestures of musical modernism which (per Adorno’s analysis) conspicuously arrest and negate historical musical grammars and logics – and yet continue to reproduce its structuring values. In our concluding statements we gesture towards some of the pedagogical implications of this work, considering how creative practice can be leveraged to re-appraise the histories shaping our practices of composition, improvisation, and performance.

Book Review: Copyright for Schools: A Practical Guide, 6th Edition

New for 2021 is the sixth edition of Copyright for Schools: A Practical Guide, by Carol Simpson and Sara E. Wolf. Ms. Simpson is an attorney and former professor of library and information science, with additional experience as a school librarian, teacher, and district library administrator. Ms. Wolf is a professor in Auburn University’s College of Education, with research interests in library media and technology and experience in institutional copyright policy development. The book is designed to address the copyright issues and questions that tend to arise for K-12 teachers, school librarians, and school administrators, though librarians in other contexts such as public libraries and higher education would likely find its contents useful too. The sixth edition updates previous editions by adding content on the copyright implications of streaming video services and cloud computing, issues related to disability, responding to cease-and-desist letters, openly licensed resources and Creative Commons licenses, and the implications of the Music Modernization Act. The latest edition of the book also contains a concordance (a table of legal citations and the principles for which they stand), and more robust legal citations than previous editions.

Recorder Use in Sacred Music during the Spanish Siglo de Oro: Archival Evidence, Historical Practices, and Applications in Performance

This article presents findings and conclusions from a recently completed Ph.D. project which researched the use of recorders in performing sacred music in Spanish cathedrals and churches during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This study also examined interactions of the historical findings with artistic questions arising in twenty-first-century performance of sacred music repertoire. Paradoxically, while numerous sets of recorders were purchased by ecclesiastic institutions during the sixteenth century, most contemporary compositions did not specifically call for their use. As well, surviving sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century documentation is highly fragmentary regarding the participatory role of recorders in sacred repertoire of this period. Scholarly research and writing had not addressed this issue, and many questions persisted regarding any role of recorders in this repertoire. Sacred music of this era offers the modern musician an extensive and rich potential repertoire of supreme quality and beauty. Therefore, in seeking an historically informed basis for performance, this project asked if recorders were used in such works in Spanish ecclesiastic institutions during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and, if so, how.

The Metaphor of Sweetness in Medieval and Modern Music Listening

Historical listening has long been a topic of interest for musicologists. Yet, little attention has been given to the systematic study of historical listening practices before the common practice era (c. 1700–present). In the first study of its kind, this research compared a model of medieval perceptions of “sweetness” based on writings of medieval music theorists with modern day listeners’ aesthetic responses. Responses were collected through two experiments. In an implicit associations experiment, participants were primed with a more or less consonant musical excerpt, then presented with a sweet or bitter target word, or a non-word, on which to make lexical decisions. In the explicit associations experiment, participants were asked to rate on a three-point Likert scale perceived sweetness of short musical excerpts that varied in consonance and sound quality (male, female, organ). The results from these experiments were compared to predictions from a medieval perception model to investigate whether early and modern listeners have similar aesthetic responses. Results from the implicit association test were not consistent with the predictions of the model, however, results from the explicit associations experiment were. These findings indicate the metaphor of sweetness may be useful for comparing the aesthetic responses of medieval and modern listeners.

Fall 2021 Supplement to Brauneis & Schechter, Copyright: A Contemporary Approach

This Fall 2021 Supplement is the product of our effort to capture important developments in copyright law since the publication of the second edition of Copyright: A Contemporary Approach. It includes two new principal cases, both Supreme Court decisions: the 2021 fair use decision in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., and the 2020 decision about copyright protection for state statutes in Georgia v. Public.Resources.Org. The supplement also includes notes on many other cases, and a few new features that we thought would enhance study of U.S. copyright law. In light of the passage of the Music Modernization Act in October 2018, we have completely revised Chapter 12.E., on digital audio transmission rights, and Chapter 12.F., on rights in pre-1972 sound recordings. The new Chapter 12.E. in this supplement, “Digital Streaming of Music After the Musical Works Modernization Act,” now consists of a general introduction to copyright and the streaming of music, covering both rights in sound recordings and rights in musical works, and all of the relevant exclusive rights.

The Music Modernization Act: A Songwriter's Perspective

This chapter is a songwriter’s essay on the Music Modernization Act and how it attempts to address the future of the songwriting profession in the digital age. Although the advent of streaming has resuscitated the music industry writ large, songwriters—unlike artists and record labels—are regulated by the government in ways that have stopped them from receiving their fair share of the growing pie. The author explains from a songwriter’s perspective how the MMA was designed to address these issues and assesses its strengths and weaknesses, the compromises that led to its passage, and the challenges going forward.

Musical Collaboration as an Integral Part of Modern Music Making

Musical Collaboration as an Integral Part of Modern Music Making

Review of Broken Beauty: Musical Modernism and the Representation of Disability by Joseph N. Straus

No abstract available.

Interpretation Content of the Modern Musical Theater: Portrait in the Style of ad Libitum

Relevance of the study. The interpretive space of modern musical theater is one of the most dynamic, multivariate and modernized world culture phenomena. In the era of culture “non-classical paradigm” the past cult operas viability is maintained through their renewed representation and “alienation”. The refusal to perceive the author’s work as complete and the only possible for realization emancipates the modern interpretive strategy and opens up endless possibilities until the emergence of the “corporate” opera text’s phenomenon. So the interpretation process extends to the work’s “inner sanctum” — to its music and thus allows the involvement of the modern artist’s personality to co-author with the composer of the past. The unique example is the opera project “Boris” by corporate authorship of Modest Mussorgsky and contemporary Russian-German composer Sergei Nevsky (2020, Staatsoper). The need for update the ideas about the modern musical theater’s interpretive strategy and the lack of this project research provides the relevance and the innovative essence of the material.Main objective of the study is to determine the modern interpretive strategies of modern opera theater on the example of the project “Boris”.Methodology. The material specificity led to the adaptation of the fellowing research methods: the interpretive — to identify the modern musical theater main interpretive strategies in relation to the production of “Boris Godunov” by M. Mussorgsky with an emphasis on the project “Boris”; the hermeneutic-semantic — for the purpose of reveal the intonation-image specificity of the analyzed S. Nevsky’s project; the comparative — for juxtaposition of two co-operas authored by Mussorgsky and Nevsky as components of the project “Boris”; the holistic intonation analysis — to study the intonation and drama specifics of the hybrid work.Results and conclusions. The modernity interpretive reality initiates the emergence of radically new trends in the opera interpretation. An example of the modern musical theater innovative strategy is the hybrid project “Boris” synthesized from two stylistically contrasting operas that belong to different epochs: “Boris Godunov” by M. Mussorgsky and “Second-hand Time” by S. Nevsky. The research considered the intonation-genre specificity and its indicators from the point of view of the associative musical text theory. The associative text of “Boris” exists in two versions: as a quotation (in S. Nevsky’s opera “Second-hand Time” was adapted the material from “Boris Godunov” by M. Mussorgsky); b) in the form of a whole work presented by Mussorgsky’s opera “Boris Godunov” in the framework of the entire project “Boris” which is a unique opera phenomenon.

CREATIVE PORTRAIT OF VOLODYMYR DOTSENKO AS EXPRESSION OF THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSALISM

The contemporary national Ukrainian art of guitar performance is actively growing. In the latest decades it is experiencing a veritable takeoff. One of the primary objectives of modern musicology is to extensively study the phenomenon of Ukrainian guitar art, specifically its regional variations. The establishment of regional schools of guitar and study of prominent artists deserve detailed research. The article examines the multifaceted creative individuality of Volodymyr Dotsenko, the founder of professional school of classical guitar in Kharkiv. His artistic image is firstly pondered in the light of universalism. Such major areas of the artist’s interest are explored as conducting, teaching practice, research and socio-educational activity, which all lie in close conjunction with each other and contribute to the universalistic image of a modern musician. A specific focus is made on the early development of artistic universalism in Dotsenko, which begins in the early days of his professional activity. The article shows how the quality of education and upbringing contributes to shaping a multifaceted creative individuality. The analysis of Dotsenko’s performance style displays such universalistic features as a deep understanding of the interpretative idea core, stylistic and technical immaculacy in performance of guitar pieces from diverse styles, exquisite taste in selection of conceptual concert programs. Afresh approach to the teaching of guitar performance and years of experience in training firstclass performer laid groundwork to a corpus of academic methodical literature, which fully conveys the principles of comprehensive universalist development of a musician. Dotsenko’s teaching and scholarly activities are characterized by deep understanding of the technical aspects of classical guitar performance, a highly academic approach, extensive knowledge, precise turn of phrase, and colorful imagery. Meanwhile, Dotsenko’s organization skills brought about the creation of a unique ensemble: the Kharkiv guitar orchestra, as well as a number of academic and practical conferences and classical guitar contests. All of these events heavily contributed to further development of Ukrainian guitar art. Dotsenko is an example of Ukrainian creative elite, a unique musician, professor, academic, and social activist. The universalist traits characteristic of his artistic individuality, can be observed in every field of his creative output and are the main qualitative feature of his personality.

Типичные построения bridge в джазовой музыке 20–60-х годов XX века

One of the most important components that determine the level of professional competence of a modern musician specializing in jazz music performance is mastering the basic laws of the art of improvisation, based on knowledge and understanding of the laws of traditional harmonic structures and stylistic features of jazz music of the 20–60s of the XX century. A qualified performer and teacher must have knowledge of the skills and abilities of this type of musical practice, which are aimed not so much at improving various techniques of playing the instrument, as at the competent use of stylistic elements of the musical language, its means of expression and forms. The typology and systematization of the main types of harmonic schemes of jazz works of the middle of the twentieth century helps the optimal practical and theoretical assimilation of technological principles and various creative methods aimed at further developing the harmonious thinking of the performer. Within the framework of this research, an analysis of the basic structures of the middle parts in jazz music of the 20–60s of the XX century is undertaken. Methods for studying this issue based on the works of David Baker, Jerry Cooker, Mark Levine and Richard Scott are presented.

Research on the Use of Computer Music in Modern Musical Composition

In the ever-changing society, disruptive technology not only causes a tremendous impact on the instruments that musicians play, but also how they make music and how we perceive them. Music algorithms and software as well as computational models are evolving as critical tools to give life to original musical ideas, diversify the nature of music, and create magnificent works of art. Even artificial intelligence can be applied to this vibrant field because they both deal with intellectual and emotional human activities. This paper investigates the current developments of computer music, its influence on the elements of modern music composition, and best practices of their applications in the music industry. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the use of computer music on music creation, analyze the latest trends of technical developments in music, to recognize the enormous potential of computer music along with its practical applications.

Music, metaphor and modernism: Barrie Gavin’s composer portraits

The Royal Philharmonic Society has described the series of composer portraits created by Barrie Gavin as ‘an unprecedented legacy and treasure trove for musicians and curious listeners alike to discover’. These profiles are characterized by their commitment to music of living composers, but also to a repertoire that has become increasingly marginalized in arts coverage in the half century or so since Gavin’s first portrait. This article examines Gavin’s contribution to the filmic presentation of musical modernism of the past 50 years and, in particular, explores his use of creative visual metaphors as a tool for interpretation.

The Vocal Cycle “A Dream in the Red Chamber” by Chinese Composer Wang Liping: Refraction of National Traditions in a Modern Musical Form

The Vocal Cycle “A Dream in the Red Chamber” by Chinese Composer Wang Liping: Refraction of National Traditions in a Modern Musical Form

The Focus of Modern Music Pedagogy in Educational Institutions of Ukraine

Contemporary art education has embarked on a path of reform and modernisation in accordance with the requirements of society. Among the current issues of the development of art pedagogy the following ones occupy a prominent place: modernisation of the content of art education, realisation of its educational potential, research of specifics of art-pedagogical diagnostics, problems of implementation of interactive methods. Defining the focus of modern music pedagogy in educational music institutions of Ukraine is relevant to the world trends and has a scientific and practical nature. The analysis of scientific sources leads to the conclusion that music and pedagogical education is a multidimensional system, between the components of which there is a close inseparable relationship. The following tasks were given: to clarify the relation between such concepts as “pedagogy as an art”, “pedagogical practice” and “pedagogy as a science”; to analyse the qualitative and quantitative state of music institutions of Ukraine; consider the features of primary music education and identify changes in higher music education. General scientific methods of idealisation and formalisation allowed to find out how science and art are related in music-pedagogical activity. The method of axiological analysis was used to determine the value of music education, which is aimed to educate a harmonious personality capable to self-realization. The presence of music schools and schools of art in Ukraine according to regions is analysed with the help of the statistical method. There is an urgent need for methodological work aimed at improving the professional level of music education of teachers and the level of their innovative culture and literacy, which is a task for training future music school teachers or music teachers in higher education.

Björn Heile, Charles Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music

This is a very large book. It is over 500 pages of 1.5 spaced A4 paper in very small (11-point, I believe) font. Its editors, Bjorn Heile and Charles Wilson, have assembled a dense phalanx of scholars offering interpretations and methodological approaches to the question of musical modernism which often diverge and mutually contradict. Some, like J. P. E. Harper-Scott, present what is in essence a primer to a much more detailed and expansive methodological framework. Others, like Mark Berry a...

Bartók’s Hungarian Musical Avant-Gardism

According to Lajos Kassák’s recollections in 1961, Bartók found elements in his poetry that lay close to his own experiments in music. In a 1926 interview, however, in which he emphasized the closeness of his art to that of poet Endre Ady, Bartók unambiguously stated that the idea of Kassák and his circle to link his music with their journal was founded on a mistake. Was Bartók then really close to those few representatives of Hungarian avant-garde in the later 1910s when his art was enthusiastically propagated in the periodical MA [Today]? Bartók’s changing attitude to musical modernism and the meaning of a “Rembrantian concept,” almost casually mentioned in the same 1926 interview and obviously meant to refer to an idea markedly different from that of the so-called “activists,” are discussed in the essay with reference to the composer’s public and private writings as well as the stylistic development of his music especially between 1908 and 1926.

Distribution Of Unmatched Accrued Royalties Under The Music Licensing Modernization Act Of 2018

This article examined the legal and economic implications of the vast sum of unpaid royalties resulting from the use and streaming of copyrighted musical works that is currently waiting to be distributed, as well as the implications of the reforms passed as part of Title I of the Music Modernization Act of 2018, the Music Licensing Modernization Act of 2018. First, it provides an overview of the relevant legal provisions and the economic system they support — copyright basics, the copyright royalty system, and the Music Licensing Modernization Act — and then assesses the scope of the problem facing unidentified copyright owners within this framework. Then, it discusses the means by which the Music Licensing Modernization Act proposes to distribute these unpaid accrued royalties, as well as other proposals for how such payments could be structured to reflect the composition and relative power dynamics of the sound recording market. While the provisions enacted by the Music Licensing Modernization Act are a noble start and provide a helpful first step in improving the mechanical license market for musical works, in the long run, further reform is necessary to ensure a more equitable form of remuneration to all stakeholders in the music copyright market.