Musical Statement Research Articles

EXPRESSIVE AND DESCRIPTIVE FUNCTIONS OF ORNAMENTATION IN THE 17TH CENTURY VOCAL MUSIC

he demand for Baroque music on the concert stage sets high requirements for singers in terms of the performance style. At present, the issues of reproducing vocal ornamentation in ancient arias are the primary tasks. Given the lack of knowledge and skills of baroque improvisation among Russian singers, the ornamentation used often represents, in fact, only a technical aspect that the soloists are diligently trying to cope with. At the same time, ornaments often sound "empty", not expressive, not corresponding to the main purpose which is to emphasise affect. According to the instructions of the 17th century masters, the main purpose of performing music was to show the passions of the human soul. The singers’ fundamental task was to maximise the impact on the listener’s feelings and to awake affects in them through an intoned word. As a vivid expressive means, ornamentation contributed to the emphasis of certain words in the general context. Moreover, according to the instructions of teachers from the past, singers needed to convey one or another affect with the appropriate intonation of the voice. The artistic function of ornaments came down to increasing the level of performance expressiveness. Various ornamentation (melismas and passages) had to be used purely to enhance the musical statement. The proposed article is aimed at solving actual problems in the field of Baroque performance, problems related to the correct interpretation and performance of vocal ornaments in 17th century works. The historicism principle is the methodological basis of the work. Using the methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as the cultural and historical method of research, the author managed to recreate the historical significance of the ornament in connection with the opera traditions of the 17th century. The author's position is that for a singer, it is important to understand the figurative and expressive functions of any type of ornamentation (melismas, passages) as one of the main means of expression, contributing to revealing the composition affect, which presents scientific novelty and is the main conclusion of the article. The content and conclusions of the article will be useful to musicians, singers performing 17th century compositions for their stylistically correct interpretation, as well as in training courses on the history of vocal performance and stylistics at Performing Arts departments of music colleges and university faculties.

The logic of forming a musical text in a solo piano-jazz improvisation by M. Petrucciani on the theme of T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight”

Statement of the problem. Due to the natural tendency to constant renewal, the phenomena that arise in the field of jazz music-making, cause special scientific interest. The jazz art of the second half of the 20th century is represented by numerous names of bright musicians who formed the latest approaches to improvisational art in their creativity. One of such musicians was an unique pianist of Italian-French origin – Michel Petrucciani (1962–1999). The study of his heritage provides opportunities to reveal some aspects of modern jazz art, which are genetically related to the embodiment of the traditions of Western European music-making in piano jazz, and also to mark the vectors of its further evolution. Nevertheless, M. Petrucciani’s solo piano creativity is not studied for a present time. Some English-, French- and German-language articles, films and interviews with the musician are represented, mainly in online-resources. These works have mostly biographical direction and contain brief information about pianist’s aesthetic views and preferences, his creative achievements, and the state of his health, since the artist suffered from a rare congenital disease all his life. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to reveal the specifics of the structural and compositional logic of jazz improvisation on the popular theme of T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight” interpreted by M. Petrucciani, in the context of solo piano creativity of the latter. The solo piano work of M. Petrucciani, who without exaggeration can be called one of the outstanding musicians of the last century, has not yet been subject to scientific analysis in domestic musicology, which determines the innovative focus of this study. A set of research approaches – historical-genetic, comparative, hermeneutic, traditional methods of musicological analysis – contributed to the disclosure of the chosen topic. Research results and conclusion. In the course of the research, genetic, genre, structural, intonation, rhythmic, textural and other features inherent in the theme “’Round Midnight” were revealed in the context of compositional and piano-improvisational style of T. Monk – a progressive musician-innovator, one of the inspirations of the bebop style, as well as a conclusion about the features of individual interpreting the theme by M. Petrucciani was justified. M. Petrucciani in the improvisation on T. Monk’s “’Round Midnight” theme demonstrates self-own unique bright improvisational style, talentedly combining virtuosity with intonation meaningfulness and accuracy of phrases, with expressiveness of a musical statement that has a philosophical undertone, and the academic traditions of music-making, learned during his studies, with American and Western European jazz ones. The variety of methods of melodic-harmonic, textural, dynamic development used by the pianist testify not only to the musician’s desire to demonstrate virtuoso mastery of the instrument, but also contribute to the realization of the unique concept of the work.

A Survey of Four Introductions by Chick Corea

Chick Corea’s florid and adventurous piano introductions burst with rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic invention. Like Erroll Garner, Corea often constructs introductions that stand on their own as complete musical statements and draw from a unique relationship with the piano and its literature. From 1965 to 1971, Corea developed several approaches to introductions that allow for increasing levels of harmonic and formal complexity and greater control of timbre that he continued to use and expand on. All these developments are crucial to Corea’s evolution as an improviser, pianist, and composer. This document will examine four introductions: “This Is New,” recorded in 1965 for the album Tones for Joan’s Bones; “Steps,” recorded in 1968 for the album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs; “Nefertiti,” recorded in 1970 for the album The Song of Singing; and “Trinkle Tinkle” recorded in 1971 for the album Piano Improvisations Vol. 2.

What can the Welsh school music sector learn from the community music movement?

This article draws on theories of creative development articulated by Sawyer and Green as well as reflecting upon data from case studies of projects run in Wales with community ensembles Wonderbrass, South Wales Intercultural Community Arts and London-based Kinetica Bloco. It proposes a model of learning for music education in Wales that promotes active creative participation and fosters the speaking of a musical language rather than simply the reading of it. In the context of Welsh Government’s recent education review, the article advocates a music policy of creative engagement, with musical materials that go beyond the pedagogy of imitation. Here I propose a creative engagement method that empowers participants to interact with musical materials by creating their own musical statements within a musical style or language, whether through extemporization, improvisation or composition.

Mulher cantada em prosa e verso

Na música popular brasileira (MPB), o espaço e voz da mulher na construção de sua própria identidade é suprimido quando esta é limitada à posição de objeto-motivo das canções. Nesse sentido, este trabalho busca identificar quando a representação social da mulher se dá como um sujeito/self na MPB, além de dar destaque ao espaço sócio-histórico das cantoras brasileiras nesse processo. Por sua vez, os objetivos específicos se pautam no uso da Teoria das Representações Sociais (TRS) de Serge Moscovici (1961) e da teoria da linguagem de Mikhail Bakhtin (1929). O material e métodos utilizados consistem na análise qualitativa e quantitativa de enunciados musicais dos principais álbuns de vozes femininas, lançados entre 1930-1980, e retirados do livro “300 Discos Importantes da Música Brasileira” de Charles Gavin (2008). Como resultado, a ênfase na natureza social da linguagem de Bakhtin se mostrou contundente com a aplicação da TRS em um objeto de estudo de caráter interacionista: a música popular. Além disso, devido ao baixo número de composições femininas, o papel da intérprete, por vezes, é essencial para a consolidação da RS de uma mulher-sujeito. Desse modo, apesar da maioria dos enunciados musicais construir a figura da mulher por meio de uma ótica externalizada, há forte influência dos contextos de produção e das conquistas sócio-históricas femininas nas letras das canções analisadas. Assim, destaca-se o dialogismo contexto e discurso na MPB, a qual se constitui como um reflexo sensível de disputas simbólicas sociais.

The Soviet Song Statement of the 1960s–1970s in the Perspective of the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology

The article considers the potential of a strong program of cultural sociology in the research of the Soviet song policy in the 1960s and 1970s. Mass musical genres of the cultural industry era are usually consid-ered in the historicist optics of emancipation and diversification. With such optics, institutional contexts serve only as a background against which the evolution of the post-folklore unfolds. The disadvantage of this approach is the uncritical mixing of the tools of classicist criticism with modern tools of social theo-ry. The Soviet song Estrada formed its own type of song statements by simultaneously rebuilding the in-stitutions of social performance, musical political economy, and aesthesis that served these institutions. Non-reductionist optics, which, from Alexander’s point of view lie at the intersection of structuralist and hermeneutical tools, have a pronounced specificity when applied to mass musical genres. The system of intonation combined with the poetic word brought to a state of pure mechanical self-reproduction, ac-cording to Adorno, somehow pushes us to describe and decipher the system of meanings of such a product. In order that the search for thickness in the description of musical phenomena does not lead to new reduc-tions, it is necessary to abandon what, at first glance, connects sound with culture, and replace the con-cepts of “song” and “music” with “song statement” and “musical statement”. Using the concepts of “nobil-ity”, “authenticity”, and “depth” that occupied post-war song discourses, we demonstrate the mechanisms of their circulation within the institute of Estrada in connection with the topoi of song statement that in-duce social imagination. To do this, we add the attitude for a thick description, in which the cultural meanings supplied by song statements appear in close connection with the Soviet social imagination, to the usual pattern of analysis of the Adornian sociology of smash hits and chamber music forms.

Zvučna semantika u savremenoj svadbenoj procesualnosti Srba u Gračanici

This paper is based on a field research of musical and folkloric materials of the Serbian population in the central part of Kosovo and Metohija, which was conducted in the period from 2015 to 2017 by the authors. During the specified time period, the authors recorded extensive collection of materials dominated by various forms of vocal expressions, and a special place is given to the wedding songs which are part of various ritual activities present in the current practice of the area. It is a part of the testimony of folk verbal and musical statements, and especially the participatory observation of the wedding ceremony that we attended in Gracanica, on September 6, 2015. Focusing on our participation in the wedding ritual in Gracanica, as a sort of paradigmatic form of this process in a wider (specified) territory, we point to the specific sustainability of traditional wedding practice, through consideration of actional, temporal, locative, personal and musical-poetic systems, in diachronic and the synchronous plane. Special attention is given to the musical component of the wedding ceremony, as well as the analysis of songs which usually function as a musical time frame of the wedding ritual. Perceiving musical characteristics of the songs through the analysis of melodies, tonal sequences, meters and other features will enable perception of the characteristics of the genre itself. Nevertheless, locating musical texts in a certain time and space enhances the importance of singing performances within the entire ritual complex.

О смысловых структурах музыкального текста в тематизме фортепианных произведений

The musical thematicism of piano compositions of various styles is uncommonly rich and diverse. Outwardly its features are fixated in the score. However, the performer who is able to discern the semantic structures in the musical text will always have the opportunity of supple operation of them and creation of a bright performing plan of a musical composition on the basis of the revealed signature forms. Deciphered in the context of practical semantics, the semantic structures of a musical text may be combined into the performer’s scenario and manifested during the process of interpretation of a concrete composition. The acute reaction on the part of the performer, the instant restructuring of the playing apparatus and performance regulators of meaning – tempo, dynamics, articulation, agogics, and, altogether, intonation – all of this is possible to perfect and actualize with the aid of contemporary methods of work on the musical text. Characteristics of semantic differentiation and detailization within the authorial text – narrative programs, the theatralization of piano sound, musical dialogues, solo improvisational and ensemble musical statements – are fixated in a particular way in signature structures of the musical text and may be perceived and intoned by the performer. Keywords: musical text, semantic structures, plot-related situational signs, musical dialogues, intonational formulas, semantic figures, performance scenario.

Old School: Some Analytical Notes on Schoenberg, <em>Five Pieces for Orchestra</em>, Op. 16 No. 2 (“Vergangenes“)

VARIATION/VARIATIONS: WHAT SCHOENBERG’S APPROACH TO FORMENLEHRE CAN REVEAL ABOUT HIS MUSICAL LANGUAGE(S) ANDREW MEAD RNOLD SCHOENBERG’S ADAPTATIONS OF traditional Formenlehre models have proven useful in understanding the language of his twelvetone compositions. His adaptations of the outlines of sonata and rondo forms in the Wind Quintet, op. 26, for example, can be very revealing as to his development of segmental and non-segmental relationships among members of his row class as a mechanism for articulating largescale structure.1 But such an approach is fruitful in examining Schoenberg’s use of other musical languages as well. In what follows I intend to use this approach to consider the language in a late and relatively ignored composition, the Variations on a Recitative for organ, op. 40. This work, written during the composer’s American period, has often been described as a return to tonality. Glenn Watkins (1965), in his pioneering article on this composition, quotes Stuckenschmidt as claiming that the work is in D minor, although a D minor that is so altered by chromaticism that it has lost its original nature. Schoenberg A 76 Perspectives of New Music himself wrote to Leibowitz that it “filled the space between my Chamber Symphony op. 9 and the ‘dissonant’ music.” And he goes on to say, “A great number of unutilized possibilities are to be found therein.” (Watkins 1965, 124) Both of these quotations suggest the problematics of trying to fit the work’s language to the strictures of traditional tonality, no matter how enriched by chromaticism. What I hope to suggest in the following is that it is possible to infer from the music a set of voice-leading principles at work that suggest an alternative approach to composing in the total chromatic in contrast to that developed by the composer in his more familiar twelve-tone compositions. I hope also to suggest that certain principles of creating musical structure found in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music can be fruitfully applied to thinking about op. 40. There are a number of reasons that this work remains in comparative obscurity, but I strongly believe that this is not due to its musical merit. I agree with Watkins in his assessment that the Variations on a Recitative is no pale companion to the Variations for Orchestra, op. 31, but that it displays a richness and breadth of conception that allows it to stand on its own as one of Schoenberg’s major musical statements. It is some twenty minutes in length, and is his most extensive solo work. It is a major composition in the organ repertoire, arguably on a par with Max Reger’s finest organ work, Variations and Fugue on an Original Theme, op. 73. But therein lies the problem: the organ repertoire is only tangentially familiar to most non-specialist listeners, and Schoenberg’s own relationship to the instrument was not an easy one. Watkins covers this at some length, so I will not repeat it here, but it is worth noting that Schoenberg saw fit to orchestrate a selection of Bach’s organ works, apparently in an effort to make them more clearly understandable to his contemporaries. This is not the place to rehearse the history of organ building and performance conventions that would have led Schoenberg to this stance, but it helps explain why his own notation for the piece requires extensive interpretation to make it even playable. Marilyn Mason (1965) has described her experiences in working with Schoenberg in preparing her performance, and while the published score edited by Carl Weinrich is useful for interpreting the work on a large instrument, it is only one perspective on a piece that I believe can be played successfully on more circumscribed instruments as well. Some have suggested that Schoenberg intended to orchestrate the work, but while others have completed such projects, I personally find the music most satisfying in its original medium. Variation/Variations 77 Before proceeding, it will be useful to distinguish between Schoenberg ’s concept of developing variation and his ideas about writing formal sets of variations. Developing variation describes Schoenberg’s attitude about constantly reshaping the presentation of ideas or motives in the flow...

Музыка США: в поисках национального стиля (к 120-летию А. Копланда)

The three first decades of the 20th century in the history of development of the USA music were period of its coming in mature age and forming of national musical traditions. This period is noted by vigorous concert and composer activity, appearance of new forms and means of musical expressiveness, development of national musical consciousness of the American composers. They address national images and symbols of the country and use melodies of national songs and dances. Music of the USA begins to sound in own way, its voice is allocated against the background of the world sound universe. The main method of a research of formation process of the USA national musical style is historical, stylistical, and theoretical analysis of musical texts of the American composers' works as primary sources of art, comparison of the ways of national musical development which was in the USA and the other countries, and also generalization of scientific views and theories of the American musicologists and historians. Having begun with citing or cultivating of traditional melodies, the American composers soon came to reconstruction and reflection of the musical thinking features, characteristic for the different nations, in their works, having captured thereby the essence – musical mentality of the Americans. There are such features characterizing national style of the American music as blues complex of expressive means, responsory and variable type of musical statement, ballad, country, and spiritual melodic typical for traditional music of the white and black population of the USA, jazz rhythmic, etc.

Early Influence of Musical Abilities and Working Memory on Speech Imitation Abilities: Study with Pre-School Children.

Musical aptitude and language talent are highly intertwined when it comes to phonetic language ability. Research on pre-school children’s musical abilities and foreign language abilities are rare but give further insights into the relationship between language and musical aptitude. We tested pre-school children’s abilities to imitate unknown languages, to remember strings of digits, to sing, to discriminate musical statements and their intrinsic (spontaneous) singing behavior (“singing-lovers versus singing nerds”). The findings revealed that having an ear for music is linked to phonetic language abilities. The results of this investigation show that a working memory capacity and phonetic aptitude are linked to high musical perception and production ability already at around the age of 5. This suggests that music and (foreign) language learning capacity may be linked from childhood on. Furthermore, the findings put emphasis on the possibility that early developed abilities may be responsible for individual differences in both linguistic and musical performances.

Bringing The Scarlet Letter into The Scarlet Professor: A Composer's Reflections

Bringing <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> into <i>The Scarlet Professor</i>: A Composer's Reflections

Pietro Antonio Bianco’s Missa Percussit Saul mille: A Precursor of the Habsburg Imperial musica politica of the Seventeenth Century

The article establishes the most appropriate context for understanding Pietro Antonio Bianco’s Missa Percussit Saul mille. In 1601 the Inner-Austrian Archduke Ferdinand II appears to have commissioned a Mass based on Giovanni Croce’s militaristic motet Percussit Saul mille for a solemn Mass celebrated before his departure for the battle of Kanisza. Its composition was entrusted to Ferdinand’s kapellmeister, Bianco. The latter’s Mass seems to be a musical statement of political ideas and demonstrates the function, convention and ideology of ceremonial sacred music at the Graz court around the turn of the sixteenth century. It reflects a political-musical culture that flourished even more greatly after Ferdinand became Emperor.

Hard floors, harsh sounds and the northern anti-festival

This article explores the history and context of the post-punk festival Futurama, inaugurated in 1979 within the cavernous, makeshift and disintegrating venue of Leeds Queens Hall, and running on an annual basis for five years. As a musical statement Futurama gathered the provincial post-punk micro-scenes that were congealing in many cities in the North and beyond, building upon a vaguely coherent common strand of moving beyond punk, by adding a sense of industrial angst and futuristic ambiguity. Futurama went against the grain. Large festivals emerging from the hippie and rock scenes had settled with events such as Glastonbury and Reading and catered for audiences within those scenes; however both punk/post-punk and the North became excluded from this culture. The article then documents the immediate post-punk environment as it grew in the (post-)industrial North through the lens of Futurama’s, with an emphasis on the problematic status of Leeds as a city trying to assert its own post-punk identity. The time of Futurama is then looked back on in both a hauntological context and a discussion of place (and buildings within place). The locations of the events and their staging as a kind of inversion of the open space and fresh-air ideology of festivals is considered within a framework of architectural other-directedness.

Estonian Music Days Festival, opening weekend, 10–12 April 2015

Broad textures, clear but unforced musical statements, a focus on tone and sound colour – at the 2015 Estonian Music Days festival all these characteristics of music from the Baltic states were much in evidence, yet its many young composers are all taking these ideas in different directions. The result, judging from the opening weekend of the festival, is a collection of works emerging clearly from a singular musical tradition, but energised by continually expanding diversity and invention. The vibrant new music scene here in Estonia belies the country's diminutive size.

A Series on the Edge: Social Tension inStar Trek's Title Cue

AbstractThe original series ofStar Trek(1966–69) documents the social tensions of the late 1960s, responding positively, on the one hand, to the progressive political and social movements of the Civil Rights era by supporting racial and gender equality, but resisting its own efforts on the other, remaining faithful to conservative power structures. As the representative musical statement of the series,Star Trek'stitle cue embodies and expresses this paradox. Using audio-visual analysis, as well as sketch scores, interviews, and correspondence from the archives of the series’ composers and producers, this article analyzes the cue's compositional history, its musical codes, its narrative structure, and its use as framing, referential, and leitmotivic material within the series’ underscore in order to demonstrate the ways in which it communicatesStar Trek'sconflicting ideologies.

This much is true

This section is dedicated to the review of ideas, articles, books, films and other media. It will include replies (and rejoinders) to articles, the evaluation of new ideas or proposals, and reviews of books and articles both directly and indirectly related to intellectual property law. It's 1982. Members of the British musical group Spandau Ballet are in Nassau, the Bahamas, at Compass Point Studios, recording their third album. The group's songwriter, Gary Kemp, wrote a love song to singer Clare Grogan of the band Altered Images, whom he met while both were performing on Top of the Pops. The backing tracks are in place and the time has come for the newest member of the band, Steve Norman, to record his solo. Though Norman has only been playing saxophone for a year, the musical statement he's about to create will play a significant role in launching the song ‘True’ to the number one spot on the UK charts, the number four spot on the US charts and into heads of innumerable listeners for years to come.

Easy to Cut

One of the defining characteristics of Bernard Herrmann’s film music is its modular construction: his cues are typically assembled from short blocks of musical material rather than extended melodic lines. While this feature of his style has been much discussed in general terms, there have been few attempts to identify specifically how these blocks are constructed and how they are chained together to yield coherent musical statements. Using examples from Psycho, Marnie, and other Herrmann scores, I will demonstrate that the phrase structure and melodic trajectory of much of Herrmann’s music is based on a small set of frequently recurring prototypes. This structural consistency contributes to making the “Herrmann sound” instantly recognizable.

Performing Ritual: Physical and Musical Gesture in Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River

Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River (1964) defies traditional genre labels, exhibiting characteristics of opera, Japanese Noh drama, and religious ritual. Set in medieval England and given a Christian theme, Curlew River is based on the Noh play Sumidagawa and uses a unique language of physical gesture inspired by Noh traditions. The integration of these physical gestures with the music is one of the ways in which Curlew River projects an atmosphere of ritual. In this paper I examine two passages from Curlew River, each of which demonstrates a close connection between the development of individual musical gestures and the progression of physical actions performed at the same time. In the arietta “Near the Black Mountains,” sung by the character of the Madwoman, the subtle development of a single musical figure is linked to the gradual transformation of the actor’s posture. A similar relationship is present in the Ferryman’s introductory scene, in which physical movements act as punctuation for a sequence of musical statements. In both instances, musical and physical gesture are integrated into a unified form of expression, the intensity and focus of which lend Curlew River its ritual quality.

Aaron Copland: Fanfare for America by Andreas Skipis (review)

Reviewed by: Aaron Copland: Fanfare for America by Andreas Skipis John Clark Aaron Copland: Fanfare for America. DVD. A film by Andreas Skipis. [Halle/Saale, Germany]: Arthaus Musik, 2011, 2001. 101 573. $28.98. This 2001 production by Hessischer Rund funk for Arthaus Musik presents an interesting overview of the career of Aaron Copland. By no means an exhaustive account, it gives what is a generally good cross section of his life and works, with many archival television clips and photographs, as well as a present-day tour through the Brooklyn of his early years. With a running time of only an hour, this film leaps from peak to peak, concentrating on the years from Copland’s study in Paris in the 1920’s to his serial pieces Twelve Poems of Emily Dickenson (1951) and Connotations, commissioned for the opening of Lincoln Center in 1962. The narration of the film is in German, although the menu presents an option of subtitles in English as well as several other languages, but the interviews (with conductor Hugh Wolff, biographer Howard Pollack and Copland himself) are in [End Page 166] English. By limiting the talking heads, director Andreas Skipis actually achieves more unity and structural coherence than might be expected from such a short film. Copland is presented in interviews done towards the end of his professional life (presumably in the 1970’s and early 80’s, although information for this is not given) and is compelling in his discussion of his music and life - especially his Zen-like acceptance of the difficulties he encountered in the McCarthy era congressional hearings. Wolff is lucid and engaging in his discussions of the music he conducts, although the sometimes bizarre film style gets in the way. Initially, I thought I was watching some very modestly gifted actors imitating symphonic musicians playing Copland’s music, but they are indeed Wolff leading the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (shortly to change its name to Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester). Why film-makers and television directors feel these community theater histrionics make Classical music more accessible is a question for future generations. Once one gets by, for example, the oddity of the rapidly appearing and disappearing soloists in Music for the Theater (1925) in front of a single music stand in an all-white room, one can appreciate the beautiful performance. A composer and pianist in his own right, Howard Pollack is responsible for the definitive biography of Copland (Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, University of Illinois Press, 1999) and here provides insights that go well beyond the merely biographical. The shortcomings of his contributions are that he is interviewed on the New York subway (apparently during rush hour, with all the attendant noise) and walking down a busy street - two more strange filmic conceits. Pollack’s musical analysis (given on a large scale in reference to Copland’s entire career) is extremely insightful and present Copland’s integrated ideas of music, politics and life in general. Musically, the film is focused on the performances by Wolff and the Frankfurt Symphony, but the DVD case includes pictures of live performances with Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein and Martha Graham - none of which lasts more than a minute or two or can stand on its own as a musical statement. In general, the musical interludes are well spaced and present a good chronological overview of Copland’s work, with the single exception of his Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra (1948) with Goodman, which is presented as a development of his interest in the Jazz of the 1920’s (which inspired his Music for the Theater). The work by Wolff and the orchestra are fortunately presented in if not complete form, then at least long excerpts. Among these selections, the most outstanding is the portion of the orchestral version of Twelve Poems of Emily Dickenson which feature soprano Stella Doufexis. While the brevity of this film can be viewed as both positive and negative, its treatment of the career of Aaron Copland is an excellent introduction to his works and philosophy. Fortunately, the theatrics of the presentation do not get in the way of the essential delivery of...