Orchestral Works Research Articles

Work on an orchestral work as a means of conducting training of an instrumental student

The article is devoted to the actual problem of orchestral-conducting training of instrumental students at the university. The author summarizes the scientific-methodical and own practical experience of the conductor's work on orchestral works of various genres and artistic epochs. The specifics of professional training of students-instrumentalists at the university and the importance of the disciplines of the orchestral-conducting cycle are characterized. The principles of their teaching (gradual and sequence, systematic and accessible, pedagogical expediency and artistic value, collegiality and interest in the results of joint musical-creative activity) are defined. The peculiarities of working with educational orchestras consisting of students with different levels of pre-university instrumental-performing training are revealed. The basic types of a student's work on an orchestral work in the class in orchestral-conducting disciplines: work with a score, analysis of the work by ear, manual technique, creative communication with an orchestral group using special terminology, etc. The work on an orchestral work is defined as a complex process that integrates the student's creative potential and natural musical abilities, his instrumental and musical-theoretical knowledge, musical-performance and emotional spheres, individual and collective. Attention is focused on the role of the teacher of orchestral conducting in the formation of professional skills of the student in the process of working on an orchestral work. Conductor's analysis of symphonic and operatic works studied by instrumental students. The peculiarities of students' educational activity in the class of orchestral conducting in the conditions of distance learning are revealed. The results of the study are summarized and conclusions are formulated: practical study of an orchestral work in a conducting class contributes to the formation of analytical-ear skills, conducting-performing skills, creative imagination, stage culture and professional experience in an instrumental student.

Оркестровая фактура в симфонических сочинениях Ван Силиня

Wang Xilin (born 1936) is a Chinese composer currently living in Germany. In his home country, he is known as a musician of the Western trend. His works are occasionally performed in China and are widely known abroad. He has written about one hundred works in various genres, among which orchestral music plays a key role. In his symphonies and symphonic suites, Wang Xilin reinterprets in a new manner the diverse traditions of the Russian and Western European classics. On the other hand, these works vividly express the national Chinese color, manifested in the figurative and emotional sphere, melodicism and textural techniques. The composer has turned towards the orchestral genres during the course of his entire life. They have become a peculiar brand of chronicles of his style and reflect the periodization of his musical output, in which it is possible to highlight three styles. Each of them has its own priorities in his choice of textural means. Thus, his early period (1961–1977) is marked by the study of the Russian and Soviet schools of composition at the Shanghai Conservatory and of Chinese folklore during his exile in the province of Shanxi. The list of textural techniques in the orchestral works of this period — the suite Poems of Yunnan and Symphony No 1 — is not marked by any originality: the composer uses doublings, imitations and canonic expositions most frequently. Wang Xilin bears a striking resemblance to Dmitri Shostakovich in his construction of monodic lines. In his second period (1977–1990) Wang Xilin expanded his arsenal of textural means, in particular creating original “figuration canons” based on pentatonic chants based on intervals of seconds and fourths. These were first used in the suite The Impressions of Mount Taihang and were subsequently widely used by him in his symphonies and suites of his later period. Despite the ban on Western music during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Xilin studied the scores of Charles Ives and Krzysztof Penderecki. This influenced the third period of his work (starting from 1990), marked by a general chromatization of the harmonies and thematicism and the creation of different types of sonorous textures in his music. Overall, the textural basis of Wan Xilin’s works examined here is polyphonic many-voiced texture, but it also includes some homophonic-harmonic sections. Among them there are pastoral fragments with static textures and dance sections with tutti-pizzicato in the strings.

Смысловой и структурный потенциал автореферентности в музыке Бента Сёренсена

The article focuses on the phenomenon of autoreferentiality and the forms of its semantic and structural realization in the music of the Danish composer Bent Sørensen (b. 1958). Based on the classification proposed by Maria Romanets, two types of intertextual interactions are considered — the corpus type (featuring self-derivation of the material of the entire work) and the lexical type (featuring self-quotation). The material for the analysis was formed by the musical compositions written by Sørensen during the last twenty years: the Concerto for Accordion It is Pain Flowing Down Slowly on a White Wall (2010), the triple concerto L’Isola della città (2015), the orchestral works Exit Music (2007) and Evening Land (2017), the composition for orchestra, chorus, actors and audience, Sounds Like You (2008), the trilogy Papillons (2013‒2014), and the St. Matthew Passion (2021). Analysis of this music discloses the specificity of the self-quoted material, which is associated with its ambiguity stipulated by a balancing between the original authorial utterance and appealing to an “alien” style. As a result of this, the crucial semantic spheres (the role of the past and traditions, the disintegration of culture, the motives of departure and loss) that are characteristic of the composer’s late work are revealed. In the works composed entirely on the basis of previously written musical material, the processes of genre transformations are noted, which are determined, among other things, by the need to explore the musical material in new conditions and the wish to renew the strategies of the musical narrative. Overall, Sørensen’s autoreferentiality becomes an important mechanism of cultural reflection and self-reflection.

Mykola Stetsiun’s creativity for bandura in the anniversary context

Statement of the problem. Recent research and publications. A significant event for the bandura community was the 80th anniversary of the Honored Artist of Ukraine Mykola Hryhorovych Stetsiun (b. 1942), whose composer’s work represents a new stage in the development of the bandura art. The artist’s professional development began in the urbanized Eastern region of Ukraine, where the folk instrumental performance was represented exclusively by the domra, balalaika, and accordion arts. The composer’s practical acquaintance with the bandura took place in his mature years in Kharkiv, which prompted him to expand the original bandura repertoire and include the timbre of the instrument in orchestral compositions. M. Stetsiun’s composer work has been covered in the number of scientific studies. His life and creative path is described by A. Vynohradova (2019), S. Bilousova (2016), and L. Shekita (2013) who characterized M. Stetsiun’s work in the context of the development of folk instrumental art. The performing interpretation some of the composer’s works is characterized in the studies of M. Tushchenko (2019) and A. Aulova (2021). I. Lisniak (2014) offered the genre style review of the composer’s work for the bandura. The relevance of the proposed study determines by insufficient research of M. Stetsiun’s bandura works. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the study. The purpose of the study is to characterize the development of M. Stetsiun’s bandura creativity in the context of the enriching the modern bandura repertoire. For the first time, the evolution of M. Stetsiun’s interest in bandura sound was traced in the context of significant for folk instrumental art the events and creative communications. Ways of formation and creative transformation of M. Stetsiun’s composer style in the field of bandura music have not yet been the object of research. A panoramic overview of the composer’s genre and style searches, aimed at expanding the performance repertoire for bandura, was carried out. The following methods was used in the research: 1) biographical to characterize significant events in M. Stetsiun’s life and work; 2) genre and stylistic to reveal the characteristic peculiarities of his music works; 3) interpretive to analyse performance tasks in the works for bandura. Research results. Thanks to the activities of V. Andrieiev and H. Khotkevich, bands of bandurists appeared in Kharkiv alongside the domra and balalaika orchestras. In 1921, the first orchestra of Ukrainian folk instruments was created. The cultural and musical environment of the Ukrainian Donbas in the middle of the 20th century was influenced the Soviet narratives. The bandura did not sound there. Therefore, since childhood, M. Stetsiun showed himself as the domra performer and talented arranger. During his studies at the Kharkiv State Conservatory (in the domra class of V. I. Mikhelis, in the composition class of I. K. Kovach), bandura performance declined. M. Stetsiun’s close acquaintance with the bandura took place at the turn of the 1980--90s, when the bandura class was renewed at the Kharkiv State Institute of Arts. There are several genre and style models to which the composer turns to in his work for this instrument: 1) vocal-instrumental compositions, 2) orchestral works with the inclusion of the bandura part, 3) arrangements for bandura solo, 4) original works for bandura, 5) compositions for the ensemble of bandurists. M. Stetsiun’s arrangements for bandura – “Elegy in Memory of Hnat Hotkevych” and “Etude-Impromtu” are very popular among the performers. The “Dance in the Form of a Rondo” stands out among his original works for bandura. Conclusion. M. Stetsiun continues the traditions of the Kharkiv school of composers, as evidenced by the bright individual stylistic appearance of most of his opuses. Conscious reception of the bandura as a national musical instrument by the composer took place in adulthood, when, thanks to the high level of compositional skill, he was able to embody organically the specifics of orchestral thinking in the solo and ensemble sound of the bandura using the traditional and the modern melodic-harmonic, textural and articulation means. The perspective of the research consists in the musicological understanding of the resent opuses of Ukrainian composers for the bandura as a complete artistic phenomenon and the important component of folk-instrumental Ukrainian art.

A Brief Analysis of Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op.77

Brahms is a giant in the era of romantic music, his works contain complex and delicate ideological changes in the hearts of the characters. His creative inspiration is deeply influenced by Schumann and other musicians, and the musical language expression in his works is sometimes tactful and sometimes obscure. Brahms has composed a large number of musical works throughout his life, including a large number of orchestral works, piano ensemble works, string ensemble works, solo piano songs, piano four-hand joint play, vocal duets, chorus, and solo works. Brahms's violin concerto consists of three movements, including the moderate Allegro in the first movement, the flexibility in the second movement, and the lively Allegro in the third movement. The first movement uses a 3/4 beat rhythm, a sonata style, the second movement uses a 2/4 rhythm, three paragraphs, and the third movement is also called the game-style Allegro, as the name suggests, is very fun, like a game. It uses a 2/4 beat rhythm, with an irregular rondo style. This article aims to helping learners to under its writing background and writing connotation of the Brahms Violin Concerto in depth, and to truly helping them restore a series of problems such as the deep promotion of the composer’s creation process and the origin of inspiration.

Fantasy on a theme by G. Enescu for clarinet and orchestra by Oleg Negruţa

In the present study, we propose to identify the structural elements of sound discourse, as well as their manifestation in the concept of the work Fantasy on a theme by G. Enescu for clarinet and orchestra by Oleg Negruţa. The author’s compositional records include vocal, instrumental chamber, concert and symphonic music. Most of his creations are attributed to concert and chamber music. The work that we are going to analyze serves as proof of the novelty of the genre, form and elements of writing. Fantasy as a genre represents an instrumental or orchestral work with a fairly free architecture, and the basic principle is improvisation. In this piece, we highlight one of the distinctive features of the composer, namely the folkloric stylistic direction - the use of folkloric species such as doina, sarba, hora, organically combined with elements of the classical language - genre, form, theme, etc. Equally important is the use of the quote, which O. Negruţa creatively develops and exposes in different sections, creating a thematic core, but also a sound reagent for the entire musical discourse.

About the Works of Russian Minimalist Composers: The Idiomatics of the Musical Language

The article examines two musical works written by contemporary Russian minimalist composers — Concerto capriccioso (1986) for cello, string orchestra, keyboards and percussion by Nikolai Korndorf and Liebliches Lied (1980) for piano four hands by Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky. Their analysis is carried out from the position of idiomatics. This term is derived from the conception developed by Russian scholar and linguist Igor Anichkov and is applied in the article as an attempt to reflect the originality of the two composers’ musical techniques. The most illustrative aspects of the aforementioned works — namely, intertextuality and repetitiveness — are determined as being the leading ones. Each of the two composers finds his own means of dialogue with musical tradition. In the case of Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, important reference points are formed by “the composer’s words” dealing with two artistic archetypes to which the intonational world of Liebliches Lied harkens back, while in the case of Korndorf, it is the source of musical quotation (an orchestral work by one of the Viennese Classicist composers) that is determined by the author of the article. Besides the means of interaction between the authorial and the derived lexis (one’s own words vs. somebody else’s words), separate attention is given to the peculiarities of the repetitive method. The compositional technique of each of the two composers possesses both common and individual features.

On the preparation of performing students for orchestral work

Creative interaction in the "conductor-orchestra" system is a complex, urgent and multifaceted problem. At present, there is a large number of professional teams that need highly trained specialists. In the modern conditions of a multi-level system of musician training, the problem of training highly professional orchestra players capable of carrying out professional activities in an orchestra group acquires a special role. At the same time, the level of training of graduates of music universities does not always meet the requirements of orchestra directors. In addition, the tasks of training personnel for orchestral groups have not yet been the subject of in-depth and systematic study, which may explain the relevance of the article.

The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art

The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art

Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and “Chinese Element”

Gustav Mahler was one of the most predominant composers and conductors between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, Das Lied von der Erde is one of the most representative music works in his later years. Creation background, Taoist thinking, application of Tang dynasty poems, and integration of pentatonic mode and Western music system are discussed in the article, which centers analysis of Chinese elements in Das Lied von der Erde and elaborates that Das Lied von der Erde is a great orchestral work with wisdom and poetry. It is the result of civilizational exchange and mutual learning and it has high artistic value.

Инструментальный концерт в творчестве Бента Сёренсена

In the musical output of the modern Danish composer Bent Sørensen, the genre of the instrumental concerto occupies the leading position. The composer has written eight concertos, as well as a number of orchestral works in which particular solo instruments stand out. Based on their analysis, the article reveals the composer’s approach to this genre and the possibility of maintaining it. One of the characteristic features of Sørensen’s concerto works is the programmatic quality. The composer’s works are united by common themes of decay, disappearance, as well as reflection of musical culture, which leads to a saturation of the musical material by means of various stylistic allusions. The unified conceptual sphere gives rise to the phenomenon of connections between different musical works in the output of the Danish composer, while the stylistic juxtapositions, as well as the contrasts of the heterogeneous material in terms of timbre and texture embody the principle of dialogue, which is characteristic of the genre of the concerto. The programmatic quality determines the variety of compositional solutions of Sørensen’s concertos, in which connection, it is proposed to differentiate all of his compositions into two categories: one is represented by compositional models that preserve or revise the concerto form (for example, the Violin Concerto, the Clarinet Concerto, the Third Piano Concerto), and the other demonstrates models, each one focusing on an individual project (for example, the First Piano Concerto, the Accordion Concerto, the Harpsichord Concerto, etc.). In the latter case, elements of instrumental theater are often introduced into the concerto genre. One specific means of dramaturgy in Sørensen’s concerto opuses is the technique of transformation of the timbre and acoustics of the sound sphere, which involves changing the means of playing, the instruments or the sound sources (for example, a transition of the functioning of the orchestral musicians to singing and playing harmonicas in the Accordion Concerto, the transition from playing tremolo to creating sounds on sandpaper blocks in the composition Mignon — Papillons, the substitution of acoustic sound with tape recording in the Clarinet Concerto). The provided analysis allows us to arrive at the conclusion that the sphere of the instrumental concerto forms a single musical-semantic space in Sørensen’s musical output, which is endowed with its own personal characteristic features.

Serenade in D Major for Orchestra by Ethel Smyth (review)

Reviewed by: Serenade in D Major for Orchestra by Ethel Smyth Jennifer Oates Ethel Smyth. Serenade in D Major for Orchestra. Edited by John L. Snyder. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2021. (Recents Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, v. 84) [1 score (xxiv, 190 p.) ISBN: 9781987206302, $425; 1 facsimile (viii, 140 p.) ISBN 9781987206326, $60] John L. Snyder's two-volume critical edition of Ethel Smyth's Serenade in D serves as the first commercial publication of the composer's first orchestral work. The edition consists of two volumes: a critical edition of the score and a reproduction of the manuscript. Each volume has a unique introduction allowing Snyder to maximize the use of his sources. Transcriptions of Smyth's program notes for the premiere, and over two dozen reviews are also included. Performance parts are available for rental via A-R Editions. In addition to this being the first published score of the Serenade, there is only one commercial recording (Ethel Smyth, Concerto for Violin, Horn & Orchestra; Serenade, BBC Philharmonic, cond. Odaline de la Martínez, Chandos CHAN 9449 [2006], CD). Some of Smyth's compositions are available via open-source websites, such as IMSLP, her publisher Universal Edition, or have been published in modern performance editions. At least one facsimile edition of a Smyth manuscript, her String Trio in D (see below), has been published. As far as I can tell, Snyder's marks the first critical edition of a Smyth composition. This is her first appearance in the Recent Researches in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries series, which includes twelve volumes by British composers (four of which feature the music of Alice Mary Smith). An edition of her music has yet to appear in Musica Britannica. Indeed, no volume of Musica Britannica is devoted to women composers or a single female composer. As a seminal figure in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music, a critical edition of Smyth's work is overdue. While her so-called "eccentricities" (e.g., being queer, a tendency to dress in a masculine manner, and a penchant for smoking cigars) helped capture the public's attention, her music earned and deserved its place in the concert halls and opera houses of Britain and on the continent. In Britain, she bucked traditions by carving out her own path and finding success without necessarily being a part of the unofficial inner circle of composers and conductors that dominated the musical scene in London. Like many British composers, Smyth benefitted from August Manns's interest. Manns, then conductor at the Crystal Palace and one of the foremost champions of British music at the time, requested an orchestral work after seeing a manuscript of one of her string quartets. She sent him the Serenade in D, her first orchestral work. The composition was first performed under Manns at the Crystal Palace on 26 April 1890. Several months later, he performed her Overture to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. While the Serenade in D appears to have been well received at the time, it has not been performed much since then. Smyth's Serenade in D is in four movements, though, unlike traditional symphonies, there is no slow movement. The outer allegro movements are in sonata-form while the inner two are ternary allegro and allegretto movements. The orchestration is sparse by [End Page 660] late nineteenth-century standards: 2 flutes (flute 2 doubles on piccolo at times), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and five-part strings (including contrabasses). While Snyder suggests that Smyth chose the title Serenade based on the lack of a slow movement, the composer's program notes clearly explains her rationale: "The claim of the work to the title 'Serenade,' lies chiefly in the fact that the prevailing character of its four movements may be described as respectively lyrical and humorous; and the intention is further carried out in the composition of the orchestra (without trombones) and the dimensions of each individual movement" (p. xv and Plate 1). Locating and identifying the manuscript required significant detective work. Snyder corresponded with Smyth's estate, Universal Edition, librarians, and fellow Smyth...

The use of the horn in the late orchestral works by Robert Schumann

When I played a Schumann piece, Genoveva Overture, for the first time, I was wondering, because there were Ventilhorn and Waldhorn parts. I could not imagine what his idea was when he wrote for four horns, but still used two different kinds of the same instrument. Did he want to express something with this set-up? Beside this, I did not understand why he, and other romantic composers, use so much transposition when they had already a completely chromatic instrument. As I started to get to know and play the natural horn, it was getting clearer what his intention could have been. Why he used an ‘ancient’ instrument, though he could compose for four chromatic horns. This made me even more interested, and I also got more questions and hypotheses about the topic, for what I wanted to find an answer. In my research, I tried to get to know the use of the horn in the middle of the 19th century. I wanted to get familiar with the contemporaries’ imagination about the old and new instrument, and with the way how they used them. Then, with this knowledge, I analysed Schumann’s orchestral works, especially the horn parts, and tried to find out if the results are matching with the background research. My aim was too, show the horn players, that the romantic horn playing is not only about the ‘holy’ valve horn, but something more complex and colourful.

The Viennese violone : A "Viennoiserie" with 5 spices

This research examines if the Viennese tuning was used in the orchestral works of Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn and whether it is possible to link the composers and the use of this tuning in their writing style for the 16’ instrument. The Viennese tuned violone is a particular 5-stringed 16’ fretted instrument tuned to “F, A, d, f#, a”. This instrument appeared in the region of Lower-Austria and Moravia in the late 17th century and was played until the middle of the 19th century. Considered a member of the viola da gamba family by its name “violone”, it also has similarities in its thirds and fourths tuning, flat back, sloping shoulders, and frets. I have found no clear evidence of a date, or of a composer, who made specific use of Viennese tuning in orchestras after the solos of Haydn's six symphonies. The Viennese tuning disappeared progressively towards the middle of the 19th century. The last clear evidence we found in the music is Beethoven’s Septet op. 20, the first performance of Beethoven’s 1st symphony, and Schubert’s Trout quintet. We also have the performance on 2nd November 1800 of Sperger’s last symphony “Erbprinzessin-sinfonie”. We also know that instruments of this tuning were built until at least 1820. For Mendelssohn, analysis of his works has shown that its classical characteristics come out clearer with the Viennese tuning. This research is done in the form of an exposition to highlight the musical extracts of the different composers.

The specificity of timbre expressiveness in N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral program compositions

The subject of the study is the forms of manifestation of timbre expressiveness in the program orchestral compositions of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. The object of the study is the peculiarities of the composer's symphonic creativity on the example of program compositions. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the results of the study can be in demand by professional musicians of various specialties and serve as a source of educational and methodological materials for general and special courses of higher and middle-level music education. The following methods were used in the study: a historical and stylistic method aimed at considering the evolutionary processes that took place in the orchestral work of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov; a method of comparative analysis and analogy, thanks to which it was possible to identify common and distinctive features in the use of timbre expressiveness in the works of the composer of different periods of his work. The relevance of the article is connected with the little-studied issues of timbre dramaturgy and the peculiarities of instrumentation dictated by them in the symphonic scores of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov's program compositions. In modern Russian musicology, there is an actualization of research attention to the field of studying the specifics of timbre expressiveness. Therefore, the appeal to the work of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, as a composer-discoverer of many techniques of timbre development, seems relevant. The novelty of the research lies in the holistic coverage of issues devoted to the specifics of timbre expressiveness in the composer's program orchestral works. The peculiarities of the use of such techniques of timbre dramaturgy as timbre personification, mixing of timbres are considered from the standpoint of the manifestation of the composer's unique timbre hearing and in the context of the general stylistic trends of Russian music of the late XIX century. Conclusions: N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral program compositions reveal a number of innovative solutions dictated by the program design. The revealed means of timbre expressiveness: the abundance of orchestral solo instruments of the woodwind group, techniques of timbre personification and timbre mixes, testify to the manifestation of the composer's unique gift — timbre hearing.

Repertoire Policy of Symphony Orchestra: Reflection and Self-Analysis

The purpose of the article is to highlight the concert and educational activities of the Ternopil Regional Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra over the last decade, and to present the orchestra's repertoire achievements in popularising Ukrainian musical art. The research methodology consists in the use of a number of approaches. The analytical approach is used to present the main stages and directions of creative activity of the academic symphony orchestra from its foundation in 2003 (the official date of creation is 01.20.2004 to today). The systemic method with the use of the methods of theoretical generalisation and introspection enables a comprehensive presentation of the repertoire policy of the Ternopil Regional Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra over the last decade. Scientific novelty consists in outlining the "repertoire policy" concept as a flexible combination of different styles and genres in the repertoire addressed to a specific performing team, which is completed according to the types of programs (thematic, monographic, collective), to the genres of the performing repertoire (orchestral, orchestral with soloists, instrumentalists, vocalists or so-called «small forms»), to the tasks of contest or festival requirements, touring performances. We have used the examples of programs from orchestral works, with soloists-instrumentalists, soloists-vocalists, vocal trio and quartet to illustrate our study. Conclusions. On the basis of the conducted analysis, the main directions, forms, and repertoire content of creative projects with foreign performers-instrumentalists and collectives, with a number of vocalists – soloists of European and Ukrainian opera have been systemised. The ways of updating the performing repertoire with works by foreign and domestic classics, examples of the work by modern composers, the importance of the "Ukrainian component" and its popularisation as a response to the socio-cultural challenges of today have been illustrated, using the example of the repertoire of the orchestra's tour (29 concerts) at the «Gala Strauss» festival (Poland). Thus, we can state that the orchestra plays a significant cultural and educational role in the cultural and artistic life of the region, which is supported by planning and implementation of creative projects and further efforts on finding and updating the artistic repertoire.
 Key words: musical culture of Ukraine, the end of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century, performance art, performance repertoire, Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Ternopil Regional Philharmonic.

Key-Specific Structure in Mozart's Music: A Peek into his Creative Process?

Theories of tonal music take for granted that all keys of the same mode (i.e., all major and all minor keys) are employed by composers in essentially the same way; however, newer analytical and cognitive research challenges this view by pointing to aspects of transpositional nonequivalence among the keys. The present study offers possibly the first systematic, data-driven investigation of correlations between the choice of absolute key and structure across a composer's body of works. By performing an extensive corpus-based analysis of music by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–91), we derive 55 prototypes, subsuming phenomena from three independent domains: dynamic-rhetoric gestures that launch orchestral works, digressions to the parallel minor in sonata-allegro movements, and the occurrences of a particular six-note motive across Mozart's complete oeuvre. Ten prototypes display a significant association with a specific key after correction for multiple comparisons, amounting to a statistically significant total. Investigation of key-related musical structure offers fresh insight into Mozart's compositional decisions and the relation between schemata and their instantiations in his works, at the same time suggesting a revised perspective on traditional key characteristics. Mozart's perfect pitch offers one possible explanation for the role of key-related structure in his works; however, we also contemplate other possible explanations.

Circé: cantata for soprano, flutes, strings, and basso continuo by Collin de Blamont, and: Première suite de pièces de clavecin by Gabriel Dubuisson

Reviewed by: Circé: cantata for soprano, flutes, strings, and basso continuoby Collin de Blamont, and: Première suite de pièces de clavecinby Gabriel Dubuisson Devin Burke Collin de Blamont. Circé: cantata for soprano, flutes, strings, and basso continuo. Edited by Graham Sadler. Versailles: Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2020. [Intro., p. 3– 12; text and trans., p. 13– 14; score, p. 15– 48; critical notes, p. 49– 51. ISMN 979-0-560-16299-7. $33.] Gabriel Dubuisson. Première suite de pièces de clavecin. Edited by Louis Caste-lain. Introduction by Gaëtan Naulleau. Versailles: Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, 2020. [Intro., p. 3– 14; score, p. 15– 33; critical notes, p. 34. ISMN 979-0-560-16305-5. $30.] This year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Centre de Musique Baroque Versailles (CMBV). Vincent Berthier de Lioncourt and Philippe Beaussant established the CMBV in 1987 in the wake of the early music revival, and since then the center has become indispensable to both scholars and performers of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French music. The two editions reviewed here represent a sampling of recent publications from the CMBV's editions catalog, which includes over two thousand works published in more than three hundred fifty editions. Their catalog comprises eight different series: works for solo voice-vocal ensemble, choral works, works for choir and orchestra, solo instrumental pieces, chamber music, orchestral works, opera, and aria collections. In addition to these series, the CMBV publishes critical editions of composers' complete works and anthologies of exemplary French music. Beyond its score publications, the CMBV also regularly releases new books and audio and video recordings. These releases frequently contain work that began with or benefitted from the various symposia and seminars that the CMBV organizes. Researchers and performers often learn from each other in these events, and the resulting collaborative relationships are among the defining strengths of the CMBV's work. This review discusses recent editions from two different CMBV series (solo voice-vocal ensemble and solo instrumental pieces). Both editions are standalone works of musical and historical interest, yet one has been recently discovered while the other is more familiar to scholars and performers of French music. Both editions feature introductory and critical notes in French and English, with the critical notes appearing after the score in each case. The critical notes are easy to interpret and are presented in the CMBV's standard tabular format. Parts for the editions with orchestra are sold separately from the score. Graham Sadler's edition of Collin de Blamont's cantata Circéfor high voice and orchestra marks the first appearance of this work in a modern edition. During the 1720s and 30s, Blamont (1690–1760) established himself as one of the most important composers in France, and he represents the type of composer whose engaging and historically significant works might merit little attention today were it not for the efforts of the CMBV. From 1719, when he bought the post of Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre, until the mid–1740s when illness required him to relinquish most of his professional obligations, Blamont enjoyed high esteem at Louis XV's court. He built his reputation on both his accomplishments as a composer and his skills as a [End Page 437]pedagogue, particularly in the training of singers. One of the values of this edition is that it illuminates both Blamont's skills in composing dramatic music and the development of his musical language across his career. As a composer, Blamont had the most impact in the genres of opera and the orchestral cantata. A decade before Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricieupended the landscape of French music, he invented the genre of the ballet héroïquewith Les Fêtes greques et romaines(1723); other operas and divertissements achieved great success as well. Within these works, he introduced several innovations including his use of an increased number of ariettes and his expansion of the orchestral palette. Both innovations anticipated Rameau, and yet Blamont's sparer style meant that Rameau's partisans unfavorably associated him with Lully when the querrellebetween the...

Cornelius Cardew's Camouflage and Bun No. 2

ABSTRACTCornelius Cardew's Bun No. 2 (1964) provides a unique opportunity to reconcile the composer's indeterminate graphic score Treatise (1963–7) with a more determinately scored orchestral work which uses orthodox staff notation. It represents an amalgamation of Cardew's approach to two notational systems that, owing to their concurrence of use in his oeuvre, can inform our understanding of how graphic scores can be used in determinate compositional processes and vice versa. This article explores why Cardew decided to embark upon this experiment, using contextual information relating to Autumn ’60 (1960) and the influence of other composers, such as Morton Feldman (1926–1987). This is situated in Cardew's notion of ‘camouflage’, a socio‐musical construct relating to the situation and presentation of his widely varied compositional output in the changing musical environment of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The analysis itself covers a small portion of Bun No. 2, drawing extensively upon Cardew's Treatise Handbook (1971), identifying and extrapolating tendencies of musical‐graphical translation and focussing on the use of major and minor triads and their deformation using geometric concepts of ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection’. Finally, the article considers the implications of this work both for Cardew and for the aesthetics and wider study of graphic score readings, briefly offering a reflection upon the concept of isomorphism in Ludwig Wittgenstein's picture theory (building upon Cline 2020) in relation to the rhetorical notion of ekphrasis (Bruhn 2000) as a means of explaining the uneasy position that this piece occupied for Cardew, read through the lens of camouflage.

Un Beethoven ibérico: Dos siglos de transferencia cultural ed. by Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco

Reviewed by: Un Beethoven ibérico: Dos siglos de transferencia cultural ed. by Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco Walter Aaron Clark Un Beethoven ibérico: Dos siglos de transferencia cultural. Edited by Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco. (Comares música.) Granada: Comares, 2021. [xi, 397 p. ISBN 9748413690520 (paperback), €33.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, bibliography. Ludwig van Beethoven's legacy is not one that we associate with Spain. At least it is not immediately apparent what sort of influence he and his music might have exercised on Spanish composers, concert artists, and audiences. We associate Beethoven with the genre of the symphony, but symphonic organizations were slow to develop in Spain during the 1800s, and Beethoven's symphonies only gradually gained traction with concert audiences there. And Spanish composers themselves never cultivated the symphony with any notable results. True, they composed an abundance of orchestral music, especially tone poems, ballets, and concertos, many of which have found a secure niche in the canonical repertoire. But one strains to think of a single Spanish symphony that has achieved the stature of Isaac Albéniz's Catalonia, Manuel de Falla's Three-Cornered Hat, or Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. For whatever reason, Spanish composers were simply not drawn to the musical abstractions of the symphony—which is not to say they never composed them. Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga (1806–1826) was a young composer whose promising career as a symphonist was cut short by a premature demise. And though they are far better known for their zarzuelas and operas, both Tomás Bretón and Ruperto Chapí essayed symphonic works. Joaquín Turina's Sinfonia sevillana (1920) also comes to mind, though it may be the exception that proves the rule, since it is as much a three-movement tone poem as it is a symphony. And yet it should not come as a complete surprise that the Iberian penetration of the Austro-Germanic heritage of which Beethoven was the crowning glory is on full display here. Joseph Haydn was hugely popular in Spain, and his Die Sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze was an orchestral work commissioned by the city of Cadiz in 1786. And in the late nineteenth century, Richard Wagner's operas and operatic philosophies were adopted and adapted by many admirers, including Felipe Pedrell, Albéniz, and Enrique Granados, among others. To be sure, this heritage was not confined to symphonies and operas. As this volume makes perfectly clear, the impact of Beethoven's chamber music and piano sonatas was immense, felt first within the salons of the elite before it made its way to concert venues populated by a growing middle class. Thus, Beethoven, a larger-than-life symbol of Viennese classicism and incipient romanticism, is not out of place in Iberian music history, and it was about time that someone undertook to examine his undoubted impact in both Spain and Portugal. That someone is Teresa Cascudo García-Villaraco, a leading musicologist in Spain and professor at the Universidad de La Rioja in Logroño. She assembled a dream team of scholars for this trailblazing collection of essays, which will be of great interest and value not only to Hispanists but also to anyone interested in the global scope of Beethoven interpretation and reception. The editor's insightful introduction concerns issues of reception, discourses, and canonicity relative to Beethoven. As she astutely points out, "Almost two centuries after his death, Beethoven is today the most-programmed composer, an icon of practices associated with 'classical music' and one that constitutes a model for certain attitudes and behaviors, an example of an idea of emancipated humanity that was defined at the end of the eighteenth century" (p. 1, my trans.). She then establishes the necessary tenor and parameters for the volume, which offers a generous collection of twenty essays, divided into nine major parts, by twenty-five scholars. This collection is the outgrowth of a 2020 [End Page 393] conference dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth and organized by the "Música y Prensa" group of the Sociedad Española de Musicología. Yet, as the editor advises, these...