Vocal Part Research Articles

Піснеспіви свята Преображення у східнослов’янських співочих рукописах єрусалимського уставу

У статті розглянуто та досліджено 6 богослужбових (Устави та Мінеї) та 76 співочих східнослов’янських кодексів єрусалимської традиції, що припадає на кінець XIV – першу половину XVII століття. Це Стихирарі, Осмогласники, Збірники, Ірмологіони, в яких віднайдено піснеспіви свята Преображення. В співочих рукописах вказаного часу представлені майже всі піснеспіви чину свята, які зафіксовані безпозначковою крюковою, путьовою та київською нотолінійною нотацією. В рукописах межі XVI–XVII століть, періоду найвищого розквіту давньоруського співочого мистецтва, послідовність служби свята Преображення завершує своє формування та з’являються різноманітні співочі інтерпретації поетичного тексту (багаторозспівність).

Ivan Mazepa’s personality as a cultural symbol: historicalperforming aspects

Ivan Mazepa’s personality as a cultural symbol: historicalperforming aspects

The principles of re-intonation of multinational folklore in the work of Ludwig van Beethoven (on the example of the collection of arrangements “Songs of Different Nations”)

The principles of re-intonation of multinational folklore in the work of Ludwig van Beethoven (on the example of the collection of arrangements “Songs of Different Nations”)

Romance «Blacked Night» by O. Tadeush based on Sappho’s poem: dialogue in “large time”

Romance «Blacked Night» by O. Tadeush based on Sappho’s poem: dialogue in “large time”

The formation of the chamber-vocal style of Zhu Jian’er: early works

The formation of the chamber-vocal style of Zhu Jian’er: early works

The specifics of female characters embodiment in contemporary Ukrainian musicals and rock operas (on the example of Nataliya Sumska’s creativity)

The specifics of female characters embodiment in contemporary Ukrainian musicals and rock operas (on the example of Nataliya Sumska’s creativity)

The embodiment of the prose libretto in opera genre (on the example of the works by M. Mussorgsky, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofi ev and G. Shantyr)

The embodiment of the prose libretto in opera genre (on the example of the works by M. Mussorgsky, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofi ev and G. Shantyr)

In the shade of “beautiful style”: talking about the chamber vocal music pieces by G. Donizetti

In the shade of “beautiful style”: talking about the chamber vocal music pieces by G. Donizetti

От Рихарда Вагнера – к собственному стилю: оперное творчество в статьях Камиля Сен-Санса

The articles about music published in France at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century present immense opportunities for research and analysis of this most abundant period of the history of musical culture. Of particular interest are the publications of Camille Saint-Saens, who imprinted the evaluations of his operatic compositions. On the one hand, they allow us to glance at the process of musical creativity from the position of the author, and on the other hand, they provide aid during an analysis of the formation of the composer’s aesthetic principles. The literary legacy of Saint-Saens is vast and consists of over 500 articles published during the course of fifty years of his artistic path. The present work examines the composer’s publications devoted to his operas in the context of the influence of Wagner and his system of leitmotifs. Fragments of the composer’s articles dealing with his operas “Samson et Dalila” (1877) and “Helene” (1904) are discussed. In his late works, Saint-Saens examines the limitations of Wagner’s system in connection with his opera works. He contemplates creating his personal style developing Wagner’s techniques but gravitating towards a lighter type of orchestration for the sake of highlighting the vocal part and giving it the most prominence. The reported study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) according to the research project No. 18-312-00195. Keywords: Camille Saint-Saens, Richard Wagner, the opera legacy of Saint-Saens, Wagner and Saint-Saens, “La Princesse jaune,” “Samson et Dalila,” “Helene.”

Composing Clémence in L’amour de loin

This article expands our knowledge of the inception of the opera, L’amour de loin, by introducing primary documents from the as-yet uncatalogued Kaija Saariaho Sammlung (KSS) at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. It then focuses on the development of the vocal part for Clémence that resulted in two versions of the role, one for coloratura and one for a lyric soprano, and situates the revision Saariaho undertook with soprano Dawn Upshaw in the historical tradition of operatic collaboration. Finally, I interpret the two versions of Clémence through the lens of operatic vocal Fach to determine how those different characterizations might affect an audience member’s experience of the opera. I argue that the iterations of Clémence’s two largest set pieces are so different that one could speak of two discrete versions of L’amour de loin in which different heroines are envoiced.

Connections between Paweł Szymański's works and Ukrainian history and culture

Three of Pawel Szymanski’s works point out connections with Ukrainian history and culture. The documentary Schizophrenia, with soundtrack by the composer, tells about two Ukrainians, victims of psychiatric repressions in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The main vocal part of the opera Qudsja Zaher was written especially for Olga Pasiecznik, an outstanding Ukrainian singer. The Concerto con duoi violini e Violoncello di Concertino obligati e duoi altri Violini, Viola e Basso di Concerto Grosso del Sig' Szymanski was performed in Lviv during “Contrasts” festival in 2017.

World cloud: A prototype data choralification of text documents

ABSTRACTAlgorithmic composition is extended to textual data, demonstrating a novel text setting method. We represent key words of documents through ‘data choralification’, being a polyphonic singing equivalent of word clouds. Using documents about sexual assault, which was the theme of a six-movement choral work, of which the choralification was one movement, frequent words had their word frequencies mapped to audio frequencies in the normal choir vocal range, after removing stop words. Words were allocated to vocal parts and sung simultaneously. The impact of composition decisions is discussed. Automated choralification of data using synthetic voices challenges the current definition of sonification.

Singing together: Pitch accuracy and interaction in unaccompanied unison and duet singing.

This paper investigates singing interaction by analysis of the factors influencing pitch accuracy of unaccompanied pairs of singers. Eight pairs of singers sang two excerpts either in unison or two-part harmony. The experimental condition varied which singers could hear singing partners. After semi-automatic pitch-tracking and manual checking, this paper calculated the pitch error (PE) and interval error and tested the factors of influence using a one-way analysis of variance and a linear mixed-effects model. The results indicate that: (1) singing with the same vocal part is more accurate than singing with a different vocal part; (2) singing solo has less pPE than singing with a partner; (3) PEs are correlated, as singers adjust pitch to mitigate a partner's error and preserve harmonic intervals at the expense of melodic intervals and absolute pitch; (4) other factors influence the pitch accuracy, including: score pitch, score harmonic interval, score melodic interval, musical background, vocal part, and individual differences.

Female characters of the operas of M. Mussorgsky and N. Rimsky-Korsakov in the context of Orthodox anthropology

Purpose of the article. The article is devoted to the disclosure of the features of the embodiment of the leading female images in the operatic works of M. Mussorgsky and N. Rimsky-Korsakov, which are revealed in the context of Orthodox anthropology and are related to the problem embodiment of spiritual evolution and involution in Russian music of the second half of the XIX century. The methodology of the study is to apply comparative, historical-cultural, musical-semantic methods, intonation concept of music in the light of the theory of B. Asafiev and his followers. This methodological approach allows us to reveal and analyze the psychological qualities of the main opera heroines of the operas «Khovanshchina» and «Tsar's Bride», recorded in their vocal part in a comparative description. The scientific novelty of the research consists in revealing the spiritual path of the heroines of the operatic compositions of Russian composers in a comparative description of the moral choice of Marfa and Lyubasha in their evolutionary/involuntary movement, which was reflected in the vocal party of the vivid female characters of the Russian opera tradition of the second half of the XIX century. Conclusions. The specific character of the musical embodiment of this moral choice of opera heroines is revealed at the level of the characteristic of the harmonic, intonational-rhythmic side of the vocal parts of Marfa (Khovanshchina) and Lyubasha (Tsar's Bride).

Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi by Paul Schleuse

Reviewed by: Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi by Paul Schleuse Massimo Privitera Singing Games in Early Modern Italy: The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi. By Paul Schleuse. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015. (Music and the Early Modern Imagination.) [x, 373 p. ISBN 978-0-253-01501-3 (cloth), $50; 978-0-253-01054-3 (ebook), $49] Singing Games in Early Modern Italy is the more recent result of a long-term research project conducted by Paul Schleuse (an associate professor of music at Binghamton University, State University of New York) on the music of the Modenese composer Orazio Vecchi, (1550–1605). This research began as a doctoral dissertation at the City University of New York (2005) and has continued for a decade with several articles and the critical edition of the Selva di varia ricreatione (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2012). Despite its subtitle (The Music Books of Orazio Vecchi), which refers to the whole of Vecchi's output, this monograph is not "a comprehensive account of the composer's life and works", as the author himself declares (p. 3), since nothing is said about Vecchi's significant books of sacred music, and little space is given to biographical accounts. The focus is centred on Vecchi's secular books, which are examined in chronological order, chapter by chapter. The first deals with the first and second books of his Canzonettas for four voices (1580), as well as the Madrigali a sei voci (1583), and special attention is given to the tripartite work for seven voices that concludes the collection, L'hore di ricreatione (the complete edition of which is provided by Schleuse in the Appendix). The second chapter is dedicated to Vecchi's remaining canzonetta collections of the 1580s and to the Madrigali a cinque voci [End Page 311] (1589). Schleuse then examines the four principal collections by Vecchi, which are characterised by the inclusion of different musical genres within a single print. The Selva di varia ricreatione (1590) and the Convito musicale (1597) are the subject of the third chapter, while L'Amfiparnaso (1597) and Le Veglie di Siena (1604) are discussed in the fourth and fifth chapters, respectively. In the sixth and last chapter, Schleuse analyses a few selected compositions by Vecchi in order to show "the means of imitation such music employs and the commentary it offers on class, frequently through its depiction of sexuality" (p. 245). Schleuse examines Vecchi's compositions in an innovative and evocative manner. Developing on the approach in the seminal article by Laura Macy ("Speaking of Sex: Metaphor and Performance in the Italian Madrigal", [Journal of Musicology 14, no. 1 (Winter 1996): 1–34]), Schleuse investigates the psychological and emotional condition of people performing Vecchi's music at the time of its publication in order to understand from within the special and original appeal it exerted on its contemporary consumers. In early modern Italy, the performance of secular polyphony played a very important social role: singing a vocal part in a polyphonic group signified above all the construction, together with others, of a shared, deeply meaningful, emotional, and intellectual world. It implied an interplay that was multifaceted: the "social acts of choosing music, singing it, and then discussing the pieces and their execution" (p. 176). Such interplay is described in some important texts cited by Schleuse such as Doni's Dialogo della musica and Castiglione's Cortegiano (not to mention the copious paintings representing groups of people performing music for their own pleasure). This complex interaction gained special status and significance between the late-sixteenth and the early-seventeenth centuries, and Schleuse's book is a successful attempt to demonstrate that Vecchi's output is one of the most interesting manifestations of that period. One of the most fascinating aspects of Vecchi's work is that he never repeats himself; he bestows a special and individual character to every one of his books. This is evident in the four main collections of his last period with their original and evocative titles, but it is also present, albeit perhaps less visible, in his earlier, more conventional, collections of canzonettas and madrigals. To point out...

Choral works from the Bachs and their contemporaries

This rather splendid batch of recordings presents a wide swathe of works by Johann Sebastian Bach and a choice handful of his offspring, extended family and his rivals. Perhaps the most stalwart of all Bach’s music for voices are the six motets, most likely composed for funerals. They are some of the only Bach works to have remained in continuous use at the Thomaskirche after his death in 1750. Although they are sometimes performed unaccompanied, the existence of a complete set of independent instrumental parts in Bach’s hand for Der Geist Hilft (bwv226) indicate that he at least had the vocal parts doubled by instruments. These deeply spiritual works are given truly magnificent performances in Johann Sebastian Bach: Complete motets, bwv225–330; bwv118 (Musica Omnia mo0403, rec 2011, 75′) by the choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, a place that was to become iconic in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Julian Wachner leads a superb ensemble of singers and players in spotless renderings of these vastly complicated and deeply emotional pieces. Tempos, balance, intonation, diction is spot on from beginning to end. The just-right reverberant acoustic of Trinity Church makes for a warm yet clear and present sound palette. Wachner brings a definite spiritual gravitas to the music without ever letting things get turgid or, dare I say it, funereal. Scholarly yet captivating liner notes by the brilliant Peter Watchhorn round out a wonderful release.

Singing voice separation with pre-learned dictionary and reconstructed voice spectrogram

Recently the mixture spectrogram of a song is usually considered as a superposition of a sparse spectrogram and a low-rank spectrogram, which correspond to the vocal part and the accompaniment part of the song, respectively. Based on this observation, one can separate singing voice from the background music. However, the quality of such separation might be limited, since the vocal part may be not described very well by low rank, and moreover its more prior information, such as annotation, should be considered when designing separation algorithm. Based on these considerations, in this paper, we present two categories, time–frequency-based source separation algorithms. Specifically, one incorporates both the vocal and instrumental spectrograms as sparse matrix and low-rank matrix, meanwhile combines some side information of vocal part, i.e., the reconstructed voice spectrogram from the annotation. The others further consider both the vocal and instrumental spectrograms as sparse matrix and group-sparse matrix, respectively. Evaluations on the iKala dataset show that the proposed methods are effective and efficient for both the separated singing voice and music accompaniment.

Texture and harmony parameter of the vocal and performance style (a case study of G. Sviridov’s works)

Texture and harmony parameter of the vocal and performance style (a case study of G. Sviridov’s works)

Texture and harmony parameter of the vocal and performance style (a case study of G. Sviridov’s works)

Texture and harmony parameter of the vocal and performance style (a case study of G. Sviridov’s works)

S. Scharrino’s «Luci mie traditrici»: the musical text of the Renaissance in the modern opera

Objectives. This paper is concerned with the creativity of contemporary Italian composer S. Sciarrino, who is primarily famous as the author of numerous operas. Among the variety of issues, which deal with the studying of this topic, one of the most important is the interaction of the author’s text and quotations from the compositions, which was created during previous eras. A similar creative approach connected with citation is the distinctive feature of S. Sciarrino’s composer style. The goal of this paper is to reveal the specifics of S. Sciarrino’s quotation method. Methods. Research methodology is based on the unity of style, genre, intonation and system types of analysis. Furthermore, to reveal the specifics of Sciarrino’s quotations method, we involved the concept of «deconstruction», which means understanding the musical text through destruction of stereotype or inclusion it in a new context. Results. Оne of the most vivid examples of S. Sciarrino’s quotations method is the opera “Luci mie traditrici” (“My Treacherous Eyes”), which is dedicated to the tragic life story of the Italian Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo di Venoza, the author of famous chromatic madrigals. Nowadays the story of Gesualdo’s life is well known as a fascinating legend of beautiful, but tragic passion, adultery, betrayal and revenge. Avoiding the quotation of the C. Gesualdo’s madrigal, S. Sсiarrino does not refuse of the idea of including the example of Renaissance music to the text of the opera at all. Composer chooses Elegy “Qu’est devenu ce bel oeil” (“What has become of those lovely eyes”), created for three voices by C. Le Jeune, French composer of XVI century. In Sciarrino’s opera the Elegy is perceived as a symbol of lost love, and, at the same time, as an identifier of the historical epoch shown in the opera. In the S. Sciarrino’s opera “Luci mie traditrici” C. Le Jeune’s Elegy appears in the Prologue and in three instrumental Intermezzo, four times in total, gaining new qualities for each time. The fragments of the ancient chromatic tetrachord, on which the Elegy is based, are the basis of the intonation vocabulary of all vocal parts of the opera. In Prologue, the Elegy is represented only by the single monodic upper voice, which is performed by non-personalized soprano behind the forestage. In the First intermezzo, following the scene of declaration of love between the main characters, the Duke and the Duchess, the Elegy sounds already in the original three-voice texture, but in instrumental transcription. The Second intermezzo, following the scene of repentance of the Duchess, the Elegy is perceived as a projection of the reflective consciousness of the Duke, who is tragically undergoing the betrayal of his beloved wife. The structure of the stanzas of the elegy gradually begins to disintegrate. The sound is constantly interrupted by pauses in all voices that can be interpreted as the embodiment of the painfully excited consciousness of the Duke. In the Third Intermezzo, preceding the final scene of the Catastrophe, the melodic lines of C. Le Jeune’s Elegy are completely preserved, but the recognition of this theme is reduced to a minimum. The melody is dispersed among the parties of various instruments and consists of separate «isolated sounds», which, by the definition of M. Cesari, is the smallest structural element of the musical vocabulary of S. Sciarrino. Overall conclusions. C. Le Jeune’s Elegy in S. Scarrino’s opera “Luci mie traditrici” is an example of a consistent “deconstruction” of someone else’s text, which leads to its new understanding, its inclusion in the new context, the expansion of new semantic and intonation space. By using the series of “dispersed variations” the composer models the dramatic line of the work with the multidimensionality of meanings and their projections, which is characteristic of post-avanguard art. As a result, the musical text of the Renaissance ceases to be a representative of the “Renaissance myth” and is perceived by the modern listener as the personification of the eternal human tragedy embodied in S. Sciarrino’s opera.