Wind Quintet Research Articles

Transpozicija mita o Panovoj fruli u Satirovoj svirali Petra Konjovića - fantazijski i baladni punktovi

In this paper we interpret the elements of the fantasy and ballad principle in Satirova svirala [La flûte de Pan] (1945) for solo flute written by Petar Konjović (1883-1970) from the point of view of the author's poetics and musical and non-musical analogies with Claude Debussy's (1862-1918) composition Syrinx (1913). Aspects of the fantasy principle are equally manifested when considering Satirova svirala as a unique musical entity that musicalizes the myth of Pan's flute, as well as in the context of its dramaturgical position, as being the central movement (Andante più sostenuto e molto rubato) in the five-movement Concert Suite for Wind Quintet. The variation principle, ballad-like 'narrativity' of the flute part, improvisational character, and rubato spaces of the Svirala's musical flow emanate the Other logic and "free play" inseparable from fantasy, resonating, at the same time, with the mythical narrative.

Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World by Mark Katz

Reviewed by: Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World by Mark Katz Abimbola Cole Kai-Lewis Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World. By Mark Katz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. [xvii, 232 p. ISBN 9780190056117 (hardcover), $24.95; also available as e-book, ISBN and price vary.] Bibliography, illustrations, index. Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World chronicles the evolution of the Next Level hip-hop diplomacy program of the US Department of State. Author Mark Katz, professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, served as the director of Next Level between 2013 and 2018, a period throughout which 111 artists actively participated in the initiative. Build describes the involvement of artists in cyphers (freestyle emcee battles), concerts, and workshop sessions in over two dozen countries across six continents (p. ix). Katz incorporates artist interviews, performance observations, photographs, and personal recollections from a wide range of destinations in emphasizing that the purpose of the program was to foster cross-cultural interactions through the elements of hip-hop culture—aerosol art, breakdancing, deejaying, and emceeing. [End Page 241] In the introduction, Katz explains that hip-hop diplomacy is "part of the US government's decades-long deployment of the arts in international relations" (p. 4), acknowledging that it began in the early twenty-first century but can be traced back to jazz diplomacy beginning in the 1950s. Katz links this form of diplomacy to building—collective and collaborative work intended for communal advancement—and frames building as both a "constructive, mutually beneficial model of engagement" and a way to "build bridges, connecting people who would have little reason to interact otherwise" (p. 17). Each chapter presents different aspects of Next Level, its international impact, and how it built linkages between the United States and other countries. In chapter 1, "History from Jazz Ambassadors to Hip Hop Diplomats," Katz offers a survey of musicians that served as State Department diplomats. He traces the process of identifying artists that were deemed to be appropriate international envoys. Initially, this included the American Ballet Caravan, the League of Composers Wind Quintet, and the Yale Glee Club, who travelled overseas as part of the work of the Office of Interamerican Affairs. The selection of these artists was criticized for being unrelatable to the public because of its exclusion of diverse artists and genres of music. Katz shares the perspective of musicologist Charles Seeger, who opposed the choices of the State Department and declared, "But let us also live true to our democratic principles and encourage primarily the communication of that which is common between the common men of all countries. This, in music, must now, and for some time to come, be done in folk and in popular idioms" (p. 28). Jazz eventually became a vehicle for cultural diplomacy from the 1950s through the 1970s. Katz highlights festivals, performances, and tours between 1956 and 1973 and describes the tours of jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in Argentina, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Greece, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, Serbia, Syria, Turkey, and Uruguay. This engendered ensuing jazz diplomacy tours by other musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, Woody Herman, and Randy Weston. Katz transitions from jazz diplomacy to the rise of hip-hop diplomacy in 2001 by presenting poet Toni Blackman's initial trip to Ghana and Senegal. Blackman, recognized as one of the premier hip-hop poets in Washington, DC, at the time, was contacted by the State Department for a tour. The State Department, Blackman recalled, was "looking for someone who had travelled internationally, who was an educator, who was actively performing as an artist, who had experience in Africa and maybe Southeast Asia. That was me" (p. 33). Her time as a cultural diplomat solidified her role as the first "American Cultural Specialist in hip hop" (p. 33). Blackman was celebrated for her work and later became an integral member of Next Level. In the wake of Blackman's international tours, the State Department selected additional artists to serve as hiphop diplomats, such as the Havikoro Dance Crew (which traveled to Azerbaijan and Vietnam) and Ozomatli...

About Teaching Methodology of Work with a Classical Wind Quintet at University

About Teaching Methodology of Work with a Classical Wind Quintet at University

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...

Hennady Liashenko’s «Technems» for winds incontemporary context of Ukrainian instrumental music

Relevance of the study . The main direct of the European instrumental music development is a genre and stylish synthesis. A lot of contemporary oboe solo and ensemble with oboe works by Ukrainian composers are signed by those charakteristik. For example, the cycle of «Technems» by H. Liashenko from the five instrumental concert pieces, – hich have inside two original compositions with oboe, – take an important place in the composer’s creation; this pieces are known as the wide examples of contemporary concert repertuar for ensembles. They present a new kind of chamber music which was beginning with the Liashenko’s «Technems», and it’s not researching enough till now. Main objective of the study is to pay attention to this new and original genre for ensemble with oboe – «Technem № 1» for wind quintet and «Technem № 4» for oboe and fagot as soloists with the baroque symphony orchestra. Methodology The provident in this study is the comparative analyses’ method. How the study was done. The «Technem № 1» for wind quintet we’re noting as the stylish unite. It’s based on individual composer’s meaning about the melodically uniting of the themes and about it’s rules. The important direct of studying in Liashenko’s works is his meaning about «growth in form»: the whole is growth from one element. Thanks to using those principal means in his compositions, work’s structure look like the one qualities unit, while inside ones we can find a different types of intonations and of stylish elements. Results and conclusions . The sphere of wind concerts is continue by «Technem № 4», which seems as a double concert for oboe and fagot. It is the next step in the composer’s process, when the main characters of stylish synthesis are seeing on the level of intonation, form and shows the kind of nearby connections between romantic and baroque. Practical significance . The well-known connective tradition «performer – author – performer» is actually till today, and sometimes we can trade it as the corporative form of interpretation as creation.

The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward ed. by M. J. Grant and Imke Misch

Reviewed by: The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward ed. by M. J. Grant and Imke Misch Paul V. Miller The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward. Edited by M. J. Grant and Imke Misch. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2016. [162p. ISBN 9783955930684 (paperback). €22.] The recent crop of scholarship on Karlheinz Stockhausen is turning out to be exceptionally abundant. Along with Jerome Kohl’s long-awaited book on the early wind quintet Zeitmasse (Karlheinz Stockhausen: Zeitmasse [Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2017]), Thomas Ulrich recently published a sizable study of the seven Licht operas (Stockhausens Zyklus Licht: ein Opernführer [Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2017]). Adding to this bounty is this new volume of essays. Its editors, Imke Misch and M. J. Grant, have [End Page 281] themselves published a considerable amount of research on Stockhausen, and Misch has extensive experience working for the composer’s foundation in Kürten, Germany. Their volume, entitled The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward, is an uneven but welcome contribution to the harvest. A compilation of papers read in 2011 at the Stockhausen Concerts and Courses Kürten workshop, the book brings together a roster of mostly European scholars. The papers range considerably in length, depth, and ambition, as did the presentations at the conference. It is probably for good reason that a considerable amount of time elapsed between the conference and the publication: the papers presented in 2011 varied across the board, and while certain studies underwent major improvements, others were omitted completely in the publication. Many of the essays are quite short and present merely tentative beginnings of larger research projects. It is worth noting that if these projects were to be followed through more comprehensively, many would surely bear even greater fruit. Nevertheless, the volume brings together some excellent research. Among the most important papers is the first contribution, by Mark Delaere. An expert on the extensive correspondence between Stockhausen and Karel Goeyvaerts, which consists of about 175 letters written between 1951 and 1958, Delaere shows how the two young composers shared an enthusiasm for new music and a deep devotion to Catholicism. Among the three principal themes running through the correspondence are “the concept of static music, the quest for absolute purity, and theological justification” (p. 23). Electronics could, in theory, provide the composers with the means to produce static music, a kind of sound that would be “congruent with the stasis of absolute Being” (p. 24). The compositional quest for “absolute purity” justified the use of the sine tone, a strangely disembodied sound without any overtones. Unlike Goeyvaerts, Stockhausen soon abandoned use of the sine tone, turning instead to the use of more complex sounds and the famous “insertion,” or Einschub (the focus of another essay in the collection). Goeyvaert’s avoidance of tones other than the sine wave left him with far fewer options, and ultimately his music has not stood the test of time as well as that of Stockhausen. Even more than these two goals, what set Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen “light years” apart from their other young European colleagues was their religious fervor (p. 32). While Stockhausen never abandoned his belief that music could convey a profound theological message, the correspondence seems to indicate that Goeyvaerts was the more ardent believer of the pair. It would be fascinating to tell the story of the origins of European serialism by fully exploring its theological foundations, but such a history would almost surely fracture the neat historical narrative that has become all too customary in textbooks. An essay by Gustavo Oliveira Alfaix Assis evaluates the concept of the Einschub in Stockhausen’s music. This practice introduces a spontaneous, unforeseen element into the music; it is something outside of the original form-plan. Stockhausen used the Einschub to add an element of organicism to the work, in such a way that the musical composition would resemble aspects of a biological system. But Assis undercuts his claim that Stockhausen’s Einschübe function “much as ‘chaos’ does in nature” in the very next text he quotes, in which Stockhausen explains that the insertion—while unplanned—is nevertheless a kind of musical...

Live wind music within an acute ward for people with dementia

Abstract This project sought to examine the effects of live music as an intervention to improve the well-being of people with dementia who had been admitted to an acute dementia assessment ward following severe psychological and behavioural distress. The literature search revealed little into the use of a group of musicians, none using a wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn), and few studies involving a group of wind musicians and people with dementia experiencing severe distress. Measurements were taken using Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) and the Bradford well-being and ill-being profiles. Data collected from individuals with dementia, carers, staff and players provided evidence to show that intervention using live group music had a positive effect upon individuals’ well-being. The number of participants was restricted to twelve – the capacity of the assessment unit – and there was no control group. This pilot study could lead to a larger, controlled research study. The interesting findings were observations of well-being in favour of ill-being in responses to the live music interventions. The precise mechanisms responsible for these affects appear complex, relating to both the musical and socially therapeutic dimensions of the intervention. An important secondary finding related to the positive effect of the whole process on musicians’ development in person-centred skills appropriate for working with people with severe dementia. The project also extended ward staff’s facilitation skills encouraging individuals’ participation in a new situation with a group of players on the ward.

“My” “Musical” “Language” ?

Abstract The problem associated with the musical “language” of a particular composer can be understood either literally, i.e. with some possible analogies to natural language, or metaphorically, as a substitute of style, technique, or manner. I try to combine both usages. In fact, my approach to composing music is not so much - to develop a consistent language ready for use in multiple instances and thus to attain a recognisable personal style, but rather - to try to build a tool for use in one particular composition on many levels of musical “grammar”. Another basic problem is the proportion between impulse and design as defined in a well-known book by Andrzej Panufnik. The examples discussed illustrate some core problems of the music creation process, such as the deliberately incomplete ‘‘monadic’’ form (Gamma from String Quartet No. 3); the evolution of style in the process of composition and its dependence on the medium (Rondeau for wind quintet); and purely intuitive composition (Con tenerezza from Cinque pezzi diversi).

Recent Music of Hans Abrahamsen

Hans Abrahamsen. Traumlieder: For Violin, Cello, and Piano (1984/2009). Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, [2010]. [Table of contents, p. [i]; score, p. 1-23, and 2 parts. ISBN 978-87-598-6941-3, pub. no. WH 30687C. $41.] Hans Abrahamsen. String Quartet No. 3 (2008). Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, [2008]. [Score, p. 1-10, and 4 parts. ISBN 978-87-5981745-2 (score), 978-87-598-1746-9 (parts), pub. no. WH 30919. $28.40 (score), $26.80 (parts).] Hans Abrahamsen. Schnee: Ten Canons for Nine Instruments (200608). Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, [2010]. [Pref. matter (instrumentation, performance instructions, stage setup, table of contents), p. i-iv; score, p. 1-191. ISBN 978-87-598-2067-4, pub. no. WH 31173. $55.30.] Hans Abrahamsen. Double Concerto: For Violin, Piano, and String Orchestra (2010-2011). Copenhagen: Edition Wilhelm Hansen, 2011. [Pref. matter (instrumentation, performance notes, stage setup, table of contents), p. i-iv; score, p. 1-57. ISBN 978-87-598-2191-6, pub. no. WH 31276. $72.70.] While there are certainly many Danish composers throughout history worth hearing, studying, and performing, it seems as though there is often one per generation that stands out as the reigning champion of Danish music. Niels Gade (1817-1890) the composer, conductor, and violinist, spent the beginning of his career in Germany within Mendelssohn's circle, returning to Denmark at the age of thirty-one due to the First Schleswig War to establish himself in a successful career as a prominent musician and educator. He guided the likes of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), the latter who ultimately became known as the greatest Danish composer of all time. Nielsen's successor was, arguably, the prolific Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996) whose neoromantic/post-Sibelius aesthetic was very influential on his pupils, including the current champion of Danish music, Per Norgard (b. 1932), who became equally influential due to his development of the infinity row--a compositional process that resembles Sibelian orchestral textures and explorations in tempos and harmony. Presently, there are several Danes vying to be Norgard's heir. Of course, only time will tell; it could be decades before one emerges. Each of the members of the current generation all exhibit qualities of their predecessors, while moving forward and developing their own ideas. Those who seem to be receiving the most national and international attention are Karl Aage Rasmussen (b. 1947), Poul Ruders (b. 1948), Bent Sorensen (b. 1958), and Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952), whose music I will discuss here. Beginning his professional career in the 1970s on the tail end of the Danish movement--a response to the complexities inherent in the Darmstadt School throughout central Europe, and not to be confused with the German new simplicity (Neue Einfachheit) nor the Tintinnabulation style found in Arvo Part or John Tavener--Abrahamsen can be perceived, in retrospect, as being somewhat naive, in that the older generation's influence--that of Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Henning Christiansen, and lb Norholm--is a bit obvious, particularly in his orchestral music. However, Abrahamsen's intimate style and rigorous forms, which are obvious features of his recent music, are also noticeable during his early career in pieces such as Herbst for tenor, flute, cello, and guitar (1972), Flowersongs for three flutes (1973), and Universe Birds for female chorus (1973). Throughout the 1970s Abrahamsen continued to develop in distinctive ways. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Abrahamsen enjoyed many successes, professionally, at home and abroad, as well as musically with the imagery and narrative he was able to convey in works such as Winternachl for chamber orchestra (1976-78), Walden for wind quintet (1978), the orchestral pieces Nacht und Trompeten (1981) and Marchenbilder (1984), and Lied in Fall for cello and ensemble (1987). …

A tribute to Norman L. Letvin (1949–2012)

A tribute to Norman L. Letvin (1949–2012)

A Gedenkschrift for Karlheinz Stockhausen: Guest Editor's Introduction

A GEDENKSCHRIFT FOR KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION JEROME KOHL He thought that he, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while their artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. —Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund HIS GEDENKSCHRIFT (MEMORIAL COLLECTION) is a successor to and completion of the three-part 70th-birthday Festschrift for Stockhausen published in Perspectives of New Music 36/1, 36/2, and 37/1, which surveyed Stockhausen’s work from the beginnings through the earlier operas of the Licht cycle. Before he died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 79 on the morning of Wednesday, 5 December T Guest Editor’s Introduction 307 2007, he had completed that cycle of seven operas and had embarked on a new cycle of chamber compositions, collectively titled Klang: Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound: The 24 Hours of the Day). Now that all seven of the Licht operas have been staged, it is possible to begin serious evaluation of the cycle as a whole. Thomas Ulrich sets the stage with a survey of the Licht cycle from the perspective of the character Lucifer, and asks whether Stockhausen’s attitude to morality leaves him open to the charge of totalitarian thinking. The last opera to be composed, Sonntag, is then given detailed scrutiny in essays by Paul Miller (on the first scene, Lichter—Wasser) and Robin Hartwell (mainly focused on the last scene, Hoch-Zieten). Stockhausen’s compositional style continued to evolve through his last years, though opinions about this differ. The harmonic dimension in particular has been reported as having become milder and gentler. The musical language of Freitag aus Licht, for example, “is astonishing and weirdly beautiful—not quite tonal and yet tonally based, deceptively simple, robustly plain” (Murray 1996), and the music in Mittwoch, “while related in principle to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method, often leans toward tonality” (Ross 2012, 105). To some extent this is the because parts of the Licht superformula focus on more consonant interval combinations. In other cases it is a product of compositional choice. A plain example of willful compositional choice is Stockhausen’s decision to omit the Bb from the Lucifer layer near the end of the superformula, leaving the clear G-major sonority that dominates Sonntag, especially in the opening scene, Lichter—Wasser. Robin Hartwell considers some possible dramaturgical and theological motivations for this choice—and some evidence of Stockhausen’s hesitation over it—in his article in this collection. As a counterexample of this effect as a native property of the superformula , a charming story is told by Suzanne Stephens about a captive audience of two hundred Rotarians at a banquet meeting in October 1997. Their president made a surprise announcement that, before the meal, they would be treated to the world premiere of a new composition by Stockhausen. Initial apprehension gave way to relief when they discovered, to their surprise, music “so consonant, so beautiful” that at the end, they gave a standing ovation (Stephens 1998). This was the Rotary Wind Quintet, a short work adapted from the ethereal vocal sextet, “Menschen hört” that closes Michaelion, the last scene of Mittwoch aus Licht. This work presents the Licht superformula in four progressively longer, more elaborate forms with the three melodic layers rotated 308 Perspectives of New Music vertically to conclude each time on a perfectly familiar C dominantseventh chord—first in root position, then in 4/2 and 6/5 inversions, and finally in root position again—and is scored for a conventional wind quintet, with its serenade associations. It is no wonder the Rotarians found it so easy to accept. While this apparent trend has displeased some doctrinaire modernists (such as the German critic Klaus Umbauch, who reviewed the Leipzig premiere of Freitag in 1996, and was answered by an eloquent letter to the editor (Leisten 1996), it has certainly improved Stockhausen’s standing with more conservative audiences. How is it, though, that when the identical music from the end of Michaelion is presented in the preceding scene of Mittwoch, scored for an ensemble at least as conventional as a wind quintet, it could be described as “a hideous amount...

Neue Mozart Ausgabe Online (review)

Neue Mozart Ausgabe Online, part of the Digitate Mozart Edition. Operated by the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg in cooperation with the Packard Humanities Institute. http://DME.mozarteum.at (Accessed June-September 2010). [Requires a Web browser, an Internet connection, and a PDF reader.] Complete works editions have long been an important resource for scholars and musicians. Although their high production costs have made them susceptible to shifts in academic trends and availability of funding, large critical editions continue to play an important role in twenty-first-century scholarship. Recent years have witnessed an increase in online digital collections; the C.P.E. Bach complete works is currently making performance parts of each volume available on its Web site (http://www.cpebach.org), nineteenth-century editions of Bach, Handel, and others are now available in facsimile online (made possible by the expiration of their copyright), and the Digitale Mozart Edition (DME) is at the forefront of this trend, with the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA) already completely digitized and available online. The DME has also begun to implement plans to make archival documents pertaining to Mozart's life available online, as part of their overall project to provide world wide access to the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ... [and to] include a critical edition of letters, documents and libretti as well. (1) Only the NMA Online will be discussed in this review. The content is free and open to the public for private and educational use. Commerical use is prohibited, as is wholesale reproduction of the edition. (1.) Excerpted from the DME's Project Outline on their homepage: http://DME.mozarteum.at/DME. With 126 volumes and almost 35,000 pages digitized, the NMA Online--available in German, Japanese, and English--offers numerous advantages to libraries, scholars, and musicians over printed volumes. Of great interest, lo librarians will be the ability for users to view any part of the edition, download it as a PDF file, and print a hard copy if needed. This will reduce wear and tear to printed editions and decrease use of copy and scanning equipment (as it renders reproduction of the originals unnecessary). The ability to print is useful for musicians since users can annotate their own copies of a with greater ease. This feature also makes the NMA Online a potential performance library for performers, although for now the score only format makes it impractical in this regard for the majority of Mozart's compositions. In the future, the DME plans to convert the NMA material into a format that would allow for individual performance parts to be viewed and printed. Compared to the printed edition, ease of use is greatly increased with the online version since it is searchable and browsable by a number of different criteria. Both a Kochel number and a more generic keyword search function are available. Users can also browse by genre, key, volume editor, and the original NMA organization scheme. If one were looking for the wind quintet K. 581, but didn't know the catalog number, it could be found in a number of different ways. A search for clarinet in the keyword box would yield it, as would browsing the category drop down list for Series VIII--quintets with wind instruments. Users can also find the correct volume by searching for its editor (in the case of K. 581, Ernst Schmid). Below the main search box is a listing of each series in the NMA and by clicking on any of these, users may browse a list of the volumes contained within each series, complete with information on works contained, publication date, editor, and number of pages. These search features of the NMA Online allow for many different works or volumes to be accessed simultaneously and compared on a single computer screen. Once the desired volume has been found, the user has the option of either viewing the entire NMA volume in facsimile (the by clicking on the note-head icon, the report by clicking on the text button) or proceeding to an interactive table of contents that has been created for each individual volume (by clicking the i button). …

Laura Jane Curtis Bullard (1831-1912)

Like so many other once-prominent nineteenth-century women writers, Laura Jane Curtis Bullard seems to have fallen from history and memory. Curtis Bullard (1831-1912) was a novelist, editor, and activist who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the editor of the suffrage newspaper, the Revolution, but she rarely exists even at the level of a footnote in books and articles about American social and literary history.1 One of the exceptions is Beneath the American Renaissance by David S. Reynolds, who declares, "Of all the oversights of literary and social historians of America, few are more heinous than the almost complete neglect of Laura Curtis Bullard" (393). Fifteen years have passed since Reynolds praised Curtis Bullard, but her work and her life remain for the most part neglected.2 Yet her texts and life offer us exciting new opportunities to explore questions of popular and elite literature, the role of women in the literary marketplace, political debates about marriage, divorce, and free love, and the cultural history of the woman's rights movement in the nineteenth century.3 Laura Jane Curtis was born, rather appropriately, in Freedom, Maine, on Nov. 21, 1831.4 She was the eldest of the five children of Lucy and Jeremiah Curtis (Mosher 17),5 who in the 1830s started a company in Bangor to sell Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a morphine-based tonic used to soothe aches and pains, such as teething in children. Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup later became one of the most popular patent medicines of the period, marketed through lush advertisements of mothers and children and an annual book of recipes. Indeed, the syrup became such a part of the popular culture that in 1879 Edward Elgar wrote a well-known adagio for wind quintet named "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup," and A. E. Housman mentioned the medicine in his comic poem "The Shades of Night Were Falling Fast." While Jeremiah Curtis was building the family business, he was also politically active as an abolitionist, serving as vice president of the Liberty Party, also called the Abolitionist Party, in Maine ("The Movement"). In November 1847, when Laura was sixteen, Jeremiah Curtis ran—and lost quite soundly—as the Liberty Party candidate for a seat in Congress ("National Intelligencer"). In the early 1850s as his business continued to prosper, Jeremiah Curtis moved his company and family to New York City (Holcombe 116).6 Jeremiah Curtis's political activism must have helped to inspire his daughter's interest in [End Page 74] social responsibility and the rhetoric of rights and reform. By the time she was twenty-three, she had published her first novel, Now-a-days!, the story of a young woman, Esther Hastings, who rejects a marriage proposal and leaves Bangor after the death of her once-wealthy father to earn her living as a teacher in backwoods Maine.7 Although Esther cares for the people of Aroostock County, like so many antebellum social activists and workers, she also wants them to change to reflect her own middle-class education and values. Esther finds happiness in her work, but, at the very end of the novel, agrees to marry her former suitor, now a widower with children. Although Now-a-Days! has received very little critical attention, it deserves to be read within the framework of the female bildungsroman, pioneer stories, and the tradition of realism and regionalism, especially for Curtis Bullard's rich, historical detail of Maine backwoods life, the lumber industry, and representation of New England dialects.8 Two years later in 1856, Curtis Bullard published the radical woman's rights novel Christine: or, Woman's Trials and Triumphs with DeWitt and Davenport of New York. Christine is a sensational story about a young woman who speaks out against the sexual exploitation of women and rejects her suitor when she learns he has seduced a young girl. Christine, the heroine, leaves her rural home and shocks her family and friends by becoming a woman...

Judith Tick. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. xiv, 457 pp. ISBN 0-19- 506509-3 (hardcover) Joseph N. Straus. The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xii, 260 pp. ISBN 0-521-41646-9 (hardcover)

Judith Tick. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. xiv, 457 pp. ISBN 0-19- 506509-3 (hardcover) / Joseph N. Straus. The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xii, 260 pp. ISBN 0-521-41646-9 (hardcover). An article from journal Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 20, Number 2, 2000, pp. 1-155), on Érudit.

Chance as Ideology

When the American composer John Cage took the podium at the Darmstadt Summer Program for New Music in 1958 to lecture on and demonstrate the principle of indeterminacy, the absolute primacy of serial organization over musical form in Europe had already been broken. The link between serialism and indeterminacy, which had already been critically elucidated without Cage's contribution, had produced works such as Boulez's Third Sonata [for piano; 1957-62] and Stockhausen's Zeitmasse [for wind quintet; 1957]. Stockhausen had subjected the traditional serial conception of the parameter to a comprehensive analysis, criticizing the discrepancy between the determination of analogous parameters and at the same time sketching the outlines of a new morphology of musical time.1

Holst: Piano Quintet in A Minor Wind Quintet in A Flat

Holst: Piano Quintet in A Minor Wind Quintet in A Flat

Donald Martino's Fantasy Variations: The First Three Measures

D ONALD MARTINO'S Fantasy Variations for solo violin was written in 1962, and directly antedates Parisonatina al'Dodecafonia and the Concerto for Wind Quintet, two works which proved to be turning points in the evolution of the composer's highly personal musical language. Upon hearing the piece for the first time, I was immediately struck by the opening three measures, which are isolated from the music that follows by a double bar and a fermata-see Example 1. In many respects, the passage is strikingly simple, yet, despite its brevity, it contains a wealth of musical information and implications. This paper is limited to an examination of these three measures, and consists of two parts, each of which explores a different way of approaching the music. In part one, I attempt to detach the opening passage from the rest of the piece and hear it as a multidimensional, miniature musical composition. In part two, I focus on pitch-

A study on the subjective effects of an active-control system for sound fields in an auditorium

This paper presents subjective effects of an active-digital-control system for sound fields in an auditorium. A pilot study using various kinds of music was made to optimize a multipurpose hall in actual concerts. A wide range of music from baroque to contemporary, such as chorus, flute sonata, string quartet, wind quintet, and music for string ensemble was performed on the stage of a hall with 915 seats. In order to control early reflections and reverberation time as well as the IACC, signals were picked up by several microphones close to the sound sources. These signals were then fed to eight loudspeakers located at the ceiling above the seats after passing through digital-delay machines and digital reverberators. Questionnaires asking subjective preference, loudness, clearness, reverberance, diffuseness, and other related items such as experiences of attending concerts, performing music, etc., were distributed to about 200 listeners. The data for both conditions, on and off, of the system were analyzed. The results indicate that subjective preference for sound fields may be improved by a carefully adjusted active-control system for a wide range of seating areas.

The Perception of Tone Hierarchies and Mirror Forms in Twelve-Tone Serial Music

Four experiments are reported in which the materials are derived from two 12-tone serial compositions (Schoenberg's Wind Quintet and String Quartet, No. 4). Two experiments use the probe tone method (Krumhansl & Shepard, 1979) to assess factors contributing to tone prominence in serial music. The contexts in Experiment 1 are musically neutral statements of the complete or incomplete tone rows; the contexts in Experiment 4 are excerpts from the two pieces. Two experiments use a classification task to evaluate whether the prime form of the row is perceived as similar to its mirror forms (inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion). The materials are neutral presentations of the forms (Experiment 2) or excerpts from the pieces (Experiment 3). Large individual differences are found. A subgroup of listeners, with more music training on average, show the following effects in the probe tone experiments: low ratings for tones sounded more recently in the contexts and high ratings for tones not yet sounded; low ratings for tones fitting with local tonal implications; similar patterns for the neutral contexts and the musical excerpts. The remaining listeners show the opposite effects. Classification accuracy of mirror forms is above chance and is higher for the neutral sequences than the musical excerpts; performance is correlated with music training. The experiments show that some, but not all, listeners can perceive invariant structures in serial music despite mirror transformations, octave transpositions of tones, and variations of rhythm and phrasing.

Stepwise Continuity as a Structural Determinant in György Ligeti's Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet

Stepwise Continuity as a Structural Determinant in György Ligeti's Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet