The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and Eighteen-Century Musical Style

2006 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 214
Author(s):  
Marie Demeilliez ◽  
W. Dean Sutcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Musical Style ◽  
Keyboard Sonatas ◽  
Eighteen Century

Composing Authority in Six Forged “Haydn” Sonatas

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Reece
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Shared History ◽  
Standards Of Evidence ◽  
Keyboard Sonatas

In December 1993 news broke that six keyboard sonatas whose rediscovery was being hailed as “The Haydn Scoop of the Century” were, in fact, not by Haydn at all. It soon emerged that the compositions—initially believed to be the lost Hob. XVI:2a–e and 2g—were not simple misattributions, but rather something that has rarely been discussed in the music world: modern forgeries deliberately constructed to deceive scholars and listeners. Adapting philosophical and art-historical writing on forgery to music, this article examines the six “Haydn” sonatas in the context of contemporary debates about expertise, postmodernism, and the author concept. Analyzing the stylistic content of the works in question sheds new light on musical forgeries as artifacts of aesthetic prejudice and anti-academic critique. More broadly, it suggests that the long-overlooked phenomenon of forgery poses questions about authorship, authority, and truth itself that have an important place in our shared history as musicologists. Should our standards of evidence be rooted in historical sources, musical style, or some combination of the two? What kind of relationship do we believe exists between composers and their works? And is there any inherent reason—cultural, ethical, or otherwise—that we cannot write music like Haydn’s today? In posing such questions, the story of the forged Haydn sonatas provides us with a unique opportunity to reflect on the values and future of the field.

Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Moment

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

Jaco Pastorius, the Electric Bass, and the Struggle for Jazz Credibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Brian F. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Electric Bass ◽  
Public Persona

This article explores Jaco Pastorius’s efforts to legitimize himself as a jazz electric bassist. Even though the instrument had existed at the margins of jazz for decades, by the 1970s it was overwhelmingly associated with rock and funk music and therefore carried with it the stigmatized connotations of outsider status. Building on the work of Bill Milkowski, Kevin Fellezs, Lawrence Wayte, and Peter Dowdall, I situate Pastorius’s career within the broader context of 1970s jazz fusion. I then analyze how he deliberately used his public persona, his virtuosic technical abilities, the atypical timbre of his fretless electric bass, and his work as a composer and bandleader to vie for acceptance within the jazz tradition. As I argue, Pastorius specifically attempted to establish his jazz credibility through his first two solo albums, initially by disassociating himself from his own instrument, and then by eventually abandoning the musical style that had made him famous. Ultimately, Pastorius’s story serves as a useful case study of the tangible ramifications of authenticity disputes and the complicated ways in which musicians have attempted to navigate contested musical spaces within popular music.

Bartók and Scarlatti: A study of motives and influence

2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Balázs Mikusi
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Human Emotions

The long-held notion that Bartók’s style represents a unique synthesis of features derived from folk music, from the works of his best contemporaries, as well as from the great classical masters has resulted in a certain asymmetry in Bartók studies. This article provides a short overview of the debate concerning the “Bartókian synthesis,” and presents a case study to illuminate how an ostensibly “lesser” historical figure like Domenico Scarlatti could have proved important for Bartók in several respects. I suggest that it must almost certainly have been Sándor Kovács who called Scarlatti’s music to Bartók’s attention around 1910, and so Kovács’s 1912 essay on the Italian composer may tell us much about Bartók’s Scarlatti reception as well. I argue that, while Scarlatti’s musical style may indeed have appealed to Bartók in more respects than one, he may also have identified with Scarlatti the man, who (in Kovács’s interpretation) developed a thoroughly ironic style in response to the unavoidable loneliness that results from the impossibility of communicating human emotions (an idea that must have intrigued Bartók right around the time he composed his Duke Bluebeard’s Castle ). In conclusion I propose that Scarlatti’s Sonata in E major (L21/K162), which Bartók performed on stage and also edited for an instructive publication, may have inspired the curious structural model that found its most clear-cut realization in Bartók’s Third Quartet.

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