scholarly journals Normative Wit

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy R. Mastic
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Starting Point

This article approaches Haydn’s treatment of sonata form from the perspective of the eighteenth-century listener, asking: if a moment is allegedly “witty” according to modern analysts, would Haydn’s contemporary audience have heard it as such? Eighteenth-century wit is a two-sided coin: wit does involve an aspect of surprise or deception, a breaking of understood norms; however, wit must also involve an unsuspected congruity, a larger-scale connection created only by breaking the aforementioned norm. Taking this as my starting point, I provide detailed analyses of the first movements of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony no. 100 and String Quartet in D major, op. 33 no. 6. Compared to the expectations set forth by each exposition, Haydn has recomposed each piece’s respective recapitulation in a significant way. I argue that these pieces are witty in the eighteenth-century sense of the term but not in the sense that the term has been used by recent scholars such as Hepokoski and Darcy, who emphasize the disruptive aspects of wit. Ultimately, I suggest that Haydn can be witty without necessarily being deceptive; wit can involve establishing a kind of unexpected coherence that binds together the recapitulation and another section of a sonata form.

scholarly journals With or without the B-A-C-H Motive? Bartók’s Hesitation in Writing his First String Quartet

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
László Somfai
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Starting Point

Considering the appearance of the musical cryptogram “B-A-C-H” (B-flat– A–C–B -natural) in well-known works up to the time of his First String Quartet (1908/1909), Béla Bartók knew Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H, presumably also Schumann’s Sechs Fugen über den Namen Bach, and Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H for organ. Such compositions quoted the celebrated motive, typically as a starting point, with the relevant (aforementioned) pitches because the musical cryptogram in this way allowed immediate recognition of the reference to the name of the Leipzig composer. However, Bartók’s planned “B-A-C-H” quotation in the development section of the sonata-form second movement of his First Quartet was not a typical homage to Johann Sebastian Bach but rather a vision: a distorted reference to the symbolic “B-A-C-H” motive. Undoubtedly Bartók liked this episode. There is reason to believe that his friend Zoltán Kodály advised him to leave out the inorganic and distorted “B-A-C-H” allusion.

WHAT BEETHOVEN LEARNED FROM K464

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-77
Author(s):  
STEPHEN RUMPH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

ABSTRACTBeethoven imitated Mozart's String Quartet in A major K464 more openly than any other work by a fellow composer. Yet critics have never explained his fascination with the fifth ‘Haydn’ quartet. This article argues that Beethoven responded to a rare and unexplored transformation of sonata form in which the primary theme returns at its original pitch in the secondary area. This preserves the melody of the theme, but reinterprets its harmonic and schematic function. Mozart explored this device with unusual rigour in k464, recalling the primary theme at pitch in both outer movements. The two primary themes share a common chromatic line whose invariant return wittily probes late eighteenth-century tonal conventions.Beethoven emulated Mozart's harmonic design in his own Quartet in A major, Op. 18 No. 5, and even intensified its more problematic features. He imitated k464 most literally in the finale of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, which provided a model for similar harmonic experimentation in the Sonata in G major Op. 31 No. 1, the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata and the first ‘Razumovsky’ quartet. k464 suggests an important source for Beethoven's use of chromatic elements to problematize tonal and thematic function, a practice most evident in the ‘Eroica’ Symphony.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

Ernest Bloch's Second String Quartet

Tempo ◽  
1959 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Frederick Rimmer
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
The Right

The four string quartets* of Bloch are a convenient medium for assessing both the strength and weakness of his unusual talent, revealing, as they do, an imperfect endowment of those processes of thought and feeling from which, in the right amalgam, a masterpiece of musical expression can emerge. Only the second quartet represents him at his best. It is one of the few works where inspiration and emotion are under the control of the intellect. There are weaknesses in the other quartets largely brought about by preoccupation with cyclic procedures—a notorious and dangerous expedient for a composer unable by nature to accept the traditional usages and disciplines of sonata form.

scholarly journals HA NOI – HUE – SAI GON IN TERRITORY EXPANSION TOWARD THE SOUTH AND UNIFICATION OF THE COUNTRY (1069–1802)

2020 ◽  
Vol 129 (6E) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Nguyễn Quang Ngọc
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Development Trend ◽  
Early History ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
The Relationship

Vietnam is a country of an early history establishment with three archaeological centres: Dong Son in the North, Sa Huynh in the Central, and Oc Eo in the South. In the long history, these three centres unite and gather into a unified block, step by step, becoming a mainstream development trend. By the eleventh century, Thang Long capital (Hanoi) is a typical representative, the starting point for the course of advancement to the South of the Vietnamese. Later, Phu Xuan (Hue) from the fourteenth century and Gia Dinh (Saigon) from the seventeenth century directly multiply resources, deciding the success of the course of territory expansion and determining the southern territory of the nation Dai Viet – Vietnam in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Tay Son movement at the end of the eighteenth century starts unifying the country, but the course is not completed with numerous limitations. The mission of unifying the whole country is assigned back to Nguyen Anh. Nguyen Anh continually builds Gia Dinh into a firm basement for proceeding to conquer the imperial capital of Hue and the citadel Thang Long, completing the 733-year journey to expand the southern territory (1069–1802) and unifying the whole country into a single unit. Hanoi – Hue – Saigon in the relationship and mutual support has become the three pillars that determine all successes throughout the long history and in each stage of expansion and shaping of territory and unification of the country.

French Influences on Germany’s Commercial Courts in the Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 469-494
Author(s):  
Thomas Vogl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
French Law ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Legal Situation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Commercial Courts

Summary The present contribution explores the extent of influence which French law had on the development of Germany’s commercial courts in the nineteenth century. Modern literature describes this influence as marginal, yet without further proof. The author takes this state of research as a starting point to compare the Napoleonic legislation on commercial courts with the German commercial court systems of the nineteenth century. However, the present contribution will start with an overview of the German legal situation at the end of the eighteenth century. This is followed by an examination of whether French law was transferred to Germany during the French occupation of large parts of Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Against this background it is possible to fully analyse the influence which French law had on the further development of German commercial courts.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
L. Poundie Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Form

Musical form is often discussed by appealing to metaphors that compare formal sections either to types of containers or to segments of journeys. Although both metaphors are usually combined and used interchangeably by most music analysts, since the nineteenth century container metaphors for form have tended to dominate. This contrasts with what was witnessed during the eighteenth century, where journey metaphors for musical form were more prevalent. The introductory chapter broadly compares container metaphors and journal metaphors for form, especially as they apply to sonata-form expositions in works composed during the Galant era. This chapter also introduces some of the features that tend to distinguish eighteenth-century formal discussions from modern ones, and it concludes with a preview of some of the strategies to be explored in subsequent chapters.

Mid-section cadences in Haydn’s sonata-form movements

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poundie Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Transition Section ◽  
Formal Procedures

Although a half cadence marks the end of the transition section in most sonata-form expositions and recapitulations, in many of Haydn’s sonata-form movements — especially those from around the 1760s — the end of the transition is instead articulated by a firm perfect authentic cadence. This establishes a point of harmonic resolution, rather than momentum, at this crucial formal juncture. As such, it yields an overall formal shape that departs from “textbook” sonata-form descriptions, which are based largely on later stylistic norms. The practice of having a strong tonic arrive in the middle of the exposition or recapitulation is a strategy that Haydn shared with other composers who flourished in the mid-eighteenth century, and it well accords with the descriptions of formal procedures found in Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition .

RECUPERATION, TRANSFORMATION AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF MAJOR OVER MINOR IN THE FINALE OF HAYDN’S STRING QUARTET OP. 76 NO. 1

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLOYD GRAVE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
A Site ◽  
Tonal System

ABSTRACTWhen the French critic Bernard Germain Lacépède identified minor harmony with inner pain, restlessness and torment (La poétique de la musique, 1785), he was recognizing what had evolved as a lopsided dichotomy within the tonal system: rather than viewing major and minor as equivalent, mutually defining opposites, later eighteenth-century musicians often viewed the latter as a site of disturbing associations and thus potentially problematic as the foundation for large-scale instrumental compositions. Against this backdrop, it is notable that Haydn ended most of his later minor-key works in major, and in the finales of his quartets Op. 76 Nos 1–3 he exploits modal reversal as a special theme by having each begin in minor before undergoing an artfully contrived switch to major. Because the tonality of two of these quartets was major to begin with, Nos 1 in G and 3 in C, this entailed a double reversal: from major to minor as the finale began, from minor to major at a crucial moment prior to the end. The finale of Op. 76 No.1 surpasses the others of this group in tonal range, intricate play of symmetries and palpable connections to its preceding movements. Crowning it is a coda that turns the movement’s stark opening unison into a cheerful rustic tune. Thus opening theme and coda, although diametrically opposed in topic and imagery, are heard to share the same underlying identity. The result may be read as a vividly evoked musical subject whose vicissitudes trace a path from darkness to light, from turmoil and confusion to a state of pastoral joy and contentment.

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