scholarly journals INTERPRETATION PECULIARITIES OF THE CAPRICE GENRE IN F. MENDELSSOHN’S PIANO CREATIVITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (60) ◽  
pp. 96-110
Author(s):  
Tymofeieva Kira
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Expressive Intonation

Statement of the problem. The centuries-old development of the genre of piano caprice (capriccio), which led to its flourishing in the work of romantic composers, is considered as an integral part of the genre system in Western European piano music. Insufficient study of Mendelssohn’s piano works, in particular caprices, determines the relevance of the research. The purpose of the article is to generalize stylistic qualities of the composer’s piano caprices in the context of genre evolution and their performance features. Analysis of research and publications. The genre of caprice is studied in the historical research of T. Livanova (1983), who equates the form of fantasy and capriccio-ricercare. V. Protopopov (1979) reveals the connection between fantasycapriccio and fugue in the early 17th century. K. Agisheva (2007) examines the historical aspects of the study of the capriccio genre. Modern Western European researchers, analyzing the genre of piano caprice, emphasize that its musical texture is filled with elements of vocal lyrics and mood swings (Lewandowski, 2017; Keym, 2009). At the same time, the issues of performance features remain unclear. Methods. Complex methodological approach applied in the article (historical, genre, structural-functional, performаnce research methods) allows us to trace the development of caprice from the Baroque era to Romanticism and conduct an intonational-dramatic analysis of Mendelssohn’s works in accordance with the following criteria: musical form (dramaturgy), textural presentation, thematic development, tempo-rhythmic characteristics, nature of thematism. Analysis of recent research and publications. Baroque caprice is a work of polyphonic composition and improvisational construction (J. S.Bach, G.F. Handel, I. Sweelink, J. Frescobaldi). In the era of Viennese Classicism, caprice was not very popular due to its improvisational, bizarre nature, contradicting to the aesthetic ideals of the time. The genre of piano caprice became widespread in the era of Romanticism in the works of F. Mendelssohn, whose distinguished style is marked by virtuosity, melody, grace, sentimentality, clarity of presentation. Among the works of F. Mendelssohn there are seven caprices for solo piano and with orchestra. The intonational-dramatic analysis of Mendelssohn’s piano caprices makes it possible to trace the main stylistic qualities of the genre and to reveal its performance features. Conclusions. The work outlines the stylistic traits of Mendelssohn’s piano caprices ассording to such parameters: – compositional structure of his piano caprices is a one-movement composition or a cyclic one, composed of two or three movements; – texture of the music is determined by polyphonic orchestral elements and broad cantilena themes; – thematic development is based on repetition, variability or variation; – tempo-rhythm is characterized by three-beat pulsation, syncopation of rhythm, sharp accentuation; – thematicism is determined by synthesis of lyrical and decisively acting images inherent in the style of Mendelssohn. Hence, the main task for the performer is clarity, expressive intonation of the melody in combination with a “pearl” light touch and energetic dynamic tempo rhythm.

scholarly journals Classical “non-classical” metodology of analysis by M. D. Tits (to upcoming 125th birthday of the scholar)

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (23) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Halyna Poltavtseva
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Compositional Structure ◽  
Classical Methodology ◽  
Theoretical Generalization ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Comprehensive Classification

Background. The goal of given article is to reveal methodology of M. D. Tits’s analysis on the premise of textbook “About thematic and compositional structure of musical pieces” (1972), to comprehend uniqueness, innovation and research value of some theoretical postulates in his approach to analysis of a melody, to typology of themes, thematic development and period. The study of the methodology of Tits’s analysis was not the subject of a special study. This is the scientific novelty of the proposed article. Conclusions. Textbook “About thematic and compositional structure of musical pieces” is a synthesis between a textbook and scholar research. It is founded on non-classical methodology of analysis of musical work, supposing start of the course not from basic elements of musical language, but from complex holistic phenomena of melody, themes, period. M. D. Tits’s methodology might be seen as some sort of resistance to analysis of abstract, dogmatic superficial approach. Non-classical methodological approach on the new level and in conditions of a new genre (textbook) continues tradition of classical analysis, founded by E. Kurt, B. Asafyev, M. Arkadyev, regarding process of musical form, as well as connected with another researchers of energetic and intonational essence of music. M. D. Tits’s textbook showed new level of theoretical generalization due to encyclopaedical knowledge of the author. The course embraces different eras, styles, genres, compositional techniques. M. D. Tits’s approach to melody, unlike one of L. A. Mazel, is mainly a teaching on melodical movement, where it is not notes that are important, but the movements from one tone to another, connections between sounds, inside the pauses. This analysis supposes unique results as it embraces intuitive and sensual comprehension of melodic process. The textbook contains valuable thought about diversity of forms of thematic material. M. D. Tits distinguished three main types of themes, introduced concept of “thematic nucleus” on thematicism. M. D. Tits suggested the most comprehensive classification of four main principles of thematic development, without contradictions between levels of motives and themes; without terminology burdened by connotations with defined musical forms. M. D. Tits developed classification of period on the basis of structural and thematic factors. He introduced period of “unfolding” type, with its variants reaching outside the baroque era. We must state that this article outlines the most basic moments of M. D. Tits’s methodology of analysis in his textbook. However, the significance if the theoretic scholar for analysis and practice is much bigger and can not be limited to these postulates.

The Lady Composer Steps Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-149
Author(s):  
Wanda Brister ◽  
Jay Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Ensemble ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Piano Music ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Festival Of Britain ◽  
One Act ◽  
Selection Of

Dring’s early career is traced through her commissions for BBC radio and television broadcasts, of which the most significant is The Fair Queen of Wu, a ballet for singers and chamber ensemble with choreography by Felicity Gray. During these years, her first publications appeared, with an emphasis on piano music (for solo piano and two pianos) and her Three Shakespeare Songs. Dring’s music was also performed in recitals, including her recently published piano works and a selection of her songs (published and unpublished). The most favorable reviews are found for her Festival Scherzo (“Nights in the Gardens of Battersea”), written to commemorate the Festival of Britain. Also discussed is her one-act opera, Cupboard Love, the music written for the Christmas plays produced by Angela Bull’s Cygnet Company, and her first performance as a singer at the RCM’s Union “At Home.” A fine example of Dring’s cabaret style is found in the discussion and analysis of her song, “The Lady Composer.” In her personal life, the chapter documents her marriage to Roger Lord, his career as a musician (principal oboe in the London Symphony Orchestra for thirty-three years), and the birth of her son, Jeremy.

UPON THE OCCASION OF THE MILTON BABBITT (1916–2011) CENTENARY: AN INTERVIEW WITH BENJAMIN BORETZ

Tempo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (278) ◽  
pp. 29-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Banks Mailman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Milton Babbitt ◽  
Stylistic Changes

AbstractThis edited transcript of a public pre-concert discussion with composer, theorist and critic Benjamin Boretz not only touches on early personal encounters with Babbitt but also ranges over issues of reception of his music, listening experiences, transformations of music's temporality, connections to Schoenberg, Webern, Cage, and postmodernism, stylistic changes over Babbitt's career and composerly poetics, as well as motivations and consequences for precompositional structures and systems. The discussion took place on 22 November 2015, at the first of three recitals during the 2015–16 concert season at Spectrum, in New York City, in which Augustus Arnone for the second time performed all of Milton Babbitt's solo piano works, this time in honour of the composer's centenary.

scholarly journals “Vocal style” in Western European and Chinese art history: a comparative analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (57) ◽  
pp. 286-296
Author(s):  
Yi. Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Bel Canto ◽  
The West ◽  
Western European ◽  
Vocal Art ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of

Background. The category of style is one of the most used in modern musicology. This is due to objective reasons: the attention of the “consumer” of a cultural product is mostly not focused on its author recently. The coexistence of individual performance versions of composer’s works is one of the reasons that problems of stylistic attribution of musical art do not lose their relevance. In different areas of musical practice these problems are interpreted in different ways and get various degrees of theoretical understanding. The area of vocal art deserves special attention. An analysis of specialized literature suggests that the ever-increasing number of appropriate studies has not yet influenced the crystallization of the definition of “vocal style” in the scientific sense. This is due to the fact that the meaning of the term “vocal style” has many dimensions that reflect technological, aesthetic, historical, individual and national parameters of creativity. This resulted in the purpose of proposed article – to identify the singular and general in the interpretation of the category “vocal style” in Western European and Chinese art discourse. The research methodology is determined by its objectives; it is integrative and based on a combination of general scientific approaches and musicological methods. The leading research methods are historical, genre-stylistic and interpretative analyzes. Results. The word style first appeared in ancient Greece, where it was called a tool for writing on wooden tablets covered with wax. Later, the word style began to be used to describe not only human activity, but himself. At the same time, there is no case in Confucius’s “Analects” of using this definition. Central to the aesthetic block of Confucius’ teaching is not the question of the style of art, but the degree of influence that it has on the formation of the five moral qualities. As for questions directly about the style of artistic creation, Chinese scholars believe that they were first addressed by a contemporary and follower of Confucius, literary theorist Liu Xie, in whose works for the first time in the history of Chinese culture the word “style” was used. We note that in both Europe and China the studies of ancient thinkers have become the foundation for centuries and millennia that determined the essential parameters of the worldview of peoples and civilizations and stimulated the development of human thought. So nowadays style is similarly understood as a certain set of features that characterize either a particular person or the results of his activities. As for a narrower understanding of style (in our case – vocal style), it historically developed much later, which was preceded by a long evolution of vocal art and the accumulation of relevant scientific works. In addition, it is necessary to take into account the specific of vocal performance, the essence of which involves working with verbal texts, their artistic representation, and, consequently, the determinism of not only musical but also artistic embodiment of the work. Thus, in European treatises of Renaissance and Baroque periods it is not about the performer, but about the style of specific musical works, basic parameters of which are determined by the place of performance and the appropriate type of expression. At the same time, there are studies which examine the national aspect of the phenomenon of vocal performance, that is perceived as a consequence of the interaction of several factors: temperament, climate and landscape. It is interesting that even in the baroque treatises maxims about the advantages of the Italian school bel canto can be found; and nowadays it continues to determine the development of not only European but also world vocal art. We emphasize that we can not find Chinese treatises dating from the XVII–XVIII centuries, which are devoted to the comprehension of vocal art in the European sense of the word. After all, academic vocal culture in this country has begun to develop only in the early twentieth century and therefore imitated and appropriated the aesthetic and technology of the dominant European vocal style bel canto. It is known that the definition of bel canto is most often used in two cases: as a designation of a certain historical style, which is most vividly embodied in works of V. Bellini and G. Donizetti, and as a designation of singing technique. So we see that, as in other performing arts, the definition of style contains two interdependent parameters: technological and artistic and aesthetic. And the latter in the case of exactly vocal schools can be interpreted as a mobile factor. The similarity of interpretation of the definition of vocal style (namely one of its varieties – bel canto) in European and Chinese art literature is the result of the fact that eastern and western cultures are gradually approaching each other in the process of historical development. Conclusions. A comparative analysis of European and Chinese scientific sources suggests that the issues of musical stylistics occupied an important place in the minds of thinkers even before our era. And although both in the East and in the West the category of style was perceived as a mean of realization of the individual worldview of the man-creator, we can still talk about the difference in vectors of study of this problem. For example, if in the East it was perceived as a fundamental part of the ethical, in the West – the aesthetic. The formation of the phenomenon of “vocal style” was a natural consequence of the development of European vocal culture, where concepts of “technique” and “style” gradually crystallized. They became the basis of European vocal art, the assimilation of which has led to the phenomenal success of the modern Chinese school bel canto.

scholarly journals La recepción diferida de la narrativa de Roberto Arlt y Leopoldo Marechal

Monteagudo ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 185-202
Author(s):  
Ana Davis Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Joint Analysis ◽  
Roberto Arlt ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Leopoldo Marechal

Este trabajo sugiere la expresión de recepción diferida para aludir a la atención de una obra en una época posterior a su publicación. Analizar la evolución de su recepció manifiesta los paradigmas estéticos, ideológicos y socio-políticos que rigen un periodo histórico. Para ejemplificar dicho análisis, nos serviremos de la narrativa de Roberto Arlt y Leopoldo Marechal, pues consideramos claves los juicios que padecieron algunos de sus textos. Nos proponemos demostrar que su recepción fue simétricamente opuesta y no totalmente motivada por cuestiones estéticas. Un examen conjunto permite profundizar en los criterios de época que condicionaron su admisión en el canon nacional. The present work proposes the delayed reception for the acceptance of at specific book in a period after its publication. The route of its reception reveals the aesthetic, ideological and socio-political paradigms that govern a specific era. That study the follows exemplifies this methodological approach with the works of two writers: Roberto Arlt and Leopoldo Marechal. We consider key the judgments that both suffered when publishing certain texts because the changes of opinion among the critics have been symmetrically opposed and not totally motivated by aesthetic causes. A joint analysis of the two allows deepening the criteria of the period that conditioned their admission into the national canon.

scholarly journals Problems of theatrical productions of dramatic works by Lesya Ukrainka on the modern Ukrainian stage

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larysa Khorolets
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Specific Weight ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Multimedia Technologies ◽  
Stage Development ◽  
The Aesthetic

The purpose of the article is diagnostics of Lesya Ukrainka’s dramatic works realization prospects in conditions of performing arts visualization as a consistent trend of the national stage development. The study involves analyzing the adequacy of modern means of expressiveness to the peculiarities of the poetess’ dramaturgy. The research methodology is determined by observational, analytical as well as historical, and logical analysis of the realization prospects of Lesya Ukrainka’s dramatic poems on the Ukrainian stage in the context of the exceptional specific weight of a word for understanding the poetic and philosophical content of the poetess’ works. The indicated methodological approach allows analyzing the reasons why some performances already realized are of enormous artistic value (notably, by “Stone Master” (“Kaminny Hospodar”) as well as outlining the prospects of some contemporary theatrical models in this sense. The novelty of the research lies in expanding the conceptions about the relevance of correlation of cardinally “re-equipped” arsenal of the XX1century scenic space multimedia technologies and the system of means of expressiveness of Lesya Ukrainka’s dramas in the context of conveying the content of these works to the audience, as well as in raising the issue of a more careful approach of modern direction to the ways of conveying and revealing the word of the creator relative to the dramatic works of Lesya Ukrainka as an exceptional phenomenon in the world dramaturgy. Conclusion. Lesya Ukrainka’s dramaturgy is in tune with the present time and corresponds to the aesthetic and civil tasks facing our art today. The Ukrainian theater is in urgent need of this dramaturgy. The poetess’s dramaturgy requires a modern but specific philosophic and poetic theater. To make it sound appropriate, it is necessary to be inspired by the Ukrainian art showing piety towards Lesya’s word and having a desire not just to act but to act namely Lesya Ukrainka, and to find the truth about life in her writing. For her plays it is very important to avoid pomposity which is typical of stage directors fascinated by visualization: there should not be any divertissements, any ball scenes except for those which are required by the unraveling of the plot.

Beyond Rhetoric

2021 ◽  
pp. 322-364
Author(s):  
Danuta Mirka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Multiple Agency

The chapter starts with the discussion of the aesthetic category of “humorous music,” which emerged in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and links it to the theory of multiple agency, proposed by Edward Klorman (2016). There follow two case studies of hypermetric manipulations in the first movements of Haydn’s string quartets Op. 50 No. 3 and Op. 64 No. 1. These analyses reveal how such manipulations act in concert with ingenious deployment of musical topics and contrapuntal-harmonic schemata, and how they affect musical form. The chapter closes with remarks about the role of the first violinist in Haydn’s string quartets.

The Five Piano Concertos

2020 ◽  
pp. 317-340
Author(s):  
Boris Berman
Keyword(s):  
Piano Music ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Piano Concertos

Across Prokofiev’s oeuvre, his piano works—and especially his piano concertos—hold a special place. A consummate pianist, he realized early on that, among various performers, he himself was the most persuasive advocate for his music. His appearances as a pianist were opportunities to present his compositions to various international audiences. Each of the piano concertos was a harbinger of important stylistic shifts in the composer’s output in general, and his piano music in particular. This chapter examines each of these works separately, looking into the circumstances of their creation, as well as the changes in Prokofiev’s style demonstrated by each of them. It explores the peculiarities of his writing for piano and the challenges it presents to the performer. By also looking into the changes in Prokofiev’s approach to the instrument as revealed in each concerto, it offers some practical solutions that may be helpful to pianists.

Keith Jarrett, Miscegenation & the Rise of the European Sensibility in Jazz in the 1970s

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Gerald Early
Keyword(s):  
Piano Music ◽  
Young Audiences ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Jazz Music ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Solo Piano Music

In the 1970s, pianist Keith Jarrett emerged as a major albeit controversial innovator in jazz. He succeeded in making completely improvised solo piano music not only critically acclaimed as afresh way of blending classical and jazz styles but also popular, particularly with young audiences. This essay examines the moment when Jarrett became an international star, the musical and social circumstances of jazz music immediately before his arrival and how he largely unconsciously exploited those circumstances to make his success possible, and what his accomplishments meant during the 1970s for jazz audiences and for American society at large.

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