3603 Final Exam

added values

rhythmic structure and notation : extra value (sound) added silence added "dot"

Andrey Zhdanov

russian member comittee that promoted socialist realism

Fantasia on "greensleeves"

"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song and tune, over a ground either of the form called a romanesca; of its slight variant, the passamezzo antico; of the passamezzo antico in its verses and the romanesca in its reprise; or of the Andalusian progression in its verses and the romanesca or passamezzo antico in its reprise. The romanesca originated in Spain[1] and is composed of a sequence of four chords with a simple, repeating bass, which provide the groundwork for variations and improvisation. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a Fantasia on "Greensleeves" based on the "Greensleeves" melody, in 1934.[16] However, according to others, the 1934 Fantasia is actually an arrangement made by Ralph Greaves from Vaughan Williams' opera Sir John in Love in 1928; they point out that the fantasia also incorporates a folk song called "Lovely Joan" in the middle section. There are also several other, later arrangements by various writers, but no version by Vaughan Williams himself.

Manifesto of Italian Musicians for the Tradition of 19th c. Art

"we dont have avant garde things" signed by respighi to suck up to mussolini

Bulgarian rhythm

As with many musical styles, it is not possible to make a satisfying let alone indisputable definition of Night music. Bartók did not say or explain much about this style, but he approved of the term and used it himself. Most of the works in Night music style do not carry a title. From an audience point of view "'Night Music' consists of those works or passages which convey to the listener the sounds of nature at night".[2] This is quite subjective and self-referential. Mostly, subjective and far-fetched descriptions are available: "quiet, blurred cluster-chords and imitations of the twittering of birds and croaking of nocturnal creatures",[3] "In an atmosphere of hushed expectancy, a tapestry is woven of the tiny sounds of nocturnal animals and insects."[4] More concrete is "Eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies".[1] Instead of an attempt at defining, a list of characteristics of 'Night music' is more useful. Sound portrayal as opposed to traditional melody and harmony. An example of Bartók's focus on sound quality are the minute directions on how the percussion instruments in the Sonata for two pianos and percussion have to be played. This sound portrayal includes: The Hungarian Unka frog Bombina bombina, whose call is imitated in The Night's Music. After making a first noisy appearance in bar 6, he features throughout the piece disrespecting metre and tonality, ribbiting a last time in bar 70 before finally hopping off. A cicada, Tibicen linnei, of which the sound features in night music The direct imitations of natural sounds, mostly of nocturnal animals. Also the term nature music is sometimes used. Milan Kundera, in commenting on Bartók's expansion of art music with natural sounds, writes "sounds of nature inspire Bartók to melodic motives of a rare strangeness".[5] Evocations of the mood of night and spaciousness. Melodies are portrayed in the music, rather than being a direct means of (self-)expression. For instance, a pastoral flute and its melody are portrayed in The Night's Music from Out of Doors. The effect on the listener is not primarily the esthetic effect of the melody. The melody's effect is rather indirect: the evocation of being out of doors at night in the plain and hearing the shepherd play his melody.[6] In the words of Milan Kundera, not only the natural sounds at night, but also the lonely songs and melodies, far from being a Lied or other self-expression of the composer, find their origin in the external world.[7] In the words of Schneider "Bartók seems to be suggesting musically the old Romantic organicist idea that peasant [and shepherds'] music is a natural phenomenon, a view he expressed in writing on several occasions". He also points out that "the G♯'s [in bar 37 which start as the mere sound of repeated notes and turn into the shepherd's melody] gradually emerge from the myriad of other natural sounds".[8] On a more technical musical level, a piece or movement of night music style may show any of the following characteristics. An ostinato sound on every beat in the slow prevailing tempo, often this sound is dissonant, and/or a cluster chord. Because of the slow and repetitive nature, these sounds come to fulfil an accompanying or background role. Curt motives at irregular time intervals within the meter. These motives may be the imitations of the natural sounds or more abstract, often primitive, motives. An example is A,A,A,C,A,A in the second movement of the Sonata for two pianos and percussion. This motive is scored as a quintuplet of sixteenths in 4/4 time on the third beat, plus a sixteenth note on the fourth beat: the last A. As the implied or latent rhythm is 3+2+1, it sounds as an accelerando which evaporates suddenly. Wide pitch ranges in glissandi, jumps and doublings over many octaves. This contrasts heavily with cluster chords of adjacent notes and trills and may well add to the evocation of spaciousness or loneliness.[9] Overlap and insertions of widely different materials, e.g. a bird call in a melodic line. Different materials sound irrespective of one another leading to novel sound effects, and, more subjectively, multiple layers and perhaps the feeling of spaciousness. The Miraculous Mandarin Op. 19. 1918-1924: The section where, in the dark, the mandarin's body glows with an eerie blue-green light. Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs op.20, No.3. 1920 music for str, perc, cel mikrokosmos

parlando-rubato

Bartok's declamatory style in which it evokes the rhythms of speech integrated in the music. inspired by folk song

Darmstadt Festival

Coined by Luigi Nono in his 1958 lecture "Die Entwicklung der Reihentechnik" (Nono 1975, 30; Fox 1999, 111-12), Darmstadt School describes the uncompromisingly serial music written by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Karlheinz Stockhausen (the three composers Nono specifically names in his lecture, along with himself), Luciano Berio, Earle Brown, John Cage, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni, Franco Evangelisti, Karel Goeyvaerts, Mauricio Kagel, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Giacomo Manzoni, and Henri Pousseur from 1951 to 1961. messiaen taught

Vaughan Williams

English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over nearly fifty years. Strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song, his output marked a decisive break in British music from its German-dominated style of the 19th century. During his time at Cambridge Vaughan Williams continued his weekly lessons with Parry, and studied composition with Charles Wood and organ with Alan Gray. He graduated as Bachelor of Music in 1894 and Bachelor of Arts the following year.[5] After leaving the university he returned to complete his training at the RCM. Parry had by then succeeded Sir George Grove as director of the college, and Vaughan Williams's new professor of composition was Charles Villiers Stanford. Relations between teacher and student were stormy. Stanford, who had been adventurous in his younger days, had grown deeply conservative; he clashed vigorously with his modern-minded pupil. Vaughan Williams had no wish to follow in the traditions of Stanford's idols, Brahms and Wagner, and he stood up to his teacher as few students dared to do.[20] Beneath Stanford's bluster lay a recognition of Vaughan Williams's talent and a desire to help the young man correct his opaque orchestration and extreme predilection for modal music.[21] In his second spell at the RCM (1895-96) Vaughan Williams got to know a fellow student, Gustav Holst, who became a lifelong friend. Stanford emphasised the need for his students to be self-critical, but Vaughan Williams and Holst became, and remained, one another's most valued critic; each would play his latest composition to the other while still working on it. Vaughan Williams later observed, "What one really learns from an Academy or College is not so much from one's official teachers as from one's fellow-students ... [we discussed] every subject under the sun from the lowest note of the double bassoon to the philosophy of Jude the Obscure".[22] In 1949 he wrote of their relationship, "Holst declared that his music was influenced by that of his friend: the converse is certainly true. Michael Kennedy characterises Vaughan Williams's music as a strongly individual blending of the modal harmonies familiar from folk‐song with the French influence of Ravel and Debussy. The basis of his work is melody, his rhythms, in Kennedy's view, being unsubtle at times.[81] Vaughan Williams's music is often described as visionary;[n 11] Kennedy cites the masque Job and the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies.[81] Vaughan Williams's output was prolific and wide ranging. For the voice he composed songs, operas, and choral works ranging from simpler pieces suitable for amateurs to demanding works for professional choruses. His comparatively few chamber works are not among his better known compositions.[88] Some of his finest works elude conventional categorisation, such as the Serenade to Music (1938) for twelve solo singers and orchestra; Flos Campi (1925) for solo viola, small orchestra, and small chorus; and his most important chamber work, in Howes's view—not purely instrumental but a song cycle—On Wenlock Edge (1909) with accompaniment for string quartet and piano.[4] In 1955 the authors of The Record Guide, Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor, wrote that Vaughan Williams's music showed an exceptionally strong individual voice: Vaughan Williams's style is "not remarkable for grace or politeness or inventive colour", but expresses "a consistent vision in which thought and feeling and their equivalent images in music never fall below a certain high level of natural distinction". They commented that the composer's vision is expressed in two main contrasting moods: "the one contemplative and trance-like, the other pugnacious and sinister". The first mood, generally predominant in the composer's output, was more popular, as audiences, preferred "the stained-glass beauty of the Tallis Fantasia, the direct melodic appeal of the Serenade to Music, the pastoral poetry of The Lark Ascending, and the grave serenity of the Fifth Symphony". By contrast, as in the ferocity of the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies and the Concerto for Two Pianos: "in his grimmer moods Vaughan Williams can be as frightening as Sibelius and Bartók"

D-S-C-H

DSCH is a musical motif used by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich to represent himself. It is a musical cryptogram in the manner of the BACH motif, consisting of the notes D, E flat, C, B natural, or in German musical notation D, Es, C, H (pronounced as "De-Es-Ce-Ha"), thus standing for the composer's initials in German transliteration: D. Sch. (Dmitri Schostakowitsch), also pronounced as "De-Es-Ce-Ha." Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 107 String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (appears in every single movement) Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141. Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, Op. 61 (questionable)[clarification needed] Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (only one time, approx. five minutes before the end of the symphony) Fugue No. 15 in D-flat major, Op. 87 (only once, in the stretto) String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 92 String Quartet No. 6 in G major, Op. 101 (Played all at once by the four instruments at the end of each movement) Before Shostakovich used the motif, it was used by Mozart in measures 16 and 18 of his String Quartet no. 19 in C major, K. 465 in the first violin part.[citation needed] Many homages to Shostakovich (such as Schnittke's Prelude in memory of Dmitri Shostakovich or Tsintsadze's 9th String Quartet) make extensive use of the motif. The British composer Ronald Stevenson composed a large Passacaglia on it. Also Edison Denisov dedicated some works (1969 DSCH for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano, and his 1970 saxophone sonata) to Shostakovich, by quoting the motif several times and using it as the first 4 notes of a twelve-tone series. Denisov was Shostakovich's protégé for a long time.[citation needed] Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb (1943) contains the DSCH motif repeated several times in the accompaniment, progressively getting louder each time, finally at fortissimo over the chords accompanying "And the watchman strikes me with his staff". The vocal text given to the motive is "silly fellow, silly fellow, is against me". A further reference appears in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia (1946), where the DSCH motif acts as the main structural component of Lucretia's aria "Give him this orchid."

ethnomusicologist

Ethnomusicologists approach music as a social process in order to understand not only what music is but why it is: what music means to its practitioners and audiences, and how those meanings are conveyed.

ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology is the study of music in its cultural context.

William Walton: Facade

Façade is a series of poems by Edith Sitwell, best known as part of Façade - An Entertainment in which the poems are recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton. After Sitwell's death, Walton published supplementary versions of Façade for speaker and small ensemble using numbers dropped between the premiere and the publication of the full score in 1951. sometimes said that the Façade verses are nonsense poetry, in the tradition of Edward Lear.[1] But despite the experiments with sound and rhythm, there is meaning in Sitwell's poems.[1] The literary scholar Jack Lindsay wrote, "The associations are often glancing and rapid in the extreme, but the total effect comes from a highly organized basis of sense. Walton set three selections from Façade as art-songs for soprano and piano, to be sung at full voice rather than spoken rhythmically. These are: Daphne Through Gilded Trellises Old Sir Faulk The first of Walton's two Façade suites for full orchestra was published in 1926. Walton conducted the first performance. The suite consists of: Polka Waltz Swiss Jodelling Song Tango-Pasodoble Tarantella Sevillana[19] The second suite was premiered in 1938, with John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic. It consists of: Fanfare Scotch Rhapsody Country Dance Noche Espagnole Popular Song Old Sir Faulk - Foxtrot[19] The orchestra for both comprises 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, 3 percussionists (side drum, cymbals, xylophone, tambourine, bass drum, triangle, glockenspiel, castanets, rattle), and strings.

Pierre Henry

French composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music. studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Paris Conservatoire from 1938 to 1948 (Dhomont 2001). Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, which had been founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1943 (Dhomont 2001). During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the 1952 short film Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. Henry has scored numerous additional films and ballets.

Pierre Schaeffer

French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime. Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music,[2] at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète.[3] The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-Nazi Germany era, following the advance of electroacoustic and acousmatic music.

IRCAM

French institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organisationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The Lark Ascending

George Meredith died in 1909. Vaughan Williams worked on his "pastoral romance for orchestra"[5] The Lark Ascending prior to the outbreak of the Great War, and inscribed selected lines (not a consecutive passage) from Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work. They are the opening and closing lines (so the entire poem is invoked), and between them the six lines in which the lark is made to embody the wine. In choosing these lines Vaughan Williams may have been drawing out a eucharistic resonance in Meredith's image. He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup And he the wine which overflows to lift us with him as he goes. Till lost on his aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings. There is no reliable evidence to support the claim that he was working on it while watching British troops embarking for France. This was presented in a 2007 documentary about the composer, O Thou Transcendent, and the subsequent related BBC programme on this work. The original source for this story is RVW, the biography by his wife Ursula. She did not meet Vaughan Williams until 1938, 24 years after he'd composed the work. George Butterworth, who was killed in World War I, who knew Vaughan Williams at the time of these events, recorded the fact that the composer was preparing for a lecture on Purcell when he wrote the piece.

"Leningrad" Symphony No. 7

Initially dedicated to the life and deeds of Vladimir Lenin, Shostakovich decided instead to dedicate the symphony to the city of Leningrad on its completion in December 1941.[1][2] The work remains one of Shostakovich's best-known compositions. The piece soon became very popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to Nazi totalitarianism and militarism. It is still regarded as the major musical testament of the estimated 25 million Soviet citizens who lost their lives in World War II. The symphony is played frequently at the Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried. As a condemnation of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the work is particularly representative of the political responsibilities that Shostakovich felt he had for the state, regardless of the conflicts and criticisms he faced throughout his career with Soviet censors and Joseph Stalin. The symphony is Shostakovich's longest, and one of the longest in the repertoire, with performances taking approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. The scale and scope of the work is consistent with Shostakovich's other symphonies as well as with those of composers considered to be his strongest influences, including Bruckner, Mahler, and Stravinsky. The symphony is written in the conventional four movements. Regardless of when Shostakovich initially conceived the symphony, the Nazi attack and consequent relaxing of Soviet censorship gave Shostakovich the hope of writing the work for a mass audience. A model on how to do this was Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Stravinsky's compositions held considerable influence over Shostakovich[17] and he had been deeply impressed with this particular work.[18] Moreover, Stravinsky had initially set the Russian text of the Psalms, only later switching to Latin.[19] As soon as Shostakovich received the score, he transcribed it for piano four-hands. He often performed this arrangement with students in his composition class at Leningrad Conservatory.[17] Shostakovich's plan was for a single-movement symphony, including a chorus and a requiem-like passage for a vocal soloist, with a text taken from the Psalms of David. With the help of his best friend, critic Ivan Sollertinsky, who was knowledgeable about the Bible, he selected excerpts from the Ninth Psalm. The idea of individual suffering became interwoven in Shostakovich's mind with the Lord God's vengeance for the taking of innocent blood (Verse 12, New King James Version).[18] The theme not only conveyed his outrage over Stalin's oppression,[20] but also may have inspired him to write the Seventh Symphony in the first place.[21] "I began writing it having been deeply moved by the Psalms of David; the symphony deals with more than that, but the Psalms were the impetus," the composer said. "David has some marvelous words on blood, that God takes revenge for blood, He doesn't forget the cries of victims, and so on. When I think of the Psalms, I become agitated."[21] A public performance of a work with such a text would have been impossible before the German invasion. Now it was feasible, at least in theory, with the reference to "blood" applied at least officially to Hitler. With Stalin appealing to the Soviets' patriotic and religious sentiments, the authorities were no longer suppressing Orthodox themes or images.[22] Yet for all the importance he placed on them, Shostakovich may have been right in writing the symphony without a text, in view of the censorship that would eventually be reimposed. Something else Shostakovich played for his composition students were the 12 variations of what later became known as the "invasion" theme. This has been taken historically, especially in the West, as portraying the invading Wehrmacht, and was listed as such in the official program. For many years this was considered irrefutable. New information now casts some doubt. For instance, musicologist Ludmila Mikheyeva (who is also Ivan Sollertinsky's daughter in law) maintains that Shostakovich played the theme and its variations for his students before the war with Germany began. In Russia At the first hearings of the Seventh, most listeners wept.[43] This was true even when Shostakovich played the piece on the piano for friends. The requiem pages of the first movement made a special impression, much as the Largo of his Fifth Symphony had done. Some scholars[who?] believe that, as he had done in the Fifth, Shostakovich gave his audience a chance to express thoughts and suffering that, in the context of the Great Purges, had remained hidden and accumulated over many years. Because these previously hidden emotions were expressed with such power and passion, the Seventh became a major public event. Alexei Tolstoy, who played a pivotal role in the life of the Fifth Symphony, was the first to note the significance of the spontaneous reaction to the Seventh. After hearing an orchestral rehearsal of it, Tolstoy wrote a highly positive review of the work for Pravda.

Herbert Eimert

German music theorist, musicologist, journalist, music critic, editor, radio producer, and composer. From 1927 until 1933 he was employed at the Cologne Radio and wrote for music magazines such as Melos and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. In 1930 he became a music critic for the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, and from 1935 until 1945 worked as an editor at the Kölnische Zeitung. After the war, he became in 1945 the first salaried staff member of the Cologne Radio (NWDR), administered by the British occupation forces. In 1947 he took over the NWDR Department of Cultural Reporting, and in 1948 initiated the Musikalische Nachtprogramme (late-night music programs), which he directed until 1965 (Wilson 2001). In 1951, Eimert and Werner Meyer-Eppler persuaded the director of NWDR, Hanns Hartmann, to create a Studio for Electronic Music, which Eimert directed until 1962. This became the most influential studio in the world during the 1950s and 1960s, with composers such as Michael von Biel, Konrad Boehmer, Herbert Brün, Jean-Claude Éloy, Péter Eötvös, Franco Evangelisti, Luc Ferrari, Johannes Fritsch, Rolf Gehlhaar, Karel Goeyvaerts, Hermann Heiss, York Höller, Maki Ishii, David C. Johnson, Mauricio Kagel, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Petr Kotik, Włodzimierz Kotoński, Ernst Krenek, Ladislav Kupkovič, György Ligeti, Mesías Maiguashca, Bo Nilsson, Henri Pousseur, Roger Smalley, Karlheinz Stockhausen (who succeeded Eimert as director), Dimitri Terzakis, Iannis Xenakis, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann working there (Morawska-Büngeler 1988, 103-108, et passim). Cornelius Cardew also worked there in 195. n 1950 he published the Lehrbuch zur Zwölftonmusik, which became one of the best-known introductory texts on Schoenbergian twelve-tone technique, and was translated into Italian, Spanish, and Hungarian. From 1955 until 1962 he edited in conjunction with Karlheinz Stockhausen the influential journal Die Reihe.

Zoltán Kodály: Háry János

Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method. a Hungarian folk opera (that is, a spoken play with songs, in the manner of a Singspiel) in four acts by Zoltán Kodály to a Hungarian libretto by Béla Paulini (1881-1945) and Zsolt Harsányi, based on the comic epic The Veteran (Az obsitos) by János Garay.

golden section, golden mean

In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. Béla Bartók's works as being based on two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic scale

Technique of My Musical Language

a book detailing his innovations birdsong harmony below:

Stockhausen: Klavierstuck XI

Klavierstück XI is famous for its mobile, or polyvalent structure. The mobile structure and graphic layout of the piece resembles that of Morton Feldman's Intermission 6 for 1 or 2 pianos of 1953, in which 15 fragments are distributed on a single page of music with the instruction: "Composition begins with any sound and proceeds to the any other" (Emons 2006, 87). In the same year, Earle Brown had composed Twenty-five Pages for 1-25 pianists, in which the pages are to be arranged in a sequence chosen by the performer(s), and each page may be performed either side up and events within each two-line system may be read as either treble or bass clef. consists of 19 fragments spread over a single, large page. The performer may begin with any fragment, and continue to any other, proceeding through the labyrinth until a fragment has been reached for the third time, when the performance ends. Markings for tempo, dynamics, etc. at the end of each fragment are to be applied to the next fragment. Though composed with a complex serial plan, the pitches have nothing to do with twelve-tone technique but instead are derived from the proportions of the previously composed rhythms. The durations are founded on a set of matrices all of which have six rows, but with numbers of columns varying from two to seven. These matrices "amount to sets of two-dimensional 'scales'" (Truelove 1998, 190). The first row of each of these rhythm matrices consists of a sequence of simple arithmetic duration values: two columns of eighth note + quarter note , three columns of eighth note + quarter note + dotted quarter note. , four columns of eighth note + quarter note + dotted quarter note. + half note , etc., up to seven columns; each successive row after the first consists of increasingly finer, irregular subdivisions of that value (Truelove 1998, 192-97). These "two-dimensional scales" are then permuted systematically (Truelove 1998, 190, 202-204), and the six resulting, increasingly larger matrices were combined together to form the columns of a new, complex Final Rhythm Matrix of six columns and six rows (Truelove 1998, 190, 198-201). Stockhausen then selected nineteen out of the thirty-six available rhythmic structures to compose out into the fragments of Klavierstück XI

musique concrete

Musique Concrete is the experimental technique of musical composition using recorded sounds as raw material. The principle uses the assemblage of various natural sounds to produce an aural montage. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre, and so on. Originally contrasted with "pure" elektronische Musik (based solely on the production and manipulation of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds), the theoretical basis of musique concrète as a compositional practice was developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the early 1940s.

National Music

National Music by Vaughan Williams was a book based on a series of lectures he gave in 1932

"night music"

Night music is a musical style of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestra compositions in his mature period. It is characterized by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies."

non-retrogradable rhythm

Nonretrogradable rhythms (also, non-retrogradable or palindromic rhythms) correspond to sequences of note-durations arranged symmetrically, resulting in rhythmic sequences that remain identical when played forwards and backwards, that is, reversing the order of an object's contents leaves the original object unaltered. It is common to find nonretrogradable rhythms that are designed around one central duration value serving as axis of symmetry.

soicialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in various other socialist countries. Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner.[1] Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern.[2] Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in various other socialist countries. Socialist realism is characterized by the glorified depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat, in a realistic manner.[1] Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a broader type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern.[2] The purpose of socialist realism was to limit popular culture to a specific, highly regulated faction of creative expression that promoted Soviet ideals.[11] The party was of the utmost importance and was always to be favorably featured. The key concepts that developed assured loyalty to the party, "partiinost'" (party-mindedness), "ideinost" (idea- or ideological-content), "klassovost" (class content), "pravdivost" (truthfulness).[12] There was a prevailing sense of optimism, socialist realism's function was to show the ideal Soviet society. Not only was the present gloried, but the future was also supposed to be depicted in an agreeable fashion. Because the present and the future were constantly idolized, socialist realism had a sense of forced optimism. Tragedy and negativity were not permitted, unless they were shown in a different time or place. This sentiment created what would later be dubbed "revolutionary romanticism."[12] Revolutionary romanticism elevated the common worker, whether factory or agricultural, by presenting his life, work, and recreation as admirable. Its purpose was to show how much the standard of living had improved thanks to the revolution. Art was used as educational information. By illustrating the party's success, artists were showing their viewers that sovietism was the best political system. Art was also used to show how Soviet citizens should be acting. The ultimate aim was to create what Lenin called "an entirely new type of human being": The New Soviet Man. Art (especially posters and murals) was a way to instill party values on a massive scale. Stalin described the socialist realist artists as "engineers of souls."[13] Common images used in socialist realism were flowers, sunlight, the body, youth, flight, industry, and new technology.[12] These poetic images were used to show the utopianism of communism and the Soviet state. Art became more than an aesthetic pleasure; instead it served a very specific function. Soviet ideals placed functionality and work above all else; therefore, for art to be admired, it must serve a purpose. Georgi Plekhanov, a Marxist theoretician, states that art is only useful if it serves society: "There can be no doubt that art acquired a social significance only in so far as it depicts, evokes, or conveys actions, emotions and events that are of significance to society."[14] The artist could not, however, portray life just as they saw it because anything that reflected poorly on Communism had to be omitted. People who could not be shown as either wholly good or wholly evil could not be used as characters.[15] This was reflective of the Soviet idea that morality is simple: things are either right or wrong. This view on morality called for idealism over realism.[13] Art was filled with health and happiness: paintings showed busy industrial and agricultural scenes; sculptures depicted workers, sentries, and schoolchildren.[16] Creativity was not an important part of socialist realism: it was actually rejected. The styles used in creating art during this period were those that would produce the most realistic results. Painters would depict happy, muscular peasants and workers in factories and collective farms. During the Stalin period, they produced numerous heroic portraits of the dictator to serve his cult of personality—all in the most realistic fashion possible.[17] The most important thing for a socialist realist artist was not artistic integrity but adherence to party doctrine.

Alfred Schnittke

Soviet and Russian composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic Symphony No. 1 (1969-1972) and his first concerto grosso (1977) In 1948, the family moved to Moscow. Schnittke completed his graduate work in composition at the Moscow Conservatory in 1961 and taught there from 1962 to 1972. Evgeny Golubev was one of his composition teachers. Thereafter, he earned his living chiefly by composing film scores, producing nearly 70 scores in 30 years.[4] Schnittke converted to Christianity and possessed deeply held mystic beliefs, which influenced his music[citation needed]. Schnittke and his music were often viewed suspiciously by the Soviet bureaucracy. His First Symphony was effectively banned by the Composers' Union[citation needed]. After he abstained from a Composers' Union vote in 1980, he was banned from travelling outside of the USSR. In 1985, Schnittke suffered a stroke that left him in a coma. He was declared clinically dead on several occasions, but recovered and continued to compose. In 1990, Schnittke left Russia and settled in Hamburg. His health remained poor, however. He suffered several more strokes before his death on August 3, 1998, in Hamburg, at the age of 63. He was buried, with state honors, at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, where many other prominent Russian composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich, are interred. strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich, but after the visit of the Italian composer Luigi Nono to the USSR, he took up the serial technique in works such as Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1964). However, Schnittke soon became dissatisfied with what he termed the "puberty rites of serial self-denial." He created a new style which has been called "polystylism", where he juxtaposed and combined music of various styles past and present. He once wrote, "The goal of my life is to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck in doing so." His first concert work to use the polystylistic technique was the Second Violin Sonata, Quasi una sonata (1967-1968). He experimented with techniques in his film work, as shown by much of the sonata appearing first in his score for the animation short "The Glass Harmonica". He continued to develop the polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony (1969-1972) and First Concerto Grosso (1977). Other works were more stylistically unified, such as his Piano Quintet (1972-1976), written in memory of his recently deceased mother. In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad, thanks in part to the work of émigré Soviet artists such as the violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky. Despite constant illness, he produced a large amount of music, including important works such as the Second (1980) and Third (1983) String Quartets and the String Trio (1985); the Faust Cantata (1983), which he later incorporated in his opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten; the ballet Peer Gynt (1985-1987); the Third (1981), Fourth (1984) and Fifth (1988) Symphonies (the last of which is also known as the Fourth Concerto Grosso) and the Viola (1985) and First Cello (1985-1986) concertos. As his health deteriorated, Schnittke started to abandon much of the extroversion of his polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style, quite accessible to the lay listener. The Fourth Quartet (1989) and Sixth (1992), Seventh (1993) and Eighth (1994) symphonies are good examples of this. Some Schnittke scholars, such as Gerard McBurney, have argued that it is the late works that will ultimately be the most influential parts of Schnittke's output. After a stroke in 1994 left him almost completely paralysed, Schnittke largely ceased to compose. He did complete some short works in 1997 and also a Ninth Symphony; its score was almost unreadable because he had written it with great difficulty with his left hand. The Ninth Symphony was first performed on 19 June 1998 in Moscow in a version deciphered - but also 'arranged' - by Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who conducted the premiere. After hearing a tape of the performance, Schnittke indicated he wanted it withdrawn. After he died, though, others worked to decipher the score. Nikolai Korndorf died before he could complete the task, which was continued and completed by Alexander Raskatov. In Raskatov's version, the three orchestral movements of Schnittke's symphony may be followed by a choral fourth, which is Raskatov's own Nunc Dimittis (in memoriam Alfred Schnittke). This version was premiered in Dresden, Germany, on June 16, 2007. Andrei Boreyko also has a version of the symphony.

polystylistics/polystylism

Term coined by Alfred Schnittke for a combination of newer and older musical styles created through quotation or stylistic allusion. Concerto grosso

Aldeburgh

The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the Aldeburgh area of Suffolk, centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall. The Festival was founded in 1948 by the composer Benjamin Britten, the singer Peter Pears and the librettist/producer Eric Crozier.

Fibonacci series

The Fibonacci Sequence is the series of numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... The next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it.

"The Thaw"

The Khrushchev Thaw (or Khrushchev's Thaw; Russian: Хрущёвская о́ттепель, tr. Khrushchovskaya Ottepel; IPA: [xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲɪpʲɪlʲ] or simply Ottepel)[1] refers to the period from the early 1950s to the early 1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed, and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization[2] and peaceful coexistence with other nations. The Thaw became possible after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. Khrushchev denounced Stalin[3] in "The Secret Speech" at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party,[4][5] then ousted the pro-Stalinists during his power struggle in the Kremlin. The term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954 novel The Thaw ("Оттепель"),[6] sensational for its time. The Khrushchev Thaw was highlighted by Khrushchev's 1954 visit to Beijing, People's Republic of China, his 1955 visit to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (with whom relations had soured since the Tito-Stalin Split in 1948), and his subsequent meeting with Dwight Eisenhower later that year, culminating in Khrushchev's 1959 visit to the United States. The Thaw initiated irreversible transformation of the entire Soviet society by opening up for some economic reforms and international trade, educational and cultural contacts, festivals, books by foreign authors, foreign movies, art shows, popular music, dances and new fashions, and massive involvement in international sport competitions. Although the power struggle between liberals and pro-Stalinists never stopped, it eventually weakened the Soviet Communist Party. Khrushchev's Thaw allowed some freedom of information in the media, arts, and culture; international festivals; foreign films; uncensored books; and new forms of entertainment on the emerging national TV, ranging from massive parades and celebrations to popular music and variety shows, satire and comedies, and all-star shows[7] like Goluboy Ogonyok. Such political and cultural updates all together helped liberate the minds of millions and changed public consciousness of several generations of people in the Soviet Union.

Orff-Schulwerk

The Orff Schulwerk, or simply the Orff Approach, is one of several developmental approaches including the Kodaly Method, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and Suzuki Method used in music education. It combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to child's world of play.

RAPM

The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians or RAPM (Russian: Российская Ассоциация Пролетарских Музыкантов, РАПМ ) was a musicians' creative union of the early Soviet period. On 23 April 1932 it was disbanded, together with other unions, such as Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, by the Decree on the Reformation of Literary and Artistic Organizations.

Luigi Russolo: "The Art of Noises"

The limits of Italian literature at the end of the "Ottocento" (19th century), its lack of strong contents, its quiet and passive laissez faire, are fought by futurists (see art. 1, 2, 3), and their reaction includes the use of excesses intended to prove the existence of a dynamic surviving Italian intellectual class. In this period, in which industry is of growing importance in all Europe, futurists need to confirm that Italy is present, has an industry, has the power to take part in the new experience, and will find the superior essence of progress in its major symbols: the car and its speed (see art. 4). (Nationalism is never openly declared, but is evident). Futurists insist that literature will not be overtaken by progress; rather, it will absorb progress in its evolution, and will demonstrate that such progress must manifest in this manner because Man will use this progress to sincerely let his instinctive nature explode. Man is reacting against the potentially overwhelming strength of progress, and shouts out his centrality. Man will use speed, not the opposite (see art. 5 and 6). Poetry will help Man to consent his soul be part of all that (see art. 6 and 7), indicating a new concept of beauty that will refer to the human instinct of aggression. The sense of history cannot be neglected: this is a special moment, many things are going to change into new forms and new contents, but Man will be able to pass through these variations, (see art. 8) bringing with himself what comes from the beginning of civilization. In article 9, war is defined as a necessity for the health of human spirit, a purification that allows and benefits idealism. Their explicit glorification of war and its "hygienic" properties influenced the ideology of fascism. The Futurist Party, for example, became part of the Combatto Fascisti before the latter's assuming power. F. T. Marinetti was very active in Fascist politics until he withdrew in protest of the "Roman Grandeur" which had come to dominate Fascist aesthetics. Article 10 states: "We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice."

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, and Princeton University professors Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. Originally concerned with experiments in music composition involving the new technology of reel-to-reel tape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. avant garde

Futurism

Twentieth c. movement that created music based on noise.

Union of Soviet Composers

Union of composers of Russian Federation — Russian public organization uniting professional composers and musicologists from 48 regions of Russia. The Union of composers of Russian Federation is an assignee, founded in 1960, the Union of composers of Russian SFSR. At the First Constituent Congress, which has taken place in Moscow, in April, 1960, unanimously, Dmitry Shostakovich has been elected as the First Secretary of Board. Since then, the Union of composers was headed by: • Dmitry Shostakovich (1960 — 1968) • Georgy Sviridov (1968 — 1973) • Rodion Shchedrin (1973 — 1990) • Vladislav Kazenin (1990 — 2014) • Rashid Kalimullin (since December, 2015) Priority activities of the organization are: - development and strengthening of the composer organizations in regions; - stimulation and creation of ample opportunities for composer creativity; - advance of musical culture and compositions of the Russian composers in Russia and abroad; - development and support of youth composer creativity; - protection of copyright of composers; - edition of notes and record of discs, and also distribution of pieces of music; - creation of positive image of the organization for expansion of opportunities and strengthening of the authority on musical space of the Russian Federation. Festivals of the Union of composers of Russia: " Panorama of music of Russia", "Composers of Russia — to children", "Music of friends", "A solar circle". Members of the Union of composers of Russia are 1011 composers and musicologists, many of which are conferred the state awards and ranks. A Youth office of composers (MolOt) exists at the organization, since 2009. It has 26 representations in Russia and abroad. The first Constituent Congress has taken place in Moscow, in April, 1960. Unanimously, Dmitry Shostakovich has been elected as the first secretary of Board. Having headed the Union of composers, Dmitry Shostakovich, has concentrated the attention on strengthening of contacts with the local composer organizations. He has accurately established the general kind of work: discipline, professionalism and the perfected skill. Thanks to Dmitry Shostakovich's efforts, the role of the new Union increased every day and, soon, it becomes the organizing center of modern musical art. Public work didn't prevent creativity of the great composer, at this time he has created grandiose symphonic works, operas and ballets, oratorios and cantatas, chamber works, songs, music for theater and cinema - all this values of the highest standart. Possessing an insight of the ingenious artist, Dmitry Shostakovich has managed to create honest, ruthlessly truthful chronicle of the era. He has skillfully created the cordial human relations in "team", trying and being good to people, however, the state of health only worsening, have forced him, in 1968, to leave the post at the Second Congress. In memory of him, the Union of composers of Russia has founded in 1981, an award of Dmitry Shostakovich. At the Second Congress, in 1968, Georgy Sviridov has been elected by the Chairman of the board. Stanislav Stempnevsky has been appointed as the executive Secretary. The third Congress of the Union of composers of Russia has taken place in 1973, in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions. At congress the new management of the Union of composers of Russia has been chosen. Rodion Shchedrin who Russian SFSR within the next 17 years became the Chairman of the board of the Union of composers. Andrey Eshpay was elected as the first Secretary. Vladislav Kazenin became the executive Secretary, and then the Vice-Chairman of the Union of composers. Jan Frenkel became the second Vice-Chairman. The Secretariat had included composers of various regions of the country: F. Vasilyev (Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), R. Gazizov (Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), V. Krasnoskulov (Rostov-on-Don), V. Kupriyanov (Mari Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), A. Novikov (Novosibirsk), A. Puzey (Sverdlovsk), M. Simanovsky (Saratov), M. Tariverdiev, V. Agafonnikov, musicologist Y. Korev (Moscow), B. Tishchenko, V. Uspensky (Leningrad), M. Yarullin (Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic). Rodion Shchedrin and the Secretariat of the Union of composers of Russia, conducted huge work on preservation of the organizational and creative traditions of Dmitry Shostakovich shown in promotion of works of modern composers at musical forums of Russia. A large number of the largest festivals in Omsk, the Tyumen region, Vilnius, Suzdal, Vladimir, Gorkiy, the cities of the North Caucasus has been carried out at that time. The festivals which have arisen during this period became traditional: " Panorama of music of Siberia" (Novosibirsk), "The Don spring", "A festival in Kuban", music holidays in Saratov, Ufa, Sverdlovsk, Gorkiy. There were new festivals, music holidays in Astrakhan, Krasnoyarsk, "Europe — Asia" — in Kazan, "The Tuva musical summer" — in Kyzyl and other cities of Tuva. Traditions of their own have festivals of two last decades - " Panorama of music of Russia", "Composers of Russia — to children", "Music of friends" — a festival at which works of foreign composers are executed. "Panorama of music of Russia" is one of the largest and most authoritative festivals of modern music in our country. This festival has arisen in 1973, at the initiative of Rodion Shchedrin, and since 1995, is annually held in various regions of the country. Festival programs represent a set of composer names of modern Russia, give the chance to make a complete idea of wealth and national variety of musical creativity of modern Russia. The form and geography of festivals of the Union of composers is extraordinary wide. Festivals are held not just in one city, but in several at once. In 2008, for example, children's festivals have taken place in Smolensk, Tver, Kirov and Saratov, and the "Panorama of Music of Russia" festival — in Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Lipetsk and Voronezh. Subject of these festivals and musical meetings, musicological conferences was diverse and considerable: "Composer-performer-listener", "The Soviet composers — to toilers of the village", "A folklore role in modern creativity", "An image of the contemporary in works of composers of Russia" and many others. From 1990 to 2014 the post of the President of the Union of composers of Russia was held by Vladislav Kazenin. Nearly a quarter of the century, heading the Union in difficult years of collapse of the USSR and reorganization, Vladislav Kazenin has managed to keep stability of the organization and to provide its sustainable development. Vladislav Kazenin is the famous Russian composer, the author of operettas, musicals, ballets, compositions for chorus, a symphonic orchestra, a piano, tool concerts, songs and romances, music for movies, animated films and theatrical performances. Thanks to big organizational work of the Secretariat of the Union of composers and the personal authority of Vladimir Kazenin, new creative offices have been created which became centres of music in the cities and the republics of Russia have been created. Thanks to them, strong links with the musical public, the concert organizations, educational institutions were formed. Artist collectives of composers have appeared in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the Republic of Tyva, Mordovia, Krasnoyarsk, Chelyabinsk, Perm, the Republic of Adygea, Smolensk, Kaliningrad, Kirov, Komi Republic, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Vologda, Bryansk, Penza, Belgorod, Chita (The transbaikal organization), Kaluga, Abakan (Republic of Khakassia), Moscow region. The beginning of activity of all new composer organizations was always followed by holding festivals, concerts and creative meetings. At the Eleventh Congress, in December, 2015, Rashid Kalimullin has been elected by the President of the Union of composers of Russia. Rashid Kalimullin - one of the leading Russian composers, the large musical public figure, the talented manager and the organizer. Since 1989 he headed the Union of composers of the Republic of Tatarstan, from 1995 to 2010 - the secretary and since 2010 - the Vice-Chairman of the Union of composers of Russia. Rashid Kalimullin is the author and the head of many large Russian and International projects, among them the international festival "Days of the Japanese and Tatar Music", the international festival of new music "Europe-Asia", the international project of symphony concerts "Pearls of the Russian and Tatar music", Russian musical festival "Names of Russia". He is also a founder of the" Center of modern music of Sofia Gubaidulina". The author of a large number of compositions in different genres: an opera, a symphony, a tool concert, music for an orchestra, chamber and vocal music. Since 1986, the Union of composers of Russia, regularly holds the "Composers of Russia — to Children" festival. Every time a festival goes over with great success, in various cities of Russia and has a big resonance among youth. Within a festival a various number of creative meetings, concerts of children's music of the Russian composers take place. An addressee of these actions are students of general education institutions and musical schools. The experience of the international work of the Union of composers is represented by the international festival "Music of Friends" In 2015 the International festival competition of patriotic songs "Red Carnation", originating since 1967 has been revived. Festivals of the Union of composers are held for promotion of works of professional modern composers of Russia, promoting development of creative cooperation and uniting with composer creativity of talented youth. One of main goals of actions of the Union of composers of Russia is the wide exposition of the best works of musical art and the presentation of genre variety of music. Systematic work is carried out towards the organization of composer competitions: "The International competition in composition of Sergey Prokofiev", in St. Petersburg, Chairman of which is Rodion Shchedrin," The competition of Andrey Petrov "CRYSTAL KAMERTON", the Chairman A. Petrov, then - V. Kazenin, "The international competition of young composers of P. Yurgenson", the Chairman V. Tarnopolsky, the Governor's international junior competition of V. Gavrilin in Vologda, a children's competition in composition in Nizhny Novgorod and many others. The Union of composers of Russia pays huge attention to education of creative youth. Since 2009, at the organization there is a Youth office of composers (MolOt) which is headed by Yaroslav Sudzilovsky. There regularly take place concerts of young composers, audition of new compositions, discussions about problems of composer creativity. Now, in various regions of our country, 26 representative offices of the MolOt tunction: in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Ufa, Petrozavodsk, Kaliningrad, Saratov, Yakutia, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Belarus, France, Armenia, other cities and countries. Annually, since 2012, "The international MolOt-Transfest" festival - a large-scale marathon of modern music where music of young authors from the different republics of the former USSR presented is held. Union of composers of Russia is a creative association of composers and musicologists of different generations. Association which, despite the changed contours and the principles of the organization of the Russian musical life, is engaged in the major mission - moral and ethical education of the modern person.

"stained glass window" effect

^add two appogiaturas

chord on the dominant

a 13th chord

Bertolt Brecht

a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century. He made contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter through the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble - the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife, long-time collaborator and actress Helene Weigel.

Gebrauchsmusik

a German term, essentially meaning "utility music," for music that exists not only for its own sake, but which was composed for some specific, identifiable purpose. This purpose can be a particular historical event, like a political rally or a military ceremony, or it can be more general, as with music written to accompany dance, or music written for amateurs or students to perform. While composer Paul Hindemith is probably the figure most identified with this expression, it seems to have been coined within the realm of musicology rather than composition. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the modern academic discipline of musicology was formulated by a mainly German group of scholars who were interested not only in formal development and biographical data, but also to an extent in the sociopolitical position of music throughout history, and the relationship of music and musicians to society at large.

Otto Luening

a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music. Luening's 'Tape Music', including A Poem in Cycles & Bells, Gargoyles for Violin & Synthesized Sound, and Sounds of New Music demonstrated the early potential of synthesizers and special editing techniques for electronic music. An October 28, 1952 concert with Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City introduced Fantasy in Space, flute recordings manipulated on magnetic tape, and led to an appearance on The Today Show with Dave Garroway. Luening was co-founder, along with Ussachevsky, of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1958. He also co-founded Composers Recordings, Inc. in 1954, with Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel.

Ernst Krenek: Jonny spielt auf

a German-language opera with words and music by Austrian composer Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic. The libretto was translated into 14 languages. It was the first opera performed by Swiss tenor Hugues Cuenod. Nevertheless, with the rise of the Nazi movement, the opera encountered hostility in Vienna in 1927-1928 from Nazi sympathisers, and the same protests occurred several years later in Munich. After the National Socialists attained power in Germany, they banned the opera.[1] Indeed, at the 1938 Entartete Musik exhibition in Düsseldorf, organiser Hans Severus Ziegler condemned the opera as the very archetype of Weimar decadence.

Rene Leibowitz

a Polish, later naturalized French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher born in Warsaw, Poland. He was historically significant in promoting serialism and the New Music in Paris, France after WWII. During the early 1930s, Leibowitz studied composition and orchestration with Maurice Ravel in Paris, where he was introduced to Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-note technique by the German pianist and composer Erich Itor Kahn. He subsequently studied with Schoenberg's pupil Anton Webern. Many of the works of the Second Viennese School were first heard in France at the International Festival of Chamber Music established by Leibowitz in Paris in 1947. Leibowitz was highly influential in establishing the reputation of the School, both through teaching in Paris after WWII and through his book Schoenberg et son école, published in 1947 and translated by Dika Newlin as Schoenberg and his School (US and UK editions 1949). The book was among the earliest theoretical treatises on Schoenberg's 12-tone method of composition, wherein Leibowitz (and Humphrey Searle) were among the first theorists to coin the term "serialism". Leibowitz's advocacy of the Schoenberg school was taken further by two of his pupils, Pierre Boulez and Jacques-Louis Monod, each taking different paths in promoting the music of Schoenberg, Webern and the development of serialism. His American students included the composers Will Ogdon and Janet Maguire, the conductor David Montgomery, and the avant-garde film director-animator John Whitney. As a conductor, Leibowitz, who studied in Paris with Pierre Monteux, completed many recordings. One of the most widely circulated is a set of Beethoven's symphonies made for Reader's Digest; it was apparently the first recording to follow Beethoven's metronome markings. In choosing this approach, Leibowitz was influenced by his friend and colleague Rudolf Kolisch. Leibowitz also completed many recordings as part of Reader's Digest's compilation albums. He also wrote for Les Temps modernes, applying existentialist ideas to musicology.

intonarumori (noise machines)

a group of experimental musical instruments built and invented by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo between roughly 1910 and 1930. There were 27 varieties of intonarumori in total with different names. perform the music outlined in his Art of Noises manifesto. The instruments were completely acoustic, not electronic. The boxes had various types of internal construction to create different types of noise. Often a wheel was touching a string attached to a drum. The wheel rattled or bowed the strings, while the drum functioned as an acoustic resonator. Many of the instruments featured a handle on top of the box, which was used to vary the string tension. Pulling the handle raised the tone, and the horn attached to the box amplified the sound. Intonarumori ('noise makers' in Italian) made noise, but not at a very loud volume, since they were all acoustic devices.

modes of limited transposition

a kind of musical scale. They were used by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen was fascinated by scales that only had a few (usually two or three) transpositions. The whole-tone scale was used by many composers including Glinka, Liszt and, especially, Debussy. Messiaen called it the first mode of transposition. Messiaen's second mode, also called the "octatonic scale", rises by alternating semitone, tone, semitone, tone etc. Messiaen used this scale a great deal, not just in his tunes but in the chords that he used (i.e. melodically and harmonically. The third mode rises by a pattern of tone, semitone, semitone. It has four transpositions. The other four modes each have a total of six transpositions. Messiaen liked these modes because there is no note which sounds like the starting note. All the notes sound equal. He described them as having "the charm of impossibilities." A mode with limited transpositions is a scale which is divided in segments of the same size and containing the same exact arrangement of steps and halfsteps. Whithin an octave (12 semitones), there are a number of such divisions possible: 12 : 2 = 6 (the repeating segment is a tritone -6 semitones- long) 12 : 3 = 4 (the repeating segment is a major third -4 semitones- long) 12 : 4 = 3 (the repeating segment is a minor third -3 semitones- long) 12 : 6 = 2 (the repeating segment is a major second -2 semitones- long) 12 : 12 = 1 (the repeating segment is a minor second -1 semitone- long) The last case produces the chromatic scale - not a very interesting result. The mode whose repeating segment is a major second long is the wholetone scale and there are only 2 such scales possible. Dividing the octaves by 4 leads to scales build around the pillars represented by a fully diminished chord and there are 4 possible transpositions for each of them. When the octave is divided by 3, the mode is built around an augmented triad and there are 3 possible transpositions of that scale. For modes built around the interval of a tritone there are 6 possible transpositions. Example: C, D, E flat, F, F#, G#, A, B: repeating 2 + 1 = 3 semitones (fully diminished chord) or C, C#, D#, E, F, G, G#, A, B: repeating 1 + 2 + 1 = 4 semitones (augmented triad) Messiaen combines modes with limited transpositions with nonretrogradable rhythms in order to create a sense of "failure of the rational thinking", an impasse created by a logical proceedure. Compare this with certain images (optical illusions) created by the artist Escher. added notes clusters chords 13th chords "resonance" chords and "natural harmony" chord progressions litanie http://ems.music.illinois.edu/courses/tipei/M202/Notes/messiaen.html

Entartete Kunst, Entartete Musik (degenerate art/music)

a label applied in the 1930s by the Nazi government in Germany to certain forms of music that it considered to be harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concern for degenerate music was a part of its larger and more well-known campaign against degenerate art ('Entartete Kunst'). In both cases, the government attempted to isolate, discredit, discourage, or ban the works. Their ideas drew on decades of anti-Semitic writing on music and on a debate on the relationship between music and mental illness. The Nazi regime promoted the works of German composers, especially those of Richard Wagner who was also much admired by Adolf Hitler as well as many others. Special favourites were Rienzi and the Ring cycle with all its links to German mythology. Military marches were highly approved,[clarification needed] and widely used as in the films of Leni Riefenstahl such as Triumph of the Will.[citation needed] Jewish composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler were disparaged and condemned by the Nazis. In Leipzig, a bronze statue of Mendelssohn was removed. The regime commissioned music to replace his incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (Petit and Giner 2015,[page needed]). In addition, many other black performers and Jazz musicians were discredited and had their reputations destroyed, often Jazz musicians were called "Schwarzer" or "Gaëtano", the first meaning black and the second meaning gypsy. From the Nazi seizure of power onward, these composers found it increasingly difficult, and often impossible, to get work or have their music performed. Many went into exile (e.g., Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Berthold Goldschmidt); or retreated into 'internal exile' (e.g., Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Boris Blacher); or ended up in the concentration camps (e.g., Viktor Ullmann, or Erwin Schulhoff). Like degenerate art, examples of degenerate music were displayed in public exhibits in Germany beginning in 1938. One of the first of these was organized in Düsseldorf by Hans Severus Ziegler, at the time superintendent of the Weimar National Theatre, who explained in an opening speech that the decay of music was "due to the influence of Judaism and capitalism". Ziegler's exhibit was organized into seven sections, devoted to (1) the influence of Judaism, (2) Schoenberg, (3) Kurt Weill and Ernst Krenek, (4) "Minor Bolsheviks" (Schreker, Alban Berg, Ernst Toch, etc.), (5) Leo Kestenberg, director of musical education before 1933, (6) Hindemith's operas and oratorios, and (7) Igor Stravinsky (Anon. 1938, 629). From the mid-1990s the Decca Record Company released a series of recordings under the title 'Entartete Musik: Music Suppressed by the Third Reich', covering lesser-known works by several of the above-named composers.

cimbalom

a large Hungarian dulcimer.

Weill: Lady in the Dark

a musical with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart. It was produced by Sam Harris. The protagonist, Liza Elliott, is the unhappy female editor of a fashion magazine, Allure, who is undergoing psychoanalysis. based on Hart's own experiences with psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg.[1] Except for the final song, all the music in the play is heard in three extended dream sequences: the Glamour Dream, the Wedding Dream, and the Circus Dream which, to some extent, become three small operettas integrated into a straight play.[1] The final song, "My Ship", functions as a leitmotif for Liza's insecurity: as each dream commences, a snippet of the tune is heard, as it is a haunting melody which Liza recognizes but cannot name, or sing with words, until her anxiety is resolved.

Zeitoper

a short-lived genre of opera associated with Weimar Germany. It is not known when or by whom the term was coined, but by 1928 Kurt Weill ("Zeitoper" in Melos) was able to complain that it was more a slogan than a description. Like opera buffa it used contemporary settings and characters, comic or at least satiric plots (Max Brand's Maschinist Hopkins is a sole tragic example) and aimed at musical accessibility. Two distinguishing characteristics are a tendency to incorporate modern technology (Jonny spielt auf: trains, Der Lindberghflug: airplanes, Von Heute auf Morgen: telephones, and even elevators) and frequent allusions to popular music, especially jazz. This last, more than any social satire, earned the suspicion of the political right and ensured that it would not survive into the Nazi era. Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927) is held up as the epitome of the genre.[1][2] Other composers are Paul Hindemith (Hin und zurück, 1927, Neues vom Tage, 1929), Wilhelm Grosz (Achtung! Aufname! to a libretto by Bela Balazs), plus Weill's Der Zar lässt sich photographieren 1928, and Die Bürgschaft (1932). At the possible instigation of Krenek, the American George Antheil also wrote a Zeitoper for Frankfurt, Transatlantic (1930, originally titled Glare). In Von Heute auf Morgen (1930) Arnold Schönberg attempted to have the last word on the fashion: at the end a child enters and asks the reconciled parents "What are modern people?" who respond with "That changes from one day to the next."

Neue Sachlichkeit = New Actuality

a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it. Rather than some goal of philosophical objectivity, it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude, understood by Germans as intrinsically American: "The Neue Sachlichkeit is Americanism, cult of the objective, the hard fact, the predilection for functional work, professional conscientiousness, and usefulness."[1] The term was originally the title of an art exhibition staged by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit, but it took a life of its own, going beyond Hartlaub's intentions.[1] As these artists rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism. The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis to power.

fuging tune

a variety of Anglo-American vernacular choral music. It first flourished in the mid-18th century and continues to be composed today. sacred music, specifically, Protestant hymns. They are written for a four-part chorus singing a cappella. In the fuging tune all the parts start together and proceed in rhythmic and harmonic unity usually for the space of four measures or one musical sentence. The end of this sentence marks a cessation, a complete melodic close. During the next four measures the four parts set in, one at a time and one measure apart. First the basses take the lead for a phrase a measure long, and as they retire on the second measure to their own proper bass part, the [tenors] take the lead with a sequence that is imitative of, if not identical with, that sung by the basses. The tenors in turn give way to the altos, and they to the trebles, all four parts doing the same passage (though at different pitches) in imitation of the [part in the] preceding measure. ... Following this fuguing passage comes a four-measure phrase, with all the parts rhythmically neck and neck, and this closes the piece; though the last eight measures are often repeated. Sacred Harp in a fugue, the voices take turns coming in at the very beginning of the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune that moment comes about a third of the way through. Moreover, in a fugue the musical material used at each entrance (the so-called "subject") is repeated many times throughout the piece, whereas in a fuguing tune it normally appears just in the one location of sequenced entries, and the rest of the work is somewhat more homophonic in texture. The fuguing tune arose in England in the middle of the 18th century. The first fuguing tunes were the work of itinerant singing masters, described by Irving Lowens as follows: [The singing masters were] often ill-trained by orthodox standards ... [They] wandered from village to village and eked out an existence by teaching the intricacies of psalm-singing and the rudiments of music to all who cared to learn. To supplement his generally meager income, [the singing master] frequently sold self-compiled tune-books in which psalm tunes of his own composition ... were featured as examples of his skill and artistry.[3] According to Lowens, the fuguing tunes created by these singing masters at first involved a separate fuguing section appended to the end of a complete psalm tune. Later, the fuguing became more integrated and eventually evolved to be the longer part of the song.[3] There is good evidence that by 1760, English tune books including fuguing tunes were circulating in the American colonies; the first English fuguing tune printed in America appeared in the hymnbook Urania, or A Choice Collection of Psalm-Tunes, Anthems, and Hymns by James Lyon. Soon, fuguing tunes were being written in great profusion by American—especially New England—composers. Karl Kroeger (see reference below) has documented the publication of almost 1300 fuguing tunes during the period 1750-1820. Among the principal composers of New England fuguing tunes Irving Lowens lists the following: William Billings

Peter Pears

an English tenor. His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years.

theremin

an early electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the thereminist (performer). It is named after the Westernized name of its Russian inventor, Léon Theremin (Термéн), who patented the device in 1928. The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas that sense the relative position of the thereminist's hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. Clara Rockmore, a well-known thereminist, toured to wide acclaim, performing a classical repertoire in concert halls around the United States, often sharing the bill with Paul Robeson.

ondes Martenot

an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin.[3] The sonic capabilities of the instrument were later expanded by the addition of timbral controls and switchable loudspeakers. The instrument's eerie wavering notes are produced by varying the frequency of oscillation in vacuum tubes. The production of the instrument stopped in 1988, but several conservatories in France still offer instruction to students of the instrument.[4]

synthesizer

an electronic musical instrument that generates electric signals that are converted to sound through instrument amplifiers and loudspeakers or headphones. Synthesizers may either imitate instruments like piano, Hammond organ, flute, vocals; natural sounds like ocean waves, etc.; or generate new electronic timbres. They are often played with a musical keyboard, but they can be controlled via a variety of other input devices, including music sequencers, instrument controllers, fingerboards, guitar synthesizers, wind controllers, and electronic drums. Synthesizers without built-in controllers are often called sound modules, and are controlled via MIDI or CV/Gate using a controller device, often a MIDI keyboard or other controller.

Billy Bud

an opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by the English novelist E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preys and the composer, and is based on the novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is often referred to as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, or informally as Lady Macbeth when there is no confusion with Verdi's Macbeth. It was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and on the 24 January 1934 in Moscow. Shostakovich dedicated the opera to his first wife, the physicist Nina Varzar. The work incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo. It tells the story of a lonely woman in 19th century Russia, who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder. Despite great early success, on both popular and official levels, Lady Macbeth was the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the Communist Party in early 1936. After being condemned by an anonymous article (sometimes attributed to Joseph Stalin) in Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, it was banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years. Many people thus know the opera primarily for its role in the history of censorship. One criticism of the work focused on its sexual content, particularly the way in which the action is depicted in the music. A 1935 review in the New York Sun called it "pornophony", referring to the lurid descriptive music in the sex scenes. Stravinsky described the opera as "lamentably provincial", considering the musical portrayal primitively realistic.[1] The thrust of the Pravda criticism was in terms of morality; it condemned the opera's sympathetic portrayal of the murderess. This criticism was revived in a different way by Richard Taruskin in a 1989 article, where he interprets the work in the context of Stalin's campaign against the kulaks in 1930, considering its portrayal of the killings of Katerina's kulak in-laws as "a justification of genocide". Daniil Zhitomirsky accuses the work of "primitive satire" in its treatment of the priest and police, but acknowledges the "incredible force" of the last scene.[1] At the time, the composer justified the sympathetic portrayal of Katerina in Soviet terms, saying she was a victim of the circumstances of oppressive, pre-revolutionary Russia.

Saint François d'Assise

an opera in three acts and eight scenes by French composer and librettist Olivier Messiaen, written from 1975 to 1983. It concerns Saint Francis of Assisi, the title character, and displays the composer's devout Catholicism. For maximum artistic freedom, Messiaen penned both libretto and score.[1] For nearly eight years, the composer consulted Franciscan sources, reading biographies by Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure, as well as Francis' own prayers (including Canticle of the Sun). He also cited passages from the Fioretti, Considerations on the Stigmata and the Bible. In order to focus on the progress of grace in Francis's soul after his conversion, Messiaen omitted certain episodes in his hero's life, including the often-romanticized relationship between Francis and St. Clare, and the fable of his taming of a wild wolf at Gubbio. He also ignored the documented struggle between Francis and his father, Pietro, thus avoiding Oedipal themes. Critics later chastised Messiaen for beginning the action after Francis's conversion. The composer defended his choice in an interview with Claude Samuel: "Some people have told me, 'There's no sin in your work.' But I myself feel sin isn't interesting, dirt isn't interesting. I prefer flowers. I left out sin."

A Midsummer Night's Dream

an opera with music by Benjamin Britten and set to a libretto adapted by the composer and Peter Pears from William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.Stylistically, the work is typical of Britten, with a highly individual sound-world - not strikingly dissonant or atonal,[1] but replete with subtly atmospheric harmonies and tone painting.

live electronics

any kind of music that can include the use of electroacoustic instruments, various electronic sound-generating devices, and computers, but which generally excludes the use of prerecorded or sampled material. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as musique concrète, electronic music and early computer music. Musical improvisation often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The timbres of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as amplifiers, filters, ring modulators and other forms of circuitry

Romeo and Juliet

ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. Prokofiev reused music from the ballet in three suites for orchestra and a solo piano work. However, the ballet's original happy ending (contrary to Shakespeare) provoked controversy among Soviet cultural officials;[4] the ballet's production was then postponed indefinitely when the staff of the Bolshoi was overhauled at the behest of the chairman of the Committee on Arts Affairs, Platon Kerzhentsev.[5] The ballet's failure to be produced within Soviet Russia until 1940 may also have been due to the increased fear and caution in the musical and theatrical community in the aftermath of the two notorious Pravda editorials criticising Shostakovich and other "degenerate modernists" including Piotrovsky.[6] The conductor Yuri Fayer met with Prokofiev frequently during the writing of the music, and he strongly urged the composer to revert to the traditional ending. Fayer went on to conduct the first performance of the ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Contrasts, 6 String Quartets

bartok

S. Volkov: Testimony

book that was published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. He claimed that it was the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich. From its publication, its portrayal of the composer and his views was controversial: the Shostakovich of the book was sometimes critical of fellow composers, and most notably was strongly anti-Soviet in his views. The book also contained comments on his own music, indicating that it was intended as veiled criticism of the Soviet authorities and support for the dissident movement. The authenticity of the book is still very much disputed.

chord of resonance

c e g b flat d f sharp g sharp b

Vladimir Ussachevsky

composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music. Ussachevsky's early, neo-Romantic works were composed for traditional instruments, but in 1951 he began composing electronic music.[2] He served as president of the American Composers Alliance from 1968 to 1970 and was an advisory member of the CRI record label, which released recordings of a number of his compositions. he joined the faculty of Columbia University, teaching there until his retirement in 1980. Together with Otto Luening, Ussachevsky founded, in 1959, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City.[2] While acting as head of the Electronic Music Center Ussachevsky specified the ADSR envelope in 1965, a basic component of modern synthesizers, samplers and electronic instruments.[3] Ussachevsky also taught and was composer-in-residence at the University of Utah.

Peter and the Wolf

composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936 in the USSR. It is a children's story (with both music and text by Prokofiev), spoken by a narrator accompanied by the orchestra. In 1936, Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats and the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow to write a new musical symphony for children. The intent was to cultivate "musical tastes in children from the first years of school".[1] Intrigued by the invitation, Prokofiev completed Peter and the Wolf in just four days. American music reviewer Gary R. Lemco has viewed Peter and the Wolf as an allegory for the political situation of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. According to this theory, the characters represent either the various bickering Soviet republics, or the nations of Europe. For example, Peter, bearing the same name as Russian national hero Peter the Great, represents Russia. In both versions of the theory, the Wolf represents the virulently anti-Communist Nazi Germany

John Antes

first American Moravian Missionary to travel and work in Egypt, one of the earliest American-born chamber music composers, and the maker of perhaps the earliest surviving bowed string instrument made in America.[1] Although Antes is often recognized for his choral works. Anthems and hymn tunes

formalism

formalism is the concept that a composition's meaning is entirely determined by its form. formalists would contend that the meaning of music lies in the perception and understanding of the musical relationships set forth in the work of art and that meaning in music is primarily intellectual, while the expressionist would argue that these same relationships are in some sense capable of exciting feelings and emotions in the listener" (Meyer 1956, p. 3). (The term "expressionism" is also used to define a musical genre typified by the early works of Schoenberg. The two terms are not necessarily related.) Meyer applied the term formalist (p. 3) to Eduard Hanslick who, in his later years,[2] championed the music of Brahms over that of Liszt and Wagner because of the clear formal principles (drawn from Beethoven's music) that he found in Brahms's music as opposed to the attempts at emotional expression and pictorial depiction (drawn from Berlioz's music) that he found in the music of Liszt and Wagner. Meyer also applied the term to Igor Stravinsky, though Stravinsky avoided applying the term to himself in the same sense. His Poétique musicale of 1942 (translated in 1947 as Poetics of Music)[3] explores "The phenomenon of music" (title of chapter 2) from a formalist perspective. The book is the transcript of a series of lectures Stravinsky gave at Harvard University as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1939-40. Two famous allegations of formalism[clarification needed] were leveled at Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich was denounced in the Russian newspaper Pravda in January 1936 in connection with a Moscow performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The composer withdrew his Fourth Symphony before its planned first performance, and his subsequent Fifth Symphony was perceived, by at least one journalist if not by the composer himself, as "a Soviet artist's reply to just criticism".[4] Another allegation came as part of the Zhdanov decree in February 1948, which cited Shostakovich, together with other prominent Soviet composers: Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Shebalin, Popov, Myaskovsky "and others", as being formalists.[5] The proscription of formalism was not restricted to the Soviet Union. For instance, in Poland immediately after World War II the Stalinist regime insisted that composers adopt Socialist realism, and those who would not do so, including Witold Lutosławski and Andrzej Panufnik, had performances of their compositions banned in Poland for being "formalist".[6] Other Eastern Bloc countries experienced similar restrictions (Zoltán Kodály complained to Panufnik of similar problems facing composers in Hungary).

Ernst von Dohnányi

important Hungarian composer, influenced Bartok

Filippo Marinetti: "Futurist Manifesto"

initiated an artistic philosophy, Futurism, that was a rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; it also advocated the modernization and cultural rejuvenation of Italy.

Turangalîla-symphonie

large-scale piece of orchestral music by Olivier Messiaen (1908-92). It was written from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. at the time of writing the symphony the composer was fascinated by the myth of Tristan and Isolde, and the Turangalîla Symphony forms the central work in his trilogy of compositions concerned with the themes of romantic love and death. a 20th-century masterpiece and a typical performance runs around 80 minutes in length. When asked about the meaning of the work's duration in its ten movements and the reason for the use of the ondes Martenot, Messiaen simply replied, "It's a love song." Although the concept of a rhythmic scale corresponding to the chromatic scale of pitches occurs in Messiaen's work as early as 1944, in the Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, the arrangement of such durations into a fixed series occurs for the first time in the opening episode of the movement "Turangalîla 2" in this work, and is an important historical step toward the concept of integral serialism. In writing about the work, Messiaen identified four "cyclic" themes that reappear throughout; there are other themes specific to each movement.[8] In the score the themes are numbered, but in later writings he gave them names to make them easier to identify, without intending the names to have any other, literary meaning.

rhythmic pedal

messiaen's ostinato

electronic music

music performed using synthesizers and other electronic instruments.

arch (mirror) form

n music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement. The sections need not be repeated verbatim but must at least share thematic material. It creates interest through interplay among "memory, variation, and progression". Though the form appears to be static and to deny progress, the pairs of movements create an "undirectional process" with the center, and the form "actually engenders specific expressive possibilities that would otherwise be unavailable for the work as a whole".[1] Béla Bartók is noted for his use of arch form, e.g., in his fourth and fifth string quartets, Concerto for Orchestra, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, second piano concerto, and, to a lesser extent, in his second violin concerto.[1] Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor also use arch form. The most popular arch-form structure is ABCBA.

nationalism

nineteenth and twentieth century trend in music in ehich composers were eager to embrace elements in their music that claimed a national identity

The Miraculous Mandarin

one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918-1924, and based on the story by Melchior Lengyel.. After an orchestral introduction depicting the chaos of the big city, the action begins in a room belonging to three tramps. They search their pockets and drawers for money, but find none. They then force a girl to stand by the window and attract passing men into the room. The girl begins a lockspiel — a "decoy game", or saucy dance. She first attracts a shabby old rake, who makes comical romantic gestures. The girl asks, "Got any money?" He replies, "Who needs money? All that matters is love." He begins to pursue the girl, growing more and more insistent until the tramps seize him and throw him out. The girl goes back to the window and performs a second lockspiel. This time she attracts a shy young man, who also has no money. He begins to dance with the girl. The dance grows more passionate, then the tramps jump him and throw him out too. The girl goes to the window again and begins her dance. The tramps and girl see a bizarre figure in the street, soon heard coming up the stairs. The tramps hide, and the figure, a Mandarin (wealthy Chinese man), stands immobile in the doorway. The tramps urge the girl to lure him closer. She begins another saucy dance, the Mandarin's passions slowly rising. Suddenly, he leaps up and embraces the girl. They struggle and she escapes; he begins to chase her. The tramps leap on him, strip him of his valuables, and attempt to suffocate him under pillows and blankets. However, he continues to stare at the girl. They stab him three times with a rusty sword; he almost falls, but throws himself again at the girl. The tramps grab him again and hang him from a lamp hook. The lamp falls, plunging the room into darkness, and the Mandarin's body begins to glow with an eerie blue-green light. The tramps and girl are terrified. Suddenly, the girl knows what they must do. She tells the tramps to release the Mandarin; they do. He leaps at the girl again, and this time she does not resist and they embrace. With the Mandarin's longing fulfilled, his wounds begin to bleed and he dies. The score begins with an orchestral depiction of the "concrete jungle." The violins have rapidly rising and falling, wave-like scales over the very unusual interval of an augmented octave. One of the central motifs of the work is set forward in bar 3—a 6/8 rhythm in minor seconds. This motif will reappear at the violent actions of the tramps. The sound of car horns is imitated by fanfares on the trumpets and trombones. As the curtain rises, the violas play a wide-leaping theme that will be associated both with the tramps and the girl. The 3 lockspiele are scored for the clarinet, each one longer and more florid than the last. The old rake is represented by trombone glissandi spanning a minor third, another very important interval. As the tramps throw him out, the minor second in 6/8 returns. The music for the shy young man is a slow dance in 5/4, also interrupted by the 6/8 minor second as the tramps throw him out. When the Mandarin is heard in the street, the trombone plays a simple pentatonic theme harmonized by 3 lines of parallel tritones in the other trombones and the tuba. When the Mandarin enters the room, the trombones and tuba play downward glissandos, again spanning a minor third. Three measures later, this interval is played fortississimo by the full brass. The girl's dance for the Mandarin contains both a waltz and the viola theme associated with her and the tramps. When the Mandarin seizes the girl, the minor second is heard again. The chase is represented by a fugue, whose subject also has a pentatonic flavor. The concert suite ends at this point. In the complete ballet, the 6/8 minor second returns again as the tramps rob the Mandarin. The attempted suffocation and stabbing are illustrated with great force in the orchestra. As the tramps hang the Mandarin from the lamp, the texture is blurred with glissandi on trombones, timpani, piano and cellos. The glowing body of the Mandarin is represented by the entry of a chorus singing wordlessly, once again in the interval of a minor third. The climax, after the girl embraces the Mandarin, is a theme given out fortissimo by the low brass against minor-second tremolos in the woodwinds. As the Mandarin begins to bleed, the downward minor-third glissando heard at his entry is echoed in the trombone, contrabassoon and low strings. The work then stutters arhythmically to a close. The scoring is generally heavy, and Bartók employs many colorful techniques here, including chromatic scales, trills and tremolos in the woodwinds; glissandi in the horns, trombones and tuba; cluster chords and tremolos on the piano; scales and arpeggios on the piano, harp and celeste; and scales, double stops, trills, tremolos, and glissandi in the strings. Other special effects include fluttertonguing in the flutes; muting the brasses and strings, a cymbal roll a deux (a cymbal crash followed by scraping the plates together); playing the bass drum with the wooden part of a timpani mallet; a roll on the gong; rolled timpani glissandi; string harmonics; col legno and sul ponticello playing in the strings; scordatura in the cellos; and, at one point, quarter-tones in the violins. In 2000 a new edition edited by Peter Bartók, the composer's son, was published. Based on the composer's written manuscripts, corrections, and the concurrently written score for piano with four hands, it restored a considerable amount of previously lost music.

Bluebeard's Castle

one-act opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The libretto was written by Béla Balázs, a poet and friend of the composer, and is written in Hungarian, based on the French literary tale "La Barbe bleue" by Charles Perrault. The opera lasts only a little over an hour and there are only two singing characters onstage: Bluebeard (Kékszakállú), and his new wife Judith (Judit ); the two have just eloped and Judith is coming home to Bluebeard's castle for the first time. Balázs originally conceived the libretto for his roommate Zoltán Kodály in 1908, and wrote it during the following two years. It was first published serially in 1910 with a joint dedication to Kodály and Bartók, and in 1912 appeared with the prologue in the collection "Mysteries". Bartók was motivated to complete the opera in 1911 by the closing date of the Ferenc Erkel Prize competition, for which it was duly entered. A second competition, organised by the music publishers Rózsavölgyi and with a closing date in 1912, encouraged Bartók to make some modifications to the work in order to submit it to the Rózsavölgyi competition. The Hungarian conductor István Kertész believed that we should not relate this to the fairy tale on which it was based, but that Bluebeard was Bartók himself, and that it portrays his personal suffering and his reluctance to reveal the inner secrets of his soul, which are progressively invaded by Judith. In this way he can be seen as Everyman, although the composer himself was an intensely private man. Here the blood that pervades the story is the symbol of his suffering. The Prologue (often omitted) points to the story that is portrayed as occurring in the imagination of the audience. While Kertész felt Judith is a villain in this sense, Christa Ludwig who has sung the role disagrees, stating that she only voices all that she has heard about Bluebeard. She refers repeatedly to the rumours (hír), Jaj, igaz hír; suttogó hír (Ah, truthful whispered rumours). Ludwig also believed that Judith was telling the truth every time she says to him, Szeretlek! (I love you!).

Death in Venice

opera in two acts by Benjamin Britten, his last. The opera is based on the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Myfanwy Piper wrote the English libretto. The astringent score is marked by some haunting soundscapes of "ambiguous Venice". The boy Tadzio is portrayed by a silent dancer, to gamelan-like percussion accompaniment. The music of the opera is precise, direct and movingly understated.

Columbia University Experimental Tape Studio

preceeded music center, musique concrete to pure electronics once they got the money. Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening

Love for Three Oranges

satirical opera by Sergei Prokofiev. Its French libretto was based on the Italian play L'amore delle tre melarance by Carlo Gozzi. The eventual libretto was adapted by Prokofiev from Vsevolod Meyerhold's translation of Gozzi's play. The adaptation modernized some of the Commedia dell'arte influences and also introduced a dose of Surrealism. Due to Prokofiev's own scanty knowledge of English, and as Russian would have been unacceptable to American audiences, the initial version was set in French, with the possible assistance of the soprano Vera Janacopoulos, as L'Amour des trois oranges.[1]

A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It was based on the second movement, "Rondeau", of the Abdelazer suite. It was originally commissioned for an educational documentary film called Instruments of the Orchestra. The work is based on the Rondeau from Henry Purcell's incidental music to Aphra Behn's Abdelazer,[3] and is structured, in accordance with the plan of the original documentary film, as a way of showing off the tone colours and capacities of the various sections of the orchestra. In the introduction, the theme is initially played by the entire orchestra, then by each major family of instruments of the orchestra: first the woodwinds, then the brass, then the strings, and finally by the percussion. Each variation then features a particular instrument in depth, in the same family order, and generally moving through each family from high to low. So, for example, the first variation features the piccolo and flutes; each member of the woodwind family then gets a variation, ending with the bassoon; and so on, through the strings, brass, and finally the percussion. After the whole orchestra has been effectively taken to pieces in this way, it is reassembled using an original fugue which starts with the piccolo, followed by all the woodwinds, strings, brass and percussion in turn. Once everyone has entered, the brass are re-introduced (with a strike on the tamtam) with Purcell's original melody. The narration for the documentary film was written by Eric Crozier, the producer of the first production of Britten's opera Peter Grimes, and is sometimes spoken by the conductor or a separate speaker during performance of the piece. The composer also arranged a version without narration. The one without narration is more often recorded. The commentary often alters between recordings.

Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus

suite of 20 pieces for solo piano by the French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992). The work is a meditation on the infancy of Jesus. Messiaen uses Thèmes or leitmotifs, recurring elements that represent certain ideas. They include: Thème de Dieu ("Theme of God") Thème de l'amour mystique ("Theme of Mystical Love") Thème de l'étoile et de la croix ("Theme of the Star and of the Cross") Thème d'accords ("Theme of Chords")[1] For example, Messiaen has written that "The 'Theme of Chords' is heard throughout, fragmented, concentrated, surrounded with resonances, combined with itself, modified in both rhythm and register, transformed, transmuted in all sorts of ways: it is a complex of sounds intended for perpetual variation, pre-existing in the abstract like a series, but quite concrete and quite easily recognizable through its colors

Kossuth

symphonic poem composed by Béla Bartók inspired by the Hungarian politician Lajos Kossuth. The symphonic poem was composed as a tribute to Hungarian politician Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and musically chronicles his failed attempt to win Hungary's independence from Austria in 1848-49. Bartók has himself penned detailed commentaries on the score, etching out a programme and subjecting it to close thematic analysis. Although the work is written as a single movement, it is nonetheless complex in its orchestration, with ten interrelated movements or sections. The piece begins with Bartók sketching a portrait of his hero and ends with a funeral march, which was also arranged for piano by the composer. The symphonic poems of Liszt and Strauss heavily influence the work, as Bartók borrows ideas from them to develop harmonies, chromatic progressions and for instrumentation. He also added a number of his individual and original Hungarian features to it. Throughout the work, a mocking satire on the imperial Austrian national anthem, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, is used in the form of a recurring leitmotif.

pure electronics

synthesize music entirely from electronically produced signals; in this way, elektronische Musik was sharply differentiated from French musique concrète, which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources -Meyer-Eppler

neotonality

term for music since the early 1900s that establishes a single pitch as a tonal center, but does not follow the traditional rules of tonality

total (integral) serialism

the application of the principles of the twelve-tone method to musical parameters other than pitch, including duration, intensities, and timbres.

Magnetophone (tape recorder)

the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Show. Later models introduced the concept of AC tape bias, and thereby improved the sound quality by largely eliminating background hiss. The resulting reproduction was so great an advance on any existing recording method that even those well acquainted with the industry could not tell the recordings from live play.

textural composition

the result of compositional techniques, in which, "the importance of individual pitches," is minimized, "in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact," obscuring, "the boundary between sound and noise". include extended techniques such as muted brass or strings, flutter tonguing, wide vibrato, extreme ranges, and glissandos as the continuum for "sound mass" moves from simultaneously sounding notes - clusters etc., towards stochastic cloud textures, and 'mass structure' compositional textures which evolve over time (Edwards 2001, pp. 326-27). In a sound mass, "the traditional concept of 'chord' or vertical 'event' [is] replaced by a shifting, iridescent fabric of sound" (Kostka and Payne 1995, 546). The use of "chords approaching timbres" begins with Debussy and Edgard Varèse often carefully scored individual instrumental parts so that they would fuse into one ensemble timbre or sound mass. Explored by Charles Ives and Henry Cowell in the early part of the twentieth century, this technique also developed from the modernist tone clusters and spread to orchestral writing by the mid 1950s and 1960s

Existentialism (J. P. Sartre)

understand human existence rather than the world as such. Adopting and adapting the methods of phenomenology, Sartre sets out to develop an ontological account of what it is to be human. The main features of this ontology are the groundlessness and radical freedom which characterize the human condition. These are contrasted with the unproblematic being of the world of things. Sartre's substantial literary output adds dramatic expression to the always unstable co-existence of facts and freedom in an indifferent world. Sartre's ontology is explained in his philosophical masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, where he defines two types of reality which lie beyond our conscious experience: the being of the object of consciousness and that of consciousness itself. The object of consciousness exists as "in-itself," that is, in an independent and non-relational way. However, consciousness is always consciousness "of something," so it is defined in relation to something else, and it is not possible to grasp it within a conscious experience: it exists as "for-itself." An essential feature of consciousness is its negative power, by which we can experience "nothingness." This power is also at work within the self, where it creates an intrinsic lack of self-identity. So the unity of the self is understood as a task for the for-itself rather than as a given. In order to ground itself, the self needs projects, which can be viewed as aspects of an individual's fundamental project and motivated by a desire for "being" lying within the individual's consciousness. The source of this project is a spontaneous original choice that depends on the individual's freedom. However, self's choice may lead to a project of self-deception such as bad faith, where one's own real nature as for-itself is discarded to adopt that of the in-itself. Our only way to escape self-deception is authenticity, that is, choosing in a way which reveals the existence of the for-itself as both factual and transcendent. For Sartre, my proper exercise of freedom creates values that any other human being placed in my situation could experience, therefore each authentic project expresses a universal dimension in the singularity of a human life. After a brief summary of Sartre's life, this article looks at the main themes characterizing Sartre's early philosophical works. The ontology developed in Sartre's main existential work, Being and Nothingness, will then be analysed. Finally, an overview is provided of the further development of existentialist themes in his later works.

Edison Denisov

was a Russian composer in the so-called "Underground"—"Anti-Collectivist", "alternative" or "nonconformist" division of Soviet music. He studied mathematics before deciding to spend his life composing. This decision was enthusiastically supported by Dmitri Shostakovich, who gave him lessons in composition. In 1951-56 Denisov studied at the Moscow Conservatory—composition with Vissarion Shebalin, orchestration with Nikolai Rakov, analysis with Viktor Zuckerman and piano with Vladimir Belov. In 1956-59 he composed the opera Ivan-Soldat (Soldier Ivan) in three acts based on Russian folk fairy tales. He began his own study of scores that were difficult to obtain in the USSR at that time, including music ranging from Mahler and Debussy to Boulez and Stockhausen. He wrote a series of articles giving a detailed analysis of different aspects of contemporary compositional techniques and at same time actively experimented as a composer, trying to find his own way. After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, he taught orchestration and later composition there. Among his pupils were composers Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Sergei Pavlenko, Ivan Sokolov, Yuri Kasparov, Dmitri Kapyrin and Alexander Shchetinsky. See: List of music students by teacher: C to F#Edison Denisov. In 1979 he was blacklisted as one of the "Khrennikov's Seven" at the Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers for unapproved participation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West. Denisov became a leader of the Association for Contemporary Music reestablished in Moscow in 1990. Later Denisov moved to France, where after an accident and long illness he died in a Paris hospital in 1996. The cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble Le soleil des Incas (1964), setting the poems by Gabriela Mistral and dedicated to Pierre Boulez, gave him an international recognition. This happened after the series of successful performances of the work in Darmstadt and Paris (1965). Igor Stravinsky liked the piece, discovering the "remarkable talent" of its composer. However, the piece was harshly criticised by the Union of Soviet Composers for its "western influences", "erudition instead of creativity", and "total composer's arbitrary" (Tikhon Khrennikov). After that, performances of his works were often banned in the Soviet Union. Later he wrote a flute concerto for Aurèle Nicolet, a violin concerto for Gidon Kremer, works for the oboist Heinz Holliger, clarinettist Eduard Brunner and a sonata for alto saxophone and piano for Jean-Marie Londeix, that became highly popular among saxophone players. His sombre but striking Requiem, setting a multi-lingual text (English, French, German and Latin) based on works by Francisco Tanzer, was given its first performance in Hamburg in 1980. Among his major works are the operas L'écume des jours after Boris Vian (1981), Quatre Filles after Pablo Picasso (1986) and ballet Confession after Alfred de Musset.

Respighi's Roman Trilogy: The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome, Roman Festivals

was supported by fascists, national pride