Steve Reich
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151152
- eISBN:
- 9780199850044
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151152.003.0058
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Proverb, which was cocommissioned by the BBC Proms as part of their 100th Anniversary season in 1995 and by the Early Music Festival of Utrecht. The idea ...
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This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Proverb, which was cocommissioned by the BBC Proms as part of their 100th Anniversary season in 1995 and by the Early Music Festival of Utrecht. The idea for Proverb was originally suggested by Paul Hillier, who thought of a primarily vocal piece with six voices and two percussion. What resulted was a piece for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones, and two electric organs, with a short text from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since Paul Hillier is well known as a conductor and singer of early music and since Reich shares an interest in this period of Western music, he looked once again at the works of Perotin for guidance and inspiration.Less
This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Proverb, which was cocommissioned by the BBC Proms as part of their 100th Anniversary season in 1995 and by the Early Music Festival of Utrecht. The idea for Proverb was originally suggested by Paul Hillier, who thought of a primarily vocal piece with six voices and two percussion. What resulted was a piece for three sopranos, two tenors, two vibraphones, and two electric organs, with a short text from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since Paul Hillier is well known as a conductor and singer of early music and since Reich shares an interest in this period of Western music, he looked once again at the works of Perotin for guidance and inspiration.
Lawrence Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267053
- eISBN:
- 9780520947368
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267053.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter describes a hermeneutically robust musicology that has never denied the existence of past interest in the contexts of music or in what were formerly called “extramusical” relations. Nor ...
More
This chapter describes a hermeneutically robust musicology that has never denied the existence of past interest in the contexts of music or in what were formerly called “extramusical” relations. Nor has it shown any lack of interest in, indeed fascination with, the internal dynamics of musical works or genres. But it breaks with earlier approaches, including the ethnomusicological approaches to which it is sometimes compared, by regarding music as a form of human agency that shapes and intervenes in such conditions, and does so, not exceptionally, but as an ordinary consequence of musical practice. Ludwig Wittgenstein's thinking about aesthetics returned continually to the question of expression, especially in music. The chapter offers a rationale for this way of thinking; a summary of its perspectives on music, signs, meaning, and subjectivity; and a transition to hermeneutic practice via an element of language not traditionally reckoned with in discussions of words and music: the performative speech act. It also discusses hermeneutic activity in language, with special emphasis on the speech act and illocution.Less
This chapter describes a hermeneutically robust musicology that has never denied the existence of past interest in the contexts of music or in what were formerly called “extramusical” relations. Nor has it shown any lack of interest in, indeed fascination with, the internal dynamics of musical works or genres. But it breaks with earlier approaches, including the ethnomusicological approaches to which it is sometimes compared, by regarding music as a form of human agency that shapes and intervenes in such conditions, and does so, not exceptionally, but as an ordinary consequence of musical practice. Ludwig Wittgenstein's thinking about aesthetics returned continually to the question of expression, especially in music. The chapter offers a rationale for this way of thinking; a summary of its perspectives on music, signs, meaning, and subjectivity; and a transition to hermeneutic practice via an element of language not traditionally reckoned with in discussions of words and music: the performative speech act. It also discusses hermeneutic activity in language, with special emphasis on the speech act and illocution.
