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After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance

Kenneth Hamilton

This book dissects the oft-invoked myth of a romantic Golden Age of Pianism. It discusses the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski and Busoni, and delves into the ... More

This book dissects the oft-invoked myth of a romantic Golden Age of Pianism. It discusses the performance-style of great pianists from Liszt to Paderewski and Busoni, and delves into the far-from-inevitable development of the piano recital. The book recounts how classical concerts evolved from exuberant, sometimes riotous events into the formal, funereal trotting out of predictable pieces they can be today; how an often unhistorical “respect for the score” began to replace pianists' improvizations and adaptations; and how the clinical custom arose that an audience should be seen and not heard. The book chronicles why pianists of the past did not always begin a piece with the first note of the score, nor end with the last. It emphasizes that anxiety over wrong notes is a relatively recent psychosis, and that playing entirely from memory a relatively recent requirement. The book presents a vivid tale of how drastically different are the recitals of the present compared to concerts of the past, and how their own role has diminished from noisily active participants in the concert experience to passive recipients of artistic benediction from the stage. The book's broad message proclaims that there is nothing divinely ordained about our own concert-practices, programming, and piano-performance styles. Many aspects of the modern approach are unhistorical — some laudable, some merely ludicrous. They are also far removed from those fondly remembered as constituting a Golden Age.Less

After the Rite: Stravinsky's Path to Neoclassicism (1914-1925)

Maureen A. Carr

After the Rite: Stravinsky’s Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) traces the evolution of Stravinsky’s compositional process with excerpts from Rossignol, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Renard, Histoire ... More

After the Rite: Stravinsky’s Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) traces the evolution of Stravinsky’s compositional process with excerpts from Rossignol, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Renard, Histoire du soldat, Étude for Pianola, Ragtime, Piano-Rag-Music, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Concertino, Pulcinella, Mavra, Octet, Cinq pièces monométriques, Concerto for Piano and Winds, Piano Sonata, the Serenade in A. One of the goals of this monograph is to illustrate how musical sketches help to inform music analysis. The use of original sources, diplomatic transcriptions, and diagrams illustrate: (1) the presence of melodic motives, such as anticipatory gestures that have a bearing on subsequent works, (2) the layering of imitative techniques that sometimes participate in the emergence of block form before transitioning into Stravinsky’s Neoclassical style, and (3) the incorporation of materials borrowed from the eighteenth century to create musical narrative, and so on. In addition to these visual representations of musical ideas, another goal is to consider the cultural complexities that established the framework for Stravinsky’s evolution as a composer, such as: (1) the cross-currents in literary circles around 1914 that were concerned with Shklovsky’s “Resurrection of the Word” and the notion of defamiliarization, (2) the swirling designs in artworks by painters who espoused the ideals of futurism and cubo-futurism, and (3) Fokine’s outline of the “New Ballet” that appeared in the Times (London) on July 6, 1914, just before the declaration of war on July 28, 1914, and that in a way paralleled the emergence of Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism.Less

Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music from 1960-2000

Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds)

This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed ... More

This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed studies of compositions written since 1960 by Ursula Mamlok, Norma Beecroft, Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho, Libby Larsen, and Elisabeth Lutyens. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer written by the editors, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on pitch design, the second on musical gesture, and the third on music and text. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Postsecondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in post-tonal theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music.Less

Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900

Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds)

This multi-author collection, the second to be published in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, ... More

This multi-author collection, the second to be published in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries, presents detailed studies of compositions written up to 1900 by Hildegard of Bingen, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre, Marianna Martines, Fanny Hensel, Josephine Lang, Clara Schumann, and Amy Beach. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer, followed by an in-depth analysis of one representative composition or a small number of comparable compositions, linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on early music for voice, the second on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music, and the third on lieder and piano music. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in early music, theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in music composed before 1900.Less

Analytical Studies in World Music: Analytical Studies in World Music

Michael Tenzer (ed.)

Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. ... More

Combining the approaches of ethnomusicology and music theory, this book offers perspectives for thinking about how musical sounds are shaped, arranged, and composed by their diverse makers worldwide. Eleven in-depth explanations of Iranian sung poetry, Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, Afro-Cuban drumming, Shanghai opera, flamenco, modern American chamber music, Central African group singing, Bulgarian dance tunes, South Indian song, and a Mozart piano concerto create a diverse compendium of music analyses. Through description of contexts of performance and creation, and especially compositional and formal construction, each chapter proposes stimulating ways to hear, conceive, and imagine these repertoires. Selections on the companion recordings are carefully matched with extensive transcriptions and illuminating diagrams in every chapter. Opening rich cross-cultural and comparative perspectives on music, this volume addresses the practical needs of students and scholars in the contemporary world of fusions, contact, borrowing, and curiosity about music everywhere.Less

The Art of Performance

Heinrich Schenker

Heribert Esser (ed.)

From early on, Heinrich Schenker was deeply interested in performance. There are many references to a planned publication on performance, there are finished segments and many miscellaneous related ... More

From early on, Heinrich Schenker was deeply interested in performance. There are many references to a planned publication on performance, there are finished segments and many miscellaneous related notebook-jottings, but his theoretical writings took precedence over all else and he never completed the book. This book may be taken as a compilation, as is explained in detail in the editor's introduction. It presents what Schenker regarded as one of his main missions: to rectify the direction music performance had taken in his time. He argues that for a meaningful performance of a masterwork the performer must understand the inner workings of the music. Therefore, the many players — largely pianists — who merely use the text to show their own ability do injustice to the music and mislead audiences. This holds true even for those who follow the markings of the composers slavishly but without understanding. In discussing the great composers' modes of notation and showing that their markings only indicate a desired effect, we get highly practical and imaginative advice based on the author's own experience as performing pianist and composer. He covers different aspects of pianistic technique including hand motions, legato and non legato touch, fingering, pedal, and articulation. The discussion of dynamics and tempo are equally valid for all instrumentalists. Throughout, the aim of a free, “singing” performance which comes from having assimilated the music is stressed: it results in true “re-creation”.Less

The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis: Thirty-Three Graphic Music Analyses

Joseph N. Straus

This book consists of analyses of thirty-three musical passages or entire short works in a variety of post-tonal styles. The works under study are taken from throughout the long twentieth century, ... More

This book consists of analyses of thirty-three musical passages or entire short works in a variety of post-tonal styles. The works under study are taken from throughout the long twentieth century, from 1909 to the present. Within the atonal wing of modern classical music, the composers discussed here, some canonical and some not, represent a diversity of musical style, chronology, geography, gender, and race/ethnicity: Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Dallapiccola, Elliott Carter, Louise Talma, Hale Smith, Elisabeth Lutyens, Ursula Mamlok, Tania León, Tan Dun, Shulamit Ran, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, John Adams, Sofia Gubaidulina, Thomas Adès, Caroline Shaw, Chen Yi, and Suzanne Farrin. The approach is pedagogical, in the somewhat informal style of a classroom. Musical examples and analytical videos carry the burden of the analytical argument, with relatively little prose. For each piece, the book suggests ways of making sense of the music, using basic concepts of post-tonal theory to tease out rich networks of musical relationships and reveal something of the fascination and beauty of this challenging music.Less

The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory

Carl Schachter

Joseph N. Straus (ed.)

Carl Schachter is the world’s leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis as applied to the masterworks of the tonal tradition. Although his articles and books have been broadly ... More

Carl Schachter is the world’s leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis as applied to the masterworks of the tonal tradition. Although his articles and books have been broadly influential, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom, at a variety of institutions. In fall 2012, Schachter taught a special doctoral seminar at the City of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, where he talked about the music and the musical issues that have concerned him most deeply. This book consists of edited transcripts of those lectures.Less

Artful Noise: Percussion Literature in the Twentieth Century

Thomas Siwe

A substantial body of musical literature for solo and ensemble percussion was created in the twentieth century. This book examines percussion literature’s evolution: how it came to be and the styles ... More

A substantial body of musical literature for solo and ensemble percussion was created in the twentieth century. This book examines percussion literature’s evolution: how it came to be and the styles that composers embraced as they produced a large body of music for percussion instruments alone. The focus is on the music that was created, the various genres that arose, and the composers who contributed seminal works. The question is posed: What world and cultural events brought composers to reject the past and embrace modernism? The twentieth century is notable for its many technological advances as well as for the global conflicts that disrupted the lives of millions. Both had significant impact on the arts. Tape recorders, synthesizers, and computers became useful tools for the avant-garde composer. Artists, exiled from their homelands by the war’s devastation, arrived in the Americas with new ideas to share. On the West Coast of the United States, composers found that percussion music was an ideal accompaniment for a nascent modern dance movement. The end of World War II brought monumental change to higher education and to music education in the States. College-trained percussionists became an important resource for the modern composer, who contributed new solo and ensemble works to the percussion canon. The twentieth century witnessed the rise of the percussive arts to a status equal to that of other instrumental groups.Less

Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis

David Elliott, Marissa Silverman, and Wayne Bowman

Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis examines the many ways that artists (amateur and professional), community artist-facilitators, educators, and scholars in ... More

Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis examines the many ways that artists (amateur and professional), community artist-facilitators, educators, and scholars in music, dance/movement, theater, visual arts, poetry/storytelling, and media and technology conceive and deploy their abilities to advance democratic citizenship and human flourishing in local, national, and international contexts. Among the questions this book addresses are the following: What is the nature and scope of artistic citizenship? How do artists and scholars in different domains conceive the aims, concepts, practical strategies, problems, and “spaces and places” of artistic citizenship? What are the most effective strategies that artists, teachers, and students use to address local, national, and world problems, including violence and international conflicts, poverty, disease, and gender and racial discrimination? What qualities and abilities do amateur and professional artists need to practice, develop, and expand artistic citizenship? What connections exist between ethical-artistic action and artistic citizenship? What is the history of conceptualizing the “why, what, how, who, where, and when” of artistic citizenship? Do particular artistic endeavors have distinctive potentials for nurturing artistic citizenship? If so, what might they be? How can artistic citizenship be pursued without compromising the natures and values of particular artistic practices? What can arts education programs do to motivate artists of all ages and abilities to better serve their communities? How might artistic endeavors informed by a pragmatic “ethic of care” contribute to positive societal change?Less

Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred

Peter C. Bouteneff, Jeffers Engelhardt, and Robert Saler (eds)

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding ... More

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred focuses on the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In response, this ambitiously interdisciplinary volume asks: What of sound and materiality as embodiments of the sacred, as historically specific artifacts, and as elements of creation deeply linked to the human sensorium in Pärt studies? In taking up these questions, the book “de-Platonizes” Pärt studies by demystifying the notion of a single “Pärt sound.” It offers innovative, critical analyses of the historical contexts of Pärt’s experimentation, medievalism, and diverse creative work; it re-sounds the acoustic, theological, and representational grounds of silence in Pärt’s music; it listens with critical openness to the intersections of theology, sacred texts, and spirituality in Pärt’s music; and it positions sensing, performing bodies at the center of musical experience. Building on the conventional score-, biography-, and media-based approaches, this volume reframes Pärt studies around the materiality of sound, its sacredness, and its embodied resonances within secular spaces.Less

Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad's Second Nature

Richard Cohn

Many nineteenth-century theorists viewed triadic distance in terms of common tones and voice-leading proximity, rather than root consonance and mutual diatonic constituency. Audacious Euphony ... More

Many nineteenth-century theorists viewed triadic distance in terms of common tones and voice-leading proximity, rather than root consonance and mutual diatonic constituency. Audacious Euphony reconstructs this view and uses it as the basis for a chromatic model of triadic space, developing geometric representations from blueprints of Euler (1739) and Weitzmann (1853). The model renders coherent many passages of romantic music (e.g. of Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, Wagner) that are disjunct from the standpoint of classical tonality. Semantic attributes commonly ascribed to romantic music are theorized as the result of incompatibilities between classical and romantic conceptions of triadic distance. The model generalizes to apply to relations among Tristan-genus seventh chords, due to their structural homologies with triads. At the heart of the approach is the observation that major and minor triads are minimal perturbations of perfectly even augmented triads, and that this property underlies their status as voice-leading optimizers. Consonant triads are thus overdetermined, as they are also independently the acoustic optimizers of classical theory. Both consonant triads and Tristan-genus seventh chords are homophonous diamorphs, whose syntactic behaviors and semantic qualities require two distinct theories, as well as a third one that reconciles them in a cognitively plausible way. Among the compositions treated analytically in Audacious Euphony are Schubert “Der Doppelgänger” and “Auf dem Fluße”, his sonatas D. 959 and 960, Chopin’s e-minor prelude, fantasy, and g-minor ballade, Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Liszt’s Consolation #3 and organ Kyrie, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar, Fauré’s Requiem, Brahms’s 1st and 2nd Symphonies, Wagner’s Parsifal, Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and Strauss’s “Frühling.”Less

Bach Perspectives, Volume 10: Bach and the Organ

Matthew Dirst (ed.)

A publication of the American Bach Society, this book pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. This volume is a collection of groundbreaking essays ... More

A publication of the American Bach Society, this book pioneers new areas of research into the life, times, and music of the master composer. This volume is a collection of groundbreaking essays exploring various aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ-related activities. Bach's report on Johann Scheibe's organ at St. Paul's Church in Leipzig is reconsidered. The likely provenance and purpose of a collection of chorale harmonizations copied in Dresden is clarified. The ways various independent trio movements served Bach as an artist and teacher is investigated. The origins of concerted Bach cantata movements are sought, spotlighting the organ and proposing family trees of both parent works and offspring. Finally, the book provides a broad cultural frame for such pieces and notes how their components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ's intimation of Heaven. The book provides an eighteenth-century context for Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas with obbligato organ by showing how their various components engage in a larger discourse about the German Baroque organ: namely, its intimation of Heaven.Less

Bach Perspectives, Volume 9: J. S. Bach and His German Contemporaries

Andrew Talle (ed.)

This addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counter-narrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. The book contextualizes Bach by examining the ... More

This addition to the Bach Perspectives series offers a counter-narrative to the isolated genius status that J. S. Bach and his music currently enjoy. The book contextualizes Bach by examining the output, reputation, and compositional practices of his contemporaries in Germany whose work was widely played and enjoyed in his time, including Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Gottlieb Muffat, and Johann Adolf Scheibe. Chapters place Bach and his work in relation to his peers, examining avenues of composition they took while he did not and showing how differing treatments of the same subjects or texts resulted in markedly different compositional results and legacies. By looking closely at how Bach's contemporaries addressed the tasks and challenges of their time, this project provides a more nuanced view of the musical world of Bach's time while revealing in more specific terms than ever how and why Bach's own music remains fresh and compelling.Less

Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era

Roger Mathew Grant

This book chronicles the shifting relationships between theories of meter and conceptualizations of time from the age of Zarlino to the invention of the metronome. Writers on music have long grappled ... More

This book chronicles the shifting relationships between theories of meter and conceptualizations of time from the age of Zarlino to the invention of the metronome. Writers on music have long grappled with the nature of meter, and throughout the history of Western music their formulations have continually evolved, reflecting fundamental reevaluations not only of music but also of time itself. Drawing on paradigms from the history of science and technology and the history of philosophy, this study illustrates ways in which theories of meter and time have mutually informed one another. The turning point of the narrative is a dramatic change in the conceptualization of meter that took place during the eighteenth century. This change in musical thought occurred within a broader shift in the construction of time. During the long eighteenth century, treatises on subjects such as aesthetics, music theory, mathematics, and natural philosophy began to reflect an understanding, first articulated in Newton's metaphysics, of time as an absolute quantity, independent of events. This change had a profound impact on the network of ideas connecting time, meter, character, and tempo. Bringing together diverse strands of thought in a broad intellectual history of temporality, this book examines the theoretical apparatuses, timekeeping technologies, and musical materials that implemented this conceptual shift.Less

Beethoven & Freedom

Daniel K L Chua

Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic ... More

Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic readings of key works. Freedom is arguably the core value of modernity since late eighteenth-century; Beethoven’s music engages with its aspirations and dilemmas, providing a sonic ‘lens’ that enables us to focus on the aesthetic, philosophical, and theological ramifications of its claims of progress and autonomy and the formation of the self and its values. Taking his bearings from Adorno’s fragmentary reflections on Beethoven, Chua charts a journey from the heroic freedom associated with the Eroica Symphony to a freedom of vulnerability that opens itself to ‘otherness’. Chua’s analysis of the music demonstrates how various forms of freedom are embodied in the way time and space are manipulated in Beethoven’s works, providing an experience of a concept that Kant had famously declared inaccessible to sense. Beethoven’s music, then, does not simply mirror freedom; it is a philosophical and poetic engagement with the idea that is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution.Less

Beyond Structural Listening?: Postmodern Modes of Hearing

Andrew Dell'Antonio (ed.)

In a highly influential essay, Rose Rosengard Subotnik critiques “structural listening” as an attempt to situate musical meaning solely within the unfolding of the musical structure itself. The ... More

In a highly influential essay, Rose Rosengard Subotnik critiques “structural listening” as an attempt to situate musical meaning solely within the unfolding of the musical structure itself. The authors of this volume, prominent young music historians and theorists writing on repertories ranging from Beethoven to MTV, take up Subotnik's challenge. The chapters here explore not only the implications of the “structural listening” model but also the alternative listening strategies that have developed in specific communities, often in response to twentieth-century Western music.Less

Beyond the Score: Music as Performance

Nicholas Cook

It is as performance that music is loved, understood, and consumed, yet musicologists have traditionally treated it as a kind of text. They have seen meaning as written into the music, implying that ... More

It is as performance that music is loved, understood, and consumed, yet musicologists have traditionally treated it as a kind of text. They have seen meaning as written into the music, implying that performance merely reproduces what is already there: this paradigm of reproduction has prevented musicology from adequately engaging with performance. Beyond the Score is a thoroughgoing attempt to reconceive music as performance, in other words as a real-time practice that affords the production of meaning. That means rethinking familiar assumptions and developing new approaches. Focusing primarily but not exclusively on the Western “art” tradition, the book explores perspectives that range from close listening to computational analysis, from ethnography to the study of recordings, and from the social relations constructed through performance to the performing (and listening) body. It also has a strong historical emphasis, extending from the early days of recording to contemporary digital culture, and a number of themes weave through it. These include the relationship between the written and the oral in musical culture, and the need to move on from thinking based on the paradigm of reproduction to a semiotic approach grounded on the production of meaning. While the principal claim of the book is that thinking based on the idea of music as text has hampered the academic understanding of music, the book argues that it has also made the practices of performance less creative than they might be, and the book explores how we might escape from the textualist straitjacket.Less

A Blaze of Light in Every Word: Analyzing the Popular Singing Voice

Victoria Malawey

A Blaze of Light in Every Word presents a conceptual model for analyzing vocal delivery in popular song recordings focused on three overlapping areas of inquiry: pitch, prosody, and quality. The ... More

A Blaze of Light in Every Word presents a conceptual model for analyzing vocal delivery in popular song recordings focused on three overlapping areas of inquiry: pitch, prosody, and quality. The domain of pitch, which refers to listeners’ perceptions of frequency, considers range, tessitura, intonation, and registration. Prosody, the pacing and flow of delivery, comprises phrasing, metric placement, motility, embellishment, and consonantal articulation. Qualitative elements include timbre, phonation, onset, resonance, clarity, paralinguistic effects, and loudness. Intersecting all three domains is the area of technological mediation, which considers how external technologies, such as layering, overdubbing, pitch modification, recording transmission, compression, reverb, spatial placement, delay, and other electronic effects, impact voice in recorded music. Though the book focuses primarily on the sonic and material aspects of vocal delivery, it situates these aspects among broader cultural, philosophical, and anthropological approaches to voice with the goal to better understand the relationship between sonic content and its signification. Drawing upon transcription and spectrographic analysis as the primary means of representation, as well as modes of analysis, this book features in-depth analyses of a wide array of popular song recordings spanning genres from indie rock to hip-hop to death metal, develops analytical tools for understanding how individual dimensions make singing voices both complex and unique, and synthesizes how multiple aspects interact to better understand the multidimensionality of singing voices.Less

Building Blocks: Repetition and Continuity in the Music of Stravinsky

Gretchen Horlacher

A pioneer of musical modernism, Igor Stravinsky marked a significant turn in compositional method. He broke free from traditional styles and contemporary trends in the early part of the 20th century ... More

A pioneer of musical modernism, Igor Stravinsky marked a significant turn in compositional method. He broke free from traditional styles and contemporary trends in the early part of the 20th century to achieve an entirely new and truly modern aesthetic. Striking a remarkable concurrence of stasis and discontinuity, Stravinsky crafted large-scale compositions out of short repeating melodies, juxtaposed these primary motives with contrasting and varying fragments, and layered on fixed ostinati which repeated at their own rates throughout the piece. Previous scholarship on Stravinsky focuses on the disparate and independent nature of such textures, conceiving them as separated and deadlocked, unable to escape their repetitions, and having no goal. This connects Stravinsky's procedures with the more radical music of subsequent composers for whom disconnection has served as a primary aesthetic. Yet, from the perspective of his later works, the static and discontinuous depictions of Stravinsky's music seem incomplete and perhaps even simplistic. The “building blocks” of his novel textures often consist of tunes with identifiable intervallic shapes, goal pitches, and defining durational patterns—organizations that engender continuity and connection. This book provides a fuller perspective, and offers a fresh approach to this music and the theoretical constructs behind it. The book portrays the whole of Stravinsky's repertoire as radical or modern not because it eschews continuity and connection, but because it places them in relation to their opposites: the music holds our interest because undeniable references toward continuity are dynamically coordinated (rather than subsumed) with stasis and discontinuity. From this vantage point, Stravinsky's music becomes a commentary on the nature of time: the music draws into relation the tension between time as it is punctuated by fixed reference and as it flows from one event to another. It is quintessentially modern because of its inherent emphasis on multiple vantage points.Less