Yonatan Malin
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195340051
- eISBN:
- 9780199863785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340051.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter explores effects of repetition and motion in Schubert's songs, together with moments of rhythmic irregularity. Analyses focus on three songs from Winterreise (poems by Müller) and three ...
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This chapter explores effects of repetition and motion in Schubert's songs, together with moments of rhythmic irregularity. Analyses focus on three songs from Winterreise (poems by Müller) and three early Goethe settings. The chapter's themes are introduced with notes on “Auf dem Flusse,” Winterreise No. 7. An unusual declamatory schema is then shown to contribute to the frenzied flight in “Rückblick,” Winterreise No. 8. Three songs—“Wandrers Nachtlied I,” D. 224, “Die Nebensonnen,” Winterreise No. 23, and “Schäfers Klagelied,” D. 121—illustrate moments of rhythmic irregularity, speech rhythm, and the emergence of a reflective, deeply feeling self. The chapter concludes with an extended analysis of “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” D. 118. Gretchen's shifting psychological states are shown to leave their trace in the flow and articulation of her poetic syntax and in the phrase rhythm and hypermeter of Schubert's remarkable setting.Less
This chapter explores effects of repetition and motion in Schubert's songs, together with moments of rhythmic irregularity. Analyses focus on three songs from Winterreise (poems by Müller) and three early Goethe settings. The chapter's themes are introduced with notes on “Auf dem Flusse,” Winterreise No. 7. An unusual declamatory schema is then shown to contribute to the frenzied flight in “Rückblick,” Winterreise No. 8. Three songs—“Wandrers Nachtlied I,” D. 224, “Die Nebensonnen,” Winterreise No. 23, and “Schäfers Klagelied,” D. 121—illustrate moments of rhythmic irregularity, speech rhythm, and the emergence of a reflective, deeply feeling self. The chapter concludes with an extended analysis of “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” D. 118. Gretchen's shifting psychological states are shown to leave their trace in the flow and articulation of her poetic syntax and in the phrase rhythm and hypermeter of Schubert's remarkable setting.
William T. Dargan
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234482
- eISBN:
- 9780520928923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234482.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Musicologists have acknowledged the importance of speech rhythms to black music from the blues forward, but the focus of the analysis has not explained their primacy. The obscurity of the ...
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Musicologists have acknowledged the importance of speech rhythms to black music from the blues forward, but the focus of the analysis has not explained their primacy. The obscurity of the hymns—despite their affinity to the spirituals that have been reinvented as a concert form—typifies the hidden significance of speech to black music. Proceeding from an English tradition that was no less oral in derivation, the performance tradition of Dr. Watts hymns brought to an African oral inheritance a heightened awareness of English poetic meters and rhyming patterns, along with a racialized theology, which slaves revitalized and subverted as their own voice of liberation. As sermons unfold the scriptures in black worship, hymns and songs freight spoken symbols with the burden of human thoughts and feelings. This chapter examines the musical implications of words as shapers of pitch, rhythm, and timbre.Less
Musicologists have acknowledged the importance of speech rhythms to black music from the blues forward, but the focus of the analysis has not explained their primacy. The obscurity of the hymns—despite their affinity to the spirituals that have been reinvented as a concert form—typifies the hidden significance of speech to black music. Proceeding from an English tradition that was no less oral in derivation, the performance tradition of Dr. Watts hymns brought to an African oral inheritance a heightened awareness of English poetic meters and rhyming patterns, along with a racialized theology, which slaves revitalized and subverted as their own voice of liberation. As sermons unfold the scriptures in black worship, hymns and songs freight spoken symbols with the burden of human thoughts and feelings. This chapter examines the musical implications of words as shapers of pitch, rhythm, and timbre.
William T. Dargan
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234482
- eISBN:
- 9780520928923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234482.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The first illustration in Black Art and Culture in the Twentieth Century, by Richard Powell, is of a late-seventeenth-century slave drum whose unchanging appearance is significant because African ...
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The first illustration in Black Art and Culture in the Twentieth Century, by Richard Powell, is of a late-seventeenth-century slave drum whose unchanging appearance is significant because African rituals and music making were legally suppressed after the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina. A century later, ministers taught slaves to turn from their own “heathenish” songs to the hymns of Isaac Watts. The continuity of unaccompanied congregational singing in congregations where Dr. Watts remains vital suggests the importance of lining out to subsequent genres and forms. Lining out became the primary slave model for Standard English-language singing in Christian worship. The history of Dr. Watts hymn singing balances between persistent African continuities and the perpetual change factors—such as migration and especially language contact—that have shaped the practice of Christianity among African Americans. Although the consistent importance of speech rhythms to black music is clear at least as far back as nineteenth-century congregational singing, the specifics of the African and Anglo-American origins of speech rhythms are not as clear.Less
The first illustration in Black Art and Culture in the Twentieth Century, by Richard Powell, is of a late-seventeenth-century slave drum whose unchanging appearance is significant because African rituals and music making were legally suppressed after the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina. A century later, ministers taught slaves to turn from their own “heathenish” songs to the hymns of Isaac Watts. The continuity of unaccompanied congregational singing in congregations where Dr. Watts remains vital suggests the importance of lining out to subsequent genres and forms. Lining out became the primary slave model for Standard English-language singing in Christian worship. The history of Dr. Watts hymn singing balances between persistent African continuities and the perpetual change factors—such as migration and especially language contact—that have shaped the practice of Christianity among African Americans. Although the consistent importance of speech rhythms to black music is clear at least as far back as nineteenth-century congregational singing, the specifics of the African and Anglo-American origins of speech rhythms are not as clear.
Mitchell Ohriner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190670412
- eISBN:
- 9780190670443
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190670412.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, Popular
Throughout his career, Talib Kweli has been called an “off-beat rapper.” Despite that highly derogatory comment, this chapter connects Kweli’s non-alignment with the underlying beat to earlier ...
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Throughout his career, Talib Kweli has been called an “off-beat rapper.” Despite that highly derogatory comment, this chapter connects Kweli’s non-alignment with the underlying beat to earlier Afro-diasporic rhythmic practices. Kweli’s voice moves away from the beat through four distinct processes: phase shifting, swinging, tempo shifting, and deceleration. The last of these, while a hallmark of the rhythm of speech, has little relationship to the rhythm of music with a mechanically regulated beat. By documenting the non-alignment between flow and beat in a particular track (“Get By”), the chapter shows the novel way in which Kweli inserts rupture into the flows of his verses, extending the aesthetic values of hip hop into the rhythms of his flow itself.Less
Throughout his career, Talib Kweli has been called an “off-beat rapper.” Despite that highly derogatory comment, this chapter connects Kweli’s non-alignment with the underlying beat to earlier Afro-diasporic rhythmic practices. Kweli’s voice moves away from the beat through four distinct processes: phase shifting, swinging, tempo shifting, and deceleration. The last of these, while a hallmark of the rhythm of speech, has little relationship to the rhythm of music with a mechanically regulated beat. By documenting the non-alignment between flow and beat in a particular track (“Get By”), the chapter shows the novel way in which Kweli inserts rupture into the flows of his verses, extending the aesthetic values of hip hop into the rhythms of his flow itself.
John Bolender
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262014441
- eISBN:
- 9780262289238
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262014441.003.0003
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Research and Theory
This chapter evaluates the self-organization in cognition and the control of behavior. The study of the intricate control of limb movement, and even aspects of language such as speech rhythm and ...
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This chapter evaluates the self-organization in cognition and the control of behavior. The study of the intricate control of limb movement, and even aspects of language such as speech rhythm and syntax, have revealed features that would seem to have physics as their natural home. This chapter illustrates that locomotion exhibits striking symmetries. It shows that gait and speech rhythm involve the coordination of intricate behaviors by the central nervous system. It reveals that sentence structure is a striking instance of magnification symmetry in biology. This chapter also must be restrained in reflecting on higher cognitive processes by a healthy fear of overgeneralizing.Less
This chapter evaluates the self-organization in cognition and the control of behavior. The study of the intricate control of limb movement, and even aspects of language such as speech rhythm and syntax, have revealed features that would seem to have physics as their natural home. This chapter illustrates that locomotion exhibits striking symmetries. It shows that gait and speech rhythm involve the coordination of intricate behaviors by the central nervous system. It reveals that sentence structure is a striking instance of magnification symmetry in biology. This chapter also must be restrained in reflecting on higher cognitive processes by a healthy fear of overgeneralizing.
Joshua Weiner (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226890432
- eISBN:
- 9780226890371
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226890371.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, ...
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Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, he demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms, and that experimental styles could still maintain technical and intellectual rigor. Along the way, Gunn's verse captured the social upheavals of the 1960s, the existential possibilities of the late twentieth century, and the tumult of post-Stonewall gay culture. This book surveys Gunn's career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, from his earliest publications to his later unpublished notebooks, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre. It traces how Gunn, in both his life and his writings, pushed at boundaries of different kinds, be they geographic, sexual, or poetic.Less
Maverick gay poetic icon Thom Gunn (1929–2004) and his body of work have long dared the British and American poetry establishments either to claim or disavow him. To critics in the UK and US alike, he demonstrated that formal poetry could successfully include new speech rhythms and open forms, and that experimental styles could still maintain technical and intellectual rigor. Along the way, Gunn's verse captured the social upheavals of the 1960s, the existential possibilities of the late twentieth century, and the tumult of post-Stonewall gay culture. This book surveys Gunn's career from his youth in 1930s Britain to his final years in California, from his earliest publications to his later unpublished notebooks, bringing together some of the most important poet-critics from both sides of the Atlantic to assess his oeuvre. It traces how Gunn, in both his life and his writings, pushed at boundaries of different kinds, be they geographic, sexual, or poetic.
John Peck
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226890432
- eISBN:
- 9780226890371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226890371.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Summation is powerful and mature statement, but as an organizing principle for poetry in English it has regained, long after the modernist detours around it, at best an intricately defended, ...
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Summation is powerful and mature statement, but as an organizing principle for poetry in English it has regained, long after the modernist detours around it, at best an intricately defended, half-confident status. To modify a phrase from a late poem by Wallace Stevens in “The Course of a Particular,” there is a resistance involved. Thom Gunn excelled in skillfully neutralizing that resistance from the outset of his career. As for chthonic power, that phrase represents something common in literary thinking since writers began to reassess Romanticism in the wake of the depth psychologies and the ongoing demolition of traditional metaphysics. Gunn hardly walked in fear of the category, though it seems that he never employed it. His flexible style is one of the most conceptually discerning in the twentieth century, and also one of the most mature in exploring the adventures of instinct (“adventure,” a term he takes from Robert Duncan). The two terms in the title to this chapter, especially given Gunn's experience with hallucinogens, point to several dimensions.Less
Summation is powerful and mature statement, but as an organizing principle for poetry in English it has regained, long after the modernist detours around it, at best an intricately defended, half-confident status. To modify a phrase from a late poem by Wallace Stevens in “The Course of a Particular,” there is a resistance involved. Thom Gunn excelled in skillfully neutralizing that resistance from the outset of his career. As for chthonic power, that phrase represents something common in literary thinking since writers began to reassess Romanticism in the wake of the depth psychologies and the ongoing demolition of traditional metaphysics. Gunn hardly walked in fear of the category, though it seems that he never employed it. His flexible style is one of the most conceptually discerning in the twentieth century, and also one of the most mature in exploring the adventures of instinct (“adventure,” a term he takes from Robert Duncan). The two terms in the title to this chapter, especially given Gunn's experience with hallucinogens, point to several dimensions.
