Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB): Qucosa
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Blick in ein Studierzimmer: Die Handschrift Urb. Lat. 1419
No full textThe manuscript Urb. Lat. 1419 is not one of the magnificent handwritings of the Italian Trecento such as the Codices Squarcialupi or Panciatichi, it is probably not even a “commodity” such as the Codex Rossi. Rather the diversity of its contents (sacred and secular two- and three-voice compositions of different provenance), its modest appearance as well as the sometimes rather clumsy handwriting allow us to assume that we are dealing with the “notes” of a music-interested studioso. This hypothesis would explain why the fascicle containing music was tied up with fascicles containing excerpts of writings about logic and jurisprudence on the one hand, and the widely fragmentary character of the musical notation on the other: there are a few sketches, whose meaning cannot be reconstructed at all, the sung text is incomplete, one composition suddenly breaks off and sometimes only one voice of an evidently polyphonic piece was written down. But the diversity of the manuscript clearly betrays a theoretical approach to the different compositional processes in the late 14th century
“Atonal” Motifs and the Presentation of the Musical Idea: Approaching a Historically Sensitive Analysis of Arnold Schönberg’s Works between 1909 and 1912
No full textNothing has conditioned the English-language analytical discourse about Schönberg’s atonal period music more than pitch-class sets. In Remaking the Past, Joseph Straus defines the pitch-class set as “a motive from which many of the identifying characteristics – register, rhythm, order – have been boiled away”. This understanding of atonal motif, which equates it with pitch-class set, remains widely accepted, intimating a type of “common practice” in Schönberg’s atonal music, evidenced by the motivic coherence demonstrated in pitch-class set analyses. This article proposes a different understanding of motif in atonal period works, based on Schönberg’s definition in Fundamentals of Musical Composition and Zusammenhang, Kontrapunkt, Instrumentation, Formenlehre. In these texts he defines the motif as a “rhythmicized phenomenon”, in which “often a contour or shape is significant”. For Schönberg, the motif is the “‘germ’ of the musical idea”. As the article recounts, Schönberg’s writings outline three forms of presentation of the musical idea: Entwicklung (development), Abwicklung (envelopment) and Aneinander-Reihung (juxtaposition). Since either Schönberg or his students referred to each method of presentation in reference to a different stage of the atonal period, an analytical approach that focusses on presentation of the idea not only illuminates something about compositional process, but also assumes that the atonal period was one of great variety and experimentation. The article reveals that pitch-class sets and other analytical hardware can serve as tools of interpretation and criticism, aiding in the periodization and pedagogy of this seminal time in music history
Venetian Clouds and Newtonian Optics: Modal Polarity in Early Eighteenth-Century Music
No full textBy common consent, modal mixture (the pairing of the major and minor keys over the same tonic) is acknowledged as a fundamental resource of mature harmonic tonality that acquired primary syntactic role and formal importance only in the late 18th century. This article aims to disprove this view by: 1) showing that modal mixture had been extensively employed by North-Italian composers already at the turn of the 17th to the 18th century; 2) reviewing these composers’ use of modal polarity through the lens of contemporaneous scientific theories and artistic practices. Rhetorical and grammatical aspects of binary oppositions and modal transportability of parallel major and minor keys are analyzed in the music of Venetian composers (Antonio Vivaldi, Tomaso Albinoni, Antonio Caldara, Benedetto Marcello). Their innovative treatment of modal mixture corresponds with the simultaneously emerging aesthetics and pictorial imagery of clouds and the new chiaroscuro techniques in Venetian art (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Sebastiano Ricci, Giambattista Pittoni, Francesco Guardi). I suggest a semantic approach to modal mixture through the lens of “Venetian” clouds with their morphological function of reflecting light and reciprocating colours between objects. This link between Venetian music and art is further considered through the prism of contemporaneous optical theories, as stimulated by Isaac Newton and advanced by his translators and exegetes in the Veneto, giving special scrutiny to Francesco Algarotti’s Il Newtonianismo per le Dame (1737). Algarotti widely addressed Newton’s theories of reflected light and of the transparency and opacity of objects, explaining their relevance and applying them to various cultural phenomena. The exploration of modal mixture in music thus mirrors the all-embracing impact of new scientific theories on the intellectual climate of the Veneto
Fremde Nächste: Ehrenamt für und mit Flüchtlingen und Asylsuchenden
No full textDas Engagement für Flüchtlinge gehört schon immer
zum Selbstverständnis der Kirche. Der Genfer Reformator
Johannes Calvin, der selbst das Schicksal eines Flüchtlings
erlitt und sich um Flüchtlinge in Genf kümmerte und für ihr
Bleiberecht stritt, formulierte als Begründung: „Unter der
Bezeichnung ‚Nächster‘ ist auch noch der fremdeste und
merkwürdigste Mensch, den es in der Welt geben mag, mit
eingeschlossen. Wie beschaffen auch immer ein Mensch sei,
so müssen wir ihn doch lieben, wenn wir denn Gott wirklich
lieben.“ Christen, die sich für Asylsuchende und Flüchtlinge
engagieren, gründen sich auf dieses Verständnis. Sie verwandeln
Flüchtlingszahlen in einzelne Schicksale von Männern,
Frauen und Kindern. Sie benennen deren Grundbedürfnisse
wie Sicherheit, Nahrung und menschliche Kontakte. Es ist
Aufgabe von uns und ein Grundrecht unseres Landes, darauf
hinzuwirken, dass Flüchtlinge eine Heimat finden. Aufnahme,
Schutz und Begleitung dieser Menschen sind Bausteine von
Gerechtigkeit und Frieden. Als Diakonie geht es uns darum,
die Betreuung und Unterbringung menschenwürdig mit zu
gestalten und Menschen dafür zu gewinnen, ehemals Fremde
zu unseren neuen Nachbarn zu machen. Dafür ist die Kollekte
dieses Sonntags der Diakonie bestimmt. Denn Fremde dürfen
keine Fremden bleiben, da sie unsere Nächsten sind
Mission Zukunft - Problemlöser*innen werden gesucht
No full textMission Zukunft – ja, darum geht es: Kinder und junge Menschen sind unsere Zukunft. Sie sollen lebensfroh, gut und gesund aufwachsen, und sie sollen an
der Gestaltung einer lebenswerten Welt so früh wie möglich selbst beteiligt
werden. Welch eine immense Bedeutung Um- und Mitwelt für unser Leben
haben, wird uns in der ganzen Tiefe erst zunehmend bewusst – aber schon
jetzt beeinträchtigen die durch Klimakatastrophe, Artensterben, Ressourcenverschwendung
und eine industrielle Landwirtschaft veränderten Bedingungen
weltweit das gesunde Aufwachsen von Kindern, rauben Gestaltungsund
Lebensperspektiven.
Eine saubere und intakte Umwelt, eine gesunde Ernährung gehören zu den
unverbrüchlichen Kinderrechten, für die wir Erwachsenen die politische
Verantwortung tragen. Nur eine klimafreundliche und nachhaltige Politik wird
unsere Welt zukunftsfähig halten – weil alles Leben miteinander verbunden ist
und voneinander abhängt.
Kinder haben keine Mühe, über die Wunder der Schöpfung zu staunen –
sie beschenken uns mit ihrem neugierigen und unverstellten Blick und lehren
uns, respektvoller, dankbarer und achtsamer damit umzugehen. Warum fällt
es uns so schwer, klimagerechter zu leben und lebensfreundliche Lebensräume
zu erhalten? Um welchen Wohlstand geht es? Junge Menschen werden
zunehmend ungeduldiger und nachdrücklicher. Die Zeit drängt und sie wollen
an den wegweisenden Entscheidungen beteiligt sein. Es geht um ihre persönliche
Zukunft wie die der Menschheit insgesamt.
Deswegen ist es so wichtig, dass unsere evangelischen Kitas, Familienzentren
und Angebote der offenen Kinder- und Jugendarbeit zu schöpfungsfreundlichen
Orten werden, an denen Kinder und junge Menschen Natur und ökologische
Verantwortung alltagsnah erleben und – verknüpft mit den wunderbaren
Geschichten und Zusagen der Bibel – zu einem lebensfrohen Vertrauen
finden. Dafür können die Weichen gar nicht früh genug stellt werden.
Freuen Sie sich auf die Projekte, Aktionen, Pläne und Ideen in diesem Heft,
die dazu beitragen, dass Kinder und junge Menschen Möglichkeiten entdecken,
die ihr Leben reicher und gesünder machen. Diese wichtige und
nachhaltige Arbeit wollen wir weiter ausbauen und verstetigen. Dazu dient die
Kollekte des diesjährigen Diakonie-Sonntags
Feindliche Übernahme: Gottfried Weber, Adolf Bernhard Marx und die bürgerliche Harmonielehre des 19. Jahrhunderts
No full textCurrent discourse on a “historically informed music theory” focusses on the 15th to 18th century, while the 19th and 20th centuries are rarely considered in this context. Rather, nineteenth- and twentieth-century music theory is frequently considered representative of “systematic” musictheoretical concepts. Nineteenth-century music theory effectively seems to be separated from eighteenth-century music theory by a categorical rupture that can be traced to the origins of the German tradition of “Harmonielehre”. These origins were closely connected to the breakdown of a music education system supported by aristocracy and church institutions during the ancien régime. In the young bourgeois society, the teaching of composition changed its social context: many representative German theorists of harmony, such as Gottfried Weber and Adolf Bernhard Marx, were autodidacts, musical amateurs with only a rudimentary knowledge of composition and music theory. Weber transferred a notion of “scientific scholarship” based on logical deduction and analogy (“Folgegleichheit”) that he had encountered during his study of law to music theory – a notion that he considered absent in the “vexatious figured bass manuals”. In a mechanistic and systematic manner the principles of scale degrees and inversions are expanded into vast combinatorial matrices of possible chord progressions. This highly speculative method separates music theory significantly from compositional practice, thus supporting the idea of impenetrable artistic decisions attributed to musical genius and independent of musical craftsmanship. Weber’s “mathematical” exploration of pitch space is representative of the “combinatorial space” (Catherine Nolan) characteristic of nineteenth-century music theory that finds its logical consequence in Arnold Schönberg’s “method of composing with twelve tones which are related only to one another”
Struktur und Interpretation: Eugen d’Alberts und Heinrich Schenkers Deutungen von Franz Schuberts Impromptu op. 90,3 im historischen Kontext
No full textThere is significant controversy between music theorists and performers about the value and relevance of the study of music theory for performers. As I argue in this paper, the dissatisfaction on the part of performers about the value of existing analytical methods stems from the fact that the majority of these methods do not address the particular needs of performers, who, unlike theorists, engage with music in a more bodily than intellectual way. The goal of this article is to propose new methods of analysis that promise to engage performer-students equally with the mind and the body. The methods proposed here share with Dalcroze Eurhythmics the belief that by experiencing music through the whole body, students develop important kinaesthetic skills necessary to understanding music more deeply and expressing themselves more musically. By revealing the connection between musical and physical movement, the two analytical representations proposed – the bouncing ball and gestural arrow – allow analysts to capture expressive movement while encouraging more bodily involvement in the analytical process. Structural analysis involves the exploration of both the expressive potential inherent in the notes of the musical score and the precise expressive effect of the way these notes are performed. The emphasis on rhythmic process and expressive nuance allows performer-analysts to engage with and become sensitized to qualities of music directly related to the act of performance
Musikalische Selbstauslegung: eine sichere Quelle historischer Musiktheorie?: Überlegungen zu Skrjabin und Schönberg
No full textTo conceptualize music in terms of the historical context of its creation seems to offer a highly authentic theoretical perspective towards understanding musical works. This essay aims to show that, in contrast, composers’ self-interpretations must be considered with enhanced scepticism, even where they seem to provide substantial insights into the relation between compositional technique and theoretical conceptualization. By discussing two prominent examples from early twentieth-century music, the text points at the necessity of a critical assessment of such sources. While Alexander Scriabin supported Leonid Sabanejew’s deduction of his “Prometheus-chord” from the overtone series, a continuous evolution from Romantic harmonic tonality (particularly Chopin) to the complexity of the “Prometheus-chord” can be traced in his stylistic developement. Beside these historical facts, the significance of Sabanejew’s deduction is debatable, for nearly every chord of sufficient complexity can be traced back to the overtone series. Furthermore, Scriabin’s harmony cannot be reduced to one governing principle. In his late works, an interaction of different scales or modes, including whole tone and half tone-whole tone-scales, can be observed. Briefly summarized, Scriabin’s own explanation of the “Prometheus-style” is misleading and reflects the high social status associated with “scientific” justifications in the arts at the beginning of the 20th century, rather than a historically adequate interpretation. A similar scepticism is advisable for a reading of the self-interpretations included in Arnold Schönberg’s Harmonielehre. In one of its final chapters, Schönberg discusses the whole tone scale as a common stylistic element in the music of his time. Although as a composer he used this scale occasionally and its contribution to the destabilization of tonal harmony in his works is obvious, in the Harmonielehre he deduces the scale from an altered dominant chord. This marginalisation of the whole tone scale as an independent structural entity without a clear tonal centre is governed by Schönberg’s intention to delineate his own stylistic development in the years 1907–1911 from the music of Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin and other contemporaries and to stress the uniqueness of his abandonment of tonality
Musik als Kultur?: Über musikalische Analyse, indigene Musikkonzepte und die Rolle virtueller Musiker
No full textAlan P. Merriam’s definition of ethnomusicology as “the study of music as culture” has sometimes led to the erroneous opinion that we will gain no insights into other cultures by research into their musical practices and the specialized knowledge and conceptualizations that go along with them. To be sure, music is part of a given culture and, therefore, as worthy of scrutiny as any other aspect of a culture. When trying to elucidate emic conceptualizations, however, ethnomusicologists often have to deal with the fact that musical concepts are not always verbalized in indigenous discourse. Also, a strictly intracultural approach usually will not lend itself to communicating its findings cross-culturally. The research project “Virtual Gamelan Graz” can serve as a case in point. By employing an analysis-by-synthesis approach it aims at an evaluation of the knowledge and understanding we have gained regarding Central Javanese gamelan music (karawitan). The idea is to let Javanese music specialists listen to computer-generated renditions of pieces from the traditional repertoire which are idiomatically acceptable in regards both to the sound of the instruments, which is digitally emulated, as well as the performance of the various instrumental parts in the ensemble. Aspects of performance practice like the extent of variability of certain parts or musical “intangibles” like the sound aesthetics of idiophones can then be tackled by interactively modifying pertinent parameters in real-time and having the indigenous music specialists evaluate the sound result, thus avoiding the disadvantages of abstract verbal discourse