Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
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Chopin - Grottger
Get PDFIs Stanisław Tarnowski’s linking of Fryderyk Chopin and Artur Grottger in his Dwa szkice [Two sketches] justified? Well, the connection is substantiated by the “Romantic-leaning” point of view and the idea of the correspondance des arts that characterised the nineteenth century in which the two creative artists (and Tarnowski himself) lived, although they represented different creative fields. Both the musician Chopin and the artist Grottger were regarded as poets. The former on account of the poetic of his piano playing and musical works, the latter for the poetical dimension of his pictures devoted to the January Rising. Tarnowski called Chopin the fourth bard of Poland, alongside Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński, and Grottger the poet of the Rising, since - as he paradoxically stated - the poetical narrator of those events could only be an artist. Terminology of a literary character belonged to the lexicon of notions employed by critics of art and music at that time. Besides this, the national character is inscribed in the idiom of the work of both these creative artists - the thoroughly patriotic stance that was so strongly manifest in the output of Polish romanticism. Another common denominator in their work is the concept of the cycle. With Chopin, the 24 Preludes, Op. 28 comprise a cycle in which the bonding element is the succession of major keys and their relative minor keys according to the circle of fifths, but they are also an expressive cycle of various states of mind, from despair to joyous reverie. The Preludes show both the semantic capacities and the suppleness of Chopin’s musical language; that is, the ability to express the same feelings through various purely musical means, without any programmatic motto. With Grottger, we have the cycles Warszawa [Warsaw] (two cycles), Polonia, Lituania and Wojna [War]. In them, the metonymy of the narrative sequences is coupled with the notional exposition, with the symbolism. Grottger portrays not the historical scenes of the Rising, but the feelings of grief, despair and fear of individual people, reflecting their experiences. And so the concept is similar. Chopin’s Preludes are like sketches, aphoristic utterances; sketches are also important in the work of Grottger, partly as a self-contained genre. A third plane of analogy is the reduction of media. Chopin confines himself essentially to the piano, from which he produces startling tonal qualities, although he did write several works for chamber or orchestral forces. Grottger, meanwhile, draws his cycles solely in black pencil, using white only to heighten contrasts and give the effect of chiaroscuro. He did not wish to distract the attention of viewers, but wanted them to concentrate on the symbol
Slash. Uri Caine’s Mahler
Get PDFIn recent years, artistic projects combining a wide array of musical styles, such as jazz interpretations of classical music or orchestral arrangements of rock songs, have enjoyed considerable popularity. As their authors were focused mainly on sales profits, the artistic value of their works was often highly disputable. Nevertheless, some outstanding achievements in that field have also been made, among them reinterpretations of classical repertoire - Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, and, above all, Mahler - by American pianist Uri Caine. He recorded several CDs containing new versions of Mahler’s entire works or their excerpts. Sometimes Caine’s music moves far away from the originals, though such artistic experiments are always well-grounded and aesthetically convincing. Caine’s reinterpretations of Mahler have also some (auto)biographical overtones
The optimal piano teacher: Sosniak’s model versus Polish teachers from public music schools
Get PDFThe author deals with the relationship between a piano teacher and her/his pupil/student at different stages of development. The relationship is defined in the literature as one of the most important features determining musical-artistic achievements. She describes the American research into the nurturing of pianists’ talent, and presents the optimal model of piano teacher devised by L. Sosniak, based on interviews with 20 young American pianists with high and significant achievements. The model indicates that the best conditions for artistic development are the sequence of three different teachers, or three different pedagogical strategies, adjusted to the stages of development of young musicians: (1) music teacher for the youngest pupils, whose task is to arouse interest and provide intrinsic motivation and passion for music and piano-playing; (2) instructor teacher (for teenagers), whose task is to help students to build a solid métier, acquire the necessary motor skills and piano technique, and to improve their artistic performance; (3) master teacher for young adult pianists, whose task is to help them to integrate the skills gained previously, to shape their artistic personality. This sequence turned out to be extremely favourable for the later achievements of the interviewed pianists. The author then provides an analysis of statements by Polish pianists from the older generation, and an observation of the behaviour of piano teachers from Polish public music schools. These show that in our piano pedagogy there exists only one type of teacher, the instructor teacher who, compared to Sosniak‘s model, places the greatest emphasis on technical skills and avoids the issue of expression
At the “Crux” of Henryk Gorecki’s Totus Tuus, Op. 60: Signification of Polish Catholic Marian Devotion
Get PDFHenryk Górecki was a devout Polish Catholic composer. He testified that many of his compositions refer to Bogurodzica, a medieval Polish hymn pertaining to Marian devotion. Furthermore, Górecki himself wrote the first seven notes of Bogurodzica on a compositional sketch. This act strongly indicates that the first seven notes of Bogurodzica signify its sum. Consequently, the article has argued that Górecki derived three motives from the first seven notes of Bogurodzica and transformed them into musical signifiers of signified Polish Catholic Marian devotion in Totus Tuus. These motives include a descending fourth derived from Bogurodzica notes 3-6; a verticalization of the fourth; incomplete neighbor from Bogurodzica notes 1-2 and complete neighbor from Bogurodzica notes 5-7; and a voice exchange that visually depicts the Christian Cross as Augenmusik. The Bogurodzica-basei motives thoroughly saturate the crux of the composition. Within the sacred pitch space of Totus Tuus Górecki, the high priest of Holy Minimalism, delivers a profoundly moving autobiographical homily preaching the musical signification of Marian devotion
Frank Martin’s Interpretation of the Tristan and Isolde Myth: Following the Trail of a Certain Novel
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Sardinian composers of contemporary music
Get PDFThe meeting point between the school headed by Franco Oppo and the rich traditional music of the island gave birth in Sardinia to an intense flowering in the field of New Music, with a strong feeling of belonging and a constant call for a positive concept of identity. Thus, since the time of Oppo (1935) and his contemporary Vittorio Montis, we come across many composers that differ between each other but are almost always recognizably “Sardinian”. Oppo has been one of the most interesting figures on the international scene during the last few decades. After his studies in Rome, Venice and Poland in the early 1960s, he remained, by his own choice, in his home territory, sharing his “Sardinian-ness” in a free and dialectic manner with the avant-garde. After formulating his own particular aleatory approach, Oppo reached a turning point halfway through the 1970s: in Musica per chitarra e quartetto d’archi, Praxodia and, finally, in Anninnia I, the meeting point between avant-garde research and the special phonic quality of traditional music became more and more close-knit and organic, at the same time also acting on the founding language structure whilst still remaining under the control of incisive and informed disciplines (during the same period, moreover, he put forward new methodologies of analysis which were also necessary for his teaching). In this sense the most important works are chamber pieces like Anninnia I and II (1978, 1982), Attitidu (1983) and Sagra (1985), the theatrical work Eleonora d’Arborea (1986), some piano “transcriptions” - the Three berceuses (1982), Gallurese and Baroniese (1989; 1993) - Trio III (1994), Sonata B for percussion and piano (2005) and the two Concerts for piano and orchestra (1995-97; 2002). Meanwhile, the foundation of a new Sardinian musical culture was also placed within the social context too, with Oppo’s deep personal engagement. At first Oppo promoted the Giornate di musica contemporanea (1977-1978), a weighty international festival, inside the Teatro Lirico of Cagliari, later founding, with some of his students, the Festival Spaziomusica (1982). Still an active event, the latter has proved to be a solid structure thanks to which generations of Sardinian composers have been able to promote their music alongside the most famous names of the avant-garde, with also the opportunity of several important conferences. From the earliest days much attention was paid to Scelsi, and, with the backdrop of the presence of Nono, Xenakis and Stockhausen, electronic music also continues to maintain a very active profile on the island. Moreover, three research centres conceived in 1990 by some of Oppo’s students have been veiy active: Spaziomusica Ricerca, Ricercare and the CERM of Sassari, which in 1992 brought the Sardinian experience to the 36. Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik. Fabrizio Casti, Antonio Doro, Lucio Garau, Marcello Pusceddu and Giorgio Tedde, together with the younger Ettore Carta and Andrea Saba, who started writing in the 1980s, can be identified as the first and most interesting generation of musicians who grew up studying with Oppo at the Conservatory of Cagliari, while Antonio Lai, the last of his students, specialized in theoretical research, working in Paris
What is a musical sign?: A guess at the riddle
Get PDFIssues surrounding the nature of the musical sign loom large in the development of a viable musical semeiotic that goes beyond ad hoc or impressionistic appropriations of terminology. This article articulates an understanding of the sign with specific relevance to the analysis of musical topics by rigorously applying Peirce’s semeiotic theory to illuminate the nature of sign functioning in music
Chopin in the music culture of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. From Glinka to Scriabin
Get PDFThis article deals with the reception of Chopin’s music in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century, as broadly understood. The Chopin cult that developed in Russia was not only genuine, it was exceptional in Europe, giving rise to numerous artistic achievements in many complementary areas, above all composition, pianism and music publishing. The author discusses the issue from an historical perspective, presenting profiles of six outstanding Russian composers in whose life and work the influence of Chopin was at its greatest. The first is Mikhail Glinka, a pioneer of the national orientation in Russian music, who drew abundantly on Chopinian models. The next generation is represented by Anton Rubinstein, the most famous Russian pianist of his times, and two of the Mighty Handful, Mily Balakirev and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Among the last heirs to Chopin in Russia, pursuing their artistic careers around the turn of the twentieth century, are two composers who masterfully assimilated the stylistic idiom of the composer of the Polonaise-Fantasy, namely Anatoly Lyadov, known as the “Russian Chopin”, and Alexander Scriabin