Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
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Water, time and a dark-green coat. On Chopin’s Barcarolle
Full text linkThe Barcarolle, Op. 60 is a late (1846) Chopin masterpiece. The shrewdest interpreters (Maurice Ravel, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) immediately understood that this miniature represents something much deeper than just a skilful stylisation based on Italian (Venetian?) melody. The author presents and discusses in detail several hermeneutic attempts at interpreting the meanings of the Barcarolle, devoting particular attention to Iwaszkiewicz’s sketch ‘Barkarola Chopina’. He also draws attention to the peculiar rhetoric of the text (strongly marked aquatic motifs, accentuated polyvalence and the shimmering of meaning). He goes on to reveal striking connections between the semantics of Iwaszkiewicz’s essay on the Barcarolle and his texts devoted to Venice. In the final section, he puts forward the hypothesis that the Barcarolle can be interpreted as a musical portrait of Venice - a portrait made of sounds, and so by definition vague, allusive and symbolic; a portrait in which the rocking and shimmering of the notes is also the shimmering of meaning
Hearing and Obedience in Traditional Cultures as a Condition for Transcendent Communication
Full text linkAudiomarketing - music as a tool for indirect persuasion
Full text linkIn modern society, music penetrates most of our everyday activities, and so one is not surprised that it has become commonplace, and even expected by consumers, in places of sale. Contemporary shops are no longer merely points of sale. They have become a sort of medium between clients, on one hand, and vendors and producers, on the other. Audiomarketing is a term used to define a modern marketing tool that uses music to create the unique atmosphere of a particular place and to influence consumer in places of sale. To explain the audiomarketing phenomenon, a review of selected studies concerning the problem of emotional responses to music has been presented. These findings are supported by a review of some investigations indicating that music can have a strong impact on consumer behaviour (e.g. music and the speed of customer activity, music and time perception, the effects of music on sales, etc.). The presented examples of experimental research provide excellent proof that it is worth introducing suitably chosen music into a space where people buy and consume. This is due above all to the fact that present-day society, overwhelmed by vociferous messages, prefers emotional arguments, and music can act as an excellent tool for communicating with consumers on an emotional level
Existential semiotic analysis of the temporal and subjective dimensions of art music performance
Full text linkFor the philosophers, aesthetics and musicologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the topic of subjectivity in art music was a controversial issue. According to them the musical art work had to be objective. However since the subjectivity of the performer has an important influence on aspects such as sound, rhythm, tempo and emotional input, her presence was considered an obstacle for achieving objective musical works. Most of the theoretic approaches to art music supported such an idea and showed a negative perspective on performance and, even though few scholars argued about the value of performance, the main trend pointed at the performer’s subjectivity as an endangerment of music as an objective art. This article conceives art music as a sonic and temporal phenomenon and, from this perspective considers that the performer’s subjectivity is an important and active element that plays a key role in the creation of musical art works. From an existential semiotic perspective this article analyses distinct aspects of the performer’s subjectivity and develops an adaptation of this theory created by Eero Tarasti to the study of subjectivity in performance and its relation with temporality. The existential semiotic theory claims that signs are created by subjects in their act of existing. In this manner subjectivity is located as a central element deeply involved in semiosis processes that creates a rich universe of signs and meaning. This article attempts to show that the sonic dimension of art music can be enriched by the presence of the performer’s subjectivity rather than being an endangerment for it
Giacinto Scelsi - homo viator and his musical itinerary
Full text linkGiacinto Scelsi was a “traveller to the East”, who tied his life inextricably to creative work. As a composer, he sought a path for the renewal of his own musical language, shaped during his youth under the powerful influence of other composers’ styles. On becoming a homo religiosus, in the Eliadean sense, he found his own path to transcendence through art (creation), deeply inspired by those great traditions of the Orient in which art was a reflection of the artist’s spirituality. The topos of the path is one of the main keys to interpreting Scelsi’s work. His works for large orchestra and choir contain distinct traces of a Scelsian “voyage to the East”. They form one great cycle, integrated by the motif of the path, expressed through meanings added in the content of the individual programme-titles. The cycle’s finale, the eschatological Pfhat (1974), is the musical depiction of a journey that ends with “a clear, primordial light,” symbolising man’s encounter with a higher reality and “great liberation” as the goal of his spiritual path. The chronotope of the path is revealed in the very musical material of his orchestral works: in their quasi-visual soundspace. It is manifest, among other things, in the processual form - one might even say the storyline - and the consistently applied procedure of transforming sonorities, texture and rhythmic structures. A fundamental symbolic function is discharged by various forms of “upwards path”, linked to the dramaturgical role of an upwards motion pattern in the melody and an upwards movement in the tonal-harmonic plan of the orchestral works. The most crucial of all the variants of the motif of the path is the direction “into the core”, that is, towards the “inner space” of the sound. This carries significance both in the dimension of the harmonic spectrum of a sound and also its spiritual depth - the mystical dimension. The journey to the centre acquires the status of an emblematic topos of the Scelsian poetic of the viaggio al centro del suono [journey to the centre of the sound]
Chopin as Romantic narrator (in his youth)
Full text linkOne can find the same features in Chopin’s correspondence as in his music. They share a wealth of emotions, expressivity and lightness, and also narrative and speech-like qualities. Far from programmicity and illustrative explicitness, Chopin the composer articulates musical content with an almost verbal force of transmission; his letters, meanwhile, bear the same distinct stamp of his personality that marks out his piano works. In both domains, Chopin may be called a narrator, but particularly interesting proves to be analysis of his correspondence, from the point of view of the narration of a Romantic ironical poem. Although one would be hard pressed to speak of an exact equivalence, it is worth taking into account the strong subjectivity, combined with irony and the writer’s self-irony, but above all his affinity with Schlegelian Romantic irony. This notion is of fundamental significance for changes to the subject in Romantic poetry and for the emergence of the form of the ironical poem. The creativeness of the text, the exposure of the subject, digressions, humour, leaps of thought and style, and a variability and transformation of content - those are just some of the characteristics of the ironical narrator. Also crucial to these considerations is the Romantic aesthetic of the fragment
Józef Wieniawski - Ferenc Liszt. Concert etude examined from the perspective of the genre
Full text linkThe cycle 24 Etudes in All Major and Minor Keys op. 44 by Józef Wieniawski (1837-1912) demonstrates the essential unity of the virtuoso and the composer in a dynamic process of transforming the genre. This played an important part in providing innovative solutions not only in relation to piano-playing, but also in its significant influence on the development of texture, diversification of the instrumental sound and the expansion of means of musical expression in nineteenth-century piano music. Wieniawski, following Transcendental etudes or Concert etudes by Liszt, whose pupil he was in Weimar, blurs the boundaries between improvisation and composition; he draws attention to the unique nature of interpretation, its singularity and the specificity of the moment in time when the work is performed. Continuing the tradition of the grand cyclic form as a special kind of universum, he implements the concept of diversity in unity. The 24 characteristic miniatures reveal contextual links, intra-musical relationships, and the quest for individual solutions. This problematic concerns issues such as symbolic references, which lead one to an extensive catalogue of expressive qualities
On collective forms of the Chopin cult in Poland during the nineteenth century
Full text linkThis article is devoted to specific forms of the Chopin cult that developed in Poland during the nineteenth century. Due to the socio-political situation in the country during the period of the Partitions and the influence of tradition, this cult was manifest first and foremost in the joint experiencing of anniversaries connected with the composer on the part of members of local communities or the entire nation. The basic medium of that experience was the press, in which biographic articles, sketches on his music and also poetical works devoted to the composer were an obligatory part of the anniversaries of Chopin’s birth and death. In this way, the Chopin cult in Poland became primarily a literary phenomenon. Also linked to the traditional culture of the letter that was Polish culture of the nineteenth century is the characteristic form of the Chopin cult known as the obchod. The communal character of the obchod was reflected in its specific form and content. One of the prime concerns was the need to forcibly communicate the fact that Chopin’s music was a national good. Thus at the centre of the theatrically-managed obchod stood an orator or actor declaiming against the background of Chopin’s music. For the purposes of these declamations, a huge amount of literature was produced, examples of which are discussed in the article. Another characteristic “anniversary” product were re-workings of Chopin compositions for large orchestral and choral forces, treated as “ceremonial”. One example of a Chopin celebration displaying the features discussed were the Lviv Chopin celebrations in 1910, which the author describes in more detail
‘Petrarch\u27s Sonnets’ by Liszt
Full text linkThe article ‘Petrarch’s Sonnets’ by Liszt revolves around the phenomenon of transformation, which dominated F. Liszt’s works. His impressive composing achievements made Liszt an unequalled author of all types of elaborations, paraphrases, adaptations, transcripts of both his own and other composer’s works, representing various styles and epochs. What is more, the transformation techniques employed by Liszt, different from the commonly applied evolutionary ones, coupled with extended tonality and harmony as well as new textures, resulted in an extremely broad scale of expression and subtly diverse expressive effects. Three of Petrarch’s Sonnets from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta collection are dedicated to Laura and represent this article’s major area of interest. The Hungarian composer worked on them three times: twice he composed them as songs and once as a piano triptych included in the Années de Pèlerinage. Dèuxieme Année: Italie series. His interpretation of the Sonnets, as well as the remaining works in the series, was inspired by the art of the old Italian masters married with the Romantic idea of correspondence des artes. While it is a part of artistic tradition to turn poetic works into songs (resulting in the vocal lyrics so typical of Romanticism), adding a musical dimension to a sonnet, a piece of poetry with a specific organisation of its content, a unique form and verse discipline, seems risky. It is extremely difficult to successfully transfer equivalent themes and structures onto a different medium i.e. piano music. By turning to Petrarch’s Sonnets, Liszt created congenial palimpsests, reflecting the syntactical and formal rudiments of the verse but, first and foremost, managing to portray Laura in new incarnations, subtly changing in the eternal search for the ideal of femininity, the so-called “Ewig-weibliche”. Especially in the piano version, Liszt seems to have accomplished the esoteric subtlety of the “Sprache über Sprache” available to and understood solely by poets and those in the know
