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What's the best way to hear Chopin?
No full textReview of two recordings: Yundi: Chopin Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 (Warner Classics) and Benjamin Grosvenor: Chopin Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 (Decca)
Art for ages: the effects of group music making on the wellbeing of nursing home residents
Get PDFIn many countries, life expectancy has increased considerably in past years, and the importance of finding ways to ensure good levels of wellbeing through aging has become more important than ever. Arts based interventions are promising in this respect, and the literature suggests that musical activities can reduce isolation and anxiety and foster feelings of achievement and self-confidence. The present study examined the effects of group music making programs on the health and wellbeing of nursing home residents in Southern Switzerland. A team of professional and student musicians delivered 10 weekly music sessions in four nursing homes, focusing on singing, rhythm-based activities with percussion instruments, and listening to short, live performances. 22 participants (16 women and 6 men, aged 72-95 years, mean 83.6, SD ± 6.9) were recruited to take part in the study and were interviewed after the last music session. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis to investigate how residents experienced group music making and its effects.
The findings show that the music programs were beneficial for residents’ wellbeing. Music plays an important role in their lives, both in their pasts and presently, and being involved in musical activities offers engagement and novelty in daily life, providing learning opportunities and facilitating interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these results were due to interactions with the musicians involved. Residents particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to live performances as part of the sessions. This study suggests that nursing home residents value music and that music based interventions play an important and direct role in enhancing their wellbeing
A pianist’s perspective on song transposition, focusing on Robert Schumann’s Liederreihe nach Kerner Op. 35
Get PDFThe study of song cycles has long been a focus of music scholarship. Many different topics have been repeatedly discussed regarding cornerstone repertoire like Schubert’s Winterreise (D. 911), or Schumann’s Dichterliebe (Op. 48). Writers have approached these works with focuses on tonal analysis, rhythmic analysis, poetry analysis, thematic relationships, structure and definition of song cycles, and many more. Nevertheless, one topic remains relatively elusive in scholarship, although it is commonplace in performance – Transposition. Transposition is a musical device where the notation or performance of music is different from which it is originally notated. Vocal music, specifically the song genre, is very frequently transposed, so much so that major publishing houses (e.g. Edition Peters, International Music Company, Bärenreiter and more) publish these transposed versions in multiple volumes, for differing voice types, making it easily accessible to the singers and public. The idea of transposed songs being accessible to public is not a new one. In a letter dated 1869 to Brahms from his publisher, Fritz Simrock, he mentioned that for a song to be considered commercially successful, frequent performances were needed. In the interest of ensuring repeated performances from as wide a range of singers as possible, Simrock regularly published transposed versions of Brahms’ songs to suit different voices during the composer’s lifetime.
The inspiration for this paper stems from my daily work with singers. As a pianist in a conservatoire, I have had the fortune to be involved in singers’ language and song interpretation classes, on top of my own personal collaboration with individual singers. This allowed me access to numerous singers, each with their own different voice types and repertoire. Over the two years of working with the Royal College of Music’s Vocal department, I played popular repertoire like Schumann’s ‘Widmung’ from Myrthen Op. 25, in no less than three different keys. Being trained as a solo pianist since my formative years, this was certainly a disturbing change, as I would never expect to play solo repertoire in multiple keys.
To understand the effects of transposition on song, I will need to examine the reasons behind such decisions and attempt to understand the reasoning from a pianist point of view. The first part of this paper will look into the tangible and intangible aspects that leads to this decision making. I will consider singers’ habits and customs; comparison with instrumental practices; the background of song performance in the 19th century; the comparison with operatic practices; the experience of tonality for performers and composers. Using Schumann’s Liederreihe nach Kerner (Op. 35) as a case study, the second part of this paper will see these aspects in play through surveying published recordings made by renowned professional singers and pianists. Analysing these recordings will some shed light on the effects of transposition within this cycle and the potential compromises that the artists make. I will also include a brief comparison with Schumann’s Frauenliebe und-leben (Op. 42) before concluding
Old world cities
No full textFor string quartet, duration approx.13 minutes. This work was commissioned by the International Spring Orchestra Festival and first performed at Palazzo Pereira, La Valletta (Malta) on 4 May
2017 by the Baltic Neopolis String Quartet.
The five movements are titled St. Petersburg, Venice, Vienna, Warsaw, London.
The full score is available open access from the UCLA Music Library Contemporary Music Score Collection at the 'Official URL' link on the 'Metadata' tab below
Book review: 'Music: a subversive history' by Ted Gioia: when did we become slaves to Spotify smooth?
No full textWellbeing in and through performance: perspectives from sports and music
Get PDFEach day, millions of people perform. Whether in the boardroom, classroom, courtroom, laboratory, operating theater, on the field or on stage, performances are almost invariably dynamic and, in some cases, extremely rewarding. Nonetheless, each performance also brings challenges, real and perceived, that may lead to patterns of negative thinking, avoidance behavior, and debilitating injury that can have serious consequences for success and for health.
In this article, we draw insight and inspiration from sports to focus on how elite performers from other fields—and in particular, music—can come to integrate healthy approaches to performing alongside their drive to succeed
Between Englishness and modernism: the critical reception of Tippett’s operas
Get PDFThis article is rooted in two large areas of debate, both of particular relevance at this culturally fraught moment. One is the way the work of many twentieth-century composers reveals an interesting and complex interaction between modern (or modernist) elements, and national (or nationalist) elements. The second is the contested nature of Englishness in the decades since the Second World War. Both themes come together in a peculiarly telling and fascinating way in the operas of Michael Tippett. The status of Tippett as an essentially English composer is itself contested, with some preferring to align him with European modernist trends. His operas can be read as revivals of English archetypes such as the masque and the pastoral but are also self-consciously universalist in their projection of ‘archetypal’ figures. The tension between these aspects is to a degree obscured in the works themselves, but it comes into sharp focus in the responses of critics, which are as fascinating as the works themselves. This article focuses on the critical response to Tippett’s operas during the decades of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, mostly in the British broadsheet press but with side-glances at continental (particularly German) responses, and at special-interest (but not academic) journals. Its conclusion is that English writers were caught in the toils of an irreconcilable tension. They wanted to put forward a specifically English riposte to continental modernism, and seized on Michael Tippett’s operas as the answer to that powerful need. His ecstatic lyricism and appeal to undefinable archetypes promised a different route to the objectivity and universalism that were modernism’s defining features. This manoeuvre now seems very much of its time. It is a response to a tension within English intellectual and cultural life, as were the operas themselves
Musicians' mental health
No full textResearch investigating the degree to which professional musicians are mentally well through experiencing positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment in their lives.
Read the full report: Ascenso S, Perkins R, & Williamon A (2018), Resounding meaning: a PERMA wellbeing profile of classical musicians, Frontiers in Psychology, 9 (1895), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01895, see also http://researchonline.rcm.ac.uk/id/eprint/324/
Le cas Debussy: layers of resonance from literature into music
No full textA discussion of Debussy's relationship with literature