1857 research outputs found
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Curating difference
No full textThe idea of democracy loomed large in Elliott Carter’s many obituaries. Carter was ‘the most democratic of composers’, his music presenting ‘the ideal form of American democracy’, ‘a pristine and utopian town-hall democracy’, even a ‘vision of America [that] resembled ... that of the Founding Fathers’. Special emphasis was placed upon Carter’s interest in musical textures that combined multiple distinct voices, an idea that Carter himself likened to ‘the democratic attitude’. Less was said by the obituarists about how this commitment sat with Carter’s view that serious composition was fundamentally threatened by the democratic preferences of modern Americans, and what Daniel Guberman terms his self-mythologization as a stubbornly asocial frontiersman. The numerous allusions to democracy in Carter’s writings and interviews have to date received no sustained analysis. This chapter explains the apparent contradictions of his position in terms of divergent mid-twentieth-century American readings of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. These provided a basis both for the advocacy of equal differences and for assigning a privileged status to visionary artists. In this way, Carter’s appeals to a single concept disguised irreconcilable positions on the questions of freedom and equality in American society
BBC Radio 3 record review: building a library: Mahler's Third Symphony
No full textWilliam Mival discusses recordings of Mahler's 3rd Symphony in this programme broadcast on 9 November 2019. This discussion is also available (UK only) on the Record Review Podcast, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07tr2pk
Organology and the others: a political perspective
Get PDFOver the past decade, an unprecedented number of proposals have been put forward advocating for a renovation of the aims, perspectives and methods of organology. In a mostly uncoordinated, but consistent methodological debate, several of them were specifically presented as a break, or at least a marked shift from ‘traditional organology’, and made clear their intention to propose a different perspective to the study of musical instruments through the adoption of new names: ‘new organology’ (a term used by a 2001 conference on Japanese instruments, and also by Roda), ‘lived organology’ (Hoosmanrad), ‘general organology’ (Stiegler), ‘new critical organology’(Sonevytsky), ‘cultural organology’ (Johnston), ‘critical organology’ (Dolan), and ‘biographical organology’ (Hoosmanrad) just to mention a few
Introduction: why ‘new music theatre’ now?
No full textAn advisory committee comprising Gianmario Borio, Giordano Ferrari, Dorte Schmidt, Daniela Tortora and the editor of this volume assembled a list of speakers from across Europe, to address several crucial themes for the topic of experimentation in European music theatre between 1955 and 1975. European new music theatre of the period 1955–1975 connected to larger continuities and conventions in human musicking. For many composers of new music theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, the domain of everyday interpersonal experience remained problematic as subject matter, the ‘everyday’ tending to serve as a dichotomous pole to progressive art-making. Even closer to Jennifer Walshe’s focus on the physical attributes of musicians are the creative approaches taken by leading stage performers of new music theatre in the 1960s and 1970s, who sought to assert the body on stage as a textual figure in its own right. New music theatre increasingly incorporated visual and light projections, electronics, sound diffusion, and video and sound recordings
Colours
No full textAlbum of compositions based on colours for piano, cello, and accordion, with poetry by Laura-Jane Foley and readings by Alex Marx.
Performers: Dimitri Scarlato (piano), Yuriy Chubarenko (accordian), and Agnieszka Teodorowska (cello)
Automatic assessment of tone quality in violin music performance
Get PDFThe automatic assessment of music performance has become an area of increasing interest due to the growing number of technology-enhanced music learning systems. In most of these systems, the assessment of musical performance is based on pitch and onset accuracy, but very few pay attention to other important aspects of performance, such as sound quality or timbre. This is particularly true in violin education, where the quality of timbre plays a significant role in the assessment of musical performances. However, obtaining quantifiable criteria for the assessment of timbre quality is challenging, as it relies on consensus among the subjective interpretations of experts. We present an approach to assess the quality of timbre in violin performances using machine learning techniques. We collected audio recordings of several tone qualities and performed perceptual tests to find correlations among different timbre dimensions. We processed the audio recordings to extract acoustic features for training tone-quality models. Correlations among the extracted features were analyzed and feature information for discriminating different timbre qualities were investigated. A real-time feedback system designed for pedagogical use was implemented in which users can train their own timbre models to assess and receive feedback on their performances
The true art of not giving up the clavichord
Get PDFSad though the demise of the British Clavichord Society undoubtedly is, there is much to celebrate from its twenty-five years as the primary force in the recent revival of the playing, making and appreciation of the clavichord in the UK
New music theatre in Europe: transformations between 1955-1975
No full textBetween 1955 and 1975 music theatre became a central preoccupation for European composers digesting the consequences of the revolutionary experiments in musical language that followed the end of the Second World War. The ‘new music theatre’ wrought multiple, significant transformations, serving as a crucible for the experimental rethinking of theatrical traditions, artistic genres, the conventions of performance, and the composer’s relation to society. This volume brings together leading specialists from across Europe to offer a new appraisal of the genre. It is structured according to six themes that investigate: the relation of new music theatre to earlier and contemporaneous theories of drama; the use of new technologies; the relation of new music theatre to progressive politics; the role of new venues and environments; the advancement of new conceptions of the performer; and the challenges that new music theatre lays down for music analysis. Contributing authors address canonical works by composers such as Berio, Birtwistle, Henze, Kagel, Ligeti, Nono, and Zimmermann, but also expand the field to figures and artistic developments not regularly represented in existing music histories. Particular attention is given to new music theatre as a site of intense exchange – between practitioners of different art forms, across national borders, and with diverse mediating institutions
Music teaching provision in primary schools: key findings 2019
No full textThis is a summary of research conducted in the academic year 2018/19 concerning trainee primary teachers’ experiences of music education in their placement schools. The research consisted of an online survey aimed at students in the School of Education and Social Work (SoESW) at Birmingham City University (BCU). ***** This report is available open access at the Official URL given below. ****