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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
The Safavid era (1501-1722) is one of the most important in the
history of Persian culture, celebrated especially for its
architecture and art, including miniature paintings that frequently
represent singers and instrumentalists. Their presence reflects a
sophisticated tradition of music making that was an integral part
of court life, yet it is one that remains little known, for the
musicological literature of the period is rather thin. There is,
however, a significant exception: the text presented and analysed
here, a hitherto unpublished and anonymous theoretical work
probably of the middle of the sixteenth century. With a Sufi
background inspiring the use of the nay as a tool of theoretical
demonstration, it is exceptional in presenting descriptive accounts
of the modes then in use and suggesting how these might be arranged
in complex sequences. As it also gives an account of the corpus of
rhythmic cycles it provides a unique insight into the basic
structures of art-music during the first century of Safavid rule.
Greek Rebetiko from a Psychocultural Perspective: Same Songs
Changing Minds examines the ways in which audiences in present-day
Greece and Turkey perceive and use the Greek popular song genre
rebetiko to cultivate specific cultural habits and identities. In
the past, rebetiko has been associated chiefly with the lower
strata of Greek society. But Daniel Koglin approaches the subject
from a different perspective, exploring the mythological and ritual
aspects of rebetiko, which intellectual elites on both sides of the
Aegean Sea have adapted to their own world views in our age of
globalized consumption. Combining qualitative and quantitative
methods from ethnomusicology, ritual studies, conceptual history
and music psychology, Koglin casts light on the role played by
national perceptions in the processes of music production and
consumption. His analysis reveals that rebetiko persistently
oscillates between conceptual categories: it is a music both ours
and theirs, marginal and mainstream, joyful and grievous, sacred
and profane. The study culminates in the thesis that this semantic
multistability is not only a key concept to understanding the
ongoing popularity of rebetiko in Greece, and its recent
renaissance in Turkey, but also a fundamental aspect of the human
experience on the south-eastern borders of Europe.
An in-depth study of the Bulgarian harmonic system is long overdue.
More than two decades since the Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares choir
was awarded a Grammy (1990), there is no scholarly study of the
captivating sounds of Bulgarian vertical sonorities. Kalin Kirilov
traces the gradual formation of a unique harmonic system that
developed in three styles of Bulgarian music: village music from
the 1930s to the 1990s, wedding music from the 1970s to 2000, and
choral arrangements (obrabotki) - creations of the socialist period
(1944-1989), popularized by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. Kirilov
classifies the different approaches to harmony and situates them in
their historical and cultural contexts, establishing new systems
for analysis. In the process, he introduces a new system for the
categorization of scales. Kirilov argues that the ready-made
concepts that are frequently forced onto Bulgarian music -
'westernization', 'socialist' or 'Middle Eastern influence', are
not only outdated but also too vague to be of use in understanding
the sophisticated modal and harmonic systems found in Bulgarian
music. As an insider who has performed, composed and arranged this
music for 30 years, Kirilov is uniquely qualified to interpret it
for an international audience.
The study of music within multimedia contexts has become an
increasingly active area of scholarly research. However, the
application of such studies to musical genres outside the
'classical' film canon, or in television and other media remains
largely unexplored in any detail. Tristian Evans demonstrates how
postminimal music interacts with other media forms, focusing on the
film music by Philip Glass, but also taking into account works by
other composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams and
others inspired by minimalist and postminimal practices.
Additionally, Evans develops innovative ways of analysing this
music, based on an interdisciplinary approach, and draws on
research from areas that include philosophy, linguistics and film
theory. The book offers one of the first in-depth studies of Philip
Glass's music for film, considering The Hours and Dracula,
Naqoyqatsi, Notes on a Scandal and Watchmen, while examining
re-applications of the music in new cinematic and televisual
contexts. The book will appeal to musicologists but also to those
working in the fields of film music, cultural studies, media
studies and multimedia.
Chopin's twenty-four Preludes remain as mysterious today as when
they were newly published. What prompted Franz Liszt and others to
consider Chopin's Preludes to be compositions in their own right
rather than introductions to other works? What did set Chopin's
Preludes so drastically apart from their forerunners? What exactly
was 'the morbid, the feverish, the repellent' that Schumann heard
in Opus 28, in that 'wild motley' of 'strange sketches' and
'ruins'? Why did Liszt and another, anonymous, reviewer publicly
suggest that Lamartine's poem Les Preludes served as an inspiration
for Chopin's Opus 28? And, if that is indeed the case, how did the
poem affect the structure and the thematic contents of Chopin's
Preludes? And, lastly, is Opus 28 a random assortment of short
pieces or a cohesive cycle? In this monograph, richly illustrated
with musical examples, Anatole Leikin combines historical
perspectives, hermeneutic and thematic analyses, and a range of
practical implications for performers to explore these questions
and illuminate the music of one of the best loved collections of
music for the piano.
Unique yet diverse in its approach, The Crucifixion in Music
examines how text is set in music through the specific
musicological period from 1680 to 1800. The treatise focuses
specifically on the literary text of the Crucifixus from the Credo
of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass. Combining analytical
theory and method to address musical rhetoric, semiotics, and
theory, author Jasmin Cameron follows the Crucifixion through many
settings in Baroque and Classical music. In this first title in
Scarecrow Press's new series, Contextual Bach Studies, Cameron
studies musical representations of the text, first through a
discussion that establishes a theoretical framework, then by
applying the framework to individual case studies, such as Johann
Sebastian Bach's B Minor Mass. By studying the musical
representation of the text, and the concepts and contexts to which
the words refer, Cameron examines the way the treatment of a
literary text fuses into a recognizable musical tradition that
composers can follow, develop, modify, or ignore. With equal time
given to the settings of the Crucifixus by composers before and
after Bach's time, the reader is provided with a fuller historical
context for Bach's genius. Cameron also combines the beliefs of
past theorists with those of today, reaching a common ground among
them, and providing a basis and analytical framework for further
study.
Presents thirteen studies that engage with the notion of formal
function in a variety of ways Among the more striking developments
in contemporary North American music theory is the renewed
centrality of issues of musical form (Formenlehre). Formal
Functions in Perspective presents thirteen studies that engage with
musical form in a variety of ways. The essays, written by
established and emerging scholars from the United States, the
United Kingdom, Canada, and the European continent, run the
chronological gamut from Haydn and Clementito Leibowitz and Adorno;
they discuss Lieder, arias, and choral music as well as symphonies,
concerti, and chamber works; they treat Haydn's humor and
Saint-Saens's politics, while discussions of particular pieces
range from Mozart's arias to Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht. Running
through the essays and connecting them thematically is the central
notion of formal function. CONTRIBUTORS: Brian Black, L. Poundie
Burstein, Andrew Deruchie, Julian Horton, Steven Huebner, Harald
Krebs, Henry Klumpenhouwer, Nathan John Martin, Francois de
Medicis, Christoph Neidhoefer, Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers, Giorgio
Sanguinetti, Janet Schmalfeldt, Peter Schubert, Steven Vande
Moortele Steven Vande Moortele is assistant professor of music
theory at the University of Toronto. Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers is
assistant professor of music at the University of Ottawa. Nathan
John Martin is assistant professor of music at the University of
Michigan.
A fully updated edition of the leading reference work on musical
key characteristics during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic
periods. This is a revised second edition of Dr. Steblin's
important work on key characteristics, first published in 1983 by
UMI Research Press and re-issued by the University of Rochester
Press in 1996. The revision has been limited to athorough
correction and update of the material in the first edition, so as
to not disrupt the content and organization, for which the book has
been praised as a significant and noteworthy reference for both
scholars and research students alike. The book discusses the
extra-musical meanings associated with various musical keys by
ancient Greek and medieval-renaissance theorists and in particular
composers and writers on music in the Baroque, Classical,and early
Romantic periods. Chapters focus on Mattheson's extensive key
descriptions from 1713, the Rameau-Rousseau and Marpurg-Kirnberger
controversies regarding unequal versus equal temperaments, and
C.F.D. Schubart's influential list based on the sharp-flat
[bright-dark] principle of key-distinctions. Rita Katherine Steblin
is a world-renowned music scholar, living and working in Vienna.
This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the
philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of
popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its
author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should
even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given
that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an
artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our
thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly
defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form,
and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and
harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from
different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a
focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz),
and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines
the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a
consideration of what, ultimately, music is. Key Features Uses
popular-song examples throughout, but also discusses a range of
musical traditions (notably, rock, pop, classical, and jazz)
Explains both philosophical and musical terms when they are first
introduced Provides publicly accessible Spotify playlists of the
musical examples discussed in the book Each chapter begins with an
overview and ends with questions for testing comprehension and
stimulating further thought, along with suggestions for further
reading
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding
Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular
music by incorporating methods developed for analyzing contemporary
art music. This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm
for examining popular music from the perspective of developments in
contemporary art music. "Expanded approaches" for popular music
analysis is broadly defined as as exploring the pitch-class
structures, form, timbre, rhythm, or aesthetics of various forms of
popular music in a conceptual space not limited to the domain of
common practice tonality but broadened to include any applicable
compositional, analytical, or theoretical concept that illuminates
the music. The essays in this collection investigate a variety of
analytical, theoretical, historical, and aesthetic commonalities
popular music shares with 20th and 21st century art music. From
rock and pop to hip hop and rap, dance and electronica, from the
1930s to present day, this companion explores these connections in
five parts: Establishing and Expanding Analytical Frameworks
Technology and Timbre Rhythm, Pitch, and Harmony Form and Structure
Critical Frameworks: Analytical, Formal, Structural, and Political
With contributions by established scholars and promising emerging
scholars in music theory and historical musicology from North
America, Europe, and Australia, The Routledge Companion to Popular
Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches offers nuanced and detailed
perspectives that address the relationships between concert and
popular music.
WINNER OF THE 2019 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE
FOR EDITED COLLECTIONS The Routledge Companion to the Study of
Local Musicking provides a reference to how, cross-culturally,
musicking constructs locality and how locality is constructed by
the musicking that takes place within it, that is, how people
engage with ideas of community and place through music. The term
"musicking" has gained currency in music studies, and refers to the
diverse ways in which people engage with music, regardless of the
nature of this engagement. By linking musicking to the local, this
book highlights the ways in which musical practices and discourses
interact with people's everyday experiences and understandings of
their immediate environment, their connections and commitment to
that locality, and the people who exist within it. It explores what
makes local musicking "local." By viewing musicking from the
perspective of where it takes place, the contributions in this
collection engage with debates on the processes of musicking,
identity construction, community-building and network formation,
competitions and rivalries, place and space making, and
local-global dynamics.
The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art presents an overview of the
issues, methods, and approaches crucial for the study of sound in
artistic practice. Thirty-six essays cover a variety of
interdisciplinary approaches to studying sounding art from the
fields of musicology, cultural studies, sound design, auditory
culture, art history, and philosophy. The companion website hosts
sound examples and links to further resources. The collection is
organized around six main themes: Sounding Art: The notion of
sounding art, its relation to sound studies, and its evolution and
possibilities. Acoustic Knowledge and Communication: How we
approach, study, and analyze sound and the challenges of writing
about sound. Listening and Memory: Listening from different
perspectives, from the psychology of listening to embodied and
technologically mediated listening. Acoustic Spaces, Identities and
Communities: How humans arrange their sonic environments, how this
relates to sonic identity, how music contributes to our
environment, and the ethical and political implications of sound.
Sonic Histories: How studying sounding art can contribute
methodologically and epistemologically to historiography. Sound
Technologies and Media: The impact of sonic technologies on
contemporary culture, electroacoustic innovation, and how the way
we make and access music has changed. With contributions from
leading scholars and cutting-edge researchers, The Routledge
Companion to Sounding Art is an essential resource for anyone
studying the intersection of sound and art.
This book looks at the role of popular music in constructing the
myth of the First World War. Since the late 1950s over 1,500
popular songs from more than forty countries have been recorded
that draw inspiration from the War. National Myth and the First
World War in Modern Popular Music takes an inter-disciplinary
approach that locates popular music within the framework of 'memory
studies' and analyses how songwriters are influenced by their
country's 'national myths'. How does popular music help form memory
and remembrance of such an event? Why do some songwriters stick
rigidly to culturally dominant forms of memory whereas others seek
an oppositional or transnational perspective? The huge range of
musical examples include the great chansonniers Jacques Brel and
Georges Brassens; folk maestros including Al Stewart and Eric
Bogle; the socially aware rock of The Kinks and Pink Floyd; metal
legends Iron Maiden and Bolt Thrower and female iconoclasts
Diamanda Galas and PJ Harvey.
Music and Transcendence explores the ways in which music relates to
transcendence by bringing together the disciplines of musicology,
philosophy and theology, thereby uncovering congruencies between
them that have often been obscured. Music has the capacity to take
one outside of oneself and place one in relation to that which is
'other'. This 'other' can be conceived in an 'absolute' sense,
insofar as music can be thought to place the self in relation to a
divine 'other' beyond the human frame of existence. However, the
'other' can equally well be conceived in an 'immanent' (or secular)
sense, as music is a human activity that relates to other cultural
practices. Music here places the self in relation to other people
and to the world more generally, shaping how the world is
understood, without any reference to a God or gods. The book
examines how music has not only played a significant role in many
philosophical and theological accounts of the nature of existence
and the self, but also provides a valuable resource for the
creation of meaning on a day-to-day basis.
It was Carl Dahlhaus who coined the phrase 'dead time' to describe
the state of the symphony between Schumann and Brahms. Christopher
Fifield argues that many of the symphonies dismissed by Dahlhaus
made worthy contributions to the genre. He traces the root of the
problem further back to Beethoven's ninth symphony, a work which
then proceeded to intimidate symphonists who followed in its
composer's footsteps, including Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann.
In 1824 Beethoven set a standard that then had to rise in response
to more demanding expectations from both audiences and the musical
press. Christopher Fifield, who has a conductor's intimacy with the
repertory, looks in turn at the five decades between the mid-1820s
and mid-1870s. He deals only with non-programmatic works, leaving
the programme symphony to travel its own route to the symphonic
poem. Composers who lead to Brahms (himself a reluctant symphonist
until the age of 43 in 1876) are frequently dismissed as epigones
of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann but by investigating their
symphonies, Fifield reveals their respective brands of originality,
even their own possible influence upon Brahms himself and in so
doing, shines a light into a half-century of neglected nineteenth
century German symphonic music.
Why do we value music? Many people report that listening to music
is one of life's most rewarding activities. In Critique of Pure
Music, James O. Young seeks to explain why this is so. Formalists
tell us that music is appreciated as pure, contentless form. On
this view, listeners receive pleasure, or a pleasurable 'musical'
emotion, when they explore the abstract patterns found in music.
Music, formalists believe, does not arouse ordinary emotions such
as joy, melancholy or fear, nor can it represent emotion or provide
psychological insight. Young holds that formalists are wrong on all
counts. Drawing upon the latest psychological research, he argues
that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive
behaviour. By resembling human expressive behaviour, music is able
to arouse ordinary emotions in listeners. This, in turn, makes
possible the representation of emotion by music. The representation
of emotion in music gives music the capacity to provide
psychological insight-into the emotional lives of composers, and
the emotional lives of individuals from a variety of times and
places. And it is this capacity of music to provide psychological
insight which explains a good deal of the value of music, both
vocal and purely instrumental. Without it, music could not be
experienced as profound. Philosophers, psychologists, musicians,
musicologists, and music lovers will all find something of interest
in this book.
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