Search Results
different elements of the musical piece into a coherent whole.” 10 Unity is the first condition, but only achieves its completeness “when it is the result of oppositions, contrasts and conflicts.” 11 Schoenberg’s definition of musical form (1967) is very
The Formenlehre (theory of musical form), first formulated systematically in the third volume of Adolf Bernhard Marx's Die Lehre von der musikalischen Komposition and subsequently consolidated by theorists such as Benedict Widmann
Tonal residua and other remnants of older musical styles and idioms seem to be inevitably bound to Ligeti’s musical language. The numerous ways of integrating the stylistic heterogeneity in his works are extremely individual and may be seen as part of each work’s specific narrative. In his early essay about musical form, Ligeti interprets Adorno’s idea of material as a parameter of form either as congealed time or as traces of musical memory. This article aims to show the different levels and qualities of musical thought Ligeti deals with by analyzing the different layers of traditional strata in his music.
There exists an evident and organic connection between the various arts (for example, painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, film etc.), which can be expressed with the term inter-art . This paper will be concerned with the relation between music and literature, more precisely, it examines the manifestation and the parallels of individual musical forms and renderings in literary text. The selected prose—Marguerite Yourcenar’s Oriental Tales —will be the focus of this textual-musical analysis, concentrating on those stylistic characteristics and text formatting tools that exhibit musical features in their properties and their structure. Even up to the present, analyses of literary texts have employed musical terms, for instance, polyphony, rhythm, cadence, pedal point, etc. This study will explore the textual manifestation of the following musical terms: rhythm, upbeat, non legato, imitation, tempo, lento, accelerando, retardation, polyphony, a cappella, soloist and figuration.
There are marked differences between Hungarian and American ethnomusicology in incentives, aims, interests, and methods. Hungarian research was based in the early twentieth century on study of musical form, while the Americans approached music in terms of social context and functions. However, Hungarians from the mid-1930s onward moved toward an increasing interest in the social aspects of folk music. Oszkár Dincsér, a lesser known researcher of Kodály's school, exemplifies this trend in his 1943 study of chordophone instruments in the Csík (in Romanian: Ciuc) County region of Transylvania Két csíki hangszer. Mozsika és gardon (Two instruments from Csík. Fiddle and gardon). A comparison with Alan P. Merriam's fundamental work The Anthropology of Music (1964) reveals that Dincsér's study includes almost every topic and approach set out by Merriam twenty years later. Although Dincsér's scholarly career ended with his emigration in 1944, he remains an important forerunner of musical anthropology.
The Path of a Hölderlin Topos
Wandering Ideas in Kurtág's Compositions
The recurrence of certain musical ideas from piece to piece can be considered as one of the main characteristic features of Kurtág's music. These recurring ideas create a web between the different groups of compositions which should span over even more decades in his oeuvre. This essay follows the path of two musical materials which are associated with Hölderlin's name in Kurtág's music and at the same time, are closely connected with each other.The members of the first group of compositions examined ('Hölderlin' the 3rd out of Four Songs to János Pilinszky's Poems, op. 11, - Study to 'Hölderlin”, Játékok IV, - Sketch to Hölderlin, Játékok VII) are homogeneous pieces characterized by the exclusiveness of the Hölderlin topos. The three compositions can be considered as variants of each other. The members of the other group (The Székely Mangle, Nr. 2 out of Three Old Inscriptions - Preface to a Bálint Exhibition, Játékok V - Lebenslauf op. 32 and the 1st movement of Stele op. 33) however, are aesthetically autonomous, independent works and the Hölderlin topos is only one of their formal constituents. The musical form itself develops from the confrontation of the toposwith a new material. This essay tries to find an answer to the question how the role of the Hölderlin toposchanges in the form and dramaturgy of each individual composition.
Abstract
Bartók collected folk music in Turkey in 1936, and his Turkish collection was published in 1976 almost simultaneously in Hungary and America, and in 1991 in Turkey. How Bartók's conclusions stand the test in the light of an examination on a larger Turkish material? I investigated this question in four of my books, and the detailed analysis points way beyond the scope of the present paper. This time I deal with a single melody, the No. 51 lament of Bartók's collection and with its larger Anatolian, Hungarian and other musical background. Can this melody be an important link between Hungarian and Anatolian folk music layers? If so, why did Bartók not realize this? Does Bartók's incredibly detailed way of transcription has practical benefits in the ethnomusicological research? Is the unique intonation of certain tones in some Anatolian and Hungarian laments accidental or do these tones show a consistent system? Can we find the musical form represented by this Turkish lament in the folk music of Turkic and other people; is yes, what kind of conclusion can be drown? Trying to find an answer to some of these questions I use the melodies and the results of my Turkish, Azeri, Karachay-Balkar, Kazakh, Mongolian and Kyrgyz researches of more then 7000 songs.
One of the more surprising developments in recent American music theory has been the revival of interest in traditional, as opposed to Schenkerian, approaches to musical form. Spearheading this renewal are William Caplin’s 1998 treatise Classical Form , and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s more recent Elements of Sonata Theory (2006). Both treatises, however, ignore the eighteenth-century operatic repertory entirely. And while valuable studies of eighteenth-century aria-forms exist (notably by James Webster and Mary Hunter), such studies generally predate the advent of the new American Formenlehre . There is, as a result, a gap between the most recent developments in the theory of Classical form and our current understanding of formal processes in late-eighteenth-century opera.This paper sketches one possible way across that gap. Even a casual survey of Haydn’s Eszterháza operas suggests that formal processes play out in ways related to, but nonetheless distinct from, their articulation in Haydn’s instrumental music (in response, no doubt, to the particular exigencies of writing texted music for the operatic stage). Thanks to its characteristic attention to the smallest possible form-functional units — the presentational, continuational and cadential phrases that subsist at the intra-thematic level — Caplin’s approach to Classical form proves particularly adaptable to this new context. The paper illustrates the analytic usefulness of Caplin’s approach for analyzing vocal music through a consideration of representative examples from Armida and Il mondo della luna .
The article aims to clarify some intricate points about the interpretation of Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet Benedetto sia ‘l giorno throughout its many settings (manuscripts and prints). The author discusses first the problem of Liszt’s knowledge of the Italian language and metric norms, usually taken for granted; then that of the dates — of composition, of revision(s), of publication(s) — which has been covered much more widely in the literature than that of the language, but that still presents uncertainties. Taking the correspondence between the rhythm of the poem and that of the music as a means of analysis, the author suggests the cooperation of external hands in the setting of the words. Discussing the form of the piece, the paper tries to confute the various commonplaces of the literature; the difficulties inherent in the meter (the hendecasyllable) and the various ways in which its rhythm is interrupted — through repetitions, pauses and vocalizations etc. — are examined. The conclusion is that in Benedetto sia ‘l giorno the relationship between music and poetry does not reflect any particular model of lied nor of opera aria; the piece instead hints slightly to the old Italian madrigal. Benedetto is not the occurrence of a known musical form, but an example of the crisis of the form.
(pp. 405–419) also examines issues of musical form and its relation to narrative content through an identification of masculine and feminine “personae,” as well as a narratorial persona in the first movement of Sonata no. 3, op. 58 – interpreting the