Lifchitz, Max. 2014. Ars Nostra Plays Max Lifchitz. The Ars Nostra Ensemble. North/South Consonance N/S R 1058, CD. (original) (raw)
marcelotoledomusic.com
I would like to thank my parents, Inés and Jorge Stratta, for their encouragement and support throughout my entire education and their immense generosity in letting me pursue my dreams in spite of the distance. For that, I will be forever grateful. I also extend an immense amount of gratitude to those who accompanied me during the years of my graduate studies. My family-in-law became the main source of encouragement while pursuing my doctoral education. They have witnessed and assisted me through hectic times from the comprehensive exams to researching and so much more that it would not be possible to describe everything in the frame of this note. I am deeply grateful to all of them. Lastly, but most importantly, I would like to dedicate all the effort, gray hair, and time this work has taken to my dear husband, Claudio. He, more than anyone, has suffered the preparation of this project during countless days, nights and weekends of work and voluntary confinement. You believed in me at every moment and helped me through every step. Your rallying and optimistic spirit showed me there is a lot for us to enjoy and live upon, and I look forward to the future more than ever before, because you
This dissertation is in two parts. The first one is an original composition, Latin Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra. The second is a musical analysis, Magical Realism in Alejandro Cardona's String Quartet No. 4. Latin Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra uses Costa Rican ideas combined with classical contemporary sonorities, such as clusters and small pitch-class sets. The first movement, Tambito, is based on a Latin American dance rhythm in six-eight meter. The name of this dance is particular to Costa Rica, but it is a widely used rhythmic pattern used in other Latin American countries under other names. This movement is fast and explosive, showing off the technical versatility of the clarinet. Its form is through composed using different variants from the main theme. The second movement is called La Fortuna at Night, describing a place in the countryside in Costa Rica where I used to go when I was a child. A lyrical clarinet melody is accompanied by transparent sonorities. The form of the movement is A-B-A1, where B serves as an interlude to the melody of the soloist. The third movement, Carnival, is based on the annual carnival from the province of Limón, mainly influenced by black culture. A catchy and playful melody is presented in the clarinet, serving as the developing material throughout. The timbales (a traditional Afro-Caribbean instrument) set the carnival mood. Sonorities from the previous movements are combined with the main theme to create overall unity. The novel Pedro Páramo by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo (1917-1986) inspired the composition of the String Quartet No. 4. Every section in the quartet is marked by a quotation from the book. My analysis involves the following stages: First, I discuss vi Cardona's musical approach to the style of the novel, called magical realism. Through the analysis of the main themes and sonorities used in the quartet, I relate the worlds of music and literature. Second, I talk about the harmonic highlights in the work and explain how they create overall unity throughout.
University of Texas at Austin, 2015
Contemporary music for flute that employs extended techniques refers to particular performance techniques that need to be utilized to produce non-conventional sonorities on the flute. This study provides an examination of the technical development of extended techniques in the flute repertoire by Argentine composers. A supplementary anthology of these works has been compiled and included to provide a reference point for further academic research. Furthermore, two pieces were selected from these works to illustrate the technical evolution encompassed by the utilization of new instrumental techniques in the last five decades. An exhaustive analysis of these compositions intends to provide readers and contemporary music performers with valuable ideas that may enrich their capacity to understand the specialized repertoire and to conceive further development and musical application of new instrumental resources.
Cuban Flute Style: Interpretation and Improvisation
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2015
Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 2014 xxix + 324pp., ISBN 978-0-8108-8441-0 (£44.95, hardback) Sue Miller's monograph on Cuban flute style will be of interest to ethnomusicologists and flautists alike. It is a clearly written, highly musical book that serves as both a guide to performance practice and an academic text. Miller brings together performance as a research technique, interviews with musicians, lessons with renowned flautists, and detailed and extensive transcription and analysis of recordings to create a 'musical
BLAS EMILIO ATEHORTUA: ROMANZA FROM FIVE ROMANTIC PIECES FOR VIOLA AND PIANO
2024
This paper examines key aspects of the life and work of the prominent Colombian composer Blas Emilio Atehortua, set against the complex political and economic backdrop of 20th-century Latin America. It focuses specifically on his piece Cinco piezas románticas for viola and piano, with a particular emphasis on the first movement, "Romanza." The study analyzes its composition, stylistic elements, and significance within Atehortúa's broader oeuvre.
Musicological Society of Australia- Victoria Chapter Conference, 2017
2017
Conference Booklet. My PhD dissertation examines the contexts and sources from which Pablo Sarasate’s folk-inspired compositions were created. Throughout the nineteenth century, the folk music was a source of musical inspiration for many nations, and this was particularly true of Spain. Numerous composers showed interest in so-called Spanish elements, resulting in a rich corpus of works, which were well received both nationally and internationally. Pablo Sarasate (1844-1908) was one of these composers, producing a great number of Spanish Dances for the violin, drawn from a variety of different regional song and dance styles, including jotas, zapateados, zortzicos, vitos or habaneras. My study also examines, from theoretical and performance perspectives, the suitability of these pieces for adaptation into the flute repertoire. Despite their differences, the violin and flute are two instruments that share multiple characteristics, such as their technical agility and melodic brightness. As a consequence, it has not been uncommon for flautists and composers to borrow and arrange violin compositions, in order to enrich the flute’s repertoire and gain access to new styles and possibilities. Finally, by adopting practice-based approach, this dissertation has led to the transcription for flute and piano of eight Spanish Dances by Pablo Sarasate, that will be published in Spain by Dasí Flauta Editorial in 2018. This new showpieces for flute will make a unique and exciting addition to the flute’s repertoire, exploring and extending the qualities that flautists today associate with the much-loved French Flute School.
2011
This monograph concerns the life and compositions of Lillian Fuchs, one of the foremost American violists. Chapter I separates her career into three areas: performer, teacher, and composer. As a violist, her famous interpretation of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, performed frequently with her brother, violinist Joseph Fuchs, has done much to increase the popularity of music written for violin and viola. As a member of the Musicians' Guild in New York, she has premiered a substantial number of chamber music works, many of them composed specifically for her. She is one of the first violists to perform the Cello Suites of J. S. Bach in concert and the first to record them. Thus, she is responsible for bringing these works into the mainstream viola repertoire. Along with premiering the viola works of others, she composed three collections of studies for the viola, as well as a concert piece titled Sonata Pastorale, making a significant contribution in the realm of instructional literature for the viola, which in many instances involves the use of violin transcriptions, rather than original works. Her second book of studies, 16 Fantasy Études, was published in 1959 and is the subject of chapter 2. Each work is analyzed through an identification of its overall form and main technical difficulties, divided as they pertain to specific issues of the left and right hands. The main elements contributing to the content of each étude are interpreted, as they contribute to a better understanding of the study being presented. The detailed examination of each work serves as an argument for the merit of the études as concert music, presenting the performer with problems that address the specific technical needs of the instrument, without dismissing the value of violin transcriptions.
I am particularly glad to have the opportunity to thank Ernst Lichtenhahn personally with this paper His teaching as well as the support he always showed with regard to my projects since my days as a student with him and later as his research associate at the department of musicology of the University of Zurich, have had a huge impact on my professional and intellectual career on many levels My research on the string quartet, for instance, to which I have continuously and enthusiastically returned for more than twenty years, originated in Ernst Lichtenhahn's proposal to focus my written Master's exam on the history of the string quartet from Haydn to Schubert It is my sincere and deep hope that I can return at least part of his enormous generosity as a mentor and as an individual with the present considerations on the string quartets of Revueltas 1 This may explain the fact that considerations on Revueltas's string quartet within the seminal study of Friedhelm Krummacher are limited to single section of less than 30 lines See Friedhelm Krummacher, Das Streichquartett, 2 vols (Laaber: Summary: The Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas (1889-1940) and his musical oeuvre are still to a large extent marginalized within twentieth-century scholarship outside of Mexico and Latin America. This marginalisation is due in part to the fact that Revueltas' musical compositions are considered within paradigms that largely refer to his Mexican origin. The close link between Revueltas' music and a constructed and imagined Mexico is itself part of the broader discourse of treating Latin American music as peripheral to what is generally considered the tradition of European art music. Revueltas' four string quartets, composed between 1930 and 1932, prove to be a remarkable instance in this respect. Considering his string quartets in the wider -and not geographically limited -context of twentieth-century Western art music brings to light aspects of his utilisation of the normative forces of string quartet composition as established by the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and their subsequent canonisation by specific