Jähnichen, Gisa (2021). Review of ‘The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation‘. Fontes Artis Musicae, 68 (3): 276-280. (original) (raw)
Musical Migrations: A Case Study of the Teresa Carreño Papers
RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage
When we focus on the migration of collections, we generally think of the movement of these collections into our own repositories, typically in North America. But as we widen our focus, we see other types of collection migrations, including those from America to other countries. What is more, we can even see cases where both of these movements—to and from America—apply to a single collection. Though less frequent than single migrations, multiple migrations raise a variety of key issues for scholars, librarians, and others. The papers of Teresa Carreño, the Venezuelan pianist, composer, and teacher, provide a case in point.
2016
The subject of this dissertation is the use of existing music in three case studies since the 1960s: George Rochberg’s Nach Bach, Fantasy for Harpsichord or Piano (1966), Alexander Goehr’s Symmetry Disorders Reach (2002), and Rodney Sharman’s Opera Transcriptions (1989-2013). The main objective of this research is to analyse and discuss the borrowings within these works from a performer’s perspective and to offer new possibilities of interpretation and concert programming, in which the relationship between the ‘source’ and new work is directly addressed both in theory and in practice. This interdisciplinary and intertextual research is situated within the discipline of creative practice and the field of musical borrowing, aiming at constantly interrelating theory and practice. Each case study is examined in the following sense: through the analysis of the intention of the composer in borrowing; my practical exploration of the borrowing from a performer’s standpoint; the exploration of relating the source with the new work within a performance; the meaning of the pre-existing material to the composer within the new composition; and the understanding of each case study within the general field of borrowing. The aforementioned actions have enabled a set of possibilities for performance and interpretation, as well as further insight and knowledge for each case study, and borrowing in the broader sense. Rochberg’s Nach Bach is a ‘musical commentary’ of Bach’s Partita in E minor BWV 830 in which Rochberg experiments with the use of pre-existing material in various manners under the broader practice of collage. Goehr’s Symmetry Disorders Reach uses pre-existing pieces as models for composing new pieces with the intention of exploring the possibility of transparency between the source and new work. Sharman’s Opera Transcriptions, composed out of his admiration of Michael Finnissy’s Verdi Transcriptions (1972-2005), takes opera arias and transforms them into something new through the use of pre-existing material. The conclusion at which this research arrives at is that, in works of musical recycling, as the aforementioned case studies, the pre-occupation with the source, both in theory and practice, can be significantly impactful and insightful to the performance of these works. Additionally, through this process my interpretation of the source was similarly affected and recycled, thus offering a fresh approach of interpretation to past repertoire. The overall assumption of this research is that the exploration of musical borrowing can become the tool with which the performer can construct and realise a series of further performance projects.
Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology, vols. 1-3 (2013-2020)
Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology is a book series published by Ekho Verlag, Berlin. The ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology was founded in the early 1980s and has a prolific history of publications. The volumes of the new series are anthologies of peer-reviewed chapters focused around a specific topic. In reflecting the wide scope of music-archaeological research world-wide, the series draws in perspectives from a range of different disciplines, including related newly emerging fields such as archaeoacoustics, but particularly encouraging both music-archaeological and ethnomusicological perspectives.
Transposing Musicology: An Essay in Honour of Elizabeth Wood
Musicology Australia, 2017
Accessed 15 March 2016), (hereafter ' Australian Opera'). Thanks to Julja Szuster for making the digitized version possible. In 2012, Julja approached the University of Adelaide library, requesting that they digitize the hard copy of the thesis lodged in the library. The digitized version became available in the same year.