Musical Modernism Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

An element that remains consistently distinctive in the writings of the Greek composer Michalis Adamis (b. 1929) is his lifelong conviction to the dynamic interrelation between symbolism and abstraction that permeates the aesthetic... more

An element that remains consistently distinctive in the writings of the Greek composer Michalis Adamis (b. 1929) is his lifelong conviction to the dynamic interrelation between symbolism and abstraction that permeates the aesthetic orientation of his compositional outlook. Apart from, but not contrary to his belief in the inherently abstract nature of music, Adamis considers the symbolic qualification of his music’s semantic content commensurate with the historical or cultural distance from the shared frame of reference that defines its symbolic dimension. In terms of compositional practice, the abstract inherence of Adamis’s music is allowed to emerge not through the deployment of automated procedures upon semantically sanitized musical material but through an attempt to incorporate material and procedures from his Byzantine and Greek traditional musical inheritance. The structural means effectuating this attempt pertains primarily to the centonization of idiomatic melodic formulas...

Tempo 216 (April 2001), 46-47

For Hermann Schroeder (1904 - 1984) – German composer, conductor, organist, and pedagogue – music was a "practical" commitment to the "mandatory inheritance" from Bach. When asked what composers he considered “modern leading figures”, his... more

For Hermann Schroeder (1904 - 1984) – German composer, conductor, organist, and pedagogue – music was a "practical" commitment to the "mandatory inheritance" from Bach. When asked what composers he considered “modern leading figures”, his list would hardly be considered “modern” by contemporary standards, citing predominantly Paul Hindemith and Max Reger. Seeming unquestionably old-fashioned, his music is typically characterized as Neoclassical, especially when compared to his prominent avant-garde peers and modernist predecessors. However, rather than merely attempting to mimic or return to aesthetic precepts associated with Classicism, Schroeder saw himself in a continuing lineage, able to look both forward and backward while interacting with and reacting to his contemporaries to create an eclectic yet internally cohesive modern musical language. In what ways has Schroeder synthesized old and new styles in his music? What particularly in his music is “modern” in mid-20th century Germany and even today? Schroeder’s concert and chamber oeuvre composed during the 1950s and thereafter form a repertoire of music that demonstrates his commitment to recasting sounds, styles, and forms of the past. Through examination of some of the pieces from this artistically productive and mature period in Schroeder’s life, not only will it become apparent that he is worthy of the further scrutiny of American scholars, but also the label “modern”.

The text pursues and investigation into the music, work, and life of composer J. K. Randall. As an expression of intellectual anxiety, the text is concerned with the process of identifying and engaging salient, though subtle, dimensions... more

The text pursues and investigation into the music, work, and life of composer J. K. Randall. As an expression of intellectual anxiety, the text is concerned with the process of identifying and engaging salient, though subtle, dimensions of Randall's works. Towards the last section of the text, details of the Csound programming environment are discussed, as are aspects of contemporary music composition.

The twentieth century saw the abandonment of traditional tonality in music. Later in the century, the American composer George Rochberg controversially used passages of tonality in such works as his String Quartet No. 3. This raises the... more

The twentieth century saw the abandonment of traditional tonality in music. Later in the century, the American composer George Rochberg controversially used passages of tonality in such works as his String Quartet No. 3. This raises the question: is Rochberg regressive in using historical forms of music? Or is he, in fact, himself a modernist in his originality? Though the answer to this is unclear, it seems evident from the musical compositions themselves—as well as the other writings of the composers—that musical style does not determine modernism so much as the composers’ philosophy of the development of music.

"Carter's music poses struggles of opposition, for instance in timbre (Double Concerto), space (String Quartet No. 3) or pulse (String Quartet No. 5). His preference for the all-interval tetrachords, 4–Z15 [0, 1, 4, 6] and 4–Z29 [0, 1, 3,... more

Nederlandstalige studie van het epoche-makende werk

Tempo 214 (Oct 2000), 31-34

Nella vita musicale del primo Novecento italiano, animata da una straordinaria vitalità di progetti culturali e scenari artistici, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) ha svolto un ruolo da protagonista. La spiccata vocazione umanistica del... more

Nella vita musicale del primo Novecento italiano, animata da una straordinaria vitalità di progetti culturali e scenari artistici, Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) ha svolto un ruolo da protagonista. La spiccata vocazione umanistica del compositore, la sua attitudine a sperimentare nuove forme di teatro musicale e a reinventare le memorie del passato in una dimensione estetica da proiettare nel futuro, hanno lasciato un segno profondo nella sua epoca e possono ancora trovare ampia risonanza nell’orizzonte della contemporaneità. Nel ricostruire un quadro organico dell’esperienza compositiva di Pizzetti, delle sue collaborazioni artistiche e delle sue opere, il volume propone una riflessione di ampio respiro sul modernismo musicale italiano. Un fenomeno tutt’altro che monolitico, in cui le istanze programmatiche delle avanguardie convivono con le aspirazioni di artisti che, come Pizzetti, intraprendono percorsi compositivi più articolati e complessi, sensibili alla dialettica tra una tradizione storicamente definita e l’inquieta alchimia delle forme che contraddistingue il disagio della modernità.

Tempo 217 (July 2001), 46-47

Tempo 57/226 (Oct 2003), 76-79

Nisan 2020 Meral Özbek'in ''Arabesk Kültür'' Makale İncelemesi ve Tartışması Arabesk müzik, Türk halk müziğinin Batı ve Mısır müzikleriyle iç içe geçmesiyle oluşmuş bir türdür. Başlangıçta popüler şarkıları yererken sonrasında Türkiye'de... more

Nisan 2020 Meral Özbek'in ''Arabesk Kültür'' Makale İncelemesi ve Tartışması Arabesk müzik, Türk halk müziğinin Batı ve Mısır müzikleriyle iç içe geçmesiyle oluşmuş bir türdür. Başlangıçta popüler şarkıları yererken sonrasında Türkiye'de ki göçmenleri betimleyen bir alan haline geldi. Toplum tarafından Arabesk, geleneksel; geleneksel her şey de gerici olarak görüldü. Çünkü sanayileşmeyle birlikte modernliğin içinde ki arabesk kültür bir leke gibi gözüküyordu. Geleneksellikten modernliğe geçilen bu geçiş dönemine denk gelen arabesk kültür sanayileşmenin ve kentleşmenin ilerlemesiyle birlikte yok olacağı düşünülmektedir. Meral Özbek'in bu makalesinde belirtmek istediği önerme arabeskin bir anomali olmadığı, yaşayan popüler kültürün biçimlenmesiyle oluştuğudur. Arabesk kültür ile mekânsal ve zamansal bağlamda göçler hakkında bilgi sahibi olunabilir. Göçmen olarak yerleşenler; kentlilere göre istenmeyen, cahil, kültürsüz tiplemeler oldu. Arabesk kültür, Türkiye'de ki modernleşme sürecinin çelişkilerini ve zıtlıkları görebilme de büyük önem taşır. Arabesk, kapitalizm sürecine bir tepkiydi; sanayileşmeyle artan kenar mahallelerinin yoğun duyguları ve acılarıyla daha da perçinlendi. Aslında özünde modernleşmeye hem karşı koyan hem de onay veren bir biçimdi. Halkın bu tepkisi ilk olarak Orhan Gencebay ile vücut buldu. Hakim olan duygular ise hem özgürlük hem de kimsesizlik idi.

The string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima from 1979 is described as a turning point not only in Luigi Nono’s oeuvre, but also in the history of musical modernism. Often, the reception focuses on the surprise of having these... more

The string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima from 1979 is described as a turning point not only in Luigi Nono’s oeuvre, but also in the history of musical modernism. Often, the reception focuses on the surprise of having these introvert sound fragments and silent Hölderlin quotations presented by a composer who had had a reputation for three decades of producing intense, confrontational music with revolutionary political intentions.
However, Nono’s use of silent Hölderlin quotations in the quartet can be understood as a continuation of an approach to texts and extra-musical meaning which characterises his works in all of his periods, an approach where conveying a text is less important than creating an engaging human context.
And while Nono’s quartet clearly signals a heightened emphasis on musical self-reflection, the overarching context is no less political than before: it is concerned with the utopian transformation of the act of listening.

This dissertation presents evidence that James Joyce was knowledgeable, and appreciated, modernist classical music. The research was instigated by the considerable shortage of biographical and critical information available on the... more

This dissertation presents evidence that James Joyce was knowledgeable, and appreciated, modernist classical music. The research was instigated by the considerable shortage of biographical and critical information available on the subject. This study adopts the focus of searching the text of Finnegans Wake for references to 20th Century classical music. This critical approach turned out to be very successful and productive, since frequent allusions to the modernist composers Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartόk, Busoni, Milhaud, Debussy, Antheil, Luening, Pisk, Krenek and Satie were discovered. The indexing of these references, with accompanying critical commentary, makes up the majority of this dissertation. Chapter 1 reveals Joyce’s wide knowledge of East European musical modernism. It also details how Joyce learnt contemporary musicology from composers he personally knew, which helped him become a fan of difficult 20th Century modernist works. Chapter 2 primarily details the nature of Joyce’s friendship with avant-garde composer George Antheil, and the social interactions he had with Paris’s musical modernist community. Additional references to contemporary Parisienne composers in Finnegans Wake are recorded also. Chapter 3 focuses entirely on Joyce’s artistic relationship with Paris’s premiere composer, Igor Stravinsky. Research has determined that Joyce was well acquainted with Stravinsky’s ballets, and that he attended performances of the works. There is little biographical evidence linking Joyce with the ballet form so the findings of this chapter prompt further research into this area.
The dissertation concludes that a comprehensive index of references to modernist composers in Finnegans Wake must be collated in the future so that Joyce’s relationship with 20th Century classical music may be fully evaluated. This study hopes to promote awareness of Joyce’s love of 20th Century classical music within Joyce studies.

Due to the 20th century mathematical and scientific developments of Georg Cantor, Max Karl Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg, concepts once relegated to obscurity, such as irrationality, infinity, insolvability, and chaos,... more

Due to the 20th century mathematical and scientific developments of Georg Cantor, Max Karl Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg, concepts once relegated to obscurity, such as irrationality, infinity, insolvability, and chaos, were brought to mainstream attention, ultimately changing the course of technological and scientific development into the 21st century. Before these seminal thinkers, concepts like numerical irrationality and infinity were considered by many to be worthless if not amoral; such attitudes can be found persisting back to the ancient Greeks under the Pythagoreans. Interestingly, the aesthetic of irrationality follows a similar historical trajectory, mostly finding relegation in peripheral movements and specific artists before the 20th century. However, the 20th century has seen the greatest and longest persisting resurgence in mathematically irrational thought within the arts. This paper compares the visual and musical experiments in irrationality, incommensurability, and infinity in the works of MC Escher and Conlon Nancarrow during the early and mid-twentieth century, showing a correlation between contemporary mathematical and physical innovations and specific aesthetic pursuits in art and music.

Tempo 57/224 (April 2003), 57-58

Integral to the multifaceted and arguably elusive contextuality of musicology is a network of shifting dynamics between musical and extra-musical forces. Ironically, Stravinsky’s writings on his early cross-cultural explorations – namely... more

Integral to the multifaceted and arguably elusive contextuality of musicology is a network of shifting dynamics between musical and extra-musical forces. Ironically, Stravinsky’s writings on his early cross-cultural explorations – namely japonisme – expose the diversity and magnitude of the latter force (sources of inspiration from Japanese poems and artworks) but evade altogether the important issue regarding the former force (musical influences from Japan). Unacknowledged yet indispensable to the compositional craftsmanship of Stravinsky and his Parisian circle, the musical undercurrent in japonisme is a crucial context to be reconstructed through a combination of textual interpretation, analytical scrutiny and archival research endeavour. Probing into the reception of traditional Japanese music in as monumental a piece as Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (1913), the present study unravels a modernist appropriation of Japanese scales in Stravinsky’s Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise (1912–13). I contend that the pitch materials essential to his pentatonic procedures are paradoxically not the five-note scales (in scale and yō scale) in their entirety, but two cells central to the melodic heritage of Japan: the “in-scale trichord” and the “yō-scale tetrachord”. Contextualizing Stravinsky’s Japanese musical influence, I pinpoint a quartal harmony in Sept haï-kaïs (1923) by Maurice Delage – the dedicatee of Stravinsky’s piece borrowing the “in-scale trichord” – and interpret it as a remarkable derivative of the in-scale. The revealed facet of musical forces underlying japonsime – (an)hemitonic pentatonicism – renews our perspectives on Stravinsky’s French connections in the early twentieth century.

Farklı Modernist Eğilimler: Empresyonist ve Ekspresyo-nist Yaklaşımlar Çerçevesinde Müzik ve Modernizm Özet Bu yazı, modernizmin müzikteki tezahürünü, başta teknik olmak üzere pek çok bakımdan birbirinden ayrı düşen farklı modernist... more

Farklı Modernist Eğilimler: Empresyonist ve Ekspresyo-nist Yaklaşımlar Çerçevesinde Müzik ve Modernizm Özet Bu yazı, modernizmin müzikteki tezahürünü, başta teknik olmak üzere pek çok bakımdan birbirinden ayrı düşen farklı modernist eğilimlere sahip erken iki akım-Empresyonizm ve Ekspresyo-nizm-merkezinde sunmayı amaçlıyor olsa da, Modernizm ve ona dair başat unsurların tanımını ve müzikte modernizmin ne za-man, neyi ifade ettiğinin detaylı biçimde örneklenerek farklı mo-dernist yaklaşımlar açısından nasıl görünür kılındığını koymuyor ortaya. Bu durum, yazının belirli bir çerçeve dâhilinde tutulmak istenmesinden ziyade, yazarların meseleye ve alana dair ortak ki-şisel eğilimlerinden kaynaklanıyor. Abstract This essay aims to discuss the manifestation of modernism in music by focusing on two early movements, Impressionism and Expressionism, which had different technical aspects from one another as well as separate modernist tendencies. While discussing these movements, this essay does not attempt to define Modernism or to refer what the modernism in music meant from the perspective of different modernist tendencies, which made it visible. This framework shall not be regarded as a limitation , as it has specifically been set by the authors', who share a common personal perspective on this particular issue and the musical field.

After World War II, Milton Babbitt and the composer-theorists collected around him at Princeton University extended Schoenbergian serial and social practices. After Stravinsky’s serial turn, Babbitt reevaluated his music, courting his... more

After World War II, Milton Babbitt and the composer-theorists collected around him at Princeton University extended Schoenbergian serial and social practices. After Stravinsky’s serial turn, Babbitt reevaluated his music, courting his legacy: the cover of the “Princeton School journal,” Perspectives of New Music, to this day reproduces Stravinsky’s drawing representing his serial music. In the late 1960s, some members of the Princeton School “dropped out,” writing experimental texts and improvising. Joseph Kerman suggested, contentiously, that this dissolution of the Princeton School around 1971 occurred because of Stravinsky’s death that year.
In this talk I discuss Stravinsky reception within the Princeton School. After discussing Stravinsky’s advice to leave the academy, Babbitt’s reading of Stravinsky’s proto-serial procedures in The Rake’s Progress, and Babbitt’s reading of Stravinsky’s “verticals” in Movements, I discuss Princeton composer Benjamin Boretz’s readings of Stravinsky’s incorporation of pitch structure into durational structure in the first scene of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring generally. I discuss Princeton composer J. K. Randall’s compositional use of series of pitches fewer than twelve as a Stravinskian conceit. I discuss an influential article by Princeton composer Edward T. Cone which shows continuity across Stravinsky’s serial turn. Lastly, I discuss Babbitt and Boretz’s purging of impressionistic language in favor of formalist discourses as a kind of Stravinskian poetics.
This combination of Stravinskian poetics and serialism with the oft-discussed Schoenbergian socialization and serialism demonstrates an attempt by members of the Princeton School to unite the two principal strands of European modernism in their own American high-modernism.

Tempo 63/248 (April 2009), 64-66

PhD Thesis (Music Composition)

In this preliminary study for my PhD-thesis, "Music Reading Poetry", I explore the main outlines of the musical reception of Hölderlin’s poetry. I introduce a way of subdividing the reception chronologically and aesthetically in two... more

In this preliminary study for my PhD-thesis, "Music Reading Poetry", I explore the main outlines of the musical reception of Hölderlin’s poetry. I introduce a way of subdividing the reception chronologically and aesthetically in two sections with different, even contrary underlying approaches to the relation between poetry and music.
The first section, which lasts until around 1960, is characterized by a traditionally imitative strategy of musical setting, in which the music is clearly supposed to imitate the meaning or mood of the poems. The way I see it, this approach can be connected to the part of the literary and philosophical reception of Hölderlin which begins with Dilthey and George and attains its peak of elaboration with Heidegger (see my study "Images of Hölderlin"). Analogically with the way Hölderlin – in Gadamer’s expression – is regarded as someone who has “found the word” in this part of the reception, the composers before 1960 approach Hölderlin’s poems as masterpieces which must be treated with the utmost reverence in a musical setting.
Around 1960, however, one can speak of a paradigm shift within the musical reception of Hölderlin. Bruno Maderna and Henri Pousseur are among the first composers to treat Hölderlin’s poems as invitations to experimentation. Their Hölderlin works are connected to their musical experiments with open form and indeterminism, and simultaneously they contain parallels to Adorno’s revision of the poet. In these works, Hölderlin is clearly not regarded as a visionary who has “found the word”, but rather as an experimenting critic of language who is incessantly “searching for the word”.

Much more than the documentation of a 15 year-long friendship between two protagonists of the music scene in Italy in the 1630s and 1640s, these unpublished letters by Alfredo Casella to Goffredo Petrassi provide a vivid image of the... more

Much more than the documentation of a 15 year-long friendship between two protagonists of the music scene in Italy in the 1630s and 1640s, these unpublished letters by Alfredo Casella to Goffredo Petrassi provide a vivid image of the controversial personality of the sender. They testify not only Casella’s indefatigable activity of composer, pianist, and promoter of young Italian composers, such as Petrassi, but also his efforts for the affirmation of Italy on the scene of the contemporary art music. Hence his need of the support of the Fascist regime, even at the price of adopting publicly a minimizing attitude towards the persecution of the Jew musicians that took place in Germany and Italy at the end of 1630s.

Tempo 57/223 (Jan 2003), 68-70

The Study addresses the dialogue of Arts through Music and Plastic Art. The study tried to monitor several the international art works that highlight the nature of this dialogue, which does not eliminate the privacy of any participating... more

The Study addresses the dialogue of Arts through Music and Plastic Art. The study tried to monitor several the international art works that highlight the nature of this dialogue, which does not eliminate the privacy of any participating works, while at the same time highlighting the interaction among them, which can be observed either in the unity of feeling and reaction of the receiver (listener or viewer) and/or in the names carried by those works. Whether temporal or spatial, the arts are all embodied, after being delivered through materials and through different media, in aesthetic forms in perception where rhythms and spaces meet.

How can we best understand the resistance to modern music in a large part of the British musical establishment in the early twentieth century? It would be easy to point to conservative attacks on new music in Britain. But it would be easy... more

How can we best understand the resistance to modern music in a large part of the British musical establishment in the early twentieth century? It would be easy to point to conservative attacks on new music in Britain. But it would be easy to point to such attacks in almost any country. A more rewarding approach is to study the response to modern music by cultural 'liberals', those who viewed themselves as open-minded and sympathetic to 'progress' in art just as in society. The liberal outlook on music flourished in the post-Victorian period—the years before the Great War and immediately after—and was developed in essays and treatises by some of Britain's most influential musicians. Liberal critics were acutely aware of the mistakes of their predecessors who had condemned composers later to be acclaimed as masters. They accepted that there were no timeless rules for musical composition, and that style and technique would always change. So they tried to do justice to modern music. But there were limits to their tolerance, stemming from their commitment to 'beauty', their insistence on incremental change in music history, and their idealist aesthetics. Although they did not appeal to religion to ground their criticism, metaphysical modes of thought lingered in their belief in eternal values to which all great art, whatever its historical situation and technique, should aspire.