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AMRC Journal Volume 21
American Music Research Center Jo urnal Volume 21 • 2012 Thomas L. Riis, Editor-in-Chief American Music Research Center College of Music University of Colorado Boulder The American Music Research Center Thomas L. Riis, Director Laurie J. Sampsel, Curator Eric J. Harbeson, Archivist Sister Dominic Ray, O. P. (1913 –1994), Founder Karl Kroeger, Archivist Emeritus William Kearns, Senior Fellow Daniel Sher, Dean, College of Music Eric Hansen, Editorial Assistant Editorial Board C. F. Alan Cass Portia Maultsby Susan Cook Tom C. Owens Robert Fink Katherine Preston William Kearns Laurie Sampsel Karl Kroeger Ann Sears Paul Laird Jessica Sternfeld Victoria Lindsay Levine Joanne Swenson-Eldridge Kip Lornell Graham Wood The American Music Research Center Journal is published annually. Subscription rate is $25 per issue ($28 outside the U.S. and Canada) Please address all inquiries to Eric Hansen, AMRC, 288 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0288. Email: [email protected] The American Music Research Center website address is www.amrccolorado.org ISBN 1058-3572 © 2012 by Board of Regents of the University of Colorado Information for Authors The American Music Research Center Journal is dedicated to publishing arti - cles of general interest about American music, particularly in subject areas relevant to its collections. We welcome submission of articles and proposals from the scholarly community, ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 words (exclud - ing notes). All articles should be addressed to Thomas L. Riis, College of Music, Uni ver - sity of Colorado Boulder, 301 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0301. Each separate article should be submitted in two double-spaced, single-sided hard copies. -
How Does the Brain Process Music?
I MEDICINE, MUSIC AND THE MIND How does the brain process music? Jason Warren Jason D Warren ABSTRACT – The organisation of the musical rhythm, metre) and the distinctive instrumental or PhD FRACP, brain is a major focus of interest in contemporary human voices (‘tone quality’ or timbre) that carries Honorary neuroscience. This reflects the increasing sophis- the tune. It is not obvious a priori how these dimen- Consultant tication of tools (especially imaging techniques) sions might translate to brain organisation, though it Neurologist, to examine brain anatomy and function in health would seem unlikely that a single ‘music centre’ National Hospital and disease, and the recognition that music processes them all. for Neurology and provides unique insights into a number of aspects The problems this entails are not unlike those con- Neurosurgery, of nonverbal brain function. The emerging picture fronting the study of that other uniquely human, Queen Square, is complex but coherent, and moves beyond London multidimensional capacity, language. Like language, older ideas of music as the province of a single music is an abstract, rule-based system (arguably the Clin Med brain area or hemisphere to the concept of music only one of comparable complexity), and the 2008;8:32–36 as a ‘whole-brain’ phenomenon. Music engages a parallels between music and language are seductive. distributed set of cortical modules that process It is possible to devise musical analogies for linguistic different perceptual, cognitive and emotional elements such as ‘vocabulary’ and ‘grammar’, and components with varying selectivity. ‘Why’ rather at a clinical level, to find musical equivalents for the than ‘how’ the brain processes music is a key aphasias. -
American Mavericks Festival
VISIONARIES PIONEERS ICONOCLASTS A LOOK AT 20TH-CENTURY MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY EDITED BY SUSAN KEY AND LARRY ROTHE PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CaLIFORNIA PRESS The San Francisco Symphony TO PHYLLIS WAttIs— San Francisco, California FRIEND OF THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY, CHAMPION OF NEW AND UNUSUAL MUSIC, All inquiries about the sales and distribution of this volume should be directed to the University of California Press. BENEFACTOR OF THE AMERICAN MAVERICKS FESTIVAL, FREE SPIRIT, CATALYST, AND MUSE. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ©2001 by The San Francisco Symphony ISBN 0-520-23304-2 (cloth) Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI / NISO Z390.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Printed in Canada Designed by i4 Design, Sausalito, California Back cover: Detail from score of Earle Brown’s Cross Sections and Color Fields. 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 v Contents vii From the Editors When Michael Tilson Thomas announced that he intended to devote three weeks in June 2000 to a survey of some of the 20th century’s most radical American composers, those of us associated with the San Francisco Symphony held our breaths. The Symphony has never apologized for its commitment to new music, but American orchestras have to deal with economic realities. For the San Francisco Symphony, as for its siblings across the country, the guiding principle of programming has always been balance. -
MTO 7.2: Cook, Between Process and Product
Volume 7, Number 2, April 2001 Copyright © 2001 Society for Music Theory Nicholas Cook KEYWORDS: performance theory, work, text, script, analysis ABSTRACT: The text-based orientation of traditional musicology and theory hampers thinking about music as a performance art. Music can be understood as both process and product, but it is the relationship between the two that defines “performance” in the Western “art” tradition. Drawing on interdisciplinary performance theory (particularly theatre studies, poetry reading, and ethnomusicology), I set out issues and outline approaches for the study of music as performance; by thinking of scores as “scripts” rather than “texts,” I argue, we can understand performance as a generator of social meaning. Received 22 January 2001 The Idol Overturned [1] “The performer,” Schoenberg is supposed to have said, “for all his intolerable arrogance, is totally unnecessary except as his interpretations make the music understandable to an audience unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.”(1) It’s difficult to know quite how seriously to take such a statement, or Leonard Bernstein’s injunction (Bernstein, of all people!) that the conductor “be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience; that all his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer’s meaning.”(2) And it might be tempting to blame it all on Stravinsky, who somehow elevated a fashionable anti-Romantic stance of the 1920s into a permanent and apparently self-evident philosophy of music, according to which “The secret of perfection lies above all in [the performer’s] consciousness of the law imposed on him by the work he is performing,” so that music should be not interpreted but merely executed.(3) Or if not on Stravinsky, then on the rise of the recording industry, which has created a performance style designed for infinite iterability, resulting over the course of the twentieth century in a “general change of emphasis . -
Terms from Kostka Twentieth Century Music
AnalysisofContemporaryMusic Terminology Dr. Mark Feezell The following list of terms is taken from Kostka’s Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music, 3rd ed. Most of the definitions are word-for-word from the same text. This is a VERY useful study guide for the text, but does not substitute for careful reading and examination of the examples in the text itself. Ch. Term Pg. Definition 1 chromatic mediant rela- 3 Triads with roots M3 or m3 apart, both major or both minor, one common tone tionship 1 doubly chromatic me- 3 Triads with roots M3 or m3 apart, one major, one minor; no common tones diant relationship 1 direct modulation 3 Modulation with no common chord between the two keys 1 tritone relationships 5 Movement of one harmony directly to a harmony whose root is a tritone away 1 real sequence 6 A sequence in which the pattern is transposed exactly 1 brief tonicizations 6 A quick succession of tonal centers, often associated with real sequences 1 enharmonicism 6 The enharmonic reinterpretation of certain (normally chromatic) harmonies so that they resolve in an unexpected way; ex: Ger+6 --> V7 1 suspended tonality 6 Passages that are tonally ambiguous 1 parallel voice leading 7 A type of progression in which at least some voices move in parallel motion 1 nonfunctional chord 8 A progression in which the chords do not “progress” in any of the ways found in succession diatonic tonal harmony 1 voice-leading chords 9 Chords that are the result of goal-directed motion in the various voices rather than traditional harmonic progression 1 unresolved dissonances 10 Dissonances which do not follow the dictates of functional harmony to resolve. -
Rethinking Minimalism: at the Intersection of Music Theory and Art Criticism
Rethinking Minimalism: At the Intersection of Music Theory and Art Criticism Peter Shelley A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee Jonathan Bernard, Chair Áine Heneghan Judy Tsou Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Music Theory ©Copyright 2013 Peter Shelley University of Washington Abstract Rethinking Minimalism: At the Intersection of Music Theory and Art Criticism Peter James Shelley Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Jonathan Bernard Music Theory By now most scholars are fairly sure of what minimalism is. Even if they may be reluctant to offer a precise theory, and even if they may distrust canon formation, members of the informed public have a clear idea of who the central canonical minimalist composers were or are. Sitting front and center are always four white male Americans: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. This dissertation negotiates with this received wisdom, challenging the stylistic coherence among these composers implied by the term minimalism and scrutinizing the presumed neutrality of their music. This dissertation is based in the acceptance of the aesthetic similarities between minimalist sculpture and music. Michael Fried’s essay “Art and Objecthood,” which occupies a central role in the history of minimalist sculptural criticism, serves as the point of departure for three excursions into minimalist music. The first excursion deals with the question of time in minimalism, arguing that, contrary to received wisdom, minimalist music is not always well understood as static or, in Jonathan Kramer’s terminology, vertical. The second excursion addresses anthropomorphism in minimalist music, borrowing from Fried’s concept of (bodily) presence. -
January 2003
21ST CENTURY MUSIC JANUARY 2003 INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC is published monthly by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. ISSN 1534-3219. Subscription rates in the U.S. are $84.00 per year; subscribers elsewhere should add $36.00 for postage. Single copies of the current volume and back issues are $10.00. Large back orders must be ordered by volume and be pre-paid. Please allow one month for receipt of first issue. Domestic claims for non-receipt of issues should be made within 90 days of the month of publication, overseas claims within 180 days. Thereafter, the regular back issue rate will be charged for replacement. Overseas delivery is not guaranteed. Send orders to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. Typeset in Times New Roman. Copyright 2003 by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC. This journal is printed on recycled paper. Copyright notice: Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC. INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC invites pertinent contributions in analysis, composition, criticism, interdisciplinary studies, musicology, and performance practice; and welcomes reviews of books, concerts, music, recordings, and videos. The journal also seeks items of interest for its calendar, chronicle, comment, communications, opportunities, publications, recordings, and videos sections. Typescripts should be double-spaced on 8 1/2 x 11 -inch paper, with ample margins. Authors with access to IBM compatible word-processing systems are encouraged to submit a floppy disk, or e-mail, in addition to hard copy. -
For Infants, Musical Exposure Is Simple and Complex
THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING Can't get it out of my head A father's yearlong quest to grasp the infant musical mind By Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff | July 13, 2008 I've never felt so paralyzed standing before my CD collection as the day I brought my newborn son home from the hospital and decided to play him his very first music. So much was at stake. Should it be modern or Baroque? Orchestral or opera? Would Mozart make him smarter? Would Schoenberg instill in him revolutionary tendencies? Would Wagner make him loathe his Jewish roots? I settled on Bach's "Art of Fugue" in an arrangement for string quartet. Why not begin at the summit, and what's more, I imagined, all that searching counterpoint would be like honey for the infant brain. He responded with aplomb, conveying his wise, wordless mastery of the material by slipping into an eyes-closed, meditative state. OK, he fell asleep. But my yearlong quest to understand the infant musical mind had begun. As it turns out, my timing was good, as the cognitive and neuroscience research on music has been exploding these days, driven by techno logical breakthroughs in brain imaging and a newly widespread openness toward music as a legitimate field of scientific study. It's hard to miss the reverberations. Keith Lockhart has been outfitted with sensors on the podium of Symphony Hall; Oliver Sacks's "Musicophilia" has brought strange tales of musical obsession to the bestseller list; the journal Nature has been running a nine-part essay series on the science of music; and a conference this weekend at Tufts University is convening more than 100 researchers from 13 countries to discuss the subject of "Music, Language, and the Mind." The art form that Claude Lévi-Strauss once dubbed "the supreme mystery of the science of man" is, one note at a time, becoming less A child being studied at the Auditory Development Lab at McMaster University, where a study indicated that the way adults bounce babies affects whether the kids prefer marches or waltzes. -
7 Process Music and Minimalisms
PROCESS MUSIC Listen: Arthesis (1973) by Éliane Radigue 1 STILL FROM EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH STEVE REICH infuenced by both tape loops and Ghanian drumming 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music 2 Music As a Gradual Process (1968) Once the process is initiated, it will continue on its own. The process defnes both the sound characteristics and structure of the piece. The process must be heard as it is happening. The process must be gradual enough to be perceived. The subject of the music is the process, rather than the sound source. Pendulum Music (1968) 3 STILL FROM EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH 4 Rhythm 5 STILL FROM EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH Phasing Poly-meter Poly-tempo 6 STILL FROM EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH Phasing Come Out (1966) is a process piece based on phasing - two identical tape loops running at slightly different speeds. Used a recording of a single spoken line by Daniel Hamm, one of the falsely accused Harlem Six. 7 Phase Music Reich used the phasing process in scores for acoustic instruments as well… Piano Phase (1967). 8 9 10 Music for Eighteen Musicians (1976) Reich expanded his sonic palette with four voices, cello, violin, two clarinets, six percussionists, and four pianos. Big Ensemble with no conductor uses music signaling methods adapted from Ghanian Drumming and Balinese Music Repetitive “tape loop” techniques translated for acoustic instruments 11 The Orb’s 1990 single “Little Fluffy Clouds” sampled Reich’s Electronic Counterpoint and an interview with musician Rickie Lee Jones. Excerpt from “Electric Counterpoint” 12 The Orb’s 1990 single “Little Fluffy Clouds” sampled Reich’s Electronic Counterpoint and an interview with musician Rickie Lee Jones. -
467381 1 En Bookbackmatter 371..409
Summaries of the Articles Part I Interrogating Essence Chapter 1 Richard Taruskin Essence or Context? Keywords: Hanslick, Burke, Kant, Meyer, the beautiful, the sublime, form versus content, essence versus context, nature versus culture, time versus space, metaphor, musical structure My title indicates my skepticism of the word “essence” as applied to music, and the article consists of a gloss, in response to Nick Zangwill’s writings on Hanslick, of the passage on that important figure from my Oxford History of Western Music. In every case my take contrasts with Nick’s, so that a comparison of my discussion with his contribution to this volume (plus the five footnotes I added in response to it) will amount to a veritable survey of esthetic issues on which philosophers and musicologists frequently disagree. They include the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime (the one founded, in Burke’s formulation, on pleasure, the other on pain); the relationship between musical form and musical content (with the attendant issue, so important to Hanslick, of absolute music); the distinction between nature and culture and the place of musical studies among the sciences; the necessity and the possible abuse of metaphor in the perception and description of music; and, finally, the ontological status of “structure” in a temporally unfolding art form, and the question of spatialization. The concluding section proposes that Leonard B. Meyer’s aesthetics propound a more useful model for musical dis- cussion than does Hanslick’s. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 371 R. Stanevičiūtė et al. (eds.), Of Essence and Context, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14471-5 372 Summaries of the Articles Chapter 2 Nick Zangwill Music, Essence and Context Keywords: Hanslick, Taruskin, essence, history, artefact, culture, absolute music, beauty, sublime I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. -
December 2000
21ST CENTURY MUSIC DECEMBER 2000 INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC is published monthly by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. Subscription rates in the U.S. are $84.00 (print) and $42.00 (e-mail) per year; subscribers to the print version elsewhere should add $36.00 for postage. Single copies of the current volume and back issues are $8.00 (print) and $4.00 (e-mail) Large back orders must be ordered by volume and be pre-paid. Please allow one month for receipt of first issue. Domestic claims for non-receipt of issues should be made within 90 days of the month of publication, overseas claims within 180 days. Thereafter, the regular back issue rate will be charged for replacement. Overseas delivery is not guaranteed. Send orders to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. Typeset in Times New Roman. Copyright 2000 by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC. This journal is printed on recycled paper. Copyright notice: Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC. INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC invites pertinent contributions in analysis, composition, criticism, interdisciplinary studies, musicology, and performance practice; and welcomes reviews of books, concerts, music, recordings, and videos. The journal also seeks items of interest for its calendar, chronicle, comment, communications, opportunities, publications, recordings, and videos sections. Typescripts should be double-spaced on 8 1/2 x 11 -inch paper, with ample margins. Authors with access to IBM compatible word-processing systems are encouraged to submit a floppy disk, or e-mail, in addition to hard copy. -
The Music of Steve Reich in Context, 1965–1968
The University of York Illusion / Anti-Illusion: the Music of Steve Reich in Context, 1965–1968 A dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Arts by Research in Musicology By Ross Graham Cole (102008550 / Y4777582) December 2010 ii © 2010 Ross Graham Cole All Rights Reserved iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv List of Figures v Acknowledgements vi (1) 1 Process, Pendulums, and Links with the Plastic Arts [Contact with the impersonal...] (2) 27 Racial Politics, Tape, and San Francisco’s Cultural Nexus [Marching to a Manhattan tempo...] (3) 61 Intermezzo: Two Missing Links [Trapped in a lab...] (4) 74 Teleological Mechanics and the Phase-Shifting Pieces of 1967 [Millions of burgers sold...] (5) 105 Concluding Remarks: Context and Contradiction Resource List 112 iv Abstract ‘Illusion / Anti-Illusion: the Music of Steve Reich in Context, 1965–1968’ Ross Graham Cole (2010) Supervisor: Professor William Brooks This dissertation situates the work of Steve Reich during the mid-to-late 1960s in its intricate socio-cultural context. Exploring biographical, hermeneutic, aesthetic, and political implications, it attempts to shed light on the composer’s early years. The historical narrative concentrates on the period between the first instantiation of the phase-shifting technique in It’s Gonna Rain, or, Meet Brother Walter in Union Square after Listening to Terry Riley (1965) and the theoretical treatise ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ (1968). It reaches back, however, to the cultural nexus of San Francisco and ahead to the mercurial gallery scene in New York. In addition, modal compositions from 1966 and 1967 are subject to detailed analyses which question the boundary between ‘impersonal’ process and composerly intervention.