Tsai Performance Center Tenth Anniversary Concert

This is the concert program of the Tsai Performance Center Tenth Anniversary Concert performance on Tuesday, May 4, 1999 at 8:00 p.m, at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Works performed were Overture to The Consecration of the House, Op. 124 by Ludwig van Beethoven, Danza by Susan Epstein, From Sieben Fruhe Lieder by Alban Berg, Concerto No. 2 in A major for Piano and Orchestra by Franz Liszt, and Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by Richard Wagner. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

“La Voz del Pueblo, una Canción, una Frase Notable, una Rima, lograron sobrevivir”. El nacimiento de la Estética Musical y el momento musicológico global

In this intellectual history of the emergence of modern musical aesthetics globally, I concern myself with the birth of aesthetics as a modern philosophical field and the expansion of music historiography to include the entire world. These global musicological moments are abundantly evident in the earliest writings of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), who would channel and sustain their confluence throughout his vast body of publications. The title of the essay comes from Herder, specifically from the seminal volumes he called Volkslieder (Folk Songs, 1778/79), in which he connects his foundational writings on aesthetics, the Kritische Wälder (Critical Forests) to the first comprehensive concept of global music aesthetics. The history of Herder reception is itself a critical thread in the intellectual history of musical aesthetics that links the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. I follow this critical thread to eighteenth-century South Asia in search of a foundational modern Indian musical aesthetics, particularly in the South Indian classical genre, kriti, and the vast aesthetic domain of rāga theory, which also took a turn toward the modern at the end of the eighteenth century. The essay concludes by returning to the present with examples of Herder’s aesthetic principles in musical performance in today’s global migration crisis. It is that intellectual history, with the cases from past and present, enlightenments in Europe and South Asia, especially their global dimensions, that shapes the theory of global musicological moments at the heart of this essay.En esta historia intelectual de la aparición de la estética musical global, trato del nacimiento de la estética como un campo filosófico moderno y la expansión de la historiografía musical hasta incluir el mundo entero. Estos momentos musicológicos globales son muy evidentes en los primeros escritos de Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), quien canalizaría y mantendría esa confluencia a lo largo de su vasta obra publicada. El título de este artículo procede de Herder, específicamente de los volúmenes que llamó Volkslieder (Canciones populares, 1778/79), en los que conecta sus escritos fundacionales sobre estética, Kritische Wälder (Selvas críticas), con el primer concepto integral de estética musical global. La historia de la recepción de Herder es en sí un hilo conductor crítico en la historia intelectual de la estética musical que conecta el siglo XVIII con el XXI. Sigo este hilo conductor hasta el sur de Asia en el siglo XVIII a la búsqueda de una moderna estética musical hindú fundacional, particularmente en el género clásico kriti, del sur de la India, y el vasto dominio estético de la teoría de los rāga, que también dio un giro hacia lo moderno a finales del siglo XVIII. El artículo concluye volviendo al presente con ejemplos de principios estéticos de Herder aplicados a interpretaciones musicales en la actual crisis migratoria global. Es esa historia intelectual, con ejemplos del pasado y del presente, de la Ilustración en Europa y en el sur de Asia, especialmente sus dimensiones globales, la que da forma a la teoría de momentos musicológicos globales que constituye el núcleo de este artículo

A reference for the art songs of Dora Pejacevic; with English translations of the song texts

Dora Pejacevic (1885-1923) is recognized as an influential figure in the musical history of her native country, Croatia. In addition to composing a number of works for solo piano, voice, and violin, her compositional output includes, among other works, a piano quartet, a piano quintet, a piano concerto, and a symphony. In recent years, within her native Croatia, a renewed interest has developed in the works of Dora Pejacevic. Coupled with this interest is a hope that increased awareness of these compositions might occur beyond the borders of this country. Dora Pejacevic wrote thirty-three art songs, with the first composed at the age of fifteen and the last composed within three years of her death. It is this component of her oeuvre that this document addresses in three ways: by providing the first comprehensive collection of translations, both word-for-word and grammatically-fluent, of the complete song texts; by guiding the reader to current literature and research for any given song; and finally, by introducing new research relevant to the songs. Simultaneously, this document increases the accessibility of these songs to English-speaking readers both through the translations of the song texts, and by summarizing and highlighting information found in foreign-language research pertaining to the composer and her songs. In addition, a brief biography of Dora Pejacevic is followed by a discussion of tangential themes intended to increase awareness of topics often found in the academic discourse concerning the composer. Although a detailed exploration of these themes is beyond the scope of this document, their prominence in research relating to Pejacevic renders a brief exploration of them essential to a thorough introduction of the composer. Finally, to assist readers with further research, an index of Pejacevic's known compositions is provided

Out of the Shadows: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, and the Will to Persist

Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn are known most commonly for their associations with their male counterparts, and often have their identities and accomplishments overshadowed by these men. This thesis shines a light on these women, uncovering the struggles with gender, agency, and societal expectations

Sunken II Chords and Inwardness: A Correspondence Complex in Robert Schumann’s \u3ci\u3eLiederjahr\u3c/i\u3e Songs

This dissertation advances a new approach to text-music relationships with a view to identifying and exploring a specific, recurring text-music relationship in Schuman’s Liederjahr songs. Chapter 1 proposes to update and restructure the taxonomy of possible text-music relationships. I argue that there are four categories of text-music relationships: two conjunctions, viz., correspondences and Widersprüche; and two disjunctions, viz., Gleichgültigkeiten and Eigenständigkeiten. I am principally interested in exploring how structures and tonal archetypes native to Schenkerian theory may function as musical metaphors for themes, ideas, and imagery in the text; a survey of extant literature reveals that Schenkerian analysts typically assert such correspondences using the linguistic formulations of metaphor (some variation on “M in the music IS T in the text”) or analogy (some variation on “m1 IS TO m2 in the music AS t1 IS TO t2 in the text”). A novel feature of my approach is that text-music relationships are formally expressed using a special symbolic notation. Symbolic definitions often collapse the distinction between metaphorical and analogical prose definitions, allowing analysts to compare seemingly disparate relationships on a level playing field. In response to Agawu’s criticism that musico-poetic analyses of Lieder are usually ad hoc and one-off (1999), I argue for the possibility of families of recurring text-music relationships, which I call text-music complexes (we may further distinguish between correspondence and Widerspruch complexes). Text-music complexes are archetypes for how some element in the text is mapped onto some element in the music for the creation of musico-poetic meaning in song; text-music relationships are their individual instantiations. As text-music relationships are to individual songs, text-music complexes are to sets of songs whose membership is circumscribed in some predetermined manner (e.g., the songs in a collection or cycle, songs by a specific composer, songs written during a specific historical era, etc.). Chapter 2 investigates the hermeneutical implications of passages where major V is followed, and prolonged, by minor II. The seeming breach of tonal syntax creates a perceived ebb in the tonal flow and gives the impression that V has somehow turned inward. By analogy to origami, I call this family of V prolongations a dominant sink fold; the Oberquintteiler here is called a sunken II chord. Because of their special voice-leading properties and inward affect, sunken IIs possess unique potential for creating text-music correspondences. The central claim of this dissertation is for the existence of a correspondence complex in Schumann’s Liederjahr songs that is bound up with a sense of inwardness. This correspondence complex (ℂ) takes sunken II as its musical element (), and any form of involution in the semantic dimension of the text as its textual element (); in symbolic notation, it is formally defined by the expression ℂInwardness = Sunken II ⚭ Inwardness. As evidence for an inwardness correspondence complex, Chapters 3–5 present analyses of three Schumann Lieder in which a sunken II in the music is meaningfully coordinated with some form of inward turn, introspection, or heightened subjectivity in the text. The three songs are “Der Nussbaum” (op. 25, no. 3), “Ich hab’ in mich gesogen” (op. 37, no. 5), and “Berg’ und Burgen schau’n herunter” (op. 24, no. 7)