Max Bruch's dramatic cantata on Friedrich Schiller's poem, Das Lied von der Glocke : a conductor's analysis for performance

The allegorical poem, "Das Lied von der Glocke," by Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) serves as the inspiration - for the dramatic cantata setting, Opus 45, by Max Christian Friedrich Bruch (1838-1920), composed for four soloists, chorus, organ, and orchestra in 1879. In ten eight-line strophes Schiller indicates, through instructions given by a master Bell Maker, the proper steps for casting a bell. Allegorically, these steps parallel the stages of human life. Through motivic development, key relationships, and formal structure, Bruch depicts the essence of this philosophically optimistic text

The interpretation of a conductor's nonverbal communication by ensemble members and the impact on conducting education

Conducting gestures and facial expressions can be interpreted with wide variance by musicians, even within ensembles with a close range of technical mastery and experience. In this study, I examined the interpretations of a music conductor’s nonverbal communication to collegiate wind ensemble students and the accompanying pedagogical considerations when leading live performers. The conceptual framework of the study was kinesics, “the study of body movements, facial expressions, and gestures” (Ottenheimer, 2009, p. 160), and more specifically, Ekman and Friesen’s (1969) categories of nonverbal communication. Within this framework, the two categories I used specifically were emblems- nonverbal signals from the body representing a verbal message, and affect displays- characterizations of an emotion or other message depicted primarily on the face. Utilizing gesture descriptions compiled by Sousa (1988), I created a video stimulus to interview students on their reactions to 21 gestures of the hands, arms, and torso, as well as 10 naturally occurring facial expressions while conducting. Using the conducting video as the stimulus, I interviewed 80 college students at nine college campuses. Students participated in an individual 30-minute interview where they watched each of the 31 video excerpts and gave verbal feedback about what they perceived as the message of each of the gestures or facial expressions. Data were analyzed and compared to Sousa’s (1988) descriptions of each gesture from which the conductor attempted to demonstrate on the video. Utilizing Ekman and Friesen’s (1969) metric of 70% recognition to code a response as an emblem, 16 of the 21 gestures (76%) were discovered to be musical emblems, compared to 71% in Sousa’s (1988) study. Only 12 out of 21 gestures were identified as emblems in both studies (57%). Categories of the strongest prevalence in the current study of emblems included dynamics and tempo changes. Results from the 10 videos of facial expression netted more than ten different themes per affect display, each with diverse descriptions of musical and emotional messages. Overall results showed the small muscle movements of the face are capable of multi-message and multi-signal semiotic functions (Ekman & Friesen, 1978) with robust descriptions that can change rapidly in significant ways

Stethoscapes: Listening to Hearts in a London Hospital

This thesis is about the stethoscope, and its use in the production and reproduction of bodies. It incorporates two ethnographic strands, sited at each end of the stethoscope. Firstly, the thesis engages with medical students as they begin to learn a new kind of listening. The thesis explores the shaping of the senses which medical training brings about, and positions 'auscultation' as productive of a particular kind of (acoustically) perceiving body. The emphasis placed on auscultation in medical training is seen to reflect the historical importance of auditory knowledge in the medical imagination of the anatomical body and in the mapping of its interior. At the same time, students adopt the postures of doctors in this training and so the stethoscope's importance in the generation of the medical 'habitus' is also highlighted. The instrument is seen to be important in producing and reproducing the respective roles of doctors and patients. The dissertation explores a second major ethnographic strand through examining contexts in which doctors, medical students and, particularly, patients begin to relate to their own interiority through sound. They apprehend the acoustic dimensions, not of abstract or conceptually distant bodies, but of their own immediate, lived and experienced bodies in unexpected and sometimes disturbing ways. The imagination of the body, then, in both formal and more immediately experiential terms, takes on an acoustic dimension within the context of the hospital and the diagnostic procedures encountered there. The thesis argues that the concept of 'acoustemology' may offer a new way of thinking about 'the body', reflecting the importance of sound in the manner in which it is lived, imagined and known

Lady Disdain

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

Romantic Ken : time and perspective in the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth

This dissertation focuses on the connection between representations of time and representations of sight in the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth. These poets often use descriptions of their narrators\u27 views as means of marking and measuring time\u27s progress.This study argues that the technique of perspective depiction allows both poets to demonstrate the reconciliation of the philosophical tensions which are imbedded in their poetry.When speaking of Coleridge and Wordsworth, one might generalize about two of their chief concerns as follows. First (and as many critics have observed), the poetry of each of these men reflects an inconsistency regarding the relationship between the external and internal realms. For Wordsworth, this issue is manifested in his ambivalence about the degree of nature\u27s influence (or lack thereof) on the mind. For Coleridge, a similar dilemma appears in his constant wavering between a Hartleian materialism and a Berkeleyan Idealism. Second, it is also generally acknowledged that the art of each poet often seems to alternate between two different conceptions of time: one is objective and successive, and the other is subjective and durational. Throughout the works of both poets, one may recognize the tensions that arise due to frequent dalliances within conflicting epistemological and temporal schemes.Numerous critical studies have considered the issues of perspective and time in this poetry; often, these topics appear in slightly modified form in discussions of landscape and memory, respectively. However, few have touched on the interactive relationship between sight consciousness and time consciousness. This thesis argues that these poets utilize the connection between one\u27s visual field and one\u27s conception of time. Through ingenious narrative presentations of temporal and visual data, each author is sometimes able to mediate between his conflicting philosophical tendencies. Surprisingly, both Coleridge andWordsworth achieve this by grounding their narrators in landscapes that contain particularistic time-space details. One finds that such dense fields of vision allow for the convergence of divergent strains within their epistemological and temporal systems

Practicing phonomimetic (conducting-like) gestures facilitates vocal performance of typically developing children and children with autism: an experimental study

Every music teacher is likely to teach one or more children with autism, given that an average of one in 54 persons in the United States receives a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ASD persons often show tremendous interest in music, and some even become masterful performers; however, the combination of deficits and abilities associated with ASD can pose unique challenges for music teachers. This experimental study shows that phonomimetic (conducting-like) gestures can be used to teach the expressive qualities of music. Children were asked to watch video recordings of conducting-like gestures and produce vocal sounds to match the gestures. The empirical findings indicate that motor training can strengthen the visual to vocomotor couplings in both populations, suggesting that phonomimetic gesture may be a suitable approach for teaching musical expression in inclusive classrooms

Tongue of Water, Teeth of Stones: Northern Irish Poetry and Social Violence

In a 1984 lecture on poetry and political violence, Seamus Heaney remarked that the idea of poetry was itself that higher ideal to which the poets had unconsciously turned in order to survive the demeaning conditions. Jonathan Hufstader examines the work of Heaney and his contemporaries to discover how poems, combining conscious technique with unconscious impulse, work as aesthetic forms and as strategies for emotional survival. In his powerful study, Hufstader shows how a number of contemporary Northern Irish poets-- including Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Ciarán Carson and Medbh McGuckian--explore the resources of language and poetic form in their various responses to cultural conflict and political violence. Focusing on both style and social contexts, Hufstader explores the tension between solidarity and art, between the poet\u27s need to belong and to rebel. He believes that an understanding of the power of lyric points towards an understanding of the source of social violence, and of its cessation. Jonathan Hufstader is assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Hufstader’s own elegant writing conveys some of the lyric power found in the poetry. —Choice Ambitious, provocative, and ultimately disturbing. . . . Should ignite lively debate in the years to come. —Irish Literary Supplement A searching, honest, and impressive analysis of some of the best poetry written in the English language in our time. —Jonathan Allison, series editor Shows how a number of contemporary Northern Irish poets—Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Ciaran Carson, and Medbh McGuckian—explore the resources of language and poetic form in their various responses to cultural conflict and political violence. —McCormick Messenger Successfully repositions the focus onto the poetry rather than the historical forces working around the poetry. —South Atlantic Reviewhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_ireland/1005/thumbnail.jp

The social organisation of the choir rehearsal: How interaction between conductor and choir is used to shape the choir's singing

The aim of this project was to explore the interaction that occurs between conductor and choir in order to develop a better understanding of the ‘unique fingerprint’ of the social activity of choral rehearsals. Little interactional research has previously been carried out in music settings, and what there is mostly focuses on instrumental lessons and masterclasses, which have distinct differences from choirs. The music literature on rehearsals often emphasises best practice, and has a strong focus on school ensembles. Over nineteen hours of choral rehearsal data were collected from eight choirs (nine different conductors; two female), transcribed, and analysed using conversation analysis (CA). The analysis demonstrated many unusual features within the interaction. Findings include a very formal turn-system, with a particularly unusual sung turn in how constrained it is by the conductor’s actions. For example, conductors work hard to launch the turn effectively, may stop it in the midst of the choir’s singing, and use both depiction and verbal utterances to direct, co-construct, and comment on the music while it is ongoing. Directives and assessments are the most prevalent features of the conductors’ feedback turns, and the constant orientation by all parties to improvement over time means that even if only one of the two actions is produced, the other is inferred. The conductors’ feedback also includes large amounts of depiction (including gesture, posture, facial expression and body orientation), verbal description and verbal imagery, which may be used simultaneously to convey more than one meaning or action at the same time. This research contributes to the expanding field of CA research in embodied performance settings, particularly music. It also provides a new methodology for exploring rehearsals in the music literature, which could offer a starting pointing for future research or conductor training programmes

Butch Morris and the Art of Conduction

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is a 62-year-old composer and bandleader who was part of a cadre of North American jazz innovators whose work began coming to public attention in the mid-1970s. Since 1985 he has developed, refined, and implemented a method for creating unique ensemble music using a patented vocabulary of conducting gestures. This novel strategy and the music it produces present an array of theoretical questions. Some of these have been simplified as questions of classificatory nomenclature: Is Conduction improvisation, interpretation, composition, or none of the above? How does Conduction as a system compare to other methods of structuring musical performance in real time? Other critical and social questions are addressed whose answers hinge upon the values and functions that sustain Conduction in the real world of monetized and competitive musicianship. Through interviews with Morris and members of his ensembles as well as observations conducted at numerous Conduction rehearsals and performances, my study documents Morris' art form as a new instrumentality that offers new ways of making and thinking about music. In the course of this study, a variety of materials and sources are used to describe how Conduction® was developed, what its historical precedents are, and how it operates in real performance situations. The explanatory implications of framing Conduction practice as a novel musical instrument are also examined. This new instrument has garnered a community of users with differential investments in and expectations for Morris' vehicle and how these investments and expectations have defined Conduction's place in the domain of musical performance and education. Supported by self-reporting and analysis, Morris' method is shown to arise from a pro-ensemble orientation that seeks to breathe new life into both the jazz big band and the classical orchestra by awakening and redistributing those core capacities most essential to the production of musical sound