53 research outputs found
Turks, Hungarians, and Gypsies on Stage: Exoticism and Auto-Exoticism In Opera and Operetta
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Maintaining Disorder: Some Technical and Aesthetic Issues Involved in the Performance of Ligeti’s E´ tudes for Piano
This article examines some of the particular questions and associated strategies concerning matters of rhythm, perceived metre, notation, accentuation, line, physical approach to the keyboard, pedalling, and more in the performance of Ligeti’s Études for piano. I relate these issues to those encountered in earlier repertoire, including works of Schumann, Liszt, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók and Blacher, and argue that particular approaches and attitudes to both technical and musical matters in the context of these Études can fundamentally affect the concept of the music. A particular focus is upon issues of continuity and discontinuity, and the ‘situation’ of these works within particular pianistic and other traditions by virtue of the approach taken to performance
Derivative Analysis and Serial Music: the Theme of Schoenberg's Orchestral Variations Op.31
Book Review: Dorottya Fabian, A musicology of performance: Theory and method based on Bach’s solos for violin
Embedded blends and meaning construction in Modest Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
The editorial playlist as container technology: on Spotify and the logistical role of digital music packages
Sound and Meaning in Recordings of Schubert's “Die junge Nonne”
Musicology's growing interest in performance brings it closer to musical science through a shared interest in the relationship between musical sounds and emotional states. However, the fact that musical performance styles change over time implies that understandings of musical compositions change too. And this has implications for studies of music cognition. While the mechanisms by which musical sounds suggest meaning are likely to be biologically grounded, what musical sounds signify in specific performance contexts today may not always be what they signified in the past, nor what they will signify in the future. Studies of music cognition need to take account of performance style change and its potential to inflect conclusions with cultural assumptions. The recorded performance history of Schubert's "Die junge Nonne" offers examples of significant change in style, as well as a range of radically contrasting views of what the song's text may mean. By examining details of performances, and interpreting them in the light of work on music perception and cognition, it is possible to gain a clearer understanding of how signs of emotional state are deployed in performance by singers. At the same time, in the absence of strong evidence as to how individual performances were understood in the past, we have to recognise that we can only speak with any confidence for our own tim
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