Mark Evan Bonds
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199343638
- eISBN:
- 9780199373437
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199343638.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
What we think music is shapes how we hear it. This book traces the history of the idea of pure—“absolute”—music from Pythagoras to the present, with special emphasis on efforts to reconcile the ...
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What we think music is shapes how we hear it. This book traces the history of the idea of pure—“absolute”—music from Pythagoras to the present, with special emphasis on efforts to reconcile the irreducible essence of the art with its profound effects on the human spirit. The core of this study focuses on the period 1850–1935, beginning with the collision between Richard Wagner and the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick. Wagner, who coined the term “absolute music” in 1846, used it as a pejorative in his efforts to expose the limitations of purely instrumental music. For him, music that was “absolute” was isolated, detached from the world, sterile. Hanslick considered this quality of isolation a guarantor of purity: music could be understood only in terms of itself. Hanslick had few followers among musicians during his lifetime (1825–1904). By 1920, however, absolute music was being endorsed by leading modernists, including both Schoenberg and Stravinsky. The key impetus for this change came from discourse not about music but rather about the visual arts. The growing prestige of abstraction and form in painting at the turn of the twentieth century helped move the idea of purely abstract, absolute music to the cutting edge of musical modernism.Less
What we think music is shapes how we hear it. This book traces the history of the idea of pure—“absolute”—music from Pythagoras to the present, with special emphasis on efforts to reconcile the irreducible essence of the art with its profound effects on the human spirit. The core of this study focuses on the period 1850–1935, beginning with the collision between Richard Wagner and the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick. Wagner, who coined the term “absolute music” in 1846, used it as a pejorative in his efforts to expose the limitations of purely instrumental music. For him, music that was “absolute” was isolated, detached from the world, sterile. Hanslick considered this quality of isolation a guarantor of purity: music could be understood only in terms of itself. Hanslick had few followers among musicians during his lifetime (1825–1904). By 1920, however, absolute music was being endorsed by leading modernists, including both Schoenberg and Stravinsky. The key impetus for this change came from discourse not about music but rather about the visual arts. The growing prestige of abstraction and form in painting at the turn of the twentieth century helped move the idea of purely abstract, absolute music to the cutting edge of musical modernism.
Maureen A. Carr
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199742936
- eISBN:
- 9780199367993
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199742936.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
After the Rite: Stravinsky’s Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) traces the evolution of Stravinsky’s compositional process with excerpts from Rossignol, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Renard, Histoire ...
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After the Rite: Stravinsky’s Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) traces the evolution of Stravinsky’s compositional process with excerpts from Rossignol, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Renard, Histoire du soldat, Étude for Pianola, Ragtime, Piano-Rag-Music, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Concertino, Pulcinella, Mavra, Octet, Cinq pièces monométriques, Concerto for Piano and Winds, Piano Sonata, the Serenade in A. One of the goals of this monograph is to illustrate how musical sketches help to inform music analysis. The use of original sources, diplomatic transcriptions, and diagrams illustrate: (1) the presence of melodic motives, such as anticipatory gestures that have a bearing on subsequent works, (2) the layering of imitative techniques that sometimes participate in the emergence of block form before transitioning into Stravinsky’s Neoclassical style, and (3) the incorporation of materials borrowed from the eighteenth century to create musical narrative, and so on. In addition to these visual representations of musical ideas, another goal is to consider the cultural complexities that established the framework for Stravinsky’s evolution as a composer, such as: (1) the cross-currents in literary circles around 1914 that were concerned with Shklovsky’s “Resurrection of the Word” and the notion of defamiliarization, (2) the swirling designs in artworks by painters who espoused the ideals of futurism and cubo-futurism, and (3) Fokine’s outline of the “New Ballet” that appeared in the Times (London) on July 6, 1914, just before the declaration of war on July 28, 1914, and that in a way paralleled the emergence of Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism.Less
After the Rite: Stravinsky’s Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) traces the evolution of Stravinsky’s compositional process with excerpts from Rossignol, Three Pieces for String Quartet, Renard, Histoire du soldat, Étude for Pianola, Ragtime, Piano-Rag-Music, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Concertino, Pulcinella, Mavra, Octet, Cinq pièces monométriques, Concerto for Piano and Winds, Piano Sonata, the Serenade in A. One of the goals of this monograph is to illustrate how musical sketches help to inform music analysis. The use of original sources, diplomatic transcriptions, and diagrams illustrate: (1) the presence of melodic motives, such as anticipatory gestures that have a bearing on subsequent works, (2) the layering of imitative techniques that sometimes participate in the emergence of block form before transitioning into Stravinsky’s Neoclassical style, and (3) the incorporation of materials borrowed from the eighteenth century to create musical narrative, and so on. In addition to these visual representations of musical ideas, another goal is to consider the cultural complexities that established the framework for Stravinsky’s evolution as a composer, such as: (1) the cross-currents in literary circles around 1914 that were concerned with Shklovsky’s “Resurrection of the Word” and the notion of defamiliarization, (2) the swirling designs in artworks by painters who espoused the ideals of futurism and cubo-futurism, and (3) Fokine’s outline of the “New Ballet” that appeared in the Times (London) on July 6, 1914, just before the declaration of war on July 28, 1914, and that in a way paralleled the emergence of Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism.
Andrew Grant Wood
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199892457
- eISBN:
- 9780199345496
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892457.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustín Lara (1897–1970). Widely known as “el flaco ...
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Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustín Lara (1897–1970). Widely known as “el flaco de oro” (“the Golden Skinny”), this remarkably thin fellow was prolific across the genres of bolero, ballad, and folk. His most beloved “Granada,” a song so enduring that it has been covered by the likes of Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo, is today a standard in the vocal repertory. However, there exists very little biographical literature on Lara in English. This book's informed and informative placement of Lara's work in a broader cultural context presents a reading of the life of this significant musical figure. Lara's career as a media celebrity as well as musician provides an excellent window on Mexican society in the mid-twentieth century and on popular culture in Latin America. The book also delves into Lara's music itself, bringing to light how the composer's work unites a number of important currents in Latin music of his day, particularly the bolero.Less
Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustín Lara (1897–1970). Widely known as “el flaco de oro” (“the Golden Skinny”), this remarkably thin fellow was prolific across the genres of bolero, ballad, and folk. His most beloved “Granada,” a song so enduring that it has been covered by the likes of Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo, is today a standard in the vocal repertory. However, there exists very little biographical literature on Lara in English. This book's informed and informative placement of Lara's work in a broader cultural context presents a reading of the life of this significant musical figure. Lara's career as a media celebrity as well as musician provides an excellent window on Mexican society in the mid-twentieth century and on popular culture in Latin America. The book also delves into Lara's music itself, bringing to light how the composer's work unites a number of important currents in Latin music of his day, particularly the bolero.
Ethan Mordden
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190651794
- eISBN:
- 9780190860929
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190651794.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, History, Western
In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths, the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamor of the big-city newspaper, the mad ...
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In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths, the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamor of the big-city newspaper, the mad decade of the 1920s, the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon—two of the greatest talents in the musical’s history—and the Wild West gangsterville that was the city of Chicago itself. The tale of a young woman who murders her departing lover and then tricks the jury into letting her off, Chicago seemed too blunt and cynical at first. Everyone agreed it was show biz at its brilliant best, yet the public still preferred A Chorus Line, with its cast of innocents and sentimental feeling. Nevertheless, the 1996 Chicago revival is now the longest-running American musical in history, and the movie version won the Best Picture Oscar. As this text looks back at Chicago’s various moving parts, including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical, we see how the American theatre serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society.Less
In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths, the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamor of the big-city newspaper, the mad decade of the 1920s, the work of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon—two of the greatest talents in the musical’s history—and the Wild West gangsterville that was the city of Chicago itself. The tale of a young woman who murders her departing lover and then tricks the jury into letting her off, Chicago seemed too blunt and cynical at first. Everyone agreed it was show biz at its brilliant best, yet the public still preferred A Chorus Line, with its cast of innocents and sentimental feeling. Nevertheless, the 1996 Chicago revival is now the longest-running American musical in history, and the movie version won the Best Picture Oscar. As this text looks back at Chicago’s various moving parts, including the original 1926 play that started it all, a sexy silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, a talkie remake with Ginger Rogers, the musical itself, and at last the movie of the musical, we see how the American theatre serves as a kind of alternative news medium, a town crier warning the public about the racy, devious interior contradictions of American society.
Warwick Lister
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195372403
- eISBN:
- 9780199870820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372403.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This book is a full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ...
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This book is a full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. He rose from humble origins as a blacksmith's son in a village near Turin, Italy, and early studies with Gaetano Pugnani, to a triumphant international career, particularly in Paris and London. His multifarious career as concert performer, composer, teacher, opera theater director, and impresario was played out against the backdrop of a dramatically changing world: from the ancien régime patronage of an Italian prince and the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, to the commercial and box-office–centered institutions of the early 19th century. Viotti's life was intensely dramatic. He knew tragedy as well as success: he was forced to flee the French Revolution, he was exiled from England for an extended period, his attempt to establish himself in business met with failure, and he died heavily in debt. His correspondence with an English family, the Chinnerys, with whom he was intimately associated for the last half of his life, provides an unusually revealing glimpse into his personal life. Viotti's biography is not without its mysteries, among which is his renunciation, twice in his life, of public performance. This study is based on extensive documentary research, much of it here revealed for the first time. Viotti's works are considered in the context of his life. Eleven appendices include translations of various Viotti-related archival documents, and additional information on Viotti's siblings, his places of residence, his violins, his unfinished violin method, and financial matters.Less
This book is a full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755–1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. He rose from humble origins as a blacksmith's son in a village near Turin, Italy, and early studies with Gaetano Pugnani, to a triumphant international career, particularly in Paris and London. His multifarious career as concert performer, composer, teacher, opera theater director, and impresario was played out against the backdrop of a dramatically changing world: from the ancien régime patronage of an Italian prince and the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, to the commercial and box-office–centered institutions of the early 19th century. Viotti's life was intensely dramatic. He knew tragedy as well as success: he was forced to flee the French Revolution, he was exiled from England for an extended period, his attempt to establish himself in business met with failure, and he died heavily in debt. His correspondence with an English family, the Chinnerys, with whom he was intimately associated for the last half of his life, provides an unusually revealing glimpse into his personal life. Viotti's biography is not without its mysteries, among which is his renunciation, twice in his life, of public performance. This study is based on extensive documentary research, much of it here revealed for the first time. Viotti's works are considered in the context of his life. Eleven appendices include translations of various Viotti-related archival documents, and additional information on Viotti's siblings, his places of residence, his violins, his unfinished violin method, and financial matters.
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190236861
- eISBN:
- 9780190236892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190236861.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed ...
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This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed studies of compositions written since 1960 by Ursula Mamlok, Norma Beecroft, Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho, Libby Larsen, and Elisabeth Lutyens. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer written by the editors, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on pitch design, the second on musical gesture, and the third on music and text. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Postsecondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in post-tonal theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music.Less
This multiauthor collection, the first of an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical essays on music by women composers from Hildegard of Bingen to the twenty-first century, presents detailed studies of compositions written since 1960 by Ursula Mamlok, Norma Beecroft, Joan Tower, Sofia Gubaidulina, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho, Libby Larsen, and Elisabeth Lutyens. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer written by the editors, followed by an in-depth analysis of a single representative composition linking analytical observations with broader considerations of music history, gender, culture, or hermeneutics. These essays, many by leading music theorists, are grouped thematically into three sections, the first focused on pitch design, the second on musical gesture, and the third on music and text. The collection is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thorough analytical studies can open new paths into unexplored research areas in music theory and musicology. Postsecondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered here to include new works in graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses in post-tonal theory, history, or women and music. Finally, for performers, conductors, and music broadcasters, these thoughtful analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh new programming possibilities to share with listeners—an endeavor of discovery for all those interested in twentieth-century music.
Joy H. Calico
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520281868
- eISBN:
- 9780520957701
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520281868.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw seemed designed to irritate every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust, it was written for an ...
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Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw seemed designed to irritate every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust, it was written for an American audience by a Jewish composer whose oeuvre had been the Nazis’ prime exemplar of entartete (degenerate) music. Both admired and reviled as a pioneer of dodecaphony, Schoenberg had immigrated to the United States and become an American citizen. At approximately seven minutes, A Survivor is too short to occupy half of a concert, yet it is too fraught to easily share the bill with anything else. A cultural history of postwar Europe on both sides of the Cold War divide comes into focus when viewed through the lens of A Survivor. This book investigates the meanings attached to the work as it circulated through Europe between 1948 and 1968 in a kind of symbolic musical remigration, focusing on six case studies: West Germany, Austria, Norway, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The details are specific to each, but common themes emerge in anxieties about musical modernism, Holocaust memory and culpability, the coexistence of Jews and former Nazis, anti-Semitism, dislocation, and the presence of occupying forces.Less
Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw seemed designed to irritate every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust, it was written for an American audience by a Jewish composer whose oeuvre had been the Nazis’ prime exemplar of entartete (degenerate) music. Both admired and reviled as a pioneer of dodecaphony, Schoenberg had immigrated to the United States and become an American citizen. At approximately seven minutes, A Survivor is too short to occupy half of a concert, yet it is too fraught to easily share the bill with anything else. A cultural history of postwar Europe on both sides of the Cold War divide comes into focus when viewed through the lens of A Survivor. This book investigates the meanings attached to the work as it circulated through Europe between 1948 and 1968 in a kind of symbolic musical remigration, focusing on six case studies: West Germany, Austria, Norway, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The details are specific to each, but common themes emerge in anxieties about musical modernism, Holocaust memory and culpability, the coexistence of Jews and former Nazis, anti-Semitism, dislocation, and the presence of occupying forces.
Ryan Bañagale
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199978373
- eISBN:
- 9780190201418
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199978373.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, History, Western
This book approaches George Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue as an “arrangement”—a status it has held since its inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. It shifts the emphasis away from a ...
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This book approaches George Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue as an “arrangement”—a status it has held since its inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. It shifts the emphasis away from a centralized composition and from the sole agency of a single composer, positing a broad vision of the Rhapsody. Based on a host of newly discovered manuscripts, this book significantly alters existing historical and cultural conceptions of the Rhapsody. Each chapter engages a different set of previously unknown documents, providing the reader with a dynamic and multifaceted reappraisal of this emblematic piece of American music. In the process of remapping the terrain of the Rhapsody, new light is shed on familiar and lesser-known musicians who each used arrangements of the piece to establish their musical identities: Ferde Grofé, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Larry Adler, and Anthony Brown. Also considered over the course of the book is the role of visual media in the enduring status of both Gershwin and the Rhapsody, including forays into film, television, and the commercial advertising of United Airlines. The overlapping, divergent, and otherwise hidden narratives that emerge reveal how arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue have shaped the development and approach of musicians throughout the twentieth century and beyond. The reader emerges from the process with new conceptualizations of the Rhapsody, George Gershwin, and music-making in America.Less
This book approaches George Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue as an “arrangement”—a status it has held since its inception in 1924, yet one unconsidered until now. It shifts the emphasis away from a centralized composition and from the sole agency of a single composer, positing a broad vision of the Rhapsody. Based on a host of newly discovered manuscripts, this book significantly alters existing historical and cultural conceptions of the Rhapsody. Each chapter engages a different set of previously unknown documents, providing the reader with a dynamic and multifaceted reappraisal of this emblematic piece of American music. In the process of remapping the terrain of the Rhapsody, new light is shed on familiar and lesser-known musicians who each used arrangements of the piece to establish their musical identities: Ferde Grofé, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Larry Adler, and Anthony Brown. Also considered over the course of the book is the role of visual media in the enduring status of both Gershwin and the Rhapsody, including forays into film, television, and the commercial advertising of United Airlines. The overlapping, divergent, and otherwise hidden narratives that emerge reveal how arrangements of Rhapsody in Blue have shaped the development and approach of musicians throughout the twentieth century and beyond. The reader emerges from the process with new conceptualizations of the Rhapsody, George Gershwin, and music-making in America.
Joseph Kerman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520243583
- eISBN:
- 9780520941397
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520243583.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Fugue for J. S. Bach was a natural language; he wrote fugues in organ toccatas and voluntaries, in masses and motets, in orchestral and chamber music, and even in his sonatas for violin solo. The ...
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Fugue for J. S. Bach was a natural language; he wrote fugues in organ toccatas and voluntaries, in masses and motets, in orchestral and chamber music, and even in his sonatas for violin solo. The more intimate fugues he wrote for keyboard are among the greatest, most influential, and best-loved works in all of Western music. They have long been the foundation of the keyboard repertory, played by beginning students and world-famous virtuosi alike. This book discusses the author's favorite Bach keyboard fugues—some of them among the best-known fugues and others much less familiar—and reveals the inner workings of these pieces, linking the form of the fugues with their many different characters and expressive qualities, and illuminating what makes them particularly beautiful, powerful, and moving.Less
Fugue for J. S. Bach was a natural language; he wrote fugues in organ toccatas and voluntaries, in masses and motets, in orchestral and chamber music, and even in his sonatas for violin solo. The more intimate fugues he wrote for keyboard are among the greatest, most influential, and best-loved works in all of Western music. They have long been the foundation of the keyboard repertory, played by beginning students and world-famous virtuosi alike. This book discusses the author's favorite Bach keyboard fugues—some of them among the best-known fugues and others much less familiar—and reveals the inner workings of these pieces, linking the form of the fugues with their many different characters and expressive qualities, and illuminating what makes them particularly beautiful, powerful, and moving.
Yolanda Plumley
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199915088
- eISBN:
- 9780199369713
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199915088.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Fourteenth-century France witnessed the emergence of a new school of lyric, as the so-called formes fixes crystallized and the Ars nova revolutionized musical practice. Charting the emergence of this ...
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Fourteenth-century France witnessed the emergence of a new school of lyric, as the so-called formes fixes crystallized and the Ars nova revolutionized musical practice. Charting the emergence of this new lyric order from ca. 1300 to ca. 1380, The Art of Grafted Song demonstrates that despite these new departures, the long-established principle of borrowing within French lyric continued to inspire poets and composers. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, this study traces citation, quotation, allusion, and other kinds of appropriations in fourteenth-century lyrics with and without music to build a more intimate understanding of song at this time and of the shared experience of poetry and music. It argues that citational practice was integral to experiments in form, genre, and style that gave rise to the new tradition. Exploring textual and musical reminiscences enhances our understanding of how poets and composers devised their works and engaged one another and their audiences in formal contests or puys and in informal lyric displays, and casts light on the reception and circulation of individual works. It also provides valuable clues about when, where, and in which milieus the polyphonic chanson and its sister lyric forms emerged and flourished. It reveals that older works often persisted longer in the shared imagination than we tend to suppose; we learn, too, about attitudes to authorship and the importance of memory in this age of literacy. All this enables us to better contextualize the contribution of Guillaume de Machaut, who is traditionally viewed as the great pioneer of lyric composition in this period, shedding light on his compositional process, on what he learned from his predecessors, and how he honed his art in response to his contemporaries.Less
Fourteenth-century France witnessed the emergence of a new school of lyric, as the so-called formes fixes crystallized and the Ars nova revolutionized musical practice. Charting the emergence of this new lyric order from ca. 1300 to ca. 1380, The Art of Grafted Song demonstrates that despite these new departures, the long-established principle of borrowing within French lyric continued to inspire poets and composers. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, this study traces citation, quotation, allusion, and other kinds of appropriations in fourteenth-century lyrics with and without music to build a more intimate understanding of song at this time and of the shared experience of poetry and music. It argues that citational practice was integral to experiments in form, genre, and style that gave rise to the new tradition. Exploring textual and musical reminiscences enhances our understanding of how poets and composers devised their works and engaged one another and their audiences in formal contests or puys and in informal lyric displays, and casts light on the reception and circulation of individual works. It also provides valuable clues about when, where, and in which milieus the polyphonic chanson and its sister lyric forms emerged and flourished. It reveals that older works often persisted longer in the shared imagination than we tend to suppose; we learn, too, about attitudes to authorship and the importance of memory in this age of literacy. All this enables us to better contextualize the contribution of Guillaume de Machaut, who is traditionally viewed as the great pioneer of lyric composition in this period, shedding light on his compositional process, on what he learned from his predecessors, and how he honed his art in response to his contemporaries.
1895
1929
1971
1989
42
“A Gentleman and an Officer”
‘A Nation of Beggars’?
The A Priori in Philosophy
A. J. Appasamy and his Reading of Rāmānuja
