In 2011 Pfau-Verlag launched Schriften der Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, a series devoted to writings by members of the Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik. The first book in the series is Mind the gap! Medienkonstellationen zwischen zeitgenössischer Musik und Klangkunst, which presents essays focusing on works that explore the gaps between media formats in the contemporary music scene.
Comments Off on Schriften der Frankfurter Gesellschaft für Neue Musik
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, New series
Launched by the Fundación Juan March in 2011, Clamor: Colección Digital de Música Española presents open-access documentation of performances of over 800 Spanish works—mostly from the 20th or 21st century—at over 130 concerts presented by the Foundation since its inception in 1975.
In addition to the concert recordings, this resource presents pre-concert talks given by composers or specialists, program notes, scores, photographs, and over 230 composer biographies and works lists.
Below, Suzana Stefanović performs Jesús Rueda’s Love song nº 3 at the Foundation in October 2011.
Comments Off on Clamor: Colección Digital de Música Española
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources
Sonic constructs is an interactive sound installation that uses LEGO Mindstorms™ semi-automata musical robots; it was created by Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, and Graham McAllistair.
In Sonic constructs, two robotic devices move and interact while performing trajectories that produce sound as a by-product of the movement itself. Direction, speed, acceleration, position, scratching, and collision characterize an environment for kinetic and acoustic participation.
This according to “Sonic constructs: Robotics and the residue of sound” by Rebelo and McAllistair, an essay included in Systems research in the arts. VI: Music, environmental design, and the choreography of space (Windsor: International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics, pp. 58–62).
Images, sound clips, and a video are here.
Related articles:
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Curiosities, Science
Launched by Edinburgh University Press in March 2011, The new soundtrack (ISSN 2042-8855; EISSN 2042-8863) presents cutting-edge academic and professional perspectives on the complex relationship between sound and moving images. The journal also encourages writing on more current developments, such as sound installations, computer-based delivery, and the psychology of the interaction of image and sound.
Alongside academic contributions, The new soundtrack includes contributions from practitioners in the field—composers, sound designers, and directors—giving voice to the development of professional practices. Each issue also features a short compilation of book and film reviews.
Comments Off on The new soundtrack
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, New periodicals
The College Music Society inaugurated the series Cultural expressions in music in 2010 with The tango in American piano music: Selected tangos by Thomson, Copland, Barber, Jaggard, Biscardi, and Bolcom by Oscar Macchioni. The book explores works from 1920 to 1990 that represent diverse musical styles, including tonal and non-tonal musical languages and both structural and improvisational writing.
Comments Off on Cultural expressions in music
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, New series
For an experiment involving both acoustical and MIDI data, the German pianist Armin Fuchs made an uninterrupted recording of Satie’s Vexations, fulfilling the composer’s apparent indication that the piece should be repeated 840 times; the performance lasted nearly 28 hours.
Tempo and loudness remained stable over the first 14 hours of alertness; after 15 hours a state of trance ensued, resulting in a destabilization of tempo followed by uncontrolled deviations in loudness.
This according to “Tempo and loudness analysis of a continuous 28-hour performance of Erik Satie’s composition Vexations” by Reinhard Kopiez, Marc Bangert, Werner Goebl, and Eckart Altenmüller (Journal of new music research XXXII/3 [September 2003], pp. 243–258).
Above, the full text of Satie’s composition. The official Satie website, which includes rare film footage, is here.
Below, a brief exposition of the work.
Comments Off on Vexing the pianist
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Curiosities, Performance practice, Science
When he coined the term sonorystyka in the 1950s, Józef Michał Chomiński (1906–94) considered sonoristics a new branch of study centered on the sound technique of a composition. Discernible as early as certain works by Debussy, sonoristics involves a whole new layer of a musical work that emphasizes its actual sound, transcending older approaches in which structural elements were considered independently of their sonorous realization.
Among his expositions of his sonoristic theories, Chomiński showed how the first six measures of Webern’s Die Sonne (op. 14, no. 1) present no traces of melody or harmony in the traditional sense; rather, they embody a full transformation of both concepts into a sonic universe regulated by timbre, rhythm, and register contrasts.
This according to “Rediscovering sonoristics: A groundbreaking theory from the margins of musicology” by Zbigniew Granat, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history. Below, a performance of Webern’s op. 14; Chomiński’s example begins the set.
Comments Off on Rediscovering sonoristics
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Theory
Developed by Jennifer Thomas of the University of Florida’s School of Music, Motet database catalog online indexes manuscripts and printed anthologies of motets produced between 1475 and 1600 and contains about 33,000 motet and Mass Proper appearances. Each part of each motet is indexed as a separate record; the total number of records stands at 50,040.
The database allows scholars the flexibility to investigate the motet and its many contexts from multiple vantage points simultaneously by enabling sorting on various fields separately and in combination, a type of inquiry that is not possible on a large scale with printed books. Users can also search for specific words or groups of words, for particular names, or for many items in combination. Scholars with specific questions can isolate the data that will best serve their needs.
Filed under Renaissance, Resources, Source studies
In Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caráter (Macunaíma, the hero without character) by the Brazilian musicologist, ethnomusicologist, poet, and cultural activist Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), the title character leaves his home deep in the jungle for a mystical quest to São Paulo to retrieve the muiraquitã, an amulet said to embody all of the history and traditions of his culture. Macunaíma succeeds in his mission, but in the process he undergoes a series of dramatic transformations; finally, he is changed into a constellation. He leaves for the firmament with a cryptic remark: He was not brought into the world to be a stone.
The story can be read as a metaphor for the cultural developments that Andrade helped to shape: He advocated bringing the jungle to the city to create the modernist aesthetic of brasilidade that informed the growth of the Brazilian creative arts and the parallel development of musicology and ethnomusicology there. Like Macunaíma, Brazilian modernism did not come into the world to be a stone, with all its implications of rigidity, contour, and well-defined boundaries—rather, brasilidade relishes improvisation, exploration, and fluid boundaries that can be perpetually transformed.
This according to “Macunaíma out of the woods: The intersection of musicology and ethnomusicology in Brazil” by James Melo, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history.
Related article: Tropicália and Bahia
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Ethnomusicology, Literature, Musicologists
The series Schola Cantorum Basiliensis: Scripta was inaugurated by Schwabe Verlag in 2009 with Die frühen Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs: Stil, Chronologie, Satztechnik by Jean-Claude Zehnder. The book follows the young composer’s development from 1699 to 1708, showing how even in his teens Bach’s compositions evinced an innovative, experimental mind at work.
Filed under Baroque era, New series
featured – Bibliolore
