- University of Vienna, Musicology, Adjunctadd
- Music Theory, Music History, Composition (Music), Performance Studies, Human Perception and Performance, Perception, and 31 moreRhythm, Aural Skills, Authenticity, Improvisation, Japanese Philosophy, Schenkerian Analysis, Sinology, Voice (Music), Chinese Studies, Neo-Riemannian Analysis, Musicology, Music Theater, Aesthetics, Ethnomusicology, Music Cognition, Music and Language, Music Psychology, Multimedia, History, Music, Poststructuralism, Psychological Analysis (Implication-Realization), Philosophy, Performance And Literature, Chinese Philosophy, Logic, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, History of Listening, Arcangelo Corelli, and 20th-century Japanese classical musicedit
- composer, music theorist, musicologist main fields of research: -Musical Analysis and Musical Performance -History ... morecomposer, music theorist, musicologist
main fields of research:
-Musical Analysis and Musical Performance
-History and Theory of Music Perception
-Theory and Analysis of 20th and 21st Century Music
-Intercultural Music History/Historiography, Theory and Aesthetics
-East Asian 20th Century Music
-Music and Narrativity
-Composers: Franz Schubert; Robert Schumann; Gustav Mahler; Edgard Varèse; Helmut Lachenmann; Giacinto Scelsi, Salvatore Sciarrino; Tan Dun
research project: Performing, Experiencing and Theorizing Augmented Listening [PETAL], 2017-2020
http://petal.kug.ac.atedit
This book tries to produce an understanding of “music as an art of perception” (Helmut Lachenmann) – which is becoming increasingly important in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries – in a way that is fruitful for musicology: the... more
This book tries to produce an understanding of “music as an art of perception” (Helmut Lachenmann) – which is becoming increasingly important in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries – in a way that is fruitful for musicology: the intertwined concepts of performative analysis and performative listening move perception processes into the centre of musicological methodology. On the one hand, Christian Utz embeds the central position of sound, time, and space in new music since 1900 in broad music-historical and music-aesthetic discourses, on the other hand, he understands sounding materiality as the starting point for listening-based analytical research, grounded in the principle of musical morphosyntax. As a performative activity, the perception of post-tonal music can be shaped in a variety of ways through the experiences of everyday auditory perception and musical listening and is characterized by an interweaving of morphological and metaphorical layers. The analyses reveal new perspectives on a broad spectrum of post-tonal instrumental music by Arnold Schoenberg, Edgard Varèse, Giacinto Scelsi, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Gérard Grisey, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Isabel Mundry.
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Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally – a challenge that musicology... more
Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally – a challenge that musicology has hardly faced yet. This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the 20th and 21st century. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled histories, and reflexive globalization. The relationship between music and broader changes in society forms the central focus and is treated as a pivotal music-historical dynamic.
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In the 1990’s interculturality became a main issue of new music. This study provides detailed analyses of East-Asian and Western composers’ intercultural concepts in their historical context. It also emphasizes social and political... more
In the 1990’s interculturality became a main issue of new music. This study provides detailed analyses of East-Asian and Western composers’ intercultural concepts in their historical context. It also emphasizes social and political implications and the continuity of stereotypes and spheres of power dating back to colonialism and exoticism. After introducing leading composers of both cultural spheres since 1950, the focus is on the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun whose music aptly shows the potential of intercultural processes for musical creativity. The first in-depth analytical study of Tan's works is provided here.
Contents:
Intercultural reception within compositional processes — Western music on East-Asia since 1950: Dialogue or monologue? (Cage, Britten, Stockhausen, Kagel et al.) — East-Asian music since 1950: Between adaptation and difference (Yun Isang, Chou Wen-Chung, Takemitsu Toru et al.) — Tan Dun 1957-1996: Cultural polyvalence
Contents:
Intercultural reception within compositional processes — Western music on East-Asia since 1950: Dialogue or monologue? (Cage, Britten, Stockhausen, Kagel et al.) — East-Asian music since 1950: Between adaptation and difference (Yun Isang, Chou Wen-Chung, Takemitsu Toru et al.) — Tan Dun 1957-1996: Cultural polyvalence
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Im folgenden wollen wir versuchen, auf der Basis der im 1. Kapitel gewonnenen Erkenntnisse konkrete kompositorische Ansätze zu beschreiben, in denen sich bei westlichen (Il) und ostasiatischen (IIl, IV) Komponisten Prozesse der... more
Im folgenden wollen wir versuchen, auf der Basis der im 1. Kapitel gewonnenen Erkenntnisse konkrete kompositorische Ansätze zu beschreiben, in denen sich bei westlichen (Il) und ostasiatischen (IIl, IV) Komponisten Prozesse der interkulturel-len Rezeption niederschlagen. Die Beschreibung der Rezeptionsprozesse basiert im wesentlichen auf bereits publizierten Untersuchungen und wird mit Hilfe unserer Rezeptionskategorien systematisiert. Es wird dabei unmöglich sein, jedes Detail der Rezeptionsvorgänge auf all seine Implikationen hin zu untersuchen. So wird insbe-sondere die Frage, wie die vom Komponisten konstruierten Traditionsbezüge sich zu historisch-musikethnologischen Fakten verhalten, hier oftmals noch keine befrie-digende Antwort finden können. Eine solche bedingt eine umfassendere Betrachtung eines kompositorischen Ansatzes, wie wir sie im IV. Kapitel anhand Tan Duns Mu-sik bieten werden. Die Auswahl der ausführlicher untersuchten westlichen Komponisten orientiert sich zum einen an den unterschiedlichen Grundhaltungen, mit denen so ein breites Spektrum absteckt werden kann. Zum anderen war die Breitenwirkung und der Ein-fluss, den die Komponisten ausgeübt haben, zu berücksichtigen. Deshalb sind mit Cage, Britten, Stockhausen und Kagel vier "Klassiker" des 20. Jahrhunderts ins Vi-sier genommen, während im fünften Teil Tendenzen der näheren Gegenwart zusam-meneef.(lsst (iarr;estellt sind. Dennoch ist es nicht zu vermeiden, dass unsere Auswahl lückenhaft bleibt. Der Grund für diese Begrenzung liegt darin, dass hier keine historisch oder regional lü-ckenlose Darstellung angestrebt ist, sondern lediglich ein Nachzeichnen einiger Haupttendenzen, die es uns danach erlauben, die neue Musik Ostasiens und insbe-sondere die genauer betrachtete Musik Tan Duns in einem historisch-geografischen Kontext zu sehen. Immerhin soll der abschließende Abschnitt dieses Teils in einer Art Querschnitt auch einige Grundhaltungen andeuten, die in den vier monografi-schen Teilen nicht vorkommen. Die historischen Voraussetzungen der Komponisten in den 1950er Jahren wur-den oben mit den Ausführungen zum naiven und intuitiven Exotismus bereits aus-führlicher behandelt (1.3.1., I.3.4). Seit den 1950er Jahren ändern sich einige Vor-aussetzungen interkultureller Rezeption grundlegend, während andererseits zweifellos Konstanten zu erkennen sind. Der Zweite Weltkrieg führt einerseits zu einem neuen Bewusstsein globaler Interdependenzen. Ob sich die Mechanismen des interkulturellen Rezipierens allerdings dadurch grundsätzlich ändern, muss die De-tailanalyse zeigen. Moden, neo-religiöse und spirituelle Strömungen, New Age, Eso-terik, Personen-und Gurukulte, das Schlagwort der Weltmusik oder Ethno-Pop ste-hen insgesamt eher fur eine instrumentalisierende Vereinnahrnung des Fremden oft unter pragmatischen, zweckdienlichen oder kommerziellen Gesichtspunkten. Sie offenbaren andererseits aber auch einen fortbestehenden massiven Zweifel des Wes-tens an seinen eigenen spirituellen und kulturellen Grundlagen und ein Bedürfnis nach kultureller Kontexterweiterung. In diesem Spannungsfeld sind die im folgen-den dargestellten Beiträge westlicher Komponisten zu verstehen.
Die in diesem Kapitel behandelten historischen und analytischen Aspekte der neuen Musik Ostasiens sind analog zum 11. Kapitel zunächst auf einige Hauptakteure der älteren Generation ostasiatischer Komponisten zentriert (2.-5.) bevor am... more
Die in diesem Kapitel behandelten historischen und analytischen Aspekte der neuen Musik Ostasiens sind analog zum 11. Kapitel zunächst auf einige Hauptakteure der älteren Generation ostasiatischer Komponisten zentriert (2.-5.) bevor am Ende kurz einige Tendenzen der näheren Gegenwart zusammengefasst sind (6.). Im Gegensatz zu den teils detaillierten Analysen des vorangegangenen Kapitels werden wir uns dabei auf das Nachzeichnen wesentlicher Grundzüge beschränken, da hier in erster Linie eine Ausgangsbasis und ein historisch-kultureller Kontext rur die genaue Be-trachtung der Musik Tan Duns im IV. Kapitel geschaffen werden solL Es wird dabei zunächst notwendig sein, die rur die Musikgeschichte Japans, Chinas und Koreas im 20. Jahrhundert relevanten zeitgeschichtlichen Fakten und Strömungen zu skizzieren (1.), so dass historische und soziokulturelle Implikationen des Komponierens von Yun Isang (2.), Chou Wen-Chung (3.), und Takemitsu Törn (4.) ersichtlich werden können. Die Haltung dieser Komponisten gegenüber unse-rem Hauptuntersuchungsfeld, der interkulturellen Rezeption, wird dann durch eine Darstellung einiger Hauptwerke und von Äußerungen der Komponisten eingekreist, wobei nach einer Zusammenfassung (5.) anschließend auch verwandte und konträre Haltungen einiger Vertreter der jüngeren Generation skizziert werden (6.). Dies wird eine direkte Überleitung zum folgenden Kapitel (IV.) erlauben, in dem mit Tan Dun ein Hauptvertreter dieser Generation ausfuhrlich diskutiert wird. Dieses IIL Kapitel soll der Frage nachgehen, inwieweit die Komponisten Ost-asiens in ihrer Verbindung von westlicher und ostasiatischer (Musik-)Tradition Er-gebnisse hervorbringen, die sich wesentlich von den im IL Kapitel analysierten un-terscheiden. Anders gefragt: Überwiegt die Angleichung an westliche musikalische Modelle und Konventionen oder ruhrt der kulturelle Hintergrund der Komponisten zu einer Art der Rezeption, die ihre kulturelle Differenz erfolgreich artikuliert, die möglicherweise sogar versucht, bewusst einen Gegendiskurs zu Hauptströmungen
Insgesamt 152 Gesamteinspielungen von Gustav Mahlers „Lied von der Erde“ (Stand 2018) durch 98 verschiedene Dirigenten erlauben einen äußerst differenzierten Blick auf die Interpretationsgeschichte dieses Werkes. Diesem Beitrag liegt eine... more
Insgesamt 152 Gesamteinspielungen von Gustav Mahlers „Lied von der Erde“ (Stand 2018) durch 98 verschiedene Dirigenten erlauben einen äußerst differenzierten Blick auf die Interpretationsgeschichte dieses Werkes. Diesem Beitrag liegt eine quantitative Auswertung von insgesamt 96 Aufnahmen (Zeitraum 1936–2016) zugrunde, von denen 52 eingehender in Bezug auf die Interpretation der Form des gewichtigen Finalsatzes „Der Abschied“ betrachtet werden. Die Aufnahmen werden ausgehend von einer narrativen Analyse der Form des Satzes, die das Modell der „rotational form“ (Hepokoski/Darcy 2006) zugrunde legt und erweitert, zunächst im Sinne eines ‚distant listening‘ (Cook 2013) in Hinblick auf die Stellung des Finales innerhalb des Gesamtzyklus interpretiert. Die daraus abgeleiteten Modelle zyklischer Gesamtdramaturgie (Rahmenform, Finalform, anti-teleologische Konzepte, Mischformen) werden dann in einem zweiten Schritt in einer Betrachtung der ‚interpretierten Form‘ des Schlusssatzes vertieft. Anhand qualitativer Beobachtungen zu ausgewählten Interpretationen (u. a. Walter 1936, Klemperer 1966, Bernstein 1966, Horenstein 1972, Karajan 1974, Gielen 2002) werden vor dem Hintergrund des Korpus zwei gegensätzliche Dramaturgien unterschieden: Eine hält die gewählten Tempi zumindest innerhalb der einzelnen Formcharaktere (Rezitativ, Trauermarsch, Lied, „Arie“), ggf. aber auch über den gesamten Satz hinweg, verhältnismäßig stabil und vermittelt so den Eindruck eines als Referenz dienenden Haupttempos, die andere inszeniert bewusst Kontraste zwischen den und innnerhalb der Tempoebenen und zielt so auf eine formale Profilierung der komponierten Zeit. Auf dieser Basis plädiert der Beitrag für eine differenzierte historisch-analytische Einordnung einzelner Interpretationskonzepte jenseits etablierter Kategorien wie „espressivo“ oder „neusachlich“.
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Tables and diagrams pertaining to the article "Form und Sinn in Gustav Mahlers Abschied" (2019)
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The challenge of reconstructing Gustav Mahlerʼs aesthetics and style of performance, which incorporated expressive and structuralist principles, as well as problematic implications of a post-Mahlerian structuralist performance style (most... more
The challenge of reconstructing Gustav Mahlerʼs aesthetics and style of performance, which incorporated expressive and structuralist principles, as well as problematic implications of a post-Mahlerian structuralist performance style (most prominently developed by the Schoenberg School) are taken in this article as the background for a discussion of the performance history of Mahlerʼs Lied von der Erde with the aim of probing the model of “performance as analysis in real time” (Robert Hill). Following a method proposed by Nicholas Cook, the article interrelates quantitative tempo analyses of recorded performances (“distant listening”) and analytical observations of musical details in individual interpretations (“close listening”) in order to explore the broad field of performance strategies that Mahlerʼs music affords. Different options for taking tempo and sound dramaturgy as a means of structuring the formal process in performance in 23 recordings of the Liedʼs first movement bring out different facets of its multivalent structure between strophic lied and rotational symphonic sonata, between architectonic and processual form. An outlook on the performance dramaturgies of the entire six-movement cycle, based on quantitative data from 92 recordings as well as on a close listening to a key section from the finale, demonstrates contrary concepts of performed form that particularly concern the proportional weight and significance of the finale: performances of Der Abschied conceptualize it either as a unique, “disproportional” telos of the cyclic formal process, optionally enhancing its fragmentary character, or as a balanced counterpart to the first and second movements, amplifying the symphonic framing of the cycle. Although the technique of using tempo as a means of “formal analysis in real time” may plausibly be traced back to Mahlerʼs own interpretative practice, “authentic” and “inauthentic” readings of Mahlerʼs Lied cannot ultimately be neatly segregated from one another.
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Composed, Interpreted and Perceived Time: The Integration of Temporal Structures into a Performative Analysis – a Discussion with Reference to J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations – Recent developments in interpretation research and... more
Composed, Interpreted and Perceived Time: The Integration of Temporal Structures into a Performative Analysis – a Discussion with Reference to J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations – Recent developments in interpretation research and performance studies have raised doubts as to whether musical performances genuinely, as often claimed, underline ›structural‹ properties of musical works. Rather, spontaneous, unorthodox ways of treating tempo and dynamics – ›accents pathétiques‹ (Mathis Lussy) – are used to establish relationships that a conventional score analysis can barely pick up or dictate. Against this background, the present essay attempts to grasp Variation 21 from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and its position within the overall temporal framework by means of a ›performative analysis‹ integrating structure-, interpretation- and reception-analytical aspects, and on the basis of a categorial model of temporal perception in music (›spatialized time‹, ›transformative time‹, ›presentist time‹). Here Robert Hill’s idea of performance as ›formal analysis in real time‹ acts as the starting-point for detailed analytical observations on micro- and macro-form amid the tensions of interpretation history. What transpires, especially in the comparison of different tempo dispositions for the entire cycle, is a tension between architectural coherence and a discontinuity in which spatialized time is broken through in the direction of presentist time, or allows itself to be carried along in the mobility of transformative time.
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The tension between a realtime-oriented conception of music as a flow of emphemeral sounds or events, closely associated with the organicist metaphor, and a spatial or architectonic conception of musical relationships, emerging from the... more
The tension between a realtime-oriented conception of music as a flow of emphemeral sounds or events, closely associated with the organicist metaphor, and a spatial or architectonic conception of musical relationships, emerging from the centuries-old “frozen architecture” metaphor, lies at the heart of the theory and analysis of musical form from its beginnings as an academic discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. Revisiting the controversial debate in historical music theories (Marx, Riemann, Schenker, Schoenberg, Kurth et al.) up to the “spatial turn” in new music aesthetics, the present essay argues for a close interdependency of spatial and temporal aspects in the analysis of musical form. Based on a perception- and performance-sensitive analytical approach, three main case studies from different epochs (Guillaume Dufay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores, Joseph Haydn’s symphonies Hob. I: 55, 86 and 91 and Edgard Varèse’s Arcana for orchestra) demonstrate the continuous impact and relevance of quasi-spatial “markers” in time as crucial aspects of a conception and perception of form while revealing evident transformational and processual qualities. By connecting these dimensions of formal “time-space” with historical discourses and contexts, the analyses aim at a convergence of speculative compositional practice and historically informed aesthetic experience.
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The present article aims to develop an approach to musical meaning that integrates performative dimensions systematically into a broadened concept of analysis, connecting particularly to recent research into the temporal qualities of... more
The present article aims to develop an approach to musical meaning that integrates performative dimensions systematically into a broadened concept of analysis, connecting particularly to recent research into the temporal qualities of musical perception. Taking three key works from the solo cello repertoire of the 1960s and ’70s – Helmut Lachenmann's Pression, Iannis Xenakis's Nomos Alpha and Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study II – as a basic corpus of study, this ‘morphosyntactic’ view of sound structure is complemented with a comparison of different recordings of these three works by interpreting software-based collections of data of timing and tempo as well as close listening, in addition to documentation of the composers’ and performers’ conceptions of time and tempo. The analyses propose an interaction of three different categories of form-building time-space concepts that are deeply embedded in the history of music theory and aesthetics: ‘spatial time’, ‘processual time’ and ‘presentist time’. Performers may shift between or merge these three archetypes by varying temporal and dynamic consistency or contrast, among other means. The performance-related data are compared with the perspectives of performers and composers, corroborating the space of ‘informed intuition’ even in the performance of these very prescriptively notated scores and demonstrating on multiple levels the continuous impact of ‘rhetorical’ performance traditions (despite or within their compositional deconstruction) in the music of the postwar and contemporary avant-garde.
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Project duration: March 1, 2012 - December 31, 2014 Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We... more
Project duration: March 1, 2012 - December 31, 2014
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We understand ‘post-tonal music’ as newly composed music that is no longer based entirely on harmonic tonality, a system which dominated Western art music between c. 1700 and 1910. We proceed from the assumption that the perception of post-tonal music is generally informed by both our experience of tonal listening and by our everyday auditive experience. Methods applied during the research included perception-informed score analysis, sketch studies, comparison of performances, sound spectrum analysis, explorative listening experiments as well as the integration of historico-cultural and music-psychological research. Our studies proceeded from the key concepts ‘organization of sound’ and ‘context sensitivity’: An organization of sound during the act of perception, understood as a broad field of possibilities, corresponding or non-corresponding to a composer’s intentions, may be correlated to the diverse intra-musical contexts in which one sound can be placed within a single work, or to the different strategies and emphases implied in diverse performances or recordings of a musical text. The analyses integrate numerous further aspects such as historical discourses on the experience of sound and time since the late 18th century (attempts at an emancipation of sound from musical structures or of the moment from a temporal architecture etc.).
The research into a very broad repertoire of art music since 1910 up to the present resulted in the key thesis that the perception of post-tonal music may be understood as a performative phenomenon which is manifoldly shapeable. Such ‘performative listening’ can be understood as a conscious or unconscious oscillation between different perceptual interpretations of the same sound-time phe-nomenon, interpretations which can be explicated by ‘performative analysis’. Complex structures and the ‘sabotage’ of conventional sound-time dramaturgies, which frequently occur in post-tonal music, may particularly direct perception to elementary processes such as the formation of gestalts and contours, streaming (the segregation of sound layers or lines), segmentation of the sound-time process by the formation of cues etc. – concepts proposed by experimentally grounded research into musical perception (A. Bregman, I. Déliège et al). By establishing such concepts, composers often aim at a self-reflexive form of »perception perceiving itself« (Helmut Lachenmann).
In sum, the materials drawn together in this project may be understood as a necessary corrective to persistent author-centric models in studies of 20th-century music. A critical assessment and continuous interaction between author-based and reception-based perspectives, however, remains its fundamental principle.
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We understand ‘post-tonal music’ as newly composed music that is no longer based entirely on harmonic tonality, a system which dominated Western art music between c. 1700 and 1910. We proceed from the assumption that the perception of post-tonal music is generally informed by both our experience of tonal listening and by our everyday auditive experience. Methods applied during the research included perception-informed score analysis, sketch studies, comparison of performances, sound spectrum analysis, explorative listening experiments as well as the integration of historico-cultural and music-psychological research. Our studies proceeded from the key concepts ‘organization of sound’ and ‘context sensitivity’: An organization of sound during the act of perception, understood as a broad field of possibilities, corresponding or non-corresponding to a composer’s intentions, may be correlated to the diverse intra-musical contexts in which one sound can be placed within a single work, or to the different strategies and emphases implied in diverse performances or recordings of a musical text. The analyses integrate numerous further aspects such as historical discourses on the experience of sound and time since the late 18th century (attempts at an emancipation of sound from musical structures or of the moment from a temporal architecture etc.).
The research into a very broad repertoire of art music since 1910 up to the present resulted in the key thesis that the perception of post-tonal music may be understood as a performative phenomenon which is manifoldly shapeable. Such ‘performative listening’ can be understood as a conscious or unconscious oscillation between different perceptual interpretations of the same sound-time phe-nomenon, interpretations which can be explicated by ‘performative analysis’. Complex structures and the ‘sabotage’ of conventional sound-time dramaturgies, which frequently occur in post-tonal music, may particularly direct perception to elementary processes such as the formation of gestalts and contours, streaming (the segregation of sound layers or lines), segmentation of the sound-time process by the formation of cues etc. – concepts proposed by experimentally grounded research into musical perception (A. Bregman, I. Déliège et al). By establishing such concepts, composers often aim at a self-reflexive form of »perception perceiving itself« (Helmut Lachenmann).
In sum, the materials drawn together in this project may be understood as a necessary corrective to persistent author-centric models in studies of 20th-century music. A critical assessment and continuous interaction between author-based and reception-based perspectives, however, remains its fundamental principle.
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Im 20. Jahrhundert wird vor dem Hintergrund der ästhetischen Moderne eine umfassende "Emanzipation" von Klang und Zeit in der Musik projektiert. Dabei ist deutlich, dass eine "Befreiung" des Klangs von etablierten Klangbeziehungen bzw.... more
Im 20. Jahrhundert wird vor dem Hintergrund der ästhetischen Moderne eine umfassende "Emanzipation" von Klang und Zeit in der Musik projektiert. Dabei ist deutlich, dass eine "Befreiung" des Klangs von etablierten Klangbeziehungen bzw. von jeglicher metaphorischer Kausalität eng verbunden ist mit einer "Befreiung" der Zeit von "chronometrisch" organisierten oder dramaturgisch ausgestalteten Zeit-Konzepten. Bernd Alois Zimmermann hat mit seinen Überlegungen und Werkkonzepten eine Spielart dieser Tendenz hervorgebracht. Das im Spätwerk Zimmermanns in diesem Zusammenhang entwickelte Konzept der "Zeitdehnung" wird in einen breiteren Kontext gestellt mit anderen kompositorischen Ausprägungen von "Präsenzästhetik" in der Musik nach 1945. Dabei wird das Modell eines "Präsenzhörens" einer Prüfung unterzogen. Analytische Grundlage ist dabei ein vom Autor entwickeltes morphosyntaktisches Analysekonzept, das von psychologischen und ideengeschichtlichen Schichten der Musikwahrnehmung ausgeht und dabei auf Zusammenhänge zwischen temporalisierten Klangstrukturen und meraphorsicher Bedeutung zielt.
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A short perception-based analysis of Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cellist (1969/70) serves as point of departure for a general discussion of sound and perception as key methodological elements in the analysis and interpretation of... more
A short perception-based analysis of Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cellist (1969/70) serves as point of departure for a general discussion of sound and perception as key methodological elements in the analysis and interpretation of post-tonal music and in their historical implications. Diverse perception strategies are applied to Pression: an »architectural« strategy, based on cross-references between salient cues in the sound surface, a transformation-oriented strategy, based on »categorical transformation« between noise and pitch, and strategies that emerge from the experience of presence and aspects of performance practice.
From this analytical sketch emerges a provisional threefold definition of sound which tentatively suggests (1) that the term includes the entire spectrum between isolated sine waves and unpitched noises of maximal spectral complexity, (2) that there is no viable distinction between musical and non-musical sounds as it is not the property of an acoustic event, but only our interpretation of it that makes it part of a »musical« or »non-musical« context, and (3) that, consequently, our perception has the capacity to »organize« any acoustic event into a »sound«.
Such a »liberal« and context-oriented definition motivates a historical review of the concept of sound and related perception theories since the late eighteenth century. Sound has been a prominent »Other« in nineteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, disciplined mainly by »form«, »structure«, or »logic«, supported by eye- and architecture-related metaphorical language. An early emancipation of sound, in contrast, was articulated through ear- and »wave«- or »stream«-related metaphors that profoundly influenced modernist music aesthetics (Herder, Richard Wagner). Facets of this discourse can be traced to the association of sound with the world of the unconscious and suppressed emotions as well as the discussion about the concealment or disclosure of a sound’s source. This debate expanded well into the later twentieth century including criticism of Wagner’s »objective sound« (Adorno), theories of »acousmatic listening« (Schaeffer, Scruton), »musique concrète instrumentale« (Lachenmann), and the twofold model of »hearing-in« (Hamilton).
Music theory has yet to cope with the emancipation of sound as a primary category in the twentieth century as it was, and in part still is, limited by the persistence of a hierarchical »surface-depth metaphor« that places (sub-)structural relationships above »surface events«. The morphosyntactic analytical methodology, developed as part of the research project A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-Tonal Sound Organization (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2012–2014), in contrast, aims to place a bodily-perceptual experience of sound events at the centre of analytical attention, based on three principal preliminaries: (1) the theory assigns a prominent role to the interaction of morphological (Gestalt-oriented) and syntactic (time-oriented) perceptual processes based on syntactic archetypes (tension/release, call/response, presence etc.); (2) it does not idealize a particular listening strategy, but aims at a multiplicity of perception modes that provide the basis for »performative listening«; (3) it understands musical perception as an interaction of cognitive factors and social construction with a particular focus on the relevance of everyday perception.
A concluding analytical sketch aims to demonstrate the interaction of the archetypes »tension/release« and »presence«. A short morphosyntactic analysis of the third movement from Giacinto Scelsi’s I Presagi (1958) demonstrates how the »flat«, non-hierarchical absence of a conventional »event structure«, provoking the perception of a timeless presence of sound, is juxtaposed with a breath-like, ritualistic phrase arching, suggesting a contemplative experience of sound transformed in time. »Performative listening« might be defined as a mode of perception that (consciously or intuitively) oscillates between such juxtaposed archetypes, allowing for an integration of a broad spectrum of meanings, associations, and emotions.
From this analytical sketch emerges a provisional threefold definition of sound which tentatively suggests (1) that the term includes the entire spectrum between isolated sine waves and unpitched noises of maximal spectral complexity, (2) that there is no viable distinction between musical and non-musical sounds as it is not the property of an acoustic event, but only our interpretation of it that makes it part of a »musical« or »non-musical« context, and (3) that, consequently, our perception has the capacity to »organize« any acoustic event into a »sound«.
Such a »liberal« and context-oriented definition motivates a historical review of the concept of sound and related perception theories since the late eighteenth century. Sound has been a prominent »Other« in nineteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, disciplined mainly by »form«, »structure«, or »logic«, supported by eye- and architecture-related metaphorical language. An early emancipation of sound, in contrast, was articulated through ear- and »wave«- or »stream«-related metaphors that profoundly influenced modernist music aesthetics (Herder, Richard Wagner). Facets of this discourse can be traced to the association of sound with the world of the unconscious and suppressed emotions as well as the discussion about the concealment or disclosure of a sound’s source. This debate expanded well into the later twentieth century including criticism of Wagner’s »objective sound« (Adorno), theories of »acousmatic listening« (Schaeffer, Scruton), »musique concrète instrumentale« (Lachenmann), and the twofold model of »hearing-in« (Hamilton).
Music theory has yet to cope with the emancipation of sound as a primary category in the twentieth century as it was, and in part still is, limited by the persistence of a hierarchical »surface-depth metaphor« that places (sub-)structural relationships above »surface events«. The morphosyntactic analytical methodology, developed as part of the research project A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-Tonal Sound Organization (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2012–2014), in contrast, aims to place a bodily-perceptual experience of sound events at the centre of analytical attention, based on three principal preliminaries: (1) the theory assigns a prominent role to the interaction of morphological (Gestalt-oriented) and syntactic (time-oriented) perceptual processes based on syntactic archetypes (tension/release, call/response, presence etc.); (2) it does not idealize a particular listening strategy, but aims at a multiplicity of perception modes that provide the basis for »performative listening«; (3) it understands musical perception as an interaction of cognitive factors and social construction with a particular focus on the relevance of everyday perception.
A concluding analytical sketch aims to demonstrate the interaction of the archetypes »tension/release« and »presence«. A short morphosyntactic analysis of the third movement from Giacinto Scelsi’s I Presagi (1958) demonstrates how the »flat«, non-hierarchical absence of a conventional »event structure«, provoking the perception of a timeless presence of sound, is juxtaposed with a breath-like, ritualistic phrase arching, suggesting a contemplative experience of sound transformed in time. »Performative listening« might be defined as a mode of perception that (consciously or intuitively) oscillates between such juxtaposed archetypes, allowing for an integration of a broad spectrum of meanings, associations, and emotions.
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Theories of musical syntax have rarely relied on simple music-language analogies but were rather conceived music-specifically. As in Hugo Riemann’s »Musikalische Syntaxis«, they often tried to systematize all feasible combinations of... more
Theories of musical syntax have rarely relied on simple music-language analogies but were rather conceived music-specifically. As in Hugo Riemann’s »Musikalische Syntaxis«, they often tried to systematize all feasible combinations of elementary musical components, e.g. triads or four-part chords. In contrast to these poietic accounts, the cognitive turn in music theory placed the conceptualization of a listener at the core of an understanding of musical syntax. Theories emerging from this background such as Lerdahl’s and Jackendoff’s »Generative Theory of Tonal Music«, however, are often limited by their simplistic separation of syntax and semantics and their nativist underpinnings, sometimes linked to mis-leading aesthetic judgements of post-tonal music.
The present essay aims to develop a perception-based, anti-essentialist theory of musical syntax, reacting to Albrecht Wellmer’s discussion of the syntax concept in music. Three aspects challenge the idea of a generalized syntax of music, in particular of post-tonal music: (1) The innovations of twentieth-century music have sensitised us to the contingency of musical progressions to the point where any two subsequent sound events can be perceived as syntactically meaningful. (2) Serial music and John Cage’s aesthetics have placed a dissolution of any pre-conceived kind of coherence at the centre of their attention, resulting in an emancipation of sound and musical presence from syntactic process. (3) The high degree of diversification of musical styles seems to undermine the idea of generalisable syntactic principles.
In response to this bold challenge of the syntax concept, the morphosyntactic model of musical syntax discussed here elaborates ideas from Albert Bergman’s »auditory scene analysis« and traces music-syntactic experience back to elemen-tary perception modes in everyday life, namely causal or categorical contiguity, equivalence, and similarity between sound events. These modes constantly switch between metaphorical and sensual-sonorous fields of auditory experience, a tension that is also traced in a number of musical examples. Although the three excerpts from works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arnold Schönberg share a common contrapuntal-harmonic model or schema (the »secunda syncopata«), interactions between relationships of contiguity and similarity, and a medium-scale tonic-dominant relationship, their enactment as represented by salient »surface« events is highly idiosyncratic and essential to the experience of syntax. In turn, three examples from post-tonal music (Schönberg: Piano Piece op. 11,3, Pierre Boulez: Structures Ia, Brian Ferney¬hough: Funérailles) demonstrate an increasing emancipation from tonal phrase structure and harmonic centrism, but nonetheless retain or even gain morphological profile through their reinventions of musical structure. Contour- and gestalt-based analyses make it clear that a morphosyntactically oriented perception of such works does manifoldly connect to elementary modes of everyday and tonal listening, suggesting a new model of post-tonal listening that ultimately frees itself from an author- and analysis-centred structuralist approach.
The present essay aims to develop a perception-based, anti-essentialist theory of musical syntax, reacting to Albrecht Wellmer’s discussion of the syntax concept in music. Three aspects challenge the idea of a generalized syntax of music, in particular of post-tonal music: (1) The innovations of twentieth-century music have sensitised us to the contingency of musical progressions to the point where any two subsequent sound events can be perceived as syntactically meaningful. (2) Serial music and John Cage’s aesthetics have placed a dissolution of any pre-conceived kind of coherence at the centre of their attention, resulting in an emancipation of sound and musical presence from syntactic process. (3) The high degree of diversification of musical styles seems to undermine the idea of generalisable syntactic principles.
In response to this bold challenge of the syntax concept, the morphosyntactic model of musical syntax discussed here elaborates ideas from Albert Bergman’s »auditory scene analysis« and traces music-syntactic experience back to elemen-tary perception modes in everyday life, namely causal or categorical contiguity, equivalence, and similarity between sound events. These modes constantly switch between metaphorical and sensual-sonorous fields of auditory experience, a tension that is also traced in a number of musical examples. Although the three excerpts from works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arnold Schönberg share a common contrapuntal-harmonic model or schema (the »secunda syncopata«), interactions between relationships of contiguity and similarity, and a medium-scale tonic-dominant relationship, their enactment as represented by salient »surface« events is highly idiosyncratic and essential to the experience of syntax. In turn, three examples from post-tonal music (Schönberg: Piano Piece op. 11,3, Pierre Boulez: Structures Ia, Brian Ferney¬hough: Funérailles) demonstrate an increasing emancipation from tonal phrase structure and harmonic centrism, but nonetheless retain or even gain morphological profile through their reinventions of musical structure. Contour- and gestalt-based analyses make it clear that a morphosyntactically oriented perception of such works does manifoldly connect to elementary modes of everyday and tonal listening, suggesting a new model of post-tonal listening that ultimately frees itself from an author- and analysis-centred structuralist approach.
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Structure and Perception: »Shape«, »Contour«, »Figure« and »Gesture« in Analyses of 20th- Century Music – In the history of theory and composition, the relationship between structure and perception has repeatedly been redefined. Although... more
Structure and Perception: »Shape«, »Contour«, »Figure« and »Gesture« in Analyses of 20th- Century Music – In the history of theory and composition, the relationship between structure and perception has repeatedly been redefined. Although leading music theorists have supported central tenets of their theories with the standards of our »hearing«, subsequent musical theories have nonetheless developed a highly normative, »prescriptive « tendency. By contrast, newer theoretical approaches increasingly tend towards making different, diverging perspectives of music perception plausible and appreciable. By focusing on aspects of perception, they converge with currents in recent compositional history in which a perceptually-based critique of compositional procedures served as a catalyst for new developments. Against this background, the present essay works on the assumption that musical structure and perception of shapes are fundamentally inseparable, though no linear or analogical relationship between them is constructed. Analytical considerations of selected 20th-century works (Arnold Schönberg: Piano Piece op.11,3; Igor Stravinsky: Threni; György Ligeti: Kyrie (Requiem); Gérard Grisey: Prologue; Brian Ferneyhough: Incipits) clarify this reciprocal relationship with reference to shape-theoretical, contour-theoretical (Robert D. Morris), figure-theoretical (Gilles Deleuze, Brian Ferneyhough) and gesture-theoretical (Robert Hatten) approaches. Different methods for visualizing progressions of shape and contour lead to an interaction of structural and perceptual perspectives. The analyses thus attempt to reveal ways of grasping even extremely complex works in the act of listening. The present text outlines the thesis that New Music often plunges the listener into elemental, sometimes reflex-like perceptual processes, thus enabling a mode of listening that is largely free of preconditions and contrasts markedly with the ideal of »educated listening« found in music theory around 1900.
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A comprehensive theory of how bodily experience, auditory perception and musical structure relate to one another has yet to be formulated. The concept of the body has been sometimes linked to a value discourse where much of post-1945... more
A comprehensive theory of how bodily experience, auditory perception and musical structure relate to one another has yet to be formulated. The concept of the body has been sometimes linked to a value discourse where much of post-1945 music, especially serial music, appears highly disembodied and thus least valuable, while tonal music – pop as well as classical-romantic music – is admitted a considerably higher degree of embodiment. Such criticism of serial music’s complex structures evading the listener is based on a surprisingly enduring misunderstanding, since direct correlations between serial structures and listening experience have never been intended by serial composers. Rather there is sufficient evidence that serial aesthetics incorporated aspects of listening expectation, auditory perception and bodily sensation from the beginning, a tendency highlighted and developed in the aesthetics of post-structuralist composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough or Gérard Grisey. The essay argues that serial and post-serial music might in fact be considered especially embodied as they aim to liberate musical processes from a conventional gestural repertoire and tonal centricity and thus tend to throw listeners back to elementary auditory reflexes such as contour and streaming detection rather than activating the memory-loaded associations of tonal music listening. Consequently, it appears that there is no firm connection between the degree of a music’s referentiality (especially its referentiality to tonal music) and its degree of embodiment.
Isabel Mundry’s music intends to relate to experiences of daily life and to produce referentiality with-out resorting to conventional musical gestures, figures or topics. In her work Ich und Du (2008) solo piano and orchestra go through several stages of an ambiguous identity discourse informed by the 1932-essay Watashi to nanji (I and You) of Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida. The personification and semantization of musical structures implied by this reference has gained significant prominence in new music discourse since the 1970s, predated by Olivier Messiaen’s personnages rhythmiques-metaphor and Theodor W. Adorno’s process-oriented interpretation of Mahler’s musical ‘characters’. This tendency reflects an increasing awareness of the necessity to reach beyond the non-referential and techno-essentialist paradigm of serialism.
A detailed morpho-syntactical analysis of Mundry’s work reveals the destabilization of sonic identities as a principal compositional means subverting the perception of complex sequences or juxtapositions of individual, distinguishable, ‘bodily’ Gestalten (emerging from three basic topics: attack, proliferation and resonance) to a ‘global’ perception. Piano and orchestra are mediated by diverse ‘chimeric assignments’ (Albert Bregman) and tilting movements between structure sound and texture sound (Helmut Lachenmann) resulting in a music-specific mode of narrativity. This compositional design together with the identity discourse suggested by the Nishida-reference of Mundry’s title are successfully evoking a polyvalent situation while avoiding a denotative coherence of musical meaning. By reflecting the instability and connectivity of identity concepts in today’s multiply stratified and fragmented societies, 'Ich und Du' exemplifies an utopia of art music’s social interaction and worldly experience.
Isabel Mundry’s music intends to relate to experiences of daily life and to produce referentiality with-out resorting to conventional musical gestures, figures or topics. In her work Ich und Du (2008) solo piano and orchestra go through several stages of an ambiguous identity discourse informed by the 1932-essay Watashi to nanji (I and You) of Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida. The personification and semantization of musical structures implied by this reference has gained significant prominence in new music discourse since the 1970s, predated by Olivier Messiaen’s personnages rhythmiques-metaphor and Theodor W. Adorno’s process-oriented interpretation of Mahler’s musical ‘characters’. This tendency reflects an increasing awareness of the necessity to reach beyond the non-referential and techno-essentialist paradigm of serialism.
A detailed morpho-syntactical analysis of Mundry’s work reveals the destabilization of sonic identities as a principal compositional means subverting the perception of complex sequences or juxtapositions of individual, distinguishable, ‘bodily’ Gestalten (emerging from three basic topics: attack, proliferation and resonance) to a ‘global’ perception. Piano and orchestra are mediated by diverse ‘chimeric assignments’ (Albert Bregman) and tilting movements between structure sound and texture sound (Helmut Lachenmann) resulting in a music-specific mode of narrativity. This compositional design together with the identity discourse suggested by the Nishida-reference of Mundry’s title are successfully evoking a polyvalent situation while avoiding a denotative coherence of musical meaning. By reflecting the instability and connectivity of identity concepts in today’s multiply stratified and fragmented societies, 'Ich und Du' exemplifies an utopia of art music’s social interaction and worldly experience.
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The relationship between musical structure, perception and musical meaning can be understood as a key to the development of a theory of post-tonal music. Preliminaries of this theory are developed in three »variations«. First, a review of... more
The relationship between musical structure, perception and musical meaning can be understood as a key to the development of a theory of post-tonal music. Preliminaries of this theory are developed in three »variations«. First, a review of the difficult relationship between music theory and new music in the 20th century is explained by (1) an increasingly diverse compositional practice that has lead to a composer-centred »theory«, often amounting to nothing more than a scantily contextualized documentation of a composer's intentions and techniques, and (2) the universalist and dogmatic tendency of music-theoretical discourse around 1900 which, however, has since developed into an »epistemological pluralism« (Nicholas Cook). The Graz research project »organisation of sound«, initiated and headed by the author, pursues just such a pluralistic methodology by integrating author-and listener-perspectives on post-tonal music based on a morpho-syntactical conceptual framework with references to gestalt theory. This approach emerged not least from the observation that new music, especially after 1945, has increasingly been conceived of »morphologically« with a strong focus on music perception, as argued in the second variation. The idea that musical structure, perception and »worldliness« [Welthaltigkeit] are inseparable allowed composers to retain the idea of musical auto-referentiality while at the same time claiming the social-political impact of contemporary music. This is illustrated by a short discussion of the relationship between structural coherence and (political) meaning in works by Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino. The third variation discusses these questions in more detail through an examination of two recent works by Chaya Czernowin and Isabel Mundry. In Czernowin's Excavated Dialogues – Fragments Western and Chinese instruments are organized in a culturally hybrid space saturated with conflict emerging from a highly gestural material; in Mundry's Ich und Du solo piano and orchestra go through several stages of an ambiguous identity discourse informed by an essay of Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida. Antinomies between the composers' self-interpretations and the morpho-syntactical analysis can be understood as results of a music-specific polyvalence that should inform any theory of post-tonal music. In einem Gespräch, das im zweiten Band der Schriftenreihe musik.theorien der gegenwart dokumentiert ist, hat Helmut Lachenmann den von György Ligeti kritisierten * Mein beim Grazer GMTH-Kongress 2008 vorgestellter Beitrag Konzeptionelle Narrativität und kulturelle Identitäten. Methodiken der Analyse von Werken für westlich-asiatische Instrumentalensembles wurde in der Folge mehrfach überarbei-tet und erweitert und schließlich 2010 im Archiv für Musikwissenschaft publiziert (Utz, Kunstmusik und reflexive Globalisierung). Der vorliegende Beitrag greift im Grazer Vortrag eher kursorisch angestellte Überle-gungen zum Verhältnis von Musiktheorie und neuer Musik im 20. Jahrhundert auf und versucht sie mit Material zu verknüpfen, das im Kontext des Forschungsprojektes Klangorganisation post-tonaler Musik an der Kunstuniversität Graz entstanden ist (siehe unten). Es handelt sich dabei, wie der Untertitel andeutet, um »Variationen« ohne Anspruch auf ein durchweg kohärentes Gesamtbild.
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Die oft hochgradige Technizität von Strukturanalyse im Bereich neuer Musik hat dazu geführt, dass gerade hier die Analysekritik besonders produktiv wurde und immer wieder eine (Re-)Fokussierung auf die Wahrnehmungsrelevanz analytischer... more
Die oft hochgradige Technizität von Strukturanalyse im Bereich neuer Musik hat dazu geführt, dass gerade hier die Analysekritik besonders produktiv wurde und immer wieder eine (Re-)Fokussierung auf die Wahrnehmungsrelevanz analytischer Befunde eingefordert hat. Auch Entwicklungen in der wissenschaftlich fundierten Musikanalyse haben zunehmend strukturalistische Analyse und ‚klassische‘ Forschungsmethoden wie Skizzenforschung mit wahrnehmungsbezogenen Befunden verbunden, u.a. durch Einbeziehung musikpsychologischer, empirischer und aufführungsanalytischer Dimensionen und Methoden. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird in diesem Beitrag eine im Rahmen mehrjähriger Forschung entwickelte Methodik »performativer Analyse« auf zwei zentrale Werke von Pierre Boulez angewendet, die in der Literatur oft als Paradigma serieller Musik gelten. Grundlage der Analyse ist ein emergenter Strukturbegriff, der davon ausgeht, dass kompositorisch gesetzte und wahrgenommene Klangstrukturen in ihrem Wechselspiel ein Feld potenzieller, divergierender Hörweisen entfalten, das die Analyse nicht nur dokumentieren, sondern auch ihrerseits produktiv erweitern und vertiefen kann. Im Vergleich von serieller Struktur, aufführungspraktischer Umsetzung und performativem Hören der Structures Ia (1951) für zwei Klaviere bestätigt sich dabei zum einen die These Martin Zencks, dass der »performative Subtext den ‚Text‘ der Partituren […] neu figuriert«, aber auch, dass die serielle Struktur keineswegs irrelevant ist oder durch eine beliebig andere ersetzt werden könnte. In diesem Sinn werden abschließend auch Kriterien für eine Interpretationsanalyse der beiden bislang vorliegenden Einspielungen von Boulezʼ Polyphonie X für 18 Instrumente (1951) formuliert, dessen Partitur vom Komponisten zurückgezogen wurde.
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The music of Salvatore Sciarrino’s opera Luci mie traditrici (1996-98) is based on the continuous (re-)combination and metamorphosis of vocal and instrumental »modules« – short musical elements that can be very flexibly cross-related and... more
The music of Salvatore Sciarrino’s opera Luci mie traditrici (1996-98) is based on the continuous (re-)combination and metamorphosis of vocal and instrumental »modules« – short musical elements that can be very flexibly cross-related and intermingled in multifarious ways and are intimately connected with the psychological development of the characters on stage. The present analysis explores four main facets of the opera’s ›semanticized‹ structure: (1) the stratified macrostructure of plot and dramaturgy, (2) the ambivalence and transformation of instrumental modules between naturalistic and psychological symbolism, (3) the re-invention of traditional libretto topoi in the text structure and of early baroque recitative aesthetics (Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini) in Sciarrino’s vocal style sillabazione scivolata (»gliding syllable articulation«) and (4) the microstructure and syntax of vocal modules exemplified by a detailed semiotic analysis of the vocal parts in the first scene. The confluence of cyclicity and linearity that can be traced in all four investigated fields prompts the metaphor of a ›spiral form‹ as an overall governing principle – a form that incorporates both the idea of musical plot and structure as a ›static allegory‹ and as a ›vortex of time‹.
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This article uses biography as a means of penetrating the musical culture of Shanghai at a particular historical moment. The multi-faceted interaction of the German-Jewish efugee composer Wolfgang Fraenkel with his Chinese host... more
This article uses biography as a means of penetrating the musical culture of Shanghai at a particular historical moment. The multi-faceted interaction of the German-Jewish efugee composer Wolfgang Fraenkel with his Chinese host environment between 1939 and 1947 affords a rare opportunity to observe the processes by which musical influence takes place – an influence flowing both from Fraenkel to his Chinese students and from Chinese culture into Fraenkel’s own music and thinking, however tentatively. Although in his public and semi-public musical life, Fraenkel was pragmatic rather than idealistic, he was one of the few who were willing to confront ethnic separation and prejudice.
Keywords: Wolfgang Fraenkel (1897 - 1983); Exile Shanghai; Twelve-Tone Technique in Asia; Sang Tong (b. 1923); Shanghai Conservatory of Music; Shanghai Municipal Orchestra; Mario Paci; Konoe Hidemaro (1898 - 1973); Julius Schloß; Karl Steiner; Ding Shande; Vinzenz Hundhausen (1878 - 1955); Musical Modernism in China
JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/pss/20184469
Keywords: Wolfgang Fraenkel (1897 - 1983); Exile Shanghai; Twelve-Tone Technique in Asia; Sang Tong (b. 1923); Shanghai Conservatory of Music; Shanghai Municipal Orchestra; Mario Paci; Konoe Hidemaro (1898 - 1973); Julius Schloß; Karl Steiner; Ding Shande; Vinzenz Hundhausen (1878 - 1955); Musical Modernism in China
JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/pss/20184469
Ausgehend von einer allgemeinen Analyse der kulturellen Globalisierung durch die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, insbesondere von der wechselseitigen Bedingung kultureller Homogenisierung/Verwestlichung und partikularistischer... more
Ausgehend von einer allgemeinen Analyse der kulturellen Globalisierung durch die Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, insbesondere von der wechselseitigen Bedingung kultureller Homogenisierung/Verwestlichung und partikularistischer kultureller Differenzierung, versuche ich Spuren dieser Prozesse in der neuen Musik Chinas und Japans aufzuspüren. Um die mehrfache Doppelbödigkeit und die verwickelten Wechselwirkungsprozesse musikalischer Interkulturalität zu veranschaulichen, wird zunächst die Geschichte der chinesischen Melodie Molihua ("Jasminblüte") dargestellt, die sowohl in chinesischen als auch in europäischen Kontexten zur Repräsentation chinesischer Kultur eingesetzt wurde, allerdings in einer gegenüber der volksmusikalischen chinesischen Praxis deutlich simplifizierenden und verfälschenden Weise.
Solche Vereinfachungen kennzeichnen auch die Symphony 1997 des bekannten chinesischen Komponisten Tan Dun (geb. 1957). Dieser Symphonie wird Tans szenisches Werk Nine Songs (1989) gegenüber gestellt, das durch einen Rückgriff auf die Rituale der archaischen Chu-Kultur ein Gegenmodell sowohl zur offiziellen chinesischen Nationalsymbolik als auch zu den bestimmenden Diskursen westlicher Kultur entwirft. Wie Tan Dun so arbeitet auch Guo Wenjing (geb. 1956) in seiner zweiten Oper Night Banquet (1998) mit einer raffiniert gebrochenen Art von tendenziell essentialisierter chinesischer Musiktradition, u.a. durch die Verwendung von "schein-authentischem" Material.
Schließlich wird auf die große Bedeutung des kulturellen Essentialismus im modernen Japan hingewiesen, der japanische Komponisten vor die schwierige Aufgabe stellt, sich im Spannungsfeld von radikaler Verwestlichung und japanischer Kulturideologie zu positionieren. Bemerkenswerte Ergebnisse liefern dabei z.B. Hosokawa Toshio (geb. 1955), dessen Musik diese Gegensätze eher synthetisierend versöhnt, und Takahashi Yûji (geb. 1938), der mit sehr originellen Konzepten beide Traditionen dekonstruiert und sich so eine kritische Distanz verschafft. Im Zeitalter einer zunehmenden Rekontextualisierung und damit Entschärfung solcher Kritik im Rahmen der globalen Homogenisierung wird die Artikulation einer solchen Differenz zu dominierenden kulturellen Diskursen für westliche wie für nicht-westliche Komponisten zunehmend erschwert.
Solche Vereinfachungen kennzeichnen auch die Symphony 1997 des bekannten chinesischen Komponisten Tan Dun (geb. 1957). Dieser Symphonie wird Tans szenisches Werk Nine Songs (1989) gegenüber gestellt, das durch einen Rückgriff auf die Rituale der archaischen Chu-Kultur ein Gegenmodell sowohl zur offiziellen chinesischen Nationalsymbolik als auch zu den bestimmenden Diskursen westlicher Kultur entwirft. Wie Tan Dun so arbeitet auch Guo Wenjing (geb. 1956) in seiner zweiten Oper Night Banquet (1998) mit einer raffiniert gebrochenen Art von tendenziell essentialisierter chinesischer Musiktradition, u.a. durch die Verwendung von "schein-authentischem" Material.
Schließlich wird auf die große Bedeutung des kulturellen Essentialismus im modernen Japan hingewiesen, der japanische Komponisten vor die schwierige Aufgabe stellt, sich im Spannungsfeld von radikaler Verwestlichung und japanischer Kulturideologie zu positionieren. Bemerkenswerte Ergebnisse liefern dabei z.B. Hosokawa Toshio (geb. 1955), dessen Musik diese Gegensätze eher synthetisierend versöhnt, und Takahashi Yûji (geb. 1938), der mit sehr originellen Konzepten beide Traditionen dekonstruiert und sich so eine kritische Distanz verschafft. Im Zeitalter einer zunehmenden Rekontextualisierung und damit Entschärfung solcher Kritik im Rahmen der globalen Homogenisierung wird die Artikulation einer solchen Differenz zu dominierenden kulturellen Diskursen für westliche wie für nicht-westliche Komponisten zunehmend erschwert.
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Dieses Buch widmet sich in 19 Kapiteln der Komplexität und den Herausforderungen einer Geschichte des musikalischen Hörens – ein Gebiet, das seit etwa zwei Jahrzehnten von der Musikforschung verstärkt behandelt und vertieft wird.... more
Dieses Buch widmet sich in 19 Kapiteln der Komplexität und den Herausforderungen einer Geschichte des musikalischen Hörens – ein Gebiet, das seit etwa zwei Jahrzehnten von der Musikforschung verstärkt behandelt und vertieft wird. In¬ter¬disziplinäre Ansätze im Spannungsfeld von Psychologie, Soziologie, Historizität und gesellschaftlicher Konstruktion musikalischen Hörens prägen die Methodik der Autorinnen und Autoren, wobei u.a. das Verhältnis von musikalischer Struktur und Hörerfahrung, die Bedeutung von Klang¬raum, Medien und technischer Klangreproduktion sowie das Spannungsfeld zwischen konventionellen Hörerwartungen und ›historischem‹ Musizieren zur Sprache kommen. Historische und methodische Überblicksdarstellungen und die Vertiefung musikästhetischer, wahrnehmungspsychologischer und musiksoziologischer Fragestellungen (I) werden eingehenden Diskussionen zu historischen Hörsituationen vom Gregorianischen Choral bis zur Gegenwart (II) und Überlegungen zu kompositorischen Konsequenzen einer Reflexion des Hörens (III) gegenübergestellt. Die Beiträge beleuchten dabei nicht zuletzt die Selbstreflexivität, Multimodalität und historische Wandelbarkeit des musikalischen Hörens.
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Die Neue Musik seit 1945. Das Lexikon zeigt, jenseits von ästhetischen Wertungen, den großen Facettenreichtum der Neuen Musik. In einem breit aufgefächerten lexikalischen Teil werden die Verästelungen der neueren und neuesten... more
Die Neue Musik seit 1945. Das Lexikon zeigt, jenseits von ästhetischen Wertungen, den großen Facettenreichtum der Neuen Musik. In einem breit aufgefächerten lexikalischen Teil werden die Verästelungen der neueren und neuesten Musikgeschichte umfassend erläutert: mit Sachartikeln u.a. zu Theorie, Formen und Gattungen, Instrumenten und Ensembles, Regionen, Medien, Interpretation und Aufführung. Darüber hinaus stellen namhafte Autoren in 15 Essays die musikgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge dar und reflektieren Grundfragen der Neuen Musik. Der Horizont des Bandes reicht einerseits über den europäischen Kontext, andererseits auch über den der musikalischen Avantgarde deutlich hinaus.
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Looking at musical globalization and vocal music, this collection of essays studies the complex relationship between the human voice and cultural identity in 20th- and 21st-century music in both East Asian and Western music. The authors... more
Looking at musical globalization and vocal music, this collection of essays studies the complex relationship between the human voice and cultural identity in 20th- and 21st-century music in both East Asian and Western music. The authors approach musical meaning in specific case studies against the background of general trends of cultural globalization and the construction/deconstruction of identity produced by human (and artificial) voices. The essays proceed from different angles, notably sociocultural and historical contexts, philosophical and literary aesthetics, vocal technique, analysis of vocal microstructures, text/phonetics-music-relationships, historical vocal sources or models for contemporary art and pop music, and areas of conflict between vocalization, "ethnicity," and cultural identity. They pinpoint crucial topical features that have shaped identity-discourses in art and popular musical situations since the1950s, with a special focus on the past two decades. The volume thus offers a unique compilation of texts on the human voice in a period of heightened cultural globalization by utilizing systematic methodological research and firsthand accounts on compositional practice by current Asian and Western authors.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Vocal Music and Reflexive Globalization in Contemporary Music Practices, Christian Utz and Frederick Lau Part I:Voices in Global Perspective 1. Globalization, Identity and the Voice in the 20th Century, Dieter Mersch 2. The Rediscovery of Presence. Explorations into Intercultural Spaces between Speech and Song, Christian Utz 3. Imagining the Other’s Voice. On Composing across Vocal Traditions, Sandeep Bhagwati Part II: Practices and Strategies in the Use of the Voice in Art Music 4. Post-war Japan’s "Operatic Problems": Opera-turgie, Narrative, Language, Fuyuko Fukunaka 5. Voice, Culture and Ethnicity in Contemporary Chinese Music, Frederick Lau 6. Metamorphosis of Traditional Vocal Practices in Korean Contemporary Music, Heekyung Lee 7. Problems of Identity in Helmut Lachenmann’s Vocal Music, Jörn Peter Hiekel 8. The Notation and Use of the Voice in Non-Semantic Contexts: Identities and Performativity in the Vocal Music of Dieter Schnebel, Brian Ferneyhough, and Georges Aperghis, Erin Gee Part III: Identity and Politics of the Voice in Popular Music and Media Art 9. At the Limits of Transnationalism: The Synthesized Ethnic Voices in Zuni Icosahedron’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Samson Young 10. Revolutionary Images and Identities: The Chinese Communist Party’s Heritage and Survival in Chinese Popular Music, Andreas Steen 11. Frenchly Japanese: On the Nationality of Voices in Japanese Popular Music, Oliver Seibt 12. Singing from Seoul to Soul: Voice, Body and Ethnicity in Korean Popular Music, Michael Fuhr Afterword, Nicholas Cook
CONTENTS
Introduction: Vocal Music and Reflexive Globalization in Contemporary Music Practices, Christian Utz and Frederick Lau Part I:Voices in Global Perspective 1. Globalization, Identity and the Voice in the 20th Century, Dieter Mersch 2. The Rediscovery of Presence. Explorations into Intercultural Spaces between Speech and Song, Christian Utz 3. Imagining the Other’s Voice. On Composing across Vocal Traditions, Sandeep Bhagwati Part II: Practices and Strategies in the Use of the Voice in Art Music 4. Post-war Japan’s "Operatic Problems": Opera-turgie, Narrative, Language, Fuyuko Fukunaka 5. Voice, Culture and Ethnicity in Contemporary Chinese Music, Frederick Lau 6. Metamorphosis of Traditional Vocal Practices in Korean Contemporary Music, Heekyung Lee 7. Problems of Identity in Helmut Lachenmann’s Vocal Music, Jörn Peter Hiekel 8. The Notation and Use of the Voice in Non-Semantic Contexts: Identities and Performativity in the Vocal Music of Dieter Schnebel, Brian Ferneyhough, and Georges Aperghis, Erin Gee Part III: Identity and Politics of the Voice in Popular Music and Media Art 9. At the Limits of Transnationalism: The Synthesized Ethnic Voices in Zuni Icosahedron’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Samson Young 10. Revolutionary Images and Identities: The Chinese Communist Party’s Heritage and Survival in Chinese Popular Music, Andreas Steen 11. Frenchly Japanese: On the Nationality of Voices in Japanese Popular Music, Oliver Seibt 12. Singing from Seoul to Soul: Voice, Body and Ethnicity in Korean Popular Music, Michael Fuhr Afterword, Nicholas Cook
Das erste umfassende Nachschlagewerk zur Systematischen Musikwissenschaft: Konzise und detaillierte Darstellungen der wichtigsten Begriffe aus den verschiedenen Disziplinen der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft werden erstmals in einem... more
Das erste umfassende Nachschlagewerk zur Systematischen Musikwissenschaft: Konzise und detaillierte Darstellungen der wichtigsten Begriffe aus den verschiedenen Disziplinen der Systematischen Musikwissenschaft werden erstmals in einem Lexikon zusammengeführt. So füllt das Lexikon auch deshalb eine Lücke, weil es die einzelnen Teildisziplinen miteinander vernetzt und dabei neuartige Sichtweisen aufzeigt.
Für den Einstieg in die Systematische Musikwissenschaft wie für die avancierte Recherche bietet dieses enzyklopädische Werk einen enormen Fundus an Information auf dem neuesten Stand des Wissens.
Für den Einstieg in die Systematische Musikwissenschaft wie für die avancierte Recherche bietet dieses enzyklopädische Werk einen enormen Fundus an Information auf dem neuesten Stand des Wissens.
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To argue that the category »sound« emancipated itself in the twentieth century is a truism. Music research pursues the aim of specifying in what respect these »new« approaches to sound really differ from »sound composition« of past... more
To argue that the category »sound« emancipated itself in the twentieth century is a truism. Music research pursues the aim of specifying in what respect these »new« approaches to sound really differ from »sound composition« of past centuries, and which discourses in compositional aesthetics, cultural history, and theories of perception have formed the background to their development. The contributions to this volume, based on a symposium held in 2011 at the Graz University of Music and Performing Arts, revolve around the interactions between sound and perception from diverse perspectives: music analysis, music history, the history of music theory, music aesthetics, and psychoacoustics. Proceeding from the diagnosis of a »sound forgottenness« (introduced in a nuanced manner) and emphasizing different aspects, they formulate desiderata and impulses for future research.
Research Interests:
The 8th congress of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) took place in October 2008 at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts Graz (KUG) on the topic »Music Theory and Interdisciplinarity«. The collected contributions characterize... more
The 8th congress of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) took place in October 2008 at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts Graz (KUG) on the topic »Music Theory and Interdisciplinarity«. The collected contributions characterize music theory as a multi-faceted scholarly discipline at the intersection of theory/practice, art/science and history/system. The six chapters explore commonalties with music history, music aesthetics, musical performance, compositional practice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, ethnomusicology and systematic musicology. A total of 45 essays (28 in German, 17 in English) and the documentation of a panel discussion form a vital discourse informed by contemporaneous issues of research in a broad number of fields, providing a unique overview of music theory today. A comprehensive English summary appears at the beginning of all contributions.
Der dritte Band der musik.theorien der gegenwart widmet sich einer multiperspektivischen Annäherung an das Thema »Passage«. Dabei wird von einem grundsätzlichen Übergangscharakter musikalischer Zeitgestalten ausgegangen, der eine Teilung... more
Der dritte Band der musik.theorien der gegenwart widmet sich einer multiperspektivischen Annäherung an das Thema »Passage«. Dabei wird von einem grundsätzlichen Übergangscharakter musikalischer Zeitgestalten ausgegangen, der eine Teilung in substantielle strukturelle Pole und »überleitende« Abschnitte – wie sie durch herkömmliche Topoi der Formenlehre vermittelt wird – problematisch erscheinen lässt. Musiktheoretische Sichtweisen, die mit »Passagen« der musikalischen Struktur ein mithin langezeit marginalisiertes Phänomen vom Rand ins Zentrum der Betrachtung rücken, erzeugen einen Konflikt mit herkömmlichen Lesarten und treffen sich mit vergleichbaren Ansätzen in der musikalischen Historiographie, der Literatur-, Kunst- und Filmtheorie.
Der Band verbindet vier Beiträge, die anlässlich des Internationalen Kongresses der IMS (International Musicological Society) 2007 entstanden, mit fünf speziell für diese Publikation verfassten Texten. Dabei reicht das Spektrum von einer umfassenden kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der Passage und dem Entwurf einer poststrukturellen Historiographie zur »Kunst des Übergangs« bei Liszt und Wagner und zu räumlichen wie zeitlichen Passagen im Film. Aus – im engeren Sinn – musiktheoretischer Sicht wird eine Systematik der Sequenz (als prototypische Technik des Übergangs) entwickelt und ein »dezentristischer« Blick auf die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil geworfen. Untersuchungen zur Werkgenese und ästhetischen Relevanz des »Passagenwerks« bei Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Conlon Nancarrow sowie ein analytisch-systematischer Beitrag zu interkulturellen Passagen zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang in traditioneller und neuer Vokalmusik komplettieren das breite Feld an untersuchten »Passagen«.
INHALT
Christian Utz / Martin Zenck: Vorwort; Martin Zenck: Zu einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der »Passage«; Christian Utz: Die Wiederentdeckung der Präsenz. Interkulturelle Passagen durch die vokalen Räume zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang; Susanne Kogler: Von der großen Erzählung zur Mikrologie? Musikhistoriographische Methodik zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne ; Johannes Menke: Historisch-systematische Überlegungen zur Sequenz seit 1600; Hans-Ulrich Fuß: Die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil. Hauptwege und Seitenwege in der Sonatenexposition bei Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven; Heinz von Loesch: »Passagenwerk«: Ein blinder Fleck in Analyse und Interpretation. Einige Bemerkungen zu Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Klaviertrio op. 49; Matthew Pritchard: Übergangsharmonien. Die »Kunst des Übergangs« als Erkundung des tonalen Raums im Spätwerk Liszts und Wagners; Julia Kursell, Armin Schäfer: Passage zur glatten Zeit. Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano; Bettina Schlüter: »Raum- und Zeitpassagen« im Film. Claude Lanzmanns Shoah; English Summaries; AutorInnen
Der Band verbindet vier Beiträge, die anlässlich des Internationalen Kongresses der IMS (International Musicological Society) 2007 entstanden, mit fünf speziell für diese Publikation verfassten Texten. Dabei reicht das Spektrum von einer umfassenden kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der Passage und dem Entwurf einer poststrukturellen Historiographie zur »Kunst des Übergangs« bei Liszt und Wagner und zu räumlichen wie zeitlichen Passagen im Film. Aus – im engeren Sinn – musiktheoretischer Sicht wird eine Systematik der Sequenz (als prototypische Technik des Übergangs) entwickelt und ein »dezentristischer« Blick auf die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil geworfen. Untersuchungen zur Werkgenese und ästhetischen Relevanz des »Passagenwerks« bei Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Conlon Nancarrow sowie ein analytisch-systematischer Beitrag zu interkulturellen Passagen zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang in traditioneller und neuer Vokalmusik komplettieren das breite Feld an untersuchten »Passagen«.
INHALT
Christian Utz / Martin Zenck: Vorwort; Martin Zenck: Zu einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der »Passage«; Christian Utz: Die Wiederentdeckung der Präsenz. Interkulturelle Passagen durch die vokalen Räume zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang; Susanne Kogler: Von der großen Erzählung zur Mikrologie? Musikhistoriographische Methodik zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne ; Johannes Menke: Historisch-systematische Überlegungen zur Sequenz seit 1600; Hans-Ulrich Fuß: Die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil. Hauptwege und Seitenwege in der Sonatenexposition bei Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven; Heinz von Loesch: »Passagenwerk«: Ein blinder Fleck in Analyse und Interpretation. Einige Bemerkungen zu Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Klaviertrio op. 49; Matthew Pritchard: Übergangsharmonien. Die »Kunst des Übergangs« als Erkundung des tonalen Raums im Spätwerk Liszts und Wagners; Julia Kursell, Armin Schäfer: Passage zur glatten Zeit. Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano; Bettina Schlüter: »Raum- und Zeitpassagen« im Film. Claude Lanzmanns Shoah; English Summaries; AutorInnen
Im zweiten Band der musik.theorien der gegenwart wird mit Helmut Lachenmann einer der führenden Komponisten der heutigen Musik ins Zentrum gestellt, dessen eigene »Theorien« des Komponierens, des Hörens, der Wahrnehmung, des Verhältnisses... more
Im zweiten Band der musik.theorien der gegenwart wird mit Helmut Lachenmann einer der führenden Komponisten der heutigen Musik ins Zentrum gestellt, dessen eigene »Theorien« des Komponierens, des Hörens, der Wahrnehmung, des Verhältnisses zwischen Musik und Gesellschaft für die in dieser Schriftenreihe thematisierte Öffnung des Theoriebegriffs zentrale Impulse geliefert haben. Lachenmanns Denken über und in Musik versteht es in brillanter Weise eine eng an musikalischen Texten und Klängen orientierte Theoriebildung von vornherein durch vielfältige Ebenen zu weiten, ohne bezüglich der Kohärenz des theoretischen Ansatzes Kompromisse zu schließen. Dass einer solchen Form der musikalischen Theorie nicht zuletzt ein dialogisches Prinzip inhärent ist, zeigt das programmatisch am Anfang des Bandes stehende Podiumsgespräch. Es belegt insbesondere wie Lachenmanns Kunstbegriff, der Komponieren und Hören in eins denkt, sich permanent neuen, unbekannten Situationen auszusetzen vermag. Die weiteren im vorliegenden Band versammelten Texte finden zu Perspektiven, die im »Kanon« der Lachenmann-Literatur bislang allenfalls marginal gestreift wurden, u.a. indem sie Lachenmanns Musik in die so unterschiedlichen Kontexte der Kognitionswissenschaften, der Klangkunst und der japanischen Mundorgel shō stellen. Sie begreifen dabei die theoretischen Ideen des Komponisten keineswegs als sine qua non der eigenen analytischen Position, machen jedoch duchweg diese so hochgradig vernetzbaren und entwickelbaren Ideen in neuartiger Weise produktiv und vermitteln dabei zwischen Theorie, Hören und musikalischer Praxis.
Welche Relevanz haben Prozesse globaler kultureller Homogenisierung und Differenzierung für die gegenwärtige Hervorbringung von Musik weltweit? Auf welchen historischen Voraussetzungen beruhen diese Prozesse und wie sehr werden sie... more
Welche Relevanz haben Prozesse globaler kultureller Homogenisierung und Differenzierung für die gegenwärtige Hervorbringung von Musik weltweit? Auf welchen historischen Voraussetzungen beruhen diese Prozesse und wie sehr werden sie zukünftige Entwicklungen prägen? Diesen Fragen widmete sich das interdisziplinäre Symposion "Musik und Globalisierung" der Kunstuniversität Graz im Oktober 2006. Mit Hans Zender stand ein Künstler im Zentrum, der mit seiner Musik und seinem Denken die Debatte zur musikalischen Interkulturalität in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten nachhaltig bereichert hat. Die Beiträge zeigen, wie sich zwischen künstlerischen Entwürfen und (musik-) theoretischen und geistesgeschichtlichen Kontexten Verbindungslinien ziehen lassen und damit die "Mehrbödigkeit" aktueller künstlerischer wie theoretischer Fragestellungen reflektiert wird.
Applying the model of "entangled histories" to music historiography, this article takes up discussions on the Cold War's relevance to globalized art music of the 1950s and 60s. Technique and aesthetics in works by Henry Cowell, Toshir6... more
Applying the model of "entangled histories" to music historiography, this article takes up discussions on the Cold War's relevance to globalized art music of the 1950s and 60s. Technique and aesthetics in works by Henry Cowell, Toshir6 Mayuzumi, and Luciano Berio from this period may be understood as resulting from entanglements between socio-political and artistic discourses, especially since these composers were closely associated with institutions
and events of the Cold War. Idiosyncrasies in their works and aesthetics, however, cannot merely be explained by recourse to the institutionalized politics of the time. They testify to the composers' increased awareness of global interconnectedness, addressing a (potentially) worldwide audience and reflecting the multipolarity of post-war modernity.
and events of the Cold War. Idiosyncrasies in their works and aesthetics, however, cannot merely be explained by recourse to the institutionalized politics of the time. They testify to the composers' increased awareness of global interconnectedness, addressing a (potentially) worldwide audience and reflecting the multipolarity of post-war modernity.
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Elements in Hugo Riemann’s late universalist music theory - disclosed in condensed form in his "Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien" (1916) - took a surprising, even nationalistically biased turn in Japan during the 1930s and 40s. Riemann’s... more
Elements in Hugo Riemann’s late universalist music theory - disclosed in condensed form in his "Folkloristische Tonalitätsstudien" (1916) - took a surprising, even nationalistically biased turn in Japan during the 1930s and 40s. Riemann’s approach to Chinese and Japanese music is reviewed here in the broader context of musicology around 1900 (Rudolf Dittrich, Georg Capellen, Abraham J. Polak, Abraham/Hornbostel etc.) as well as the narrower one of Japanese musical modernity between 1900 and 1945 (Kōsaku Yamada, Shūkichi Mitsukuri, Klaus Pringsheim, Shōhei Tanaka, Fumio Hayasaka). The multiple re-interpretations of the fundamentals of East Asian music that resulted from these discourses provide ample evidence for the high relevance of "invented traditions" (Eric Hobsbawm) in global music history - attempts to demonstrate the constructivist character of musical identities as they are insufficiently covered by concept of "transculturality."
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A long analytical essay on Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Among several methodologies, a "semiotic" segmentation of rhythmical cells in the first movement attempts to highlight the abundance of its submotivic relationships. The musical... more
A long analytical essay on Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Among several methodologies, a "semiotic" segmentation of rhythmical cells in the first movement attempts to highlight the abundance of its submotivic relationships. The musical narrativity inherent to the music is explored by references to Michail Bachtin's concept of "chronotopos".
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The optimistic assessment that the future of classical music will be dominated by Chinese (or Asian) artists motivates a re-evaluation of 20th century music in the context of “reflexive” cultural globalisation. The term “classical music”,... more
The optimistic assessment that the future of classical music will be dominated by Chinese (or Asian) artists motivates a re-evaluation of 20th century music in the context of “reflexive” cultural globalisation. The term “classical music”, often used in such assessments, however, is inappropriate to describe the complex intercultural foundation of 20th century art music in East Asia. Instead, drawing on theories by Ricœur, Taylor, Bhabha, and Samuels, alterity and narrativity are introduced here as key concepts for an interpretation of works that combine Chinese and European instruments or sounds from the 1930s until the present. Earlier concepts of musical narratives approaching alterity and interlinkage of Asian and Western musical discourses such as reform (Liu Tianhua), coexistence (Yamada Kōsaku, Hashimoto Kunihiko), integration (Shi Yongkang, Chinese “conservatory style”) and individualization (Takemitsu Tōru) were closely related to socio-political processes in East Asia. More recent works for bicultural instrumentation show more specific and reflexive forms of musical narrativity. Four main narrative modes in which gestural types and structural processes intersect are discerned: interaction (Chen Xiaoyong), polarity (Tan Dun), stratification (Zhu Jian’er) and hybridity (Chaya Czernowin). Cognitive constraints in the listening process might limit the communicability of some aspects in these narrative concepts.
Research Interests: Paul Ricoeur, Chinese Music, Charles Taylor, Homi Bhabha (Cultural Theory), Classical Music, and 13 moreIdentity and Alterity, Narratology in music, Tan Dun, Liu Tianhua, Yamada Kōsaku, Hashimoto Kunihiko, Shi Yongkang, Takemitsu Tōru, Chen Xiaoyong, Zhu Jian’er, Chaya Czernowin, Reflexive Globalisation, and Robert Samuels
The horizons of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's and Charles Ives' music afford a dialogue on multiple realms. Both composers tested comprehensive methods of stratification to create effects of simultaneity in a conclusive and radical way. The... more
The horizons of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's and Charles Ives' music afford a dialogue on multiple realms. Both composers tested comprehensive methods of stratification to create effects of simultaneity in a conclusive and radical way. The comparability of their polymetrical and polytemporal techniques seems to be limited, but they often lead to similar results: transitions between temporal and spatial dimensions, oscillations between texture and structure and multi-perspectivity achieved by distinct timbral layers. The eminent importance of intertextuality for both artists is linked to collective cultural memory and to a partly de-invidualised conception of artistic creation. While Zimmermann rarely abandons the distance between self-text and other texts, Ives disseminates an enormous reservoir of other texts mosaic-like within the substance of his work. Surprising analogies also include a conscious historical and cultural positioning of both composers and a religiously and philosophically motivated orientation towards utopia and potentiality.
A booklet of "Vierhändig, immer einmal" Piano Four Hands Music Symposium (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 26-26 January 2019). Organizers: Cecilia Oinas and Christian Utz (Institute 1, University of Music and Performing Arts... more
A booklet of "Vierhändig, immer einmal" Piano Four Hands Music Symposium (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 26-26 January 2019). Organizers: Cecilia Oinas and Christian Utz (Institute 1, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)