Papers by John D , Vandevert
BILT Student Journal, 2022
When it comes to determining how a culture’s musical identity is formed and expressed aesthetical... more When it comes to determining how a culture’s musical identity is formed and expressed aesthetically, researchers often find themselves in a difficult situation, required to explain how music embodies national identity without falling epistemically prey to the hand of essentialism or subjective normalization. In Russian music studies, the question of “What makes Russian music Russian,,” encapsulated in the contentious term “musical Russianness,” has prompted many scholars to outright reject the premise of national aesthetics. However, what if the term is not as inhibitory as they claim but is instead being used in ineffective ways, thus obfuscating the term’s advantageousness in analytical processes? This paper will attempt to prove the usage of “musical Russianness” must be reinterpreted in a manner that puts it into conversation with corollary themes such as creative autonomy, practical usage, and wider contextuality. The term, on its own, cannot be considered sufficient in accurately deducing how Russian music does (or does not) embody domestic identity via its aesthetic design. Therefore, by reformulating “musical Russianness” as a dialogic theory of music analysis, its efficacy can be restored. The purpose of this present study is then to foster a potential way forward for Russian music scholars in renegotiating how cultural uniqueness and national identity are detected in musical material. I will first delineate some of the central discourses on the term in past and present research within the field of Russian musicology, followed by three theoretical frameworks on how “musical Russianness” could be better utilized in the process of music analysis. The way forward for Russian music studies cannot be to idealistically eschew “Russianness” as an analytical theory but to cogently reassess its methodological construction and practical application in order to render it useful once again.
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NA, 2019
Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Piano and Violin stem from a need to re-invent. They treat the l... more Lera Auerbach’s 24 Preludes for Piano and Violin stem from a need to re-invent. They treat the listener to a sonic play of juxtaposing emotional lifelines within a structure of 18th-century structure 19th-century virtuosity, and 20th-century modernity, within the 21st-century mindset of self-expression through music. Her integration of previously-explored compositional techniques into contemporary architectures demonstrates her musical intellect, as she re-invigorates accepted compositional practices, thus importing them into the post-modern future. No better example of this synthesis then through her 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano, giving substantiality to the conceptualization that perhaps composers like Rachmaninoff and Barber were not glued to antiquated notions of emotional facundity, but rather their compositions were amalgamations of previous attempts to circumnavigate the musical waters of emotional objectional.
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NA, 2020
Samuel Barber’s Despite and Still, op. 41 is characterized as ‘musical therapy’ by Barbara Heyman... more Samuel Barber’s Despite and Still, op. 41 is characterized as ‘musical therapy’ by Barbara Heymann, ‘emotionally distant’ by a reviewer, his’ ’ final defense against his Romantic style.’ Within this five-song cycle is the truthful predicament of his ‘melancholy’ character, and the elusive of his emotional state is stridently stripped away due to Barber’s perceived failure of his opera, Antony and Cleopatra. Intertwined within the song cycle, for me, is a transfigured usage of the White Goddess concept, induced by the usage of poetry by Robert Graves, James Joyce, and Theodore Roethke. All three poets share stylistic similarities that establish an interconnectedness with Barber’s mental state during the compositional years of Despite and Still, thus contributing to the certainty that the usage of these poets was a deliberate choice on the part of Barber. Robert Grave’s theory of Goddess worship as the primary incentive behind all the poet’s formation of poetic output is supposedly detectable through lyrical themes of nature, spirituality, and women (although Graves does not explicitly specify aspects of detectable Goddess worship traits in poetry). In my research project, I attempt to identify the White Goddess traits within Barber’s output, transmuted from strictly Muse worship to the expansion of his melancholic tendencies and a trajectory of an all-consuming internal and upward path. Despite and Still could be a culmination of Barber’s inferiority complex mentally conceived after the supposed degradation of his musical name.
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Conference Presentations by John D , Vandevert
N/A, 2020
“The new listeners uplifted the performers with their energy and faith. As a result, the ‘overpla... more “The new listeners uplifted the performers with their energy and faith. As a result, the ‘overplayed’ and ‘oversung’ pieces were being performed in a new way.” S. Hentova’s observation of the newly liberated 1960s Leningradian audience and its response to music, namely ‘with their hearts,’ reflects the sociological endeavor of B. Asafiev to restore the Proletariat’s derelict awareness of their cultural heritage through the ‘art of sound,’ the process dubbed ‘culturology’ by E. Viljanen and ‘perception’ by Bogdanov. Bearing witness to the superficial layers of music, i.e., playing the score, singing in a choir, or listening to any type of audible content, does not equate to ‘hearing’ by default, nor does it condition the Musicologist to the realm of ‘knowing’. Rather, ‘Formalist listening’ and Academic stringency actively prevents substantive, poly-dimensional contemplations, as treating music as a fine art’ without recognizing the ‘historical, holistic, and organic’ components is to treat music as ‘неживое образное искусство’ (non-living, figurative art), or in N. Marr’s thoughts ‘musealization’ (музеефикатция). Instead of musical literacy based on ‘abstract instrumentalism,’ music should be seen as ‘an experience of the epoch,’ a sonic representation of the composer’s experience within society. In 1923, Trotsky had said, “the artist who creates this form, and the spectator...They are living people, with a crystallized psychology...the result of social conditions” describing the artist as one ‘who creates and who consumes what has been created.’ To demonstrate how one could start to ‘hear’ music’s ‘реальное положение’ (real position), Rimsky-Korsakov's one-act opera, ‘Kashchey the Deathless’, specifically the Third Tableau, will serve as a conduit for analysis inspired by Asafiev’s psycho-methodological approach to musical understanding, labeled in 1918 as ‘жизненни роста развития’ (life growth-development).
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Drafts by John D , Vandevert
[Unpublished Masters Thesis], 2022
The study of Russian hip-hop is conventionally studied as a linguistic, sociocultural, political,... more The study of Russian hip-hop is conventionally studied as a linguistic, sociocultural, political, and psychological phenomenon, leaving musical considerations unexamined. Further, the study of aesthetic “Russianness” and ‘Russian musical nationalism’ is generally relegated to classical music, with little attempt to involve popular music being conducted. In this thesis, I contribute to answering “How Russian is Russian hip-hop” by examining Russian rap’s musical evolution and arguing for its connection to the aesthetic parameters of “musical Russianness” as set by 19th-century nationalist composers. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how Russian rap’s musical language can be more accurately comprehended when examined as both a domestic art form with its own unique aesthetic chronology and sociohistorically linked with the larger chronology of Russian music history. The rap album “Hoshkhonog” by Husky serves as the case study in order to examine the extent to which the parameters of “musical Russianness” are evident in the Russian rap language today. The thesis studied Russian rap’s development from 2010-2019, using a qualitative study of 6-7 albums per year to do so while foregrounding Husky’s evolution via three of his albums. To assess the presence of “musical Russianness,” a literature review on the topic and its parameters were conducted, and the findings were then used to analyze the album. The findings denote a partial, albeit theoretical, connection between Russian rap’s aesthetics and 19th-century “musical Russianness,” but more work is required to gauge the connection’s ubiquitousness. By studying Russian rap as a culturally unique art form, shaped by domestic music history and nationalist aesthetic doctrines rather than being stereotypically indebted to Western culture as academic abstractions posit, the shifting of non-Western hip-hop research away from Western comparison culture can be instigated. This study also illustrates the contextual benefits and advantages of studying rap from a music-first methodological outlook.
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Papers by John D , Vandevert
Conference Presentations by John D , Vandevert
Drafts by John D , Vandevert