Music

On the lower walls of the Upper Church at Assissi there is a series of frescoes (1297-1300) by Giotto that celebrate the life of St Francis as recounted in Bonaventure’s life of the saint (from which excerpts are found beneath each fresco). One of these frescoes, The Crib at Greccio, shows an unusual view of the exposed carpentry on the verso of the cross fixed above the doorway of the solid tramezzo screen that divides the chorus from the nave. The lecture explores the issue of whether the purpose of this view strangely occluded cross is to interrupt the customary focus of the devout on the mass that takes place on the frontal side of the cross on the other side of the screen. Would this increase the emotional impact of the miraculous vision associated with St Francis’s unprecedented nativity play (that other mass) taking place in the chorus with priest, the saint himself, monks and leading citizens of the city? What is the significance of displacing the scene from its humble hill town setting at Greccio to this new setting in the wealthy Franciscan church pictured in the fresco? Does this deviation from the Bonaventure’s text increase the prestige of the order without destroying the spontaneity of the event? Does it constitute a precedent for liturgy with fresh and moving ideological connotations? Finally, is the setting of the nativity drama in the chorus a ‘front region’ masquerading as a ‘back region’ (in Irving Goffmann’s terms) providing worshippers in the actual church with an especially privileged and emotional identification with the events taking place within the fictional church? Contrasts will be made with Duccio’s double-sided Maestà at Siena, and innovative use will be made of the theories of indeterminacy attributed to the ‘wrong’ sides of things by philosophers such as Edmund Husserl, Luc Ferry and Jan Patocka.

RESUMO: O artigo apresenta resultados de pesquisas relacionadas especificamente às atividades corais a capella desenvolvidas e/ou patrocinadas pela Sociedade de Cultura Artística Brasílio Itiberê (SCABI), desde a sua criação, em Curitiba, Paraná, em 1944 até meados década de 1960, período em que a entidade realizou cerca de 30 apresentações com grupos vocais nacionais e internacionais. Dos conjuntos nacionais, investigou-se, em particular, da Associação Orfeônica de Curitiba, cuja regência coube ao maestro Luiz Eulógio Zilli (1907-1990); dos conjuntos internacionais pesquisou-se a vinda de Os meninos cantores de Viena (Die Wiener Saengerknaben), em 1949 e 1961.
Palavras-chave: Sociedade de Cultura Artística Brasílio Itiberê (SCABI); coral a capella; atividades musicais no Estado do Paraná do século XX.
ABSTRACT: The article presents results of a research specifically related to the choral activities a capella developed and/or sponsored by the Sociedade de Cultura Artística Brasílio Itiberê (SCABI), in Curitiba, Parana, Brazil. The research covers SCABI activities since its creation, in 1944 until mid 1960s. During this period SCABI featured about 30 presentations with national and international vocal groups. Among the national sets, the research focused particularly on the Associação Orfeônica de Curitiba, under regency of the conductor Luiz Eulógio Zilli (1907-1990); among the international sets the studies concentrated on the visits of the Viena Boys Singers (Die Wiener Saengerknaben), in 1949 and 1961
Keywords: Socidade de Cultura Artística Brasílio Itiberê (SCABI); choral a capella; musical activities in the State of the Paraná of century XX.

Colonialism is a particular mode of domination exercised by a state or comparable entity over foreign lands and peoples. There is a good deal of overlap between the keyword colonialism and the more general concept of imperialism. The former has come to refer specifically to the European domination of vast expanses of the world during the modern period as well as to techniques of imperial control developed during this period and applied by powers such as Japan and the United States. Colonialism and decolonization have had a profound impact on all domains of cultural production, including music. After defining colonialism, this entry introduces some of the processes and musical effects of Western colonial expansion from the 15th century to the present.

This article discusses the aetiology and evolution of musical structure, specifically the sonata-form exposition, from a memetic perspective. It regards established musical forms as replicated schemata arising from the conglomeration of foreground-level memes, the resultant archetypes (structural memes or Memesätze) being replicated (reinstantiated) by different collections of functionally analogous (allelic) memes. After a discussion of the theoretical background — including the top-down/bottom-up generative dichotomy as it applies to form, and some attributes of memes affecting conglomeration — three sonata expositions, by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, are discussed as specific evidence in support of the general hypotheses advanced.

Since the DCMS Creative Industries Mapping Document highlighted the key role played by creative activities in the UK economy and society, the creative industries agenda has expanded across Europe and internationally. It has the support of local authorities, regional development agencies, research councils, arts and cultural agencies and other sector organisations. Within this framework, higher education institutions have also engaged in the creative agenda but have struggled to define their role in this growing sphere of activities. Higher Education and the Creative Economy critically engages with the complex interconnections between higher education, geography, cultural policy and the creative economy. This book is organised into four sections which articulate the range of dynamics that can emerge between higher education and the creative economy: partnership and collaboration across higher education institutions and the creative and cultural industries; the development of creative human capital; connections between arts schools and local art scenes; and links with broader policy directions and work. While it has a strong UK component, it also includes international perspectives, specifically from Australia, Singapore, Europe and the USA. This authoritative collection challenges the boundaries of creative and cultural industry development by bringing together international experts from a range of subject areas, presenting researchers with a unique multidisciplinary approach to the topic. This edited collection will be of interest to researchers and policy-makers working in the area of creative and cultural industries development.

Even if sound and music are deeply intertwined phenomena, it is still fiercely debated whether all music is made up of sound, and vice versa, whether all sound can be deemed as music. Researchers from many different backgrounds have proposed numerous solutions to the conundrum; however, most of them analyse music and sound out of their natural context, ignoring not negligible variables such as listeners and cognitive constraints.

This paper fills this gap, by introducing a theoretical model, called the Circle of Sound, which aims to solve the sound/music dilemma. The Circle of Sound is based on cognition, and has
been developed according to the concepts of musical complexity, musical understanding and musical enjoyment. By combining these concepts, a new operational definition of music is proposed. The theoretical framework provided can also be used as a basis for future experimental investigations, willing to shed some light on how musical is understood by
people.

Musical Portraits: The Composition of Identity in Contemporary and Experimental Music explores the wide-ranging but under-examined genre of musical portraiture. It focuses in particular on contemporary and experimental music created between 1945 and the present day, an era in which conceptions of identity have changed alongside increasing innovation in musical composition as well as in the uses of abstraction, mixed media, and other novel techniques in the field of visual portraiture. In the absence of physical likeness, an element typical of portraiture that cannot be depicted in sound, composers have experimented with methods of constructing other attributes of identity in music, such as character, biography, and profession. By studying musical portraits of painters, authors, and modern celebrities, in addition to composers' self-portraits, the book considers how representational and interpretive processes overlap and differ between music and other art forms, as well as how music is used in the depiction of human identities. Examining a range of musical portraits by composers including Peter Ablinger, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, György Ligeti, and Virgil Thomson, and director Robert Wilson's on-going series of video portraits of modern-day celebrities and his "portrait opera" Einstein on the Beach, Musical Portraits contributes to the study of music since 1945 through a detailed examination of contemporary understandings of music's capacity to depict identity, and of the intersections between music, literature, theater, film, and the visual arts.

La Barcarolle op. 60 de Chopin fait partie de la dernière période créatrice du compositeur, également appelée « dernier style ». Cette œuvre a suscité de très nombreuses interprétations dans la littérature musicologique, mais l’objet de cette communication est de proposer notre propre analyse, à la fois formelle et narrative, qui permettra de mettre en lumière certaines nouveautés stylistiques caractéristiques de cette période et d’expliquer les déviances formelles apparentes. Ce double-niveau analytique souhaite en effet investir les aspects techniques du discours musical (forme, tonalités, sections, cadences, harmonies, etc.) mais également son niveau expressif, à travers l’utilisation des topiques musicaux. L’étude de la succession de ces unités expressives permettra notamment d’éclaircir et d’expliquer le parcours de l’œuvre, qui se détache de la forme ternaire si chère au compositeur, avec un retour varié des deux thèmes principaux dans un style héroïque au sein de la dernière section, amenant un sentiment apothéotique. Il s’agit donc d’une stratégie narrative construite selon une concaténation particulière des unités du discours musical, une disposition de type téléologique qui amènera à cette apothéose finale, également retrouvée dans d’autres œuvres du corpus de la dernière période.

This paper was read at the 2021 annual conference of the Musicological Society of Australia. It is drawn from my forthcoming book, edited with David Dolata and Philippe Vendrix: "Tablature: Alternate notations 1350-1750" to be published by Brepols. It presents a new vision of tablature and its role in Western culture resulting from a ten-year study of tablatures, 1350-1750. The surviving repertoire of more than 70,000 works for more than forty instruments, including human voice, is preserved in a variety of notations that are alternatives to conventional mensural notation. We examined all kinds of tablatures, from the widely accepted mainstream forms to the more idiosyncratic and experimental varieties that gained little traction in the real world of musical practice. On the notational side, this paper explores the nature of tablature, the essence of its graphic system, the commonalities between systems and the contemporary challenges to renewing the associated terminology. From another perspective, it considers the marginalisation of tablature music in our cultural heritage, and the attendant historiographical deficiencies that result from the near-total exclusion of the repertoire from musicological thinking. Tablature can be revealed as more than a simple notation for "playing by numbers,” instead an alternative way of thinking about music and transmitting it. Tablature fulfilled special and necessary functions, not only as the first viable system of score notation, but also permitting the expression of dimensions of performance-related information that were impossible in conventional notation. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tablature was a mainstream notation, essential to the social fabric of music, and important whether in their broader use as conducting scores, or in facilitating the popular transmission of elite repertoires.

Acoustical knowledge of ancient Hindus "Expressed in the Vedic language, which is derived from classical Sanskrit, the verses of the Vedas were traditionally chanted during sacred rituals and recited daily in Vedic communities. The value of this tradition lies not only in the rich content of its oral literature but also in the ingenious techniques employed by the Brahmin priests in preserving the texts intact over thousands of years. To ensure that the sound of each word remains unaltered, practitioners are taught from childhood complex recitation techniques that are based on tonal accents, a unique manner of pronouncing each letter and specific speech combinations." (World Intangible Cultural Heritage-ICH) UNESCO Proclamation 2003

Euro-American performance arts are exceptional among the world’s cultures in that music and dance are separable and constitute independent disciplines. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a distinct consciousness emerged that demonstrated an awareness of the varying and protean relationships that music and dance can share. While some artists were keen to develop their particular medium to its fullest potential, others were keen to group expressive mediums together into new wholes. These explorations were accompanied by a rapid but uneven expansion in audio, visual and audio-visual technology. As artistic practices evolved and technology developed, a range of possibilities were explored and the discipline of choreomusicology finally emerged. Choreomusicology is the study of the relationship between sound and movement within any performance genre. As a pedagogical tool, this article discusses key developments in the history of choreomusical theory and practice with a sympathetic selection of material using the words of artists and theoreticians. The evolving relationship between music and dance in any performance tradition is a socially situated process shaped by a range of historically constituted practices. The current discussion situates the artistic legacy inherited by contemporary Euro-American artists within a historical and cultural context.

This chapter explores the use of music and digital media in the Chanjo campaign against corruption in Tanzania, focusing on mediations of agency. Building on Latour (2005), I use the concept mediated agency to refer to a process in which different cultural forms (mediators) bring about social transformation (agency). In so doing I recognize the ‘agency of art,’ especially its embeddedness in networks of social relations and its ‘practical mediatory role’ in processes of social change (Gell 1998). Similarly, I appreciate media and other mediators in the broader sense of ‘social mediation,’ with an emphasis on social interaction and exchange (Boyer 2012). Thus, while understanding agency in the sense of transformative action or practice, I build on anthropological theories of mediation, focusing on social processes of intervention and interaction that include but go beyond different forms of media. In this chapter, I will argue that the Chanjo campaign creates a platform that mediates the agency of participants, empowering them to speak up against corruption. The music itself is of course an important form of mediation, but so is the method of delivery, not least the interaction with the audience, as well as the mobility of the campaign. These layers of mediation intersect in different ways, which enforces the process of social and cultural transformation. Through digital mediations and remediations (Bolter and Grusin 1999), especially through social and mobile media, the campaign expands in time and space, thus extending agency beyond the tour itself.

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate, if possible, whether there is any relation between rap and African-American music. That is to say, if rap directly comes from the music that the first slaves to arrive in North American soil brought with them. For this, characteristics of African music will be first reviewed. After that, a study will be done about the ways that this kind of music lived with the one that predominated at that time among the inhabitants of the emerging United States of America – the majority of them being whites –, as it was deeply bound to religion. Following that, there will be a discussion about whether the latter had any influence on the music of slaves in order for this to survive. With the passing of time, a blend between African and American cultures derived in what we know as African-American culture. As a consequence, new musical styles were set up, till the most current – rap –, which originated as a music to express social protest and wishes to change, to freedom for the black population. However, today rap is fairly linked to an almost obsessive quest for money and success, having freedom and revolution ideals been nearly erased from its lyrics.

This is a book of ideas, a catalogue of experience, a mass of personal stories, a collection of inspiring musical exercises, and a fascinating record of community music's roots and heritage. Community music making is exploding across Britain and this book will help you develop new insights into the practice of: running workshops making new music with people, whatever their age, culture, skill or background. Rising out of a 10 year training programme organised by More Music in Morecambe this publication has drawn on the talents of many of the key players in British community music. An essential tool for community musicians, community arts workers, music teachers, musicians from drummers to singers, workshop leaders, people involved in activities from alternative informal) education to street performance. A how-to book that should have a place on the bookcase and the music stand.

The book also contains also a series of poems by Lemn Sissay.

Includes a chapter by McKay:
"The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it traces the historical development of the idea of community music. It does this with particular emphasis on community music’s relation to aspects of the 1960s countercultural project and its legacy. This involves looking at the role of free jazz in music education, links with the burgeoning community arts movement, the radical politics and social ideas frequently claimed by those central to community music. Community music remains imbued with the spirit of improvisation, and I think it important to acknowledge the special role played by that particular music (as opposed to, say, classical music outreach teams, grassroots folk or more recent world music projects) in its development. Second it narrates the development of the More Music in Morecambe community music project through the 1990s, its successes and (mini-)crises, its beliefs and practices. It considers the origins of MMM in some of the earlier musical/theatrical performance practice of Welfare State International, and locates MMM in the context of the rise of community music as a social-cultural phenomenon in Britain. This involves discussion of ways in which the radicalism or idealism of some of early community music has been knocked and/or maintained."

Agitation is a common problem in patients suffering from dementia and encompasses a variety of behaviors such as repetitive acts, restlessness, wandering, and aggressive behaviors. Agitation reduces the probability of positive social interaction and increases the psychological and organizational burden. While medical interventions are common, there is need for complementary or alternative methods. Music intervention has been brought forward as a promising method to reduce agitation in dementia. While interventions, target groups and research designs differ, there has so far not been a systematic overview assessing the effect of music intervention for agitation in patients with dementia. A meta-analysis was conducted in order to investigate possible effects of music interventions. Twelve studies met inclusion criteria. Music intervention had a medium overall effect on agitation in dementia, suggesting robust clinical relevance. While the moderate number of studies does not allow for further differentiation between sub-types of music intervention, the subgroup comparisons indicated promising pathways for future systematic reviews. This meta-analysis is the first systematic and quantitative overview supporting clinically and statistically robust effects of music intervention on agitation in dementia. The analysis provides further arguments for this non-pharmacological approach and highlights needs for future systematic research reviews for the investigation of intervention types.

“Prokofiev's music is extremely visual. It's physically communicative. Sometimes, playing it, I feel like a ballet dancer sensing the music through motion and vibration. In later life Prokofiev took this still further. Not only can we visualise objects, we can also feel the material that they’re made of, the structure, the consistency of the fabric. His distinctively 'orchestrated; writing for the instrument creates a particular challenge for a performer, different weightings, voicings and colours demanding different soundscapes” ~ Dinara Klinton

The relationship between music, the self/identity, and consumption is significant and widely acknowledged, yet it remains under-researched. To further our understanding of the symbolic consumption of music, this study evaluates the usefulness of Larsen, Lawson, and Todd's (2009) conceptual framework of the consumption of music as self-representation, and presents a revised framework. Twenty-two individuals provided data, including in-depth interviews and participant diaries. The resulting framework details the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the symbolic consumption of music. It is based on an evaluation of the level and acceptability of congruency between the image of the music and the self-concept, both of which are socially situated. Identity is expressed through a variety of consumption rituals, which allow the individual to ‘own’ or ‘possess’ the associated meanings. The framework demonstrates that music is a rich and important site of symbolic consumption, and could also be used in contexts other than music to describe symbolic consumption.