Showing papers in "Musicology Australia in 2004"

New technology requires new collaborations: Changing ourselves to better shape the future

Abstract: Extract During the past few years I have sometimes glanced away from my perusal of journal articles or dissertations thrashing through ideas that have been around for decades and briefly envied fields like genetics, where technology and new research have opened up a host of new and interesting theoretical challenges and put some old issues completely to rest. That research has also had some satisfying practical results, among them the release of prisoners from death rows in jails around the United States of America as DNA evidence proves their innocence. Why, I have wondered, isn't my field so fortunately theoretically refocused and practically applicable?

Bach and the meanings of counterpoint

Abstract: (2004). Bach and the meanings of counterpoint. Musicology Australia: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 135-138.

Re-organization and Rhetoric: Changes in the social organization of North Indian classical music

Abstract: This article re-examines some of the conclusions drawn about the social organization of North Indian classical music by Daniel Neuman in his writings of1977 and 1980. It marks the changes effected in the relationship between soloist and accompanist system through the ascendancy of specialists from other than traditional backgrounds. It explores the way such changes are framed by practitioners by validation through the rhetoric of tradition, pedigree and seniority, and investigates the manner in which the musical authority of soloist over accompanist is maintained in the absence of its underpinning by social hierarchy.

Painting the Cannons Roar: Music, the visual arts and the rise of an attentive public in the age of Haydn

Abstract: informed performance, and inspiration to many makers. To Kottick he is merely 'a historically oriented postwar harpsichordist' (p. 444)Without an example of Leonhardt playing an instrument by Skovronek (one of few non-American makers to be acknowledged) the disc lacks an illustration of arguably the most influential turning point in the history of harpsichord playing and making in the twentieth century. In both cases, it might be argued that this is a history of the harpsichord, not of harpsichordists. Yet the career ofWanda Landowska is given in reverent detail. It is interesting to read that more than one critic of the time--though struck by her playing--referred openly to the problem of the harpsichord in large concert halls: its 'weak and non-carrying quality' (p. 428). Was this perception--the discrepancy between the grandeur of the artist and the 'almost inaudible' instrument she played--the factor that led to the engineering of those massive, unreal sonorities heard in the recordings through which Landowska's playing is now known? This anomaly remains perhaps the most critical problem for harpsichordist in today's concert conditions. Whereas guitarists have almost universally adopted the solution of electronic amplification in the concert hall, harpsichordists are still trapped in an unwillingness to face the problem that the more impressive the sound of their recordings, the greater are audience expectations of the five event, and inevitably the more disappointing in most cases. The conditions for playing harpsichord music have simply changed beyond recognition from the days in which the great harpsichords of the past were built, leading to inevitable distortions in perception. Unless more imaginative solutions are found for this ongoing problem, it is difficult to see Kottick's concluding dream for the harpsichord being realized: 'a new aesthetic, one in which the harpsichord may play a par t . . , perhaps [as] an instrument separated from early music, existing independently, with a viable contemporary literature and enthusiastic contemporary audiences' (p. 47o). This book should appeal to a new and more numerous readership than previous major studies on the harpsichord, and thus has a central part to play in disseminating knowledge normally confined to specialist journals and exchanges between makers. At the same time, it leaves the door open for others to describe the ways in which harpsichords, their makers, composers and players all form part of the same history, rather than coinciding by chance as the accompanying CD seems to suggest.

Productive disjunction and the play of rupture: Reading ‘the blanks’ in Writing to Vermeer

Abstract: At a crucial structural moment in the opera Writing to Vermeer, Saskia, Vermeer's model, describes some sheet music bought by her mother at the flea market: ‘But there were two pages missing from Sweelinck's “Mein junges Leben”. She said I could easily fill in the blanks. She has a peculiar idea of music. She asked me if she could join up all the dots to make the music go faster’. As Saskia implies in this passage, interpretation or performance, no matter how many pages of the text may be missing, is never simply a matter of filling in the blanks or speeding things up by joining the dots. The blanks cannot be glossed over, nor can contradictions be resolved by rushing preemptively to a conclusion. In this essay we consider the ‘blanks’ in Saskia's song not merely to be emblematic of the demand for interpretation provoked by this opera's unique mix of genres but to be deliberately produced and sustained in the spaces opened up by the interplay of the opera's many elements. This overwhelming dynami...

'This Rare and Precious Music': Preliminary Findings on the Catalogue of the Music Collection of the Dresden Catholic Court Church (1765)

Abstract: This study provides an overview of composers and works listed in the earliest known thematic inventory of the music library of the Dresden Catholic court church, the ‘Catalogo (Thematico) [sic] della Musica di Chiesa (catholica [sic] in Dresda) composta Da diversi Autori-secondo l ‘Alfabetto 1765.’ The ‘Catalogo’ is the only complete, currently accessible inventory of what is arguably the most important library ofCatholic liturgical music assembled in Saxony between c. 170865. Surviving items of the collection reveal the development of Saxon Catholic musical taste during the first half of the eighteenth century. Contributors to the collection are identified, the general purpose of musical items is outlined and reworkings ofthe repertoire are discussed. Problems inherent in the ‘Catalogo’ and considerations of assembly of the collection, musical fraud, losses to the collection and transmission and dissemination are also addressed.

Modernist versus postmodernist aesthetics: Contemporary music criticism and the case of Matthew Hindson

Abstract: While stylistic and thematic tendencies associated with postmodernism in the last two decades in the fields of literature, the visual arts, philosophy and social theory are also a striking feature of recent music culture, music critics, historians and composers have been reluctant to embrace the postmodern label or to confront aesthetic, cultural and philosophical issues that have become identified more widely in the arts with postmodernism. This essay introduces a collaborative research project by a musicologist and cultural theorist who examine critical reception of the works of Australian composer Matthew Hindson in order to test the hypothesis that a combination ofignorance of, and hostility toward, postmodern theory is hampering both the critical reception and the academic study of important trends in contemporary Australian art music.

Deadly sounds, deadly places: Contemporary aboriginal music in Australia

Abstract: used as a good introduction. But, perhaps inevitably, one would wish for more: for a deeper, more analytical, less superficial coverage, tighter editorial control, a more consistent poficy on the format and contents of the index and closer attention to the elimination of errors of fact. As it stands, the Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia is a compilation of individual articles, rather than a consistent, well-edited whole. Perhaps such a work is the next step in charting and evaluating music and dance in Australian society.

Out of Africa: Recent publications on African music, culture and the politics of music making

Abstract: In one sense the two publications under review represent two ends of the spectrum in relation to the current research into African music. The former is a collection of largely hitherto unreleased materials collected on a 1934 expedition in West Africa, while the latter looks at the recording industry in South Africa during the transition period from apartheid to the country's first democratically-held elections in 1994. Taken together, they provide diverse yet fascinating accounts of aspects of the history and development of African music, as well as studies of advances in the research techniques and technological approaches of the ethnomusicologist in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Margaret Sutherland's Chiaroscuro I: A comparison of autograph sources

Abstract: From the viewpoints of both performer and editor, the author compares two autograph sources of Sutherland's solo piano work Chiaroscuro I (1967). Issues concerning access to original manuscripts and facsimiles, the reading and interpretation of the composer's notation, idiosyncrasies of Sutherland's style and questions of editorial and performance judgement are discussed.

Issues at Stake beyond the ‘insuperable melancholy longing for the unity of interpretation with experience'

Abstract: Much of the enterprise of these two collections resonates strongly with Joseph Kerman's call-to-arms for musicology in Contemplating Musicology from two decades ago.2 It seems to have taken this long for the discipline to start to embrace poststructuralism and postmodernism in a substantial way, with collections such as these: one can pretty much count on one hand the numbers of art-music books that have appeared with the term 'postmodern' in their tides. Indeed, it is worth quoting from a multi-disciplinary collection, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism,3 which appeared in 2004, in order to afford some perspective on the broader position of music scholarship in current cultural discourse. The Companion contains chapters on postmodernism in relation to subjects ranging from philosophy, film, literature, art, performance, space, science, technology, post-religion, ethics, to law and justice—but, saliendy, nothing on music. The editor, Steven Connor, in the introduction, comments: