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Combining historical music theory with the cognitive study of music, Playing with Meter traces metric manipulations and strategies in Haydn and Mozart's string chamber music from 1787 to 1791. Her analysis shed new light on this repertoire and redefine the role of meter and rhythm in Classical music.
Topics are musical signs that rely on associations with different genres, styles, and types of music making. The concept of topics was introduced by Leonard Ratner in the 1980s to account for cross-references between eighteenth-century styles and genres. While music theorists and critics were busy classifying styles and genres, defining their affects and proper contexts for their usage, composers started crossing the boundaries between them and using stylistic conventions as means of communication with the audience. Such topical mixtures received negative evaluations from North-German critics but became the hallmark of South-German music, which engulfed the Viennese classicism. Topic theory ...
"This book presents a systematic discussion of hypermeter and phrase structure in eighteenth-century music. It combines perspectives from historical and modern music theory with insights from the cognitive study of music and introduces a dynamic model of hypermeter, which allows the analyst to trace the effect of hypermetric manipulations in real time. This model is applied in analyses of string chamber music by Haydn and Mozart. The analyses shed a new light upon this celebrated musical repertoire, but the aim of this book goes far beyond an analytical survey of specific compositions. Rather, it is to give a comprehensive account of the ways in which phrase structure and hypermeter were described by eighteenth-century music theorists, conceived by eighteenth-century composers, and perceived by eighteenth-century listeners"--
Written by ten leading scholars, this volume assembles studies of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music under the broad rubric of communication. That such an impulse motivates musical composition and performance in this period of European musical history is often acknowledged but seldom examined in depth. The book explores a broad set of issues, ranging from the exigencies of the market for books and music in the eighteenth century through to the deployment of dance topoi in musical composition. A number of close readings of individual works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven draw on a sophisticated body of historically-appropriate technical resources to illuminate theories of form, metre, bass lines and dance topoi. Students and scholars of music history, theory and analysis will find in this volume a set of challenging, state-of-the-art essays that will stimulate debate about musical meaning and engender further study.
Singing in Signs: New Semiotic Explorations of Opera offers a bold and refreshing assessment of the state of opera study that engages composer-constructed and work-specific music-semiotic systems, broader socio-cultural music codes, and narrative strategies, with implications for performance and staging practices today.
Reveals how the culture and repertoire of the early Viennese ballroom permeated and intersected with other areas of musical life.
Written by ten leading scholars, this volume assembles studies of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music under the broad rubric of communication. That such an impulse motivates musical composition and performance in this period of European musical history is often acknowledged but seldom examined in depth. The book explores a broad set of issues, ranging from the exigencies of the market for books and music in the eighteenth century through to the deployment of dance topoi in musical composition. A number of close readings of individual works by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven draw on a sophisticated body of historically-appropriate technical resources to illuminate theories of form, metre, bass lines and dance topoi. Students and scholars of music history, theory and analysis will find in this volume a set of challenging, state-of-the-art essays that will stimulate debate about musical meaning and engender further study.
For the past four decades, the concept of hypermeter has been routinely applied to eighteenth-century music. But was this concept familiar in the eighteenth century? If so, how is it reflected in writings of eighteenth-century music theorists? And how does it relate to their discussion of phrase structure? In this book, a follow-up to the award-winning Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart, author Danuta Mirka unearthes a number of cues that point to eighteenth-century recognition of what today is called hypermeter, and retraces the line of tradition that led from eighteenth-century music theory to the emergence of the modern concept of hypermeter in the twentieth century. Mirka describes...
Cadence is a comprehensive examination of how formal units in European art music of the tonal era achieve closure. The book brings together the author's decades-long investigations into cadence, a compositional device that is readily experienced both by musicians and non-musicians, but one that has proven intractable to clear and precise theoretical formulation. Rooted in Caplin's broader theory of formal functions, the book first develops concepts of cadence for music of the high classical style and then extends these ideas to gauge cadential practice in earlier and later style periods. Throughout the study, various manifestations of cadence are defined in terms of their morphology (their harmonic and melodic profiles) as well as their function (the specific formal contexts in which they are deployed). Cadence introduces a host of theoretical concepts illustrated by copious musical examples, all of which contain extensive analytical annotations of harmony, melody and form. Though the book is addressed primarily to music theorists, the many issues of compositional practice raised in this study will resonate with the interests of composers, historians, and performers alike.
Embodied experience and sensorial understandings in Western music The Western history of aesthetics is characterised by tension between theory and practice. Musicians listen, play, and then listen more profoundly in order to play differently, adapt the body, and sense the environment. They become deeply involved in the sensorial qualities of music practice. Artistic practice refers to the original meaning of aesthetics—the senses. Whereas Baumgarten and Goethe explored the relationship between sensibility and reason, sensation and thinking, later philosophers of aesthetics deemed the sensorial to be confused and unreliable and instead prioritised a cognitive or objective approach. Written ...