musicologyc - Tumblr blog

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

Music and Emotion, Theory and Research Stephen Davies 2001

Music Cognition May 2006 Jezabel Cohen Differences between philosophical problems on the essay that are arguing on the understanding of the relationship between music and emotion in the way Davies describes

I had to chose one of the approaches and identify which of the information given on the area of cognition can help to support the approaches or destroy them? Davies is trying to excuse himself of the many ways it is possible also wrong and right to use science to approach to a result, and how much important the understanding of such sciences are connected with the results that we might obtain, he is discussing the philosophy of music expressiveness and on how music can awaken emotions in every one of us. He is conscious on the ways that we chose to take and what results we might obtain, after chosen, he is asking how can music could express emotion. He is presenting three ways in which music expression of emotion can be philosophically problematic, suggesting to distinguish the different theories of emotions where emotions are experiences passively undergone by its subjects, this allows one to think that emotions possess a phenomenological profile. Emotions are object-focused, this means that usually they are superficially facing the object, not face to face, the object and the emotion are separate. Davies suggests making distinctions between emotions and mere sensations, between moods and emotions and between emotions that may involve bodily sensations. 1st Instrumental Music is not the kind of thing that can express emotion. Then he asks about what is it about emotions that music resembles? Page 31. The origins of vocal music must be sought in impassioned speech, this means not expressing emotion but just narrating a story, today vocal music is many times much more expressive than it was, when a text was included in a piece of music, in the Romantic period, the importance of the mixture of both text and music was one of the difficulties a composer encountered when he had to write a piece of music.

Giving musical meaning to a word needs tons of skills and when listening Schubert’s lied’s, for example Winterreisse cycle of songs it cannot be deny that the story that is being told it’s not only full of emotions and the feelings this person is experiencing, but also he is transmitting a sad moment and a tragic story, his music shows it as well, the voice is reflecting and we cannot avoid the fact that we are being emotionally troubled when listening a tragic story like that. One or the other (voice separated from instrument) are powerfully full of expression and can awaken endless emotions in everyone. Chamber music is only instrumental and in my own experience as a listener can bring out endless emotions when listening to it. 2nd Listeners response, example: when listeners are saddened by the music sadness Schubert is suggesting emotions. In Schubert’s Arpeggione, that was written and was meant to be played for the imagination of the listener, the music was meant to be played in a salon and the musician’s responsibility was to make the listener change his state of emotion and to transmit it, this was the musician’s work. Each note has its own expression, each rhythm its own importance, each player will play with its own accumulative emotional experiences. So it is likely that when playing with passion or with a certain kind of feeling, the piece will sound each time like something else. Listener’s response will be attached to what it is transmitted to them, but not always will awaken what was meant by the musicians to awaken. The expression theory is supporting the idea that a person should be a recipient of emotions and when a certain expression in music appears, this person is the one responsable to bringing it out. We can call it composer, singer, player, listener. Emotions are there and maybe suddenly awaken like the sleeping beauty in our memory of emotions, looking for an emotion that suits with what we are listening. This theory sustains that all art is able of emotional expressiveness, artists for example have techniques that can remove their emotions out or play with their emotions, their art is designed to provoke pleasure in viewers or listeners. The arousal theory talks about the stimuli build-in music, can evoke certain emotions and can make us forget about the other, this theory is putting music in a very powerful position, the power to bring this or that emotion, sad or happy, manipulating responses in the listener. Motivation is the main importance if the music is inviting we will maybe start dancing, if the music is boring we probably will start sleeping. A lot of what we buy or like or listen to, it has more meaning today than ever, this theory is already made and inherent to the composers before they even start writing a piece. It has also I think, great resourceful profits. Davies’s theory limits are suggesting to consider all the information that is left behind when approving any theory. Expressing an emotion in music parallels the case of a person expressing an emotion that she or he is feeling. Music modality influence the way we can feel about it when we listen to it. The listener has to be qualified to detect expression in music, an idea that I don’t personally agree with. I don’t agree because we are all vulnerable in front of anything and any thing can influence on us in so many ways and we specially don’t need to be professionals or skillfully musicians or listeners that had heard all in the world to recognize an emotion that came out. 1st problem, The expression of emotion in music Music as a symbol This approach talks on how music’s expressiveness is metaphorical and how refuses to show its metaphor and this is not to say that music can be described metaphorically but that music is metaphorically expressive. Expressiveness is completely connected to the music. (Mysteriously). And this idea should be a metaphor in it self, but since metaphor is a linguistic tool depending on semantic relations for which there is no musical connection, this is why the connection of emotions and expressiveness within music is an enigma. Another approach says that music is connected to emotions as a result of a symbol system that is linked to it. Example, music linked to rites and events emotionally charged, that are bringing out these emotions and become common for musical expression. Another approach talks on the physical connection we have with music, emotion is transparently immediate to our experience to music, page 30.

The contour theory is not analyzing music connections to emotions but the certain behaviors that are understood as expressive but without being caused by an emotion. It proposes that music present emotions rather than giving expression to existing emotions. Expressiveness is a characteristic of music it self. Which is almost true, but when humans are making music, while humans are emotional creatures and when a human is making music there must be an emotion involved there. When he talks about the theory that sees music as an iconic symbol he is disagreeing with it, saying that music is not capable of resembling expressions of the emotions, as this theory, and not just music it is not redolent of emotions. Another objection to this theory doubts about this theory being able to explain the meaning of expressiveness on music. 2nd problem: mirroring responses to music’s expressiveness Davies is asking, how is the listener’s response appropriate to the music? Emotional responses are happening often when hearing a piece of music and on the other hand the response to another’s emotion often does not mirror it. The cognitive theory says that emotions posses a phenomenological profile, among other characteristics, emotions can be caused by physiological changes, emotions involve a classification of their objects, Davies describes the cognitive model as one that exactly can fit with the one that supports that our emotional reactions to music expressiveness are mirrored in listener’s feelings. He is giving a quotation of Griffiths, describing people not often wrong when identifying their own emotions. Music can arouse only rather general feelings, and thereby is capable of expressing only a limited range of emotions. 3rd problem: Negative responses On the negativity music communicates when is sad or why listeners like to hear it again and again, a music that awakens sad feelings. ………..Generalizing music is a common thing, we cannot assume that music in minor keys means sad only because Sad it does not mean music in minor keys……… This is a common generalization but it’s also a generalization that has the capacity on making us think that Sad might be as well, meaning music in minor keys, among thousand others. The sad emotions that are evoked by listening sad music, are not negative responses and the feeling of wanting to hear again and again the same sad song, instead of listening other things, does not have anything strange also. Davies come here to the conclusion that conciseness, is maybe the thing that people forget, when exposing themselves again and again, to music that might awake sad memories, feelings, and emotions. The position Hume is suggesting, talks about energies that might be transform to positive when negative. It sounds very mad but there is quite a lot of research done on the transformation of emotions or feelings, holistic movements and spiritualism is talking about the way a negative energy can be transformed into a new and positive one. It is necessary to understand how is the way our mind works, the way a mind of a musician, a mind of a non musician, a mind of an elder, a mind of a younger, a mind of a religious person, a mind of a boy or a woman with any kind of syndrome or symptoms that will bring us always something that it is joined directed to us, to people, that make things and that also like music, and like to listen to it, and like to buy it, and like to play it, and like to sing it, but in addition or in the most incredible ways also feels it, feels passion about it when it listens to it. Researches will tell us much more about humanity, ethnicity and anthropology than about music itself, about people’s reactions or about the reactions of a group of people.

http://www.google.co.il/search?hl=en&q=Music+and+Emotion%2C+Theory+and+Research+Stephen+Davies+2001&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

3 notes · View notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Link

0 notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Video

vimeo

Hebrew University Orchestra march, 2017 Eroica Jerusalem Theater

#Vimeo

0 notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Video

vimeo

Hebrew University Orchestra 2017, jerusalem theater

#Vimeo #jezabelcohen

0 notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

Jewish Music- Musicology Department

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Musicology Department

Jewish Music-to Professor Edwin Seroussi

by:Jezabel Cohen

2- The term Makam is central for the research in Sephardic liturgical music today. Examine the different definitions in relation to Jews and the different liturgical implementation of the Makam.

Modes of music in religious traditions are one of the main providers of the way the texts are designed with the use of melodic embellishments. Maqam works in the same way when reading the Qur’an and when reading of Shaharit and Shabbat services for the Sepharadic Jews of Syria.

Every day has its maqam, the hassan is in charge of pointing out of the use of it. The choice of a maqam is regarded to the Bible and from it to the liturgical designation of the way it will be heard the different melodies of each week. Communities from Arab lands like the Lebanese, Turkish, Egyptian, Iraqi and Sepharadic Jews in Jerusalem make use of the maqam in their praying of Shabbat.

Associations between Syrian communities like the community of Brooklyn in New York and its links with the Arab music became tradition of cultural and religious interchange that started back and before the 19th century. Even the Jewish Syrians developed and transformed with their own musical features for example the adherence to a proper maqam for Shabbat. (Kligman 2001:451).

The maqam is built on a scale and do not include any rhythmical statements. A close Hebrew name for the maqam is the word niggun, (tune), and is the one to establish the foundation of the prayers on which the cantor bases his rendering of the Shaharit portion of the service. Four principles characterize the use of maqamat in Brooklyn’s community (Kligman 2001:451) affect, theory, melody and variety. The affect principle relates to a unique emotion and then related to thematic content in the biblical reading. Theory principle relates to the use of a maqam in the opening reading of the Torah. The melody principle describes the content of a biblical event and corresponding it to each Shabbat, or it can be related to a holiday with which a pizmon is associated, using the maqam in the Shabbat that precedes that holiday. Variety is the principle that is in charge of variations creating diversity, in the use of the maqamat like bayat, huseini, nahawand, rahaw nawa, seyga and mahur. Unique feature in the Syrian Jewish community to the maqam is the adherence of their own system of associations with the maqam. Reflecting their local life style which is independent to the Arab musical practices. (Kligman 2001: 465 (Shiloah 1981:39). The melodic associations deriving from song-type associations, is also a common feature between both Arab and Jewish use of the maqam. In the reading of the Torah and the Qur’an, both start using a maqam that will be the same one at the end.

The music of the maqam can be called as the Arab style that Jewish Sepharadic music, took part not in building in the style, but in reforming it till became part of the Syrian Jews praying style. Its melodic modes got into the Jewish music with modifications and varieties going beyond religious practice and showing the people’s tradition and cultural surrounding.

Arab melodies were incorporated into the liturgy making possible the encounter between biblical events and images of antiquity with present day traditions of the ritual of prayer. Different organization of extra-musical associations of the like can be found in the nusah, time of the Jewish calendar in Ashkenazic Jewish services; raga, that provides the daily cycle in addition to ragas in India; pathet, organizes a performance of wayang kulit, in South Asia; maqam guides the reading of the Qur’an.

Similarities between the Arab maqamat from Hakham David Tawil’s chart and the maqamat used by Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, can show the similarities, the main are stated in a note that is flattened by one- quarter step from the natural position, always in the same place of the scale. And this places (maqam) the note, three quarters of a step from the adjacent notes of the scale. The uses of one-quarter step in Jewish Syrian liturgy can be seen in the maqam, ajam, 3 times, rast, 2 times, mahur, one time. In maqamat starting on C of upper octave, bayat, 2 times appears as in the Hakham David Tawil’s chart. For starting on upper D octave and upper tetrachords, saba, 2 times, and seyga 3 times.

Jewish Syrians use eleven maqamat on the liturgy, seven modes and its variations, ajam, rast, mahur, nahawand, rahaw nawa, bayat, muhayyar, huseini, saba and seyga. The adaptation of Arab songs to Jewish liturgical melodies comes both from instrumental and vocal repertories. Bakkashot and Pizmonim are sung in the Arab musical style. The practical use of seven basic maqam families, or fasa’il, using only the primary maqam, four fasa’il, and one or two variants in the other three fasa’il, resulting the use of eleven maqamat.

Modes of the music of a maqam, examines Amnon Shiloah (Kligman 2001:448) are related to planets, zodiac, seasons, day and night, hours, elements, humors, temperaments, virtues, colors and odors. These associations were to be considered when a musician had to choose a mode to the circumstances. Plato’s stated that “Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State…when modes of music change, the State always changes with them. - Plato’s “The Republic” 360 B.C.

This can be explained to the significant part of life music had in the emotional state of the people. Modes of music are modes of seeing, in a way, the music that we hear. Marcus says that these associations are of no relevance in modern sources, (Kligman 2001:449) that the mode of the maqam’s emotion depends of the habit and not by the essential quality of the maqam.

Mark Kligman: The Bible, and Maqam: Extra-Musical associations of Syrian Jews. Mark Kligman / Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion- Volume 45. No.3. Ethnomusicology Fall 2001.

5- The changes that took place in the music of the Western and Central European synagogues. Influences of the enlightenment period, civil rights for Jews and processes of modernization. Examine many of these changes and of the figures that were involved in the design of the music for synagogues during the different places and times along the 19 th century.

Musical art in Europe was defined as significant also for the part that music took for devotion to religion. Sepharadic and Ashkenazic rabbinic circles were not taking the same attitude when music was being design. Sepharadic communities rejected the Hasidic notion that music can change the life of the Jew. Holidays or personal celebrations were the place of expression of Jewish folk music, this was the way for showing the culture in an omnipresent reality of anti-Semitism and political perspective. Jewish in France, enjoyed a relative good life during the Revolution, French proletariat rights was extended also to the Jews. Education was open to them and quickly they took part in intellectual as well as in political life. Influenced by reforms, that took place in the liturgy of Berlin, Paris was always in constant interchange with the communities of central Europe, becoming itself the center of Jewish musical changes. These produced a slowly dissolution of the Kehillah, in which format Jewish organized since the Middle Ages. Individual rights soon over took power from the rabbinic authorities. This led to conversion by the Jewish to Christianity.

Samuel Naumbourg, born in Bavaria (1815-1880), a 10th generation of south German Hazzanim, the choirmaster of Strasbourg, arrived to Paris in 1843, he was the first hazzan of Notre Dame de Nazareth synagogue, Zmirot Yisrael 1847, including a volume for the Shabbat and High Holy Days, volumes 3, Hymnes et Psaumes. Between his contemporaries are Jaques Fromenthal Halevy and Jacob Meyerbeer. Among other works, Aguddat Shirim in 1874, collection of traditional synagogue melodies, that presented some Sepharadic melodic material, as well as a long preface on the history of Jewish religious music. French musical reform after his death was recognized and transformed the synagogue music of the west and of central Europe.

In churches the music heard at the time was Mozart or Bach, with splendorous repertoires and instrumental accompaniment. The synagogues offered a non instrumental accompaniment and chants brought from the East known by the hazzanim. The answer for being able to survive in such circumstances was to reform Judaism and to hope to suit it to the modern times that were up to come. Many of the prayers were now held in French or German, and not in Hebrew, making it easier to set the music into the texts. New melodies were composed. Chorales and hymn tunes by Jewish and Christian composers mixed in the reformed synagogues. An example for it was Allegenwart (Omnipresence) published in German, in Stuttgart in 1836.

Louis Lewandowski (1821-1824) born in Poland. Sent to study music at the conservatory of Berlin, became close to Asher Lion, chief cantor of Berlin synagogue. Lewandowski worked for Asher as his reader and cantor in the synagogue. After Lion’s retirement the hazzan was Abraham Jacob Lichtenstein (1806-1880), and Lewandowski was in charge of the choral arrangements. Left to Vienna to study for Sulzer and soon after became a choir director in Oranienburgerstrasse Shul in Berlin. The organ was part of the services. The second publication of the volume of chorals Schir Zion was published in 1866. Between Lewandowski’s works, Kol Rinah Utefillah, 1871, Todah W’simrah four voices, soloist and organ accompaniment, 2 volumes 1876-1882, and 18 Liturgische Psalmen, for solo, choir and organ. The music was for all the Jewish calendar. His music had been used into all the spectrum of Jewish ritual practice.

In early 19th century Europe, Jewish schools included music reading and singing. Academies trained professionals in modern music theory and harmony. Jewish cantors performed as soloists and as music directors, with choral performances and organ accompaniment. Access to secular musical styles and performances enabled Jewish music to reach the level of the music of the surrounding. But the threat of abandon to the tradition was always present. The nusah, provided the structure and form to the ritual in synagogues, tradition also guaranteed that displaced Jewish populations could find their rituals wherever they go.

Solomon Sulzer (1804-1890) was one of the first reformers of the Jewish music. Born in Austria, he benefited from secular musical training as well as Jewish familiar tradition. This combination costumed him as the chief cantor of Vienna’s Great Synagogue in the year of 1826. Became a favorite performer of the salons in Vienna. Schubert wrote a composition of the psalm 92. Tov Le-hodos, appeared in his magnum opus Schir Zion published in 1840. Sulzer abandoned the conventional nusah to write in the style of that time. He wrote and created a new nusah, among the new composing works he introduce are Torah Service for Festivals, and its texts included Shema Yisrael and Ki-mi Tziyon. Schir Zion took an important role in Reform musical practice. His music was heard in all Europe and into traditional synagogues. Music theory, choral conducting, music reading and accompaniment were abilities that showed study and dedication and not through only listening or only attending services.

The music of the three main reformers Sulzer, Lewandowski and Naumbourg, found a place to stay between the repertoires of the nineteenth century Jewish liturgy.

Among the figures that succeeded after the three main figures of the processes of modernization synagogue’s music, are Baruch Schorr (1823-1904), between his works, Yiddish operetta, Samson, that earned his suspension from his congregation for the period of four weeks. Left to New York to return back to Lemberg, his home town and died officiating the service in the last day of Passover.

Nissan Blumenthal (1805-1903), the first in adopting Western, bel- canto style, in Romania, Berdichev 1826.

Processes of modernization

The late nineteenth-century synagogues buildings were accused by their failure in their “architectural assimilation”. The Jewish socio-economic characteristics and the community organization, was always in threat by the political context. The degree of freedom or restriction was given by the degree of emancipation pointed by the Jewish social position. Civic, political and religious rights were marking the process of a Jewish social position in Europe. Between “ghetto like” synagogues and emancipated like, relies the born of the modern synagogue which was given light by the search for a definition of Judaism inside Europe. The building of synagogues in Europe is of major relevance, in Britain there were about 35.000 Jews in the year 1850. Emigration from Poland and from Russia, due to deterioration of the economy, estimates an amount of 60.000 Jews by the year of 1890. This happens where Anglo-Jewry generations had reached a respectable legal and political equality. Jews were blame of a result of a general lowering in the wages and as sweating the unemployment. In reaction to this, model dwelling replaced slums, Hebrew classes would be substituted by schools, and small religious meeting in dwellings will be replaced by large scale synagogues. The building of a synagogue, between the years of 1870 and 1900 in London, was approved when the congregation was in need to be protected and its status needed to be safe. Through this period, the union of large London congregations of Central and Eastern European origins ensured the building of synagogues of a certain form. The designing was in large scale given by the local community and its dependence on and integration into, the Anglo-Jewish body, as the control of ritual.

Differences in type of employment or religious faction, country of origin, designed the form of religious worship and this was not only due to lack of money or temporary measures given by the circumstances. The so called United Synagogue, would in a matter of years be without any power to control what each community would prefer for its own, each community that emigrated liked or not, would naturally develop its own path of worship, being this, part of the immigrant society and its needs. The chevrot, became a threat directly to the Jewish population stability inside London. The Union was in charge to achieved great deals in having permission on building policies and with compromises between the community and the government. Through the Union the chevrot achieved a great deal of achievements, which would promote the upper class Synagogue like, the ones we can see today in North London, church-like synagogues type. The Union would suppress the shtiebl kind worship, which simultaneously it served as a place of meeting, praying and study, and characterized by being small, humble and an intimate space. The hope that immigrating Jews would be accepting the church-like synagogues, become a clash within Jews and was also the focus of increasing anti-alien and anti-Semitic campaigns. The designing of worshiping then, was one fact that affected and controlled the social, religious and a behavioral change. (Glasman 1992: 172)

Kushner, Tony, Editor 1992: The Jewish Heritage in British History, Englishness & Jewishnees. Assimilation by Design: London Synagogues in the Nineteenth Century, Judy Glassman, pages 172-209.

Rothmuller, Aron Marko, 1967, The Music of the Jews. The days of enlightenment, emancipation and reform, chapter XI, pages 124-139

Edelman, Marsha Bryan, 2002, Discovering Jewish Music. Emancipation, Enlightment and Evolution, chapter 4, pages 54-70.

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Musicology Department -Piano trio no-2 in E flat major d 929 op-100 - Jezabel Cohen - Schenkerian Analysis

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Musicology Department- Schenkerian Analysis Dr. Yosef Goldenberg- February 2007 Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory on Schubert Piano trio Nr. 2 –929, op.100 by: Jezabel Cohen Piano trio no-2 in E flat major d 929 op-100 Composition for piano, violin and cello Part A 1. From bars 585 to 614 2. EbM 585 —P—ebm6 592 —–L—CbM 594—–P—–(CbM)597 bm 598 — L —-GM 605—-P— gm6 607— L—- EbM 612 - EbM 623 - EbM 614 3. Neo- Riemann sentence can go like this at the end PLPLPL 4. EbM - ebm6 - CbM - (CbM) = bm -GM - gm6 - EbM Like in Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata, the Octave is divided in 3 Typical Sonata Form A typical sonata-form movement consists of: A two-part tonal structure, in three sections, the first section (‘exposition’) divides into theme A, in the tonic and after transitional material, a second theme in another key (usually the dominant in major movements, the relative major in minor ones), often with a codetta to round the section off. Both include a number of different themes. In 18th-century music the exposition is almost always directed to be repeated, the 19th century brought many changes of emphasis: a concentration on contrasting first and second themes rather than on the tonal duality of the exposition; a tendency to avoid exact repetition and expanded system of tonal relationships. A sense of tension between structure and content is often manifested in the search for new methods of organization, e.g. thematic transformation. Relative parallel minor Schubert’s piano trio maintains this form Part B Beginning EbM bar 4 —— ? —–GM bar 6—– ? BbM bar 15 and 18—–? – — F bar 19 —–? —–Bb M bar 22 —– ? —–Gb M bar 24 Db bar 25—-? —–eb bar 26 ——> L—–CbM bar 28 —–? —–Gb bar 29 —-?—— Bb 30 —–?—–Eb 31—–?—–Ab 32 —–?—–F7 33 Bb 34—–?—–BbM 41—–?—–d#m 46—–? —–bm 48 —-?—– GM 57 —-minorization – P—– gm 58—-gm 62 —-L—– EbM 66 —–Ab 67 EbM GM – BbM- F - Bb M - Gb M – Db – eb- CbM- Gb- Bb- Eb- Ab- F7- Bb- BbM- d#m- bm- GM- gm gm - EbM- Ab beginning Eb-Cm-Ab-F-Db-Gb-Cb-Bb LRLR-D-LRLR end L—P–L– P— L – P– L— Conclusions The triad on the sixth degree is called the Tonic relative In a major key the triad on the second scale degree is subdominant relative, LRLR- D- LRLR we called P, P parallel is the minor -major relationship between keys, C and c example, minorization or majorization, Parallel = P= leads from a C-major triad into a C-minor triad and vice versa, Relative is what in hebrew is magbil.—parallel- it’s not the same, where amir R we did P, we are wrong, because there are no passages of Bbm to Bm ….. TAmar and Daniel,. let’s see how we do that right, L for leading tone flip, it to go to the Relative key the Leittonwechsel = L = links the C-major and E-minor triads In minor keys—example Cm from I to the VI In major keys- example in C from I to the III Relative of EbM is c minor, but we don’t find the key in the music, at least not in the beginning…. after 3 pages is not there. The Relative = R = transforms a C-major triad into an A-minor triad and an A-minor triad into a C-major triad; the D is standing, it looks to me that is the hook between LRLR and LRLR, is a Riemannian function discussed also by Hyer, but eschewed by Cohn because it can be expressed as a compound of what he considers to be more basic functions, R plus L

Short story of the piece

Second of Franz Schubert’s piano trios was finish in November 1827. The Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 100, was written almost immediately after the Piano Trio in B flat, Op. 99. In the opening Allegro, Schubert moves to the distant key of B minor to the second subject defined by an incessant ostinato rhythm. A third melody appears in the key of the dominant B flat, but it is in fact an extension of the first theme. The Andante con moto The Allegro moderato (Scherzo) unfolds canonically; even when the exact imitation evaporates, the spirit of friendly emulation remains intact. The trio section is physical and robust. The finale is expansive and complex; the move from the bright opening theme to the more dark-spirited second subject is made with little transition that at first one might imagine the movement to be a rondo. After this second subject runs its course, however, we get no reprise of the opening music but rather something absolutely astonishing: a reprise of the melody from the second movement, doctored to suit the new tempo and context, that acts as an accompany to the arriving development section.

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

MOMA Mia: An interview with Paola Antonelli

___________________________________________________________

Good design is design that meets a need, and does not exist in a vacuum, fulfilling the purpose for which it was created. It should be elegant, economic, logical and use correct materials. Good design is a combination of all the obvious features. Thus, simply and clearly, Paola Antonelli answers to the question what makes a design a good one.

Antonelli, who heads the Department of architecture and design of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, (MOMA), thinks that you don’t need her to know what is good design. It’s like asking what good weather is. Anyone can answer to that. Good design is a paper clip or Post-It Note or an iPod. There are endless examples. Bad design is all the opposite: ugly plastic chairs made of low quality materials that you can not recycle.

I have a non original example: Juicy Salif lemon squeezer

“Oh yes”, Antonelli laughs, “the people who bought it probably should have known that it was a sculpture”. The ones who want to buy a good juicer buy the plastic ones that costs one dollar. Stark’s juicer is a vanity object and has always been, is quite clear that is not considered a good design".

Antonelli, who is considered one of the strongest women in the art world, has been in the MOMA for 16 years. She has been the curator of notable exhibitions, including Mutant Materials, Work Spheres, Safe, and Design and the Elastic Mind. And has also curated an exhibition of the designer Ron Arad. As a science fiction fan, technological and cultural myths inspire her when she needs to explore the world of design. She studied economics for two years, moved to study architecture and she holds a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, but has only worked as an architect for two years. “Architects are focus on their destiny. I’m not build for it”, she says.

Ignore rich people

The Boeing 747 is one of her known fetishes. Antonelli dreams to exhibit one in the museum’s permanent collection. IPods, are brilliant in her view, they show the fact that good design is not only for people with money. “The IPod is a whole universe, a synthesis of human needs and interactions that include everything inside them: a beautiful and elegant design, eco-friendly materials, marketing and economics,” she said before in the interview. Rich people are the last thing a designer needs to think about when they are at work.

You see design as an art genre, good art attributes are opposite to those you mention. “Yes, I think design is an art, and it is not right to say that art haven’t got any use. In any case, designers don’t enjoy artist’s freedom. They have to show responsibility and take into the account those things that an artist does not necessarily thinks about”.

And with all the importance she gives to usability, in her view the principle “Form Follows Function”, is no longer relevant. “I don’t agree with those who say that design is the solution for problems. That definition is completely obsolete. Design is much more complex and open”, says Antonelli. So what is the place of usability and necessity? “Necessity is something that always works, but combined with other things. That is why sometimes I call designers "problem makers”, because sometimes the best ideas come not in the form of a response to a request or demand, but from a review in the search for better questions".

With the same determination that characterizes her attitude towards theory, Antonelli reveals solid opinions on the industry practice. She rejects the idea of a possible development of design in a brief meeting with a client. “I don’t think that clients are particularly interesting. Such methods don’t lead to anything good,” she laughs and explains, “The trick is to find out what is required, but not to give answers at any request. Think beyond the obvious”.

Do you need to keep some limits, in the search beyond the obvious? “The most basic thing in my view is context. Suppose that you’re in Africa, a three-day walk from the hospital. What you need is a quick way to distribute drugs, then who cares that the product you’re using it is unsustainable? It does not matter. You can not talk abstractly about good design. Beauty, functionality and sustainability can be important or secondary, all depends on context. Designers and architects don’t work in a vacuum. They work in cities, with people, with clients, and they must always know what the context is”.

The new tribal scholars "Good designers are sponges", says Antonelli in one of the lectures held at TED, a nonprofit devoted to creative thinking, and she says this as compliment, “they are curious, they can absorb any kind of information that goes through them and turn it into something that people like us can use it. "On the conversation with her, she admits, "I wish that designers were the wise men of the tribe, erudite that are aware of the society around them, and call upon them each time there is a need for a group work. They don’t know everything, but they are good in establishing teams. They know how to ask for advice from the people who do know”.

Do you think designers are necessarily optimists? “I think they are necessarily constructive and productive. Sometimes they are pessimistic. Some people prefer to be surprised for the better, that is why I consider pessimism a kind of optimism. But designers are definitely people who try to improve things”.

For whom? “Until recently designers mainly influenced consumerism, today there is more attention to the environment and the culture they are living in. Designers influence the world in their own way, their work is a political act. Most of the time designers have clients who ask them to do things they do not completely agree with them. But each time you bring something to the world, an object - assuming that the product is relatively available – you are changing the balance”. Lots of designers haven’t yet acknowledged this attitude. There are many examples of unnecessary objects that doesn’t improve anything. “If a designer like Raymond Louis - Oh God, he was completely guided by branding and consumption - If he was alive maybe, I don’t know maybe, he’d say to Coca-Cola to recycle cans. These are things that are hard to control, but society and design schools play an important role. The world is changing because people are changing it. Of course that there are revolutions like in science, but the ones allowing them to take place and implementing them are the people. For example, the fact that so many people have stopped smoking, it’s because of propaganda, because of a social pressure, because cigarettes price raised and because everyone bothers you when you light a cigarette. People causes you to think what is good and what is bad and change your behavior accordingly”.

Antonelli thinks it won’t be long before everyone understand this. “I’m not good at identifying trends, but I can say that today many designers think a lot more before they design a new product. Not only because of the damage to the environment, but also because it is much less interesting. It is true that manufacturers have become more cautious in that regard, but many designers today are working in the digital or virtual world.

They create websites, design information or are engage in information architecture, and the transition that releases them and allows them to be more creative with less material. The entire industry is changing. This is the trend that I see: designers produce less objects and move to the design of information”.

A role model for children Surprisingly, she has nothing against design celebrities such as Philippe Starck or Karim Rashid. “In Italy, Israel and the Netherlands people are talking about design, but in many countries people don’t know what it is. They think design is a way to beautify or ornament things, so, although I do not always like the things they do, I think is good to have familiar people who identify with design and serve as a model. For example, children, for instance, can imagine themselves as doctors, engineers, firefighters or designers when they grow up. I don’t know if Philippe Starck is a good model for children, but maybe, why not”.

There must be a designer that you specially appreciate.

“There are so many designers and is such a wide profession that it’s hard to choose. In visualization and information design - Ben Fry. In furniture and objects – Ella Jongerious. Israel has great designers, some of them live in Israel and some emigrated. Israel has a technological background that is combined with a lyrical approach and it produces a very interesting design. I did an exhibition with Ron Arad, worked with Ezri Tarazi and Ayala Zerfati. I also know the works of Tal Landsman”.

Does local culture or ethnic origins affect design? “Sometimes it’s fun to play with stereotypes, they can help to understand the world. Still, it’s hard to say ‘This is Japanese, Italian or British. But more important, is to know where the designer studied. For example, the Israeli designer Noam Thorne studied at RCA in London, you can’t tell he is Israeli, but you can tell he studied there because he works with a lot of scientists, like Oded Ezer. Networking and training are much more important. Stereotypes exist mainly as something that you could rebel against”.

Pompidou in Holon Antonelli haven’t yet visited the Design Museum designed by Ron Arad in Holon, but she understands the controversy that it raised. “Ron Arad is the designer, and he builds buildings that are simply large objects,” she describes, “he is not the only one working like that, and not always a crime against humanity, the planning depends on the context. Bilbao, for example, sought to turn the world’s attention. The best way to do that was to build the Guggenheim Museum like a huge object that looked like a spaceship that landed in the city. That is Frank Gehry’s building. The Sydney Opera House or the Pompidou Center in Paris are also like that, and for me this is exactly the context: the context sometimes requires something that does not communicates with the environment and that is where its importance resides. I don’t know Holon, so I have no idea how and whether the museum alone is incapable of bringing a city back to life. It is necessary to invest in infrastructure and change the approach. Never is enough to do only one thing. It requires a whole system which is built around a successful act of design”.

Do you think that there is a unique authority or a canon? “One of the good things that happened thanks to the Internet today is the disappearance of a so called canon. It happened because we stopped thinking about beauty as a parameter and began to think about it as a feature of meaning, of character and personality. People are looking for works - musical, artistic, design - that have a meaning, and that’s what makes them beautiful. In such a situation a canon cannot exists. Antonelli believes now more than ever, we need mediators - curators and critics – that will help us to navigate the flood of information. "I think of myself as a journalist of some kind, whose job is very simple: Not to tell people what to think, but to show them and tell them my opinions about the best examples that I consider good design. We need to do so with humility, not to say 'this is the best’, but say instead 'these are the good examples’, so you can develop your own critical skills. Even today, that everyone can do everything, there is still quality; There are good things and and meaningless things. That is why opinions are still relevant. They allow others to develop an independent sense. This is a kind of service that indeed requires intelligence and expertise, but is still a service”.

How does one can become an authority on what’s important?

Authority means trust, it is something that you need to earn. The life of critics got tougher and they must prove themselves at every turn. I feel that we are always being tested and that is for the better. We must ask questions and examine ourselves. There are of course arrogant people, who know everything, but who cares about them". You once said that your job is what you would imagine as paradise. Do you still feel the same? “I said that for me, paradise is the satisfaction of curiosity, to hold a perfect vision, laying back on an puffed cloud with a remote control that allows me to see anything I want to, and go through time and space zooming-in and zooming-out - at my own will. My job is very similar to that experience, but in heaven there will be no disturbances. It will be HD all the time”.

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

Esthetics On Painting as Leonardo Da Vinci, Cennino D'Andrea Cennini, Leon Battista Alberti, have seen it.

Esthetics On Painting as Leonardo Da Vinci, Cennino D'Andrea Cennini, Leon Battista Alberti, have seen it. Dr: Lola Kantor Student: Jezabel Cohen september 2005 Cennino D’ Andrea Cennini.

Cennino Cennini was born in 1370-1440, near Florence. He followed the traditions of Giotto (1267-1337), and advocated painting from artisanship to the fine arts. Cennino Cennini was apprenticed to Agnolo di Taddeo of Florence whose own grandfather had apprenticed under Giotto and been in his following for 24 years. The book of Art, the only book written by Cennino Cennini is best known for his treatise on painting and it marks the transition between Medieval and Renaissance concepts of art. The book of Art, the only book written by Cennino Cennini, explains about medieval painting techniques that were before or around the inventing of oil painting method. Indeed with the first page of “Il Libro” (The Book), Cennini attempts to describe where the creative urge comes from. “Man pursued some occupation related to the one which calls for a basis…coupled with skill of hand: and this is an occupation known as painting, which calls for imagination, and skill of hand, in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them (give them shape) with the hand, presenting to plain sight what does not actually exist.” Cennini goes into detail with regards the responsibility incumbents on the artist of his day. Such responsibility included the knowledge of how to produce the very tools the artists needed to exercise his profession. But this was not the case in Cennini’s time and for many years later. Much of Cennini’s book concerns itself with instructions on how to make the tools of the trade. So, for example, he goes on to describe how to make parchment, paints, brushes, gessos etc. Art for him is a combination of imagination and a virtue of the hands. Imagination together good use of the hands, this relation can be taken as a simple formula for the good artist. Cennini sustains that the art is a product of the sin that Adam and Eve started. A good example of the religious-oriented mentality of Cennini’s time is his opening chapter where he begins: “Here begins The Craftsman’s Handbook, made and composed by Cennino of Colle, in the reverence of God, and of The Virgin Mary, and of Saint Eustace, and of Saint Francis, and of Saint John Baptist, and of Saint Anthony of Padua, and, in general, of all the Saints of God; and in reverence of Giotto, of Taddeo and of Agnolo, Cennino’s master; and for the use and good profit of anyone who wants to enter this profession.”. Every chapter of his book has a title and is written as advices and suggestions on how to use colors and mix them, and how to use the natural elements nature gives to make a painting and good use of colors. In his handbook, Cennini describes the motivations of many artists of the period. He describes artists in the search of artistic skills and gives some prototypes of them by the following few sentences: “…through this delight, they come to want to find a master; and they bind themselves to him with respect for authority, undergoing an apprenticeship in order to achieve perfection in all this. There are those who pursue it, because of poverty and domestic need, for profit and enthusiasm for the profession too; but above all these are to be extolled the ones who enter the profession through a sense of enthusiasm and exaltation” Chapter II. Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell'Arte sheds more light on the daily work of the common Quantrocento artist-artisan. Cennini meant this to be a book describing methods of painting. It was the “How to…” book for 15th century Florence painters, both pros and apprentices. Leon Battista Alberti – On Painting. Leon Alberti lived from 1404 till1472, wrote the first general treatise on the laws of perspective and also wrote the first book on cryptography containing the first example of a frequency table. Leon Battista Alberti’s book On Painting sets out the Renaissance system of theory. Alberti received his mathematical education from his father. He attended a school in Padua then the University of Bologna where he studied. Alberti lived mainly in Rome and Florence working within the Roman Catholic Church, by 1432 he was following a literary career as a secretary in the Papal Chancery in Rome writing biographies of the saints in Latin. Alberti studied the representation of 3-dimensional objects and wrote the first general treatise Della Pictura on the laws of perspective in 1435. It was printed in 1511. He said: Nothing pleases me so much as mathematical investigations and demonstrations, especially when I can turn them to some useful practice drawing from mathematics the principles of painting perspective and some amazing propositions on the moving of weights. Alberti describes painting as a gift from God, strength of God; Perspective as a logic strength. Nature and Math is the formula for GOD. The artist, he maintain, feels in it self a creator. Alberti says that Painting is the basis of Arquitecture and Math. The drawer should not draw in perspective. He sustain that the artist should make circumscriptions, give some lines for the understanding of proportions and the compositions of the lines. His theories on mathematical proportions were based on classical art. This affected all aspects of his work. Early architectural works are influenced by Bruneleschi. In turn, Alberti was to influence the work of Bramante. The most important an artist have he says is the Istoria, the tale that the artist has to tell us. He divides it in levels then in spaces, the composition of space. He speak in his book, On Painting, about the body of the man, he refers to human bodies and their relation with the spaces, sizes and proportions. The idea behind that is that the artist when drawing a human body should also imagine what is behind the body, he should know about anatomy as well, to be able to paint it with proportions. The painting should have a sense together with the function that the body has in the frame. It should have harmony and décor. Although figures are the essence of the Istoria, Alberti allowed for the inclusion of animals, landscape and buildings. He thus expected the artist to be broadly knowledgeable. The concept of Istoria provided Alberti with his highest level of generality for analyzing pictures. Proposing that the spectator should ‘enter’ not only the space of a picture but also the experience depicted, he understood an Istoria to be more than simply narrative, rather it represented an instant of an idealized but essentially true reality, a reality that accorded with nature and with art. For the composition of the bodies the Istoria has an important part in influencing people in some form. Variety is the main element needed for that. The theme is important to create an image and there is no need of many elements. He sustains in his book, that nature does not bring geniuses instead is in our hands to make them be. He says that it is possible to make art without copying other artists. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) - Renaissance man Da Vinci was born April 15, 1452, and died May 2, 1519. Leonardo never attended public school. He was raised by his single father. Worked in Florence, Milan and at the court of the French king, Francis I, at Cloux. His theory was given to the light in the XVII end of the XVI century, in France. Renaissance artists studied the human body to improve realism. Leonardo’s look was for knowledge and went beyond surface features, deep inside to the location, function and workings of joints and organs. Leonardo believed people have a soul and tried to locate it. He experimented on frogs, showing they lived on until their spinal cord was pierced. Leonardo started dissecting human brains around 1508. He realized the brain is part of the nervous system. From age 13 to 20, Leonardo was a pupil at the bottega of Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Leonardo had read books such as Cennino Cennini’s Treatise on Painting, written in the 1430s. Da Vinci was an architect, musician, engineer, scientist and inventor. He sketched the first parachute, first helicopter, first aero plane, first tank, first repeating rifle, swinging bridge, paddle boat and first motor car. Da Vinci designed machines of war as well. He was one of the first artists to sketch outdoor portraits. Da Vinci was a sculptor and designer of costumes. He was also a mathematician and a botanist. The Neo Platonic Academy sees the material as something negative, and Love as something that gets you close to God. Leonardo had part in the Neo-Napoleonic Academy, which main head at the time was Ficcino. The levels to get to God were given in that order, Deus, God, Mens, mind, Anima, soul, Natura, nature, and Materia, material. 1 Deus, 2 Mens, 3 Anima, 4 Natura, 5 Materia. Almost all the artist in the academy followed Ficcino; Leonardo followed Aristo, which’s ideas of Materia was inside Nature. Inside Materia we find Superior. Leonardo looks around him and he sees reality. Aristo like Leonardo investigates Nature on his writings there is no end or beginning. Neo- Platonic levels of men were like this. First Intellect at the top, together with the ideas, second ratio rational thinking with the soul, the spirit body and material, which it concerns to earth the banality and the flesh as the most down men can get, the basic and Leonardo’s main interests were focus in that I think. Men, elements and a combination of all together with his great capacity to figure out things. Intellect –Ideas 1 Alma- Ratio 2 Spirit 3 Body 4 Materia Ficcino’s Philosophy follows Plato ReadingIntellect. Leonardo is a scientist and an investigator of Nature. He maintains that the senses make man full of intuition, and that is the main instrument of men, trough senses he can get to knowledge. The first one to say that is Leonardo. He says that the eyes are connected to the brain and that is all we need to know. He says that the view is the most important of all the senses. Aristo sustains that we can learn the fact of copying Nature. Plato sustains that the real is the world of the ideas. Copy of copy. The eyes can see the result and the mind can see the reasons for that result. Aristotle’s convention says that every thing has four reasons, 1. Idea 2. Form 3. Goal 4. The creator of the piece, the reason of the piece. Nature and its laws construct its self. 1 Natura- Naturans (ing), in process. 2 Natura- Naturata (ed), finished. Leonardo has two ways in copying Nature. 1. Engineer, everything has its function. The understanding of the structure of the wing of a bird makes us think that we can fly. He wrote an entire book about the mechanics of the wings and the mechanics of flying. Da Vinci goes to the source to understand the function in the world. He draws the anatomy treaty. As well as Cennini, Da Vinci sees that drawing is something mechanical because it can be done with the hands. Music, poetry and literature we need to listen, opposite to drawing that we need to look at, we need the eyes for it, and it is connected to Nature. He says that it is better to be deaf than not being able to see, to be blind. Da Vinci divides his book into subjects; he paints what it is relevant. A good painter is the one who paints the man and also his mentality. Renaissance Italy produced distinctive styles of art, architecture and music. “Universal men” such as Leonardo da Vinci were seen as a renaissance ideal because of their mastery of many different skills . Bibliography *Tratado de la Pintura (El libro Del Arte) Cennino Cennini. ND 1130 C39. 1968. * Leon Battista Alberti- On Painting. ND 1130 A513. 1991. * Leonardo Da Vinci, Treatise of Painting. ND 1130-L58. * Encyclopedia of Art.

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

the winterreise - Der Weigweiser - The Signpost - Jezabel Cohen - Hebrew Universe-City

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcDLrn7kAXc

http://petrucci.mus.auth.gr/imglnks/usimg/9/92/IMSLP00414-Schubert_-_Winterreise.pdf

http://imslp.org/wiki/Winterreise,_D.911_(Op.89)_(Schubert,_Franz)

Schubert wrote 24 lieders, called The Winterreise, with text written by Wilhelm Müller.

The idea of the lieder comes from the tremendous long pieces of that time and this cycle of songs is an example of short pieces, most of them are written in minor keys and accompanied by texts that are narrating the miserable story of an unfortunate young man. Chronological story narrating the beginning and end of a journey, the beginning and end of love, the latter outside of time, as if in winter and night the anonymous traveler (you, me) had lost any sense of hour and place.

The listeners are taken to a winter travel and experience almost the same sensations as this lonely character that we imagine sad and demoralized walking in the cold and frozen white winter, and cannot conceive that his almost future wife has left him for another person.

In the Der Wegweiser, lied number 20, the feeling of depression and instability and desolation are enormous, Schubert is showing us those feelings of chaos and loneliness, the title, The Signpost, searching for a sign on the road that will conduct him to a better stage and the feeling is of absent.

Schubert with very clear examples connects directly the text and the music, with chromatic passages, with modulations taking us to the farthest of keys and with examples of sequences that are showing the monotony of loneliness and a monotony that is not always the same, it repeats and it gets worse, it repeats and it stays at the very same place, one example can be the repetition of the 1st subject in major key, F major, in the second stanza, use of majorization, using the tonic continuously until we arrive to F major key, the formula of the 1st stanza is repeated here although not exactly.

Modulations

1-The first part of the first modulation appears in bar 14 with an III minor chord (3b) of F minor to the IV6 of Ebm and in bar 18 he is returning to F minor with a chord in the tonic, the I 6/4, showing tonal and emotional instability - verschneite Felsenhöh'n - that is ending the first stanza and starting the second with a majorization with the a natural, he passes to F major, in bar 22, and what will follow is almost the same material that is presented in the beginning but in the 2nd stanza is in major and also here he goes to other keys like d minor, now with one b, from four b’s that we had in the beginning, now we are left with only one in bars 28-36, here we are taken to d minor and almost without seeing the tonic of d minor, but instead we feel the instability and the use of an apparent cadence, as he uses VI/VI where the cadence should be taking us to the tonic but instead we are taken to the dominant V, this is a very unstable passage and it reflexes what is going on with the narrative, the words, törichtes Verlangen = foolish desire, the normal expectation is the tonic but instead we are taken to the same dominant series, of V of the V and until bar 36 where the minor V leads us again to the original key, F minor (III 1# -5#).

In bar 39 Schubert introduces a German chord (IV (6#, 1b) is being solved to a I6/4, the note B natural is in bar 39 is going to the note Cb in bar 40 with this ends the 2nd stanza, and the music is leading us to the third stanza that is almost the same material presented in 1st stanza but with some changes.

The main changes are going from bar 58 where the chord VII/V starts the most highlighted passages of the piece, Schubert with the help of the I6/4 that is helping to prepare this chromatic and enharmonic passage from F minor using again the German chord with cb instead of b natural from bar 58 and using the note d instead of c#, exactly in the word Fixed, Blick, starts the,נקודת עוגב, with the note F continuously, he arrives to the farthest key that he could go, b minor from four b, to two #, in the words One road I must take, From which no one has ever returned– Eine Straße muß ich gehen, Die noch keiner ging zurück.

On the words ich gehen he is putting himself a mission, he must take decisions, (the character) he is ready to change the situation of depression but for a tragic end, from a road that no one returns, he is recalling death, this is why here the music is taking us so far away from the real key and taking us to the opposite side possible. This is a chain of chromatic passages that for the most is representing the feelings of the traveler. In bar 65 Schubert returns to F with a chord V7/V in bar 67 he uses the chord II6 Neapolitan, that also he used it in the beginning in bar 12, where also there we had chromatica that falls in the words versteckte Stege- hidden paths- mysterious passages that are full of sentiment and show the tragedies that may come, the fear and tonal instability, because we cannot tell what the future will bring to our lives and the life of the traveler in our story. The use, until the very end, of chords with the inversion 6/4 are pointing of the instability of what it’s happening to the character as we listen.

Tonality progress

Original key F minor (bars 1-13)

Eb minor (bars 14-17)

Original key F minor (bars 18-20)

F Major (21-27) bar 21, neutralization of the note f, and he passes to F major, and then returning to the same material from the 1st stanza, but not exactly to the same.

D minor (bars 28-35)

F minor (bars 36-49)

Eb (bars 50(V/VII) -52)

F minor (bars 52-62) (IV)

B minor (bars 63- half of bar 65) (the farthest key he could go to)

F minor (bars 65-84)

Text relation to the music

Schubert in Der Weigweiser sets the same text and mostly the same vocal line to tonally and harmonically opposed progressions in the piano part, thereby bringing out different semantic potentials in the words. The same phrase is set to two diametrically opposed types of music, creating different hierarchies of semantic significance between the various words. As an example of pointing the way to death (“Der Wegweiser”), the light, the Title of this piece is suggesting, I think, the need of come across to a light, a place of reference and in the way, we the listeners can see how hard this search and long and painful it is.

The material that links all these passages are the harmonic sequences involving speciphic bass pitches and keys, like the one in bars 59-65.

The Signpost

Why do I avoid the pathways where the other wand'rers go; why do I take furtive forays through the mountains’ heavy snow?

I am free of depravation that must shun the others’ sights - what a foolish motivation drives me toward the barren heights?

Signposts on the road are standing, that the route to towns suggest, and I travel without ending, without rest in search of rest.

There’s a signpost ever showing in my sight, unmoved and stern: there’s a road I must be going: it’s the road of no return

Der Weigweiser

Was vermeid’ ich denn die Wege, Wo die ander'n Wand'rer geh'n, Suche mir versteckte Stege, Durch verschneite Felsenhöh'n? Habe ja doch nichts begangen, Daß ich Menschen sollte scheu'n, – Welch ein törichtes Verlangen Treibt mich in die Wüstenei'n? Weiser stehen auf den Straßen, Weisen auf die Städte zu. Und ich wandre sonder Maßen Ohne Ruh’ und suche Ruh’. Einen Weiser seh’ ich stehen Unverrückt vor meinem Blick; Eine Straße muß ich gehen, Die noch keiner ging zurück.

5 notes · View notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

A Visual way to Music. Seminar

The Hebrew University, Jerusalem Musicology Department: Dr. Roni Granot

Music Cognition Seminar December 2006 A visual way to music by Jezabel Cohen Foreword This study is inspired on the work of a painter called Charlotte Salomon, at her last few years of her short life she produced 800 paintings with the artistic talent to document the tragic story of her life using a variety of multimedia effects in her work, where she combined in texts, audio and mainly through her painting. The set of visual art together with elements like literature, drama, dance, or music gave as a result a tool of great and powerful communicational force that transforms the original piece of art as well of the affecting alteration on the receptor when approaching to the art. Reading, watching, listening, performing and understanding what is in front of us and mainly when all is together at once, requires a row of information processing that can change meaningfully our awareness of things and our enjoyment of them. My work will focus in the study of the use of music mutually with other arts, and how can music receives a great deal of protagonism alone sometimes and how different it becomes while combined with visual arts, how is it that we can experience such a catharsis, sometimes without noticing, and how can these combinations change the meaning, the understanding and the perception of our way to music. Most listeners of music are seeking for pleasure in music and this is probably one of the reasons it is so much important for our lives and it’s not a minor pleasure, to try understanding it. Music has the power to take us away from reality in a very unique way and has the impetus to introduce itself into our lives and change our moods and emotional activity. Like a language that we can’t imagine it without accents or intonations that are some of the different ways words may sound, music is the component for distinguishing between one idea, one intention and also emotions or feelings, but most of all has the ability to transport us to imaginary places. When speaking of ideas and of pictures in music it is very important to remind the category of instrumental music that many composers of the romantic period made use of, Program Music. Program music is music intended to bring extra musical ideas, images in the mind of the listener by musically representing a scene, image or mood, it was meant for instrumental music and not for music with words, lieder or operas. Some examples are the symphonic poems of Liszt, based on literary narrative and illustrative elements or Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Works of music are almost always suggesting ideas that are the understanding of the relationship among people and the world and the people and things, all kind of relationships. Ideas are the product of countless human actions, are not emotions, but they transform the life of people and change their emotional life. For that it is almost impossible to think music without taking in account time place, society, history and nature of a work of music, the real context of a piece of music that created it is very hard to ignore when analyzing music. Music cannot do all but is it almost the art that can reflect many aspects of people’s life faithfully. Berlioz comes out against the division made by theoretician Carpani, who claims that music must imitate nature just as in drawing, which is direct imitation. Contrary to this Berlioz maintains that there is no need for direct imitation of nature and he sets 4 conditions for “correct” imitation: Imitation must not be the goal, but only a means for presenting an idea.

The composer must imitate only what music can imitate in nature Imitation must be accessible to the listener (i.e. not too sophisticated) Direct imitation must not come in place of indirect, spiritual imitation The goal of spiritual imitation, which Berlioz supports, is to attract the soul of the listener, passing on the experience. In terms of the experience music rises above the plastic arts, but the moment it tries to describe objects in nature perfectly, it misses the mark. (Therefore music needs to describe the dimension behind the reality, a direct continual line to Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer criticized the philosophers of his generation, as well as the musicians. The need to translate the imagination of music into words is distorted. The language of music is specific and cannot be spoken in text. He brings the example of Beethoven as the expression of general feelings, abstractly with no textual content. According to him Beethoven brings his feelings in a pure form. Therefore only instrumental music can express the essence of music perfectly. . The melody expresses the intellectual world, the feelings, while the words are the language of reason. In The Republic Plato declared “when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them” (Republic IV, 424c). He meant to the emotional influential powers that music has when good or bad to the human soul because it possesses an ethical influence and is intimately connected with it through the concept of harmony of the soul and of harmony of the state. I don’t know how much relevant a statement like this can be nowadays. General aspects on -Music and Pictures- by Stephen Davies From his book Musical Meaning and Expression Davies opens the preface of his book with a description of one of the last parts of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, by Stephen Spielberg, there the extraterrestrials and humans attempt to communicate neither in Alienese (extraterrestrial language) nor in English, but in music. The aliens might have share the view that music can be the universal language. In his book Musical Meaning and Expression, Stephen Davies proposes several comparisons between music and language, music and pictures, music and symbols, feelings, expressions of emotions, response and understanding. He is exploring the meanings of music. In chapter two of his book he compares Pictures with Music. Music used in operas, film and ballet not only to accompany the action and the texts but to illustrate the texts. Davies set up his theory by saying that the idea is perhaps rather than asserting or describing, as language does, music represents or depicts, as nonabstract paintings and sculptures do.

One part of program music claims to be representational, using literary titles and texts to focus the listener’s attention on the subjects depicted. Many composers believed that they could paint pictures in sound. The differences between painting and music, rather than marking a distinction between types of representation, are such as to suggest that music is not a depictive art form. He is suggesting that music has a certain power as pictures do to depict things as paintings do. He mentions Kendall Walton, a philosopher at the University of Michigan that develops a theory of make-believe and uses it to understand the nature and varieties of representation in the arts. He has written on pictorial representation, fiction and the emotions, the aesthetics of music, in his view all paintings are representational and no photographs are representational. He distinguishes depiction from representation, he says that depiction is a species of representation. Davies on the contrary is using both terminologies as synonymous.

Davies first defines pictorial representation, he takes pictures, drawing, silhouettes, also statues, dolls to provide the paradigm and to discover the central condition of music that if it were representational, would be so in its own way. He is not asking whether music might represent the same subjects as may be depicted in paintings or nevertheless whatever differences there are between music and pictures. If music is representational it must have the general conditions for that.

The differences between music and pictures rather than marking a distinction between types of representation are such as to say that music is not a depictive artform. He focuses in two types of theory “semantic”, which gives priority to the work’s title, the title of a work can contribute to representation only where elements are systematized in a way that might allow them to combine appropriately with the title to secure denotation and a characterization of the subject, and “seeing –in” accounts of representation. Davies himself is defending the seeing-in account. He lists his own four conditions for art as pictures, none of which is sufficient alone, the second and fourth of the conditions would agree with both, the“semantic” and “seeing –in” theories of depiction. The seeing-in theory endorses the third condition while the semantic theory rejects it. (1) Intention, it is a necessary condition for X’s representing Y that X be intended to represent Y. Three objections must be raised for this conditions right for representation, 1. There are noncircular ways of specifying the intention-example, as the intention to produce an X in which Y can be seen. Consistency in the use of the relevant conventions is important for representation. 2. When by accident the representation happens, example a camera is triggered by mistake and produces a representation, despite the absence of the relevant intention. If music is representational it is so by equivalence with painting rather than with photography. Such musical image making as is achieved relies in the composer and not in a machine mechanism. 3. Against relevant intention as necessary for representation might be put this way: Misunderstanded intentions. The gap between a painter want to transmit and what is understood or what is the result of it mainly depends on the intimate relation between the painter and the conventions for pictorial representation that have a life of their own, more often the artist succeeds, so the viewer is the direct receptor for the effect the artist wanted to create. A painting can look as something different from the intentions of the artist. There is a break between the conventions for representation and their intentional use, and this because the conventions are used successfully, most of the time, putting the exceptions mentioned above. Representational character of music assumes that there are established conventions for musical depiction and that suppose that musical representation is possible. Davies’s approach provides some grip on Walton’s defense an anti-intentionalist posture, example a cloud might represent a camel, this position is designed to stress the degree in which the conventions of representation take on a life of their own. (2) Medium/content distinction, it is necessary condition for X’s representing Y that there be a distinction between the medium of representation and the represented content. Arthur Danto sustains that the use of the medium of representation not only separates the representation from the subject, it allows the depiction to comment on its subject in presenting a way of seeing that subject. Artworks are about the mode of representation as much as they are about the subjects represented. Arthur Danto (1981) sustains that if one thinks on the medium of representation as the stuff of representation, then the use he puts to this point appears not to sustain the force of his claims. But if we agree that the idea of the medium of representation pays attention to not only the material qualities of the stuff but to the histories, context and traditions of the use of that stuff, his claims says Davies are more acceptable.

(3) Resemblance between perceptual experiences It is necessary condition for X’s representing Y that there be a resemblance between a person’s perceptual experiences of X and of Y, given that the person views X in terms of the applicable conventions. According to Wollheim, the attempt to represent a man in painting is successful only if a man can be seen in the painting. This position which Davies calls it the seeing-in theory, distinguishes between representational and abstract paintings by reference to the content of the visual experiences to which they give rise. He accepts the version of the seeing-in theory that treats as a necessary condition for representation a resemblance between one’s seeing X in a representation and one’s seeing X, provided that it also allows that the naturalness of this element is tempered, structured, and shaped by conventions that have varied in their detail place to place and time to time. Davies concluded that the resemblance condition claim is at its most plausible when it compares music’s dynamic pattern to that apparent in nonverbal, behavioral expressions of emotion. (4) Conventions X represents Y within the context of conventions (that might be regarded as constituting a symbol system), so that the recognition of Y in X presupposes the viewer’s familiarity with those conventions and his viewing X in terms of them in perceiving Y in X. This condition concerns to the recognition of a representation as such. In musical depiction, Davies’s argument is trying to explain how applicable is the musical case of representation, above described in general terms, by giving conclusions mainly indicating that music is not a depictive art. Music representational powers can’t be denied in ballet or opera, but the argument focuses not in the contribution of music to such artworks, but on its own capacity to be a depictive in its pure form. Many musical representations are a regular and persistent aspect in music, but not common in instrumental works. The most often identified as depictive types of music are the genres of song and program music. Other views claim that all music is programatic and consequently depictive, J.W.N. Sullivan (1927) who describes all great music as involving a program about human spirituality. Davies names Jacques Barzun, Richard Kuhns and their support to the view where musical representation is important precisely because it is enjoyed, and that to be enjoyed it must be perceivable, since is seeing every human action as programmatic and self referential and self representational. These views involve and expansion of the concept of representation. The depiction theories that most fit to the musical case, there seem to be no conventions which for pure music would allow one to distinguish relevant difference style or school of representation, as there are within painting. To deny that there are many distinctive musical styles is not to deny that music is a conventionalized artform. Davies is trying to say that each style may characterize through rules governing the combination of the musical elements and they don’t function as those of a representational symbol system. Davies again sustains that the seeing in theory allows that titles are important in determining the represented content of the work, so it has not consistency to exclude reference to them in the musical case. And the problem then is focused not in the vagueness cases of musical depiction but with the nature of what it is that is said to be represented. In the case of paintings if a man is depicted in a painting, this is because people familiar with the relevant conventions have a visual experience as of a man while looking at the picture. For music, Davies sustains that one would expect the relevant perceptual experience to be aural, while music sometimes is represent is said to represent sounds, so that one can hear a sound of a hand knocking on the door (Shostakovich, String Quartet N08) in hearing repeated drumbeats, more often it is said to represent things that have no sound. All music seems to be depictive for love, yearning, motion and the phenomenal qualities of emotions and moods. Seems to Davies that the seeing in theory is not relevant if the perceptual element of the experience is lost and this must result where one attempts to accommodate the musical depiction of the phenomenal, nonperceptual qualities of emotional states and the like to a hearing-in account of musical depiction. A person, who knows that Debussy’s work is titled La Mer, will be inclined to develop a description of the work in suitably watery terms. That person naturally enough, seems to hear such things in the work. But this need not be evidence of the work’s representationality, even if the title is part of the work.

Music is expressive in character rather than representational as pictures are, and sometimes the title of a musical work can be relevant to an appreciation of the detail of its expressive character. Representation might be achieved by music in its marriage with words, states Davies, though depiction is not a feature of pure music. After all music is an important element in many hybrid artforms-ballet, opera, film and song - that are undoubtedly held to be representational. Music is joined with many other elements and in many different proportions, to create hybrid artforms, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, based on ten drawings and watercolors produced by a deceased friend, the architect and artist Victor Hartmann, through works with an accompanying text supplied or indicated by the composer, through works with a narrated story, like Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, through song, choral music, oratorio, mass, and the passions, through opera and ballet, through film music, Prokofiev’s famous work for S.M. Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, or through supplementary music for plays such as Bizet’s music for Alphonse Daudet’s L’Arlesienne, case where the music conforms a more or less supplement to the main artistic fare. Davies says that ballet, opera, song, film should be viewed as synthetic artforms. It is significant that this artforms are not called “music”, as for example orchestral music, choral music, chamber music, etc) music being one element in the whole. It makes sense to talk only of music’s representational place only within the context of the whole to which it contributes. Davies believes that music does not satisfy these conditions and see no interest in holding to the view that music achieves a special variety of representation. The differences between paintings and music are not attributable to the specific character of their modes of depiction. He concludes that while “painting can be depictive, music usually cannot be”. He has rejected the view that music is representational as pictures often are, but allowed that there may be a degree of depiction in music (like that in pictorial representation) based on natural (but conventionally structured) resemblances. Analyzing Musical Multimedia- Nicholas Cook Music and Pictures In this chapter Cook takes a close look to Madonna’s Material Girl, video, to exemplified the theme of study. Cook analyzes the nature of song by saying that this form is not a visual text, in the sense of containing gaps for the incorporation of visual elements, he uses the “visual” word in a logic corresponding to the musical or music-ready text. The pictures serve to open the song up, he says and believes that both music and picture can be understood in terms of distributional analysis, and the relationship between them can be understood as interplay of structurally similar media, with this he intends to say that the pictures can be analyzed musically. For that he analyses in terms of how many words and musical phrases fit in a certain period of time, giving the example on the video of Madonna, Material Girl. He analyzes this through an attempt to destabilize the meaning of the words and, through them, the closure of the song as a whole. The pictures serve to open the song up to the emergence of new meaning. He sustains that many music videos are constructed out of a small number of easily distinguishable visual sections, which are edited in a very similar way that music is constructed (MTV is an example, Cook sustains). “Videos represent visual staff to listen to”, for this statement he gives a graph of Madonna’s video where he cuts the words and scenes, and counts the verses. The main cuts on the video are closely coordinated with also the metre of the phrase structure that come together on the down beat. Another association between cutting rhythms and the distribution of musical model classes would be that the high level of musical redundancy resulting from the immediate repetition is compensated by increased activity in the visuals.

He directs his conclusion to compositional means, a formal link between music and pictures suggests a reflexion on the composition of both, the introduction, the middle, the conclusion, and the structure is the main effect. These views have nothing in common to the points that Davies above bring to light. These are views that take in account only the parameters of video together with music and the distribution into the length of the artwork. Cook observes that little has been done in cross-fertilization between the analysis of song and that of opera, and neither offers much of a model for analyzing music videos or film. It exist virtually nothing in the way of a general theory of multimedia that explains or provides a background of its many genres. Cook says that he intended to start his analyses with still images juxtaposed with music exemplified on record sleeves ( the idea that I had in mind when starting this work) He came to the conclusion that the mix of music with moving images could be a more rich scenario for his work.

Musical Communication The role of music communication in cinema Scott D. Lipscomb and David E. Tolchinsky

The plot begins to thicken, they say (authors say), when one considers what is being communicated, to use a film metaphor. They open the chapter with a filmic example after they had presented a general model of music communication in the book, they‘ll introduce experiential and theoretical models, on the role of music in film and its perception. Investigating the relationship between sound and image in the cinematic context. The authors wants us to pay attention on the difference terminology when talking of film, motion picture and cinema, as they acknowledge the distinction between the three terms and the variety of media types upon which each may exist. Sound can be fitting with an image, in opposition to what is expected or to what is different from what is conventionally anticipated, the sound track can clarify image events, contradict them, or render them ambiguous (Bordwell and Thompson 1985, p.184). The relationship between audio and visual is both dynamic and active. Before the 1990s, as noted by Annabel Cohen (2001) (not Jezabel) the study of film music and its place in the cinema context had been neglected by musicologists, today there is amount of research done and confirming that the presence of film music affects apparently enlarge the emotional content of a visual scene. As well music is able to evoke emotion in a scene that would be neutral without a sound. Psicho, Alfred Hitchcock’s film, in the rainstorm scene, this will have a different effect without any music, this example is quite extreme as we are talking of horror movies and where all kind of effects are being used to bring a certain sentiment of fear in the audience is obviously requested, but this case might demonstrate that also without the sound behind, the effect of horror might not exist at all. The term “film music” is used here as one component of a variety of sounds that includes musical score, ambient sound, dialogue, sound effects and silence. The functions of these elements interact with each other. In the case of absence of musical score, other elements like ambient sound that can function similarly to music are giving dynamic moves and structurally meaningful sound to push the narrative ahead. Music communication as a form of expression is the model described by Campbell and Heller (1980) that consists of a composer a listener and a performer, for this tripartite model it is outlined a process involving states of coding, decoding and recoding. As music is a culturally defined artifact, successful communication will involve shared implicit and explicit knowledge structures. Composers succeeds when in communicating a musical message this one is in proportion to the level of agreement between emotional and/or expressive intent of the message and that perceived by the listener. Kendall and Carterette suggest that this is a process that includes grouping of elementary thoughts units, and these units are mental representations involved in the process of creating, performing and listening to musical sounds. Film music communication empirical models In an effort to give meaning to what Marshall and Cohen (1988) sustain as a model called “congruence-associationist” the model gives connotation of film when is altered by the music as a result of two cognitive processes. Researchers results demonstrate that based upon responses, Potency, strong –weak, the Activity, passive-active and the Evaluative dimension, good-bad, relies on the similarities the audio and the visual components on all three dimensions as determined by comparison. The next part of the model attributes to the similar components between audio and visual. The result they put it in words “the music alters meaning of a particular aspect of the film” (Marshall and Cohen, 1988), they also acknowledge the temporal characteristics of sound and of the image saying that the importance of the accent to events will affect retention, processing, and interpretation, i.e. the point to which significant events in the musical score take place at the same time with significant events in the visual scene.

The purpose of a series of three experiments utilizing stimuli ranging for simple and complex animations, suggested by Lipscomb (1995), gave as a result that two implied judgments appears to be dynamic as that accent structure association plays an important role, when the stimuli was more sophisticated the determinant of meaning in audio appeared in for example when focusing audience attention on specific aspects of the visual image. The changes on complexity and simplification on the experiments of the visual imaginary and musical score (highly repetitive), Lipscomb (1995) in the level of complexity stimuli apparently alter the way that the different audio-visual components are processed in human cognition. The most complex and developed model of film music up to date they say, is the one that Cohen’s (2001) has made.

Congruence-associationist framework to understand film music

communication. That they explain as follow: The model tries to look for meaning that comes from speech, images and musical sound. Level A represents bottom- up processing, based on physics. Level B presents a determination of cross-modal similarities based both on associational and temporal grouping features. A level D represents top-down processing, determined by a person’s past experience and the retention of that experience in long term memory. In terms of this model, levels B and D meet in the observer’s conscious mind level C, where information is ready to transfer it self to short term memory. This model sustains an assumption on visual primacy, the authors of this chapter express their reservation on this assumption and suggest that more research is required before a claim like that can be supported.

Film Music Communication Theoretical Models

The authors open the sub-chapter bringing as an example Richard Wagner as the creator of the form of art that developed in the nineteenth century music drama as the Gesamtkunstwerk, Suzanne K. Langer, music has all the earmarks of the symbol, but one, the existence of an assigned connotation, thus representing an unconsummated symbol. (1942, p.240), this unfinished symbol, (Royal Brown, 1988) is represented by the predominance of the orchestral film score. Brown argues that the very human presence felt through the performance of a vocalist tends to move the musical symbol on step close to consummation. For a film to make impact, it is necessary an interaction between verbal dialogue and cinematic images (consummated symbols) with musical score (unconsummated symbol).

There are three methods presented by Gorbman (1987) where music can “signify” inside a narrative film. Purely musical signification, that comes from syntactical relationships natural in the association of one musical tone with another. Patterns of tension and release give a sense of organization and meaning to musical sound, apart from other spare musical association that might exist. Hamslick’s (1891/1986) absolute music. Cultural musical codes are represented by music that has come to be associated with a certain mood of mind; Meyer’s (1956) referentialism. These associations have been included into Hollywood film industry into conventional expectations, completely known from the start by enculturated audience members- determined by the story content of a given scene. The last influence musical meaning, simply because of the place of the musical sound is within the filmic context are the cinematic codes. Music that represents a recurring theme that illustrates a character or a situation, as well as in the opening credits and the titles music. Film music is determined to communicate the underlying psychological drama of the narrative at a subconscious level (Libscomb 1989).

All sounds - including music – that are meant to be heard by characters of the narrative are referred as diegetic, while those that are not, like orchestral score, are called as non-diegetic. Diegetic music is in a more conscious level and non-diegetic remains at the subconscious, but the authors say that more research must be done to probe this true. Michael Chion (1990/1994) distinguishes these two types using the term onscreen and off-screen, respectively. The authors name two more models of the role and function of film music, Gorbman (1987) compiled a list of principles for composition, mixing, and editing classical Hollywood film between the 1930s and 1940s King Kong, Gone with the wind, Casablanca.

Seven principles were considered as discursive, in the book the authors give a graph with six principles: invisibility, Inaudibility, Signifier of emotion, Narrative cueing, Continuity, Unity.

The second model is the one proposed by Nicholas Cook (1998), above described in general terms on his chapter on Music and Images. The model presented here explains the express purpose of analyzing musical multimedia, like the present authors of this chapter agree with Cook on the often-stated fact that music plays a subsidiary role to the image, what he refers to as depictive translucency of image. In opposition to what Gorbman classifies music-image and music narrative as mutual implication. Cook explains that words and pictures, deal with the objective, while music deals primarily with responses, that is with values, emotions, and attitudes, the connotative qualities of the music complement the denotative qualities of words and pictures (p.22). Cook presents three ways for the identification of similarities and differences between the component media, with the parameters of conformance, complementation, and contest. The model provides two processes for determining this relationship. The first to identify the similarities, determining the consistency with each of the media component, an application of this model would be to ask if the amount of information presented via both the auditory and the visual are similar. Also a question can be whether the music and the image are consistent or merely coherent. The authors after this models say the they relationships and perceived meanings can be reciprocal as one can state that it is equally valid to say that music projects the image meaning or the other way around. Then conformance would be the one that fits with the similarity test. In places where the component media is coherence rather than consistent, one steps to the second part of the model, the difference test. Here the uncertainty relies on whether the media components relationship is in coalition with another inter-media component, and if this exist the relation is the one of contest. Without any contradiction or similarities the relation is of complementation. Were the media shares the same narrative structure but each medium elaborates the underlying structure in a different way (Cook 1998, p.102). Music can convey mood in the film, can convey scope in film, can convey the quality and size of a space, can establish the narrative’s placement in time, to authenticate the era or to provide a sense of nostalgia. (Stuessy and Lipscomb 2003, pp.410-11), Amadeus (1984), and Immortal beloved. Music can convey a sense of energy.

The level of perceived energy increases by the presence of music, and can be manipulated, i.e. Adagio for Strings of Samuel Barber, appeared in the scene where the battle in the movie Platoon (1986) is taking place. Music can also communicate a perspective or a message intended by the director or as applied by Gorbman to describe the capability influences of music in the meaning of the film, the term of commutation, as an example of the dynamic manner in which cinematic meaning can be manipulated by sound. (Gorbman, 1987) Music can convey the internal life or feelings of a character, one of the most used effects in cinema as well as in opera, the unspoken thoughts that underline the drama. Music can convey character, the director can choose to define a character by sound, in Psycho, the mother character, in Der Ring des Nibelungen (1857-74) Wagner’s nineteenth century music drama, the leitmotif the theme or the musical idea to define and identify a place or object, idea state of mind, supernatural or any other element in the work.

In Star Wars, recurring musical themes are very often and their purpose as leitmotifs is very clear as well. The narrative structure of a film can be provided by the musical score, the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of the musical sound, can clarify the structure narrative of a film and of a theatrical work. Music can emphasize beginnings and endings, music can convey messages about where in the frame the audience should put attention, music can apply a direct influence on the cognitive processing of a film by guiding selective attending toward mood –consistent information and away from other information that is inconsistent with its affective valence. (Boltz 2001,p.p. 427-446) Music can convey irony, when put without the associated character with which we know the music, for example when music is decontextualized, taken out from its context, like in the Clockwork Orange (1972), the music of “Singing in the Rain” is heard on a scene where a rape is taking place. Or another example can be when the expected music is not there, and suddenly silence can make a whole audience go very anxious. This chapter tried to show many ways in which musical sound can communicate information to the listener in a filmic experience.

Cognitive models of music communication carefully formulated on past results research, serve as a starting point. In this chapter we could see that music is so attached to the context in which it become a living art. The situations and contexts in where music takes place, are as important as the music itself, for us, to understand the message, the purposes, it becomes a unique experience when music is joined with film.

Musical multimedia aspects in the work of Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)

Music is the artistic element that Charlotte used to amplify the mood and emphasize the emotion of the painted images she created. Sometimes, the music she selected was complimentary, while at other times it was quite the opposite. Thus, she was able to give particular images quite an ironic twist. Charlotte’s work includes a script in the form of words that are either themselves in the form of paintings, written into the paintings, or presented as overlays to the images. It also has a ‘soundtrack’ - music chosen by Charlotte that reinforces her stories. The music ranges from Nazi marching songs to Schumann and Schubert Lieder and extracts from the music of Bach, Mozart and Mahler.

The work is operatic, modern and has a unique form. Charlotte described her life’s work as a singspiel, a combination of music, words, and visuals for dramatic presentation. In 1942 she finished the production of 800 paintings with the name of Life or Theatre? The title that she chooses to give to the series of painting which is divided into acts and scenes, like a musical work, incorporates elements of music and drama, wonders whether life and theatre are polar opposites or an engaged language. Salomon exploited the potential qualities of performance of her paintings. Charlotte also used some film techniques in creating this artistic chronicle. For example, there are several shots in one picture, with sudden close-ups and the camera zooming in and out in succession. Charlotte influences owe much to German Expressionism, to German operetta tradition in which spoken lines were mixed with lyrics sung to tunes borrowed, from Bizet, as well as to more melodies taken from folk songs and popular music. She subtitled her work a singspiel, also is the example of the artist that expresses a message of awakening in itself as the artist, but the awaken on the audience, on the public, she looked for the attention of a public, her art demonstrate that painting, music, words, are the combination that most succeeds to provoke a sentiment of an emotional level. Though the music component in the oeuvre of Charlotte is not the most important, the aim of mentioning her in this work is to see the multimediatic composition in her work and the originality of it.

Finally, Word-Painting, an important and not mentioned before in this study the use of musical gestures in a work with an actual or implied text to reflect, often pictorially, the literal or figurative meaning of a word or phrase.

Is the part of music that presumes the possibility of a meaningful relationship between word and music. Thus it developed as a characteristic feature of the Renaissance, when this relationship was carefully (re)constructed by musical humanists on the precedent of classical antiquity. Given the emerging sensitivity to music’s responsibilities towards the content and delivery of the text, increasingly subtle forms of word-painting contributed to musical expression: Josquin, for example, was able to give musical life to his texts by a wide range of melodic, harmonic or textural word-painting devices that could themselves take the music in new directions.

The technique was standard, even conventional, in the 16th-century chanson and madrigal, often for witty effect – it became closely associated with the term ‘madrigalism’ – but sacred music was not excluded. Word-painting devices range from onomatopoeia (for example, the imitation of the sounds of battle, birdsong or chattering washerwomen by Janequin) through figurative or pictorial melodic or contrapuntal gestures (Catabasis or its ascending opposite, Anabasis; Circulatio; Fuga etc.) and scoring (a single voice for ‘all alone’; three for the Trinity) to more abstruse effects associated with musica reservata (see Musica reservata.

Not all can be perceived aurally: some are visual, such as the so-called Eye music found in the 16th-century madrigal and later (black notes for ‘night’; two semibreves for ‘eyes’), or musical symbols depending on some technical pun, as with Bach’s use of notes marked with a sharp sign (Kreuz) in works whose text refers to the Cross.

Conclusion

This study tried to explore the reception of musical depiction in two different levels, theoretical and empirical, though lots of research on the subject I don’t refer to, this subject in the last years had received a highly regarded amount of consideration in the area of Music Cognition as well as Psychology. An analysis with open-ended responses on feelings and associations reveals that we are in front of a subject matter of rich material for work that lots of philosophers and thinkers contributed in the past and still do in the present. What does music mean? Music acquires meaning through its mediation to society? Or the meaning of music arises by the mutual mediation of music to society? . All these questions form part of endless aspects of music as a science that in a slowly but persistent path can lead us to one understanding of humanity (maybe it too much pretentious to think that but a little bit of imagination can help to solve something, otherwise what’s good in so much work of our minds?) In this work I tried to see how is possible to see that music can acquire an expressive power in itself and not in any interpretation of its meaning. Fundamental meanings of music are not far to a possible understanding, but to an understanding that music is universal. Though to formulate that music in its self is depictive or expressive is to put all the elements that made of it the status that gain through all times and periods and its belonging, if such thing exist, on a side. To formulate that music alone is the bonding element that all can pursue, also it is totally not proportionate. But to say that music in itself can extend its intentions to other arts and become the protagonist, this is of no doubt for me a truth. Davies believes that the expressiveness of music relies in its dynamics, mainly on a resemblance we perceive between the dynamic character and music movement, gait, baring, or carriage . To conclude I want to add that all views and themes surround the theme of subject are presented here in general and in a summarize form. The Bibliography:

Musical Meaning and Expression- Stephen Davies -Chapter 2- Music and Pictures –Cornell University Press, 1994. Analyzing musical multimedia- Nicholas Cook- Oxford University Press,1998. Part II, 4- Credit Where It’s Due: Madonna’s Material Girl, Music and Pictures. Musical Communication -Chapter 18- The role of music communication in cinema. Scott D. Lipscomb and David E. Tolchinsky - Oxford University Press, 2005. New Music Grove Encyclopedia Online, www.grovemusic.com Hector Berlioz ,“The limit of Music” ‘in J.Barzun ,the pleasures of Music ,NY, Viking 1951, pp 243-58. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Walt als Wille Und Vorstellung’ in Ruth Katz and Carl Dalhaus, Contemplating Music, Pendragon ,Stuyvesant, vol.I 1987, pp 141-58. Charlotte Salomon, Life or Theatre?, Biography acquired from The Jewish Historical Museum website http://www.jhm.nl/collection.aspx?ID=7, Pictures obtain from the website. 23

2 notes · View notes

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Link

Hebrew University Orchestra 2016

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

Bach Prelude in F major – BWV 927 (Little Prelude in F Major) by Jezabel Cohen The Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach is a collection of keyboard music compiled by Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann. Johann Sebastian began compiling the collection in 1720. Most of the pieces included are better known as parts of the Well-Tempered Clavier and individual inventions and symphonies. The authorship of most other works is debated: particularly the famous Little Preludes BWV 924–932 are sometimes attributed to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. The book begins with a preface that contains an explanation of clefs and a guide to playing ornaments. The pieces of the collection are arranged by complexity, beginning with the simplest works. A prelude is a short piece of music, usually in no particular internal form, which may serve as an introduction to movements of a work that are usually. Many preludes have a continuous ostinato throughout, usually of the rhythmic and melodic variety. They are also improvisatory in style Bach Prelude in F major – BWV 927 (Little Prelude in F Major)- Schenkerian analysis Initial ascent, the music of the upper voice at the beginning of this composition that leads to a linear progression, starts with a firm melodic figure on the tonic, from an initial tonic to the Kopfton, the primary melodic note of a composition, in this case I think is the note A in bar# 5, it is established near the beginning of the piece, after four bars of exposition and followed by the initial ascent, serving as the first note of the Urlinie (upper voice of the Ursatz, called the Urlinie (‘fundamental line’). The initial accent I marked on the graph# 2 as the first note of the soprano, C- D-E-F-G- (fifth progression) there is a jump to –Bb- (cover tone) and then continues to A that is the note I sign as the Ursatz, that is descending from . . A typical technique for Bach that can explain what is happening on bars# 1-4, is the structural purpose continually recurring to the two-note motive, but musical structural function prevails. The four first bars form the introduction which mainly they are divided into two where the lower voices appear with the same rhythmic form than in bars# 3 and 4. Bars# 5-10 serve as the development, bars# 11-15 serve as a coda, all is arranged with harmonic and melodic balance, music seems in tune. . The melodic process Bach makes use of is the incorporation of passing tones, neighboring notes, arpeggios, and other ornamental figures into the melody which he decorates on cadential points with arpeggios, in bars# 5-8, all the passages are sequenced, subdominant passage, development (new material with appearance of the Ursatz). In Schenkerian analysis the first fundamental layer, the background is the deepest structural level, showing the fundamental structure of the piece, (graph 3). Establishes the tonality and the realization of the Ursatz, bar#11- , dominant area, bar# 11 the note E in the soprano, G in the bass, in an area where is the second bar after the beginning of the territory of the dominant, E is not expected after the A of bar# 4, but we can see G in the bass. I suggest E first because is part of the dominant and second because is the leading tone of F which is the last Ursatz note of the piece. This gives a background illustration as I (bar#4)-V (bar# 11)-I (bar# 15). The lower voice, which encapsulates the harmonic motion of the piece, consists of a tonic, followed by a dominant and a return to the tonic; this is called the Arpeggiation of the bass (Ger. Bassbrechung) since it involves movement between two notes belonging to the tonic triad. Thus the upper and lower parts of the Ursatz both exhibit a ‘horizontal’ unfolding of the tonic triad. I marked as the neighbor of the Ursatz D in bar# 8, as is a note of a subdominant area still and directs to the C in the bass in a secondary descent. In graph 2 I show, progression of 3rds, 4th, 5th and 8th notes, arpeggios, change of register, voice exchange bars# 4-5. From bar # 5 to bar# 6 and bars# 11-13 and in both parts we can see a sub-structure that takes the form of a four progression first and then a fifth progression, these passages come after the note I marked as the urzats notes of the piece. This is a one part form because Bach writes with a tonic point at beginning, an expanded pre-dominant area, bars # 5-10, a tonicization of the dominant, bars# 11- 14, a dominant switch bars# half of 14 to 15 with a cadential gesture at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_673537&feature=iv&src_vid=5iNMHIDUP-w&v=vLmVOgifuKg

1 note · View note

musicologyc · 6 years ago

Text

Musicology Department- Reality of Illusion and Disbelief inside the Opera- Jezabel Cohen -The Hebrew University of Jerusalem-Musicology Department

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Musicology Department

Opera as a World and the World of the Opera: Esthetics, Politics and Emotions.

to Dr. Ruth HaCohen

2007- December

Reality of Illusion and Disbelief inside the Opera

By: Jezabel Cohen

Opera, Don Giovanni

Music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart �� Libretto, Lorenzo Da Ponte

introduction

“…..the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination…”. With Coleridge’s idea I happen to find the subject to this seminar study, “Willing suspension of our disbeliefs”. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria). He suggested that a series of poems

should be composed in two ways. He proposed two ways for the creative process of a fiction, one way the action should be in part supernatural and the quality achieving must consist in the appealing of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. As far as that an audience could suppose itself being under a supernatural experience. The other side to take in account is that subject for a fiction should be taken from ordinary life, “the characters and incidents were to be such, as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.”

The will of suspending our incredulities, conscious or not, is a moment where we immerse ourselves inside a story forgetting about the real or in the contrary never willing of such a disloyalty to the world, in either case, the decision to put to test ourselves has been done. Coleridge puts down another phrase that talks about the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, as a gift of the imagination, he was referring to poetry and to its music. But this can apply also towards any work of art. My intention will be to compare music of this particular opera, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with elements that work in a similar way in modern mediums like cinema. The themes I’ll try to discuss in this study will talk about the way reality is possible, on the illusions created upon us and from us when being audience, with my focus on how music works together with the text, how actors work within their own musical and theatrical characters, the effects music produce on the audiences and how it endeavors the continuity of the story.

Characters inside a story rely on real world beliefs as well as audiences are, both have a common treaty from the start and that is to accept fiction. The challenge of accepting fiction requires both changing of beliefs and to skip reason for a moment. Like in film, similar processes of real life happen in the opera, the strategy is to believe that the impossible can happen on stage. The role of composers and librettists or directors will be as connectors between both groups of people, the one in stage and the one listening and staring at it. Characters with a human nature and an audience that holds a poetic faith will both concentrate and accept getting into the fiction, a relation that can be described as of cynism vs. romance, actors and real people. A non rational agreement between the audience and the characters must be created for the opera’s existence.

Don Giovanni’s self reflection tells about a man that thinks that nobody is as talented as him and if opera is an imitation of life all his bad deeds are seen as an illusion to our eyes. The theatre within the theatre inside the opera has something that recalls only real life and Don Giovanni reminds many times to a supernatural creature that everything can chase, there are resemblances to Dracula in his behavior, or like a serial corrupted, a never ending story, he rapes, loves, murders and before the audience’s eyes all of his sides are exposed. The need of Don Giovanni to search for life and always the search is in other’s lives, no matter what the circumstances are, is in a way a very human characteristic, but then extreme the way it ends. A rebel of the social and moral norms. Donna Elvira believes in him and prefers to keep believing in him, Laporello express his concerns about her and ask God to protect her against her credulity. Don Giovanni’s deeds are an illusion set in front of our ears and eyes, imitating life and exaggerating life. Murder and Love and Rape do not happen in opera, but only in life. Music does not happen in real life, (but that can be question). The music here functions to realm the drama and to quiet it, to give us a line of hierarchies and to put things in order, the music protects the drama, when is being told a truth and when a lie has been told. Familiar flavors and real life objects are assembled to provide together with the music what it is as a result the Opera. This study will try to show a small aspect of the interaction of the music inside the opera.

fictional truths

What are fictional truths? The answer by Noel Carrol consists in the need or acceptance of a prescription or mandate in a certain context to imagine something, as stated by Kendall Walton on his book Mimesis as Make-Believe, these come from the representation with its attendant rules for moving from features of the prop to whatever is to be imagined in the relevant game. In Walton’s system, it is important to distinguish between two different types of fictional worlds - the world of the prop, which is a cluster of propositions that every one is prescribed-by the representation in question to imagine, and the world of each one’s game of make-believe. These ‘worlds’ are different. Novels, pictorial depictions, plays, films and the like are things possessing the social function of props in games of make-believe. Their function is to generate the fictional material that we are supposed to imagine. Appreciating paintings, novels and the like is largely a matter of playing games of make-believe with them, games of the sort in which it is their function to be props.

It is not the function of non-fiction works to serve as props in games of make-believe. But whether or not it is the function of a candidate to perform the role of prop in a game of make-believe serves as the dividing line between fiction and non-fiction. As Walton admits that this is not our ordinary sense of what it is for something to count as a fiction. For in Walton’s view, a story comprised of all and only true statements could turn out to be fictional, as long as there is also a mandate or prescription to imagine the content of those statements. Moreover, Carroll doubts on the Walton’s aptitude that believes that he is in the position to solve a number of outstanding paradoxes concerning our responses to fiction, such as tragedy, suspense and our emotional responses to fiction. What is paradoxical about our emotional responses to fiction is that emotional responses in general appear to require certain beliefs on our part.

But Carroll finds it difficult to suppose that looking at pictures involves fictional sightings of whatever is portrayed by the picture or postulate games of make-believe. It seems to her that it is easily and more economically do without them. This way of proceeding enables to keep intact the plausible idea that there is a distinction between fictional and non-fictional depictive representations.

On his book Musical Meaning and Expression, Stephen Davies, proposes several comparisons between music and language, music and pictures, music and symbols, feelings, expressions of emotions, response and understanding. He is exploring the meanings of music, in chapter two of his book he compares Pictures with Music, suggesting that music used in operas, film and ballet is used not only to accompany the action and the texts but to illustrate the texts. Davies set up his theory by saying that the idea rather than asserting or describing, as language does, represents or depicts, as non-abstract paintings and sculptures do. The differences between painting and music, rather than marking a distinction between types of representation, are such as to suggest that music is not a depictive art form. Davis suggests that music has a certain power as pictures do, to depict things as paintings do. He mentions Kendall Walton, the philosopher mentioned above, that develops the theory of make-believe and uses it to understand the nature and varieties of representation in the arts. He has written on pictorial representation, fiction and the emotions, the aesthetics of music. He distinguishes depiction from representation, he says that depiction is a species of representation. Unlike Davies that uses both terminologies as synonymous, sustaining that if music is representational must have the general conditions for that, for him music is not a depictive art-form. He focuses in two types of theory the “semantic”, which gives priority to the work’s title, the title of a work can contribute to representation only where elements are systematized in a way that might allow them to combine appropriately with the title to secure denotation and a characterization of the subject, and “seeing –in” accounts of representation. Davies himself is defending the seeing-in account and lists his own four conditions for art as pictures, none of which is sufficient alone. The conditions are Intention, Medium/Content distinction, Resemblance between perceptual experiences and Conventions. I find it difficult to find a classification of a representational theory above describe that may apply to Don Giovanni’s, accepting that a semantic theory applies partly to this opera, yet it is not entirely correct that only by its title we can have a whole perspective of the work, this is by no means a very not flexible theory and by being so it fails to apply to an opera of this kind, that contains so many different features that are not only directed to the one implied by its so suggesting and provocative title, Il Dissoluto Punito ossia al Don Giovanni. (The Rake Punished namely Don Giovanni), it can give us a hint to the opera’s topic but by no means can give us what this is all about. The second theory can apply much better as it includes a wider range perspective of the piece as a whole, taking in account what is in it an not only above it (title).

Walton’s point of view talks about the moment when music mixed with words makes a contribution to the creation of fictional truths even if it would not be representational by itself, this is to say that the mixing of both elements already gives a meaning to the art that might not be the one intended from the beginning, in film, he points out the moment when the characters are suddenly realizing of something that occurs in the story being done with the help of a sudden background music. In Hitchcock’s movies music is the key to create mystery besides the many other uses music has on his movies. In opera this is occurring all the time, in opera music is not a domain simply touched when needed to give an explanation of the story but also and only to make it possible. As Walton describes musical expressiveness, is sometimes understood as a species of representation. In opera there are moments where music act as a secondary tool but our intentions can find or impose representationality to it anywhere in the music and the story. Music is less perceptual, less an aural art than painting or films are visual ones, when it represents an auditory observable fact, what it represents is less auditory, as Walton describes. Illusion has a role in music, rather than the apparent affinity we can find between other arts and music, more specifically in visual arts, perception of expressiveness inside a piece of music might be fictional, feelings, emotions or moods are connected straight with the awareness each one has of his own experiences collected in life. Walton concludes by saying that instead of having fictional perceptions from external objects we have fictional introspections or self-awareness. When a listener experiences feelings there might not be fictional truths for which music alone is responsible, but yet feelings can direct us straight to fictional places that not exactly are established by the music itself, until one listens to the music, fiction might not be there, none apart from listener’s games of make-believe. He sustains that music becomes a personal and a private experience, listening is more like dreaming, he explains, as is a solitary activity, than the appreciation of a painting or a novel. He ends by saying that listeners might talk about their fictional reactions to a piece of music, talking about music, rather than taking part verbally with other listeners in a game of make- believe. The roles of the props he speak about represent a fictional truth.

light and cinema, music and opera On his book Image and Mind, Gregory Currie, writes about The myth of illusion, he sets several arguments that oppose a possible perceptual illusionism in cinema, referring to it as an experience that represents the world being in a certain way, when in fact it is not that way and the subject (the audience) does not believe it to be that way. The most common version that cinema induces a perceptual illusion, is when speaking about movement, when we seem to see movement on the screen, but really do not. He speaks on cinematic images telling that they are precarious, in order to speak about reality of cinematic images it is not only necessary to establish a reality of colors as for cinematic images might constitute a case where there appear to be colors, but really are not. He notices that one way to argue that there is real movement of cinematic images would be to adopt very liberal criteria of reality. In modern mediums like cinema, movement is provided by the use of light, that works as well focusing on a stage and on actors to give importance to what is happening in the story and enabling the director to express his ideas or to let us see through the screen how he sees. In film, light, is the essence for an image composition, for the narrative and the central thematic concern. Light works as in other visual arts, like painting, ex. Caravaggio’s paintings, being not less revolutionary. Light can be compared and work in similar ways as when a composer tries to focus an audience into a certain place inside the story, the music can center the public into an idea or to give an actor individuality inside the story. In the introduction of her book, A Culture of Light, Francis Guerin starts by stating that cinema is a medium of electric light and that it is the qualities of light and lighting technology that define German Weimar cinema, she says that light as the medium of film also has the capacity to be deployed as the content of representational images. These images might represent developments in light technology that take place in the historical world. Such representations can analyze the sociological function of artificial light formations such as the cinema itself. Light in cinema not only allows moving images to exist in it, but compose it. The idea of comparing the use of artificial light inside cinema with music comes to me when seeing that to both, music and light, applies a quantity of different uses that could be found in some of their mediums, on this case, cinema or opera, to give representation to an idea. Today cinema and opera include artificial lightening but not when they were in their early stages.

words, music, actors, characters and affinities

Don Juan on the stage, spoken or lyric, was the contrary of an innovation, The Spaniard Tirso de Molina started the trend in the early 17th Century. Moliere took up the subject in his Lej'estin de pierre (1665), a prose comedy, which introduces the characters Donna Elvira, Zerlina and Masetto as victims of Don Giovanni. Goldoni treated it in an early play of his Don Giovanni Tenorio ossia Il dissoluto (1736), his

legacy is a Donna Anna who is affianced to Ottavio against her will. Gluck made the legend into pantomime ballet, first staged at

Vienna in 1761.

The model upon which Mozart and Da Ponte worked was Don Giovanni

ossia Il convitato di pietra, dramma giocoso in un atto, first performed at Carnival season in Venice, February 1787. The poet was Giovanni Bertati, one of the most sought after librettists at Venice following Goldoni’s departure, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, an opera composer, wrote the music.

Drama Giocoso the operatic genre that is born in Italy in the midst of the XVIII century, is a combination of both tragedy and comedy, of a pathetic act and a dramatic scene, typically of the genre is that the combination appears synthesized at the end of an act. This genre was regarded to Carlo Goldoni, a leading Venetian playwright, that together with Galuppi, a Venetian musician created the buffo finale that extended a chain of unbroken action and music to enliven the act ending. Goldoni combined character types from serious opera, with buffa and sometimes also added roles that were half way between the two characters, di mezzo carrattere. Dramma Giocosso became a known genre by the year of 1748, dramma signifying opera seria and giocare, meaning to play in Italian, also to deceive or make a fool of. Goldoni in 1752 writes, ‘these drammi giocosi of mine are in demand all over Italy and are heard with delight; noble, cultivated people often attend, finding in them, joined to the melody of the singing, the pleasure of honest ridicule, the whole forming a spectacle more lively than usual’ (and less uniform than an altogether serious or comic opera).

The buffa parts were given to strophic folk songs to short binary airs. The importance of singing in the dramma giocoso has a particular relevance to the roles given to the actors. Unlike other genres, the most essential thing is that the story on the whole be comic. The vocal dramatic parts are the first to be considered by Mozart when setting up the parts.

In opera words temporarily have primacy over music, they give a composer a direction together with the technical means he posses to provide the desired effect upon an audience. Herbert Lindenberger on his book, Opera the Extravagant Art, mentions Hoffman, that demonstrates (on his work Kreisleriana, chapter 6) that Mozart finds the use of modulations functional, to create dramatic effects. Hoffman gives the example where Don Giovanni accepts an invitation to dinner from the statue, the key shifts goes from E to C, Hoffman identify this as the moment a libretto posses a temporal primacy over its musical realization, a librettist can guide the composer towards its musical realization, in which he can find the musical means.

In this section I will show an analysis made by the musicologist Fritz Noske on the dramatic and the musical aspects structure in Don Giovanni with Mozart use of a different melodic treatment within the different groups of people inside the opera. Characters are eight all together and they can be separated into three different theatrical and singing categories regarding to their different class positions and dramatic situate. One category is the Seria that includes Donna Anna, Don Ottavio and The Commendatore, the three are playing a role of the weak or victim from the dramatic and musical perspective and at the same time they represent nobility. Next group is defined as the Buffa that includes Laporello, Zerlina and Mazetto, the last includes Donna Elvira and Don Giovanni, they can be categorized as the mezzo carattere. This last group is defined by the ambivalent emotional personality both of the actors have along the story, Donna Elvira doesn’t really know where she is with her feelings towards Don Giovanni and he even if his fame of a Don Juan it is probed by “the book” Laporello holds on his love affairs, here appears as a person that is not really succeeding in getting what he would expect of himself and of the rest of the people around him. Mozart search for the integration of the drama with the music is done by maintaining a musical physiognomy of every individual actor. Donna Anna and Donna Elvira show differences in character that they are seen in their melodic action of their parts, No.19 Anna and No. 24 Elvira.

Anna’s lines are characterized for its expression of feelings with elegant turns while Elvira’s melodic line is extravagant.

Don Giovanni’s melodic language, as called by F. R. Noske, is lacking homogeneity because he adapts himself to every situation, being flexibility the main weapon to achieve his goals. A consistent Giovanni would fail to convince the public. For the understanding of Mozart’s intention in the structure of such an individual he uses the application of individual characterization, Intention, one of the above named conditions for representation.

Examples of the diversity of his character can be found in the

Introduzione no.1, on his two encounters with Zerlina no.7 and no.13, his aria no. 11, his duet with Laporello no.14, the balcony scene no.15, his scene with the peasants no.17 and Elvira’s interruption of the banquet no.24.

Another tool for achieving dramatic coherence, studied by Noske is also given by the musical relationships that are providing continuity and how distant scenes link to each other by apparent leitmotivs.

Laporello in the course of the opera is trying to identify himself with Don Giovanni, this leads him to imitate his tone until he adopts the style for some moments, like in the beginning of the first finale, no.13. Transitions between scenes are not suggested by the text but only musically, the arias start most of the times with a melody that derives from the closing of the preceding recitative. Zerlina’s second aria is an example of it, vedrai carino, sings an appoggiatura on the penultimate note of the recitative.

Don Ottavio’s first section appearances are dominated by descending thirds that are determined by affection and pitty. The arias and recitatives relationships are determined by the words through the first act, given by pitty and affection and in the second act dealing with vengeance.

Noske notes that in spite of the abilities of Mozart to sustain the dramatic élan all the time, the gap between the two acts is not bridgeable by melodic relations. Instead Da Ponte and Mozart make use of the audience’s imagination, with no explicit beginning they open the second act, giving the public the impression that during break the drama was continuing. Act II opens with a dialogue that started before the curtain went down, here Don Giovanni is imitating the buffo tone of Laporello, and we are introduced into an atmosphere of the unpredicted, while in the introduzione, the relationship of continuity is given by Laporello’s monologue and the argument between Donna Anna and Don Giovanni, the two scenes open both of the acts and show a dramatic contrast that is reflected in the music. Laporello appears in F major, in the second act, simple in his melody, with few notes. Melody is simple and harmony slow, but still Laporello’s voice color keeps the agitated rhythm that tag him along the opera, in the first act his melody line is in Bb showing in the rhythm doted notes and fast, . At the end of this section Laporello hear noises and tension reign the stage, everything is faster, the harmony doubles its speed, but still close to the metre, the anapaestic motif, forms a syncopation with the harmony and this motif anticipated the beginning of Donna Anna’s melody, and the replying of Don Giovanni in a lower octave.

The communal work between Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte that connect the passages from a scene to the next can be found in lines like “ma mi par che venga gente”, these two scenes are tied with the same rhyme and words, “ma mi par- non sperar”. By making use of the same lines and rhyme in a rondo like form, Mozart prevents braking of the sections and enables continuity. When referring only to the rhythmic aspect Mozart makes use of syncopations and explains Noske, that this is a feature that introduces magic atmosphere and tension, he suggest that only in marginal episodes of the plot the music appears to be free of syncopation. Like in Zerlina’s arias with Mazzeto. Another point that he suggests in the scena ultima, where the music is free from syncopation, suggesting that the music is liberated from terror and suggesting truth. The physiological function in the drama given by the syncope allows the intensive moving-on of the scenes. An example is in the duet “la ci darem la mano’ no.7, the music is speaking more truthfully than the text, this is to say, that in spite of her words, Zerlina is surrounded by Don Giovanni and her syncopating singing suggests urge.

Noske gives this example as one that comes to clarify a social class’s disorder appearing in an unconditionally way all along the opera. Concerning class disorder or better making order, one memorable scene, is the one of the dance at Don Giovanni’s palazzo, a scene that while trying to show social clashes treated with elegance by Mozart, with all the characters, that ones in other parts of the opera, were seduced to be part of other than their own social class or when being too closed to Don Giovanni happening that their own voice color changed, in this scene here all of the characters are clearly turned back to where they belong by all means, by the music of the orchestras on stage and by the drama, in the same scene the audience is witnessing all the Dramma Giocosso at ones, at the finale of Act I, the three dances, the Minuetto with the masked three seria characters, the Contradance for the mezzo carrattere and the Tedesco or Teutsch for the buffa, (dance that belongs to the populations at the periphery parts of the south of Austria). This moment of the opera characterizes for the unreal that finally becomes true, this is a moment of dream and a moment of clear separation and union between the characters that compound the opera, the stage is shared by all and music works separating all of them in a very elegant way. This moment of magic is labeled by the polyphonic work in the music and by the balanced amounts of fantasy of the drama that makes possible the fusion of the genre to fit the opera at ones. The music for the scene is in G Major key.

Noske continues to describe that these social gaps are presented within many eighteen century operatic scores, where fluent syncopation refers to the language of the upper classes, an example of the forbidden or the taboo that comes to be true on stage is also found in the part of a

peasant girl, Zerlina, enchanted by the nobleman, where she adopts a tone far above her own class. Laporello in the catalogue aria no.4 “Madamina, il catalogo e questo” speaks the idiom of Don Giovanni as well. Each time Don Giovanni emits his spell the syncopation appears, dominating the actor’s language and creating an atmosphere of unrest.

Rhythm and melody, observed by Noske, establish a musical connection that supply a logical explanation between the scenes, harmony and orchestration work as well as a means to connect two fragments, their function, is generally limited to support of a melodic or rhythmic relationship. Characters involved in the dramatic situations should be taken into account as well as the key the music is, should be taken in account, in the case of an affinity between scenes which is musically doubtful but dramatically clear, identifying the key can help solve the matter. The musical keys can stress the dramatic intensity and the development of the action.

The dramatic interpretation is dependant on the creation of a distinction within the different fragments, medium/content distinction, one of the conditions mentioned by Davies above, where it is necessary condition for X’s representing Y that there be a distinction between the medium of representation and the represented content.

Furthermore Noske suggests that if 'subject’ and 'quotation’ is sung by different persons, the variance is explained by the composer’s wish to preserve the individuality of each actor.

The musical affinity between these two passages, taken from the opening scene and Masetto’s aria, is melodic, there is similarity of key and tempo (molto allegro and allegro di molto).

Masetto’s phrase is written in double note values, his time signature of his aria is alla breve. In both fragments, text refers to imposed subordination. Masetto’s language and its orchestral accompaniment (in unison) are more basic than Leporello’s. This holds also for the instrumentation, Leporello is accompanied by strings, oboes, bassoons and horns, Masetto only by strings. This points the social distinction between the servant and the peasant. Both express feelings of social frustration and that’s why they are shearing their part, yet there is a difference between their respective situations. While Leporello is sad about his lack of freedom, Masetto is threatened and therefore the bitterness of his tone.

At the balcony scene the seduction theme of the trio and the mandolin canzonetta tells about a Don Giovanni that shows an apparent effort to pacify Donna Elvira’s mood and to revive her love. Noske describes that the canzonetta is a rather square piece giving the impression of something 'known’ and therefore well suited to charm a female servant. She is familiar with that type of music, although she probably never been the object herself of this form of courtship.

The ending scene at the cemetery, the author explains that the dramatic connotation is the concept of fear, but in this case again the differences are more revealing than the similarities. In the sextet it is the terror exercised by the absent Don Giovanni, causing blind confusion and panic. Leporello’s aria shows another kind of fear. He is physically threatened. In the cemetery scene Leporello is again frightened. When, after two failures, he finally succeeds in inviting the statue on behalf of his master, the flutes and bassoons express his mortal fear by suspensions causing sharp dissonances. The melody descends and there are no singing parts here, the orchestra is heard only. As a result a single musical phrase serves to depict three different situations. Noske explains that in the sextet it is society that is terrorized through the power of an individual who threatens to disturb its order, in the aria it is a weak and fundamentally conformist individual who fears to be punished by society and finally in the cemetery scene, stage and public are completely bewildered by the appearance of the supernatural. Yes, in this moment the audience’s treaty and the actor’s treaty becomes a one sided contract, here both Don Giovanni and the audience are being overwhelmed by the surreal, as Coleridge described on his Biographia Literaria, good quotes of supernatural experiences to ordinary people can help generate an action for a fiction to be possible.

Donna Elvira makes her first entrance, complaining about being abandoned by Don Giovanni. Here her motif will follow her all along the drama, as Noske describes, this motif is too simple to be connected to a dramatic fundamental idea, hence its use as a tradimento motif, treason motif, and is subject of restrictions showed ones in the key she is in, limited only to Bb major, although the interval of the minor fifth may be filled up, the intervening notes never will exceed the Eb and the motif always appears at the end of a phrase (this holds for the music as well as the text), finally the notes are harmonized by the dominant and the tonic chords.

In the score, observes Noske, the motif is not appearing in the key of Bb, and if it does, does it with a connotation of betrayal, whereas the many instances of its occurrence, in other keys, only rarely reveal a connection with the idea of break of faith. The almost all refer to other elements or seems to have no specific dramatic meaning. The motif is exposed in the first phrase, sung by Donna Elvira: “DO not

Trust, o unhappy lady, this villainous heart. The monster has already betrayed me, he will betray you too. As Noske points out, the concept of betrayal is not limited to the relation between individuals, but also refers to man in his relation to society. When the motif is taken up by Don Giovanni himself it underlines his lie, “this poor girl is mentally disturbed, dear friends, leave me alone with her, and perhaps she will calm down”, illustrating the very act of treason.

To conclude, on his article Noske considered some aspects that Mozart sets out of the turbulent sequences of events, appeared to have chosen a number of basic elements such as the concepts of 'violence’, 'fear’ and 'betrayal’, which he afterward translated in his own sonorous language. These motifs adopt a dramatic dimension in the course of the opera. Some of them express an idea and are therefore impersonal, while others are related to special actors, reinforcing the viability of their characters. All serve to intensify the dramatic action. Never, observe Noske, is a motif repeated automatically in order to connect two scenes, small differences are always dramatically determined.

Various moral aspects are examined inside Donna Elvira’s character

that feels betrayal primarily as violation of a human value, she is individually hurt and reacts by personal accusations. Donna Anna and Don Ottavio 'betrayal’ has the exclusive meaning of conscious disturbance of a social convention. Neither of them shows an interest in the real nature of Elvira’s sufferings, because they are unable to recognize moral standards detached from social order.

This is also the case with Don Giovanni, that denies the

existence of 'social’ infidelity, which in spite of being based on convention rather than on ethics is still a moral concept.

As a character Don Giovanni is not immoral but amoral. Nowhere in the drama does he show the slightest awareness of any ethical values.

Some of the affinities interpret the dramatic situations so cleverly that one must consider Mozart to have been fully aware of what he was doing.

conclusion

Many subjects presented here, were trying to assemble some of the few concerns that can arise when trying to talk about music.

I think that a false impression, a fantasy, a dream, several times words cannot explain and music can describe, and an illusion is something that it’s not present in reality and we appear to make it true, by using our imagination first and foremost. Some illusions have a space on stage, and opera is an exponent of the will of the unconceivable, the unpredictable, the magic to come true. And still we cannot call them reality to us but for a moment, they do become.

While belief, as put it by Noel Carroll, involves entertaining propositions as asserted, imagining is a matter of entertaining certain propositions unasserted - supposing them without commitment. Fictions invite this stance. Not everything we are invited to suppose and that we implicitly suppose need to be in the spotlight of the theatre of the mind. Not everything we see we must believe in. Not everything we hear we should really listen to it. But do we have a choice when we are already immersed?.

Musical relationships discussed in this seminar stem from a conscious effort to find coherence and unity of the drama of this particular opera and to present theories that would enable clarifying the last analysis.

Believing in opera might be a personal choice, to make an audience believe in it, will be the work of a composer and a librettist. Interpretation of what happens in front of our ears and trough our eyes will find a place in the capacity us, as an audience, will have in engaging and receiving, judging and feeling the meaning of what is that we are experiencing. Coleridge ideas proposed to accept fiction in such ways that by accepting it, we are accepting other dimensions of reality, that without them fiction wouldn’t exist. There will be no fiction without no reality.

How it is possible to benefit from fiction by ignoring reality?, Coleridge had this question in mind, suggested that only by elements that recall real life we are able to create fiction, while we are actually ignoring it. It can be possible that by ignoring reality we allow ourselves to enjoying it much better, and if that’s true, when entering the opera house, in that moment where we hang our coats, we sudden realize that with them are hanging, or suspended, many of our beliefs that are the only ones in charge to make opera possible, and if so, we might be able to realize part of how the world of opera is about.

Bibliography:

Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lyrical Ballads, Chapter XIV. Aldine House Bedford St. London, 1906, pp. 146-152.

Il Dissoluto Punito ossia il Don Giovanni, Dramma Giocosso in 2 Akten, Text von Lorenzo Da Ponte. Musik von Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart, Kochel, No 527. Edition Eulenbug, Edited from the autograph MS. in the Paris Conservatoire Library by Alfred Einstein, Edition Eulenburg, GmbH, Zurich. Partiture.

A Culture of Light: Cinema and Technology in 1920s Germany, Introduction, Frances Guerin, University of Minnesota Press, 2005,

Image and Mind, Film Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Gregory Currie, Chapter 1, the Myth of Illusion-

Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 28-41

Musical Meaning and Expression- Stephen Davies,

Music and Pictures –Cornell University Press, 1994, pp. 51-122

Mimesis as Make-Believe - on the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Kendall L. Walton, Musical Depictions, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts London, England, (1990), pp.333- 338.

Opera The Extravagant Art, Hebert Linderberger, Music against Words, Opera and Mimesis, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London (1984), pp. 108-139.

Believing in Opera, Tom Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996, pp. 3-15.

Online Bibliography

Don Giovanni: Musical Affinities and Dramatic Structure- F. R. Noske

Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 12, Fasc. ¼. (1970), pp. 167-203.

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0039-3266%281970%2912%3A1%2F4%3C167%3ADGMAAD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae is currently published by Akadémiai Kiadó.

Critical Study, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts by Kendall L. Walton. Review author[s]: Noel Carroll. The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 178. (Jan., 1995), pp. 93-99. Stable URL: https://tango.huji.ac.il/Web/cgi-bin/jstor/printpage/00318094/di983094/98p0448s/0.pdf,CVPNHost=www.jstor.org,CVPNProtocol=http,CVPNOrg=abs,CVPNExtension=.pdf?backcontext=page&dowhat=Acrobat&config=jstor&[email protected]/01c0a848661189f1171dfdb729&0.pdf

Goldoni, Don Giovanni and the Dramma Giocoso

Daniel Heartz, The Musical Times, Vol. 120, No. 1642. (1979),

pp. 993-995+997-998. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4666%28197912%29120%3A1642%3C993%3AGDGATD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R

Audiovisual Material

DVD, Opera Don Giovanni- Production by Franco Zeffirelli, Metropolitan Opera Association, 2000.

This seminar study originated in the frame of the class entitled “Opera as a World and the World of the Opera: Esthetics, Politics and Emotions” by Dr. Ruth HaCohen. The class was attended by students of the musicology department as well as students from other departments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the academic year 2006-07.

The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 45, No. 178. (Jan., 1995), pp. 93-99./ www.Jstorg.org

Props are the elements that are making possible a fictional truth, as Walton analyses representations in terms of the fictions (the fictional truths) it generates, the concepts of representation and fiction as interchangeable, as Carroll describes. Fictional truths are not a special sort of truth.

A semantic theorist might deny that the elements of music are of a type that permits them to conjoin with the work’s title in producing a depiction. A semantic interpretation identifies no purpose in listening.

The seeing –in theory emphasizes in what can be seen or heard in a work than on its title, the theory by no mean threats the title as irrelevant. The title might clarify of what type is the work (ex., program music). The theory might allow that many musical works with literary titles or texts are representational.

it is a necessary condition for X’s representing Y that X be intended to represent Y.

it is necessary condition for X’s representing Y that there be a distinction between the medium of representation and the represented content.

is necessary condition for X’s representing Y that there be a resemblance between a person’s perceptual experiences of X and of Y, given that the person views X in terms of the applicable conventions.

X represents Y within the context of conventions (that might be regarded as constituting a symbol system), so that the recognition of Y in X presupposes the viewer’s familiarity with those conventions and his viewing X in terms of them in perceiving Y in X. This condition concerns to the recognition of a representation as such.

On her Critical study on Walton’s book, Noel Carrol, suggests 'What is art?’ as the main question formulated by Walton by exploring the nature of representation, and in the course of that exploration he intends, but failing to bring any original idea, thereby to show how very many questions that vex philosophers of art can be insightfully addressed without defining 'art’. Stable URL: www.Jstor.org .

From his libretti Portentosi effetti della madre natura

Wagner use the word Verwirklichung meaning Realization, to indicate a composer’s role to the librettist. On his treatise Oper und Drama Wagner, looks at the marriage of words and music as inseparable.

In Italian, the middle or center character.

All graphs examples are taken from the work Don Giovanni: Musical Affinities and Dramatic Structure- F. R. Noske- Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 12, Fasc. ¼. (1970), pp. 167-203. Online stable URL, ww.Jstor.org.

In my view a very interesting point, during the opera many recitative parts are syncopation -less, suggesting moments of truth, like speaking in opera recalls real life, in the plot many of the recitatives are accompanied by a light piano or violin music that is in the background, a very calm and quiet music lines.

2 notes · View notes