Schenker and Schoenberg on the Tone and the Genius
Author : Matthew Arndt
Publisher :
Page : 452 pages
File Size : 38,95 MB
Release : 2008
Category :
ISBN :
The Musical Thought and Spiritual Lives of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg
Author : Matthew Arndt
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 40,32 MB
Release : 2017-09-11
Category : Music
ISBN : 135197579X
Book Description
This book examines the origin, content, and development of the musical thought of Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg. One of the premises is that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s inner musical lives are inseparable from their inner spiritual lives. Curiously, Schenker and Schoenberg start out in much the same musical-spiritual place, yet musically they split while spiritually they grow closer. The reception of Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s work has sidestepped this paradox of commonality and conflict, instead choosing to universalize and amplify their conflict. Bringing to light a trove of unpublished material, Arndt argues that Schenker’s and Schoenberg’s conflict is a reflection of tensions within their musical and spiritual ideas. They share a particular conception of the tone as an ideal sound realized in the spiritual eye of the genius. The tensions inherent in this largely psychological and material notion of the tone and this largely metaphysical notion of the genius shape both their musical divergence on the logical (technical) level in theory and composition, including their advocacy of the Ursatz versus twelvetone composition, and their spiritual convergence, including their embrace of Judaism. These findings shed new light on the musical and philosophical worlds of Schenker and Schoenberg and on the profound artistic and spiritual questions with which they grapple.
Handling Dissonance
Author : Chelle L. Stearns
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 24,58 MB
Release : 2019-06-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1625645465
Book Description
Music can answer questions that often confound more discursive modes of thought. Music takes concepts that are all too familiar, reframes these concepts, and returns them to us with incisive clarity and renewed vision. Unity is one of these “all too familiar concepts,” thrown around by politicians, journalists, and pastors as if we all know what it means. By turning to music, especially musical space, the relational structure of unity becomes less abstract and more tangible within our philosophy. Arnold Schoenberg, as an inherently musical thinker, is our guide in this study of unity. His reworking of musical structure, dissonance, and metaphysics transformed the tonal language and aesthetic landscape of twentieth–century music. His philosophy of compositional unity helps us to deconstruct and reconceive how unity can be understood and worked with both aesthetically and theologically. This project also critiques Schoenberg’s often monadic musical metaphysic by turning to Colin Gunton’s conviction that the particularity and unity at the heart of God’s triune being should guide all of our theological endeavors. Throughout, music accompanies our thinking, demonstrating not only how theology can benefit the philosophy of music but also how the philosophy of music can enrich and augment theological discourse.
Schoenberg: ‘Night Music' – Verklärte Nacht and Erwartung
Author : Arnold Whittall
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 12,74 MB
Release : 2023-11-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 1316514099
Book Description
Synthesises and refocuses the wealth of recent research into two of Arnold Schoenberg's major compositions from the years 1899-1909.
Music, Performance, Meaning
Author : Nicholas Cook
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 35,62 MB
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : History
ISBN : 135155705X
Book Description
This selection of sixteen of Nicholas Cook's essays covers the period from 1987 to 2004 and brings out the development of the author's ideas over these years. In particular the two keywords of the title -Meaning and Performance- represent critical directions that expand to the point that, by the end of the book, they become coextensive: music is seen as social action and meaning as created by that action. Within this overall direction, a wide variety of topics is explored, ranging from Beethoven to Schenker, from Chinese qin music to jazz and rock, from perceptual psychology to sketch studies and analysis of record sleeves. A substantial introduction draws out the links (and differences) between the essays, sometimes critiquing them and always setting them into the developing context of the author's work as a whole.
Tonality
Author : Dmitri Tymoczko
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 633 pages
File Size : 34,18 MB
Release : 2023
Category : Music
ISBN : 0197577105
Book Description
This encyclopaedic book proposes a sweeping reformulation of the basic concepts of Western music theory, revealing simple structures underlying a wide range of practices from the Renaissance to contemporary pop. Its core innovation is a collection of simple geometrical models describing the implicit knowledge governing a broad range of music-making, much as the theory of grammar describes principles that tacitly guide our speaking and writing. Each of its central chapters re-examines a basic music-theoretical concept such as voice leading, repetition, nonharmonic tones, the origins of tonal harmony, the grammar of tonal harmony, modulation, and melody. These are flanked by two largely analytical chapters on rock harmony and Beethoven. Wide-ranging in scope, and with almost 700 musical examples from the Middle Ages to the present day, Tonality: An Owner's Manual weaves philosophy, mathematics, statistics, and computational analysis into a new and truly twenty-first century theory of music.
Schoenberg
Author : Malcolm MacDonald
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 13,50 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0195172019
Book Description
"Directly or indirectly, Arnold Schoenberg had a greater impact on the music of the twentieth century than any other composer. He was a vigorous polemicist whose theories were driven by his compositional practice, and although his music was for many decades more talked about than listened to, Schoenberg's influence has been incalculable" "In this completely rewritten and much enlarged updating of his long-indispensable study, Malcolm MacDonald takes advantage of thirty years of recent scholarship, new biographical information, and deeper understanding of the composer's aims and significance to produce a richly argued and thought-provoking guide to Schoenberg's life and work. He demonstrates how Schoenberg's musical language (including the much misunderstood twelve-note method), his personal character, and his creative ideas are indissolubly linked, as is his genius as a teacher and as an original composer. He also examines virtually every work in the oeuvre to demonstrate its vitality and many-sidedness. A chronology of Schoenberg's life, a work-list, an updated bibliography, and a much-expanded personalia enhance the usefulness of this new edition."--BOOK JACKET.
Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century
Author : Suzannah Clark
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 38,20 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780521771917
Book Description
Music theory of almost all ages has relied on nature in its attempts to explain music. The understanding of what 'nature' is, however, is subject to cultural and historical differences. In exploring ways in which music theory has represented and employed natural order since the scientific revolution, this volume asks some fundamental questions not only about nature in music theory, but also the nature of music theory. In an array of different approaches, ranging from physical acoustics to theology and Lacanian psychoanalysis, these essays examine how the multifarious conceptions of nature, located variously between scientific reason and divine power, are brought to bear on music theory. They probe the changing representations and functions of nature in the service of music theory and highlight the ever-changing configurations of nature and music, as mediated by the music-theoretical discourse.
The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt
Author : Milton Babbitt
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 531 pages
File Size : 46,1 MB
Release : 2012-06-24
Category : Music
ISBN : 0691155402
Book Description
Like his compositions, Milton Babbitt's writings about music have exerted an extraordinary influence on postwar music and thinking about music. In essays and public addresses spanning fifty years, Babbitt has grappled profoundly with central questions in the composition and apprehension of music. These writings range from personal memoirs and critical reviews to closely reasoned metatheoretical speculations and technical exegesis. In the history of music theory, there has been only a small handful of figures who have produced work of comparable stature. Taken as a whole, Babbitt's writings are not only an invaluable testimony to his thinking--a priceless primary source for the intellectual and cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century--but also a remarkable achievement in their own right. Prior to this collection, Babbitt's writings were scattered through a wide variety of journals, books, and magazines--many hard to find and some unavailable--and often contained typographical errors and editorial corruptions of various kinds. This volume of almost fifty pieces gathers, corrects, and annotates virtually everything of significance that Babbitt has written. The result is complete, authoritative, and fully accessible--the definitive source of Babbitt's influential ideas.
Roger Sessions
Author : Andrea Olmstead
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 462 pages
File Size : 32,97 MB
Release : 2012-08-06
Category : Music
ISBN : 1135868921
Book Description
Recognized as the primary American symphonist of the 20th century, Roger Sessions (1896-1985) is one of the leading representatives of high modernism. His stature among American composers rivals Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and Elliott Carter. Sessions was awarded two Pulitzer prizes, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winning the Brandeis Creative Arts Award, the Gold Medal of the American Academy, and a MacDowell Medal, in addition to 14 honorary doctorates. Roger Sessions: A Biography brings together considerable previously unpublished archival material, such as letters, lectures, interviews, and articles, to shed light on the life and music of this major American composer. Andrea Olmstead, a teaching colleague of Sessions at Juilliard and the leading scholar on his music, has written a complete biography charting five touchstone areas through Sessions’s eighty-eight years: music, religion, politics, money, and sexuality.
