The Book of Requiems, 1450-1550


Book Description

Reference work for musicologists, music theorists, performers, and music lovers Few western musical repertories speak more to the imagination than the Requiem mass for the dead. The Book of Requiems presents in-depth essays on the most important works in this tradition, from the origins of the genre up to the present day. Each chapter is devoted to a specific Requiem, and offers both historical information and a detailed work-discussion. Conceived as a multi-volume essay collection by leading experts, TheBook of Requiems is an authoritative reference publication intended as a first port of call for musicologists, music theorists, and performers both professional and student.




The Book of Requiems, 1550-1650


Book Description

Few western musical repertories speak more to the imagination than the Requiem mass for the dead. Yet, surprisingly, despite the significance of Requiem settings for our musical culture, the literature concerning them is sparse. The Book of Requiems presents essays on the most important works in this tradition, from the origins of the genre up to the present day. Each chapter is devoted to a specific Requiem, and offers both historical information and a detailed work-discussion. Conceived as a multi-volume essay collection by leading experts, The Book of Requiems is an authoritative reference publication intended as a first port of call for musicologists, music theorists, and performers both professional and student. The present volume, the second in the series, treats settings composed between c. 1550 and c. 1650, a period in which the Requiem becomes a defining feature of the soundscape of Catholic death rituals.




The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603)


Book Description

The first substantial study of Victoria's Requiem, among the most prominent Renaissance musical works, encompassing its genesis, style, and impact.




Experience Music Experiment


Book Description

“Truth happens to an idea.” So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of “doing and undergoing.” But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music—that is, with “artistic research”? In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some offer probing analyses of noteworthy practices; some view historical continuities through the lens of pragmatism and artistic experiment. The resulting collection yields new insights into what musicians do, how they experiment, and what they experience—insights that arise not from doctrine, but from diverse voices seeking common ground in and through experimental discourse: artistic research in and of itself.




Sémiotique et vécu musical


Book Description

Nouvelles perspectives en sémiotique Tout est musique, et la musique nous accompagne partout : ces lieux communs n’ont jamais été si vrais qu’aujourd’hui, au temps de l’arrosage musical continuel. Cette ubiquité, loin d’être simplement une mode, nous oblige à repenser sémiotiquement la fonction et le fonctionnement de la musique. Les essais composant Sémiotique et vécu musical montrent dans quelle direction se dirigent les recherches de nos jours. L’analyse de l’expérience musicale, par exemple, détermine la réception affective, peut provoquer l’ébranlement intérieur, transformer le temps vécu, changer et déterminer les structures de l’expérience ainsi que l’expérientialité. L’expérience musicale est profondément liée à l’incarnation et à la corporalité. Elle peut redéfinir l’horizon de compréhension, moduler les attentes, déterminer et délimiter les contenus phénoménaux. Elle est fondamentalement conditionnée par l’interaction physique avec un instrument ou encore modelée par le studio d’enregistrement. L’intelligence artificielle et l’usage de robots dans des spectacles commencent à remettre en cause nos conceptions de l’expérience musicale. Ces nouvelles perspectives développées en sémiotique s’ouvrent nécessairement et impérativement aux sciences cognitives, aux nouvelles approches de la musicologie, à la transdisciplinarité et au transmédial. Le caractère innovant du présent ouvrage qui touche la théorie, la méthodologie et l’empirisme, témoigne de la vivacité, de l’inventivité et du dynamisme qui caractérisent la sémiotique toujours jeune, curieuse et surprenante. Contributors Sylvain Brétéché (Aix-Marseille Université), Guillaume Deveney (Aix-Marseille Université), Carole Egger (Université de Strasbourg), Christine Esclapez (Aix-Marseille Université ), Márta Grabócz (Université de Strasbourg), Michel Imberty (Université de Paris X, Nanterre), Thomas Le Colleter (Université Paris-IV Sorbonne), Gabriel Manzaneque (Aix-Marseille Université), Zaven Paré (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), Isabelle Reck (Université de Strasbourg), Mathias Rousselot (Aix-Marseille Université)




Powers of Divergence


Book Description

What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes, conventions and territories of music performance. Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts and semiotics, and crucially based upon an artistic research project with a strong creative and practical component, it proposes a new approach to music performance. The approach is based on divergence, on the difference produced by intensifying the chasm between the symbolic aspect of music notation and the irreducible materiality of performance. Instead of regarding performance as reiteration, reconstruction and reproduction of past musical works, Powers of Divergence emphasises its potential for the emergence of the new and for the problematisation of the limits of musical semiotics.




Opera & Ideas


Book Description

Opera and Ideas is a study of the connections between music and intellectual history. Through lucid analysis of six operas and two song cycles, Paul Robinson shows how operas give musical and dramatic expression to ideas about the self, society, and history.




Performance, Subjectivity, and Experimentation


Book Description

Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity “in” music – how music expresses or represents “an” individual or “a” group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what sense is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary musical practices, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity.




Music Alone


Book Description

What makes a musical work profound? What is it about pure instrumental music that the listener finds attractive and rewarding? In addressing these questions, Peter Kivy continues his highly regarded exploration of the philosophy of musical aesthetics. He considers here what he believes to be the most difficult subject of all--"just plain music; music unaccompanied by text, title, subject, program, or plot; in other words, music alone."




Futures of the Contemporary


Book Description

Transdisciplinary approaches to the notions of “the contemporary” and “contemporaneity” Futures of the Contemporary explores different notions and manifestations of “the contemporary” in music, visual arts, art theory, and philosophy. In particular, the authors in this collection of essays scrutinise the role of artistic research in critical and creative expressions of contemporaneity. When distinguished from “the contemporaneous” of a given historical time, “the contemporary” becomes a crucial concept, promoting or excluding objects and practices according to their ability to diagnose previously unnoticed aspects of the present. In this sense, the contemporary gains a critical function, involving particular modes of relating to history and one’s own time. Written by major experts from fields such as music performance, composition, art theory, visual arts, art history, critical studies, and philosophy, this book offers challenging perspectives on contemporary art practices, the temporality of artistic works and phenomena, and new modes of problematising the production of art and its public apprehension. Contributors: Andrew Prior (University of Plymouth), Babette Babich (Fordham University), Geoff Cox (Fine Art at Plymouth University / Aarhus University), Heiner Goebbels (Justus Liebig University), Jacob Lund (Aarhus University), Michael Schwab (Orpheus Institute), Pal Capdevila (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute), Peter Osborne (Kingston University London), Ryan Nolan (University of Plymouth), Zsuzsa Baross (Trent University)