Musical Works and Performances

Musical Works and Performances
Author: Stephen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0199274118

Stephen Davies addresses such questions as: What are musical works?; are they discovered or created?; of what elements are they comprised?; how are they specified?; what's a performance? ; and, is it possible to perform old music authentically?

Musical Works and Performances

Musical Works and Performances
Author: Stephen Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2004
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780199274116

What are musical works? Are they discovered or created? Of what elements are they comprised? How are they specified by notations? What makes a performance of one piece and not another? Is it possible to perform old music authentically? Can ethnic music influenced by foreign sources and presented to tourists genuinely reflect the culture's musical and wider values? Can recordings substitute faithfully for live performances? These are the questions considered in Musical Works and Performances. Part One outlines the nature of musical works, their relation to performances, and their notational specification. Works for performance differ from ones that are merely for playback, and pieces for live rendition are unlike those for studio performance. Pieces vary in the number and kind of their constitutive properties. The identity of musical works goes beyond their sonic profile and depends on their music-historical context. To be of a given work, a performance must match its contents by following instructions traceable to its creation. Some pieces are indicated via exemplars, but many are specified notationally. Scores must be interpreted in light of notational conventions and performance practices they assume. Part Two considers authenticity in performance, musical traditions, and recordings. A performance should follow the composer's instructions. Departures from the ideal are tolerable, but faithfulness is central to the enterprise of work performance, not merelyan interpretative option. When musical cultures interact, assimilation from within differs from destruction from without. Even music subject to foreign influences can genuinely reflect the musical traditions and social values of a culture, however. Finally, while most works are for live performance, most performances are experienced via recordings, which have their own, distinctive characteristics. This comprehensive and original analysis of musical ontology discusses many kinds of music, and applies its conclusions to issues as diverse as the authentic performance movement, the cultural integrity of ethnic music, and the implications of the dominance of recorded over live music.

Music Performance Issues

Music Performance Issues
Author: Beverly Jerold
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2016
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781576472750

Frontcover -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface -- 1 Dilettante and Amateur: Our Evolving Language -- 2 Bach's Lament about Leipzig's Professional Instrumentalists -- 3 Choral Singing Before the Era of Recordings -- 4 Why Most a cappella Music Could Not Have Been Sung Unaccompanied -- 5 Fasch and the Beginning of Modern Artistic Choral Singing -- 6 What Handel's Casting Reveals About Singers of the Time -- 7 Intonation Standards and Equal Temperament -- 8 Eighteenth-Century Stringed Keyboard Instruments from a Performance Perspective -- 9 The Tromba and Corno in Bach's Time -- 10 Maelzel's Role in Beethoven's Symphonic Metronome Marks -- 11 The French Time Devices Revisited -- 12 The Notable Significance of C and (in Bach's Era -- 13 Numbers and Tempo: 1630-1800 -- 14 Overdotting in Handel's Overtures Reconsidered -- 15 Notes inégales: A Definitive New Parameter -- 16 Distinguishing Between Artificial and Natural Vibrato in Premodern Music -- 17 A Solution for Simple (secco) Theater Recitative -- 18 How Composers Viewed Performers' Additions -- 19 The Varied Reprise in Eighteenth-Century Intrumental Music-A Reappraisal

Musical Meaning and Expression

Musical Meaning and Expression
Author: Stephen Davies
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1994
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780801481512

We talk not only of enjoying music, but of understanding it. Music is often taken to have expressive import--and in that sense to have meaning. But what does music mean, and how does it mean? Stephen Davies addresses these questions in this sophisticated and knowledgeable overview of current theories in the philosophy of music. Reviewing and criticizing the aesthetic positions of recent years, he offers a spirited explanation of his own position. Davies considers and rejects in turn the positions that music describes (like language), or depicts (like pictures), or symbolizes (in a distinctive fashion) emotions. Similarly, he resists the idea that music's expressiveness is to be explained solely as the composer's self-expression, or in terms of its power to evoke a response from the audience. Music's ability to describe emotions, he believes, is located within the music itself; it presents the aural appearance of what he calls emotion characteristics. The expressive power of music awakens emotions in the listener, and music is valued for this power although the responses are sometimes ones of sadness. Davies shows that appreciation and understanding may require more than recognition of and reaction to music's expressive character, but need not depend on formal musicological training.

Desired Artistic Outcomes in Music Performance

Desired Artistic Outcomes in Music Performance
Author: Gilvano Dalagna
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0429619464

Desired Artistic Outcomes in Music Performance is about empowering musicians to achieve their professional and personal goals in music. The narrative argues that developing musicians should be supported in conceptualizing and achieving their desired artistic outcomes (DAO), as these have been recognized as key elements in a successful career transition in and beyond their studies in higher education. The text explores the nature of DAO and illustrates how higher education students can be enabled to explore and develop these. The book draws on the findings from a range of exploratory studies which: Bring to light connections between contemporary topics in music, such as artistic research and career development; Contribute to existing discussions on innovative pedagogical approaches in higher education in music; and Offer theoretical models to support the broad artistic and professional development in young musicians. This is a text grounded in theory and practice, and which draws on case study examples, as well as historical perspectives and coverage of contemporary issues regarding employment in the music industries. The book will be of particular interest to aspiring music professionals and all those working in the areas of Music Education, Performance Studies and Artistic Research.

Experience and Meaning in Music Performance

Experience and Meaning in Music Performance
Author: Martin Clayton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199811326

This book explores how the immediate experience of musical sound relates to processes of meaning construction and discursive mediation. A unique multi-authored work that both draws on and contributes to current debates in ethnomusicology, musicology, psychology, and cognitive science, it presents a novel and productive view of how cultural practice relates to the experience and meaning of musical performance.

Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra

Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra
Author: Michael Allen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 708
Release: 2001
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781579992774

"The book contains thorough analyses of 100 of the most significant works for strings and full orchestra, Grades 1-6. Researched and compiled by scholarly musicians and teachers around the country, the book gives important information on each musical selection, including composer and composition information, historical background, technical requirements, stylistic considerations, musical elements, suggestions for additional listening, and a guide to selected references"--Publisher's website

Practicing Music by Design

Practicing Music by Design
Author: Christopher Berg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019-06-14
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0429576315

Practicing Music by Design: Historic Virtuosi on Peak Performance explores pedagogical practices for achieving expert skill in performance. It is an account of the relationship between historic practices and modern research, examining the defining characteristics and applications of eight common components of practice from the perspectives of performing artists, master teachers, and scientists. The author presents research past and present designed to help musicians understand the abstract principles behind the concepts. After studying Practicing Music by Design, students and performers will be able to identify areas in their practice that prevent them from developing. The tenets articulated here are universal, not instrument-specific, borne of modern research and the methods of legendary virtuosi and teachers. Those figures discussed include: Luminaries Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin Renowned performers Anton Rubinstein, Mark Hambourg, Ignace Paderewski, and Sergei Rachmaninoff Extraordinary teachers Theodor Leschetizky, Rafael Joseffy, Leopold Auer, Carl Flesch, and Ivan Galamian Lesser-known musicians who wrote perceptively on the subject, such as violinists Frank Thistleton, Rowsby Woof, Achille Rivarde, and Sydney Robjohns Practicing Music by Design forges old with new connections between research and practice, outlining the practice practices of some of the most virtuosic concert performers in history while ultimately addressing the question: How does all this work to make for better musicians and artists?

Beyond the Score

Beyond the Score
Author: Nicholas Cook
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2013
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199357404

In Beyond the Score: Music as Performance, author Nicholas Cook supplants the traditional musicological notion of music as writing, asserting instead that it is as performance that music is loved, understood, and consumed. This book reconceives music as an activity through which meaning is generated in real time, as Cook rethinks familiar assumptions and develops new approaches. Focusing primarily but not exclusively on the Western 'art' tradition, Cook explores perspectives that range from close listening to computational analysis, from ethnography to the study of recordings, and from the social relations constructed through performance to the performing (and listening) body. In doing so, he reveals not only that the notion of music as text has hampered academic understanding of music, but also that it has inhibited performance practices, placing them in a textualist straightjacket. Beyond the Score has a strong historical emphasis, touching on broad developments in twentieth-century performance style and setting them into their larger cultural context. Cook also investigates the relationship between recordings and performance, arguing that we do not experience recordings as mere reproductions of a performance but as performances in their own right. Beyond the Score is a comprehensive exploration of new approaches and methods for the study of music as performance, and will be an invaluable addition to the libraries of music scholars-including musicologists, music theorists, and music cognition scholars-everywhere.