Questions - SMT Discuss

Strange "d.g" notation

RomanticStrings — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 23:24:07 +0000

I am a member of both this discussion board and the user-list for LilyPond (an open-source, text-based music engraving software). A user there submitted the following question, and I thought that perhaps the minds here could provide some insight.

Best,

Conor Cook

Music Director, LaSalle Catholic Parishes, LaSalle, IL

Hello folks,

In the viola score of a Telemann quartet in G minor, I find this notation. Does anyone know what it means?

Thanks for your help!

JM

Webern correspondence

Bcmoseley — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 14:55:43 +0000

Does anyone out there have a copy of any of Webern's unpublished correspondence—translated or otherwise? (I'm especially interested in correspondence between Webern and Berg.) The Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung has been preparing editions of the correspondence amongst Second Viennesse School for quite a long time, but the pace at which these are being issued is really slow.

Was Berlioz The First Composer To Use Col Legno Bowing Technique?

carsonics — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 13:58:18 +0000

I would like to know if anyone is aware of an earlier use of col legno bowing technique than Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Did Berlioz innovate this technique or are there earlier examples of it in the repertoire? Can anyone point to other composers who innovated new bowing techniques, for example Bartok's pizzicato snapping techniques in his 4th String Quartet? Thanks

Minor dominant in minor mode?

jdunsby — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 15:00:14 +0000

Here’s a thing which has intrigued me long‑term. I regularly challenge theory students to identify a tonal composition in minor that does not “somewhere use the dominant minor”. There’s one Schumann song which might just demonstrate it, but it uses III a lot, and the flat 7 could well be emblematic of v, rather than V. Otherwise, zilch, which is also my own experience of the tonal repertoire.

I know (=I know, I know, I know) Schenker says chromatics are a foreground feature. Obviously there is something intuitively grammatical about any v in i.

Anyway, never mind Schenker. (1) Why is there always a dominant minor in minor mode music—is it some kind of “obligatory” feature? (2) Where in the history of theory has this been discussed before?

Jonathan

Question about Kofi Agawu's Milwaukee lecture on African Time-lines

bluesprucetree — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 18:32:43 +0000

Is there any relationship between the time-lines and the phonetic properties of African languages? Are there any differences between the phonetic properties of European languages and American English vs. African languages that are evident in the difference between African time-lines and the rhythmic patterns of European or American music?

Query on Listening Habits

S_Soderberg — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 17:35:02 +0000

This morning I clicked on a link in the online Arts Journal to a blog post titled "How Writers Read." This got me wondering about how music theorists listen -- not in the sense of what you hear while listening to this or that music, but (in the sense of the survey of writers in the blog post): what do you listen to outside the expectations/requirements of your profession? I don't intend this as a questionaire & the following questions, numbered only for reference, are only suggestions to stimulate sharing thoughts about what you personally listen to & why (-- and perhaps as a bonus, how the answers might affect how this might help you help others to open up their own ears to as broad a sound spectrum as possible).

Do you tend to listen to music you know well already, or do you tend to explore? (What does "explore" mean to you with regard to listening to music?)
What sorts of contemporary works do your ears gravitate toward?
How often do you listen just to stretch your ears?
Why do you listen to something you've never heard before? How do you approach music entirely unfamiliar to you?
Do you listen to much music from outside your geo-political sphere? (e.g., American theorists: beyond the usual well-knowns names, how much music do you listen to from European, South American, African, Asian sources?)
How do you find music you've never heard before? Regular or occasional focussed searches? Journal article mentioning a piece you've never heard? Random perusal of web site lists? Serendipity?
Do you tend to look for works to listen to that are inside or outside your professional sphere?
Common writers' advice to students is to read widely -- how do you encourage your students to listen widely? (Or should they focus on music related to current coursework?)
Do you keep a (non-technical) "listening diary" of your impressions on first hearings & do/would you encorage your students to do this?

etc.

Brahms archeology

jdunsby — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 04:44:23 +0000

We know that lots of Brahms's compositions use found material. Sometimes it is his own, sometimes not. The literature ripples with discussion of examples.

Here's a new one, which does not seem ever to have been mentioned in the literature, the affinity between the opening idea of the A major violin sonata, Op. 100, and a half bar, plucked out notationally but I wonder if also creatively by Brahms, in the half bar four bars before the end of Chopin's exquisite Etude No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 10:

First use of the word "atonal"

seanatki — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 22:38:29 +0000

Here's a bit of trivia I hope someone can help with. A student of mine is working on master's thesis which, among many things, is engaging with music in the film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (the sequel to the Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey Jr.). In that first film, there is a scene in which Sherlock is performing an experiment with his violin. He explains to Watson that "atonal clusters," rather than a chromatic scale, causes flies to move in a certain direction. The film takes place in or around the year 1881, which predates the earliest reference to the word "atonal" I can find, which comes from a 1907 thesis written by composer Joseph Marx.

So my question: Does anyone know of an earlier use of the English word "atonal," or do we have to assume that Sherlock was not only a great detective, but also an amateur musicologist.

Brahms progression

bjp2146 — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 04:32:49 +0000

Hello,

I am looking for examples of chord sequences that are akin to what is found in mm. 27-28 of Brahms's Intermezzo Op. 117 No. 1, which I guess you could call a Fr.6/V --- vi half-diminished 7 --- V7/V --- V7 progression. Inversion doesn't matter for the purposes of the point I need to make with the example.

Here's the link, in case my description is inaccurate or misleading (I know I got the measure numbers right, at least):

http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/f/f2/IMSLP01515-Brahms_intermezzi_op117_1.pdf

Thanks,

Bryan

Bryan J. Parkhurst

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Music

Department of Music

Columbia University

New York, NY, USA

bjp2146@columbia.edu

https://columbia.academia.edu/BryanParkhurst

song and the sounds of poetry

feets3517 — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 16:03:15 +0000

I’m preparing to teach a seminar on song and the sounds of poetry, and looking for examples of settings in which composers emphasize the sounds of words as much as (or even more than) their meanings. I’m thinking of pieces like Babbitt’s Philomel or John Adams’s Harmonium (whose first movement starts with meaningless phonemes—"n-n-n-n-no-no-no…"—that we only later realize are related to one of the key words of John Donne’s poem). Settings of poetry are preferred, but any language or era will do.

Thanks in advance for your collective wisdom!