Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition

Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition PDF Author: David E. Schneider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520932056
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
It is well known that Béla Bartók had an extraordinary ability to synthesize Western art music with the folk music of Eastern Europe. What this rich and beautifully written study makes clear is that, contrary to much prevailing thought about the great twentieth-century Hungarian composer, Bartók was also strongly influenced by the art-music traditions of his native country. Drawing from a wide array of material including contemporary reviews and little known Hungarian documents, David Schneider presents a new approach to Bartók that acknowledges the composer’s debt to a variety of Hungarian music traditions as well as to influential contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. Putting representative works from each decade beginning with Bartók’s graduation from the Music Academy in 1903 until his departure for the United States in 1940 under critical lens, Schneider reads the composer’s artistic output as both a continuation and a profound transformation of the very national tradition he repeatedly rejected in public. By clarifying why Bartók felt compelled to obscure his ties to the past and by illuminating what that past actually was, Schneider dispels myths about Bartók’s relationship to nineteenth-century traditions and at the same time provides a new perspective on the relationship between nationalism and modernism in early-twentieth century music.

Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition

Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition PDF Author: David E. Schneider
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520932056
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
It is well known that Béla Bartók had an extraordinary ability to synthesize Western art music with the folk music of Eastern Europe. What this rich and beautifully written study makes clear is that, contrary to much prevailing thought about the great twentieth-century Hungarian composer, Bartók was also strongly influenced by the art-music traditions of his native country. Drawing from a wide array of material including contemporary reviews and little known Hungarian documents, David Schneider presents a new approach to Bartók that acknowledges the composer’s debt to a variety of Hungarian music traditions as well as to influential contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. Putting representative works from each decade beginning with Bartók’s graduation from the Music Academy in 1903 until his departure for the United States in 1940 under critical lens, Schneider reads the composer’s artistic output as both a continuation and a profound transformation of the very national tradition he repeatedly rejected in public. By clarifying why Bartók felt compelled to obscure his ties to the past and by illuminating what that past actually was, Schneider dispels myths about Bartók’s relationship to nineteenth-century traditions and at the same time provides a new perspective on the relationship between nationalism and modernism in early-twentieth century music.

Liszt's Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-gypsy Tradition

Liszt's Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-gypsy Tradition PDF Author: Shay Loya
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 1580463231
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Transcultural modernism -- Verbunkos -- Identity, nationalism, and modernism -- Modernism and authenticity -- Listening to transcultural tonal practices -- The verbunkos idiom in the music of the future -- Idiomatic lateness

Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók

Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók PDF Author: Lynn M. Hooker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199908850
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Some of the most popular works of nineteenth-century music were labeled either "Hungarian" or "Gypsy" in style, including many of the best-known and least-respected of Liszt's compositions. In the early twentieth century, Béla Bartók and his colleagues questioned not only the Hungarianness but also the good taste of that style. Bartók argued that it should be discarded in favor of a national style based in the "genuine" folk music of the rural peasantry. Between the heyday of the nineteenth-century Hungarian-Gypsy style and its replacement by a new paradigm of "authentic" national style was a vigorous decades-long debate-one little known inside or outside Hungary-over what it meant to be Hungarian, European, and modern. Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók traces the historical process that defined the conventions of Hungarian-Gypsy style. Author Lynn M. Hooker frames her study around the 1911 celebration of Liszt's centennial. In so doing, she analyzes Liszt's problematic role as a Hungarian-born composer and leader of Hungarian art music who spent most of his life outside of Hungary and questioned whether Hungary's national music was more the creation of Hungarians or Roma (Gypsies). The themes of race and nation that emerge in the discussion of Liszt are further developed in an analysis of discourse on Hungarian national music throughout the Hungarian press in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Showing how the "discovery" of "genuine" folk music by Bartók and Kodály, often depicted as a purely "scientific" matter, responds directly to concerns raised by earlier writers about the "problem of Hungarian music," Hooker argues that the innovations of Bartók and Kodály and their circle are not so much in correcting a flawed concept of the national as in using the idea of national authenticity to open up freedom for composers to explore more stylistic options, including the exploration of modernist musical language. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Redefining Hungarian Music from Liszt to Bartók is essential reading for musicologists, musicians, and concertgoers alike.

Musical Lives and Times Examined

Musical Lives and Times Examined PDF Author: Richard Taruskin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520392027
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
In this new and final collection, Richard Taruskin gathers a sweeping range of keynote speeches, reviews, and critical essays from the first twenty years of the twenty-first century. With twenty-three essays in total, this volume presents five lectures delivered in Budapest on Hungarian music and ten essays on Russian music. Reviews of contemporary work in musicology and reflections on the place of music in society showcase Taruskin’s trademark wit and breadth. Musical Lives and Times Examined is an essential collection, a comprehensive portrait of a distinguished figure in music studies, illuminating the ideas that have transformed the discipline and will continue to do so.

Nation and Classical Music

Nation and Classical Music PDF Author: Matthew Riley
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783271426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
How and why do listeners come over time to 'feel the nation' through particular musical works? This book develops a comparative analysis of the relationship between western art music, nations and nationalism. It explores the influence of emergent nations and nationalism on the development of classical music in Europe and North America and examines the distinctive themes, sounds and resonances to be found in the repertory of each of the nations. Its scope is broad, extending well beyond the period 1848-1914 when national music flourished most conspicuously. The interplay of music and nation encompasses the oratorios of Handel, the open-air music of the French Revolution and the orchestral works of Beethoven and Mendelssohn and extends into the mid-twentieth century in the music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Copland. The book addresses the representation of the national community, the incorporation of ethnic vernacular idioms into art music, the national homeland in music, musical adaptations of national myths and legends, the music of national commemoration and the canonisation of national music. Bringing together insights from nationalism studies, musicology and cultural history, it will be essential reading not only for musicologists but for cultural historians and historians of nationalism as well. MATTHEW RILEY is Reader in Music at the University of Birmingham. The late ANTHONY D. SMITH was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism andEthnicity at the London School of Economics.

Music and Decadence in European Modernism

Music and Decadence in European Modernism PDF Author: Stephen Downes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521767571
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Downes presents a detailed examination of the significance of decadence in Central and Eastern European modernist music.

Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 Volume 1

Ideological Battlegrounds – Constructions of Us and Them Before and After 9/11 Volume 1 PDF Author: Joanna Witkowska
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443869171
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
“The effects of 9/11 ramify through a network of conduits and pathways, including the examples of expressive culture this volume explores; and the registration of those effects will likewise be felt in an array of documents and texts. The cultural, literary, and mass mediated effects of 9/11 encompass the globe and the chapters in this volume assume a transnational and international range of vantage points. The topics examined include the representation of Islam and Moslems in a number of texts and genres, the political and psychological dilemmas faced by characters in a number of literary works, and the refraction of current psycho-cultural-political tensions in forms of expressive culture in which the effects of 9/11 are felt in other than explicit ways. Was 9/11 a moment that punctuated and disrupted the movement of history or, as one of the authors suggests, did it act as a catalyst to escalate existing stereotypes? The chapters investigate not just different genres and cultural forms but distinct modes of intersection between the political, the cultural and the psychological. One achievement of this volume is to show how 9/11’s effects at times insinuate themselves in discourse through nuance and subtlety, and at other times frontally assault texts and images. In the words of one article, “modern Dutch post-9/11 novels directly participate in current cultural and political discourses.” By the same token, these cultural and political discourses participate in novels, films, TV shows, and the effects of 9/11 proliferate and concentrate in this exchange. This volume draws timely attention to the multiple forms of this complex interaction.” Dr Patrick Hagopian, University of Lancaster

Sounding Authentic

Sounding Authentic PDF Author: Joshua S. Walden
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199334668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Sounding Authentic considers the intersecting influences of nationalism, modernism, and technological innovation on representations of ethnic and national identities in twentieth-century art music. Author Joshua S. Walden discusses these forces through the prism of what he terms the "rural miniature": short violin and piano pieces based on folk song and dance styles. This genre, mostly inspired by the folk music of Hungary, the Jewish diaspora, and Spain, was featured frequently on recordings and performance programs in the early twentieth century. Furthermore, Sounding Authentic shows how the music of urban Romany ensembles developed into nineteenth-century repertoire of virtuosic works in the style hongrois before ultimately influencing composers of rural miniatures. Walden persuasively demonstrates how rural miniatures represented folk and rural cultures in a manner that was perceived as authentic, even while they involved significant modification of the original sources. He also links them to the impulse toward realism in developing technologies of photography, film, and sound recording. Sounding Authentic examines the complex ways the rural miniature was used by makers of nationalist agendas, who sought folkloric authenticity as a basis for the construction of ethnic and national identities. The book also considers the genre's reception in European diaspora communities in America where it evoked and transformed memories of life before immigration, and traces how many rural miniatures were assimilated to the styles of American popular song and swing. Scholars interested in musicology, ethnography, the history of violin performance, twentieth-century European art music, the culture of the Jewish Diaspora and more will find Sounding Authentic an essential addition to their library.

Béla Bartók in Italy

Béla Bartók in Italy PDF Author: Nicolò Palazzetti
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Examines the reputation of the Hungarian musician Béla Bartók (1881-1945) as an antifascist hero. This book examines the reputation of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) as an antifascist hero and beacon of freedom. Following Bartok's reception in Italy from the early twentieth century, through Mussolini's fascist regime, and into the early Cold War, Palazzetti explores the connexions between music, politics and diplomacy. The wider context of this study also offers glimpses into broader themes such as fascist cultural policies, cultural resistance, and the ambivalent political usage of modernist music. The book argues that the 'Bartókian Wave' occurring in Italy after the Second World War was the result of the fusion of the Bartók myth as the 'musician of freedom' and the Cold War narrative of an Italian national regeneration. Italian-Hungarian diplomatic cooperation during the interwar period had supported Bartok's success in Italy. But, in spite of their political alliance, the cultural policies by Europe's leading fascist regimes started to diverge over the years: many composers proscribed in Nazi Germany were increasingly performed in fascist Italy. In the early 1940s, the now exiled composer came to represent one of the symbols of the anti-Nazi cultural resistance in Italy and was canonised as 'the musician of freedom'. Exile and death had transformed Bartók into a martyr, just as the Resistenza and the catastrophe of war had redeemed post-war Italy.

Performer's Voices Across Centuries and Cultures

Performer's Voices Across Centuries and Cultures PDF Author: Anne Marshman
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 1848168810
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book and its accompanying website present the selected proceedings of the inaugural, ?The Performer's Voice: An International Forum for Music Performance and Scholarship?, directed by Dr Anne Marshman (editor) and hosted by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore. The chapters, which were selected through a process of international peer review, reflect the symposium's wide-ranging interdisciplinary scope, coupled with an uncompromising emphasis on the act of performance, the role of the performer and the professional performer's perspective.