Newsletter No. 31 (January 2009) (PDF) - Society for Music Analysis

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emotion; it is time now for music analysis tojoin the conversation. This will be the first timethat a conference on music and emotion willbe organised under the banner of a musicsociety. Music analysis can only be deepenedand enriched through a dialogue with theempirical and speculative disciplines. „Somesort of emotional experience is probably themain reason behind most people‟sengagement with music‟, say Patrik Juslin andJohn Sloboda, two of the many keynotespeakers at the conference. This will be anexciting year to be an analyst in the UK. I hopeto see you at as many events as you canmanage.Michael Spitzernew committee membersDanuta Mirka, Vice PresidentI am currently SeniorLecturer at SouthamptonUniversity. I studiedmusic theory at theSzymanowski Academyof Music in Katowice,Poland, and earned thePh.D. in musicology atthe University of Helsinki,Finland. In mydissertation/book TheSonoristic Structuralismof Krzysztof Penderecki(1997), I reconstructedthe technique employed in the composer's 'soundmass' compositions of the early 1960s. From Polishcontemporary music I moved to the study of musicalcommunication in the late eighteenth century. I amparticularly interested in integrating aspects ofhistorical music theory with those of contemporarymusic-theoretical research including cognitivelyorientedmusic theory and cognitive musicology, and Iapply this approach to the study of meter and rhythmin a forthcoming book for Oxford University Press,2009). The subsequent book will be a study ofhypermeter and phrase structure in lateeighteenth-century music. Other aspects ofmusical communication that interest meinclude musical topics and forms analyzed intheoretical terms of the late eighteenthcentury. As Vice-President of the Society forMusic Analysis, I will strive to support thePresident of the Society in his efforts to bringthe disciplines of music theory and analysisinto greater prominence on the scene ofmusical scholarship in Great Britain and tofoster music-theoretical and analyticalinterests of students and young scholars atBritish HEIs. I will also aim to strengthen theties of the SMA to its sister societies abroad,in particular to the Society for Music Theoryand Gesellschaft für Musikforschung.Lois Fitch, Events OfficerMy background includesa BA (Hons) and PhDfrom Durham University(with Max Paddison). Myresearch focuses on theaestheticsandphilosophy of twentiethandtwenty first-centurymusic, in particular that ofBrian Ferneyhough. Ialso have interests inanalysis of tonal and atonal music, semiotics andresearch into the role of the performer in New Music.I teach the history of music from the Baroque to thepresent day, analysis, aesthetics and performancestudies. At postgraduate level I havesupervised doctoral students in the areas ofcontemporary British music, topic theory andanalysis.I would like to become more involved in theSMA. This is an exciting time for theSociety, and recent research in the fieldhas captured attention widely. I find this aparticularly fruitful area of research and amable to feed it into my teaching at all levels.The Society's events are important inbringing together original ideas anddisseminating new and challengingresearch to musicologists and studentsalike.SMA newsletter 4
eviews cornerCardiff Music Analysis ConferenceOrganised by Charles Wilson. Cardiff University 4–7 September 2008Review article: Centennial reflectionsComplex challenges but potentially richrewards confront prospective analysts ofOlivier Messiaen and Elliott Carter, bornon 10 and 11 December 1908respectively. The principal reward is thepossibility of shedding new light on someof the most highly-regarded music fromthe second half of the 20 th century.Nevertheless, analysts who keep contextsin mind might well find themselvesconsidering the exact nature and extent ofthat „high regard‟ alongside the essentialcharacter of the music itself. WithMessiaen a solid consensus seems tohave developed, with no prominent voicesdissenting from the general view that hewrote very personal music of very highquality. Even the Boulezian caveat aboutthe dangers of collage-like juxtapositionshas been given a positive spin, asevidence of an innovative and productivemodernism. 1 With Carter the situation isdifferent, especially after a prominenthistorian, one Richard Taruskin, accusedhim of embracing an „asocial aesthetic‟,and compared him to his detriment with anear-contemporary, Benjamin Britten,whose primary concern, as Britten himselfonce put it, was „to write music for humanbeings – directly and deliberately‟. 2More of that comparison later. Meanwhile,as far as technical character is concerned,both Messiaen and Carter can be seen asexponents of post-tonality: that is, bothnormally shun the comprehensivefunctional frameworks of diatonic orchromatic tonality, but do not always avoidat least fragmentary allusion to suchframeworks. In addition, both employ1See „Proposals‟ (1948), in Pierre Boulez,Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. StephenWalsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 49. See alsoArnold Whittall, „Messiaen and twentieth-centurymusic‟ in Messiaen Studies, ed. Robert Sholl(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),232–53.2 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of WesternMusic, vol. 5, „The Late Twentieth-Century‟ (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2005), 261–306 (305).Benjamin Britten, „On receiving the first Aspen Award(1964)‟, in Britten on Music, ed. Paul Kildea (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2003), 255–63 (256).structuring methods for pitch and rhythmthat have become familiar but whoseprecise operations in specific pieces –even quite short ones - can be far fromsimple to explicate. With pitch, inparticular, both have preferred „unordered‟source materials – modes or sets – to theordered series forms of twelve-tone ormore integrally serial composition. Since itis a considerable challenge to the analystto determine how such source materialsare deployed, bar by bar, in a score byMessiaen or Carter, and to present suchdiscussions in readable form, analystsmight well relish the prospect of moving toanother feature common to bothcomposers - that is, the connectionbetween non-vocal music and such textsas might be referenced in titles, epigraphsor associated commentaries. Moreevidence of common ground is providedby the fact that both have allowed forassociations between their music and thenatural world, and both at different timeswere inspired by the deserts and canyonsof the Western United States. Respondingto such cues, analysts often aim to ascribewhat was once termed „extra-musical‟meaning to materials whose methods ofpresentation and elaboration are alsounder review.In reality, of course, those aesthetic,stylistic qualities that attract analysts toone of these composers might actuallypromote a degree of principled dislike forthe other, given that in so many essentialways they are very different. Despite beingborn within a day of each other, and bothpassing their most crucial student years inParis, their trajectories diverged quiteradically. Against Messiaen‟s rapidadvancement one sets Carter‟s slow,steady evolution: against Messiaen‟sRoman Catholicism, Carter‟s agnosticscepticism: against Messiaen‟s long-termpositions as performer and teacher,Carter‟s shunning of long-term academiccommitments and any pretensions asconductor or player: against Messiaen‟sallusions to birdsong, plainchant and non-Western rhythmic patterns, Carter‟s lessSMA newsletter 5
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Page 17 and 18: S M ACall for PapersBach’s Passio
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