Abstracts - American Musicological Society

38 Thursday Afternoon: Session 1- 34
AMS/SEM/SMT New Orleans 2012
well-known old type, but also experiments what I have called the “new manner” inganni, the ones where chromatic alteration
of the syllables is breaking the ordinary hexachord, therefore introducing potential structural modifications. I will show that
there is a strong connection between the strategies chosen by the composers to alter their subjects and the form of the ricercar.
Finally, this paper will demonstrate the importance of solmization theories as an analytical tool for this kind of repertoire.
Maximally Self-Similar Melodies and Canons with Infinite Solutions
Clifton Callender (Florida State University)
Most canons, ranging from the very simple to the most complex, have a single solution. For example, Ciconia’s tempo
canon Le ray au soleyl will only work at the ratios 4:3:1, and the canon by augmentation and inversion from Bach’s Musical
Offering will not work in any other manner. However, some canons have multiple solutions, including a canon by inversion
from the Musical Offering that has two distinct solutions and the multiple combinations of an eight-note theme in Bach’s
Fourteen Canons on the Goldberg Ground. Are there limits to the number of solutions for canons that maintain some kind of
strict harmonic control? Surprisingly, the answer is no! It is possible to create lines that can combine in an infinite number
of ways while maintaining maximal harmonic consistency. Specifically, melodies that are maximally self-similar, exhibiting
self-similarity at all possible time scales, can be combined in any number of voices, at any ratios (rational or irrational), with
each voice moving either forward or backward. This presentation will explain the construction and provide examples of these
canons with infinite solutions.
Session 1-34 (AMS), 2:00–5:00
Chopin Revisited
Jeffrey Kallberg (University of Pennsylvania), Chair
Nationalizing the Kujawiak and Constructions of Nostalgia in Chopin’s Mazurkas
Halina Goldberg (Indiana University)
In the musicological literature (including Grove), Chopin’s slow minor-key mazurkas and mazurka sections are typically labeled
as kujawiak, a Polish folk dance from the Kujawy region. Yet Chopin’s lone use of this term, in his Fantasy on Polish Airs
op. 13, marks a spirited (Vivace) dance in A major, contradicting the widely accepted definition. Similarly, kujawiaks found in
the earliest publications, most notably in Oskar Kolberg’s 1860 collection of stylized dances, do not display the characteristics
ascribed to them (slow tempo, minor mode) by later writers. The kujawiak is also absent from descriptions of Polish national
dances by Chopin’s contemporaries. It is clear that at the time kujawiak was not a significant marker of Polishness in dance
and that the term carried a different meaning from the one encountered in modern studies.
Only in the last third of the nineteenth century did scholars attempt to link Chopin’s pieces to the folk kujawiak, a trend coinciding
with the awakening of interest in the culture of Kujawy, which resulted in the publication of descriptions of the music
and choreography of regional dances in the Orgelbrand Encyclopedia (vol. 16, 1864) and Kolberg’s Lud (series 4, 1867). The new
inclusion of the kujawiak in the pantheon of Polish national dances provided a convenient musical and cultural link between
the composer and the province he visited twice during his summer vacations. Moreover, the French roots of his father troubled
proponents of an all-Polish Chopin, compelling them to seek confirmation of Chopin’s Polish pedigree in his mother’s origins
in Kujawy. The purported musical connections between Chopin and his ancestral land reinforced this narrative.
Chopin used the slow mazurka—the kind widely but anachronistically called kujawiak—to summon nostalgia for the
spatially and temporally distant—and mythical—Poland. But rather than referencing his homeland through the supposed
identity of this dance, Chopin invokes it through musical styles and gestures typical of then-popular characteristic pieces typically
marked by the adjectives pathétique, elegique, lugubre, triste, or mélancolique.
Ferruccio Busoni and the “Halfness” of Fryderyk Chopin:
A Study about Gender Perception and Performance Interpretation
Erinn Knyt (University of Massachusetts)
Ferruccio Busoni’s performances of Fryderyk Chopin’s compositions elicited responses of quizzical amusement in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even some of Busoni’s staunchest admirers had trouble appreciating his insertion of
additional measures, the repetition of structural wholes in the preludes, registral or textural alterations, and his unsentimental
interpretive style. Also unusual was his choice to program the preludes as a complete cycle.
What was the rationale behind Busoni’s interpretive approach? My analysis of a previously unpublished and un-translated
essay by Busoni, “Chopin: eine Ansicht über ihn,” in conjunction with analyses of recordings, concert programs, and recital
reviews, connects Busoni’s unconventional Chopin interpretations to an idiosyncratic perception of Chopin’s character. As