Composer-performer collaboration

Béla Kovács’s Homages for solo clarinet have become standard works in the contemporary clarinet repertoire and are frequently performed in recitals, competitions, and auditions worldwide. Despite their popularity, relatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding Kovács’s compositional process, the musical materials he borrowed from the composers he honored, and the ways in which his own musical voice emerges within these works. This study examines three of Kovács’s most frequently performed compositions—Homage to J.S. Bach, Homage to C.M. von Weber, and Homage to Z. Kodály—through detailed comparative analysis with selected works by each composer.

Drawing on score analysis, structural comparison, and performance considerations, the paper investigates similarities and differences in form, harmony, melody, rhythm, articulation, dynamics, tempo, and stylistic characteristics. The analysis demonstrates that Kovács employs varying degrees of musical borrowing, ranging from direct references to specific compositions to broader stylistic imitation. Homage to J.S. Bach closely reflects Bach’s compositional language and contrapuntal procedures, particularly those found in the Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001. Homage to C.M. von Weber exhibits the highest degree of direct borrowing, incorporating thematic, formal, and expressive elements from Weber’s clarinet works. In contrast, Homage to Z. Kodály relies primarily on the adaptation of Hungarian folk materials and stylistic features associated with Kodály’s Peacock Variations.

The findings reveal that Kovács successfully balances imitation and originality, creating compositions that capture the essence of each composer while maintaining a distinct artistic identity. By illuminating the compositional techniques and musical references embedded within these works, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of Kovács’s place within the clarinet repertoire and provides performers, teachers, and scholars with new interpretive insights into these influential compositions.

Music for human rights and social justice is very often a vehicle for words which then carry the lion's share of the interpersonal and musical communication. Music for solo piano which heightens our awareness of human rights and social justice issues exists without words, relying on extramusical representations and symbols to create a bridge between the music and our perception of it. The first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 81a, "Das Lebewohl", will be discussed for its symbolism of grief and farewell over the Archduke Rudolph's forced exit from Vienna as Napoleon's troops advanced, as will the first movement of Sonata "27 April 1945" of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, which uses Beethoven's motif from the first movement of Op. 81a as a primary reference in his musical outpouring of grief towards the imminent deaths of "preventative detainees" from Dachau at the hands of the Nazis at the end of the Second World War. Through music's connection to our nonverbal layers, these musical compositions can connect with our core selves, hold a mirror to our own belief systems and, if we are fortunate, bring us closer to peace.

Pieces are written for untuned percussion and generally assumed they will be played on a drum, usually a snare drum. But what if a piece is written and the player is given the option of playing it on different percussion instruments? Can a simple notation provide clear playing directions for each of those instruments, yet be in a standard format? This study in time moves between 6/8 and 2/4, is an exercise in counting and tempo changes, and uses double-stroke rolls.

The term Spielfiguren was used by Heinrich Besseler (1956) and others to refer to figurations which are performatively idiomatic to a particular musical instrument. Piano toccatas from the 19th century onwards often feature specific pianistic figures to generate their motoric character (for example repeated notes), simultaneously shaping the musical substance. With reference to the toccata genre and Alfredo Casella's Toccata Op. 6 in particular, this article suggests ways in which signification may be thought to operate from contrasting viewpoints. From the perspective of the skilled pianist, the toccata's printed page may be regarded as symbolic of (and the sound in performance indexical to) a particular type of engagement with the keyboard, thus conveying corporeal (or haptic) signification. From the point of view of both work and performer, toccatas are usually virtuoso pieces which tax the pianist's playing mechanism, thereby augmenting the importance of the performer and reversing the usual "work > performance" paradigm. The perceived role of virtuosity in referencing death, the macabre and the sublime is also considered. From the point of view of the work itself, a toccata's tendency to depend on a single Spielfigur means that it will be topically limited and will not generally bespeak a complex narrative structure. However, toccatas are often cumulative with executive difficulties and dynamic intensity building as the end approaches, a feature that may be experienced as teleological, providing another, less self-referential, type of signification.

1e edition d'une revue multidisciplinaire sur l'art contemporain. Cette première édition est assez orientée vers la discipline musicale. Mêlant articles de Richard Barrett, Gregory Rowland Evans, Michael Quell, et Johannes Kreidler; à des oeuvres visuelles de Joanna Żaboklicka et Roman Karpov.

La capătul unei călătorii sonore, fiecare notă rămâne ca o urmă de lumină. Pianul și vocea au deschis ferestre spre interior, iar publicul a plecat purtând în suflet ecoul acestor clipe, asemenea unor petale de sunet. Concertul ,,Cântecul meu de dor” nu s-a încheiat, ci s-a așezat tainic în inimile celor prezenți, ca un dor frumos, ca o chemare spre profunzime, spre iubire și spre o trăire mai deplină a artei și a vieții.

Este artigo consiste em uma investigação sobre o instrumento vocal na obra do compositor alemão Helmut Lachenmann (1935). Para tanto, analisaremos os principais aspectos de seu pensamento composicional em dois pontos: primeiramente, investigando a própria noção de instrumento na poética do compositor, buscando compreender a articulação entre pensamento e prática composicional por intermédio dos conceitos que se desdobram de sua música concreta instrumental. Posteriormente, observando a relação que se estabelece entre voz e elementos textuais no conjunto de sua obra, analisaremos algumas das estratégias composicionais que Lachenmann dispõe ao texto de Álvaro de Campos, Todas as cartas de amor são ridículas, em sua peça, Got Lost (2008), para piano e soprano, investigando os aspectos discursivos que se realizam a partir da construção do instrumento em questão.

This paper explores the implications of using microsound as an organising principle when structuring composition for acoustic instruments and electronics. The ideas are presented in the context of a composition by the author for bass clarinet, flute, piano and electronics: The Sea Turns Sand To Stone 1 (2015). After giving a definition of microsound, the compositional affordances of microsound are considered. Microsound is presented as an aesthetically rich tool for creating cohesion between acoustic and electroacoustic sounds and different parameters for manipulating the sounds are presented. Issues of structure and form are discussed and the challenges of creating a coherent environment that uses both note-based and texture--based material are explored. The implications of applying different models of form to mixed compositions are considered. This leads to a discussion of the different relationships that exist between the acoustic and the electroacoustic parts of a composition. The Sea Turns Sand To Stone are given. Finally, the use of a pure sound/noise axis, mediated through the application of microsound, is presented as a viable organising principle for structuring mixed compositions. The implications of such a model are explored and the underlying structure of The Sea Turns Sand To Stone is presented as a practical example of the application of the process.

This paper explores the implications of using microsound as an organising principle when structuring composition for acoustic instruments and electronics. The ideas are presented in the context of a composition by the author for bass clarinet, flute, piano and electronics: The Sea Turns Sand To Stone 1 (2015). After giving a definition of microsound, the compositional affordances of microsound are considered. Microsound is presented as an aesthetically rich tool for creating cohesion between acoustic and electroacoustic sounds and different parameters for manipulating the sounds are presented. Issues of structure and form are discussed and the challenges of creating a coherent environment that uses both note-based and texture--based material are explored. The implications of applying different models of form to mixed compositions are considered. This leads to a discussion of the different relationships that exist between the acoustic and the electroacoustic parts of a composition. The Sea Turns Sand To Stone are given. Finally, the use of a pure sound/noise axis, mediated through the application of microsound, is presented as a viable organising principle for structuring mixed compositions. The implications of such a model are explored and the underlying structure of The Sea Turns Sand To Stone is presented as a practical example of the application of the process.

O presente trabalho investiga as relações entre música, futebol e distinção
racial em Salvador nas primeiras décadas do século XX, por meio da análise e
recriação sonora de partituras esportivas do Acervo Impressão Musical da Bahia
(IMB). Tendo como eixo o tango Bahiano de Tênnis, a pesquisa realiza uma
reconstrução histórica mediada por inteligência artificial (IA), com uso da ferramenta
SUNO, aproximando-se das sonoridades das jazz bands soteropolitanas dos anos
1920. Articulando musicologia histórica, humanidades digitais e estudos raciais, o
trabalho evidencia como a música esportiva funcionou como dispositivo de distinção
social e racial, ao mesmo tempo em que preservou matrizes rítmicas afro-brasileiras.
Os resultados demonstram que o uso crítico da IA amplia a escuta histórica, evocando
o ambiente acústico e as tensões raciais do período, e propõe novas metodologias de
reescuta do passado musical no campo da etnomusicologia crítica e das humanidades
sonoras.

A few professional intersections, on concert stages, and even a few subtle musical gestures in some of theirown scores – which the present notes aim to recall succinctly and, as much as possible, to place in a more accurate light than hitherto – attest to the longevity of the truly cordial relations that Enescu and Ravel maintained over time. But the word “friendship” is perhaps too strong to describe what rather subsisted in the form of mutual admiration between two distinct personalities who, in maturity, crystallised their musical natures and preferences along quite different lines.

Resumo. Este texto propõe uma reflexão sobre uma década de ações dedicadas ao violão no Centro de Pesquisa e Formação do Sesc São Paulo (CPF-Sesc). Articulando práticas pedagógicas, investigações historiográficas, experimentações com cordas dedilhadas antigas e redes de circulação latino-americanas, essa trajetória construiu um espaço plural de escuta e ressignificação do instrumento. O violão é abordado como linguagem em disputa, atravessado por tensões culturais, sociais e políticas que desafiam categorias fixas e convocam uma historiografia transversal. Problematizam-se os modos de apresentar, ensinar e pensar o instrumento em suas múltiplas temporalidades e territórios, propondo uma abordagem crítica para repensar as narrativas musicais brasileiras e latino-americanas. Palavras-chave. violão; pedagogia musical; historiografia; cordas dedilhadas; práticas musicais; CPF-Sesc São Paulo.

Digital technologies, perceived here as musical sources, contribute to transforming music creation and to informing and recreating performance practice. As digital technologies for sound production rapidly evolve, they themselves can become archival sources; they also quickly become obsolete and, on some occasions, are no longer readable. This represents a highly problematic issue for archiving, and raises two key questions: how do we translate the thinking behind live electronics into programs like Max MSP? And how do we document creative processes for future preservation in archives? In 2014, the Italian composer Adriano Guarnieri began to collaborate with the research centre Tempo Reale to translate his live electronic ideas into patches using Max MSP by Cycling ’74. Francesco Giomi and Damiano Meacci, both from Tempo Reale’s team, assisted with the production of live electronics in Guarnieri’s scenic cantata Lo stridere luttuoso degli acciai (2014). This chapter aims to explain the processes deployed by the Tempo Reale team to perform the live electronics sections of this work by Guarnieri through their documentation procedures, considering the ephemerality of digital technologies, the importance of preserving live electronics in musical works, and the difficulties in incorporating these traces into the archive.

Our scientific article entitled "A bright representative of the composer school - Adil Babirov" is dedicated to Adil Babirov, a composer who contributed to the history of Azerbaijani music of the 20th century, his work, as well as the study of some of his works. At the beginning of the article, the names of some works of outstanding musical figures of Azerbaijan, exhibited outside our country, are mentioned. On world stages, there are sold out operas and ballets by Kara Karaev and Fikret Amirov. The article presents the works of the composer Adil Babirov. The composer, who lived in exile until the end of his life, composed and created in the national spirit. The mode-intonation form of his songs is built according to the national principle. Almost all of the composer's songs were composed in the mode of mugham. Here the composer uses Segakh, Shura, Shushtar and other mugham modes. The Prelude-Scherzo is a very interesting and unusual work. So this multi-movement piece starts with a heavy adagio tempo, moves into an allegro rhythm, and then returns to a heavy largo tempo again, making a beautiful twist. In the article, musical versions of the work are reproduced in small fragments. The article notes that Adil Babirov is a versatile composer. Thus, the composer turned to film music, pop music, the song genre and Western classical music. His music for films is an invaluable contribution to Azerbaijani culture. And also the composer wrote music for cartoons. In 1976, he wrote the music for the cartoon Claw, Ear, Carpet, Thorn. During the years of emigration, the composer created many works related to Karabakh. His work "Native Land" is an example of this. The music written by the composer for the TV play “Yurd Yeri”, which reflects the real life of people forcibly displaced from the Karabakh land, is one of his last works. It should be noted that what distinguishes the composer from other colleagues is his work with modulations. The article also discusses the composer's life path. The years of his education and the universities where he worked are discussed. It is emphasized here that Adil Babirov, who was a student of the brilliant composer Kara Karaev, was not awarded the honorary titles he deserved to perpetuate his name. The compositional activity of the honored artist Adil Babirov occupies a special place in the musical culture of Azerbaijan. It is noted that, as mentioned in the text, while studying at the Pedagogical Institute, our teacher in his student years was the composer Adil Babirov.

Drawing from extensive experience in piano pedagogy and performance, the author has observed that the concepts of piano technique and skill often remain nebulous to students, educators, and even some pianists. This article aims to elucidate the definitions of technique and skill, delineate their distinctions, and explore their interplay. By examining these concepts from multiple perspectives, it seeks to provide readers with a clearer, more nuanced understanding of piano performance technique and skill.

The theme is to affirm the fact that there is a place where contemporary music, composed from 1945 to the present, is produced, divulged, and disseminated to other places and countries in Europe and outside. The group of agents and institutions that is active in this particular field of music creation represents a power device capable of pronouncing inclusions and exclusions in a way close to the concept of power theorized by Foucault (1998), especially in respect of not having a subject: There is no one individual responsible for the exercise of such power. There is not only a vast network of agents, teaching institutions, and systems that is important in putting in place the acts of power but also a type of internalized functioning grounded in types of discourse that mold, produce, and reproduce the reality they describe. The topic of my article reads thus.

In this chapter the author takes a feminist autoethnographic approach to describing and critiquing peer review practices in music education research. The chapter opens with an account of the author's accidental and later willful complicity in the silencing of women's voices in discussion of patriarchal hegemony. The author then acknowledges those scholars whose voices he had previously ignored. The author problematizes his positionality as a male, occupying and perpetuating masculine roles in music education scholarship, before providing specific illustrations of ways in which people of all genders can be forced, by systemic structures, into perpetuating injustice in academia. Highlighting the disingenuousness and masculinity inherent in claims to solo authorship, the author concludes with the hope that scholarship in music education, a field that ostensibly champions community and togetherness, might imagine more collaborative ways to work.

Discussion on the role of listening in actor training is limited. Compared with studies on ear training for conservatoire music students, there is a gap in the literature regarding the ways in which student actors acquire and improve listening skills. This paper investigates the musicality inherent in Meisner Technique, an approach to actor training, and points to intersections with ear training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, an approach to music education. It analyses the common ground between these pedagogical practices, drawing on sources from a variety of domains in which listening is foregrounded. It asserts that Meisner Technique and Dalcroze Eurhythmics promote similar forms of responsive, interpretative, and collaborative listening skills. This paper is written from the author's interdisciplinary perspective as a teacher of acting and music at a university conservatoire. It offers insight into practical training through a personal, philosophical lens. Its themes are transferable to actor trainers and music educators engaged in continuing professional development.

O presente artigo apresenta uma reflexão sobre a composição colaborativa da obra Berimbau para piano, voz e sons eletroacústicos. Os objetivos intentados foram: a) oferecer um panorama do estado da arte da pesquisa em colaboração artística (JOHN-STEINER, 2000; BARRET, 2014) e da criatividade distribuída (CLARKE; DOFFMAN, 2017); b) descrever brevemente as teorias da composição desenvolvidas por Laske (1991) e Reynolds (2002), iluminadas por Rios Filho (2010); e, a partir delas, c) propor uma reflexão sobre instâncias dedecisão compartilhada entre colaboradores com o objetivo de compor uma obra musical. Para tanto, utilizamos episódios do processo colaborativo da obra Berimbau para exemplificar as diversas fases e instâncias de decisão propostas no esquema. Acreditamos que o presente artigo possa ser somado às iniciativas de reflexão acerca da colaboração artística e oferecer alternativas para a compreensão e estudo de como os processos colaborativos podem ser desenvolvidos.