{"title":"How Music and Our Faculty for Music Are Made for Each Other","authors":"JAMES PARAKILAS","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.1","url":null,"abstract":"This study relies on the prevalence of certain structures that largely distinguish the creation and reception of music from that of language – namely, temporal grids, scalar grids, and segments with their repetitions – to construct a model of the human cognitive faculty for music that allows humans to make music the way they do. The study draws on research and thought in philosophy (including phenomenology), linguistics, psychology, and neurology, coupled with musicology, to produce a model of a human capacity to make complex comparisons between ongoing sound sequences and those simultaneously reconstructed from memory by registering the relativities within their flow. This model is then used in a consideration of how the faculty for music interacts with the faculty for language in the experience of song and a consideration of how a similar cognitive capacity for music might be identified in other species.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142262883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dr Cooke’s Protest: Benjamin Cooke, Samuel Arnold, and the Directorship of the Academy of Ancient Music","authors":"BRYAN WHITE","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.2","url":null,"abstract":"In 1789, the Academy of Ancient Music replaced Benjamin Cooke with Samuel Arnold as its musical director. This article offers a detailed analysis of an autograph copy of the address Cooke delivered to the Academy responding to their action, and of a letter to Cooke from Arnold countering accusations made regarding his conduct in the affair. Both documents are annotated by Henry Cooke, who used them in writing a biography of his father. These documents enable a new understanding of the significant changes made within the Academy in the 1780s and of the reasons Academy subscribers replaced Cooke with Arnold.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"118 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142262882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Szymanowski’s Third Piano Sonata and First String Quartet and the Artistic Theory and Practice of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz: ‘Pure Form’, Subjectivity, and the Burlesque","authors":"STEPHEN DOWNES","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.4","url":null,"abstract":"Karol Szymanowski and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz were leading figures in Polish modernism. A thorough review of their relationship and an examination of Witkiewicz’s theory of ‘pure form’ and its applicability to music (via Witkiewicz’s literary portraits of Szymanowski, his attempts at composition, and the critical and theoretical extensions of his work by Konstanty Regamey) provides the basis for analysing the form and content of Szymanowski’s Third Piano Sonata and First String Quartet.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142208412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Matter of Hono[u]r: Editing and Performing Beethoven’s Late Quartets in 1840s London","authors":"NICHOLAS MARSTON","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.6","url":null,"abstract":"The importance to reception history of the first complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets, given in London in 1845 by the Beethoven Quartett Society, is securely established. Less well recognized is the significance of the complete edition of the quartets prepared by the cellist Scipion Rousselot and published in London in 1846. This article offers the first close examination of Rousselot’s edition and posits that while its claims for unparalleled correctness were unsustainable, its inclusion, uniquely in the case of the late quartets, of two uncommon features – rehearsal letters and instrumental cues – constitutes a trace of the rehearsal practices of the four players responsible for these historically outstanding performances.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142208413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reflections on Women in Music","authors":"SUSAN WOLLENBERG","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.16","url":null,"abstract":"Four substantial volumes dedicated to women in music, all published within the past couple of years, give welcome indication of the continuing growth of this area of study.<jats:sup>1</jats:sup> Following some general background, I first survey the books, then consider each individually. That I select chapters to discuss in detail does not mean that others would not deserve comparable attention. I can give only a glimpse of the riches these books contain.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142208415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sonic Figurations for the Anthropocene: A Musical Bestiary in the Compositions of Liza Lim","authors":"JOSEPH BROWNING, LIZA LIM","doi":"10.1017/rma.2023.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.3","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a musical bestiary, a collection of creatures found in the work of the composer Liza Lim. It is a thought experiment, meant to unsettle current ways of thinking about music and its relationship with the world. Centring our discussion on sonic figurations rather than on a composer’s works, we experiment with alternative musical ontologies and consider their lessons for understanding the role of contemporary art in a time of ecological breakdown. Thinking of Lim’s musical creations in terms of strange beasts inhabiting the Anthropocene draws out a range of themes – including uncanny ventriloquism, performer-instrument symbiosis, theatricalization and the everyday, musical mourning and witnessing – that might help make sense of the sensory and conceptual derangements of our time. The prose style and nonlinear format are likewise experimental, intended as provocations that we might read and write otherwise about music in the Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142208416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letting Beethoven’s Hair Down: Dancing and Musicking in Vienna","authors":"NATASHA LOGES","doi":"10.1017/rma.2024.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.7","url":null,"abstract":"It feels fitting to have worked on this review in Baden bei Wien, in which Beethoven spent many summers. This pretty town southwest of Vienna boasts not only a Beethoven-Haus, but also a Beethoven-Panoramaweg, Beethoven-Rundwanderweg, Beethoven-Spazierweg, and even an imposing Beethoven-Tempel, offering a scenic view; notions of decentring, decolonizing, or even critically engaging with Beethoven’s canonic status feel not only remote, but also faintly inappropriate in this, as many other, Beethoven-designated spaces. Moreover, at the time of writing, the international press is reporting that Beethoven’s skull fragments are being returned to Vienna, as though they are holy relics.<jats:sup>1</jats:sup> Such material traces of Beethoven’s canonicity seem to mock attempts to rattle the ideological cage, yet two recent books by Erica Buurman and Nancy November make significant contributions.<jats:sup>2</jats:sup> The former indirectly poses questions about Beethoven’s relationship to Viennese dance culture, while the latter is a deeply impressive account of the chamber music arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies. Both left me a touch nostalgic for the now marginal cultures of formal dancing and musical arrangement, which dominated the soundscape of early nineteenth-century Vienna.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142208414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Was Carlo Gesualdo’s Honour Killing Liturgical?","authors":"JEFFREY LEVENBERG","doi":"10.1017/rma.2023.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.4","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, musicologists have dropped the murder charges against Carlo Gesualdo because criminal law in Renaissance Italy permitted cuckolds to execute their unfaithful wives. As Annibale Cogliano has expounded, Gesualdo had the right to perform an ‘honour killing’. Still, the known facts of this case are few, and the extent to which Gesualdo premeditated his attack has remained a mystery. Through a new investigation of the surviving sources, this study proposes that Gesualdo coordinated his honour killing with the church liturgy: fearful of breaking the fifth commandment, Gesualdo attacked on a day when the Bible lesson sanctioned vendetta killing.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140580291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Childhood’s Charms and Nature’s Enchantments: Listening to Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance","authors":"JAMES SAVAGE-HANFORD","doi":"10.1017/rma.2023.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.7","url":null,"abstract":"Enescu’s <jats:italic>Impressions d’enfance</jats:italic> is notable for the ways in which it evokes a childlike fascination with the world. This article considers not only how this experiential mode is constructed, but also how the topic of childhood overlaps with Enescu’s conception of an enchanted dwelling-place, particularly in the context of how humans interact with the natural world. I argue that exploring such ‘strategies of enchantment’ and their musical framing allows not only for a more nuanced understanding of Enescu’s aesthetics and his music, but also of the role that enchantment as an aesthetic category occupies within musical modernity more broadly.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140579999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sibelian Formal Principles in the First Movement of Malcolm Arnold’s Fifth Symphony","authors":"RYAN ROSS","doi":"10.1017/rma.2023.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.6","url":null,"abstract":"Malcolm Arnold’s symphonies have persistently divided critical opinion because of their problematic relationship with traditional genre expectations. This is especially the case in works that eschew sonata-style tonal conflicts and formal markers in favour of theme- and timbre-driven processes. In these respects, Sibelius, rather than members of the Austro-German symphonic tradition, was an important model for Arnold’s individual approach to symphonic composition. This article applies four formal principles (content-based forms, teleological genesis, rotational form and <jats:italic>klang</jats:italic> meditation), which James Hepokoski has explicitly identified with Sibelius’s later symphonic style, to the first movement of Arnold’s Fifth – one of his most admired and yet most unconventional symphonic structures. The resulting analysis shows a complex and yet accessible movement that generates its own unique tension and dramatic interest. Far from being the feeble work of a symphonic lightweight, it is an impressively realized landmark of the genre in the late twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140580289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}