{"title":"Music, Noise and Conflict: Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Acoustic Agency and Ontological Assumptions about Sound","authors":"Luis Velasco-Pufleau","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.18","url":null,"abstract":"In a 1969 interview, the Italian composer Luigi Nono stated that, ‘If a score cannot provoke or incite revolution, it can contribute to it by participating in intellectual and revolutionary hegemony.’1 Drawing on the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nono considered composers as intellectual workers with a responsibility to catalyse or amplify the social struggles of their times through the technical means and material employed in their works.2 The scores, tapes or concerts were sites of action and representation of revolutionary struggles: ‘A score can mature and evolve into direct and concrete participation of the struggle, which can be confronted and transposed into the score.’3 He believed that the musical experience was capable of reconfiguring reality through dual listening – the composer’s listening to revolutionary struggle, and audiences’ listening to the resulting musical works. Furthermore, Nono proposed a direct link between technology, hegemony and the use of sonic archives. As I have examined elsewhere, in the 1960s and the early 1970s Nono believed","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"501 - 508"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42400797","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":"Beethoven Biography at the 250th Anniversary","authors":"E. Buurman","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.16","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45388044","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":"Constructing the Public Concert Hall","authors":"N. Smith","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.17","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the current discourse surrounding classical music institutions, issues of inclusion and diversity are regularly to the fore. There is pressure to prove the relevance of orchestras and ensembles to wider society, with outreach work in educational settings and in communities already an established part of their output. Using data gathered from a research project with the International Music and Performing Arts Charitable Trust Scotland (IMPACT Scotland), which is responsible for planning a new concert hall in Edinburgh to be called the Dunard Centre, this article extends these debates by relocating them to a new arena: the buildings classical institutions inhabit. First, the public nature of the concert hall is explored by examining three ‘strategies for publicness’ identified in concert-hall projects: the urbanistic strategy, the living building strategy and the ‘art for all’ strategy. These will be discussed in relation to the extensive literature on public space. The second part of the article examines recent developments in musicology and arts policy which encourage more ‘democratic’ arts practice. These will be used as the basis for asking how the concert hall (and its primary tenant, the orchestra) might better achieve the publicness that is so often promised on their behalf.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"255 - 281"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42520457","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":"Notating Deconstruction: What Can Ethnomusicological Transcription Learn from the Notational Practices of Contemporary Composers?","authors":"Matthew H. Warren","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.15","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s (1981) approach to deconstructing Platonic dichotomies, this article argues that any notational system is inherently structuring and should be subjected to deconstructive efforts. Further, my contention is that this deconstruction can be realized in how notation itself is used, in what I refer to as ‘deconstructive notation’. This article looks at how notation has been used by composers to deconstruct the categories of Western staff notation, opening up the ways in which music is studied as an invitation to all those engaged in notating music to make room in their work for deconstructive notational play.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"283 - 314"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48422344","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":"‘Yet another guitar recital filled the Wigmore Hall’: The Popularization of the Classical Guitar in Britain, c.1950–c.1970","authors":"D. Russell","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.14","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The popularity of the classical guitar in Britain surged between 1950 and 1970. The virtuosity of elite professionals led by the pioneering Andrés Segovia and the new stars Julian Bream and John Williams earned the classical instrument considerable purchase within the wider culture. Above all, it inspired thousands of largely middle-class, male, relatively young and urban amateur players, attracted not simply by the instrument’s intrinsic appeal but also by the opportunity offered to display a fashionable modernity and sophisticated connoisseurship. However, although securing for the classical guitar a much-enhanced musical role, these enthusiasts also created an often inward-looking specialist culture.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"335 - 365"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41496487","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":"The Birth of ‘Modern’ Vocalism: The Paradigmatic Case of Enrico Caruso","authors":"B. Gentili","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.11","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the decades spanning the turn of the twentieth century Italian opera singing underwent a profound transformation and became ‘modern’. I explore the formative elements of this modernity and its long-term effects on the way we sing today through the paradigmatic case of the tenor Enrico Caruso. I frame Caruso’s vocal evolution within the rise of verismo opera, comparing selected recordings, reviews and the rules and aesthetic prescriptions contained in vocal treatises to show how his new vocalism differed from that of the old bel canto. To set Caruso’s achievement in context I also analyse recordings of two other tenors of the era: Giovanni Zenatello and Alessandro Bonci.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"425 - 453"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42878371","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":"Alienated Entertainment: Ludwig Berger’s Meistersinger Film Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927)","authors":"Á. Sheil","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.13","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Der Meister von Nürnberg is a silent film adaptation of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg remembered chiefly for the protests it generated on its release in 1927. Several authors refer to it briefly in reception histories of Die Meistersinger, but the film has not yet attracted sustained attention either within Wagner scholarship or within literature on opera and film. Der Meister von Nürnberg is, however, an effective lens through which to examine sensitivities in opera’s relationship with film in 1920s Germany, as well as various ambiguities in Weimar-era film making and consumption. The film constitutes fascinating proof of the historically conditioned reverence for Wagner’s Die Meistersinger that existed within conservative opera criticism in 1920s Germany, while its ephemerality serves as a key to understanding several wider features of the Weimar cultural landscape. In this sense, the film exceeds curiosity status and emerges as a multivalent artefact of a complex, contradiction-ridden time.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"367 - 395"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/rma.2021.13","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44380319","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":"Black Opera, Operatic Racism and an ‘Engaged Opera Studies’","authors":"K. Henson","doi":"10.1017/rma.2020.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2020.27","url":null,"abstract":"Naomi André’s Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement is a call for recognition and inclusion. Over the course of nearly 300 pages, André covers a range of subjects, from long-forgotten concert performances, to opera, Broadway and opera film, to contemporary operatic composition and practice. As she does, she moves between the United States and South Africa – a striking way of approaching her material and a feature of the book that ought to prove highly influential. Some of the arguments she makes are new, some combine pre-existing thought and research in new ways. The most important moments, though, are when she pauses to describe her experiences or those of another black opera lover or group of black opera lovers.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"219 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/rma.2020.27","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43106323","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":"RMA volume 146 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":" ","pages":"b1 - b1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/rma.2021.9","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43516747","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":"Groove in Cuban Son and Salsa Performance","authors":"Adrian Poole","doi":"10.1017/rma.2021.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2021.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Using a combination of ethnography, empirical measures of microtiming between rhythm-section musicians and ethno/musicological analyses, this article examines and measures groove in three real-world performances of the popular dance tradition of Cuban son and salsa. The findings paint a complex picture of groove that is shaped by rhythmic-harmonic structure, shared concepts of timing, individual preferences, group dynamics and rhythmic interactions between musicians as they work together to negotiate a groove with the ‘correct’ feel. Microtiming analyses produce a snapshot of how rhythmic timing relationships are ‘played out’ between musicians in live performances and provide quantitative measures of the level of synchrony and separation within the rhythm section. They also suggest that microtiming is influenced by certain metric locations within the rhythmic-harmonic structure, particularly those locations that anticipate harmonic changes and mark the beginning of repeated rhythmic-harmonic sequences.","PeriodicalId":17438,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Royal Musical Association","volume":"146 1","pages":"117 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/rma.2021.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49531087","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}