{"title":"Metric Ambiguity and Rhythmic Gesture in the Works of George Crumb","authors":"Kristina L. Knowles","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2022.2033569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2022.2033569","url":null,"abstract":"Despite a growing body of theoretical work on the music of George Crumb, surprisingly little has been said about his use of rhythm and metre, elements which are often more aurally accessible than complex pitch structures and which constitute a recognisable aspect of Crumb’s style. Much of Crumb’s output is characterised by a unique combination of metric ambiguity with clear and often recurrent rhythmic gestures whose use and juxtaposition creates varying levels of metricity. A significant portion of his music can then be situated in the middle of a spectrum that ranges from completely non-metrical to clearly metrical. The result is a unique rhythmic language that stringently avoids large-scale metrical structures but makes frequent use of localised metrical gestures and brief moments of metrical emergence. These rhythmic and metric structures are then used in different ways to create a range of temporal and formal effects. This paper focuses on the rhythmic and metric characteristics of motives from several pieces by George Crumb. Emphasis will be placed on a particularly interesting case in the final movement from Crumb’s Vox Balaenae, where the repetition and shifting musical context of a small set of rhythmic motives results in a process of metrical emergence and dissolution that contributes to the arch form of the piece.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45803893","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":"Interviews with George Crumb 2013–2018","authors":"Yati Durant","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2022.2033574","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2022.2033574","url":null,"abstract":"The following discussion fragments between George Crumb (GC) and Yati Durant (YD), transcribed from audio or video recordings made between 2013 and 2018, took place at Crumb’s residence in Media, Pennsylvania. The conversations have been transcribed and edited for clarity without altering the original meanings. In the case of discussions on works or composers, these have been indicated in the section headings or are referred to directly in the interview dialogue.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47856615","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":"How Did the Archaic Become the Avant-Garde? The Case of Ljubica Marić (1909–2003) Through the Prism of Contemporary Sources","authors":"Nikola Komatović","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022895","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022895","url":null,"abstract":"The historical-biographical method takes precedence in the first part of this study, focusing on the analysis of the heterogeneous and changing context of Ljubica Marić’s (1909–2003) work throughout her long life, with an overview of the most up-to-date biographic and monographic literature on the subject. This study also describes the composer’s research of the Byzantine musical heritage in Serbia––namely, the system of religious chants known as the Octoëchos or the Book of Eight Tones. These analytical considerations aim to determine how conflicting creative tendencies came to be reflected in Marić’s works through an analysis of two pieces from her opus magnum: Oktoiha 1 [Octoïcha 1] for symphony orchestra (1958–59; rev. 1998) and Vizantijski koncert [Byzantine Concerto] (1959) for piano and orchestra, with an overview of the genesis of her musical language. The discussion of the two selected works is followed by a consideration of their critical reception when they premiered. Finally, the paper reflects on Ljubica Marić’s later works and her legacy today.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47639072","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 Cage Effect from a Serbian Perspective","authors":"I. Prica","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022891","url":null,"abstract":"John Cage, a key figure and leading exponent of the experimental paradigm in twentieth century music, and in the performing and visual arts, was a reference point for testing the cultural openness of socialist countries during the Cold War. His influence appeared in various forms in Serbian music and art, primarily in the field of extended media, performance art, and musical minimalism. This paper discusses the reception of John Cage’s works in Serbia from the 1970s to the present day, ranging from transpositions and re-mediations of his aesthetic positions and poetic moves, to identification with them. Particular attention is paid to the appropriation of Cage’s concepts of silence, indeterminism, and chance operations, as phenomena highlighting the maturing of receptive views of Cage in Serbian music, in relation to the oeuvres of the composers in the group Opus 4 (Miroslav Savić, Milimir Drašković, Miodrag Lazarov Pashu, and Vladimir Tošić) and Katarina Miljković. Also, Cage’s appearance with the Merce Cunningham Troupe at the Sixth Belgrade International Theatre Festival in 1972 is considered in the context of both cultural connections and the resonances of his impact on the Serbian and Yugoslav art scene.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42729551","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":"INTRODUCTION Serbian Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Musical Avant-Gardes: An Introduction","authors":"Laura Emmery","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022884","url":null,"abstract":"During the course of the twentiethand twenty-first centuries, Serbia underwent several major political and socio-economic reorderings, which had a tremendous impact on its cultural and musical life. The beginning of the twentieth century marks a significant development in all spheres of Serbian cultural life: the founding of cultural institutions (theatres, concert halls, and opera houses), the formation of professional orchestras and ensembles, and the establishment of music schools. Serbian composers during this period continued the romantic tradition. As Sonja Marinković observes, the development of Serbian music can be examined through three stages of romanticism: preromantic (1830s– 1880s), romantic (1880s–1914), and late-romantic, paving the road for modernism (until the 1950s) (Marinković 2008, 71). The most notable first-generation (romantic) composers were Josif Marinković (1851–1931) and Stevan Mokranjac (1856–1914), who among his other achievements recorded Serbian Orthodox church chants,Octoechos (or eight tones) in staff notation in 1908. The second generation of Serbian composers, who continued writing in the romantic tradition, included the ‘Belgrade School’ composers––Stanislav Binički (1872–1942), Petar Krstić (1877–1957), Milenko Paunović (1889–1924), and Vladimir D̵orde̵vić (1869–1938)––who honed their compositional skills at the leading music centres in Europe at the time, such as Munich, Prague, and Vienna. Right before the First World War, the works of three ‘giants’ of Serbian music––Petar Konjović (1883–1970), Stevan Hristić (1885–1958), and Miloje Milojević (1884– 1946)––started to appear. However, the impeding wars between 1912 and 1918 in which Serbia engaged, disrupted and abolished musical life in the country. Serbian cultural life flourished during the interwar period––Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, became the cultural centre of the country, with the formation of a Contemporary Music Review, 2021 Vol. 40, Nos. 5–6, 471–481, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022884","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44322309","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":"Music in Vladan Radovanović’s ‘Art Synthesis’ Works","authors":"Melita Milin","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022887","url":null,"abstract":"Vladan Radovanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Владан Радовановић, b. 1932) is an intriguing creative figure––a composer and a visual artist, author of literary prose as well as a poet, passionately striving to bring together all of those artistic disciplines into his personal and original approach to synthesising art. Right from the very beginning of his creative work, Radovanović systematically explored the possibilities of expressing himself in different individual arts. At the same time, he was particularly attracted to the idea of extending the limits of art, as well as to various modalities of synthesising them. Since both of those trajectories in Radovanović’s creativity began in his early youth, which he kept developing throughout his life, one may surmise that this was his long-term plan, and that these were strategies that simultaneously developed in multiple directions. This article provides a concise survey of the main trajectories in Radovanović’s accomplishments in monomedia and polymedia arts, focusing on an analytical discussion of the artist’s approach to music in his ‘Art Synthesis’ works.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43481890","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 Role of the Third Program of Radio Belgrade in the Presentation, Promotion, and Expansion of Serbian Avant-Garde Music in the 1960s and 1970s","authors":"I. Medić","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022885","url":null,"abstract":"This article details the various activities at the Third Program of Radio Belgrade that contributed to the presentation, promotion, and expansion of ‘new music’ in Serbia (then a constituent republic of the SFR Yugoslavia) during the 1960s and 1970s. These activities ranged from the foundation of the first professional Electronic Studio in Serbia in 1972 to the organisation of concerts by soloists and ensembles, mostly from abroad, specialising in performing the most advanced contemporary music at the time. Moreover, the music broadcast on the Third Program inspired the most adventurous Serbian composers to embark on mastering the newest compositional techniques and the latest technologies of that time. My aim is to discuss the numerous ways in which the Third Program contributed to the development and flourishing of the avant-garde music scene in Serbia.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47983665","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":"Two Modes of the Avant-Garde’s Disintegration in Twenty-First-Century Serbian Music","authors":"Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022893","url":null,"abstract":"To discuss Serbian twenty-first-century avant-garde music means to address two key phenomena: (1) the avant-garde’s position in postmodernism, which—established in its form in the mid-1970s—has persisted over the past two decades of the twenty-first century; and (2) a modification of that position, which has concurrently manifested itself in Serbian music since the late 1980s. The first phenomenon refers to the condition of treating the avant-garde in postmodernism, like any other style from the musical past, as devoid of its internal hierarchy and authentic being. More precisely, it has been treated as a ‘collection’ of artefacts, i.e. constitutive components, into which the avant-garde has been ‘disassembled’ or ‘dismantled’. The second phenomenon concerns a certain tendency to transcend that de-hierarchising impulse precisely by using postmodernist tools. Namely, it concerns the postmodernist ‘validation’ of indicators associated with various creative tendencies from the past, among them also some modernist concepts, including those that once qualified as avant-garde. In other words, in neither of those two instances does the avant-garde in Serbian twenty-first-century music exist the way it did before the advent of postmodernism, but instead becomes part of a phenomenon that I regard as postmodernist modernism.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47750353","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":"Three String Quartets by Ivana Stefanović—Three Aspects of Serbian Music in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century","authors":"Srđan Teparić","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022897","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022897","url":null,"abstract":"The three string quartets by eminent Serbian composer Ivana Stefanović (b. 1948) were composed during three distinct periods of her oeuvre: modernism, avant-garde, and postmodernism. As such, they are paradigmatic for the development of Serbian modernist and avant-garde tendencies in the second half of the twentieth century. The First Quartet (1969–70) is a student work influenced by Enriko Josif, her professor of composition who was a member of the first modernist wave that appeared in Serbian music in the 1950s. The Second Quartet, Harmonies (1976), indicates Serbian avant-garde features with arched forms and music that ‘emerges’ from silence before ‘drowning’ in it. The Third Quartet, Play Strindberg (1993), is a departure from the previous two—it is a tonal piece with a clear form, written for a theatrical play. The dramatised musical story carries with it an emphasized need for the literarisation of musical form and a typically postmodernist attitude towards styles such as romanticism and modernism.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48105004","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 Polish School, Johann Sebastian Bach, and The Gospel According to St. John in an Avant-Garde Synergy: Music of Becoming (1965) by Serbian Composer Rajko Maksimović","authors":"Dragana Stojanović-Novičić","doi":"10.1080/07494467.2021.2022894","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2022894","url":null,"abstract":"In his orchestral composition, Musique de devenir [Music of Becoming, 1965], Serbian composer Rajko Maksimović (b. 1935) established a musical style he formed after hearing the works of Witold Lutosławski and other Polish composers at the first Music Biennale Zagreb (Yugoslavia, 1961). Maksimović believed that the novelties of the Polish school were much more interesting than (m)any of the achievements of the avant-garde Darmstadt circle or American experimental music. Thus, he structured Music of Becoming on clusters and applied aleatory principles to rhythm and pitch. As a support to this avant-garde ‘announcement’, Maksimović used selected lines from The Gospel According to St. John; just as the Gospel accounts for the genesis of the wor(l)d, Maksimović’s improvisation on Bach’s name (B–A–C–H) suggests the procreation of new music that is based on aleatoric principles and clusters.","PeriodicalId":44746,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Music Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46335912","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}