scholarly journals Possible implementation of Heinrich Christoph Koch’s analytical terminology in contemporary analytical practice

Muzikologija ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 159-177
Author(s):  
Jasna Veljanovic
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
Analytical Practice

This paper aims to interpret two capital works of Heinrich Christoph Koch, the most important theorist of the eighteenth century: Musical Lexicon (Musikalisches Lexikon) and Introductory Essay on Composition (Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition) in three volumes, from the viewpoint of his analytical terminology. For better understanding of the piece, and bearing in mind that his Introductory Essay is a textbook, and therefore has a pedagogical nature, his view on the composer?s relation with his work is discussed, and with it, creating a piece based on three parameters: conception, realization and elaboration, as well as the concepts of feeling, genius, fervour, impression and taste. Koch?s relationship to the work from the viewpoint of the analysis of musical form and its dissection is considered. Some concepts, which have always been used in the analysis of form, whose meaning is understood by default, are explained: character, genre, style. This paper arises from the necessity of re-examining Koch?s analytical terminology and to introduce it into today?s analytical practice, especially for the better understanding of music of the baroque and classical periods and its more logical explication. Special emphasis has been given to sonata form, which is necessary to be seen in a different way, in accordance with the stylistic period in which it was created. Koch?s music theory is completely neglected in the textbook literature and therefore the contribution of this scientific work is twofold: the analysis of Koch?s postulates as well as an attempt to implement them in todays? practice.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
L. Poundie Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Form

Musical form is often discussed by appealing to metaphors that compare formal sections either to types of containers or to segments of journeys. Although both metaphors are usually combined and used interchangeably by most music analysts, since the nineteenth century container metaphors for form have tended to dominate. This contrasts with what was witnessed during the eighteenth century, where journey metaphors for musical form were more prevalent. The introductory chapter broadly compares container metaphors and journal metaphors for form, especially as they apply to sonata-form expositions in works composed during the Galant era. This chapter also introduces some of the features that tend to distinguish eighteenth-century formal discussions from modern ones, and it concludes with a preview of some of the strategies to be explored in subsequent chapters.

Journeys Through Galant Expositions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Poundie Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Standard Series ◽  
And Performance

Through much of the eighteenth century, commentators often described musical form in relation to a type of journey leading toward a set of specific tonal/harmonic/melodic/rhythmic goals, punctuated along the path by a standard series of resting points. Partly in reaction to developments witnessed in music composed during the high Classical era onward, since around the nineteenth century descriptions of musical form have tended to combine or even replace these “journey” metaphors with those that rely more heavily on architectonic analogies. When dealing with works composed around the middle of the 1700s, however, there are advantages for viewing musical form as it unfolds, much in the manner described by those who composed, improvised, listened to, and performed at the time. Taking as its focus the part of the movement now known as the exposition, this study analyzes the form of sonata-form works from Galant era by applying concepts and methodologies that stem from the eighteenth century, particularly those proposed by Heinrich Christoph Koch. It argues that analyzing this music through such a vantage point provides a valuable opportunity for understanding its form in a down-to-earth manner that can directly inform practical aspects of listening and performance.

HERMENEUTICS AND THE NEW FORMENLEHRE: AN INTERPRETATION OF HAYDN'S ‘OXFORD’ SYMPHONY, FIRST MOVEMENT

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW RILEY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Primary Mode ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article establishes a dialogue between twenty-first-century music theory and historical modes of enquiry, adapting the new Formenlehre (Caplin, Hepokoski/Darcy) to serve a historically oriented hermeneutics. An analytical case study of the first movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 92 (1789) traces the changing functional meanings of the opening ‘caesura prolongation phrase’. The substance of the exposition consists largely of things functionally ‘before-the-beginning’ and ‘after-the-end’, while the recapitulation follows a logic of suspense and surprise, keeping the listener continually guessing. The analysis calls into question Hepokoski and Darcy's restriction of the mode of signification of sonata-form movements to the narration of human action. The primary mode of signification of the recapitulation is indexical: it stands as the effect of a human cause. This account matches late eighteenth-century concepts of ‘genius’.

Other Eighteenth-Century Approaches to Expositions

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
L. Poundie Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Theoretic Approach ◽  
Musical Form

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, some music commentators—including Francesco Galeazzi, A. C. F. Kollmann, and Franz Christoph Neubauer—reacted to recent stylistic trends in their discussion of music form. Accordingly, their writings placed greater emphasis on cadences (as opposed to resting points of various types), implied sections, and thematic character as vital elements for understanding musical form, thereby serving as harbingers for later discussions of musical form. Even so, their observations and descriptions of the section that modern terminology labels as the sonata-form exposition—as well as the works they choose as exemplars of the form—suggest a theoretic approach that differs in some telling ways from what is typical in modern accounts of sonata form.

The First Movement of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony and the “Burden” of Romantic Form

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-340
Author(s):  
Eric Hogrefe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Classical Form ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
Metaphor And Metonymy

AbstractStudies of post-Classical form must inevitably contend with the issue of how eighteenth-century practices retain relevance in later repertory. This article offers a framework for considering musical form and historical distance around the beginning of the twentieth century. Following historian Hayden White, I analyze the first movement of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony as an example of formal troping. Mahler’s movement is shown to enact a conflict between metaphor and metonymy in its treatment of Adagio practice and sonata form. In portraying Mahler’s form tropologically, this article emphasizes the role of historical distance within Mahler’s formal imagination.

Formenlehre goes to the opera: Examples from Armida and elsewhere

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 387-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
Classical Form ◽  
Sonata Theory ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Developments

One of the more surprising developments in recent American music theory has been the revival of interest in traditional, as opposed to Schenkerian, approaches to musical form. Spearheading this renewal are William Caplin’s 1998 treatise Classical Form , and James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s more recent Elements of Sonata Theory (2006). Both treatises, however, ignore the eighteenth-century operatic repertory entirely. And while valuable studies of eighteenth-century aria-forms exist (notably by James Webster and Mary Hunter), such studies generally predate the advent of the new American Formenlehre . There is, as a result, a gap between the most recent developments in the theory of Classical form and our current understanding of formal processes in late-eighteenth-century opera.This paper sketches one possible way across that gap. Even a casual survey of Haydn’s Eszterháza operas suggests that formal processes play out in ways related to, but nonetheless distinct from, their articulation in Haydn’s instrumental music (in response, no doubt, to the particular exigencies of writing texted music for the operatic stage). Thanks to its characteristic attention to the smallest possible form-functional units — the presentational, continuational and cadential phrases that subsist at the intra-thematic level — Caplin’s approach to Classical form proves particularly adaptable to this new context. The paper illustrates the analytic usefulness of Caplin’s approach for analyzing vocal music through a consideration of representative examples from Armida and Il mondo della luna .

scholarly journals Towards a Galant Pedagogy

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilad Rabinovitch ◽  
Johnandrew Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
School Of Music ◽  
Eastman School Of Music ◽  
Teaching Music

This article presents a pedagogical approach for teaching modern-day students how to improvise in eighteenth-century style based on Gjerdingen’s schemata and the tradition of partimenti. We present results from a pedagogical experiment conducted at the Eastman School of Music, in which students’ improvisations were recorded. We offer a qualitative assessment of selected student improvisations in order to demonstrate the merits of this approach for teaching music theory and historical improvisation. We also address the challenges associated with implementing such a pedagogical approach in modern-day theory curricula. We conclude by reflecting on sonata-form improvisations by the authors and discuss the theoretical implications of attempting to construct complete movements based on Gjerdingen’s schemata and formal considerations.

scholarly journals Differences over Difference: Sino-Russian Friendship at Interstate and Interpersonal Scales

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-721
Author(s):  
Ed Pulford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Global Era ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Border Town ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
Difference Form ◽  
Social Scientific

AbstractRelations between states are usually framed in human terms, from partners to rivals, enemies or allies, polities and persons appear to engage in cognate relationships. Yet whether or not official ties and relationships among people from those states actually correspond remains less clear. “Friendship,” a term first applied to states in eighteenth-century Europe and mobilized in the (post)socialist world since the 1930s, articulates with particular clarity both the promise and the limitations of harmonized personal and state ties. Understandings of friendship vary interculturally, and invocations of state-state friendship may be accompanied by a distinct lack of amity among populations. Such is the case between China and Russia today, and this situation therefore raises wider questions over how we should understand interstate and interpersonal relationships together. Existing social scientific work has generally failed to locate either the everyday in the international or the international in the everyday. Focusing on both Chinese and Russian approaches to daily interactions in a border town and the official Sino-Russian Friendship, I thus suggest a new scalar approach. Applying this to the Sino-Russian case in turn reveals how specific contours of “difference” form a pivot around which relationships at both scales operate. This study thus offers both comparison between Chinese and Russian friendships, and a lens for wider comparative work in a global era of shifting geopolitics and cross-border encounters.

Beyond Rhetoric

2021 ◽  
pp. 322-364
Author(s):  
Danuta Mirka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Multiple Agency

The chapter starts with the discussion of the aesthetic category of “humorous music,” which emerged in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and links it to the theory of multiple agency, proposed by Edward Klorman (2016). There follow two case studies of hypermetric manipulations in the first movements of Haydn’s string quartets Op. 50 No. 3 and Op. 64 No. 1. These analyses reveal how such manipulations act in concert with ingenious deployment of musical topics and contrapuntal-harmonic schemata, and how they affect musical form. The chapter closes with remarks about the role of the first violinist in Haydn’s string quartets.

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