Kevin O’Connell’s North: Modernism, Sibelius, and Identity

The influence of Jean Sibelius and Scandinavian modernism can show up in unexpected quarters: the Northern Irish composer Kevin O’Connell (b. 1958) names the Finnish great as one of his crucial influences, particularly evident in the composition North. Having grown up under the shadows of the Northern Irish Troubles since the late 1960s, O’Connell’s music can be read as a way to engage with this specific identity crisis. Another northern influence on this piece, albeit non-musical in topic, includes Seamus Heaney’s collection of poetry of the same title and structure, with Heaney also hailing from Derry in Northern Ireland. Alongside such issues of identity, this article assesses the determinacy of Kevin O’Connell's orchestral composition, entitled North (1997–98), on Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4. North displays motivic transformation as a significant element of O’Connell’s orchestral style and the central element utilized to construct an extended and coherent piece of music. As mentioned, Sibelius’s influence is not only musical; in his position as a composer from northern Europe negotiating a path between nationalist political movements and the productive engagement with the central European artistic tradition, in the process laying claim to full membership of the exclusive club of European composers – all of which contribute to ‘Conceptualizing the North’.

Interactions of Folk Melody and Transformational (Dis)continuities in Chen Yi’s Ba Ban (1999)

Chen Yi’s Ba Ban (1999) for solo piano, like many works of Western-trained Chinese composers, situates fragments of evocative traditional folk melody within a post-tonal discourse that is well described by transformation theory. The eponymous folk tune that it quotes is a standard of the sizhu (“silk-and-bamboo”) repertoire. In sizhu performance practice, the evenly pulsed rhythm of the 68-beat melody is augmented and each pitch is highly “flowered,” that is, decorated. Chen’s piece, often simulating the timbral quality of sizhu heterophony, reproduces some of the directed temporal qualities of this repertoire by quoting distinctive phrases and elaborating their pitches. Intermingled with this discourse, however, it presents multilinear threads of motivic transformation through virtuoso figurations typical of Western piano repertoire. The free rhythm evokes a different folk music tradition, mountain song, that Chen mentions as inspiration. At first, as the post-tonal structures are introduced, they disrupt the linear continuity of the Ba Ban folk tune and create an undirected associative network. Eventually, however, they gain control over temporality as firmly as Ba Ban did at first, and then Ba Ban itself is transformed into ametrical pulse. Considering the contrasting gendered connotations of mountain song and sizhu, I suggest how my narrative of these rhythmic processes might resonate with some ideas of feminist theory.

Expressive Emotion and Symphonic Economy: A Note on Recent Works by Uroš Krek

The music of Uroš Krek combines symphonic economy with expressive emotion. Even in the earlier neo-classical and folk music influenced works, this character was evident. Many of these works are written for string instruments for which Krek has a particular interest and affinity. The music of the 1970s contains an extensive use of a highly developed motivic activity which shows his flexible approach. His motives change by rhythm, inversion, reordering, and changing notes. These features are also very evident in more recent works, notably the Streichsextett of 1990 which combines variation technique and motivic transformation in a unique and satisfying way with an intense emotional expression.