Department of Music

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586720000099 (open access)

This article exmaines representations of masculinity in Italian operatic performance in the 1820s and 1830s, with a particular focus on the ways in which male characters were transformed through the practice of aria and scene substitutions. Upon his retirement in 1833, the tenor Nicola Tacchinardi chastised musico performers – women who sang male roles – for their unconvincing portrayal of operatic heroes. Rather than complain about their high-lying voices, he chose to criticise these women's feminine appearance and idiosyncratic stage behaviours as unmasculine. Tacchinardi's criteria for gender performance, then, sidestepped embodied vocality and centred on performer appearance and behaviour in specific narrative situations. My study explores how Tacchinardi and his contemporaries employed aria substitution in heroic roles as a means for plot substitution, forgoing arias of dramatic stasis for dynamic scenes that showcase decisive action and augmented narrative significance. In this pre-Duprez milieu, before the onset of predetermined physiology in operatic discourse, male singers across the 1820s achieved an explicitly masculine self-definition not through voice, but as masters of textual control. Aria substitutions in the operas La Sacerdotessa d'Irminsul, La donna del lago and Norma demonstrate how singers established the components of masculine-heroic conventions through sensitive consideration of dramaturgy. I stress that the singing voice before 1830 was under-assimilated as an index of gender, and that rethinking the history of the ‘rise of the tenor’ may be crucial to understanding the history of the vocalic body.

Upon his May 14, 1897 arrival in Venice, King Chulalongkorn became the first monarch of Siam ever to set foot in Europe. The king visited courts and governments across the continent, collecting allies, negotiating trade and treaties, and parading the Siamese court through the halls of European palaces in an attempt to prove their status as global royalty. 1 Between military demonstrations, banquets, and museum trips, Chulalongkorn was usually received at the local state-sponsored opera house for an evening performance. The spectacular scale and emotional affordances of European opera left the monarch in awe, and he repeatedly bemoaned the expressive shortfall of his own operatic tradition to the courtiers back home. European singing could convey cries, insanity, and rage, the king observed. Siamese singing, in comparison, was emotionally limited. "Our singing cannot convey such rage," Chulalongkorn observed, "only cries." 2 Yet despite his assessment of the emotional intensity of European vocality, the king dismissed the possibility of training Siamese court performers in European operatic singing. As he wrote to one of his half-brothers, the court impresario Prince Narathip Praphanphong: On the topic of opera, I think it would be impossible for our singers to train in the European manner and still retain the Siamese ensemble. The Europeans can sing over dozens of violins because they howl loudly like dogs. Against this volume, our singing sounds like mumbling, and would be entirely drowned out by the instruments. An Italian claiming to be a professor of singing has written to me, asking to apprentice two Thai students capable of speaking Italian, German, French, or English. He claims that within five years these students could return and start their own schools of singing. I am not sure what to make of this. In Bangkok, only a handful of individuals have the taste to appreciate the European sound. If our students go to Italy for training, when they return, I am afraid that they would not be able to do much except howl like dogs. 3

Motivated by Marshall McLuhan’s suggestion that advances in technology serve to alter sense perceptions, and that it is the role of artists to be aware of such changes, the author explores intersections and contrasts among five different approaches to the subject and practice of ear training in the context of sound recording technology, with attention to how these approaches serve to expand and challenge traditional ear training pedagogy and what these changes to tradition reveal about how sound recording technology has altered our sense perceptions.

Pierre Schaeffer's notion of reduced listening, closely related to his concept of the objet sonore (sound-object), encourages analytical attention to internal sound relationships only, downplaying real-world associations. This approach to analysis mirrors conventional practice in the analysis of Western instrumental music, with its philosophical underpinning in German metaphysics. However, such methods run the risk of missing the full potential that audio technology holds in altering sense perceptions, as they fail to recognize how the affordance of virtual events and spaces can play a central role in the experience of certain electroacoustic works. Short analyses of three works—Hildegard Westerkamp's "Cricket Voice" (1987), Judy Klein's "The Wolves of Bays Mountain" (1998), and Yves Daoust's "Mi Bémol" (1990)—are presented, revealing a key structural role in each case to the play between abstracted and real sound- worlds. In conclusion, the author argues in favor of real-world contextual-awareness in mapping the listening experience as a model for the analysis of electroacoustic works, along with a re-positioning of the aims of analysis.

In this paper, I use the program for a concert of electroacoustic music as a point of departure for discussing issues related to teaching electroacoustic music in the musicology or music theory classroom. Specifically, I examine the implied pedagogical framework of the Masterpieces of 20th Century Multi-channel Tape Music concert (hosted by Columbia University in the summer of 2000 as part of the Lincoln Center 2000 Festival) as it presented six works to a general, non-academic audience. In conclusion I suggest educators resist the urge to establish new canons of electroacoustic works,  and instead employ pedagogical approaches that encourage critical engagement with contemporary musical works from a variety of perspectives.

The translator's introduction provides a description of Wagner's 1898 première production and Cosima's 1888 production; an overview of Appia's general theory on stage productions; and a summary of Appia's vision for "Die Meistersinger."  Appia's essay, translated from the original French, describes a hypothetical stage production of Richard Wagner's music drama "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg)"; overview of the outdoor and interior settings for each of the play's acts; material forms of abstraction on stage; role of lighting in the overall presentation; and background of the play's characters.

Exploration of issues related to music composed for diffusion over loudspeakers, beginning with a historical overview. Subsequent chapters discuss terminology for the classification of such music, theories of listening, approaches to ear-training, the aesthetics of mimesis in music, and methods of analysis.

A report on the goals and objectives for a class on the history of electronic and computer music originally intended for American students and making use of the latest digital teaching aids, and how the design of the class was modified to meet the needs of Japanese students studying in English.

While electroacoustic music has been in existence for well over half a century, related study in terms of music theory and analysis is yet at a fledgling stage. In this talk, I provide an overview of variegated strands of music-theoretical discourse concerned with electroacoustic music, with an emphasis on those that take ear training (or focused listening) as a key element in their approach. The lack of a standardized graphical representation (notation) is often a common motivator in such cases; thus I review some of the divergent solutions that have been sought to this perceived problem and discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses in relation to the listening experience. Over the course of the talk, I offer brief samples of given analytical approaches that illustrate how they have been applied to actual works from the electroacoustic repertoire.

An exploration of trends and challenges regarding musicological research on electroacoustic music by means of a survey of relevant articles published in leading North American journals of musicology and music theory from the 1930s through the end of the twentieth century.

Have you ever listened to an audio recording and wondered, "What's that strange sound?" If so, you've experienced acousmatic listening. Since the 1950s, a number of works have been composed that seek to exploit the possibilities for audio technology to ambiguate sound sources and recontextualize both the sounds and the listeners into fictionalized virtual spaces. In this talk, I discuss the challenges these works pose to the music theorist and analyst, illustrated through an analysis of the opening of Judy Klein's 'The Wolves of Bays Mountain' (1998).

(Written in Japanese) A report on teaching Schenkerian techniques for the analysis of tonal music, with an example analysis of Robert Schumann's 'Ich grolle nicht' (Dichterliebe Op. 48, Nr. 7). Includes a brief introduction to the music theorist Heinrich Schenker, whose theory is not generally taught in Western music classrooms in Japan and whose writings have only very recently begun to be translated into Japanese.

First published in the April 1956 issue of the magazine ‘Ongaku Geijutsu’ (The Art of Music), and drawing heavily on two German texts from 1954 that had been unofficially translated into Japanese, composer and electronic music pioneer Toshiro Mayuzumi presents an overview of electronic music divided into four sections: (1) a historical perspective positioning electronic music as developing from twelve-tone compositional techniques; (2) a brief history and overview of activities of the Cologne Electronic Music Studio; (3) an overview of the techniques of electronic music, including an account of Mayuzumi’s first experimental electronic music composition, ‘Music for Sine Waves by Sequences of Prime Number Ratios’ (1955) composed at the NHK studio in Tokyo; and (4) some of the composer’s own thoughts on the tasks and future of electronic music. This article appears here translated into English for the first time.

A free eprint of this translation is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/y8Z4sNZGu4gdTUTR3HU2/full

Program note for Toshiro Mayuzumi's contribution to the serial electronic work, 'Shichi no Variation' ('Variations of 7', or '7 Variations'), a collaboration with fellow Japanese composer Makoto Moroi carried out at the NHK electronic music studio in 1956. Here, Mayuzumi describes the structure of the seventh and longest variation, the sound sources and techniques used, and his general thoughts regarding electronic music. First published as a program note to the concert 'An Evening of Contemporary Music, No. 1: Ars Nova' at the Dai-ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo on March 28, 1957, this text appears here translated into English for the first time.

A free eprint of this translation is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Fyc5GwhJeGmYyJWR9zpr/full

The author examines the study and implementation of serial electronic music techniques of the Cologne School—specifically those Karlheinz Stockhausen employed in his 'Studie I & II' (1953/54)—by Japanese electronic music pioneer Toshiro Mayuzumi through his works 'Music for Sine Waves by Sequences of Prime Number Ratios' (1955) and, in collaboration with Makoto Moroi, '7 Variations' (1956), both realized at the NHK Electronic Music Studio. Mayuzumi's account of 'Music for Sine Waves' in his essay 'The Principles of Electronic Music' is cross-examined with Stockhausen's account of 'Studie I' in his essay 'Komposition 1953 Nr. 2'; while technical details from Mayuzumi's program note and Moroi's essay about '7 Variations' are compared with those in Stockhausen's score for 'Studie II'. Attention is also given to Mayuzumi's own assessment of the works and his ultimate abandonment of electronic music composition.

A free eprint of this paper is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/U5XGIJjXhjzYgHxDgh4f/full