Abstract: Otherwise known as the Age of Reason for the scientific undertakings and discoveries it witnessed, the seventeenth century is frequently seen as a period of uncertainty and confusion in the context of musical thought. From our own present perspective, musical thought of this period is overshadowed both by what precedes it and by what follows: the opposing poles of Renaissance modal theory and eighteenth-century harmonic tonality each seem more intelligible than that which we perceive as the transition between the two. Indeed, much of what we find in seventeenth-century theory appears to present a puzzling mix: ideas that accord strikingly well with the precepts of major-minor tonality appear to mingle freely with the teachings and terminology of modal theory. Added to this seeming paradox is the darkened mood of the theorists themselves, many of whom lament the confusion of their age. And yet, seventeenth-century music treatises paint a clear, if richly detailed, picture of musical thought if we keep in mind that they address widely different purposes: to serve the church singer in a long-standing and relatively stable practice of liturgical chant; to train keyboardists and other chord-playing instrumentalists in the art of extemporizing harmonies over a bass; to educate the well-rounded musician in the established traditions of counterpoint and modal theory; to instruct the rational mind in the scientific bases of tuning systems; and finally, to enlighten the curious on more speculative and imaginative musical topics, such as Pythagoras’s fabled discovery of harmony in the sound of hammers at the forge, the Boethian harmonic strata, and the legendary origins of music itself.

Abstract: How did Renaissance composers learn their craft? They could have learned much of their technique from treatises, especially from those portions devoted to counterpoint. Today, we often think of counterpoint as consisting primarily of rules of voice leading. Such rules, which are found in virtually every music treatise of the time, teach the student to regulate the melodic motions of lines in relation to the simultaneous intervals between them (e.g., conditions for approaching perfect consonances or for preparing and resolving dissonances). They were learned by young singers for the purpose of improvisation, and following them would have been as natural as speaking in grammatically correct sentences. Yet just as the art of oratory consists of more than correct grammar, so musical composition goes far beyond mere voice leading. Composers had to choose between many large-scale contrapuntal techniques involving texture, motivic and structural repetition, and variation. While there has been extensive study by scholars of the rules of voice leading in Renaissance music, less consideration has been given to these more advanced compositional techniques. In this chapter, then, we will examine some of these compositional techniques by reviewing some two dozen treatises written between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. We will see that the real challenge for a Renaissance composer consisted not of employing “correct” contrapuntal voice leading but rather of elaborating primary musical material – sometimes called a soggetto – by varying it or combining it with some other melodic material. (As we will see, a soggetto need not be simply a melodic subject in equal or mixed rhythmic values; it could also be a duo, or, in the case of parody technique, even an entire polyphonic composition.)

Abstract: 1. Vor deinen Thron and the art of dying 2. The alchemy of Bach's Canons 3. Bach's taste for pork and canary 4. The autocratic regimes of A Musical Offering 5. Bach the machine 6. Physiognomies of Bach's counterpoint.

Abstract: Abstract A Rajasthani woman, Shobhag Kanvar, taught me much about women’s religion. In an earlier work, I described her as someone who, although totally illiterate, “possesses more knowledge about rituals and traditional lore than most women in her large multicase village, giving her a certain status there as a religious expert.” I noted further that her repertoire included stories, songs, healing spells, and massage.

Abstract: Bach's life-long interest in canonic composition is manifest not only in the large-scale works devoted to exploring various contrapuntal techniques, but also in a number of short occasional works of a generally theoretical nature written throughout his life and usually placed in albums dedicated to students or friends. Canons of this kind were often notated in enigmatic fashion and their solution provided intellectual enjoyment to the dedicatees. Christoph Wolff suggests that Bach derived much pleasure from writing pieces in this genre and in solving similar puzzle canons by others. Wolff also suggests that Bach's occasional canons could "chjallenge his visitors with simple-looking yet complex vignettes of musical logic". Some eight occasional canons survive, and it is very likely that many more are lost.

Abstract: The use of music in pastoral therapy within the structure of a model of discourse This is part two of an article on the use of music in pastoral therapy. The first part of the article dealt with theoretical issues, while the second part explores the practical possibilities of the counterpoint between music and pastoral therapy. It is argued that the model of conversation could be a possible structure to accommodate this holistic approach. The aim of this exploration is to deal with and help a person in need as a whole, as an integrated being. Pastoral therapy is an opportunity for people to realise their creative possibilities and responsibilities to lead a life of hope and praise before God. The structured use of music could enhance and enrich this opportunity.

Abstract: (2002). The Grammar Of Musical Communication: Two Versions Of Counterpoint In Early Romantic Literature. European Romantic Review: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 153-160.

Abstract: Preserved anonymously and without title in Barcelona 1967 is a unique six-voice polyphonic Mass which to a large extent ‘parodies’ Josquin's famous setting of the Marian sequence Inviolata, integra et casta es Maria. It was copied along with other works apparently imported from northern Italy to the court of the duke of Calabria in Valencia in the early 1540s, the supposed provenance of the choirbook, and bears every indication of having been written by a skilled Franco-Flemish hand c.1520–3. More particularly, the counterpoint, richly woven texture and sonority have much in common with music attributed to Philippe Verdelot, especially in works he composed from c.1518 through to his time in Florence up to 1527. This article draws upon several works by Verdelot for stylistic comparison, including an eight-voice Inviolata setting now attributed to him, as well as music by his contemporaries, and also shows how the composer of the Mass was skilled in manipulating Josquin's themes, and contrapuntal textures a...

Abstract: Gainesville: UP Florida, 2001 288 pp ISBN 0-8130-1821-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-4159-3695-0 (paper) From Carmen Miranda to Chico Science, and from funk in Bahia to heavy metal in Belo Horizonte, this collection of sixteen essays articulates the intricacies of genre, personality, tradition and economics in the globalization of Brazilian popular music Even before the Tropicalia movement's appropriation of Oswald de Andrade's ideas about native digestion of international influences to create a national export product, the impact of Brazilian music on the world scene has been a given But the diverse writers represented in this compilation explore what the editors identify as "increased exposure to musical products and cultural styles from abroad [that] has generated an ever-expanding panoply of hybrids without necessarily effacing more traditional styles, perhaps even encouraging them" (30) Charles A Perrone's and Christopher Dunn's opening essay is a riff on "Chiclete com banana"--a playful tune about mixing US and Brazilian styles--as song, lyrics and manifesto that synthesizes the dynamics of global musical interaction A history of domestic and foreign (mostly US) interplay, the essay traces the growth of Brazilian popular genres from samba through bossa nova, Tropicalia, MPB, lambada and blocos afro, to current fusions, setting the stage for the essays that follow it The first of these is singer/songwriter Caetano Veloso's brief piece "Carmen Mirandadada," in which he explores the contradictions as well as the triumphs of the not-quite-Brazilian, not-quite Bahian chanteuse's career and her reception in Brazil Punning on the word "shame" in Portuguese, Veloso succinctly concretizes the love-hate relationship between Brazilians and their sexy, fruit-donning default representative Perrone's essay compares the artistic heritage and genesis of the 1959 film Black Orpheus with those of the 1999 retelling (not remake) Orfeu Perrone's detailed accounts of creative struggles and compromise illuminate the web of relationships among these films and their sources while characterizing the urgent desire to appropriate Carnaval rhythms and symbolisms An appendix of lyrics from both films supplements the essay Dunn's essay focuses on the careers of Veloso and Gilberto Gil who, imprisoned and then exiled during 1968-1972, brought international influences to Brazil and were instrumental in the countercultural movements Both musicians, as Dunn shows, lent credence to the incipient Afro-Brazilian cultural renaissance and to the general postcolonial reinvention of Brazil as a multiethnic dialogue between polis and periphery Liv Sovik's essay further develops the globalization of Veloso and his artistic output in the Hispanic world, through the paradoxes and alibis of Veloso's dual philosophical and economic motives for singing in Spanish John J Harvey jumps from 1928 to 1968 to 1998 as he illuminates the precursors, career and rediscovery of the precocious, Beatles-like band Os Mutantes, whose collaborations with Tropicalia artists have been reappraised by such recent artists as Kurt Cobain, Beck and Mac McCaug-han Harvey connects Nestor Garcia Canclini's contemporary ideas about hybridization to Oswald de Andrade's cannibalist framework for artistic export The development of death metal, especially the band Sepultura, in Minas Gerais is seen by Idelber Avelar asa counterpoint to the spectacular career of MPB artist Milton Nascimento Avelar's essay opposes the discordant, nihilist and centrifugal tendencies of the disenfranchised urban youth of Belo Horizonte to Nascimento's nostalgic, spiritual and centripetal themes Anthropologist Livio Sansone compares his field work at funk dances in Rio de Janeiro and in Salvador, concluding that although informants in both communities hesitate to affirm themselves as members of a certain group or as celebrants of Afro-Brazilian expression, the dance nonetheless affirms a modern, Afro-Brazilian sphere of identity that does not necessarily consider itself to be on the periphery of a Black Atlantic interchange …

Abstract: Abstract What is Mendelssohn’s first original extant composition? The earliest musical notation in his hand that we know of is that contained in the volume of harmony and counterpoint exercises done under the supervision of Carl Friedrich Zelter. As Larry Todd has indicated in his edition of this volume, the first entries were probably made in August or September 1819, although the advanced nature of the initial exercises in the book suggests that others, no longer extant, would have preceded them, perhaps done on loose sheets or possibly in another exercise book. Certainly Mendelssohn had been receiving tuition from Zelter since at least July 1819, and perhaps earlier. A number of original compositions are to be found amongst the formal exercises in thoroughbass, counterpoint, and canon, but the earliest of these exercises dates from July 1820, by which time there is plenty of evidence of compositions elsewhere.

Abstract: Abstract Obivously a traid can progress to another with quiescent subtlety, with terrific force, and with every degree of emphasis in between. Debussy begins his Prelude no. I, book I, “Danseuses de Delphes,” (ex. 6-1) with a series of six-note chords, but after the first it becomes clear that only four real melodies are in counterpoint; the parallel octaves in right and left hands are amplifications of the outermost voices. For one beat in the third measure these outer voices alone continue the motion; then the alto joins in. In the fourth measure we hear sevennote chords for the first time and as many as five active voices.

Abstract: Abstract In William Blake’s famous poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he challenges the sanctimony of libidinous restraint—particularly as evidenced in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Blake warns: Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. This poem provides a particularly fitting introduction to the regulation of sexual pleasure and the questions it evokes. Such as the most basic query: Why do we restrict and encumber this many splendored thing? And why do we consider ourselves so noble when we do? Blake’s poem reaffirms the vitality of passion and desire, and the creative acts they inspire. Desire provides a counterpoint to oppression, the virus of regulation and restraint.