Vincent Rone

The Selected Writings of Max Reger. Edited and translated by Christopher Anderson. New York: Routledge, 2006. [xliii, 138p. ISBN-10 0415973821; ISBN-13 9780415973823. $95.] Illustrations, references, index. As the first collection of the composer's writings translated into English, The Selected Writings of Max Reger, Christopher Anderson's second book concerning the composer, is a significant addition to the growing body of Reger scholarship (his first was Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition [Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003]). As editor and translator, Anderson has a close connection to Reger, whose life and work have only recently begun to enjoy some critical attention. How Anderson became familiar with Reger shaped much of the material in the book. Anderson has helped lessen the negative reception that has haunted Reger for many years and presents a book indispensable for English-speaking researchers interested not only in Reger, but also in the largely underappreciated history of early German modernism. Anderson concerns himself primarily with the question, "what sort of person under what sort of circumstances could produce this type of music?" (p. ix) and to "call attention to the fact that he was an active player in a game that mattered very much" (p. xii). The "game" is, of course, the musical culture of Reger's day- composition, performance, theory, musicology, and so on. For purposes of unity and thematic coherence Anderson limits himself to the professional and public essays published between 1904 and 1914, and divides the work into four parts. Part 1 is a set of essays in defense of Reger's Beitrage zur Modulations lehre (Leipzig: C. F. Kahnt, 1903). The next is entitled "The 'Draeske' Controversy of 1906," referring to the debate that stemmed from the premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome. Composer Felix Draeseke (1835-1913) published an article, "Die Konfusion in der Musik," in Stuttgart's Neue Musik-Zeitung (4 October 1906). Draeske argued against the new musical sounds Salome featured and the overall trajectory of music. This section of essays reveals Reger's rather adamant philosophies concerning the field of Musikwissenschaft and musical "progress." It also contains the very interesting (and somewhat personal) polemical exchange between the composer and his former mentor, Hugo Riemann. Part 3 deals with Reger's own reception of composers and artists: Hugo Wolf, dancer Isadora Duncan, Felix Mendelssohn, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Richard Strauss. Perhaps most entertaining is the fourth and last part which presents Reger's "analyses" of his own works written for the yearly festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein and later published in Die Musik. Although intended for a scholarly audience, this book can be appreciated by those with some prior biographical knowledge of Reger and familiarity with his music. Because Reger scholarship is a fairly recent development in America, it is necessary to view this work and the thrust of Anderson's scholarship in light of what others have written and are writing about Reger. The annual meeting of the American Musicological Society in 2000 featured a session dedicated entirely to Reger. This session produced a number of fine essays, later published in The Musical Quarterly (87, no. 4 [Winter 2004]). It was a major victory for the composer in the United States. The goal was "to bring Reger into the 'conversation' in English-language musicology and theory" (Walter Frisch, "The Music of Max Reger," Musical Quarterly 87, no. 4 [Winter 2004]: 628). This goal is akin to Anderson's second theme, Reger's activity in musical culture. Frisch describes the fundamental question: "Where is Reger to be located in the axis of Romanticism and Modernism?" (Frisch, "Music of Max Reger," p. 630). This question is undoubtedly characterized by "where" or "how." Anderson treats a much more basic question (who), though the logical eventuality of his question and findings bring us to the "where" and "how" posed by Frisch. …

This article argues that the music of opening peritexts within two The Legend of Zelda games reflects their reception history and continuity within the series mythology. On the one hand, “The Legendary Hero” peritext of The Wind Waker mirrors the game's reception history as one of departure from a Zelda tradition established by Ocarina of Time, which caused controversy initially yet gained acceptance in the long term. The audiovisual components of “The Legendary Hero” all position gamers to consider the events of Ocarina of Time as old, submerged under the Great Sea. Textual references to “legend” and “myth,” visual cues of antique art and runes, and musical cues harkening to medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque tropes within Western music—all these serve to depart from Zelda tropes. On the other hand, the title-screen peritext of Twilight Princess restores the legacy of Ocarina of Time. Reception of the former always includes its nostalgic, intimately connected relationship to the latter. Consequently, Twilight Princess garnered immediate praise but became problematic in the long term. The audiovisual components of the title-screen peritext position gamers to reestablish continuity with Zelda tropes. Visual and musical cues reach across several previous games and as far back as the original The Legend of Zelda game, all of which orient players back to traditions from which the franchise had departed for years. Thus the music of the peritext enables players to engage in Zelda's potential for self-reference more apparently than its adoption of Western-music tropes, as in Wind Waker. The peritexts of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess complement each other and allow us to understand more critically the reception and historiography of each game, how the music can reveal a deeper understanding of narrative themes characteristic of each game, and their placement within the Zelda mythology.

Each December between 2001 and 2003, Tolkien fans and film lovers alike flocked to theaters to see The Lord of the Rings films. Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien’s work invited audiences to immerse themselves in the landscapes and peoples of Middle-earth. Howard Shore’s film music became integral to that process and consequently garnered critical attention. Many have noted Shore’s adoption of musical techniques used in Romantic opera, especially his predilection for Wagnerian leitmotifs. Yet Shore scores Middle-earth in a far more nuanced manner than just the adoption of the leitmotif. He distinguishes entire peoples of Middle-earth through entire systems of harmony. In fact, Shore’s score parallels an ordered triple of races (Hobbits, Men, and Elves) with an ordered triple of harmonic accompaniment (major-minor diatonic, modal diatonic, and nondiatonic [chromatic mediants]). Moreover, analysis of each race in this series places them on a continuum of familiar to unfamiliar, from ordinary to fantastical, derived from associativity codified in the Romantic era. I first trace the associativity of each harmonic system to developments in the nineteenth century and then locate their correlates in the textual and cinematic depictions of each race, as well as their leitmotifs. For example, tonality’s association with normativity parallels the Hobbits, the familiar. Next, the revitalization of modes as expressive deviations from tonality and as markers of the past suggests how Men reflect both familiarity and unfamiliarity. Finally, composers often have used mediant progressions to summon the fantastical, which parallels music of the Elves, the unfamiliar. Howard Shore’s compartmentalization of harmony in The Lord of the Rings invites close investigation as to how film scores can continue several nineteenth-century traditions and can assist in our understanding of entire peoples in the fantasy genre.

ABSTRACT Maurice Duruflé’s music and writings on Vatican II from between 1970 and 1983 reveal his growing resignation to the popularization of church music. An article of 1978 illustrates the softening of Duruflé’s position, a reflection of the composer’s increasing acceptance of socio-religious contexts that resulted in the gradual disappearance of Gregorian chant. The musical correlate to Duruflé’s shift in tone can be found in his harmony for the brief motet Notre Père, his last composition and the only one he composed that was suitable for congregational singing. His last essay of 1983 bitterly closes the door on Vatican II, as he realized that Gregorian chant would not return in his lifetime.

ABSTRACT In a series of articles and essays between 1965 and 1970, French composer and organist Maurice Duruflé documented his relationship to Vatican II’s liturgical reforms. In the writings he deplored the diminishment of Gregorian chant and the organ in favor of popular music styles and instruments. Duruflé wished to preserve the Church’s musical heritage, a sentiment that translated to his 1966 concert work Messe “cum jubilo.” He bases the work on chant and the organ, characteristics that flag the Church’s past. The Sanctus and Benedictus movements in particular foreground Gregorian chant via harmonic progressions in the organ accompaniment that are associated with the otherworldly. Duruflé’s use of harmony and its associativity parallels the transcendent dimensions of the liturgical texts, which illuminate the themes of his writings.

The Legend of Zelda series is one of the most popular and recognizable examples in videogames of what Tolkien referred to as mythopoeia, or myth-making. In his essay On Fairy Stories and a short poem entitled Mythopoeia, Tolkien makes the case that the fairy tale aesthetic is simply a more intimate version of the same principle underlying the great myths: the human desire to make meaning out of the world. By using mythopoeia as a touchstone concept, the essays in this volume explore how The Legend of Zelda series turns the avatar, through which the player interacts with the in-game world, into a player-character symbiote wherein the individual both enacts and observes the process of integrating worldbuilding with storytelling. Twelve essays explore Zelda’s mythmaking from the standpoints of literary criticism, videogame theory, musicology, ecocriticism, pedagogy, and more.

... Reger's essays address directly, or with which they have a demonstrable and germane connection (for instance, Arthur Smolian's review ... other writings presented here, Reger's treatise was made available almost immediately in an English edition by John Bernhoff (Reger 1904e ...

This article argues that the music of opening peritexts within two The Legend of Zelda games reflects their reception history and continuity within the series mythology. On the one hand, “The Legendary Hero” peritext of The Wind Waker mirrors the game's reception history as one of departure from a Zelda tradition established by Ocarina of Time, which caused controversy initially yet gained acceptance in the long term. The audiovisual components of “The Legendary Hero” all position gamers to consider the events of Ocarina of Time as old, submerged under the Great Sea. Textual references to “legend” and “myth,” visual cues of antique art and runes, and musical cues harkening to medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque tropes within Western music—all these serve to depart from Zelda tropes. On the other hand, the title-screen peritext of Twilight Princess restores the legacy of Ocarina of Time. Reception of the former always includes its nostalgic, intimately connected relationship to th...

This article demonstrates how elements of harmonic symmetry in the sacred music of French Catholic composers have signified transcendent imagery. Such harmonic techniques have constituted a defining stylistic element in French Organ music of the 20th century.

Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) codified the use of harmonic symmetry--octatonicism, third rotations, modal mixture, and "polytonality;" however, Maurice Durufle (1902-1986) and Jean Langlais (1907-1991) used it as defense against the liturgical changes that occured after the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

Location: Protest Music in the Twentieth Century, International Conference at Lucca, Complesso monumentale di San Micheletto, Italy
Date: 15-17 November 2013

Location: Remembering Heinrich Bewerunge: Perspectives on 150 Years of Church Music, MUI Maynooth and Maynooth College, Ireland

Date: 6-7 December 2012

This blog post demonstrates how the harmonic accompaniment of a video-game character’s theme, “Zelda’s Lullaby” from The Legend of Zelda series, can parallel the portrayal of the character. Specifically, the harmonic accompaniment of the lullaby is ambiguous; it avoids tonic harmony and lingers on the dominant. The elusive tonality parallels the elusive nature of the Princess herself.

This installment of the article series focuses primarily on the Hyrule Field theme as it saturates the game and appears in varied guises, contexts, narrative points, and locations. In many ways, this theme and its versatility distinguishes Twilight Princess from most, if not all, of the previous Zelda games.

By referring to a selection of themes discussed in Part 1, I demonstrate that the music of Twilight Princess takes themes of past Zelda games and recontexualizes them in ways that distinguish them from the way fans may have recognized them originally. In other words, Twilight Princess takes familiar themes and turns them on their ear, often varying them in completely new ways from what came before.

This article series argues that the musical soundtrack of the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the most sophisticated of the game's franchise. The first installment discusses how Twilight Princess draws from more past iterations of the game than any other Zelda game but does not sacrifice originality.

Thesis: Nostalgia operates on multiple levels and in kaleidoscopic ways in the music of Mad Men.

Purpose and Significance: This essay demonstrates the fluidity and potential of nostalgia as a mode of discourse in musicology. Second, since the bulk of scholarship about the music of Mad Men focuses on the soundtrack, this essay also stresses the importance of the original score, as it provides an unexamined source of discourse concerning nostalgia in the music of Mad Men.

Methodology: I divide the essay into four sections, each proffering different perspectives of nostalgia. The first section examines how authors have characterized Mad Men as nostalgic and which theories they adopted. This section lays the groundwork for a musical discussion. The second section adopts two taxonomies of nostalgia to investigate pop songs used in the Mad Men soundtrack, Svetlana Boym’s famous “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgias, as well as Sandra Garrido and Jane W. Dickson’s musical “historical” and “personal” nostalgias. The third section focuses on the jazz used in both the soundtrack and David Carbonara’s score, which implements the film theory of Marc Le Sueur. Finally, the fourth section contends that the leitmotifs of Carbonara’s score function as carriers of nostalgia through music-perception, traditional music-theory analyses, and close readings of scenes.

This is the *final* draft of the article for the anthology: Dangerous to Go Alone: Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda.

Reception of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (TP) hails it as a masterpiece, while also critiquing it as a mere rehashing of Ocarina of Time (OoT). Such divisiveness complicates TP’s nostalgic value, arguably its greatest strength. TP’s mode of storytelling summons Zelda’s past more than any other in the franchise, particularly its music. TP’s soundtrack can tap into our gaming history of Zelda writ large, as well as the developing mythology of Zelda, the game world itself. The music of TP thus primes it for investigation under J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythopoeic framework.

Time and nostalgia figure importantly into Tolkien work, namely “On Fairy Stories” and The Lord of the Rings, upon which scholars Verlyn Flieger and Paul Kocher have expounded. Ludo-scholarship also has treated both topics in such volumes as Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games by Whalen and Taylor and Music in Video Games: Studying Play by Donnely, Gibbons, and Lerner. Zelda provides a nexus for these two discussions on time and nostalgia, for it shares commonalities with Middle-earth. TP particularly stands out because reception has associated it with nostalgia since 2006, thus providing fertile ground for examination against a Tolkienesque backdrop.

TP’s music exemplifies Tolkien’s mythopoeia further by forging two-fold connection to the past. First, TP features leitmotifs from five previous Zelda titles, more than any other in the franchise. Therefore, its musical borrowings can tap into our gaming past, which correlates with Tolkien’s ‘Primary’ or “real” world. For example, the main Zelda leitmotif plays during TP’s opening cut scene, potentially summoning our experience of each Zelda game featuring that non-diegetic music. Second, TP also features diegetic music, which characters in the game hear, respond to, and perform. Given the chronology outlined in Hyrule Historia, the appearance of melodies like “Zelda’s Lullaby” included in multiple titles and played by characters in the game can suggest a distant past or shared memory of those in Hyrule. The music thus can connote nostalgia within the Zelda universe itself, an example of Tolkien’s Faërie or ‘Secondary World.’ I conclude by showing these parallels at work in a comparison between Tolkien’s “Lothlórien” chapters in Lord of the Rings and the Sacred Grove/Temple of Time sequence in TP.

TP perhaps uniquely codifies the myth of Zelda through music. Consequently, we can perceive music’s associative power of the past and of nostalgia most clearly through the lens of Tolkienian mythopoeia.

I focus on how peritexts (opening cutscenes) within a video game reveal narratives of broader peritexts related to but outside a game, namely its reception history and developing mythology. The installments comprising The Legend of Zelda series present strong cases to investigate. The reception history and mythology of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess clue us into the complex, causal relationship both games have, which comes into sharp focus upon analyzing the music of select peritexts, "The Legendary Hero" of the former and the title screen of the latter.

In fact, analysis of the visual, narrative, and musical content within the opening narrative peritext of WW and the title-screen peritext of TP reveal microcosms of their reception history and contextualization within the Zelda mythology.

Reception of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (TP) hails it as a masterpiece, while also critiquing it as a mere rehashing of Ocarina of Time (OoT). Such divisiveness complicates TP’s nostalgic value, arguably its greatest strength. TP’s mode of storytelling summons Zelda’s past more than any other in the franchise, particularly its music. TP’s soundtrack can tap into our gaming history of Zelda writ large, as well as the developing mythology of Zelda, the game world itself. The music of TP thus primes it for investigation under J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythopoeic framework.

Time and nostalgia figure importantly into Tolkien work, namely “On Fairy Stories” and The Lord of the Rings, upon which scholars Verlyn Flieger and Paul Kocher have expounded. Ludo-scholarship also has treated both topics in such volumes as Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games by Whalen and Taylor and Music in Video Games: Studying Play by Donnely, Gibbons, and Lerner. Zelda provides a nexus for these two discussions on time and nostalgia, for it shares commonalities with Middle-earth. TP particularly stands out because reception has associated it with nostalgia since 2006, thus providing fertile ground for examination against a Tolkienesque backdrop.

TP’s music exemplifies Tolkien’s mythopoeia further by forging two-fold connection to the past. First, TP features leitmotifs from five previous Zelda titles, more than any other in the franchise. Therefore, its musical borrowings can tap into our gaming past, which correlates with Tolkien’s ‘Primary’ or “real” world. For example, the main Zelda leitmotif plays during TP’s opening cut scene, potentially summoning our experience of each Zelda game featuring that non-diegetic music. Second, TP also features diegetic music, which characters in the game hear, respond to, and perform. Given the chronology outlined in Hyrule Historia, the appearance of melodies like “Zelda’s Lullaby” included in multiple titles and played by characters in the game can suggest a distant past or shared memory of those in Hyrule. The music thus can connote nostalgia within the Zelda universe itself, an example of Tolkien’s Faërie or ‘Secondary World.’ I conclude by showing these parallels at work in a comparison between Tolkien’s “Lothlórien” chapters in Lord of the Rings and the Sacred Grove/Temple of Time sequence in TP.

TP perhaps uniquely codifies the myth of Zelda through music. Consequently, we can perceive music’s associative power of the past and of nostalgia most clearly through the lens of Tolkienian mythopoeia.

This essay examines the way we can consider and discuss music of the LOTR films agains specific themes found in J.R.R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories." In effect, I demonstrate how Howard Shore's music can both reinforce and problematize Hobbits and Elves when examined from Tolkien's notions of the Primary and Secondary Worlds, i.e. our world and the "subcreated" world of fantasy.

This article is more of a think-piece, and I consider it to be in a developmental state. So it's not polished. But I'm extremely curious to know if any music, fantasy, and Tolkien scholars find the parallels I draw convincing and/or interesting. I do hope to receive some feedback!

Many thanks.

This article examines Duruflé’s writings and music on Vatican II between 1970 and 1983, which reveal his growing resignation to the popularization of church music. One article of 1978 illustrates a softening of Duruflé’s position, resulting in an impasse towards the disappearance of Gregorian chant. The musical correlate to the shift in tone surfaces in the harmony in the motet Notre Père, Duruflé’s last composition and his only one suited for congregational singing. His last essay of 1983 bitterly closes the door on Vatican II, as he realized Gregorian chant would not return in his lifetime.

This paper argues how French organist-composer Maurice Durufle protested in both word and music the implementation of Vatican II's liturgical reforms.

I first ground his position by discussing his published letters from 1965 - 1970, which traces his plea to have the Church retain use of Gregorian chant and the pipe organ.

I then examine the "Sanctus" and "Benedictus" movements of his Messe "cum Jubilo," which Durufle composed amid the flurry of writings. Analysis of the music reveals a correlation to the themes found in his writings, as he highlights the transcendent images of the liturgical prayers through nineteenth-century harmonic traditions of signifying the otherworldly.

This is the first of a two-part series. Part 2 discusses Durufle's eventual resignation, detailed in his later writings of 1977 - 1983 and the composition Notre Pere.

The Lord of the Rings film score parallels an ordered triple of races—Hobbits, Men, and Elves—with am ordered triple of harmony—major-minor diatonic, modal diatonic, and chromatic (non-diatonic). Analysis of each race in this series places them on a continuum of familiar to unfamiliar, or ordinary to fantastical.