Music Theorist and Musicologist, interested in the history of music theory (particularly Medieval), and in orchestral music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and ... more MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History. By Stefano Mengozzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xviii, 286 p. ISBN 9780521884150. $95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Guido of Arezzo is surely the most familiar of all Medieval music theorists; certainly no history of music course fails to introduce Guido as the inventor of the staff and of solmization. And many, if not most, also credit him with the system of overlapping hexachords, taken as the way musicians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance conceived pitch relationships, and therefore seen as the key to understanding medieval and Renaissance music properly. It will therefore come as a revelation to a great many-perhaps even to some specialists in the area-to learn the degree to which the Guidonian theory we all met as undergraduates is in reality the product of reworkings, reconceptualizations, "reforms," and other manipulations by later writers. In this rich but compact book, Megozzi retraces the course of Guido's legacy from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, with an epilogue covering the period up to the early nineteenth century and the establishment of musicology as a scholarly discipline. The book is, of course, a contribution to the history of music theory, but-unusually for music theory-it also partakes of reception history, engaging wider intellectual history at key points. This monograph thus belongs to that narrowest of subspecialties: the metahistory of music theory; but, precisely because it occupies a nexus among several disciplines, it will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of niches: medievalists, Renaissance scholars, performers of medieval and Renais - sance music (to name the obvious), not to mention those engaged in the teaching of music history at all levels. The wide scope of the book (almost six centuries, plus extensions, of music history), features a large cast of characters, with an interesting variety of motives and agendas. Running through all this, almost as an idee fixe, is the hexachord system itself, as a pedagogical tool, and as a fundamental theory of pitch space. The book is, appropriately, organized into two principal sections, each with four chapters. Part 1, "Guidonian Solmization in Music Theory and Practice," covers the history and development of Guido's ideas to the end of the trecento, reading the primary sources "as 'informants' on the basic questions of the nature and function(s) of Guido's hexachord as understood in the Middle Ages" (p. 13). Part 2, "Reforming the Music Curriculum in the Age of Humanism," continues the story to the end of the sixteenth century, "address[ing] the historiographic side of the question . . . to understand the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the foundational view of the hexachordal system" (p. 13). These are framed by an introduction and an epilogue, and punctuated by an "Interlude" with the intriguing title "All Hexachords are 'Soft.' " Mengozzi opens the introduction with a series of questions, the first of which is, "Was there a hexachordal season in the long history of Western music?" That is, he continues, was there a time when "the octave scale . . . did not possess the cognitive and normative weight that it undoubtedly has had since the Enlightenment?" (p. 1). The introduction unfolds an overview of the spread of the hexachord system, and the friction between it and the system of seven pitch letters-the essential basis of the story to be told. Of central importance is the medieval distinction between proprietas (the six-note segment of the gamut) and deductio (the attached set of syllables). As Mengozzi sums it up, "this monograph aims to chart out the rich and convoluted history of the hexachordal system as a way of appreciating the cultural factors that transformed that system from a low-key method for sight-singing into an all-around structural pillar of early music" (p. …
Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus... more Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus Contractus is here presented in a newly revised translation, with commentary reflecting the best current scholarship. A polymath and monk, Hermannus Contractus (1013-54) contributed to the important advancements made in European arts and sciences in the first half of the eleventh century, writing on history, astronomy, and time-keeping devices, among other topics, and composing several chants. His music theory, founded on a systematic treatment of traditional concepts and terminology dating back to the ancient Greeks, is concerned largely with the organization of pitch in Gregorian chant. Hermann's approach stems from Germanic species-based thought, and is marked by a distinction between aspects of form and aspects of position, privileging the latter. He expresses this in terms imported from then-new developments in Italian music theory, thus acting as a nexus for the two traditions...
even more delightful were the moments when Wollenberg, writing about a work that I know well as a... more even more delightful were the moments when Wollenberg, writing about a work that I know well as a listener but have never analyzed, made a point about its musical structure that immediately connected with my own aural experience. Two such moments, for me, were the observation of how in movement 1 of the String Quartet in G major, D 887, the key of B major/minor ‘exerts a kind of fascination, drawing the music back, as if magnetically, to the dominant chord’ (pp. 57–9), and the discussion of the retransition in the first movement of the Sonata in A major, D 664, in which the first attempt through the tonic key fails, leading to ‘the vision of a much more imaginative route y by means of the F] minor passage from the central section of Theme I’ (pp. 120–22). Read along with the musical examples in the text, Wollenberg’s analytical commentary can be extremely persuasive. The ample number of music examples is a fine quality of this book. Since Wollenberg often brings into one discussion multiple passages from one or more works, it would be difficult to read this book without them – readers would need multiple scores at hand, and this would slow the reading process considerably. In some ways, though, the examples create some awkwardness for the reader, simply because the example being discussed is frequently a few pages away. It is necessary to pay close attention to example numbers in order to be sure one is looking at the relevant passage. Nevertheless, it is clearly a benefit that Ashgate allowed such a generous number of examples. Schubert’s Fingerprints should be heartily welcomed to the literature on Schubert’s instrumental music. Susan Wollenberg persuasively argues that Schubert’s music takes its essence from the combination of poetic sensibility and rational structure – and most appropriately, the same is true of her book, whose eloquent descriptions are supported by careful analysis. These two aspects of this book work together to offer a deeper understanding of how Schubert’s specific musical tendencies and processes work together to create powerful musical experiences.
theoretical thought which holds that the minor triad has a natural origin different from that of ... more theoretical thought which holds that the minor triad has a natural origin different from that of the major triad, but of equal validity. Specifically, the term is associated with a group of nineteenth and early twentieth century theo-rists, nearly all Germans, who believed that the minor harmony is constructed in a downward ("negative") fashion, while the major is an upward ("positive") construction. Al-though some of these writers extended the dualistic approach to great lengths, applying it even to functional harmony, this article will be concerned primarily with the problem of the minor sonority, examining not only the premises and con-clusions of the principal dualists, but also those of their followers and their critics. Prior to the rise of Romanticism, the minor triad had al-ready been the subject of some theoretical speculation.
... Snyder Page 2. Page 3. Symphonic Variations on an African Air Page 4. ... op. 1, and a Nonet,... more ... Snyder Page 2. Page 3. Symphonic Variations on an African Air Page 4. ... op. 1, and a Nonet, op. 2. In the next two years he composed larger works, including his Ballade for violin and orchestra, op. 4, and a Clarinet Quintet, op. 10. ...
The theme-and-variations genre has a long history: having originated in late Renaissance Spain, i... more The theme-and-variations genre has a long history: having originated in late Renaissance Spain, it has continued to attract composers to the present day. During that span composers have developed numerous techniques for creating variations and for organizing them into sets.1 One feature of the genre that has remained a constant challenge for composers is the form’s paratactic nature. As Jan LaRue puts it, “in the rigid pattern variations found commonly from the late Renaissance to the early twentieth century, no growth [i.e., formal process] is less imaginative ... the inevitable repetition ... turns the growth into a sort of musical link-sausage.”2 But of course the best composers have always been able to counter this tendency, producing highly effective works of art. Analysis of variation sets must consider both the individual variations and the set as a whole. Robert Hatten has suggested that the character variation provides fertile soil for topical analysis, which
MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and ... more MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History. By Stefano Mengozzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xviii, 286 p. ISBN 9780521884150. $95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Guido of Arezzo is surely the most familiar of all Medieval music theorists; certainly no history of music course fails to introduce Guido as the inventor of the staff and of solmization. And many, if not most, also credit him with the system of overlapping hexachords, taken as the way musicians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance conceived pitch relationships, and therefore seen as the key to understanding medieval and Renaissance music properly. It will therefore come as a revelation to a great many-perhaps even to some specialists in the area-to learn the degree to which the Guidonian theory we all met as undergraduates is in reality the product of reworkings, reconceptualizations, "reforms," and other manipulations by later writers. In this rich but compact book, Megozzi retraces the course of Guido's legacy from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, with an epilogue covering the period up to the early nineteenth century and the establishment of musicology as a scholarly discipline. The book is, of course, a contribution to the history of music theory, but-unusually for music theory-it also partakes of reception history, engaging wider intellectual history at key points. This monograph thus belongs to that narrowest of subspecialties: the metahistory of music theory; but, precisely because it occupies a nexus among several disciplines, it will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of niches: medievalists, Renaissance scholars, performers of medieval and Renais - sance music (to name the obvious), not to mention those engaged in the teaching of music history at all levels. The wide scope of the book (almost six centuries, plus extensions, of music history), features a large cast of characters, with an interesting variety of motives and agendas. Running through all this, almost as an idee fixe, is the hexachord system itself, as a pedagogical tool, and as a fundamental theory of pitch space. The book is, appropriately, organized into two principal sections, each with four chapters. Part 1, "Guidonian Solmization in Music Theory and Practice," covers the history and development of Guido's ideas to the end of the trecento, reading the primary sources "as 'informants' on the basic questions of the nature and function(s) of Guido's hexachord as understood in the Middle Ages" (p. 13). Part 2, "Reforming the Music Curriculum in the Age of Humanism," continues the story to the end of the sixteenth century, "address[ing] the historiographic side of the question . . . to understand the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the foundational view of the hexachordal system" (p. 13). These are framed by an introduction and an epilogue, and punctuated by an "Interlude" with the intriguing title "All Hexachords are 'Soft.' " Mengozzi opens the introduction with a series of questions, the first of which is, "Was there a hexachordal season in the long history of Western music?" That is, he continues, was there a time when "the octave scale . . . did not possess the cognitive and normative weight that it undoubtedly has had since the Enlightenment?" (p. 1). The introduction unfolds an overview of the spread of the hexachord system, and the friction between it and the system of seven pitch letters-the essential basis of the story to be told. Of central importance is the medieval distinction between proprietas (the six-note segment of the gamut) and deductio (the attached set of syllables). As Mengozzi sums it up, "this monograph aims to chart out the rich and convoluted history of the hexachordal system as a way of appreciating the cultural factors that transformed that system from a low-key method for sight-singing into an all-around structural pillar of early music" (p. …
Page 1. Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyd... more Page 1. Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyder Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyder Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions ...
Page 1. Theinred of Dover on Consonance: A Chapter in the History of Harmony John L. Snyder A Sum... more Page 1. Theinred of Dover on Consonance: A Chapter in the History of Harmony John L. Snyder A Summary of Harmonic Theory to the Twelfth Century Harmony characterizes Western music; in no other music has that element ...
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Jan 1, 1990
Page 1. A Road Not Taken: Theinred of Dover's Theory of Species JOHN L. SNYDER INTRODUCT... more Page 1. A Road Not Taken: Theinred of Dover's Theory of Species JOHN L. SNYDER INTRODUCTION: THE BASES OF MEDIEVAL SPECIES THEORY THE music theory of the Middle Ages had its origins in the music theory of late antiquity. ...
MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and ... more MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History. By Stefano Mengozzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xviii, 286 p. ISBN 9780521884150. $95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Guido of Arezzo is surely the most familiar of all Medieval music theorists; certainly no history of music course fails to introduce Guido as the inventor of the staff and of solmization. And many, if not most, also credit him with the system of overlapping hexachords, taken as the way musicians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance conceived pitch relationships, and therefore seen as the key to understanding medieval and Renaissance music properly. It will therefore come as a revelation to a great many-perhaps even to some specialists in the area-to learn the degree to which the Guidonian theory we all met as undergraduates is in reality the product of reworkings, reconceptualizations, "reforms," and other manipulations by later writers. In this rich but compact book, Megozzi retraces the course of Guido's legacy from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, with an epilogue covering the period up to the early nineteenth century and the establishment of musicology as a scholarly discipline. The book is, of course, a contribution to the history of music theory, but-unusually for music theory-it also partakes of reception history, engaging wider intellectual history at key points. This monograph thus belongs to that narrowest of subspecialties: the metahistory of music theory; but, precisely because it occupies a nexus among several disciplines, it will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of niches: medievalists, Renaissance scholars, performers of medieval and Renais - sance music (to name the obvious), not to mention those engaged in the teaching of music history at all levels. The wide scope of the book (almost six centuries, plus extensions, of music history), features a large cast of characters, with an interesting variety of motives and agendas. Running through all this, almost as an idee fixe, is the hexachord system itself, as a pedagogical tool, and as a fundamental theory of pitch space. The book is, appropriately, organized into two principal sections, each with four chapters. Part 1, "Guidonian Solmization in Music Theory and Practice," covers the history and development of Guido's ideas to the end of the trecento, reading the primary sources "as 'informants' on the basic questions of the nature and function(s) of Guido's hexachord as understood in the Middle Ages" (p. 13). Part 2, "Reforming the Music Curriculum in the Age of Humanism," continues the story to the end of the sixteenth century, "address[ing] the historiographic side of the question . . . to understand the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the foundational view of the hexachordal system" (p. 13). These are framed by an introduction and an epilogue, and punctuated by an "Interlude" with the intriguing title "All Hexachords are 'Soft.' " Mengozzi opens the introduction with a series of questions, the first of which is, "Was there a hexachordal season in the long history of Western music?" That is, he continues, was there a time when "the octave scale . . . did not possess the cognitive and normative weight that it undoubtedly has had since the Enlightenment?" (p. 1). The introduction unfolds an overview of the spread of the hexachord system, and the friction between it and the system of seven pitch letters-the essential basis of the story to be told. Of central importance is the medieval distinction between proprietas (the six-note segment of the gamut) and deductio (the attached set of syllables). As Mengozzi sums it up, "this monograph aims to chart out the rich and convoluted history of the hexachordal system as a way of appreciating the cultural factors that transformed that system from a low-key method for sight-singing into an all-around structural pillar of early music" (p. …
Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus... more Long recognized as one of the most important medieval treatises on music, the Musica of Hermannus Contractus is here presented in a newly revised translation, with commentary reflecting the best current scholarship. A polymath and monk, Hermannus Contractus (1013-54) contributed to the important advancements made in European arts and sciences in the first half of the eleventh century, writing on history, astronomy, and time-keeping devices, among other topics, and composing several chants. His music theory, founded on a systematic treatment of traditional concepts and terminology dating back to the ancient Greeks, is concerned largely with the organization of pitch in Gregorian chant. Hermann's approach stems from Germanic species-based thought, and is marked by a distinction between aspects of form and aspects of position, privileging the latter. He expresses this in terms imported from then-new developments in Italian music theory, thus acting as a nexus for the two traditions...
even more delightful were the moments when Wollenberg, writing about a work that I know well as a... more even more delightful were the moments when Wollenberg, writing about a work that I know well as a listener but have never analyzed, made a point about its musical structure that immediately connected with my own aural experience. Two such moments, for me, were the observation of how in movement 1 of the String Quartet in G major, D 887, the key of B major/minor ‘exerts a kind of fascination, drawing the music back, as if magnetically, to the dominant chord’ (pp. 57–9), and the discussion of the retransition in the first movement of the Sonata in A major, D 664, in which the first attempt through the tonic key fails, leading to ‘the vision of a much more imaginative route y by means of the F] minor passage from the central section of Theme I’ (pp. 120–22). Read along with the musical examples in the text, Wollenberg’s analytical commentary can be extremely persuasive. The ample number of music examples is a fine quality of this book. Since Wollenberg often brings into one discussion multiple passages from one or more works, it would be difficult to read this book without them – readers would need multiple scores at hand, and this would slow the reading process considerably. In some ways, though, the examples create some awkwardness for the reader, simply because the example being discussed is frequently a few pages away. It is necessary to pay close attention to example numbers in order to be sure one is looking at the relevant passage. Nevertheless, it is clearly a benefit that Ashgate allowed such a generous number of examples. Schubert’s Fingerprints should be heartily welcomed to the literature on Schubert’s instrumental music. Susan Wollenberg persuasively argues that Schubert’s music takes its essence from the combination of poetic sensibility and rational structure – and most appropriately, the same is true of her book, whose eloquent descriptions are supported by careful analysis. These two aspects of this book work together to offer a deeper understanding of how Schubert’s specific musical tendencies and processes work together to create powerful musical experiences.
theoretical thought which holds that the minor triad has a natural origin different from that of ... more theoretical thought which holds that the minor triad has a natural origin different from that of the major triad, but of equal validity. Specifically, the term is associated with a group of nineteenth and early twentieth century theo-rists, nearly all Germans, who believed that the minor harmony is constructed in a downward ("negative") fashion, while the major is an upward ("positive") construction. Al-though some of these writers extended the dualistic approach to great lengths, applying it even to functional harmony, this article will be concerned primarily with the problem of the minor sonority, examining not only the premises and con-clusions of the principal dualists, but also those of their followers and their critics. Prior to the rise of Romanticism, the minor triad had al-ready been the subject of some theoretical speculation.
... Snyder Page 2. Page 3. Symphonic Variations on an African Air Page 4. ... op. 1, and a Nonet,... more ... Snyder Page 2. Page 3. Symphonic Variations on an African Air Page 4. ... op. 1, and a Nonet, op. 2. In the next two years he composed larger works, including his Ballade for violin and orchestra, op. 4, and a Clarinet Quintet, op. 10. ...
The theme-and-variations genre has a long history: having originated in late Renaissance Spain, i... more The theme-and-variations genre has a long history: having originated in late Renaissance Spain, it has continued to attract composers to the present day. During that span composers have developed numerous techniques for creating variations and for organizing them into sets.1 One feature of the genre that has remained a constant challenge for composers is the form’s paratactic nature. As Jan LaRue puts it, “in the rigid pattern variations found commonly from the late Renaissance to the early twentieth century, no growth [i.e., formal process] is less imaginative ... the inevitable repetition ... turns the growth into a sort of musical link-sausage.”2 But of course the best composers have always been able to counter this tendency, producing highly effective works of art. Analysis of variation sets must consider both the individual variations and the set as a whole. Robert Hatten has suggested that the character variation provides fertile soil for topical analysis, which
MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and ... more MUSICA ANTIQUA The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History. By Stefano Mengozzi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. [xviii, 286 p. ISBN 9780521884150. $95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Guido of Arezzo is surely the most familiar of all Medieval music theorists; certainly no history of music course fails to introduce Guido as the inventor of the staff and of solmization. And many, if not most, also credit him with the system of overlapping hexachords, taken as the way musicians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance conceived pitch relationships, and therefore seen as the key to understanding medieval and Renaissance music properly. It will therefore come as a revelation to a great many-perhaps even to some specialists in the area-to learn the degree to which the Guidonian theory we all met as undergraduates is in reality the product of reworkings, reconceptualizations, "reforms," and other manipulations by later writers. In this rich but compact book, Megozzi retraces the course of Guido's legacy from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, with an epilogue covering the period up to the early nineteenth century and the establishment of musicology as a scholarly discipline. The book is, of course, a contribution to the history of music theory, but-unusually for music theory-it also partakes of reception history, engaging wider intellectual history at key points. This monograph thus belongs to that narrowest of subspecialties: the metahistory of music theory; but, precisely because it occupies a nexus among several disciplines, it will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of niches: medievalists, Renaissance scholars, performers of medieval and Renais - sance music (to name the obvious), not to mention those engaged in the teaching of music history at all levels. The wide scope of the book (almost six centuries, plus extensions, of music history), features a large cast of characters, with an interesting variety of motives and agendas. Running through all this, almost as an idee fixe, is the hexachord system itself, as a pedagogical tool, and as a fundamental theory of pitch space. The book is, appropriately, organized into two principal sections, each with four chapters. Part 1, "Guidonian Solmization in Music Theory and Practice," covers the history and development of Guido's ideas to the end of the trecento, reading the primary sources "as 'informants' on the basic questions of the nature and function(s) of Guido's hexachord as understood in the Middle Ages" (p. 13). Part 2, "Reforming the Music Curriculum in the Age of Humanism," continues the story to the end of the sixteenth century, "address[ing] the historiographic side of the question . . . to understand the historical circumstances that led to the emergence of the foundational view of the hexachordal system" (p. 13). These are framed by an introduction and an epilogue, and punctuated by an "Interlude" with the intriguing title "All Hexachords are 'Soft.' " Mengozzi opens the introduction with a series of questions, the first of which is, "Was there a hexachordal season in the long history of Western music?" That is, he continues, was there a time when "the octave scale . . . did not possess the cognitive and normative weight that it undoubtedly has had since the Enlightenment?" (p. 1). The introduction unfolds an overview of the spread of the hexachord system, and the friction between it and the system of seven pitch letters-the essential basis of the story to be told. Of central importance is the medieval distinction between proprietas (the six-note segment of the gamut) and deductio (the attached set of syllables). As Mengozzi sums it up, "this monograph aims to chart out the rich and convoluted history of the hexachordal system as a way of appreciating the cultural factors that transformed that system from a low-key method for sight-singing into an all-around structural pillar of early music" (p. …
Page 1. Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyd... more Page 1. Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyder Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions John L. Snyder Entropy as a Measure of Musical Style: The Influence of A Priori Assumptions ...
Page 1. Theinred of Dover on Consonance: A Chapter in the History of Harmony John L. Snyder A Sum... more Page 1. Theinred of Dover on Consonance: A Chapter in the History of Harmony John L. Snyder A Summary of Harmonic Theory to the Twelfth Century Harmony characterizes Western music; in no other music has that element ...
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Jan 1, 1990
Page 1. A Road Not Taken: Theinred of Dover's Theory of Species JOHN L. SNYDER INTRODUCT... more Page 1. A Road Not Taken: Theinred of Dover's Theory of Species JOHN L. SNYDER INTRODUCTION: THE BASES OF MEDIEVAL SPECIES THEORY THE music theory of the Middle Ages had its origins in the music theory of late antiquity. ...
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