All sessions take place in M267 (the large seminar room in the Music Library) at 3:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.
[January 17, 19]
Charles Rosen
Indiana University Patten Lectures:
"The Representation of Sentiment in the Arts, 1700-1930"
[February 10-11]
14th Biennial Symposium of Research in Music Theory
[March 23-24]
Scott Burnham, Princeton University
"Dissonant Mozart"
Dissonance is pervasive in Mozart's music: rarely routine,
often extreme, never ugly or shrill. With the aid of a number of telling
examples, Burnham hopes to show that Mozart may even be said to have created a
new kind of dissonance, one that is not the simple opposite of consonance but
rather represents some other order of aesthetic experience.
"Intimacy and Impersonality in Late Beethoven: Contrast and the Staging of Subjectivity"
Beethoven's late music is renowned for its striking and often enigmatic contrasts. This lecture listens for a particular type of contrast, that which obtains between music marked as humanly vulnerable or hyperemotional and music marked as mechanical or otherwise impassive. Such contrasts find a ready to hand narrative within the quasi-religious context of the Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, where human impulses are challenged by representations of an all-powerful, often inscrutable divinity. Bereft of such a context, as in the late quartets and Op. 130 in particular, these contrasts prove to be more unsettling: by radically juxtaposing the human with the subhuman and/or the superhuman, they are heard to stage the limits of human subjectivity.
April 12
Lewis Rowell, Indiana University
“Minor Scales: A Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspective”
What is the ancestry of the succession of tones that we call “minor?” Do they constitute one or several scales? How do their preferred forms and distinctive melodic properties differ from one musical culture to another?
Among the topics to be addressed are (1) the dorian/phrygian/aeolian complex, (2) explanations for the generation of the minor mode, (3) the minor scale and chromaticism, (4) modal ethos in the ancient Greek and medieval Gregorian systems, (5) how universal are what we perceive as tonal tendencies in the minor scale, and [taking a deep breath] (6) is the minor scale expressive of sadness?
Examples will also be drawn from traditional musics of West, South, and East Asia. The presentation will conclude with a short account of the history and present state of minor scales in the raga systems of North and South India, with recorded and sung illustrations.
April 26
Roman Ivanovitch, Indiana University
“Mozart’s Art of Retransition”
This paper engages a characteristic aspect of Mozart’s
musical art: his retransition passages—those moments of preparation and
expectancy, potentially quite functional and routine, that alert the listener to
the return of a main theme. There are, of course, conventional ways of treating
these spots, often involving contrapuntal patterns above a dominant pedal.
Especially in his slow movements, however, Mozart transforms these passages into
moments of exquisite beauty, with a thickness of texture, an interplay of
voices, and a lushness that belies, even challenges, their stark functionality.
The paper elucidates some of the technical features of these retransitions, and
asks how we might understand these effusions of compositional artistry: are they
passages for amateurs or connoisseurs? Is this the exuberance of a remarkable
imagination or a showy didacticism? What is the quality of “return” to which
they give rise?