So Berlin’s most revered senior conductor has resigned from his job as music director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (while, naturally, still maintaining his lifelong post as chief conductor of Staatskapelle Berlin). I fully understand the urge to praise his accomplishments, and I share most of the views on Barenboim’s impressive lifetime achievements. But can we please take this opportunity to stop using the outdated term maestro? This designation clings to toxic traditional hierarchies, corroborates disparity and abuse of power, and engenders artistic and administrative subordination. I’d really appreciate if we could, in music journalism as well as in colloquial discourse, move a step forward in this respect.
General
The Nature of Music Analysis
Some people think that analysing music means to add harmonic figures to a bassline, to make a form diagram or graph, to compare motivic relations at different positions, or to examine the instrumentation. While any of the above may be used as a means of analysis, neither of these is sufficient to grasp the essence of a musical work. As long as you study an individual piece without incorporating its multiple historical, social, and aesthetic contexts, its examination will remain incomplete.
Music analysis, as a multi-faceted activity with artistic, performative, and scholarly components, is impossible to be carried out without a thorough knowledge of the repertoire. The ability to view a piece of music in terms of its time and place of origin, the biographical situation of its creator, and other music composed in its environment, is of crucial importance to make substantial observations. A central question is: What makes this particular artwork appear special in relation to others? So, every time we approach written music or performances with an analytic intention, we need to take into account its superordinate contexts and relevance. Analysis is research.
»The score is not the music itself, just like the recipe doesn’t make a meal.«
Overview on Fair Payment Initiatives
My latest publication in the newly founded Pro Musik Magazine is out. It is a survey of the recent efforts and initiatives to establish fair payment for freelance musicians in associations and on political and administrative level. Some of the mentioned developments are still thought-in-progress, yet worthwhile to spread so as to have more colleagues and concerned persons informed about the ongoing considerations. Feedback and comments are welcome!
Spellbinding Silvestrov
It’s been such a pleasure to be an inconspicuous part of the audience and watch Valentin Silvestrov listen to his own pieces being performed on stage. This experience made me feel a proximity of both physical and spiritual nature, a certain unity with the music and its creator, while submerging in that continuous stream of sound, largely devoid of contours and contrasts, which seemed that it might go on eternally. Thank you, Viktoriia Vitrenko, Alexei Lubimov, and Pianosalon Christophori for making this happen just two miles from my place!
Some Insights into Chinese Music Theory
In an intriguing session of my History of Music Theory seminar at Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf, two Asian students presented a short panopticum of Chinese music theory. One gave an overview of the theories and writings of Ming dynasty scholar and polymath Zhu Zaiyu, who developed an approach to calculate equal temperament more accurately than ever before. The other presentation focused on the structure of traditional Chinese modes and the adoption of numbered notation which, originating from the Galin-Paris-Chevé system, is used as an alternative solfège method. Such a piece of luck when, as a lecturer, one gets the opportunity to gain considerable new knowledge from one’s own teaching activity!