Jann Pasler

Postmodernism, narrativity, and the art of memory

This article explores an important difference between modernist and postmodernist music, specifically in the role played by memory and contemplation of the past. It analyses Pierre Boulezs recent revision of his song cycle, Le Visage Nuptial, with regard to the role of influence anxiety and juxtaposes to this analysis a discussion of postmodernist approaches to music of the past. Then, examining some recent music of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, the article proposes a new aesthetic in some ways postmodernist, in some ways moving beyond the modernist-postmodernist dialectic. This involves the emancipation of memory, the interpenetration of non-aesthetic with aesthetic domains, and the exploration of connections the listener may come to understand through memory. To explain the relationship between perception and thought in these works, it discusses these works in terms of new kinds of narrativity. The notion of a memory palace serves as a model for understanding their open, non-traditional kind of struc...

Debussy, "Jeux": Playing with Time and Form

Debussys Jeux, ignored for many years because of its banal scenario,1 recently has prompted great interest among composers and musicologists.2 Although they have succeeded in demonstrating a certain unity based on motives (Eimert), instrumentation (Zenck), intervals (Spies), and pitch sets (Jakobik), they have failed to find the key to its form. Their analyses have skirted half of the central problem: Jeux concerns not just sound but also time. In the program of the concert version of Jeux on 1 March 1914, Debussy described the scenario of the ballet in terms of time and metric alternation: After a very slow prelude of several measures ... a first motive scherzando in 3/8 appears, soon interrupted by the return of the prelude.... Then the scherzando resumes with a second motive. At this point the action begins: a ball falls on stage. [After the young man has danced with the first girl,J scorn and jealousy cause the other girl to begin an ironic and mocking dance (2/4) and thus attracts the attention of the young man: he invites her to a (3/8) waltz.... The first girl, abandoned, wants to leave, but the second holds her back (3/4, very moderate). Now all three dance (3/8) quicker and quicker up to the moment of ecstasy (3/4, very moderate), which is interrupted by another stray tennis ball, causing the three young people to flee: return of the chords of the prelude; a few more notes slide furtively, and thats all.3

Debussy the Man, His Music, and His Legacy: An Overview of Current Research

On the 150th anniversary of Debussys birth, after four international conferences, this review of research in the past decade focuses on the man, his music, and his legacy. Debussys opera Pelléas et Mélisande and his songs continue to capture the greatest interest, and scholars continue to investigate tonality, timbre, and time; his aesthetic in the context of painting, poetry, and dance; and reception and influence of his music, at home and abroad. The recent publication of 3,000 letters (2005), new critical editions of his music (including unfinished works), and the discovery of sketches, song drafts, and other little-known documents, along with study of historical recordings, have opened new perspectives and laid new foundations for future scholarship. Recent histories have shed light on what French identity meant to Debussy and Debussystes, especially in the 1920s and 1940s. Newest of all is study of Debussys place and meaning in popular culture.

Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest

Judit Frigyesi, B

Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France

eAla Bart

The Utility of Musical Instruments in the Racial and Colonial Agendas of Late Nineteenth-Century France

oAk and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1998. x + 356 pp. ISBN 0 520 20740 8