Music Performance

by Ricarda Fouch, April 2015

1200 words

4 pages

essay

I have recently been to two concerts: one of orchestra music, and another one of jazz. I cannot say that I am a true connoisseur of orchestra music, but the pieces I was listening to have really won my heart. On September, 12th, I was lucky to visit the concert of orchestra music, where I could enjoy listening to “Fabric” by Henry Cowell, “La Histoire du Soldat” by Igor Stravinskiy, and Xenakis’s “Palimpsest”.

The first piece I was listening to was “Fabric” by Henry Cowell, who is known as the composer who likes rhythm. He used a lot of rhythmic materials in this piece, which influenced my perception of the composition and accelerated the perception of time.

I knew before the concert that Cowell Henry Dickson was an American pianist, composer and musicologist. He performed in the USA and Europe as a pianist and a propagandist of a new American music. He was also one of the first representatives of American avant-gardism; he experimented in the field of harmony and instrumentation.

Moreover, he was the inventor of unusual technical methods: keystrokes with a fist or a forearm, creating “tone cluster” - a “sound cluster”, and tweaks of strings. In the concert I heard the dissonant polyphony - tone clusters - together with the use of old instruments. I was amazed by Cowell’s set of compositions of different stylistics. However, first of all, I was surprised by the new sound combinations and unusual pieces of music.

“A cluster, obviously, must be measured to show its size, and this may be easily done as intervals are measured, using the distance between the outside members of the clusters. Thus, a cluster of three consecutive chromatic tones may be called a cluster major second; a cluster of four consecutive tones may be called a cluster minor third, etc.” (Schwartz: 1978).

Another innovation of Cowell, which I heard during the concert, was “elastic” music which used the principle of a free moving of composition’s whole fragments. Moreover, I felt and distinctly heard when and how the outstanding composer designed the instruments playing different rhythms simultaneously. I was delighted, because I was listening to the famous “Rhythmicana” which Cowell composed together with an orchestra. Thus, the sound expressive experiments in the compositions for a piano reached their culminations in the middle of the concert.

Another masterpiece that I listened to was “La Histoire du Soldat” by Igor Stravinskiy. “La Histoire du Soldat” is a French name of Stravinsky’s composition, since the libretto was originally written by the French writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. Everything that was especially remarkable in the creativity of the early Stravinsky was present: a change of rhythms, angularity, and theatricality in “La Histoire du Soldat”.

A march, a tango, a rag-time, a pastoral, a bewitching final choral - everything sounded organically and was surprisingly bright.

“The challenge of “L’Histoire du Soldat” (“The Soldier’s Tale”) is deciding on the balance of dance, acting and narration, which alternate and mingle within the musical framework” (Wakin: 2011).

Speaking of Xenakis’s “Palimpsest”, it is necessary …

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