The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
The analysis-interpretation presented here concentrates on one work - Witold Lutoslawski's orchestral composition 'Mi-parti' dating from 1976, of 15-minute duration. The authoress subjects it to three examinations, each time from a further distance, from a higher plane of understanding and level of interpretation. There are many levels of reading a work and revealing its meanings - in fact, they are...
The article attempts to analyse the problem of response to music in the context of phenomenological analysis of the act of perception, undertaken by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his 'Phenomenology of Perception'. Such a perspective allows to go beyond the framework of artistic and aesthetic analysis in exploring music perception, by making it possible to examine the situation of response to music ('experience...
The article presents a sample of logical analysis performed on the terminology used to describe 'professional' European music in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although we basically confined our analysis to the most elementary part of that terminology, we are convinced that our observations apply to musical terminology as a whole. Using examples from a Polish encyclopaedia of music, we demonstrate...
Analyses of the meaning of music frequently attempt to use theoretical concepts borrowed from other branches of learning - semiotics, linguistics or literary theory, - such as the concepts of symbol, index, iconic sign, metaphor, metonymy and others. The article demonstrates examples of erroneous usage of the concepts of the index and iconic sign in analysis of vocal music, and the doubtful value...
The subject of the article is interpenetrating of the bond between music and philosophy. Employing both the methods of aesthetics and the theory of music has made it possible to take a multidimensional approach to the problem, and to use many examples equally from music and philosophy. The chapter 'Philosophy in Music' demonstrates the degree to which musicians use their 'philosophising' in their...
One of the distinctive features of Lasso's style of composition lies in the manner of setting the words and interpreting the text. On the one hand, he uses the contemporary repertoire of expressive possibilities: for example, if 'ascendere' appears in the text, the music rises in pitch, the word 'heaven' is expressed through high notes, and so on. But Lasso often goes far beyond this. His imagination...
The article discusses the inception and development of the acoustic ecology movement as it manifests itself in the soundscape school of thought. The origins of the term 'soundscape' in the mid 60s and its use by R. Murray Schafer are discussed; followed by a presentation of soundscape philosophy and the postulation of soundscape studies and acoustic design developed from then on. There follows an...
In the years 1762-1765, an engraving workshop in Gdansk belonging to M. Deisch (1724-1789) published a cycle of 40 etchings known today as 'Die Danziger Ausrufer' (The Gdansk Criers). The etchings show street traders, craftsmen and entertainers, and the texts of the verbal and musical cries of these pedlars. These are men, women and boys, who use the local variant of the German language, with an admixture...
The first distinguishing sign of the postmodern idiom is the restoration of faith in traditional subjects. This means a return to melodiousness, rhythmicity, shaping the form on the basis of models tried throughout history - in other words, a return to the past and to musical tradition, which at one time was consciously rejected by modernist '-isms'. However, postmodernism is not a simply a reaction...
The paper discusses the only opera by Domenico Scarlatti which has survived in full until today. The opera is 'Tolomeo et Alessandro' composed in 1711 and performed in Rome, at the private theatre of the Polish queen Maria Kazimiera (Marysienka) Sobieska, who resided in the Eternal City during 1699-1714. The three-act libretto shows the influence of ideas originating from a group of writers and poets,...
The paper presents the beginnings of opera in Poland in the context of the dynastic connections of the Polish Vasa kings, Zygmunt III Vasa and his son Wladyslaw IV, with the Habsburg house of the archdukes of Graz (the imperial house from 1619), and the marriage links between the children of Charles II of the Habsburg family and Maria von Wittelsbach, and the Italian families Medici and Gonzaga. It...
Historical themes in Polish opera (whose beginnings go back to 1778) appeared and began to flourish only in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The main reason for this was the political perturbations of a nation which, although deprived of its own state after 1795, attempted in spite of all the odds to participate in the politics of the great powers and to fight for at least a degree of autonomy...
'Philaenis' (1897), an opera by Roman Statkowski (1859-1925), written to the libretto by Hermann Erler (1844-1918), is an interesting research subject from the perspective of the history of Polish opera, as a work which stands half-way between the legacy of Wladyslaw Zelenski (1837-1921) and the musical theatre of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937). The article describes the difficulties encountered by...
The author suggests that K. Penderecki's 'Fourth Symphony', composed on the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution and remarkably solemn in expression - in spite of the stylistic divergence - is a work which contains a very similar message as Penderecki's opera buffa 'Ubu Rex' written two years later (1991). Both compositions offer a more or less veiled critique of the revolutionary idea. In his...
The article presents a portrait of Jan Karlowicz (1836-1903), the father of Mieczyslaw. The author refers to Jan Karlowicz's work as a historian and linguist, which is generally known, but concentrates on his activities as a musician, composer and musicographer, an aspect of his persona which has been little known so far. The issues discussed here present a picture of the home environment in which...
Listeners who are not familiar with the blues might have the impression that most compositions in that style appear to sound somewhat alike. This article examines the question of what might contribute to creating this impression. The original blues compositions were created within the so-called local traditions. Local tradition can be described as a group of blues musicians who perform together, learn...
This paper investigates the influence of musical structure concerning some chosen historical styles (2 impressionist pieces, 1 classical, 2 baroque) on the symbolic and diagnostic content (i.a. the EPQ-R Eysenck Personality Test was applied) of the imaginary process in 10 persons aging from 18 to 24. The goal of this research consists on verification of the rightness of choosing M. Ravel's music (I...
The article examines a number of fragments from 'Dialogues' by Gregory the Great which contain allusions to monastic liturgical practices, and in particular to the antiphonal singing of psalms, the nature of which is still the subject of controversy among liturgists and musicologists. The traditional view of the congregation being divided into two choirs during the singing of a psalm with an antiphon...
There has been much controversy surrounding the Latin name of the instrument called rota and its vernacular equivalents (rotta, rote, rotte, rothe, rocta, etc.), which were in use in sources dating from between the sixth and fifteenth centuries. The term was regarded as a model example of medieval organological polysemy and was applied to practically all types of chordophones. However, a thorough...
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.