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Music in context(s): the conductor as curator

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This research paper examines the close relationships between the visual arts and music and the implications of curatorial practice upon the work of conductors. While some conductors consider suitability the prime (or only) factor in determining which music to perform, curators use many more criteria. Five elements of exhibition design…

This research paper examines the close relationships between the visual arts and music and the implications of curatorial practice upon the work of conductors. While some conductors consider suitability the prime (or only) factor in determining which music to perform, curators use many more criteria. Five elements of exhibition design are particularly germane to musicians including setting, subject matter, visual weight, compositional direction, and narrative. Each of these five elements is discussed in terms of its impact on concert design with a goal of providing additional criteria to the conductor when planning concerts. Three concert experiences, designed with these principles in mind, are presented as examples. Upon consideration of the elements of exhibition design separately and corporately, one arrives at a new appreciation of the concert as a unified experience--capable of being much more than the sum of its parts. The aim of effective concert design is to eliminate unintentional communication--to present music in the most complimentary manner possible. To this end, this study has implications for conductors at all levels.
ContributorsHoughtalen, Brandon (Author) / Hill, Gary W. (Thesis advisor) / Bailey, Wayne A (Committee member) / Ericson, John Q (Committee member) / Feisst, Sabine M (Committee member) / Russell, Timothy W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
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An ethnology of Arizona early music performers in the twentieth century

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ABSTRACT A cultural overview of the so-called "early music movement" in Arizona, specifically the musicians who performed early music in the mid-to-late twentieth century, has never been undertaken. In applying ethnographic methods to Western art music, Kay Kaufman Shelemay suggests, in her 2001 article, "Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early…

ABSTRACT A cultural overview of the so-called "early music movement" in Arizona, specifically the musicians who performed early music in the mid-to-late twentieth century, has never been undertaken. In applying ethnographic methods to Western art music, Kay Kaufman Shelemay suggests, in her 2001 article, "Toward an Ethnomusicology of the Early Music Movement," that a musical anthropology "would seem to hold great potential for the study of `Western music.'" In this paper I analyze and discuss issues related to "early music" in Arizona from roughly 1960 to 2008. In focusing primarily on the musicians themselves, I address issues in three primary areas: 1) the repertory and the so-called "early music revival;" 2) specific types of early music which have been presented in Arizona and the effects of economic factors; and 3) Arizona musicians' attitudes toward the repertory and their motivations for specializing in it. I then analyze Arizona musicians' involvement with both the early music repertory itself and with the community, identifying how musicians were exposed to early music and whether or not those first exposures began a long-lasting involvement with the repertory. In this section I also describe ways in which musicians define early music for themselves as well as analyze more critical areas such as musicians' formation of an "early music identity." I also asked informants to discuss how they see early music as being fundamentally different from other types of "classical" music and how they view their own places in that community of "difference." Finally, I compare musicians' thoughts on the "transformative" effect that some early music can have on performers and listeners and how that effect compares with similar phenomena in other types of Western art music.
ContributorsDe Fazio, James M (Author) / Haefer, John R (Thesis advisor) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Saucier, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010