Oriental Jazz Improvisation: Microtonality and Harmony is a comprehensive study on setting Arabic, Turkish, and Northern Indian scales and modes into context and blending and employing them in improvisation. It contains about two dozen of the mentioned music cultures' scales and modes each as well as their transpositions. Scales and modes which any musician interested in South-Western Asian or Northern Indian music should be familiar with. It moreover contains numerous scales and modes of oth...

When one realises that thousands of liturgical chants were transmitted over more than three centuries in which there were no accurate means of melodic notation, the core repertoire of Gregorian plainchant has been transmitted with an astonishing degree of uniformity.

On the other hand, these chants are reflections of a living liturgy, and thus reflections of their particular surroundings: any monastic or collegial environment could develop its own conventions in relation to what only seems to...

Multidisciplinary analysis of experimentalism in music and the wider arts today.

Experimental Encounters in Music and Beyond opens a necessary dialogue on experimental practices in the arts and negotiates their place in contemporary society. Going beyond the music-historical usage of the term "experimental", this book reimagines experimentation as an open working definition encompassing multiple forms of artistic attitudes and processes. The texts, images, and sounds offer multiple traces, fa...

Futures of the Contemporary explores different notions and manifestations of “the contemporary” in music, visual arts, art theory, and philosophy. In particular, the authors in this collection of essays scrutinise the role of artistic research in critical and creative expressions of contemporaneity. When distinguished from “the contemporaneous” of a given historical time, “the contemporary” becomes a crucial concept, promoting or excluding objects and practices according to their ...

A profound approach to opera uncovers a gold mine of possibilities; opera is fuelled with the energy of the future. And while the search for gold will always go on, the other 'mines' - concealed in the operatic production process - must be tracked down and defused. Risk-taking is integral to the operatic process; without risks, an exciting policy is unthinkable.'

It was with these thrilling and significant metaphors that, in 1988, Pierre Audi laid out his initial plans as artistic director of...

The process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation, and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas.

To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of ...

To perform a musical score implies the transformation of a symbolically coded text into vibrant sound. In Performing by the Book? a carefully selected cadre of artist-researchers dissects this delicate act in critical ways. Offering first-hand insights into the notational, structural and interpretative challenges faced by musicians in dealing with texts of all kinds, the chapters traverse the spectrum between the Middle Ages and the age of Stockhausen. In a harmonious blend of scholarly allur...

Liszt-kenner Albert Brussee beschrijft in dit rijk geïllustreerde boek de reis die Franz Liszt en Marie d’Agoult in de zomer van 1835 door Zwitserland ondernamen. Marie, in verwachting van haar minnaar, had met haar officiële echtgenoot, de al oudere oorlogsveteraan graaf d’Agoult, gebroken en was naar Bazel gevlucht; Liszt volgde haar enkele dagen later. Vanuit de stad aan de Rijn trokken de geliefden ruim een maand lang door Zwitserland om zich uiteindelijk in Genève te vestigen. Omd...

The Sixties: het grote verlangen.

Wat maakt dat men zich nog steeds bezig houdt met de 60er jaren?

Die jaren vormden een kantelpunt in de vorming van onze moderne maatschappij. Voor het eerst eiste de jeugd haar plaats op. Barbaren deden de gevestigde orde schudden. Nieuwe mogelijkheden openden zich, nieuwe standpunten, verworvenheden en muziek ontstonden. De verbeelding was aan de macht ...

... of toch niet?!

Is er daadwerkelijk zoveel veranderd? Of was er meer sprake van het grote verlang...

Franz Liszt bezocht Nederland vijf keer voor langere tijd. In november/december 1842 maakte hij samen met de beroemde tenor Giovanni Rubini een uitgebreide tournee door de ‘Lage Landen aan de Zee’. In 1854 was hij een week in Rotterdam ter gelegenheid van het zilveren jubileum van de Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst en maakte toen ook een uitstapje naar Scheveningen en Den Haag. Twaalf jaar later bezocht hij Amsterdam om concerten bij te wonen in de Parkzaal en de Mozes en Aäro...