Description
The worlds of new music and historically informed performance might seem quite distant from one another. Yet, upon closer consideration, clear points of convergence emerge. Not only do many contemporary performers move easily between these two worlds, but they often do so using a shared ethos of flexibility, improvisation, curiosity, and collaboration—collaboration with composers past and present, with other performers, and with audiences.
Bringing together expert scholars and performers considering a wide range of issues and case studies, Historical Performance and New Music—the first book of its kind—addresses the synergies in aesthetics and practices in historical performance and new music. The essays treat matters including technologies and media such as laptops, printing presses, and graphic notation; new music written for period instruments from natural horns to the clavichord; personalities such as the pioneering singer Cathy Berberian; the musically “omnivorous” ensembles A Far Cry and Roomful of Teeth; and composers Luciano Berio, David Lang, Molly Herron, Caroline Shaw, and many others.
Historical Performance and New Music presents pathbreaking ideas in an accessible style that speaks to performers, composers, scholars, and music lovers alike. Richly documented and diverse in its methods and subject matter, this book will open new conversations about contemporary musical life.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Music Examples
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Introduction
REBECCA CYPESS
PART I: Aesthetics and Media
1 Unfixed Media: On the Aesthetics of HIP and Interactive Computer Music
KIMARY FICK AND JASON FICK
2 Open-Source Performance Practice: The Laptop as an Instrument of Musical Democracy
DRAKE ANDERSEN
3 Minimalism and the Post-War Early Music Revival
LOREN LUDWIG
4 Historical Performance and the Ethos of Graphic Notation: Reading Pre-Twentieth-Century Scores through the Lens of an Avant-Garde Notation
DAVID HYUN-SU KIM, ELLY TOYODA, AND REBECCA CYPESS
PART II: Old Instruments for New Music
5 Parallel and Contemporary Vocal Practices: Vibrato, Historically Informed Performance, and New Music
RACHAEL LANSANG AND ERIC RICE
6 A Contemporary Lesson from an Ancient Flute: Tradition as a Key to Innovation
MATTEO GEMOLO
7 The Evolution of Modern Clavichord Music
FRANCIS KNIGHTS
8 A Natural Horn Revival in Contemporary Composition and Performance
J. DREW STEPHEN
9 Technology and/as Community in Molly Herron’s Through Lines (2021)
REBECCA CYPESS
PART III: Case Studies
10 Feeding the Flexible Omnivore: Collaborative Systems in A Far Cry and Roomful of Teeth
ESTELÍ GOMEZ AND SARAH DARLING
11 The Early Music Vocality of Cathy Berberian
KAILAN R. RUBINOFF
12 The Confrontation of Old and New in Lost Objects
VICTORIA ASCHHEIM
Bibliography, Audio, and Audio-Visual Sources
Index
