Editor’s Message
Dear contemplative MTO Readers,
It is autumn, and in Harmony Twitchell’s words set to music by Charles Ives,
Earth rests! Her work is done, her fields lie bare,
And 'ere the night of winter comes
To hush her song and close her tired eyes,
She turns her face for the sun to smile upon
And radiantly, radiantly, thro' Fall's bright glow, he smiles
And brings the Peace of God!
Helen Boatwright, soprano; John Kirkpatrick, piano. Songs of Charles Ives, Ernst Bacon (CRI American Masters)
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Unlike the earth (at least in New England), we do not rest in autumn. But we will take this moment to pause and reflect because after three years of rich and exciting work as editors of this vibrant journal, Karen Bottge (associate editor) and I are passing the baton to a new team. It has been a great pleasure for both of us, serving the Society, the authors, and you, our readers.
We welcome a superb new team with Nicole Biamonte from McGill University as editor and Stephen Rodgers from the University of Oregon as the associate editor. Nicole and Stephen bring abundant intelligence, deep knowledge, critical acumen, warmth, and fine craftsmanship to MTO. Karen and I have collaborated with Nicole and Stephen on this issue, and we will continue to work with them on one more issue to round out the year.
Now to the issue at hand! We are proud to present three articles, a collection of essays on Russian music theory, and four book reviews.
The three articles in this issue are:
- Mattias Lundberg, “‘To Let it Be Without Pretense’: Canon, Fugue, and Imitation in Progressive Rock 1968–79.” Lundberg documents a range of contrapuntal devises in progressive rock and argues that they are not necessarily forms of “pretension” or “contention” vis-à-vis the musical and cultural establishment.
- Adriana Ponce, “Form, Diversity, and Lack of Fulfillment in the First Movement of Schumann’s Fantasie op. 17.” Ponce offers a new interpretation of this oft-studied movement, drawing on formal functions and the build up, climax, and abatement of tension.
- Jordan Smith, Isaac Schankler, and Elaine Chew, “Listening as a Creative Act: Meaningful Differences in Structural Annotations of Improvised Performances.” Two listeners analyze original improvisations by Schankler and “Mimi,” a software system for human-machine improvisation; the authors explore differences in the analyses and identify their causes.
The essays on twentieth-century Russian theory present a wide range of topics—mutability, modality, hemitonicism, expression parameters, counterpoint, and holistic analysis—and they will no doubt foster ongoing dialogue. We thank Inessa Bazayev for bringing the essays to MTO and Ellon Carpenter for serving as advisor on the project. Inessa and Ellon together provide an introduction with background on the history of Russian theory and prior scholarship in the West. The essays are:
- Ellen Bakulina, “The Concept of Mutability in Russian Theory.”
- Inessa Bazayev, “The Expansion of the Concept of Mode in Twentieth-Century Russian Music Theory.”
- Zachary Cairns, “A Glimpse at Iuriĭ Kholopov’s Garmonicheskiĭ analiz.”
- Philip Ewell, “The Parameter Complex in the Music of Sofia Gubaidulina.”
- Christopher Segall, “Sergei Taneev’s Vertical-Shifting Counterpoint: An Introduction.”
- Daniil Zavlunov, “The “tselostnyĭ analiz” (holistic analysis) of Zuckerman and Mazel.”
We present four timely reviews—including two reviews of digital resources—with thanks to our reviews editors Kyle Adams and Heather Platt:
- Henry Hope reviews the Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik).
- René Rusch reviews Death in Winterreise: Musico-Poetic Associations in Schubert’s Song Cycle by Lauri Suurpää (Indiana University Press, 2014).
- Anna Stephan-Robinson reviews Music Theory Skill Builder by Leigh Van Handel (Oxford University Press, 2013).
- Lauri Suurpää reviews Expressive Intersections in Brahms: Essays in Analysis and Meaning, edited by Heather Platt and Peter H. Smith (Indiana University Press, 2012). Kyle Adams commissioned and edited the review by Suurpää.
We have made a correction to the article “Timing and Meter in Mande Drumming from Mali” by Rainer Polak and Justin London; details about the correction are given at the end of the article. We have also substituted a new video without the long introductory text for “Day 1” in “Unpacking the Box in Frescobaldi’s Ricercari of 1615” by Massimiliano Guido and Peter Schubert. The text that was previously in the video is available in paragraph 3 of the introduction.
Karen and I offer our sincere thanks to Nicole Biamonte (incoming editor) and Stephen Rodgers (incoming associate editor) for collaborating with us on this issue, to Brent Yorgason (managing editor) for his brilliant work behind the scenes, to all editorial board members for their thorough and constructive reviews, and to the editorial assistants for their dedication, hard work, and attention to detail.
We would like to encourage new and creative submissions to MTO. Although we are especially well suited for the publication of articles that incorporate recordings, videos, and other media, we also welcome submissions in any number of formats, including full-length articles, shorter essays and commentaries, conference reports, and entire special volumes.
Comments in response to this issue’s articles may be submitted to the Editor for publication in the next issue. Also, please refer to our submission guidelines, if you are interested in submitting.
We host job listings and a dissertation index; please submit announcements for both to MTO.
All MTO volumes dating back to our first issue in 1993 can be accessed from the contents page at http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/issues.html. Thank you, as always, for your support of MTO - a Journal of the Society for Music Theory. It has been a pleasure and privilege to serve you for the past three years.
