music

music
—musicless, adj.
/myooh"zik/, n.
1. an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.
2. the tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line (melody) or multiple lines (harmony), and sounded or to be sounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both.
3. musical work or compositions for singing or playing.
4. the written or printed score of a musical composition.
5. such scores collectively.
6. any sweet, pleasing, or harmonious sounds or sound: the music of the waves.
7. appreciation of or responsiveness to musical sounds or harmonies: Music was in his very soul.
8. Fox Hunting. the cry of the hounds.
9. face the music, to meet, take, or accept the consequences of one's mistakes, actions, etc.: He's squandered his money and now he's got to face the music.
[1200-50; ME musike < L musica < Gk mousikè (téchne) (the art) of the Muse, fem. of mousikós, equiv. to Moûs(a) MUSE + -ikos -IC]

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I
Art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony.

Music most often implies sounds with distinct pitches that are arranged into melodies and organized into patterns of rhythm and metre. The melody will usually be in a certain key or mode, and in Western music it will often suggest harmony that may be made explicit as accompanying chords or counterpoint. Music is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. It is used for such varied social purposes as ritual, worship, coordination of movement, communication, and entertainment.
II
(as used in expressions)
Music Corporation of America
Music Television
feigned music

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▪ 1995

Introduction

CLASSICAL
      From "Encore! The Three Tenors" concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles to the firing of Myung-Whun Chung from the Paris National Opéra, from pianist Van Cliburn's ill-starred 60th-birthday concert tour to soprano Kathleen Battle's dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera (see BIOGRAPHIES (Battle, Kathleen )), the world of classical music scarcely lacked for headlines in 1994. There were happier developments, too, including the inauguration of Glyndebourne's opera house and Tanglewood's Seiji Ozawa Hall. Resignations from and appointments to major artistic posts also promised lively developments in years to come.

      The prize for spilled ink almost certainly went to the "Three Tenors" extravaganza, internationally telecast and issued in both audio and video formats (by the pop label Atlantic). Backed by palm trees, 15-m (50-ft) waterfalls, giant classical columns, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Opera Chorus, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras thrilled the masses (some of whom paid as much as $1,000 for seats) and gave critics plenty to huff about. At least it was not the sad affair that Van Cliburn's 17-city U.S. tour, with the Moscow Philharmonic, became. Having spent most of 16 years in hibernation, the pianist planned a triumphant comeback with two concerti he had been most associated with in happier days: the Tchaikovsky First and the Rachmaninoff Third. When the Rachmaninoff came unglued in a preview performance, it was dropped in favour of solo pieces, and even the Tchaikovsky only occasionally hinted at past glories.

      Just five years after Pierre Bergé had dismissed Daniel Barenboim as music director of the not-yet-open Bastille Opera and appointed dark horse Myung-Whun Chung, Chung himself got the ax from Bergé's successor, Hugues Gall. With the Paris Opéra losing more than $9 million a year, Gall wanted to renegotiate Chung's salary, set to reach $1.5 million by the year 2000; also at stake was control over artistic decisions. Dismissed during rehearsals for Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, Chung went to court and got a stay of execution; he was allowed to remain through the opening production, after which he left—with a buyout reportedly worth $1.3 million. Financial and political complications also figured strongly at the Rome Opera in the sackings of superintendent Giampaolo Cresci (who was replaced by Giorgio Vidusso) and artistic director Gian Carlo Menotti. Kathleen Battle's much-reported dismissal from the Metropolitan Opera came after years of reports of temperamental behaviour.

      Another relationship that went sour, although far less dramatically, was Franz Welser-Möst's with the London Philharmonic, but the announcement of his 1996 departure was tempered by his appointment as music director of the Zürich (Switz.) Opera, effective in 1995. Giuseppe Sinopoli and London's Philharmonia Orchestra also agreed to part ways, their relationship a casualty, in part, of years of savage notices in the press. Citing a serious financial crunch, Matthew Epstein resigned as general director of the Welsh National Opera. Elaine Padmore left the plucky Wexford (Ireland) Festival to devote herself to the Royal Danish Opera; her Wexford successor was to be Luigi Ferrari. Pittsburgh, Pa., was hit by two high-visibility resignations: Lorin Maazel's from the music directorship of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (effective in 1996) and Tito Capobianco's as general director of the Pittsburgh Opera (in 1997).

      There were two top-level appointments at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.: Placido Domingo's as artistic director of the Washington Opera (effective in 1996) and Leonard Slatkin's as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Mstislav Rostropovich (in 1996). Domingo was also named artistic adviser and principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera; Slatkin would leave the St. Louis (Mo.) Symphony Orchestra. Jukka-Pekka Saraste took up his duties as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as did Andrew Litton with the Dallas (Texas) Symphony Orchestra; Eiji Oue was named music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, succeeding Edo de Waart.

      In England, Glyndebourne's new 1,200-seat theatre, 400 seats larger than its predecessor, got good reviews for both looks and sound. So did the new Seiji Ozawa Hall, a 1,200-seat concert facility at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home in western Massachusetts. A fire destroyed the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, the largest and most prestigious opera house in Spain, but a rebuilding project was immediately announced. The Paris Opéra announced a plan to renovate the venerable Garnier Opera House to accommodate approximately a third of the company's performances, and the Santa Fe (N.M.) Opera unveiled plans to rebuild its hillside amphitheatre, roofing over the hitherto exposed middle section of seating.

      Awards included the Pulitzer Prize for Gunther Schuller's Of Reminiscences and Reflections (see BIOGRAPHIES (Schuller, Gunther )) and the Grawemeyer Award, from the University of Louisville, Ky., for Toru Takemitsu's Fantasma/Cantos. Noncompetitive performance awards went to pianists Ralf Gothoni (the Gilmore Artist Award, presented by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Mich.) and Garrick Ohlsson (the Avery Fisher Prize). Deaths included those of composers Lejaren Hiller (Hiller, Lejaren ) and Witold Lutoslawski (Lutoslawski, Witold ) (see OBITUARIES), conductor Norman Del Mar, pianists Artur Balsam, Rudolf Firkusny (see OBITUARIES (Firkusny, Rudolf )), and György Cziffra, musical philanthropist Avery Fisher, and pianist-comedian Donald Swann (see OBITUARIES (Swann, Donald Ibrahim )).

Opera.
      Germany and The Netherlands provided particularly fertile ground for new operas. Commissioned by Brussels' Théâtre de la Monnaie, Peter Schat's Symposium—based on the death of Tchaikovsky and the controversial theory that he committed suicide to avoid exposure as a homosexual—was premiered by the Netherlands Opera. The Holland Festival also saw the first performances of Guus Janssen's Noach, Guo Wenjing's Wolf Cub Village, and Xiao-Song Qua's Death of Oedipus. In Germany the Schwetzingen Festival offered the world premiere of Eckehard Mayer's Sansibar, a coproduction with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the fourth Munich Biennale included new operas by Tania Leon, Robert Zuidam, Paul Engel, Benedict Mason, Nikolai Horndorf, and Jörg Widman, the last for marionettes. Other world premieres included Rodion Shchedrin's Lolita (Royal Opera, Stockholm), Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert (English National Opera, followed by the Santa Fe Opera), Conrad Susa and Philip Littell's Dangerous Liaisons (San Francisco Opera), Dominick Argento's The Dream of Valentino (Washington Opera), Robert Moran's The Dracula Diary and Noa Ain's The Outcast (both Houston [Texas] Grand Opera), Bruce Saylor's Orpheus Descending (Lyric Opera of Chicago Center for American Artists), and Ilkka Kuusisto's Miss Julie (Vaasa Opera, Finland). A new Wagner Ring at the Bayreuth Festival—directed by Alfred Kirchner, designed by Rosalie, and conducted by James Levine—drew as many hisses as huzzahs.

      In addition to brand-new works and repertory chestnuts, a number of recent operas and works off the beaten path showed up around the world. Among them were Clementi's Carillon (La Scala, Milan), Dvorak's Dimitrij (Bavarian State Opera), Delibes's Lakmé (New York City Opera), Massenet's Hérodiade (San Francisco Opera), Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchei the Immortal and The Maid of Pskov (Kirov Opera, St. Petersburg), Rachmaninoff's Aleko and The Miserly Knight (Bolshoi Theater, Moscow), Rutland Boughton's The Immortal Hour (Juilliard Opera Center, New York City), Ingvar Lidholm's Ett Droemspel (Royal Opera, Stockholm), Hans Werner Henze's The Bassarids (Hamburg [Germany] State Opera), Aribert Reimann's Das Schloss (Deutsche Oper, Berlin), Philippe Boesmans' La Ronde (Chatelet, Paris) and Reigen (La Monnaie, Brussels), and Louis Andriessen's Rosa (Netherlands Opera). The Santa Fe Opera commissioned three new operas by American composers who had not previously essayed the form: David Lang, Tobias Picker, and Peter Lieberson.

Orchestras and Festivals.
      A series of major snowstorms early in the year played havoc with concert producers in the eastern United States. One storm made Philadelphia's Academy of Music inaccessible to many of the Philadelphia Orchestra's musicians, but with the soloists for the February 11 concert of Wagner opera excerpts housed in nearby hotels, music director Wolfgang Sawallisch decided to go ahead with the program. An audience of some 700 hardy souls was treated to the singing of soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Heikki Siukola, and bass René Pape, with the maestro accompanying at the piano.

      New concerti by living composers continued to figure prominently in orchestral programs. World premieres came from Krzysztof Penderecki (for clarinet, introduced by Sinfonia Varsovia at the Kissingen [Germany] Summer Festival), Rodion Shchedrin (for trumpet, Pittsburgh Symphony), John Adams (for violin, Minnesota Orchestra), Ned Rorem (English horn, New York Philharmonic), Richard Danielpour (for cello, San Francisco Symphony), and Christopher Rouse (for flute, Detroit Symphony). New second symphonies by Philip Glass and the late Stephen Albert were introduced by, respectively, the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic. The latter orchestra also gave the world premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Seventh Symphony, while the National Symphony gave the first North American performance of his Sixth, introduced on a 1993 Russian tour. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered major new works by Pierre Boulez (Notations V-VIII) and Elliott Carter (Partita). What might have seemed a passé medium, the oratorio, appeared to be alive and well to judge by new works by Edison Denisov (St. Matthew Passion, premiered at the Frankfurt [Germany] Festival), Paul Dessau (Haggada, Hamburg Music Festival), and Minas Alexiades (Viva la Vida, Frankfurt Festival).

      Claudio Abbado signaled the new, post-Karajan era at the Salzburg (Austria) Easter Festival with a spectacular postmodern production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. The Spoleto Festival USA, in Charleston, S.C., proved that it was quite capable of carrying on even after the contentious departure of founder Menotti. The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and the Aspen (Colo.) Festival honoured Schnittke's 60th birthday, but heart attacks kept the composer from attending. The Cardiff (Wales) Festival devoted attentions to works by female composers, while the Edinburgh Festival marked the centenary of Emmanuel Chabrier's death with stagings of L'Étoile and Le Roi malgré lui, plus a concert performance of the unfinished Briséïs.

Recordings.
      The record industry continued the trend toward huge boxed-set reissues of materials from its vaults. Without so much as an anniversary excuse, BMG came out with a 65-compact disc (CD) compilation of all of violinist Jascha Heifetz' RCA recordings, and Teldec issued a 60-CD repackaging of the pioneering period-instruments Bach cantata recordings of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt. From Koch Schwann came 24 double-disc releases of historic recordings from the Vienna State Opera. Philips produced a 21-CD Svyatoslav Richter compendium, and BMG honoured Pierre Monteux with a 15-CD collection. Among the most welcome of these megarepackagings was Deutsche Grammophon's (DG's) reissue of the Strauss opera recordings of Karl Böhm, whose collaborations with the composer lent a special authority to his interpretations.

      Gramophone magazine's Record of the Year prize went to Krystian Zimerman's DG traversal of the Debussy preludes. Other notable new recordings included a Berlioz Les Troyens from Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony (Decca/London), an extensive survey of Samuel Barber songs by Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson, with pianist John Browning (DG), and two more operas in Decca/London's "Entartete Musik" series: Berthold Goldschmidt's Der gewaltige Hahnrei and Viktor Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis. Among the most interesting books of the year were Frederic Spotts's exhaustively researched Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival and Humphrey Burton's Leonard Bernstein, the latter a more measured consideration than the earlier—and hotly controversial—Joan Peyser biography. The most remarkable music-related release of all may have been François Girard's inventive—but also surprisingly penetrating—movie, Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould. (SCOTT CANTRELL)

JAZZ
      In 1994 several pioneers of free improvisation were especially newsworthy. Anthony Braxton (see BIOGRAPHIES (Braxton, Anthony )) was one of two jazz artists to receive a MacArthur Foundation fellowship during the year. Only a fraction of his music had been documented on recordings, so the appearance of Composition No. 96 (Leo), played by an orchestra directed by Braxton, was welcome even if it was not a major work in his canon. What was indisputably major was Duo (London) 1993 (Leo), free improvisations that found Braxton and fellow saxophone innovator Evan Parker alternating intensity, lyricism, and sly humour in exhilarating interplay. In a companion CD, Trio (London) 1993 (Leo), Braxton and Parker were joined by trombone original Paul Rutherford.

      Parker, a British artist, rarely played in the United States, but when a New York radio station devoted an entire week to playing nothing but Parker recordings, in honour of his 50th birthday, he offered a three-day improvisation festival in the city, including duets with Americans such as Braxton, trumpeter Paul Smoker, and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, and then embarked on a brief U.S. tour. Meanwhile, Parker's new recordings multiplied, including Corner to Corner with John Stevens (Ogun) and Imaginary Values (Maya) with bassist Barry Guy and drummer Paul Lytton.

      The catalyst of the British free-improvisation scene was drummer John Stevens, who led a series of Spontaneous Music Ensembles ranging from duets to big bands; Stevens died in 1994, the year several of his early recordings, including Karyobin (Chronoscope), from 1968, were reissued. The most determinedly devoted of free improvisers, guitarist Derek Bailey, released the second volume of his Guitar Improvisations (Incus) and toured in the United States in 1994, including Chicago concerts where he duetted memorably with multiple saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell.

      The battle lines between young jazz revivalists and their more exploratory elders continued to be entrenched. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who increasingly wrote Ellington-like arrangements, introduced his extended tribute to African-American religious services, In This House, on This Morning, in concerts and on recording (Columbia), and the responses were typically enthusiastic or dismissive, depending on whether reviewers accepted Marsalis' own biases. Innovator Cecil Taylor, the most influential living jazz pianist, rented Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall for his 65th birthday concert, his first in New York City in two years; apart from its musical merits, the concert was an important symbolic gesture, since Taylor had been excluded from the official Jazz at Lincoln Center series, of which Marsalis was a founder. The most remarkable young lions to emerge in 1994 were from Los Angeles—the B Sharp Jazz Quartet, whose eponymous debut CD (Mama Foundation) introduced a sparkling hard-bop perspective and original repertoire.

      Like Braxton, saxophonist Ornette Coleman received a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1994 and, perhaps more remarkably, formed a jazz quartet with outstanding musicians Geri Allen (piano), Charnett Moffett (bass), and Denardo Coleman (drums). Coleman was not quite ready to abandon his two-decades-long preoccupation with his free jazz-rock Prime Time band, however, and at the San Francisco Jazz Festival he offered a multimedia concert with both groups. He also announced the formation of Harmolodic Records, a cooperative venture with Verve, to document works by himself as well as by other artists. It was a coup by Verve, which was observing its 50th anniversary and which held an all-star concert at Carnegie Hall to celebrate.

      The Louis Armstrong Archives, including music manuscripts and recordings, opened under the aegis of Queens College, New York. The collection was to be housed in a museum in Armstrong's home in Queens, and part of the collection was in a touring exhibit, "Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy," sponsored by the college and the Smithsonian Institution. While Delmark was reissuing a near-classic, Last Testament with trumpeter Bunk Johnson, who claimed to have taught Armstrong and who was a key figure in the 1940s traditional jazz revival, Jazzology offered 44 discs, including no fewer than eight Johnsons, of New Orleans jazz from the pioneering American Music recording series.

      For die-hard LP collectors, Blue Note rereleased 12 items from its 1960s catalog on limited-edition, heavy-duty LPs, and Michael Cuscuna's mail-order Mosaic label offered boxed sets by Benny Goodman's 1944-55 small groups, Serge Chaloff (the finest bop baritone saxophonist), Eddie Condon, and Jimmy Smith, among others, on LP as well as CD. There were boxed CD sets by two seminal instrumentalists, guitarist Django Reinhardt (Blue Note), including his 1930s Hot Club of France Quintet masterpieces, and pianist Bud Powell (Blue Note, Verve), including his early 1950s classics. Other recordings of note in 1994 included Peter Brötzmann's tribute to Albert Ayler, Die like a Dog (FMP); Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble in South Side Street Songs (Silkheart); Damon Short's All of the Above (Southport); and Calling All Mothers (Quinnah) by the NRG Ensemble. New issues recorded years earlier attracted special attention: Randy Weston Sextet, Monterey '66 (Verve); Charlie Haden, The Montreal Tapes (Verve); and Fred Anderson-Steve McCall, Vintage Duets (Okka Disk).

      Live jazz in 1994 included festivals ranging from the daringly programmed Vancouver (B.C.) Jazz Festival to New York City's cautious, conservative JVC Jazz Festival, where rival repertory bands, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, held a concert together. In Quebec the Victoriaville new music festival returned after a year's absence, and the Montreal Jazz Festival celebrated its 15th year with 350 concerts in 12 days. The Istanbul Jazz Festival went on in the face of fierce protests by Kurdish separatists and Islamic fundamentalists and included Okay Temiz' Magnetic Band, which joined jazz to traditional Turkish instruments and rhythms.

      The year's deaths included critic Leonard Feather, bandleader and singer Cab Calloway (Calloway, Cab ), composer Antônio Carlos Jobim (Jobim, Antonio Carlos ), singer Carmen McRae (McRae, Carmen ), trumpeter Red Rodney (Rodney, Red ), and guitarist Joe Pass (Pass, Joe ). (See OBITUARIES.) Among others who died were longtime Ellington clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton, drummer Connie Kay, trumpeter Max Kaminsky, guitarist Sonny Sharrock, bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and West Coast bandleader Shorty Rogers. (JOHN LITWEILER)

POPULAR
      Major pop artists Pink Floyd, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, and Billy Joel and Elton John (together) undertook tours in 1994, restoring the summer concert business to prosperity after several slow years. Pink Floyd toured in support of The Division Bell, the group's first studio album in seven years. Dramatic, sweeping, and laced with the sonorous guitar work of front man David Gilmour, the album received a warm welcome from fans, who bought 465,000 copies in its first week of release. The Rolling Stones also had a new album, Voodoo Lounge, ready for the public as they began their world tour. The album found the Stones in good form, relying again on the blues-influenced guitar work of Keith Richards and Ron Wood and the inimitable vocals of Mick Jagger. The album never topped the U.S. pop chart, however, but was held at number two by the motion-picture soundtrack of the Walt Disney film The Lion King. With music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice, and three performances by John, the Disney album stayed at the top of the pop charts for nine weeks before yielding to the second album by the Philadelphia-based rhythm-and-blues quartet Boyz II Men. This group's success signaled the ongoing popularity of vocal-harmony groups in the rhythm-and-blues field.

      The ballad "I Swear" (written by Nashville songwriters and a hit earlier for country singer John Michael Montgomery) was recorded by All-4-One, another harmony quartet, and stayed at number one on the pop charts for 11 weeks during the summer, tying Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel"/"Hound Dog" as the third most successful single of the rock era. R. Kelly and Babyface dominated rhythm and blues during the year, Kelly with his lascivious "Bump n' Grind," Babyface with the sultry ballad "I'll Make Love to You," written and produced for Boyz II Men.

      Soundgarden followed fellow Seattle, Wash., rock bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam (see BIOGRAPHIES (Pearl Jam )), and Alice in Chains to the top of the pop album chart with Superunknown, the band's fourth album. The thriving Seattle rock scene was dealt a severe blow, however, when Kurt Cobain (see OBITUARIES (Cobain, Kurt )), front man and creative force for Nirvana, died in April of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Pearl Jam staged a hugely successful tour early in 1994, playing songs from Vs., their album released in late 1993. The band canceled plans for a summer tour when it became involved in a dispute over ticket prices and the service charges added by a national ticketing corporation.

      Nine Inch Nails—whose rock music had been described as industrial because it featured blasts of noise similar to those heard in foundries and factories—emerged from Woodstock '94 with a higher profile. The band members' spontaneous decision to cover themselves in mud, as many in the rain-soaked audience had done already, and the band's aggressive, futuristic stage show, in which front man Trent Reznor destroyed musical instruments and caromed about the stage, made Nine Inch Nails the most memorable performers of the highly touted festival. More than 500,000 attended the event in upstate New York marking the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival. Among the artists who performed were veterans Joe Cocker, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, and Crosby, Stills & Nash, along with newer acts Metallica, Porno for Pyros, Rollins Band, Candlebox, and Green Day.

      The San Francisco Bay-area punk-pop trio Green Day had a major-label debut album, Dookie, that sold more than two million copies and inspired a resurgence of punk bands. Driven by guitars and featuring edgy, disenchanted lyrics, Green Day also played throughout the summer at the alternative Lollapalooza festival. The Los Angeles-based record label Epitaph helped revitalize the punk movement with its roster of popular punk bands, including Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and Rancid. Eric Clapton's collection of blues covers, From the Cradle, topped the pop charts, becoming the first blues album ever to reach the number one spot. Clapton included such favourites as Elmore James's "It Hurts Me Too" and Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man." R.E.M., in recent years featuring a more acoustic sound, returned to hard-edged power pop with Monster. Among artists rising to prominence for the first time during 1994 were the angst-ridden, roots-oriented Counting Crows, a Berkeley, Calif., outfit; Seattle-based hard rockers Candlebox; Los Angeles-based session regular and singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow; and forthright hip-hop-influenced singer Me'Shell NdegéOcello.

      In country music, Tim McGraw, a Louisiana native and son of former major league baseball star Tug McGraw, had the year's top-selling album, Not a Moment Too Soon. McGraw's hard country inflection and traditional instrumentation yielded the hits "Indian Outlaw," "Don't Take the Girl," and "Down on the Farm." Garth Brooks toured Australia and Europe but for the first time in his career did not release a new album during the year. The McDonald's restaurant chain sold two million copies of a collection of Brooks's earlier recordings. Johnny Cash received widespread critical acclaim for American Recordings, a new album featuring only Cash and his guitar.

      Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees included Rod Stewart, Duane Eddy, the Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, Elton John, the Animals, the Band, and John Lennon for his post-Beatles work. Merle Haggard was chosen for the Country Music Hall of Fame. (JAY ORR)

      In Britain, as in the United States, the fragmentation of pop continued, and the diversity of musical styles could be judged from the nominees for the year's Mercury Prize, which had become the accepted barometer of British (and Irish) musical trends. In purely economic terms, the British pop industry continued to be dominated by dance music, particularly the electronics- and synthesizer-dominated house and techno styles that provided the soundtracks at discos and the controversial mass dance gatherings known as “rave” parties. The success of Manchester's M People and their Elegant Slumming album, the winner of the year's Mercury, was a reflection of the continued importance of dance music. The more soulful side of the new techno-pop was reflected by the success of Massive Attack, whose first album in three years, Protection, was a subtle blend of soul, funk, jazz, and reggae, with cool, sophisticated vocals from the Nigerian singer Nicollete. It was also an excellent year for Massive Attack's former singer, Shara Nelson, now a soloist specializing in atmospheric soulful ballads.

      The influence of guitar-based pop—the predominant form from the 1960s to the 1980s—persisted, thanks to a handful of bands such as Oasis, Suede, and Blur. Blur's distinctively English album Parklife was a best-seller that revived memories of the Kinks and the Small Faces. Paul Weller, the onetime leader of punk-era heroes the Jam and then the more sophisticated Style Council, helped the new guitar-rock revival along with his Wild Wood and Live Wood albums, which echoed such 1960s and '70s heroes as Van Morrison and Traffic.

      Veterans who had opted for lengthy periods of retirement returned in 1994 to find that their audience had not deserted them. Bryan Ferry produced a long-awaited selection of new songs on his Mamouna album, which was praised for sounding like his best latter-day work with Roxy Music—not that surprising since Ferry was helped by former Roxy members Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera. Other comebacks included Traffic, now reduced to just Steve Winwood (on keyboards) and Jim Capaldi (percussion) from the original band. Their new album, Far from Home, was less well received than their live shows, which included the Traffic trademark of extended improvised solos on almost every song. Those nostalgic for British pop from a later era applauded Elvis Costello's decision to team up once again with his original backing band, the Attractions. Their comeback album, Brutal Youth, marked Costello's return to snappy, clever pop styles and provided a stark contrast to his previous set, which had been recorded with a string quartet.

      It was another excellent year for African music. South Africa's first multiracial elections and Nelson Mandela's election as president provided the opportunity for celebratory concerts inside and outside the country. The most ambitious such event, held in London, was the biggest-ever gathering of black South African musicians. It included Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a major success across Africa, reggae singer Lucky Dube, and those veterans of South Africa jazz and pop Hugh Masekela and his former wife, Miriam Makeba. The continent's best-known female singer after Makeba was Angelique Kidjo, born in Benin but living in Paris. Her new album, Aye, showed how international some African music had become. It was partly recorded in Minneapolis, Minn., with production work from Prince's engineer, and partly in London and Paris, and it succeeded because the Western funk and classy production work never swamped her majestic singing and energetic self-written songs.

      Outstanding albums also originated in Third World trouble spots. Cecile Kayirebwa's Rwanda—recorded in exile—was a disconcertingly charming, relaxed set that provided a reminder of the beauty of the central African state before it was torn apart by civil war and genocide. Khaled's N'ssi—also recorded in exile—was a rousing demonstration of rai music, the Algerian pop style still hated by the country's fundamentalists (who murdered a rival rai star during the year). From Haiti came Boukman Eksperyans with Kalfou Danjere, an album that mixed harmonic chanting and echoes of African, blues and reggae styles with a political message. This “voodoo/political” band, which supported Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was none too popular with the country's military rulers, who threatened the band and banned its music from the radio. (ROBIN DENSELOW)

      See also Dance ; Motion Pictures ; Television and Radio ; Theatre.

▪ 1994

Introduction

Classical.
      Amid a continuing economic slowdown in 1993, there was no shortage of furrowed brows among managers of orchestras and opera companies. What was surprising was the relatively small number of outright foldings and cancellations. Covent Garden postponed a projected new production of Fromental Halévy's La Juive, substituting eight performances of La Bohème, and La Monnaie in Brussels postponed Judith Weir's Missa e combattimento; frustrated at cancellation of plans for a new home for the Canadian Opera Company, Brian Dickie resigned as the Toronto company's general director. However, amid widespread worry about its fiscal viability, the New York City Opera put on a happy face for its 50th birthday, presenting a festival of three world premieres on succeeding nights—Ezra Laderman's Marilyn (based on the life of Marilyn Monroe), Lukas Foss's Griffelkin, and Hugo Weisgall's Esther. In both the U.K. and the U.S. a steady stream of major new orchestral works had first performances, and despite growing talk of a glut in the recordings market, each month brought a veritable flood of new releases, reissues, and repackagings.

      It was not a big year for anniversaries. The centenary of Tchaikovsky's death and the 50th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's might have made more of a splash if both composers had not already been so secure in the performing repertory. The Grieg sesquicentenary was marked by a 24-disc recorded survey of the composer's output on the Victoria label, and Gramophone magazine gave its Record of the Year award to a Grieg recital by mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. The two record labels most closely associated with the late Leonard Bernstein—Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon—observed his 75th birthday with a torrent of reissues; perhaps the most important were video releases of Bernstein's justly renowned "Young People's Concerts." The 80th anniversary of Benjamin Britten's birth occasioned a month-long Britten Festival in London, directed by Mstislav Rostropovich, and publication of a revelatory biography by Humphrey Carpenter.

      A number of significant conductorial appointments were announced: Jukka-Pekka Saraste to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (effective in 1994), Michael Tilson Thomas to the San Francisco Symphony (1995), Sir Colin Davis to the London Symphony (1995, succeeding Tilson Thomas), Charles Dutoit to the NHK Orchestra in Tokyo (1996), and Vjekoslav Sutej to the Houston (Texas) Grand Opera (1994). In addition, Antonio de Almeida took over as music director of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Sian Edwards at the English National Opera, and Graeme Jenkins as artistic director of the Dallas (Texas) Opera. Among notable departures were those of Eduardo Mata from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Amelia Friedman from the Bath (England) Festival, and John Williams from the Boston Pops. Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau retired from performing, and mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig began a series of farewell recitals.

      The Pulitzer Prize for music went to Christopher Rouse's trombone concerto, and the Grawemeyer Award (presented by the University of Louisville, Ky.) to Karel Husa for his cello concerto. Rostropovich was among the winners of the 1993 Japanese Praemium Imperiale awards for lifetime achievement in the arts. Winners of the three top prizes in the Van Cliburn piano competition were Simone Pedroni (Italy), Valery Kuleshov (Russia), and Christopher Taylor (U.S.). First prize in the 10th Robert Casadesus piano competition went to Amir Katz from Israel.

      Deaths included those of conductors Erich Leinsdorf (Leinsdorf, Erich ) and Maurice Abravanel (Abravanel, Maurice ), violinist-conductor Alexander Schneider (Schneider, Alexander ), pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski (Horszowski, Mieczyslaw ) (at age 100), sopranos Arleen Auger (Auger, Arleen ) and Lucia Popp (Popp, Lucia ), mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos (Troyanos, Tatiana ), contralto Marian Anderson (Anderson, Marian ), and bass Boris Christoff (Christoff, Boris ). (See OBITUARIES.) Twenty years after the death of Czech conductor Karel Ancerl, his remains were transported from Toronto to Visehrad Cemetery in his native land.

Opera.
      The Finnish National Opera opened a new house in Helsinki, and the Opéra de Lyon (France) inaugurated a bold new home set within and above the walls of an 1831 theatre. With Glyndebourne's theatre under construction, the British company's productions were transferred to the Royal Festival Hall in London and the new Symphony Hall in Birmingham. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, one of the last holdouts against above-the-stage projections of translations, announced that a system of seat-back video screens would be installed to serve the same purpose.

      In addition to the three new operas presented by New York City Opera—actually, Foss's was a revision of a work dating to 1955—world premieres included Michael Berkeley's Baa Baa Black Sheep (Cheltenham [England] Festival), Jonathan Harvey's Inquest of Love (English National Opera), Kevin Volans' The Man Who Strides the Wind and Julian Grant's A Family Affair (both by the English National Opera's Contemporary Opera Studio), Wilfried Hiller's Der Rattenfänger (Dortmund [Germany] Opera), Libby Larsen's Mrs. Dalloway (Lyric Opera, Cleveland, Ohio), and Daron Hagen's Shining Brow (Madison [Wis.] Opera). The Cave, a new "documentary video music theatre" work by Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot, was premiered at the Vienna Festival, after which it traveled to Berlin, Amsterdam, and New York City. In England the BBC's Channel 4 inaugurated a series of specially commissioned television operas with Orlando Gough's The Empress of Newfoundland, Peter Blagvad's Camera, and Stewart Copeland's Horse Opera. A hybrid form, the play with incidental music, was revived with a London performance of Euripides' The Bacchae, with music by Iannis Xenakis.

      Karlheinz Stockhausen's Tuesday of Light was given its first staged performance by the Leipzig (Germany) Opera, and the Santa Fe (N.M.) Opera presented the first professional U.S. stagings of Kurt Weill's The Protagonist and The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken. Debussy's early and incomplete Rodrigue et Chimène was orchestrated by Edison Denisov and presented by the Opéra de Lyon. The same composer's Pelléas et Mélisande was mounted in unusual new productions by the opera companies of Amsterdam and Seattle (Wash.), the former directed by Peter Sellars and set in a villa-fortress in California, the latter with decor by the glass artist Dale Chihuly.

      Verdi's Stiffelio was revived at Covent Garden (in an Elijah Moshinsky production set in Montana) and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (using the newly published critical edition). Other notable revivals included Jean-Baptiste Lully's Phaëton (Opéra de Lyon), Gounod's Philémon et Baucis (Teatro Coccia, Novarra, Italy), Spohr's Faust (Bielefeld, Germany), Alexander Zemlinsky's The Birthday of the Infanta (Spoleto Festival, Charleston, S.C.), and Sir Michael Tippett's Midsummer Marriage (New York City Opera). The Lyric Opera of Chicago inaugurated a new Ring, directed by August Everding and designed by John Conklin, with Zubin Mehta conducting. The young Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli caused quite a stir in her stage debut in the U.S., in a Houston (Texas) Grand Opera production of Rossini's Barber of Seville (see BIOGRAPHIES (Bartoli, Cecilia )).

Orchestras.
      For all the long-standing predictions of the imminent demise of the symphony, at least three major essays in the form had high-profile premieres: Alfred Schnittke's Sixth (by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., on tour in Moscow), Witold Lutoslawski's Fourth (by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with the composer conducting), and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Third (by the New York Philharmonic). Other notable premieres included Peter Lieberson's viola concerto (Toronto Symphony Orchestra), Husa's violin concerto (New York Philharmonic), Geoffrey Burgon's trumpet concerto (City of London Festival), Deborah Mollison's violin concerto (New London Orchestra), John Adams' chamber symphony (The Hague), and Robin Holloway's Second Concerto for Orchestra (BBC Symphony Orchestra, London). The tone poem seemed very much alive and well, too, with new contributions by Anthony Powers (Terrain, introduced by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra), York Höller (Aura, Chicago Symphony Orchestra), John Casken (Darting the Skiff, Northern Sinfonia at Cheltenham), and Shulamit Ran (Legends, Chicago). Major new works for chorus and orchestra included Requiem for the Victims of the Mafia, a collective work by seven young Italian composers (Marco Tutino, Lorenzo Ferrero, Carol Galante, Paolo Arcà, Matteo D'Amico, Giovanni Sollima, and Marco Betta) premiered at Palermo Cathedral, and in England the octogenarian George Lloyd's Symphonic Mass (Brighton Festival) and Dmitry Smirnov's A Song of Liberty (Leeds Festival).

      A topic of much discussion—and controversy—among orchestra professionals and critics in the U.S. was a study by the American Symphony Orchestra League. Addressing long-standing problems of graying audiences and shaky fiscal conditions, it advocated a rejection of traditional, European-based models in favour of new and distinctively American approaches to programming and promotion.

Festivals.
      The Edinburgh Festival featured the young Scottish composer James MacMillan, with a schedule including first performances of his trumpet concerto, Epiclesis, and two music-theatre works, Tourist Variations and Visitatio Sepulchri. The Venice Biennale turned its attention to Luigi Nono; the Helsinki Biennale, to Lutoslawski. A Czech Festival at London's South Bank Centre included two operas by composers incarcerated at the Nazi concentration camp at Theresienstadt (now Terezin)—Viktor Ullman's The Emperor of Atlantis and Hans Krasa's Brundibar. Among the features of the Vienna Festival was a series of concerts devoted to music dating from the year 1913; it opened with a re-creation of the notorious "scandal concert" given by Arnold Schoenberg in March of that year, including works of Mahler, Zemlinsky, Webern, and Berg as well as Schoenberg's own Chamber Symphony. With the guidance of composer Bright Sheng, the San Francisco Symphony mounted a "Wet Ink" festival of recent music, with a special focus on composers of the Pacific Rim. In London the Royal Academy of Music presented a five-day festival of works by 57 living British composers who had studied at the institution; among them were more than 50 world premieres. Toronto mounted a huge international choral festival, called "The Joy of Singing." Finally, the little town of Spillville, Iowa, marked the 100th anniversary of Antonin Dvorak's summer sojourn there with its own Dvorak festival.

Recordings.
      Decca (London) inaugurated an Entartete Musik series, devoted to works by composers who ran afoul of Adolf Hitler. The first two releases were devoted to long-forgotten operas—Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane and Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf. A parallel series of recordings on the Channel Classics label began to explore smaller-scale works by other composers of the musical diaspora. One of the more interesting recent developments in the record industry was a prolific reissuing of prestereo recordings, even going back to acoustic recordings from early in the century. With new techniques of digital remastering, even some quite aged performances came up sounding surprisingly fresh. EMI completed a three-volume, nine-CD reissue of all of Edward Elgar's electrical recordings, revelatory performances quite unlike the norm today and many of them sounding astonishingly good. BMG marked the 50th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's death with a boxed 10-CD reissue of all his recorded performances, as both pianist and composer. Such recordings, newly refurbished, together with Robert Philip's book Early Recordings and Musical Style (1992), deserve to spark major reconsideration of present-day performance practices in music from earlier years in the 20th century. Pearl weighed in with four volumes devoted to "Singers of Imperial Russia," another prizewinner in the annual Gramophone magazine awards. Among recent "authenticist" recordings the most interesting was surely John Eliot Gardiner's period-instruments account of the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, recorded by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in the Paris Conservatoire hall where it was first performed. The same forces also recorded Berlioz' recently rediscovered Messe solennelle and Verdi's Quattro pezzi sacri. But the most astonishing success in the classical record industry continued to be an Elektra Nonesuch release of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3; by the end of the year it had sold more than 600,000 copies worldwide and reached number six even on the British pop-music charts. (See BIOGRAPHIES.)

SCOTT CANTRELL

Jazz.
      The divisions between repertory and neoclassic, or revival, jazz on the one hand and the more exploratory kinds of jazz on the other continued to trouble the American jazz community during 1993. When early in the year Lincoln Center presented the New York City Ballet in Jazz, choreographed by Peter Martins, much of the acclaim for the work went to its music, which was composed by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and played by his 11-piece band. During the summer the third annual Jazz at Lincoln Center series began, with Marsalis returning as artistic director; his "Jazz for Young People" programs; concerts of new works commissioned from Marsalis, pianists Marcus Roberts and Geri Allen, and trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard; and a 30-city tour by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, directed by Roberts, were among the offerings. Since most of those commissioned to compose for the series were protégés or associates of Marsalis, charges of narrowness of focus erupted.

      The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., began a three-and-a-half-year project with a concert series of Duke Ellington's works, played by the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, and an Ellington film festival, along with an exhibit portraying Ellington's life with interactive videos that opened in New York and was set to tour other American cities. A Broadway production of William Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, with Ellington's incidental music, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater's performances of The River and The Mooch, also with Ellington's music, and a concert of his orchestral works by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra with the Mercer Ellington band were part of the celebration. The Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, which in the 1990s emerged as a leading supporter of jazz, aided the events.

      Meanwhile, there was no comparable forum for the works of more modern-styled jazz composers. The Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie presented new compositions by German composers and Art Ensemble members in concerts in Germany, and in the U.S. the Brooklyn Philharmonic, directed by Dennis Russell Davis and with drum soloist Max Roach, performed Mix for Orchestra by Henry Threadgill. Apart from the musical qualities of the performances, they were reminders that these composers and others, such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, and Ornette Coleman (see BIOGRAPHIES (Coleman, Ornette )), had created further large-scale orchestral works that had been neither recorded nor performed in concert since their premieres. Although a few important composers managed to have their works performed by re-forming big bands, the need remained for repertory bands that could meet the challenges of the large body of music by jazz composers who incorporated the rhythmic-harmonic-sonic discoveries of free jazz.

      Jazz festivals hardly abated in 1993, despite the erratic global economy. Issues of artistic control and financing made almost as much news as the music at the Chicago Jazz Festival, while the important new music festival at Victoria-ville, Que., took a hiatus. The nine-day Vancouver, B.C., festival became North America's largest new music event, with musicians from as far away as Australia and Germany. Despite alarms over continued government funding, the Berlin Jazz Festival continued to present a variety of jazz, while its adjunct, the Total Music Meeting, concentrated on free improvisation. At the Verona, Italy, festival the 1960s Experimental Band, including the Art Ensemble, Braxton, Threadgill, and other ex-Chicagoans, held a reunion, with new music composed by the band's leader-founder Abrams.

      With the pace of traditional and swing reissues slowing, the rerelease of postwar jazz albums on CD was newsworthy; they included 100 titles from the Savoy label, including 1940s Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro masterpieces, and the ESP-Disk catalog from the 1960s, including masterpieces by Coleman and Albert Ayler. The discovery of previously unheard music was crucial in the 1957 Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane At the Five Spot (Blue Note); Beauty Is a Rare Thing (Rhino/Atlantic), a five-CD set of Coleman's 1959-61 classics plus previously unissued tracks; and The Art Ensemble 1967/68 (Nessa), a five-CD set of the earliest and in many ways best work by the Art Ensemble of Chicago players. Among notable new recordings were It's Got to Be Funky (Columbia), Horace Silver's first album in a decade; Dance with the Ancestors (Chameleon) by the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble; Touchin' on Trane (FMP) by Charles Gayle, William Parker, and Rashied Ali; the Globe Unity Orchestra's 20th Anniversary (FMP), from 1986; and Benny Carter's Legends (MusicMasters). Two valuable artists who had died the previous year had their final recording projects issued in 1993: multisaxophonist Charles Tyler's Mid Western Drifter (Adda) and Folly Fun Music Magic (Adda) and Hal Russell's solo Hal's Bells (ECM) and The Hal Russell Story (ECM), with his NRG Ensemble.

      While the arrivals of such young musicians as saxophonists James Carter, Joshua Redman, and Eric Alexander were impressive, the loss of important older musicians in 1993 was keenly felt, including bandleader Bob Crosby (Crosby, George Robert ), blues-gospel singer-songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey (Dorsey, Thomas Andrew ) (Georgia Tom), pianist-bandleader Art Hodes (Hodes, Art W. ), Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer Mario Bauza, pianist Kenny Drew (Drew, Kenny ), tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper, and singer Billy Eckstine (Eckstine, William Clarence ). Sun Ra , who had maintained his Arkestra for four decades, died during the year, and tenor saxophonist John Gilmore announced plans to continue the band, playing Ra's many compositions. The most notable artist to die in 1993 was Dizzy Gillespie (Gillespie, John Birks ), trumpeter and bandleader, who had been a pioneer of bebop, in small groups with alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and in the big band he formed in the 1940s. (See OBITUARIES.)

      Especially valuable among the year's books were the biography Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington by John Edward Hasse and The Duke Ellington Reader, an anthology edited by Mark Tucker.

JOHN LITWEILER

Popular.
      In 1993 popular music continued to search for new directions, often in contradictory ways, as some musicians experimented with the latest computerized technology while others favoured returning to acoustic styles. Once again, it was established artists who tended to dominate the music business.

      The most startling exponents of the high-tech approach were the Irish band U2 (see BIOGRAPHIES (u2 )), now widely accepted as the most successful rock band of the late 1980s and the '90s. They toured extensively during 1993, and their new album, Zooropa, which was in some ways a spin-off from their best-seller of the previous year, Achtung Baby, showed the band continuing to experiment and even improvise, with unexpected results. The album reflected their current fascination with the theme of technology and information saturation, and the opening track had lyrics that consisted of a string of advertising slogans. During some concerts they telephoned politicians from the stage or used live satellite links so that singer Bono could talk directly to victims of starvation and fighting in the besieged Bosnian city of Sarajevo—a device that some found moving and others regarded as exploitation.

      Peter Gabriel, on tour for the first time in six years, was another established artist mixing music and technology in a new way. His live shows used high-tech devices, from trees that appeared to grow onstage to a miniature camera, strapped to his head, that transmitted close-ups of his face onto a screen behind the stage. Gabriel revealed plans to build a "music theme park" in Barcelona, Spain. It consisted of a trailer that housed a video screen and seats "programmed to dance," moving in time with the music and the images on the screen. At the same time he was promoting such high-tech entertainment, Gabriel was also helping to encourage music from the Third World through the WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance) organization. The effort started in Britain in 1982 but was now launched in North America with a series of concerts at which Gabriel performed alongside African, Asian, and Latin-American artists, many of whom recorded for his Real World label.

      The widening interest in global folk styles was matched by a move to more acoustic styles by some rock artists. The MTV channel promoted a series of "Unplugged" concerts, which led to a batch of successful albums following the initial triumph of Eric Clapton's acoustic debut. Artists from Rod Stewart to 10,000 Maniacs recorded for the series, but the best was by the veteran star Neil Young, whose career had spanned everything from folk-country to hard rock. He continued the gentler approach shown on his Harvest Moon with treatment of such old favourites as "Like a Hurricane." Young was just one of the pop music old guard to prove that age did not matter much in the 1990s music market. Mick Jagger, singer with the Rolling Stones, celebrated his 50th birthday with the release of his best solo album to date, Wandering Spirit, that showed that neither his image nor musical style had changed drastically during his 30-year career.

      Another veteran who took advantage of the continuing market for nostalgia was Lou Reed, who joined forces once again with John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker for the most unexpected reunion of the year, the return of the Velvet Underground. When the band first played together in New York in the late 1960s, they never reached a mass audience. Only when they split up did their raw, energetic style and bleak lyrics begin to make a profound impact on other musicians, and they began to acquire legendary status. It was appropriate that David Bowie, who was both influenced by the Velvet Underground and largely responsible for their posthumous fame, also made a comeback during the year. His Black Tie White Noise album, which dealt in part with his marriage to the Somali model Iman, was coproduced by Nile Rodgers and was his most successful recording in 10 years.

      The old boys of rock still held a powerful influence, but there were new contenders. In Britain the most successful new band of the year, Suede, showed that the influence of Bowie still continued, while in the U.S. the continuing success of Nirvana showed how mainstream rock had been influenced by the noisy excesses of the hard-core movement. This three-piece band from Seattle, Wash., mixed melodic pop with sonic overkill and became the leaders of the grunge movement, with influence extending to films and fashion. The continuing importance of Seattle in the new rock scene (compared by some to the role of Liverpool in the 1960s) was shown by the success of another local band, Pearl Jam, whose debut album, Ten, outsold Nirvana's Nevermind and who released a best-selling second album during the autumn. Meanwhile, megastar Michael Jackson was in seclusion after accusations of child molestation and consequent nervousness on the part of his corporate sponsors and recording companies.

      In the mainstream pop field the best newcomers ranged from the Californian girl group 4 Non Blondes, with their well-crafted bluesy, quirky songs, to the European dance material of Ace of Base, whose Happy Nation album showed that they could be the 1990s answer to Abba. Reggae also made a comeback during the year, thanks to the continuing success of Britain's UB40, with their best-selling Promises and Lies album, and the international success of Jamaican artists like Shabba Ranks and Chaka Demus and Pliers, who had hits with their reggae-soul fusions "Tease Me" and "She Don't Let Nobody." The new reggae revival even spread to Africa; the most successful South African artist of the year was Lucky Dube, whose style was largely influenced by Bob Marley.

ROBIN DENSELOW
      See also Dance ; Motion Pictures ; Television and Radio ; Theatre .

      This updates the article music, history of (music, Western).

* * *

Introduction

      art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony.

      Both the simple folk song and the complex electronic composition belong to the same activity, music. Both are humanly engineered; both are conceptual and auditory, and these factors have been present in music of all styles and in all periods of history, Eastern and Western.

      Music is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human society. Modern music is heard in a bewildering profusion of styles, many of them contemporary, others engendered in past eras. Music is a protean art; it lends itself easily to alliances with words, as in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout history, music has been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion. Popular culture has consistently exploited these possibilities, most conspicuously today by means of radio, film, television, and the musical theatre. The implications of the uses of music in psychotherapy, geriatrics, and advertising testify to a faith in its power to affect human behaviour. Publications and recordings have effectively internationalized music in its most significant, as well as its most trivial, manifestations. Beyond all this, the teaching of music in primary and secondary schools has now attained virtually worldwide acceptance.

      But the prevalence of music is nothing new, and its human importance has often been acknowledged. What seems curious is that, despite the universality of the art, no one until recent times has argued for its necessity. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus explicitly denied any fundamental need for music: “For it was not necessity that separated it off, but it arose from the existing superfluity.” The view that music and the other arts are mere graces is still widespread, although the growth of psychological understanding of play and other symbolic activities has begun to weaken this tenacious belief.

      Music is treated in a number of articles. For the history of music in different regions, see music, African (African music); music and dance, Oceanic; music, Western; arts, Central Asian (Central Asian arts); arts, East Asian; arts, Islamic (Islamic arts); arts, Native American (Native American music); arts, South Asian (South Asian arts); and arts, Southeast Asian (Southeast Asian arts). Folk music is covered within folk art (folk music). Other aspects of music are treated in counterpoint, harmony, instrumentation, mode, musical criticism, musical composition, musical performance, music recording, musical sound, musical notation, rhythm, scale, and tuning and temperament. See also such articles as blues, chamber music, choral music, concerto, electronic music, fugue, jazz, opera, rhythm and blues, rock, rock and roll, symphony, sonata, theatre music, and vocal music. Musical instruments are treated in electronic instrument, keyboard instrument, percussion instrument, stringed instrument, and wind instrument, as well as in separate articles on individual instruments, such as clarinet, drum, guitar, piano, and theremin.

Historical conceptions
      Music is everywhere to be heard. But what is music? Commentators have spoken of “the relationship of music to the human senses and intellect,” thus affirming a world of human discourse as the necessary setting for the art. A definition of music itself will take longer. As Aristotle said, “It is not easy to determine the nature of music or why anyone should have a knowledge of it.”

      Early in the 20th century, it was regarded as a commonplace that a musical tone was characterized by the regularity of its vibrations; this uniformity gave it a fixed pitch and distinguished its sounds from “noise.” Although the view may be supported by traditional music, it would be an unacceptable yardstick in the latter half of the 20th century, when “noise” itself may be treated as an element in composition, to say nothing of the random sounds incorporated (without prior knowledge of what they will be) by modern composers, such as the American John Cage, and others in works having aleatory (chance) or impromptu features. Tone, moreover, is only one component in music, others being rhythm, timbre (tone colour), and texture. Electronic machinery has enabled some composers to create works in which the traditional role of the interpreter is abolished and to record, directly on tape, sounds that were formerly beyond human ability to produce, if not to imagine.

The non-Western world
      From historical accounts, it is clear that the power to move men has always been attributed to music; its ecstatic possibilities have been recognized in all cultures and have usually been admitted in practice under particular conditions, sometimes stringent ones. In the civilization of India, music was put into the service of religion from earliest times; Vedic hymns stand at the beginning of the record. As the art developed over many centuries into a music of profound melodic and rhythmic intricacy, the discipline of a religious text or the guideline of a story determined the structure. Even today the narrator is central in most performances of Indian music, and the virtuosity of a skillful singer rivals that of the instrumentalists. There is very little concept of vocal or instrumental idiom in the Western sense. The vertical dimension of chord structure—that is, the effects created by sounding tones simultaneously—has never been developed in South Asian music; the divisions of an octave (intervals) are more numerous than in Western music, and melodic complexity in Oriental music goes far beyond that of Western practice. Moreover, an element of improvisation is retained that is vital to the success of a performance. The spontaneous imitation carried on between an instrumentalist and narrator, against the insistent rhythmic subtleties of the drums, can be a source of the greatest excitement, which in large measure is because of the faithful adherence to the rigid rules that govern the rendition of ragas—the ancient melodic patterns of Indian music.

      Chinese music (arts, East Asian), like the music of India, has traditionally been an adjunct to ceremony or narrative. Confucius (551–479 BC) assigned an important place to music in the service of a well-ordered moral universe. He saw music and government as reflecting one another and believed that only the superior man who can understand music is equipped to govern. Music, he thought, reveals character through the six emotions that it can portray: sorrow, satisfaction, joy, anger, piety, love. According to Confucius, great music is in harmony with the universe, restoring order to the physical world through that harmony. Music, as a true mirror of character, makes pretense or deception impossible.

Ancient Greek ideas
      Although music was important in the life of ancient Greece, it is not now known how that music actually sounded. Only a few notated fragments have survived, and no key exists for restoring even these. The Greeks were given to theoretical speculation about music; they had a system of notation, and they “practiced music,” as Socrates himself, in a vision, had been enjoined to do. But the Greek term from which the word music is derived was a generic one, referring to any art or science practiced under the aegis of the Muses. Music, therefore, as distinct from gymnastics, was all encompassing. (Much speculation, however, was clearly directed toward that more restricted meaning with which we are familiar.) Music was virtually a department of mathematics for the philosopher Pythagoras (c. 550 BC), who was the first musical numerologist and who laid the foundations for acoustics. In acoustics, the Greeks discovered the correspondence between the pitch of a note and the length of a string. But they did not progress to a calculation of pitch on the basis of vibrations, though an attempt was made to connect sounds with underlying motions.

       Plato (428–348/347 BC), like Confucius, looked on music as a department of ethics. And like Confucius he was anxious to regulate the use of particular modes (i.e., arrangements of notes, like scales) because of their supposed effects on men. Plato was a stern musical disciplinarian; he saw a correspondence between the character of a man and the music that represented him. Straightforward simplicity was best. In the Laws, Plato declared that rhythmic and melodic complexities were to be avoided because they led to depression and disorder. Music echoes divine harmony; rhythm and melody imitate the movements of heavenly bodies, thus delineating the music of the spheres and reflecting the moral order of the universe. Earthly music, however, is suspect; Plato distrusted its emotional power. Music must therefore be of the right sort; the sensuous qualities of certain modes are dangerous, and a strong censorship must be imposed. Music and gymnastics in the correct balance would constitute the desirable curriculum in education. Plato admitted and valued music in its ethically approved forms; his concern was primarily with the effects of music, and he therefore regarded it as a psychosociological phenomenon.

      Yet Plato, in treating earthly music as a shadow of the Ideal, saw a symbolic significance in the art. Aristotle carried forward the concept of the art as imitation, but music could express the universal as well. His idea that works of art could contain a measure of truth in themselves—an idea voiced more explicitly by Plotinus in the third century AD—gave added strength to the symbolic view. Aristotle, following Plato, thought that music has power to mold human character, but he would admit all the modes, recognizing happiness and pleasure as values to both the individual and the state. He advocated a rich musical diet. Aristotle made a distinction between those who have only theoretical knowledge and those who produce music, maintaining that persons who do not perform cannot be good judges of the performances of others.

       Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, gave considerable credit to the human listener, his importance and his powers of perception. He denigrated the dominance of mathematical and acoustical considerations. For Aristoxenus, music was emotional and fulfilled a functional role, for which both the hearing and the intellect of the listener were essential. Individual tones were to be understood in their relations to one another and in the context of larger formal units. The Epicureans and Stoics adopted a more naturalistic view of music and its function, which they accepted as an adjunct to the good life. They gave more emphasis to sensation than did Plato, but they nevertheless placed music in the service of moderation and virtue. A dissenting 3rd-century voice was that of Empiricus, who said that music was an art of tones and rhythms only that meant nothing outside itself.

      The Platonic influence in musical thought was to be dominant for at least a millennium. Following that period of unquestioned philosophic allegiance, there were times of rededication to Greek concepts, accompanied by reverent and insistent homage (e.g., the group of late 16th-century Florentines, known as the Camerata, who were instrumental in the development of opera). Such returns to simplicity, directness, and the primacy of the word have been made periodically, out of loyalty to Platonic imperatives, however much these “neo” practices may have differed from those of the Greeks themselves.

      In the 20th century, the effects of Greek thought are still strongly evident in the belief that music influences the ethical life; in the idea that music can be explained in terms of some component such as number (that may itself be only a reflection of another, higher source); in the view that music has specific effects and functions that can be appropriately labelled; and in the recurrent observation that music is connected with human emotion. In every historical period there have been defectors from one or more of these views, and there are, of course, differences of emphasis.

Music in Christianity
      Much of the Platonic–Aristotelian teaching, as restated by the Roman philosopher Boethius (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus) (c. 480–524), was well suited to the needs of the church; the conservative aspects of that philosophy, with its fear of innovation, were conducive to the maintenance of order. The role of music as accessory to words is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the history of Christianity, where the primacy of the text has always been emphasized and sometimes, as in Roman Catholic doctrine, made an article of faith. In the varieties of plainchant, melody was used for textual illumination; the configurations of sound took their cue from the words. St. Augustine (Augustine, Saint) (AD 354–430), who was attracted by music and valued its utility to religion, was fearful of its sensuous element and anxious that the melody never take precedence over the words. These had been Plato's concerns also. Still echoing the Greeks, Augustine, whose beliefs were reiterated by St. Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas, Thomas, Saint) (c. 1225–74), held the basis of music to be mathematical; music reflects celestial movement and order.

      Martin Luther (Luther, Martin) (1483–1546) was a musical liberal and reformer. But the uses he envisioned for music, despite his innovations, were in the mainstream of tradition; Luther insisted that music must be simple, direct, accessible, an aid to piety. His assignment of particular qualities to a given mode is reminiscent of Plato and Confucius. John Calvin (Calvin, John) (1509–64) took a more cautious and fearful view of music than did Luther, warning against voluptuous, effeminate, or disorderly music and insisting upon the supremacy of the text.

17th- and 18th-century Western conceptions
      In reviewing the accounts of music that have characterized musical and intellectual history, it is clear that the Pythagoreans are reborn from age to age. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (Kepler, Johannes) (1571–1630) perpetuated, in effect, the idea of the harmony of the spheres, attempting to relate music to planetary movement. René Descartes (Descartes, René) (1596–1650), too, saw the basis of music as mathematical. He was a faithful Platonist in his prescription of temperate rhythms and simple melodies so that music would not produce imaginative, exciting, and hence immoral, effects. For another philosopher–mathematician, the German Gottfried von Leibniz (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm) (1646–1716), music reflected a universal rhythm and mirrored a reality that was fundamentally mathematical, to be experienced in the mind as a subconscious apprehension of numerical relationships.

      Immanuel Kant (Kant, Immanuel) (1724–1804) ranked music as lowest in his hierarchy of the arts. What he distrusted most about music was its wordlessness; he considered it useful for enjoyment but negligible in the service of culture. Allied with poetry, however, it may acquire conceptual value. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) (1770–1831) also extolled the discursive faculties, saying that art, though it expresses the divine, must yield to philosophy. He acknowledged the peculiar power of music to express many nuances of the emotions. Like Kant, Hegel preferred vocal music to instrumental, deprecating wordless music as subjective and indefinite. The essence of music he held to be rhythm, which finds its counterpart in man's innermost self. What is original in Hegel's view is his claim that music, unlike the other arts, has no independent existence in space, is not “objective” in that sense; the fundamental rhythm of music (again an aspect of number) is experienced within the hearer.

      After the 18th century, speculations upon the intrinsic nature of music became more numerous and profound. The elements necessary for a more comprehensive theory of its function and meaning became discernible. But philosophers whose views have been summarized thus far were not speaking as philosophers of music. Music interested them in terms extrinsic to itself, in its observable effects; in its connections with dance, religious ritual, or festive rites; because of its alliance with words; or for some other extramusical consideration. The only common denominator to be found, aside from the recognition of different types of music, is the acknowledgment of its connection with the emotional life; and here, to be sure, is that problematic power of the art to move men. Various extramusical preoccupations are today the raison d'être of “contextualist” explanations of music, which are concerned with its relation to the human environment. The history of music itself is largely an account of its adjunctive function in rituals and ceremonies of all kinds—religious, military, courtly—and in musical theatre. The protean character of music that enables it to form such easy alliances with literature and drama (as in folk song, art song, opera, “background” music) and with the dance (tribal, ethnic, “social,” ballet) appears to confirm the wide range and influence that the Greeks assigned to it.

Modern theories of musical meaning
      Before the 19th century, musicians themselves seldom were theorists, if theorist is defined as one who explicates meaning. Musical theory, when it was something other than the exposition of a prevalent or emerging style, was likely to be a technical manual guiding vocal or instrumental performance, a set of directions for meeting current exigencies in church or theatre practice, or a missive advocating reforms. Prolific masters, such as Johann Sebastian Bach, produced not learned treatises but monuments of art.

      The 19th century saw the emergence of composer–critics (Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt), versatile artists with literary proclivities who were not, to be sure, propounding comprehensive theories or systems of thought. Richard Wagner (Wagner, Richard), an active theorizer, presaged a new species, the composer–author. But he did little to advance musical theory. He proposed a unity of music and drama (Gesamtkunstwerk)—a reflection of the “programmatic” preoccupations of 19th-century composers—but its multiplicity of musical and extramusical elements only added to the confusion of musical thought. The distinctly musical character of Wagner's genius, clearly discernible in The Ring, is in no way explained by his discursive credos. Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and other composer–authors of the 20th century were to be somewhat more successful in elucidating their techniques and aims.

The concept of dynamism
      Present-day ideas of music as a symbolism owe much to two German philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer (Schopenhauer, Arthur) (1788–1860) and Friedrich Nietzsche (Nietzsche, Friedrich) (1844–1900), who brought to the theory of music a new concept, articulated by each in different ways and in divergent terms but faithful to the same principle—dynamism. Both saw in music an art that is not “spatialized” (hence not “objective”) in the way that other arts are by the very conditions of their manifestation. Music is closer to the inner dynamism of process; there are fewer technical (and no concrete) impediments to immediate apprehension, for an entire dimension of the empirical world has been bypassed.

      Schopenhauer looked upon Platonic Ideas as objectifying will, but music is

by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.

      In contrast to Kant he accords a special efficacy to music:

The effect of music is stronger, quicker, more necessary and infallible. Men have practiced music in all ages without being able to account for this; content to understand it directly, they renounce all claim to an abstract conception of this direct understanding itself.

      Schopenhauer acknowledged a connection between human feeling and music, which “restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but entirely without reality and far removed from their pain.” Music, which he is presenting an as analogue of the emotional life, is a copy or symbol of the will.

      Nietzsche posed an Apollonian–Dionysian dichotomy, the former representing form and rationality and the latter drunkenness and ecstasy. For Nietzsche, music was the Dionysian art par excellence. In The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche anticipated the 20th-century discovery that symbol making (whether in dreams, myth, or art) is a necessary and to some extent even automatic human activity. The rich suggestiveness and prescience of his insights embraced the concept of the “symbolical analogue”—the artistic function of ordering and heightening the ingredients of the actual world—and the polarities of experience symbolized in the Apollonian–Dionysian conflict itself, which Igor Stravinsky also explored. Nietzsche gave short shrift to mathematical aspects of music, and like Schopenhauer he deprecated blatantly programmatic music that abounds in obvious imitations of natural sounds. Discerning a power in music to create myths, he looked upon mere “tone painting” as the antithesis of its essential character.

      Efforts of theorists to account for the universal appeal of music and to explain its effects have, since the 19th century, been various, contradictory, and highly controversial. In pointing out the chief points of view that have emerged, it must be emphasized that there are no completely isolated categories, and there is usually considerable overlapping; a single spokesman, the 19th-century English psychologist Edmund Gurney, for example, may incorporate formalist, symbolist, expressionist, and psychological elements, in varying proportions, to explain the phenomenon of music. Although some disagreements are more apparent than real because of the inherent problems of terminology and definition, diametrically opposing views are also held and tenaciously defended.

Referentialists and nonreferentialists
      Among those who seek and propound theories of musical meaning, the most persistent disagreement is between the referentialists (or “heteronomists”), who hold that music can and does refer to meanings outside itself, and the nonreferentialists (who are sometimes called formalists or absolutists), who maintain that the art is autonomous and “means itself.” The Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick (Hanslick, Eduard), in his The Beautiful in Music (German edition published 1854), was a strong proponent of music as an art of intrinsic principles and ideas; yet even Hanslick, ardent formalist though he was, struggled with the problem of emotion in music. Hanslick's views have been classified as a modified heteronomous theory.

      One looks in vain for an extremist of either persuasion, referentialist or nonreferentialist. Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky, Igor) first achieved fame as a composer of ballet music, and his works throughout his career were rich in extramusical associations. It would be a comfortable simplification to ally referentialism with “program” music and nonreferentialism with “absolute” music. But the problem cannot be resolved by such a choice, if only, first of all, because extramusical referents can vary in complexity from a mere descriptive title to the convolutions of the Wagnerian leitmotiv, in which a particular musical phrase is consistently associated with a particular person, place, or thing. The referentialist does not require an explicit program (which may, when present, be altogether too meagre by his canons), and the nonreferentialist does not necessarily denigrate program music, though he makes a point of distinguishing between the extramusical program and the musical meaning. The contemporary U.S. theorist Leonard Meyer, in his Emotion and Meaning in Music (1956), speaks of “designative” and “embodied” meanings; he recognizes both kinds in music but appears to give equal weight to the extrinsic and intrinsic.

      If there is intrinsic, or embodied, meaning, one may well ask what meaning is embodied and how it is to be apprehended. An extreme formalist would say that the acoustic pattern itself and nothing more is the sense of music; Hanslick, indeed, said this, though he did not hold consistently to the view. But most nonreferentialists regard music as, in one way or another, emotionally meaningful or expressive. Referentialists, too, find expressive content in music, though this emotional content may be extramusical (even if not explicit) in origin, according to the American theorists John Hospers in Meaning and Truth in the Arts (1946) and Donald Ferguson in Music as Metaphor (1960). Meyer has made the observation that while most referentialists are expressionists, not all expressionists are referentialists. He makes the useful distinction between absolute expressionists and referential expressionists and identifies his own position as “formalist–absolute expressionist.” In acknowledging that music can and does express referential (designative) meanings as well as nonreferential ones, Meyer exhibits an eclectic and certainly permissive view. But he has been criticized for failing to make clear the modus operandi of this referential meaning in music.

Intuition and intellect
      Most theorists agree that music is an auditory phenomenon and that hearing is the beginning of understanding. Beyond this there is little agreement. There is bad blood especially between proponents of intuition, like Benedetto Croce, and champions of intellectual cognition, like Hospers. Gurney was constrained to postulate a special musical faculty that need not reside exclusively either in the mind or the heart. The main problem for theorists arises from the inveterate tendency to dichotomize thought and feeling. Henri Bergson (Bergson, Henri) (1859–1941) broke with this tradition when he spoke for “an intellectual act of intuition.” Recently, a reawakened philosophic and artistic concern for the concept of organic unity has revealed strong affinities among such disparate works as Gurney's The Power of Sound (1880); the U.S. philosopher Susanne K. Langer's (Langer, Susanne K.) Philosophy in a New Key (1942) and her later works; John Dewey's classic Art as Experience (1934); and the U.S. composer Roger Sessions' The Musical Experience (1950).

      It is apparent that music is connected in some way with the emotional life of man, but the “how” continues to be elusive. Sessions (echoing Aristotle) states the problem fairly:

No one denies that music arouses emotions, nor do most people deny that the values of music are both qualitatively and quantitatively connected with the emotions it arouses. Yet it is not easy to say just what this connection is.

      It was long fashionable to speak of the “language” of music, or of music as the “language of the emotions,” but since a precise semantics is wanting in music, the analogy breaks down. Two or more listeners may derive very different “meanings” from the same piece of music, and since written and spoken language cannot render these musical “meanings,” whatever they may be, in consistent and commonly recognizable terms, verbal explication often seems to raise more questions than it settles. Philosophic analysts who hold that all meaning is capable of rendition in language therefore pronounce music—unless it can be saved by the referentialists—without meaning, confronting the thoughtful listener, thereby, with a proposition that seems clearly to contradict (and trivialize) his own experience. The difficulty, of course, is a semantic one and explains why some theorists substitute such terms as import, significance, pattern, or gestalt for meaning. Recognizing an incompatibility between the modalities of nonverbal arts and their treatment by discursive thought, it is hardly surprising that musical aestheticians have been few.

Symbolist (Symbolist movement) contributions
      Significant contributions to musical theory have been made in the 20th century by several investigators who may be classified as symbolists, though most of them exhibit formalist, expressionist, and psychological elements as well. The most influential (and controversial) work has been done by Langer. Her most adamant critics (such as John Hospers) have objected to her use of the term symbol that must, in their lexica, stand for something definite; she takes pains to ascribe this more limited usage to the term signal. The more general use of the term symbol that she endorses has a long history, notably in such 19th-century figures as Goethe, Carlyle, and the French Symbolist poets. Langer is accused of having somewhat weakened her argument through a vacillating terminology, and she has described the musical symbol as “unconsummated” because of its ambiguity. But the validity of her theory does not depend upon the term symbol; her thought, indeed, has much in common with that of Edmund Gurney, who does not employ the term and whose “ideal motion,” if substituted for symbol, would remove most of her critics' objections. Her use of symbol is nevertheless defensible; she construes art as a “symbolic analogue of emotive life,” rendering the “forms of sentient being” into intelligible configurations. She is a naturalist; she sees art as organic in origin, and she echoes the view, long held among symbolists, that artistic form and content compose an indissoluble unity that each art manifests according to its peculiar conditions. The symbolism of music is therefore tonal (or, at its broadest, auditory) in character and can be realized only in time; in psychological experience, time assumes an ideal guise. (Painting and sculpture, in their distinctive modalities, embody ideal space.) Langer embraces all the arts in her purview. The U.S. musical theorist Gordon Epperson's The Musical Symbol (1967) is an application of her concepts, with modifications, intensively to music.

Contextualist theories
      In moving from symbolic to contextualist explanations of music, it is well to note that a source of great confusion, in the former, is the fact that tone painting (with explicit signals that yield, when the code is understood, designative meanings) is widely regarded as musical symbolism. An example of such tone painting is Bach's introduction of musical notes, corresponding to the letters of his own name, as a theme in the unfinished final fugue of the Art of the Fugue. And surely it may be argued that this qualifies on one level. But the contention that there is an intrinsic symbolism in the musical meaning itself is a claim that referentialists are generally unwilling to honour. Yet many theorists, whose concern is with the sociological or psychological effects of music, are not so much opposed to the idea of inner or profound meaning as indifferent to such meaning per se. Even an absolutist, however, is unable to examine music in isolation from its human environment. Meyer deliberately eschews logical and philosophical problems of music and makes “no attempt to decide whether music is a language or whether musical stimuli are signs or symbols.” (He does not defend the inference that such concerns are irrelevant to meaning.) Musical meaning and communication, he maintains, cannot exist in the absence of the cultural context. The statement is hardly open to dispute; a theorist is classified according to his proximity to the referential or nonreferential pole. If a referentialist emphasizes explicit aims and associations of a particular work (as in varieties of Gebrauchsmusik, or “utility” music, written for specific social or educational purposes), the formalist can maintain that there is also an intrinsic, or embodied, meaning to which he attaches the greater aesthetic value.

      Among contextualists, however, a simple referential view is the exception rather than the rule. Any theorist who examines musical perception is making a study of a complex human activity. He is dealing with the psychology of music, in which certain elements—e.g., music, listener, mode of apprehension, cultural context—are indispensable and in which characteristic processes recur. Specialists will emphasize one element or another: formalists the music itself, sociologists the listener and his milieu, psychologists the how of perception. Though psychology could survey the whole field, in practice psychologists, according to their persuasions, investigate the perception of measurable acoustic phenomena, the physical-mental effects of musical sound, or—more rarely—the functional role of music in human experience; and pragmatists and analysts alike may leave something out of account. But it remains for the comprehensive theorist, probably one who, like Langer, is equipped to discern relationships among many departments of thought, to construct a valid hierarchical structure of musical meaning in all its ramifications.

      Deryck Cooke, the British musicologist and the author of The Language of Music (1959), who may be classified as a referential expressionist, has offered a sophisticated argument for the notion of music as language. Concepts, however, may not be rendered by this language, only feelings. Cooke reaffirms the possibility, long disputed by many theorists, that such feelings may be recognized, identified, and even classified. But he confines his investigation to the last few hundred years of the Western tradition.

      The French theorist Abraham Moles's Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (1966) brings the new science of information theory to bear on musical perception, emphasizing that the concept of form is the essential thing; the “sonic message,” whose dimensions vary from one composition to another, is a whole. Information theory thus proves to be a novel ally for organicists. The message, which is subjected to “atomistic” study of its components, is (thanks to recording) concrete; there is a temporal sonic material, a materia musica. Moles gives reinforcement to the aesthetic theory of distance:

The esthetic procedure of isolating sonic objects is analogous to the sculptor's or decorator's isolating a marble work against a black velvet draping: This procedure directs attention to it, alone and not as one element among many in a complex framework.

      Information theory, which Leonard Meyer also discusses, begins its investigations without the help of traditional theory, which it finds to be untenable for its procedures. Musical messages discerned through information theory are not referential, yet Moles chooses to term the measurable elements in the sonic repertoire symbols: “each definable temporal stage represents a ‘symbol' analogous to a phoneme in language.” According to Moles, music must, as an art, obey rules; the role of aesthetics is to enumerate universally valid rules, not to perpetuate the arbitrary or merely traditional. He foresees experimentation with a much richer repertoire of sounds, transcending musical instruments and drawing on whatever sources—certainly electronic ones—are available for realizing the “most general orchestra.” A host of composers have set out to fulfill this desideratum. In order to increase the compass of possible sounds, various electronic synthesizers were constructed. In electronically synthesized music, the medium itself is indistinguishable from its message.

      The quest for some distillation of musical meaning may be foredoomed to failure. Meanings, intrinsic and extrinsic, abound; meanings of all kinds, moreover, are revealed in and through the social setting. Church, theatre, and broadcasting affect music in characteristic ways. The modern concert is a device whereby formal, autonomous meanings are emphasized; further, the scope and available repertoire of the concert have been enormously increased through recordings, for any suitably equipped room may become, at the turn of a switch, a recital hall.

Considerations related to performance practice
      Listening to music for its own sake, apart from ritual or storytelling, is a recent historical development. There have always been impromptu song and dance; and performances of music in home, church, and theatrical productions have a long history. But there was no public opera house until 1637 when the first one opened in Venice; the first public concerts for which admission was charged appeared in London in 1672. During the next 50 years there were beginnings in Germany and France also, but the modern concert was not a significant feature of musical life until the late 18th century.

      Of the forms that have characterized distinct periods of musical history, it is sufficient to remark here that the chief Renaissance forms—mass, motet, the polyphonic chanson, and madrigal—were allied to texts that strongly influenced their structure. Instrumental music was for the most part in the service of the voice, though instrumental church compositions, dances, and chansons arranged for organ were not uncommon. A strong alliance between voices and instruments has continued into the present, with musical theatre, the art song, and religious music. Instrumental music as a separate genre emerged in the 16th century, gaining considerable momentum in the 17th through a variety of idiomatic pieces. Increased attention to technical fluency was accompanied by greater complexity and sophistication in the instruments themselves. In response to stylistic demands for greater resonance and power, the modern forms of the violin appeared in the late 16th century, only gradually supplanting the earlier viols. The harpsichord did not finally yield to the pianoforte until the 18th century. The once-prevalent idea that early stringed and keyboard instruments were primitive precursors of their modern counterparts has been effectually demolished by research in medieval and Renaissance music and by dedicated performers, who seek to restore the sounds and spirit of those eras.

      The development of opera, oratorio, and the cantata gave a prominence to vocal music throughout the Baroque era (c. 1600–1750) that made it equal in importance to instrumental music, with which these forms were closely allied. But instrumental chamber and independent orchestral ensembles, as they exist today, also had their beginnings during this period. A highly significant development of the late 18th century was the definitive appearance of the modern sonata (whether in the form of the solo and duo sonata, piano trio, string quartet, concerto, or symphony) with the Viennese classicists Haydn and Mozart and, later, Beethoven.

      Since a vocal text is likely to be confused with intrinsic musical meaning, or at least to divert attention from a preoccupation with it, it is not surprising that modern aesthetic theory followed on the emergence of an autonomous instrumental music requiring greater concentration on the sound itself, its colour and intensity, and the intelligibility (in terms of tonal organization alone) of a composition. Moreover, the very concept of listening as an attentive (and sometimes rigorous), serious, and necessary activity of the music lover gained acceptance only slowly, following the inauguration of public concerts, and is still vigorously resisted. The expectation that the art should provide enjoyment without effort is, indeed, widespread and accounts for much of the opposition to new and demanding idioms. But even for the well-disciplined and eager listener there is the problem of quantity: he must cope as best he can with what Langer has called “the madhouse of too much art.” If more effort is required, more discrimination is also needed. In music education, articulate voices ask that teaching be centred more upon qualitative aspects of the art (“aesthetic education”), less upon music making as an activity. This concern for musical value appears to reflect a more intensive search for meaning, which is not likely to be the exclusive property of a particular style or era; nor is it to be sought in an indiscriminate acceptance or rejection of novelty per se. A pronounced pedagogical interest developed in such contemporary popular music as “rock,” (rock) “soul,” and similar folk idioms with great numbers of followers, especially among the young, whose gigantic festivals generated feelings of religious exaltation. The texts of the songs are highly emotional and often deal with “protest” themes; accompaniments are provided by guitars, keyboard and percussion instruments, and are electronically amplified. Music educators became attracted by the intrinsic structural values of this music, especially its distinctive rhythmic and modal characteristics, its texts, and the qualitative levels that may be distinguished. A music so vital and widespread, moreover, was deemed by many to be worth studying in school. The “rock” movement became a musical–sociological phenomenon of large proportions.

Music and world view
      Again, music proves its protean susceptibilities in the service of disparate world views. Among humanist psychologists (such as the Americans Gordon Allport and Abraham Maslow) music may be one among other means toward self-fulfillment, integration, self-actualization; for aesthetic Existentialists (such as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre) it is yet another crucial department of choice and freedom; for spiritual Existentialists (such as the philosophers Karl Jaspers and Martin Buber) it transmits transcendent overtones. For expressionists (such as the composers Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, and René Leibowitz) music carries austere, and sometimes doctrinaire, moral imperatives. Theodor Adorno (Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund), a composer–philosopher and pupil of Alban Berg, writes powerfully of these and speaks for an awareness of dazzling lucidity, but the tone, notwithstanding his humour, is one of obligation. Only the expressionists, among those mentioned here, are committed primarily to music, though Adorno, in particular, considers music and musicians always in interaction with their environments. The aesthetic concept of play is virtually absent, except among such humanists as Maslow (Maslow, Abraham H.). With Sartre (Sartre, Jean-Paul), no less a humanist, the tone is one of responsibility. Many educators long held the explicit aim (at least in part because of a misinterpretation of John Dewey) of presenting the content of a discipline as “fun”; the present concern for aesthetic education, an area of great interest to Dewey himself, eschews this trivial view. But play, in the aesthetic sense, follows rules, as information theory has demonstrated; even “controlled aleatory” composition observes some limits. And the play may be very serious indeed, as in the important 20th-century atonal style known as “12-tone technique,” (12-tone music) practiced by the Viennese expressionists and their successors.

Tonality and meaning
      The most troublesome problem not only for the untutored listener but also for the professional musician has been, in much contemporary work, the loss of explicit tonality; and this accounts for the tardy popular response to Schoenberg and his school: the vocabulary is esoteric. Nineteenth-century compositions did, indeed, stretch the tonal system to its outer limits; but it is now clear that Wagner and Richard Strauss, and even the early Schoenberg, had not broken from it. As for Debussy, his use of “exoticisms” was filigree upon a secure tonal base. So were such practices as the juxtaposition of keys by Stravinsky. This is not to say that the tonality of the Western world, fecund though it has been, is superior or more natural than other systems. Ethnomusicology and comparative musicology have proved this to be a parochial view, though there are still those who champion harmonic practices based on the physical laws governing overtones—as Western tonality is—as the only “natural” source of development. It should not be irrelevant, however, to inquire if any folk music has been discovered that exhibits atonal characteristics.

      Tonality in Western music, though a significant aspect, cannot be considered the crux of musical meaning. The tone rows that are used in the 12-tone compositions of Schoenberg (Schoenberg, Arnold), like major–minor tonality in earlier music, are a technical substratum and must be no more explicit in the finished work than the chemical makeup of pigments in the “Mona Lisa.” The devices selected may affect the comprehensibility or accessibility of the work, but they are not, per se, the determinants of its worth or quality. Similarly with musical colour, or timbre; the 19th century produced a great profusion of compositions, particularly in the orchestral repertoire (e.g., works by Liszt and Berlioz) that exploited the unique sonorities of instruments; control of volume was, in itself, a rich source of colour. Works with literary or other extramusical associations were excellent vehicles for sonorous effects, but colour, like tonality, must be evaluated in musical context. Langer, among present-day aestheticians, regards words themselves as musical, rather than discursive, ingredients; they are “assimilated” by the song.

Gordon Epperson Ed.

Additional Reading

Modern theories of musical meaning
Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1883; Eng. trans., The World as Will and Idea, 1961); and Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,” trans. by Clifton P. Fadiman in The Philosophy of Nietzsche (1954), are two important expositions. Eduard Hanslick, Vom musikalisch Schönen (1854; Eng. trans., The Beautiful in Music, 1957), remains the best single exposition of the formalist (or nonreferentialist) position in musical aesthetics. Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound (1880, reprinted 1966), maintains a similar point of view but with considerably greater amplitude and subtlety. For background of the contemporary symbolist views of musical meaning, see Alfred North Whitehead, Symbolism (1959); Susanne K. Langer, “On Significance in Music,” in Philosophy in a New Key, 2nd ed. (1951), and Feeling and Form (1953). Leonard B. Meyer has made an important contribution to the aesthetics of music. His interest in the relevance of information theory to music has been evidenced in two articles: “Meaning in Music and Information Theory,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 14:412–424 (1957), and “Some Remarks on Value and Greatness in Music,” ibid., 17:486–500 (1959), reprinted in his Music, The Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture (1967). John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934, reprinted 1959); and Karl Jaspers, Von der Wahrheit (1947; Eng. trans., Truth and Symbol, 1959), have given reinforcement to organic and symbolic theses, respectively. Peter Le Huray and James Day (eds.), Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries (1981), expounds theories of musical aesthetics from the pre- and early-Romantic period. Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell (1981), is a study of the emotional expressivity of music.

Performance practice, styles, and musical forms
The best historical accounts of musical forms, styles, and performance practice are to be found in Donald J. Grout, A History of Western Music (1960); Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (1940), and Music in the Renaissance, rev. ed. (1959); Manfred F. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era (1947); Alfred Einstein, Music in the Romantic Era (1947); and William W. Austin, Music in the 20th Century, from Debussy to Stravinsky (1966). Sir Donald Francis Tovey, The Forms of Music (1956), contains informative and engaging short pieces. Robert Schumann, On Music and Musicians, ed. by Konrad Wolff (Eng. trans. 1947), is an example of the work by a 19th-century precursor of the phenomenon of the present-day composer-authors who have contributed to aesthetic theory by elucidating their own works and commentating on other composers and on the scene in general. See also Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (1947); Paul Hindemith, A Composer's World (1952); Aaron Copland, Music and Imagination (1952). Discussion of music and film may be found in Lewis Jacobs (ed.), The Emergence of Film Art (1969). Twelve-tone technique and varieties of serialism deriving from it are treated in Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea (1950); and René Leibowitz, Schoenberg, et son école (1947; Eng. trans., Schoenberg and His School, 1949). Short pieces on electronic music appear often in periodical literature. Harold C. Schonberg, Facing the Music (1981), is a collection of performance-oriented articles. See also Carol MacClintock (ed.), Readings in the History of Music in Performance (1979).

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • MUSIC-N — refers to a family of computer music programs and programming languages descended from or influenced by MUSIC, a program written by Max Mathews in 1957 at Bell Labs.[1] MUSIC was the first computer program for generating digital audio waveforms… …   Wikipedia

  • Music On! TV — M On! Music On! TV Logo Launched July 1, 1994 Owned by Music On! TV, Inc., a division of Sony Music Entertainment Japan, Inc.[1 …   Wikipedia

  • Music — Mu sic, n. [F. musique, fr. L. musica, Gr. ? (sc. ?), any art over which the Muses presided, especially music, lyric poetry set and sung to music, fr. ? belonging to Muses or fine arts, fr. ? Muse.] 1. The science and the art of tones, or musical …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • Music & Me — Studioalbum von Michael Jackson Veröffentlichung 13. April 1973 Label Motown …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • MUSIC/SP — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Music. MUSIC ( McGill University System for Interactive Computing ) a été développé par le centre de calcul de l’Université McGill à Montréal. Les initiateurs de ce projet ont été Alan Greenberg et Roy Miller qui …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Music & PC — Beschreibung Fachmagazin Fachgebiet …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Music 4 — is a creator of custom music for media and production libraries. It has worked with many TV and radio stations in the United Kingdom, including BBC Radio 1 and ITV. The company produces the majority of the jingles for the Chris Moyles show on… …   Wikipedia

  • Music & PC — Music PC Beschreibung Fachmagazin Fachgebiet Computer und Musik Sprache …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Music '60 — Genre music variety Written by John Aylesworth Saul Ilson Frank Peppiatt Directed by Bill Davis Presented by Bill Walker Country of origin …   Wikipedia

  • Music —    Music was heard in the Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule as early as 1362. Beginning in 1486, the church installed a singing master who oversaw production of song and voice. Musical production largely paralleled the presence and prestige… …   Historical Dictionary of Brussels

  • Music K-8 — magazine is a music resource magazine for teachers of students in grades K 8. History Music K 8 magazine is published by Plank Road Publishing, which was founded in an old farmhouse on logically enough Watertown Plank Road, in Wauwatosa,… …   Wikipedia

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