Women in the Musical Culture of Danzig in the First Half of the 20th Century

The musical culture of pre-war Danzig/Gdansk remains an area that is not well enough recognized in the scholarly literature.Numerous traces of this musical life are preserved in the collections of the Gdansk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences.The collection ranges from scholarly publications and scores to an extensive number of concert programs and posters.The collection testifies to the dynamism and diversity of the city’s pre-war musical life.Notable among the collected materials is the role of female figures-composers,singers,and instrumentalists who made significant contributions to the shape of Gdansk musical life.In this article,I will present forgotten profiles of musically committed women:Martha Reincke,Ella Mertins,and Lotte Prins.In light of the surviving materials,it can be assumed that they were significant figures in the musical culture and social life of the city.

The Importance of Breathing Training in Folk Dance Teaching

The importance of breathing training in dance teaching is reflected in the two aspects of enhancing the quality of dance movements and sublimating the connotation of dance movements.For example,high-quality breathing can help performers complete the dance movements and improve the coordination of the movements;at the same time,the unique body rhythm formed by breathing can strengthen the visual effect of the performance and convey its spirit and soul to the audience.This requires folk dance teachers to carry out relevant training and teaching activities based on the categories and skills of dance breathing,such as changing students’ideological cognition,developing periodic breathing training courses,providing personalized guidance to students,and allowing students to adjust their learning and practice methods in the evaluation.

Idyllic Chronotope as One of the Principles of Organizing Time and Space: The Example of Handel’s “Alcina” Staged by Katia Korabelnik

An operatic work is a complex assemblage of different arts.Space-time in an operatic work is organized as a set of scores of all participating arts and is based on the conventions of their chronotopes.Each score is part of the system.At the same time,it is also relatively independent and flexible and can become a leading component for building the structure of the work.The chronotope of an operatic piece has several levels:(1)A dramaturgical source(a musical score with a libretto)that creates the spatial-time system of the work.This is a musical and poetical text whose chronotope transfers it into a stage text,placing it as the chronotope of the performance.(2)A spatial-time-stage director system.A stage work is a material object and is also the original idea of its creator,their spiritual perception.Being so,we discover the dual reality-a physical space-time of the work and a metaphysical space-time of its idea.A spatial-time system is the stage language of the work,the coordination between its external and internal art form.The external form is a set of expressive representations and the internal form is a logical structure,the space-time of the director’s perception.(3)Spatial-time-singer system.The singer integrates into this system partially in a way that is conditioned by the parameters of the chronotope in the spatial-time system.(4)A time-spatial system-an observer.Here a synergistic situation is created in which the show at the time of its ending(disintegration)moves into the space-time of the viewer and changes their inner world.In the ever-growing mosaic of contemporary art,in a rich variety of different currents,there is a need to look for universal values-the fundamental things that produce a sense of uniformity and completeness of the artistic work.A temporal analysis,that is,the analysis of the chronotopes of an operatic work can become a starting point for different approaches that investigate the contemporary processes taking place in an operatic work,and can also show new directions in the development of the operatic genre itself.

B.Britten-orrelation Between the Realizations of H.Purcell's Orpheus Britannicus and the Vocal Cycle Sechs Holderlin-Fragmente op.61

Henry Purcell(1659-1695)and Benjamin Britten(1913-1976)are the main figures in English musical culture.Britten was particularly inspired by Purcell’s illustrative approach to putting together music and text,thus creating fascinating connections between different historical and musical contexts.This paper will analyse and show the correlation between Britten’s realizations of Purcell’s setting of songs Orpheus Britannicus and the input in the original Britten’s vocal cycle Sechs H?lderlin-Fragmente op.61.The harmonious language of the songs and different thematic motives and their relationship will be considered.It will demonstrate that Britten’s songs were very much shaped by thematic structure,intervals like could be found in Purcell’s vocal music and they show the parallels between Britten’s realizations of Purcell’s songs and the input in the original Britten’s vocal music.The article presents the results of the analysis of a song cycle using the method of musical analysis of Rudolph Réti based on his understanding of a“thematic process”in music.The paper will use the case of Britten’s vocal cycle Sechs H?lderlin-Fragmente op.61(1958)to explain how this cycle is structured.The song cycle will be analysed from the perspective of cyclicity based on Réti’s theory of microtopicality explaining an organic cohesion between architectonics of composition and the parts of a vocalist and a pianist.It is argued that the cyclicity in the song cycle is created through the cross-links between the textual and musical dramaturgic lines and could be sayed about the realizations of Purcell’s Six Songs from Orpheus Britannicus(1943-45).First,the structure of the thematic motives(prime cells)in the setting of Britten’s realizations of Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus Six Songs will be analysed and the deep connection in cyclicity will be considered.Second,the thematic motives(prime cells)in the realizations that are cross-linked with the original Britten’s vocal cycle Sechs H?lderlin-Fragmente op.61 will be uncovered.Third,the correlation between the scheme of tonality and the other linkages of the setting of realizations and the vocal cycle will be considered.

The Impact of Selected Parameters of a Modified Sampling Synthesis on the Result of Its Auditory Assessment

One of the main shortcomings of standard sampling synthesis is the very limited number of sound parameters that are user-controllable. In the most general case, the user can choose a particular pitch, duration, and amplitude. If the sampler allows control over articulation, it simply switches from one sound sample to another. This makes fine-tuning of musical performances demanding and time-consuming if not an impossibility altogether. A synthesis system has been developed at the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland. It uses a large collection of samples that contain short sequences of notes. The system implements a number of techniques to seamlessly connect recorded sequences, to control note durations as well as the tempo and the dynamics envelopes. Samples are automatically chosen, modified, and connected to keep the recorded, natural note transitions intact. The system uses performance rules to introduce variations into the regular playback akin to live performances by musicians. A user can either control the parameters manually or choose a desired expression and leave the particular decisions to the system. However, it is necessary to examine which parameters have the greatest impact on the listeners’ impression and determine useful values. 15 expert listeners compared and evaluated variants of musical performances produced by the synthesis system with different sets of parameters. The paper discusses a selection of the examined parameters, the test methods employed and the results obtained.

A Modified Sampling Synthesis for a Realistic Simulation of Wind Instruments—The Design and Implementation

Sampling synthesis is one of the most practical and widely used approaches among the various sound synthesis methods used for creating a realistic simulation of acoustic instruments. Using numerous high quality sound samples it is possible to reproduce a sound of almost any musical instrument, including subtle variations caused by the registers of an instrument or through the use of different articulation techniques and dynamic levels. However, this method has some disadvantages. Firstly, with high fidelity reproduction systems, the repeatability of samples becomes quickly apparent for more experienced listeners. This is sometimes manually corrected by switching between several different samples of the same note. Secondly, it is standard approach to record and reproduce each note separately. It prevents samplers from reproducing natural note transitions, making fluent, connected articulations, such as legato, unnatural. Finally, samplers provide a very limited number of sound parameters to control. Therefore, it is difficult to introduce a set of purposeful fluctuations of selected parameters uniquely attributable to human performances. A synthesis system which addresses the aforementioned problems has been developed at the Academy of Music in Krakow (Poland) for a group of wind instruments as part of a symphony orchestra. The system is based on a large collection of non-standard samples. Samples contain short sequences of notes instead of single notes. In order to use them, a number of techniques have been implemented to allow the seamless connecting of recorded sequences and the control of note durations as well as tempo and dynamics envelopes. Decision-making algorithms and signal processing are applied to create melodic figures by choosing, modifying, and connecting fragments of samples, while keeping natural note transitions intact. The problem of mimicking human performances is addressed by implementing a set of performance rules. It allows to introduce context-dependent variations into the regular playback of the material contained in the musical notation to properly shape the expression of musical structures, similarly to that of live performances by musicians. This article presents the main modules of the modified sampling synthesis system designed by us as well as its general structure and principle of operation. The modules are responsible for performing musical score analyses, an automatic selection and connection of sound samples, and the application of performance rules.