Browsing by Author "Barnett, Gregory"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    “Grave, solemn, & fitted to devotion”: Anglican Church Music 1688 – 1727
    (2017-04-21) Salyer, Andrew James; Barnett, Gregory
    My thesis explores how English church composers between 1688 and 1727 engaged with the wide-spread religious and cultural objective for moderation and tolerance, in order to avoid repeating the destructiveness of seventeenth-century religious division between Catholics, Anglicans, and Nonconformists. Sermons written around the turn of the eighteenth century are particularly valuable because they illustrate this moderate temperament, and a number of them also defend and support Anglican sacred music, which had been a highly divisive issue in the seventeenth century. For English church composers to have their music approved of and accepted, preachers and writers cautioned them to avoid imitating French and Italian-style secular music, which was decried as the “theatrical style,” and encouraged them to maintain, in the words of William Croft (1678 – 1727), the “Solemnity and Gravity of what may properly be called the Church-Style.” There were two methods that composers used to attain the grave and solemn style: the first was choice of text, where they favored penitential psalms, or selectively chose mournful verses from non-penitential psalms; the second was the cultivation of a distinctive style that avoided text painting, but emphasized syllabic setting, slower tempos, and the repetition of mournful words within anthem movements for ensembles of voices
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    Performing with a Personal Musical Identity: An Examination of Musicians' Distinctive Personalities in Performances of Bach's Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas
    (2024-04-19) Park, Samuel; Barnett, Gregory
    Teaching and performing Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin is a major challenge in American violin pedagogy today. A significant reason for this can be traced historically to the mid-20th-century, when performances influenced by modernist ideology became prevalent in the classical music world. Under this influence, musicians search for objective measures to define proper performance practice of musical works, including fidelity to the notated score or to a historically informed recreation of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas (S&Ps, hereafter). Modernist performance and pedagogy are not only established on a misleading premise that textually literal and historically accurate recreations of pieces are true to a composer’s intentions, but they have also led to complaints of uniformity and blandness of violin performances. These complaints persist to this day. In this thesis, I analyze how violinists can make interpretative decisions in the S&Ps based on their own identifiable musical personality. In highlighting the vast musical possibilities featured in a variety of S&P interpretations, I hope that the violinist reader will be inspired to implement their own personality into Bach’s S&Ps instead of feeling compelled to attribute their interpretative choices to an objective criteria such as text-fidelity or historical accuracy. In advocating for future performances based on the performer’s own unique musical inspirations, I also hope that we will further contribute to a more diverse ecosystem of violin playing today. Toward this objective, I examine cellist Pablo Casals, a Romantic, early-20th-century trailblazer of Bach’s solo string works. Utilizing Romantic string techniques such as flexible rubato and a wide range of intonation, articulation, and dynamic contrasts, he is able to channel his deep empathy, shaped by his humanitarian convictions, into distinct human emotions through Bach’s music. Then, I compare four violinists, ranging from the mid-20th-century to today, who present contrasting interpretations of the S&Ps: Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, Christian Tetlzaff, and Shunske Sato. I demonstrate how they also utilize similar Romantic, early-20th-century string techniques to highlight their own personally identifiable music philosophies.
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    The Pedagogical Relevance of the Historical Precedents to Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas
    (2020-12-04) Herd, Geoffrey; Barnett, Gregory
    This paper demonstrates the pedagogical relevance of technical and stylistic precedents that influenced Bach in his composition of the Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin. By preemptively studying these musical precursors, students develop the needed technical foundation and stylistic awareness to successfully learn and perform the Sonatas and Partitas. This paper identifies three primary influences that impact the technical demands of the Sonatas and Partitas and that have continued pedagogical relevance today: (1) Works by Marin Marais for the viola da gamba. The work of Marais, which exemplifies the chordal-melodic style outlined in Jean Rousseau’s Traité de la viole, offered a precedent and model to Bach in his conception of the violin as a polyphonic instrument. Rousseau argued for the need to maintain a melodious quality even when composing with multiple-stops. Similarly to Marais, Bach incorporated Rousseau’s ideals in composing polyphonically for the violin. The resulting chordal-melodic texture of the Sonatas and Partitas represents an innovation in violin music of the early 18th century. Understanding Bach’s stylistic aims highlights the technical skills necessary to compellingly perform Bach’s chordal-melodic texture on the violin. (2) The work of 17th- and early 18th-century German composers for the violin. The violin music of 17th-century German composers incorporated an array of virtuosic techniques including agile, rapid passagework, dexterous string crossings, and dense passages of multiple-stops. The work of Heinrich von Biber (1644-1704), Johann Jakob Walther (c.1650-1717), and Johann Paul Westhoff (1656-1705) exemplifies the violin techniques used by German-speaking composers of that era. Today, the music of these German violinist-composers is glaringly omitted from pedagogical methods despite its broad applicability to the teaching of the Sonatas and Partitas (3) Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) were the reigning violinist-composers in Italy in the late 17th- and early 18th-centuries. The music of both of these composers deeply impacted Bach’s writing in the Sonatas and Partitas. In modern violin pedagogy, Corelli’s and Vivaldi’s music is primarily studied by beginner- and intermediate-level violinists. However, the work of both these Italian violinist-composers offers important training opportunities for the technical challenges of the Sonatas and Partitas.
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    Understanding and Applying the Spectrograph in Vocal Pedagogy
    (2021-04-30) Besch, Christopher Michael; Barnett, Gregory; King, James S; Stallmann, Kurt
    Many vocal pedagogy textbooks and curriculums lack a tangible application of the course content. This is often remedied with audio exampes or lesson practicums, but both options include a wide degree of variability that limits the students’ and teachers’ ability to apply the concepts they’ve learned. In this paper, we will explore how the use of the spectrograph and tone generator fill the gap between the understanding of the mechanics of singing and its application by teaching us to listen to and understand timbre more concretely. This paper uses the software VoceVista whose spectrograph and tone generator give us the ability to mimic and manipulate a digital version of the human voice free of the limitations of a real-world environment. Combined with a detailed understanding of vocal tract physiology, acoustics, and psychoacoustics, the use of this tool encourages the exploration of more efficient and effective pedagogies. Chapter 1 explores how the tone generator can be utilized to manipulate the four basic properties of sound – frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre – to create a synthesized version of the human voice, which helps us understand how the singing voice works and what changes may produce different timbres. Chapter 2 details how our perception of sound varies from what is shown on the spectrograph and how the human ear itself serves as a tuned filter to perceive vowel colors through the properties of psychoacoustics – auditory roughness, perceived loudness, absolute spectral tone color, and the missing fundamental. Approaching the voice in this way allows us to begin to listen to the timbre with more specificity and describe it with more accuracy. Chapter 3 combines these ideas to demonstrate how passive vowel migration and active vowel modification are employed in vocal techniques such as high frequency reinforcement, upper treble transitions, second vocal tract resonance tuning, and belting. This approach to vocal pedagogy brings together the study of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and singing technique to eliminate some of the guess work of teaching and improve access to effective pedagogical information.
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    Understanding and Applying the Spectrograph in Vocal Pedagogy
    (2021-04-30) Besch, Christopher Michael; Barnett, Gregory; King, James S; Stallmann, Kurt
    Many vocal pedagogy textbooks and curriculums lack a tangible application of the course content. This is often remedied with audio exampes or lesson practicums, but both options include a wide degree of variability that limits the students’ and teachers’ ability to apply the concepts they’ve learned. In this paper, we will explore how the use of the spectrograph and tone generator fill the gap between the understanding of the mechanics of singing and its application by teaching us to listen to and understand timbre more concretely. This paper uses the software VoceVista whose spectrograph and tone generator give us the ability to mimic and manipulate a digital version of the human voice free of the limitations of a real-world environment. Combined with a detailed understanding of vocal tract physiology, acoustics, and psychoacoustics, the use of this tool encourages the exploration of more efficient and effective pedagogies. Chapter 1 explores how the tone generator can be utilized to manipulate the four basic properties of sound – frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre – to create a synthesized version of the human voice, which helps us understand how the singing voice works and what changes may produce different timbres. Chapter 2 details how our perception of sound varies from what is shown on the spectrograph and how the human ear itself serves as a tuned filter to perceive vowel colors through the properties of psychoacoustics – auditory roughness, perceived loudness, absolute spectral tone color, and the missing fundamental. Approaching the voice in this way allows us to begin to listen to the timbre with more specificity and describe it with more accuracy. Chapter 3 combines these ideas to demonstrate how passive vowel migration and active vowel modification are employed in vocal techniques such as high frequency reinforcement, upper treble transitions, second vocal tract resonance tuning, and belting. This approach to vocal pedagogy brings together the study of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and singing technique to eliminate some of the guess work of teaching and improve access to effective pedagogical information.
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    Understanding and Applying the Spectrograph in Vocal Pedagogy
    (2021-04-30) Besch, Christopher Michael; Barnett, Gregory; King, James S; Stallmann, Kurt
    Many vocal pedagogy textbooks and curriculums lack a tangible application of the course content. This is often remedied with audio exampes or lesson practicums, but both options include a wide degree of variability that limits the students’ and teachers’ ability to apply the concepts they’ve learned. In this paper, we will explore how the use of the spectrograph and tone generator fill the gap between the understanding of the mechanics of singing and its application by teaching us to listen to and understand timbre more concretely. This paper uses the software VoceVista whose spectrograph and tone generator give us the ability to mimic and manipulate a digital version of the human voice free of the limitations of a real-world environment. Combined with a detailed understanding of vocal tract physiology, acoustics, and psychoacoustics, the use of this tool encourages the exploration of more efficient and effective pedagogies. Chapter 1 explores how the tone generator can be utilized to manipulate the four basic properties of sound – frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre – to create a synthesized version of the human voice, which helps us understand how the singing voice works and what changes may produce different timbres. Chapter 2 details how our perception of sound varies from what is shown on the spectrograph and how the human ear itself serves as a tuned filter to perceive vowel colors through the properties of psychoacoustics – auditory roughness, perceived loudness, absolute spectral tone color, and the missing fundamental. Approaching the voice in this way allows us to begin to listen to the timbre with more specificity and describe it with more accuracy. Chapter 3 combines these ideas to demonstrate how passive vowel migration and active vowel modification are employed in vocal techniques such as high frequency reinforcement, upper treble transitions, second vocal tract resonance tuning, and belting. This approach to vocal pedagogy brings together the study of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and singing technique to eliminate some of the guess work of teaching and improve access to effective pedagogical information.