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Copyright of Yegah Musicology Journal / Yegah Müzikoloji Dergisi is the property of International Yegah Music Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 1920s, Frenchman Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) and Brazilian Heitor VillaLobos (1887–1959), inspired by the carnival, created works that resemble each other in genre and scoring. These are the fantasias for piano and orchestra: Mômoprecóce by Villa-Lobos and Le Carnaval d'Aix, Op. 83b by Milhaud. The article presents an attempt to analyse the pieces in the context of carnivalesque aesthetics as well as musical representation (as described by Peter Kivy and Lawrence Kramer) and seeks to deeply comprehend the phenomenon’s resonance in the composers’ music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) is one of the leading composers of the French avantgarde in the 20th century. His stylistic idiom was formed under the influence of the folklore of various cultures from around the world, which he encountered during his numerous travels. One of the compositions inspired by foreign elements, both musical and cultural, is the fantasia Le Carnaval d'Aix op. 83b (1926) for piano and orchestra. The analysis from the genre perspective aims to examine the musical poetics of the composition (including Milhaud’s specific neoclassical strategies) and its links with Carnival. As a result, a dualistic perspective towards the musical language of the composer is proposed as exemplified by the work in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of the opera minute which emerged from the avant-garde experimentalism after WWI; its beginner and one of the foremost masters, the French composer Darius Milhaud put three short, eight-minute operas on stage in 1927. Others soon followed, among them the Slovenian composer Slavko Osterc who composed the opera-minute “Medea” in 1932. This paper is the first to transcribe in length the manuscript of Osterc’s “Medea”, comparing it to Euripides’ original. Furthermore, the article aims to establish the fine similarities and distinctions between the approach regular opera took towards myth and that of the avant-garde opera-minute.

The article aims to examine the circumstances of Milhaud and Villa-Lobos’s encounter, who are the significant figures of 20th century French and Brazilian avant-garde. The analysis of the principle aspects of youthful inspirations, musical approaches and personalities as per Mieczysław Tomaszewski’s concept of the integral interpretation, presents the impact of cultural milieux on artists’ aesthetics, together with their apparent fascination with Carnival. Additionally, the study highlights a connection between the composers’ natures and the fantasy implied either as a category or a genre fantasia. As a result, various analogies are identified linking the composers’ life and musical language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1930 the French composer Darius Milhaud achieved a major career milestone: his ambitious opera Christophe Colomb received its premiere at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The premiere was the most prestigious of a surprisingly large number of performances of Milhaud's music in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Even as he found success in Germany, many French critics dismissed Milhaud's music as frivolous or incomprehensible, and in 1930 the Paris Ope'ra had yet to stage one of Milhaud's works. In the wake of the Berlin premiere, however, the specter of German cultural dominance provoked calls in Paris for reevaluation of Milhaud's work. In response, the director of the Paris Ope'ra, Jacques Rouche', quickly secured the right to stage Milhaud's next opera, Maximilien, and Milhaud subsequently received a string of state commissions. After years of struggle with French critics and institutions, Milhaud's success abroad finally precipitated official recognition at home. Milhaud owed his popularity in Germany and the subsequent transformation in his French reception to his relationship with the Viennese music publisher Universal Edition. Unpublished correspondence and contracts reveal how the firm orchestrated Milhaud's success in Germany through a network of affiliated conductors, composers, and institutions. Universal Edition and its director, Emil Hertzka, played crucial but largely unrecognized roles in advancing Milhaud's early career, and Milhaud's letters demonstrate his keen appreciation for the advantages that working with Universal brought, both to his finances and to his international reputation. The transnational collaboration that enabled Milhaud's German reception and facilitated his path to official recognition ultimately offers a thought-provoking counterexample to the historiography of chauvinism and antipathy that otherwise dominates narratives of interwar Franco-German musical relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Mythologica Slavica is the property of Scientific Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The first part of this study, published in a previous issue of this journal, discussed the Polytonalité Harmonique system, proposed by Darius Milhaud in 1923, from the perspective of the Molino & Nattiez's tripartitional categories of the "immanent" and "poietical" levels. In continuation, this second part examines the system of "harmonic polytonality", and some early controversies surrounding polytonality, from the perspective of the "esthesic level". It is also suggested that the more general, and actually fundamental principle behind the system of "harmonic polytonality" - i.e., the compositional choice, among all possible "dissonant" vertical aggregate chords, of those which are decomposable into traditional "consonant" chords (accords classés) - applies well beyond the early twentieth-century répertoire, including later composers, such as Messiaen, Ligeti, Schnittke, Glass, Widmer, and Krieger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A frequent feature in early twentieth-century music, which gained enormous impulse from Stravinsky´s introduction of complex polyharmonies in the Rite of Spring, has been the utilization of “dissonant” harmonic aggregates, presenting the peculiarity of being decomposable into traditional consonant units, such as perfect triads and “dominant 7th” chords. In a 1923 text, Darius Milhaud attempted to provide both a rationale and a taxonomy for these “new chords” through a system of “harmonic polytonality”. It will be argued along this paper that Milhaud´s approach would be particularly enriched if seen, on the one hand, as a method for generating a particular “family” of unordered pitch-class sets, which are found not only in Stravinsky´s fase russe works but also among as different composers as Ravel, Ives, Villa-Lobos Britten or Messiaen; and, on the other hand, in the perspective of Molino & Nattiez´s tripartition theory. The first part of this article discusses the “immanent” and “poietic” levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]