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istván anhalt set articulations Anhalt's musical composition is strongly influenced by his study of the psychology of speech . . . A keen interest in the extension and functions of vocal music, on which he has lectured and written widely, culminated in the book Alternative... more
Reviewed by Hapax Mar 16 2009, 06:21pm ( 1 review ) • thecanadianencyclopedia.com
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Rated by Hapax on Mar 16 2009, 6:21pm
istván anhalt set articulations Anhalt's musical composition is strongly influenced by his study of the psychology of speech . . . A keen interest in the extension and functions of vocal music, on which he has lectured and written widely, culminated in the book Alternative Voices. Often socio-linguistic in approach, this is a pioneering work of analysis of significant vocal writing after about 1945, and of striking insights into the kinds and powers of vocal utterance in art and society. In his own music Anhalt has been concerned with the range and variety of sounds which can be produced vocally and the ways in which a text may be treated structurally. A text may be presented in a straightforward manner where the music is a commentary on or a reflection of the meaning, but the text might also be treated less for the surface meaning of words than for the juxtapositions or the sounds and types of articulations which can be used as expressive means in a musical composition to project underlying meaning. In Comments the unconventional text consists of miscellaneous newspaper clippings. The ordinariness of a weather report was set to sustained and richly textured music which, by the setting up of a conflicting musical gesture, suggests an interior drama behind the trivial exterior of the text itself; and the report of the death of a Balinese dancer following a European tour serves to focus through the music on the tension and on the potential for violence inherent in the sharp contrast of cultures and societies. Related to the spirit of place and time in Comments is Cento, 'Cantata Urbana,' a treatment of Eldon Grier's poem 'An Ecstasy.' The long poem was reduced by Anhalt to 25 lines and the text fragmented, the words themselves broken up so that recognition of sense is blurred and meaning becomes uncertain. In its carefully controlled abstraction, Cento portrays the tension and disjunction of modern urban life where elusive meaning bubbles to the surface only to sink back before it is grasped. The use of mixed media and the temporality of subject matter are continued in more complex ways in Foci, where words from a number of sources in a variety of languages form an important part of the texture of a piece to be performed in a planned visual environment. . . .
