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The composition of new string quartets in Spain from the end of the 1950s undertook a path of renewal that strove toward modernity through the use of serial and aleatory techniques or new conceptions of timbre. This was in spite of the relatively scarce experience for Spanish composers of international examples of the genre. This essay offers a brief insight into the aesthetic diversity to be found in string quartets composed in Spain from 1950 up to the present, and stresses their openness toward newer hybrid perspectives of intertextuality and narrativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 2001 Biko Memorial Lecture, Zakes Mda defines “raising-consciousness poetry” as a self-empowering poetry performed by young South African spoken word artists, young “conscientized” poets who (often) operate at the margins of the mainstream industries of culture. Mda calls these young artists the “children of Biko”, thus identifying the members of this fluid community as today's heirs and innovators of the Black Consciousness leader's unforgotten tradition. This paper critically analyses selected musical and poetic texts written by four representative young performing poets and songwriters of South Africa, and suggests that their works are re-invigorating the arts scene by infusing it with the ethos of self-empowerment that stands at the very core of Biko's philosophy of liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Horacio Vaggione's music is a true challenge for the musical analyst, both for its technical complexity and its artistic depth. This article aims to suggest some promising analytic approaches to his piano and tape piece Till —arguably a turning point in the composer's evolution—classifying characteristic material and creating typologies of them. After an initial consideration of the context of composition, the analysis proceeds in three parts. In the first part, the tape is investigated between the meso- (middle) and the microscopic temporal levels and a typology of the sound objects is established. In the second part, the piano's complementary temporal field is examined and a corresponding typology of the musical figures constructed. Finally, the modalities of interaction between the tape and the piano, their complementary temporal levels and their ‘common vectorisation’ are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the overall assemblage of American jazz musicians currently living in Paris, two subgroups can be identified: Americanists and Universalists. By drawing on interviews with a range of individuals, it is possible to explore some of the ways in which performers and composers sometimes display, discard, or otherwise represent "Americanness" through musical style, language choice, and professional strategy. The situation among these musicians mirrors in many ways the sometimes flexible, even apparently contradictory, narratives of jazz that on one hand celebrate the music as a worldwide phenomenon, and on the other hold it to notions of specific national ownership and authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the orchestral composition of Bernard Rand entitled 'Body and Shadow,' which exhibits qualities of aesthetic attitudes. Types of aesthetic attitudes in music; Information on modernnist and antimodernist composers; Characteristics of postmodernism; Aspects of tonality.