Daniel Leech‐wilkinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3593855 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Leech‐wilkinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Leech‐wilkinson |
| SIGNATURE | WILKINSON D L |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The danger of virtuosity
This Afterword to the special issue on Virtuosity takes the main contributions to the issue as a starting-point for a discussion of the normality of virtuosity, the anxieties it creates for performers, and the politics of virtuosity. Conclusions from Izabela Wagner’s (2015) study of the training of violin virtuosi are outlined. The relationship between virtuosity and conformity is considered. And suggestions are offered for increased virtuosity o…
Classical music as enforced Utopia
In classical music composition, whatever thematic or harmonic conflicts may be engineered along the way, everything always turns out for the best. Similar utopian thinking underlies performance: performers see their job as faithfully carrying out their master’s (the composer’s) wishes. The more perfectly they represent them, the happier the result. But why should performers not have a critical role to play in re-presenting a score, just as actors…
Cortot's Berceuse
Alfred Cortot's 1920 recording of Chopin's Berceuse has some unusual properties - illustrated here in a discussion of the relationships among rubato, loudness, variation form and melody - which shed new light on the score and exemplify the pianist's ability to trigger embodied metaphor with unusual intensity. Comparisons with other recordings are made, and Jeffrey Kallberg's image of the Berceuse as a music box is considered in relation to the la…
Compositions, Scores, Performances, Meanings
The standard model of musical transmission, in which composers embody their intentions in works which they encode in scores which performers (and scholars in their imagination) decode as accurately as possible for audiences, is unpicked in the light of the evidence of recorded performance. It is replaced with a model that recognizes the large extent to which performances trigger the generation of musical meaning in the minds of listeners, and the…
Performance Style in Elena Gerhardt's Schubert Song Recordings
Performance style is conceptualised as a collection of small ‘expressive gestures’ consisting of changes in frequency, loudness or duration within or between notes or phrases. Collections differ somewhat between individuals (personal style) and change in content over time (period style). The changing style of Elena Gerhardt (1883–1965), as documented in her recordings of Schubert Lieder (1911–1939), is analysed through her habits of timbre, vibra…
Listening and Responding to the Evidence of Early Twentieth-Century Performance
Early recordings raise fundamental questions about our response to music. Why do these performances seem so strange to us? How could they ever have made musical sense to listeners? How might we make sense of them now, in our very different music-cultural environment? This paper looks at some of the ways in which musical sounds model other processes involving change over time. A mechanism is proposed that may underlie the cross-domain mappings gen…
The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture. By Steven Jan
Memes, as formulated by Richard Dawkins, are units of cultural transmission comparable in function and behaviour to genes, units of biological transmission. Both are replictors, means by which information is passed from one individual to another. While genetics has transformed our understanding of heredity, memetics has had less impact so far on the general understanding of cultural development. This seems curious, given that so much of humanitie…
Sound and Meaning in Recordings of Schubert's “Die junge Nonne”
Musicology's growing interest in performance brings it closer to musical science through a shared interest in the relationship between musical sounds and emotional states. However, the fact that musical performance styles change over time implies that understandings of musical compositions change too. And this has implications for studies of music cognition. While the mechanisms by which musical sounds suggest meaning are likely to be biologicall…
Portamento e significado musical
Portamento was a significant expressive device among performers for at least two hundred years; yet, for the past sixty it has made musicians uncomfortable. More than a change of fashion, this suggests responses formed at a relatively deep psychological level. Drawing on work in developmental psychology, and reading in the light of it performances of art music lullabies, it is suggested that portamento draws on innate emotional responses to human…
On the Origins of Harmonic Tonality
Machaut's Mass: An Introduction
Medieval Masterpiece
Machaut's Mass. An Introduction
Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame stands as an enduring monument of medieval musical art. As such it is one of the most widely studied and performed works of music written before 1600. The Mass itself, however, is surrounded by uncertainty; its date of composition is unknown, its purpose is unclear, and its construction yields much ambiguity. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson has prepared a modern performing edition of this work, published by OUP's music depart…
Philippe De Vitry
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Machaut's 'Rose, Lis' and the Problem of Early Music Analysis
An Elizabethan Motet from Longleat
Compositions, Scores, Performances, Meanings
The standard model of musical transmission, in which composers embody their intentions in works which they encode in scores which performers (and scholars in their imagination) decode as accurately as possible for audiences, is unpicked in the light of the evidence of recorded performance. It is replaced with a model that recognizes the large extent to which performances trigger the generation of musical meaning in the minds of listeners, and the…
Cortot's Berceuse
Alfred Cortot's 1920 recording of Chopin's Berceuse has some unusual properties - illustrated here in a discussion of the relationships among rubato, loudness, variation form and melody - which shed new light on the score and exemplify the pianist's ability to trigger embodied metaphor with unusual intensity. Comparisons with other recordings are made, and Jeffrey Kallberg's image of the Berceuse as a music box is considered in relation to the la…
Machaut's 'Rose, Lis' and the Problem of Early Music Analysis
An Elizabethan Motet from Longleat
Machaut's 'Rose, Lis' and the Problem of Early Music Analysis
Philippe De Vitry
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Medieval Masterpiece
Machaut's Mass. An Introduction
Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame stands as an enduring monument of medieval musical art. As such it is one of the most widely studied and performed works of music written before 1600. The Mass itself, however, is surrounded by uncertainty; its date of composition is unknown, its purpose is unclear, and its construction yields much ambiguity. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson has prepared a modern performing edition of this work, published by OUP's music depart…
Machaut's Mass: An Introduction
On the Origins of Harmonic Tonality
Sound and Meaning in Recordings of Schubert's “Die junge Nonne”
Musicology's growing interest in performance brings it closer to musical science through a shared interest in the relationship between musical sounds and emotional states. However, the fact that musical performance styles change over time implies that understandings of musical compositions change too. And this has implications for studies of music cognition. While the mechanisms by which musical sounds suggest meaning are likely to be biologicall…
Portamento e significado musical
Portamento was a significant expressive device among performers for at least two hundred years; yet, for the past sixty it has made musicians uncomfortable. More than a change of fashion, this suggests responses formed at a relatively deep psychological level. Drawing on work in developmental psychology, and reading in the light of it performances of art music lullabies, it is suggested that portamento draws on innate emotional responses to human…
The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture. By Steven Jan
Memes, as formulated by Richard Dawkins, are units of cultural transmission comparable in function and behaviour to genes, units of biological transmission. Both are replictors, means by which information is passed from one individual to another. While genetics has transformed our understanding of heredity, memetics has had less impact so far on the general understanding of cultural development. This seems curious, given that so much of humanitie…
Performance Style in Elena Gerhardt's Schubert Song Recordings
Performance style is conceptualised as a collection of small ‘expressive gestures’ consisting of changes in frequency, loudness or duration within or between notes or phrases. Collections differ somewhat between individuals (personal style) and change in content over time (period style). The changing style of Elena Gerhardt (1883–1965), as documented in her recordings of Schubert Lieder (1911–1939), is analysed through her habits of timbre, vibra…
Listening and Responding to the Evidence of Early Twentieth-Century Performance
Early recordings raise fundamental questions about our response to music. Why do these performances seem so strange to us? How could they ever have made musical sense to listeners? How might we make sense of them now, in our very different music-cultural environment? This paper looks at some of the ways in which musical sounds model other processes involving change over time. A mechanism is proposed that may underlie the cross-domain mappings gen…
Compositions, Scores, Performances, Meanings
The standard model of musical transmission, in which composers embody their intentions in works which they encode in scores which performers (and scholars in their imagination) decode as accurately as possible for audiences, is unpicked in the light of the evidence of recorded performance. It is replaced with a model that recognizes the large extent to which performances trigger the generation of musical meaning in the minds of listeners, and the…
Cortot's Berceuse
Alfred Cortot's 1920 recording of Chopin's Berceuse has some unusual properties - illustrated here in a discussion of the relationships among rubato, loudness, variation form and melody - which shed new light on the score and exemplify the pianist's ability to trigger embodied metaphor with unusual intensity. Comparisons with other recordings are made, and Jeffrey Kallberg's image of the Berceuse as a music box is considered in relation to the la…
Classical music as enforced Utopia
In classical music composition, whatever thematic or harmonic conflicts may be engineered along the way, everything always turns out for the best. Similar utopian thinking underlies performance: performers see their job as faithfully carrying out their master’s (the composer’s) wishes. The more perfectly they represent them, the happier the result. But why should performers not have a critical role to play in re-presenting a score, just as actors…
The danger of virtuosity
This Afterword to the special issue on Virtuosity takes the main contributions to the issue as a starting-point for a discussion of the normality of virtuosity, the anxieties it creates for performers, and the politics of virtuosity. Conclusions from Izabela Wagner’s (2015) study of the training of violin virtuosi are outlined. The relationship between virtuosity and conformity is considered. And suggestions are offered for increased virtuosity o…
Art (15 works) · Literature (9 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (9 works) · Musical (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Music and Audio Processing (5 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Visual arts (4 works)