Richard Toop
Biographic Data
| ID | 3684980 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Toop |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Toop |
| SIGNATURE | TOOP R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sydney University Musical Society |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Paris, Darmstadt, New York
As a European musical avant-garde starts to emerge around 1950, two locations assume a particular importance. One is Paris, where a group of radical young composers emerges around Messiaen, and Pierre Schaeffer founds musique concrète. The other is the town of Darmstadt, where an annual New Music Summer School (Ferienkurse für neue Musik) soon starts to attract young avant-gardists from all over Europe. Although this avant-garde broadly rejects a…
The Pleasure of Modernist Music
Concept and Context
Orchestral music has occupied a central position in Lachenmann's work. Although one can divide these works into distinct periods, there is a consistency of purpose and style that runs through them. Nevertheless, it is argued here that certain consistent features acquire different significances, depending on the general context of European new music at the time. To this end, the works are placed in a broader compositional context than that of Lach…
Stockhausen, Karlheinz
Dillon, James
Ferneyhough, Brian
Banks, Don(ald Oscar)
Five proposals
Stele — a gravestone as end or Beginning? György Kurtág's long march towards the orchestra
Few works by Kurtág have gained as much immediate attention as his first major orchestral work Stele (1994), composed at the age of 68. While primarily regarding himself as a composer of vocal and chamber works, from 1987 Kurtág wrote a series of works for spatially separated small ensembles whose gradual paving of the way for the overtly symphonic sonorities of Stele is examined here. Two further orchestral works written since 1994 suggest a ret…
Beyond the ‘crisis of material’
Chris Dench's Funk (1989) for contra-alto clarinet and percussion marks a new stage in the composer's technical evolution; virtually every aspect of the composition is derived, in caballistic manner, from the name of its dedicatee, the New York funk/rap artist Afrika Bambaataa
On superscriptio
Superscriptio (1981) for solo piccolo is the first part of Brian Ferneyhough's 7-part cycle Carceri d'invenzione (completed in 1986). It represents Ferneyhough's work at its most schematic — in the composer's words, ‘automatised’. The opening sequence of intervals generates several formal and articulatory dimensions of the work
Karlheinz stockhausen
In recent years, a few companies have begun to issue ‘historical recordings’ of avant-garde European works from the fifties and sixties. In some cases these simply serve to make tbrgotten or neglected works available. But others are of very considerable musicological interest, either because they allow us to hear works in early versions which differ substantially from subsequent published scores, or because they shed light on interpretative conve…
Last sketches of eternity
Many of Stockhausen's works from the early fifties consciously attempted to use serial organisation in a way which corresponded to Stockhausen's own Catholic/mystic conception (at that time) of the Divine Creation: a universe always in perfect balance, yet never repeating itself. In these works, everything from local detail to the overall formal structure is generated by the same basic proportions. Because of its innate complexity, and a series o…
The pit and the pendulum
Current musicology is reluctant to apply its methods to either the repertoire or the performance practice of contemporary music. One likely consequence is the loss of knowledge concerning twentieth-century performance practice. Moreover, the widespread failure of ‘traditional musicologists’ to integrate the recent past into the overall framework of their discipline is arguably a contributory factor to the alienation of new music from its public, …
Arts/Sciences
An apt subtitle for this slim volume might be : How to get a Doctorate Without Really Trying. Once the candidate for a ‘Doctorat d’Etat’ has found a university to sponsor his application, he presents a ‘file’ of work to a five–member jury which he is entitled to select himself; this jury then meets with him for a fivehour deliberation session, after which it decides whether or not to award the doctorate, and if so, at what level. All in all, it's…
The pit and the pendulum
Current musicology is reluctant to apply its methods to either the repertoire or the performance practice of contemporary music. One likely consequence is the loss of knowledge concerning twentieth-century performance practice. Moreover, the widespread failure of ‘traditional musicologists’ to integrate the recent past into the overall framework of their discipline is arguably a contributory factor to the alienation of new music from its public, …
The pit and the pendulum
Current musicology is reluctant to apply its methods to either the repertoire or the performance practice of contemporary music. One likely consequence is the loss of knowledge concerning twentieth-century performance practice. Moreover, the widespread failure of ‘traditional musicologists’ to integrate the recent past into the overall framework of their discipline is arguably a contributory factor to the alienation of new music from its public, …
Arts/Sciences
An apt subtitle for this slim volume might be : How to get a Doctorate Without Really Trying. Once the candidate for a ‘Doctorat d’Etat’ has found a university to sponsor his application, he presents a ‘file’ of work to a five–member jury which he is entitled to select himself; this jury then meets with him for a fivehour deliberation session, after which it decides whether or not to award the doctorate, and if so, at what level. All in all, it's…
Last sketches of eternity
Many of Stockhausen's works from the early fifties consciously attempted to use serial organisation in a way which corresponded to Stockhausen's own Catholic/mystic conception (at that time) of the Divine Creation: a universe always in perfect balance, yet never repeating itself. In these works, everything from local detail to the overall formal structure is generated by the same basic proportions. Because of its innate complexity, and a series o…
Karlheinz stockhausen
In recent years, a few companies have begun to issue ‘historical recordings’ of avant-garde European works from the fifties and sixties. In some cases these simply serve to make tbrgotten or neglected works available. But others are of very considerable musicological interest, either because they allow us to hear works in early versions which differ substantially from subsequent published scores, or because they shed light on interpretative conve…
Beyond the ‘crisis of material’
Chris Dench's Funk (1989) for contra-alto clarinet and percussion marks a new stage in the composer's technical evolution; virtually every aspect of the composition is derived, in caballistic manner, from the name of its dedicatee, the New York funk/rap artist Afrika Bambaataa
On superscriptio
Superscriptio (1981) for solo piccolo is the first part of Brian Ferneyhough's 7-part cycle Carceri d'invenzione (completed in 1986). It represents Ferneyhough's work at its most schematic — in the composer's words, ‘automatised’. The opening sequence of intervals generates several formal and articulatory dimensions of the work
Stockhausen, Karlheinz
Dillon, James
Ferneyhough, Brian
Banks, Don(ald Oscar)
Five proposals
Stele — a gravestone as end or Beginning? György Kurtág's long march towards the orchestra
Few works by Kurtág have gained as much immediate attention as his first major orchestral work Stele (1994), composed at the age of 68. While primarily regarding himself as a composer of vocal and chamber works, from 1987 Kurtág wrote a series of works for spatially separated small ensembles whose gradual paving of the way for the overtly symphonic sonorities of Stele is examined here. Two further orchestral works written since 1994 suggest a ret…
The Pleasure of Modernist Music
Concept and Context
Orchestral music has occupied a central position in Lachenmann's work. Although one can divide these works into distinct periods, there is a consistency of purpose and style that runs through them. Nevertheless, it is argued here that certain consistent features acquire different significances, depending on the general context of European new music at the time. To this end, the works are placed in a broader compositional context than that of Lach…
Paris, Darmstadt, New York
As a European musical avant-garde starts to emerge around 1950, two locations assume a particular importance. One is Paris, where a group of radical young composers emerges around Messiaen, and Pierre Schaeffer founds musique concrète. The other is the town of Darmstadt, where an annual New Music Summer School (Ferienkurse für neue Musik) soon starts to attract young avant-gardists from all over Europe. Although this avant-garde broadly rejects a…
Art (11 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (9 works) · Visual arts (7 works) · Art history (6 works) · Diverse Musicological Studies (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · History (3 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (3 works) · Performance art (3 works)