Volume 7 (2021)
Dance as Music in George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco
Kara Yoo Leaman (Oberlin College)
Volume 7.2 (February 2021)
In George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, a neoclassical ballet choreographed in 1941 to J. S. Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins (BWV 1043), there is a memorable passage in which ten dancers hop on pointe while creating surprising visual accents against the music and against each other. The off-beat accents reflect the jazzy character of the ballet, and the pattern they articulate artfully relates to a metrically dissonant rhythmic motive in Bach’s score.
Keywords: J. S. Bach, George Balanchine, dance, ballet, choreomusical, audiovisual
Excerpts of Concerto Barocco used with permission from the New York City Ballet.
Music Appreciation Through Animation: Percy Scholes’s ‘AudioGraphic’ Piano Rolls
Stephanie Probst (University of Cologne)
Volume 7.1 (January 2021)
From 1925-30, British music educator Percy A. Scholes spearheaded an initiative for music appreciation by means of the player piano. The series “AudioGraphic Music” featured select works from the musical canon on the Aeolian Company’s piano rolls. In addition to their function as sound recordings, Scholes prepared the rolls as visual artefacts with introductory texts, pictures, and analytical commentary. This video article explores the analytical and pedagogical potential of these rolls as tools for music listeners and highlights how they foreshadowed recent innovation in musical animation.
Keywords: player piano, music rolls, music appreciation, public music theory, Percy Scholes, J. S. Bach, fugue
DOI: http://doi.org/10.30535/smtv.7.1