Documents found
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971.More information
Twenty-three years separate the music from Batman (Tim Burton, 1989) and The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) with the respective compositions of Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. If both composers remain faithful to a signifying design of the themes, Zimmer proposes a higher number of thematic materials, with the presence of an “identifying ostinato” for each of the three main characters, in addition to their own themes.Developed by a real team, “sound narration” is also a major characteristic of Nolan and Zimmer's aesthetics with the elaboration, throughout the film, of a continuum of sound effects and music, in which what we've called “effects underscoring” constitutes one of the most innovative strategies. “Effects underscoring” is a compositional technique by which music is intended to create an emotional setting no longer to the voices, but to the noises, during sequences where sounds concentrate the dramaturgical meaning of a section through their intrinsic properties (rhythmic organization, timbral characteristics) The meticulous work on noises, adding to a better definition of sound effects thanks to digital technology, really “frees” music in its relationship to the image; we observe the concrete effects of this by comparing the synchronisms and the handling of the ostinatos (length, harmonic pedals, harmonic rhythm) in action scenes from the two films. While Elfman's work is characterized by a vivid and detailed writing which emphasizes both the characters' actions and the editing, Zimmer distances himselfs from visual events by privileging a greater musical continuity which mostly depends on what we have called “stem scoring”, a multi-layered musical composition that the composer or mixer can trigger or remove, depending on the image.
Keywords: musique de film, bruits, effects underscoring, stem scoring, rythme harmonique, film music, sound effects, effects underscoring, stem scoring, harmonic rhythm
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972.More information
How does Debussy's work became to be considered as one of the most important of occidental music history? It is certain that we here dealing with a very complex process of recognition. However, this article aims to isolate from it and to examine one of its main stages, such as the recognition of Debussy by some of his peers.Our thesis is the following: the recognition that today knows Debussy's work is widely due to its appropriation between the 1900s and 1910s by French musicians from the group of the “Indépendants.” It seems essential, in the first instance, to widen the scale of observation and restore the collective position occupied by this group within the structure of the relatively autonomous macro-social world that constitutes the “French musical field” of the early 20th century. We can then show that they are part of a dual opposition—inextricably institutional, aesthetic and musical—to the Institut and to the Schola Cantorum managed by Vincent d'Indy. In this conflicting context, an accurate review of the writings from Émile Vuillermoz, Florent Schmitt, Maurice Ravel and Charles Koechlin shows that the Indépendants take hold of Debussy's work through specific aesthetic logics (logic of emotion and logic of innovation).If this appropriation of Debussy's work by the Indépendants is so decisive, it is not only because they are among the first to make an indisputable milestone of history of music, but also because they identify with it in a coherent and near-organized way to found their own artistic existence. It is through this double action, which consists on making of the author of Pelléas the founder of their artistic lineage and struggling (successfully) to exist within french musical field, that the Indépendants gradually make the value of Debussy's work grow.
Keywords: appropriation, champ musical, Debussy, Indépendants, Schola Cantorum, appropriation, Debussy, Indépendants, musical field, Schola Cantorum
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975.More information
Most of what we know about musical life in Québec during the period between the Conquest and the Act of Union comes from the printed press. An analysis of the six music manuscripts in the De la Broquerie Fortier fonds, which is kept at the Québec archives centre of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, sheds new light on the period. The music manuscripts, transmitted by six generations of people in or close to the Boucher de la Bruère family, are studied here from a musical, historical and social standpoint. To examine these documents, copied between 1750 and 1850, is to have access to political, artistic and family networkings during the English Regime. The documents are also an excellent source of information on quadrille dance figures and organ accompaniment of motets. In addition, the fonds contains a violin manuscript from the late French Regime, and a guitar manuscript, assembled around 1841, that provides a rare example of 19th-century guitar tablature. Finally, the manuscripts dating from the first half of the 19th century show the gradual Americanization of the vocal and instrumental repertoire in Canada and provide evidence of the first Canadian compositions.
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977.