This paper examines how collage in music was comprehended in an academic field and area of musical practice by elucidating its aspects from the 1970s commentaries on G. Mahler’s quotations.　Musical collage at present is mainly considered as one of the significant compositional techniques in contemporary music from the late twentieth century onwards. It being perceived as a subordinate　concept of borrowing with a long-standing history, previous studies have intensely focused on its technical side. Although the precedent studies in relation to intertextuality or semiotics suggest meaningful methods of structural analysis, its cultural and historical contexts are evidently overlooked.
   Bearing the aforementioned methodological problem in mind, this paper treats secondary sources of historiography used for deep understanding of compositional technique as primary sources to present aesthetics of that time. This paper takes a method of tracing the history of the word collage, exploring the arguments on Mahler’s quotation made by two prominent musicologists, W. Dömling and T. Kneif, and their contemporary composer G. Ligeti in the 1970s. Their arguments verified multifaceted perspectives of formalism, semantics, or the function of social criticism respectively. The underlying basis of the diverse views is clarified as follows: 1）As other contemporary studies that aimed for theorization of musical collage did, those diverse perspectives were derived from the premise that musical collage is intimately bound up with collage practice in the plastic art and 2）in an academic field, internal structure or acoustic recognition was the core of their discussion, meanwhile in the field of music practice, a social and cultural situation surrounded by the composer was incorporated in musical collage. This study not only sheds new light on a further understanding of musical collage in its early reception but provides the groundwork for future studies on its cultural meaning in the 1970s.

View full abstract

   This study analyzes how the hymns of Martin Luther are treated in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. It has been stated that Bach often used Luther’s chorales in his vocal and organ works, and yet there has been no monograph capturing its entire picture. In this article, 44 hymns whose texts are written by Luther are regarded as “Luther’s hymns”（ Table 1）.
   Among some 200 Bach’s organ chorales, 53 are based on Luther’s chorales （Table 2）. In the Orgelbüchlein, Luther’s hymns printed in contemporary hymnals are covered exhaustively. Bach used about 370 hymn stanzas in his vocal works. Eleven among 53 chorale cantatas are wholly based on Luther’s hymns. 26 four-part chorales use Luther’s hymns. In other vocal works, Luther’s hymns are used in 58 movements of 46 works （Table 3–4）. Bach used 100 stanzas of Luther’s hymns in all. The data shown in this study demonstratively support the widespread statement that Bach often used Luther’s hymns.
   Table 1 shows which of Luther’s hymns are used in which of Bach’s works. It is considered that the most popular hymns in Bach’s time were Luther’s. However, Luther’s hymns account for only one to nine percent in four hymnals Bach referred to. It is true that Luther’s hymns are located at conspicuous positions in these hymnals; it is supposed that the ecclesiastical authorities had the policy to attach great importance to Luther’s hymns. Nevertheless, it cannot be an accident that as many as a quarter of organ chorales and hymn stanzas Bach composed are based on those of Luther. Besides, the reason why 10 hymns of Luther were not composed by Bach was given.

View full abstract

   Amerus’ Practica artis musicae（1271） is among the most significant witnesses to the practice of early mensural music before Franco of Cologne’s Ars cantus mensurabilis（c.1280） diffused. While most contemporaneous thirteenth-century writings on mensural theory refer to both tempus/tempora and rhythmic modes, notably Amerus employs neither. Presumably in order to compensate for Amerus’ text, an anonymous short treatise appended to Practica（hereafter, the Appendix） —comprising three paragraphs—describes tempus/tempora and the six rhythmic modes.
   Intriguingly, the entire content of the Appendix is considerably inconsistent in terms of its repetitive descriptions of modus and a three-tempora long. This incoherency arguably arises from the fact that the Appendix is a miscellany of major mensural rules from several influential treatises circa 1280. Its first paragraph on the six rhythmic modes in motets appears identical to the principles provided by Anonymous’s Discantus positio vulgaris（mid-thirteenth century）. The second paragraph on the six rhythmic modes in organum is based on Johannes de Garlandia’s De musica mensurabili（c.1260）. Moreover, the explanation of proprietas of ligatures in the third paragraph accords with Franco’s doctrine—which contradicts Amerus’ rule of ligatures. This article explicates the ascriptions and networks of each sentence in the Appendix to other thirteenth-century writings.
   In addition, the notational examples in the Appendix show idiosyncratic ascending three-note ligatures cum proprietate with a downward stem on the left, which cannot be found in any other sources. This results from the lacuna in the definition of ascending ligatures within the text, and it is conceivable that the author or the scribe(s) attempted to reproduce ascending ligatures on the basis of the textual explanation of descending ligatures cum proprietate that have a downward stem on the left. These ligatures might reflect the perplexity surrounding multitudinous mensural rules circa 1280, when pre-Franconian and post-Franconian theories coexisted.

View full abstract

   Kaija Saariaho considers the aurora borealis, which she discovered in Lapland, to be a significant source of inspiration for her work, Lichtbogen for nine musicians and live electronics （1986）. She created several drawings inspired by the image of the aurora to construct her musical ideas. The primary sources （including the drawings） produced by Saariaho during the composition of Lichtbogen are presently housed at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Switzerland. The aim of this article is to examine the role of these drawings during the drafting process of the work.
   Indeed, a close study shows that Saariaho produced these drawings, not only to depict the image of the aurora, but also to conceive her own musical form. Form has always been a crucial aspect of her work. The outcome of her undertaking lies in the notion of a “timbral axis,” that is, the relation between musical tone and noise. Saariaho used this concept to replace the relation between consonance and dissonance in tonal music. She sought to create a dynamic form by organizing musical elements such as timbral axis, range, or rhythm in a different manner. To this end, the drawings played a crucial role.
   However, Saariaho did not exactly realize the score according to the drawings; rather than being bound by them, she based her work freely on them.

View full abstract