Yonatan Malin

'Alte Liebe' and the Birds of Spring: Text, Music, and Image in Max Klinger's Brahms Fantasy

Yonatan Malin — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:58:41 PST

Musical Examples for Eastern Ashkenazic Cantillation

Yonatan Malin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:32:37 PDT

Eastern Ashkenazic Cantillation: Mode, Prosody, and Meaning

Yonatan Malin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:30:51 PDT

This paper is an analytical study of Jewish cantillation melodies of Eastern Ashkenazic origin, now commonly used in North America. The purpose of the analysis is not to delineate traditions or determine historical continuity or discontinuity, but rather to offer musical insights—ways of hearing and understanding. Musical features (melodic contour, phrase relations, focal pitches, pitch collections, and scales) are compared in the six standard “modes” of Ashkenazic cantillation. Musical features, furthermore, are considered in relation to liturgical occasions and the speech rhythm of biblical texts. For example, I explain the plaintive quality of Eicha (Lamentations) cantillation in terms of its high degree of repetition and unique use of half steps in the minor scale. Similarly, I explain the narrative quality of Esther cantillation in terms of tonal flux and melodically open verse endings. Following the work of B. Elan Dresher, I show that the te’amim (musically rendered accent marks) indicate a prosodic parsing of verses, and only secondarily reflect syntax and semantics. Background in music theory is provided for non-specialists. The six modes are presented first with a basic set of phrases—those that appear most frequently—and then with an expanded set. In the conclusion, I briefly review the history of Jewish music study in the United States and argue that the methodological orientation of this paper offers a new opening for the study of musical meaning in Jewish traditions.

Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied

Yonatan Malin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:19:42 PST

This book explores rhythm and meter in the nineteenth-century German Lied. It illustrates the transformation of poetic meter into musical rhythm and situates songs within larger aesthetic and historical narratives. The Lied, as a genre, is characterized especially by the fusion of poetry and music. Poetic meter itself has expressive qualities, and rhythmic variations contribute further to the modes of signification. These features often carry over into songs, even as they are set in the more strictly determined periodicities of musical meter. A new method of declamatory-schema analysis is presented to illustrate common possibilities for setting trimeter, tetrameter, and pentameter lines. Degrees of rhythmic regularity and irregularity are also considered. Recent theories of musical meter are reviewed and applied in the analysis and interpretation of song. Topics include the nature of metric entrainment (drawing on music psychology), metric dissonance, hypermeter, and phrase rhythm. The book provides new methodologies for analysis and close readings of individual songs by Fanny Hensel née Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. Whereas songs by Hensel, Schubert, and Schumann may generally be described as musical settings of poetic texts, songs by both Brahms and Wolf function as musical performances of poetic readings. The frequently mentioned differences between Brahms and Wolf are clarified, along with deeper affinities.

Review of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Early Romantic Poetics: Fragmentation of Desire by Beate Julia Perrey

Yonatan Malin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:11:48 PST

Metric Analysis and the Metaphor of Energy: A Way into Selected Songs by Wolf and Schoenberg

Yonatan Malin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:07:54 PST

This paper provides additions and alternatives to the current practice of metric analysis, drawing on the metaphor of energy, and it engages in close readings of music and text in songs by Wolf and Schoenberg. The metaphor of energy enables in-time interpretations of relations between rhythm and meter, contour, intensification and de-intensification in other domains, and the desire of musical and poetic personae. The approach is also grounded in recent theories of metaphor, cross-domain mapping, and embodied meaning. Analytical readings explore the dynamics of subjectivity in Wolf's "Um Mitternacht" and "An die Geliebte" from the Mörike Songbook and an oscillation between manic excitement and depressive calm in Schoenberg's "Valse de Chopin" from Pierrot Lunaire.

Metric Displacement Dissonance and Romantic Longing in the German Lied

Yonatan Malin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:57:30 PST

This article seeks to explore the hermeneutics of metric dissonance by examining the association between displacement or syncopation-type conflicts and Romantic longing (Sehnsucht) in the German Lied. It includes close readings of music-text relations in four specific songs: The 'Wandrers Nachtlied II' (Goethe/Schubert); 'Intermezzo' (Eichendorff/Schumann); 'Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer' (Lingg/Brahms); and 'Unterm Schutz' (Geroge/Schoenberg). The primary methodology for the process of metric analysis derives from the work of Harald Krebs.

The article as a whole traces changes both in the use of displacement dissonance, and in the nature of Sehnsucht, as well as correlations between the two over the course of the 'long nineteenth century'. The four analyses as a group outline an historical progression of 'introduction' (in Schubert), 'intensification' (in Schumann), 'complication' (in Brahms) and 'refraction' (in Schoenberg). The study thereby combines a history of metric dissonance - one of the recurring elements of nineteenth-century style - with that of Sehnsucht - one of the most prominent features of Romantic consciousness.