A Handbook To Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches

Edited by Patricia Hall, Friedemann Sallis

This indispensable handbook explains how scholars and students should work with and think about the composer’s working manuscripts. Over the past quarter century, the scholarly study of autograph sources has exploded and nowhere is this more true than in the field of twentieth-century music. And yet, few if any courses or seminars broach the subject of sketch studies and the skills required to examine the manuscripts. This book surveys the knowledge necessary to work efficiently in archives and libraries housing this material and with the skills and techniques specifically related to sketch studies: transcription, reconstructing sketchbooks, deciphering handwriting, dating documents. It deals with the music of important twentieth-century composers and presents visual examples of manuscripts from the collections of world renowned institutions such as the Paul Sacher Foundation. The book aims to make the work of both researchers and students more efficient and rewarding.

Bibliographic Details

53 b/w illus. 9 music examples

Contents

• Introduction Friedemann Sallis and Patricia Hall
• 1. Sketches and sketching Giselher Schubert and Friedemann Sallis
• 2. Preliminaries before visiting an archive Ulrich Mosch
• 3. Archival etiquette Therese Muxeneder
• 4. Coming to terms with the composers working manuscripts Friedemann Sallis
• 5. The classification of musical sketches exemplified in the catalogue of the Archivio Luigi Nono Erika Schaller
• 6. Digital preservation of archival material William Koseluk
• 7. Transcribing sketches Regina Busch
• 8. A tale of two sketchbooks: reconstructing and deciphering Alban Bergs sketchbooks for Wozzeck Patricia Hall
• 9. Written between the desk and the piano: dating Béla Bartóks sketches László Somfai
• 10. Defining compositional process: idea and instrumentation in Igor Stravinskys Ragtime (1918) and Pribaoutki (1915) Tomi Mäkelä
• 11. Floating hierarchies: organisation and composition in works by Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen during the 1950s Pascal Decroupet
• 12. Elliot Carters sketches: spiritual exercises and craftsmanship Denis Vermaelen
• 13. E-Sketches: Brian Ferneyhoughs use of computer assisted compositional tools Ross Feller
• 14. John Cages Williams Mix (1951-53): the restoration and new realizations of and variations on the first octophonic, surround-sound tape composition Larry Austin
• Appendix: Select list of institutions housing manuscript collections of twentieth-century composers.