Neo-mythologism in Music: From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb

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Pendragon Press, 2007 - 299 pages
Frontcover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- I Neo-Mythologism: a Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend -- Defining the Term: "Neo-Mythologism" as Assertion of Myth's Artistic Validity -- The Diachronic Perspective -- Remythification in Literature -- Early-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music -- Creative Mythology During the Age of Disintegration -- Late-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music -- The Role of Jungian Psychoanalysis in Neo-Mythologism -- Forerunners of Neo-Mythologism Prior to the Twentieth Century -- Wagner -- Scriabin -- The Synchronic Perspective -- Mythologems -- The Operational Modes and Archetypes of (Neo- )Mythic Thought -- II The Prime Structuring "Molds"of Myth and Music -- Binary Opposition -- Hindemith's Oppositive Thinking: Is Mediation Possible on Earth? -- Schoenberg, the Mediator of Opposites -- Other Instances of the Binary Opposition at Work -- The Idea of Symmetry and Mythological Twins -- The Odd and Even from Stravinsky to Reich -- Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato -- The Mythologem of the World Tree as the Model for a Musical Score -- The Meaning of Ostinato in Minimalism: Steve Reich's The Desert Music -- "The Quest for the Invariant": Variability and Combinatoriality -- III Towards the Universality of Myth -- "Wie ein Naturlaut": Reaching Beyond Culture -- Crumb's "Evocation of Nature": Drones -- Imagining the Pre-Cultural: Babbitt's Philomel -- The Composer as "Archaeologist of Culture"--The Mythic "World Body" and the Idea of Global Communication -- From Universal Nature to Universal Culture -- Polystylistics in its Mythological Function: Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms -- The Tower of Babel -- IV In Search of the Lost Union: Word-Myth-Music -- Assonance and Alliteration -- Babbling, the Language of Magic -- Mythic Power of Names in Stockhausen's Licht

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Contents

a Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend
1
The Synchronic Perspective
18
The Operational Modes and Archetypes of NeoMythic Thought
24
Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato
51
Variability and Combinatoriality
64
Towards the Universality of Myth
77
The Composer as Archaeologist of Culture
83
Stravinskys
90
Return of Number Symbolism
185
Numerology in Musical Fabric and in Piece Grouping
187
The Mythologem of a Circle
201
The Circle in Archaic Myths and Jungs Theory
207
The Circle in the Poetic Text of Ancient Voices of Children
213
Historical Precedents?
221
Stockhausens Curvilinear Thought
230
The Cyclic Time of David Demnitz
236

The Tower of Babel
108
Assonance and Alliteration
117
Mythic Power of Names in Stockhausens Licht
125
Denisovs Requiem
132
Cosmogony and Eschatology
152
the Initiation Rite of Modernism
168
The Musical Mythification of Technology and Science
178
The Reception of Crumbs Music
243
Schnittkes Mythological Outlook
249
The Devil and the Perception of Schnittkes Early Style
256
Postlude
262
The English translation of the texts by García Lorca
273
List of Illustrations
287
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Victoria Adamenko was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 1965. She graduated from Gnesin Music Institute in Moscow, Russia, in 1990. While in the Soviet Union, Adamenko worked as a critic for Russian Musical Newspaper, providing interviews with contemporary composers and covering current musical events, such ""Moscow Authumn"" festival. At the same time, she studied mythology, semiotics and various interrelationships between mythology and music. She immigrated to the United States in 1991, where she continued to study both musicology, mythology, and Jung, receiving her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2000. Adamenko helped organize Schnittke Festival in New Jersey and interviewed George Crumb with the purpose of researching the role of mythology in composers' thought. Adamenko presented her research at the national meeting of the AMS, International Jung conferences and congresses on musical semiotics, Schnittke conferences, and other venues. She published articles in American Music, Journal of Musicological Research and in semiotic journals. Adamenko taught research in music and other disciplines at the University of West Florida and University of Southern Mississippi.

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