The Vienna workshop ‘Historical Perspectives on Musical Commissions’ offered a reminder of the array of rationales that have motivated individuals and organisations to commission musical works. Listening to the workshop presentations from my disciplinary perspective as a historian of late twentieth-century modernist and avant-garde music, I found it striking that aesthetic considerations – specific styles, compositional techniques, and attitudes to musical language – by no means predominated as a motivation for patrons.
Continue readingMonthly Archives: August 2024
Commissioning Soundalikes. What if clients want imitation instead of originality? |by K. Hondros
Have you ever heard of “soundalikes”? They are music products often found in highly commercial areas of the music business, such as advertising, and are specifically created to sound extremely similar to already existing pieces of music. Soundalikes are problematic. They do not follow the typical intrinsic motivation of music creation to be original and to strive for novelty, it is difficult to perceive their production as “creative” or “creativity,” and they strongly suggest that copyright infringement is always imminent when a soundalike is commissioned and subsequently composed.
Continue readingLady Gaga’s “Poker Face” as a Baroque Aria. Or: How a problem is solved by a singer as a commissioner | by A. Flor
As a coloratura soprano, Simone Kermes specializes in the virtuosic music of the early eighteenth-century dramma per musica, primarily singing pieces composed by Georg Friedrich Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, and their lesser-known contemporaries. Critics often call her the “Lady Gaga of Baroque music,” a nickname she now embraces, skillfully navigating between the realms of Baroque and pop. What makes her fascinating is her ability to handle the demanding music of the eighteenth-century castrati and prime donne – while fearlessly embracing various elements of pop culture.
Continue reading