Visualizing Peter: The First Animated Adaptations of Prokofiev’s<i>Peter and the Wolf</i>

Rifkin, Deborah

doi:10.30535/mto.24.2.7

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 9 publications

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“…The music stimuli used for the experiment were six excerpts of the musical piece Peter and the Wolf, composed in 1936 by Sergei Prokofiev, is an "orchestral tale for children" (Rifkin, 2018). A narrator tells the story of the boy Peter, who lives with his grandfather in the woods and sneaks out of his yard to play in the meadow, against his grandfather's will.…”

Section: Musical Representaminamentioning

confidence: 99%

Referential iconicity in music and speech

Giraldo

2020

PJOS

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Musical meaning is multifaceted. It is highly sensory and yet often abstract; able to cross cultural boundaries and yet embedded in specific traditions. For the most part music as a semiotic system is characterized by non-referential meaning (Monelle, 1991). Nevertheless, in so-called programmatic music, musical themes are intended to refer to worldly objects and events on the basis of iconic (and indexical) grounds. Such non-arbitrariness has been extensively documented in the case of speech as well (Ahlner and Zlatev, 2010; Sonesson 2013; Imai and Kita, 2014). In an experimental study, I investigated how referential iconicity in speech operates in comparison to music, considering the factors (a) primary/secondary iconicity and (b) linguistic/cultural background. In the experiment 21 Swedish and 21 Chinese native speakers had to match musical fragments from Prokofief’s Peter and the Wolf and spoken word-forms to objects, represented by schematic pictures. The experiment was designed to have two conditions to operationalize higher degree of primary and secondary iconicity, respectively. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the overall results for music and linguistic tasks, indicating that the cognitive-semiotic processes involved are not limited to a single cognitive domain or semiotic system. Both groups performed significantly above chance in both conditions, which serves as a clear indicator that interpreting referential music in music and speech sounds is not purely a case of secondary iconicity. Author Biography Verónica Giraldo’s academic background is in music and linguistics. She holds an MA in Language and Linguistics with specialization in Cognitive Semiotics from Lund University. The work presented derives from her master’s thesis project. One of her main interest is exploration of the possible correlations between language and music from the perspective of cognitive semiotics. She is currently researching on how to make visual art and museums more accessible to the blind and visually impaired community.

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Section: Musical Representaminamentioning

confidence: 99%

Referential iconicity in music and speech

Giraldo

2020

PJOS

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Misreading Revueltas: Polysemy and the Second String Quartet

Burns¹

2023

Súmula

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Silvestre Revueltas’s Second String Quartet premiered in Mexico City 1931, and was played a year later at Aaron Copland’s Yaddo Festival in Saratoga Springs. When Copland heard the work, he described it as “very amusing... a little Mexican drama, and I could easily imagine it being danced.” Copland’s description treats the quartet as a unified whole that all functions seamlessly under a US gaze. But he missed many elements of the music—most glaringly, the canción that forms the primary theme (and also subtitle) of the first movement, “Los Magueyes.” Copland’s essentializing take was common for Revueltas reception: critics highlighted his supposed naturalness and naiveté, thereby minimizing Revueltas’s labor and skill and denying the full range of musical features, which are by no means limited to sounds associated with “Mexicanness.” This article explores several alternative analytical interpretations, focusing especially on strategic alterity and composerly ambivalence. These frames, strategic alterity and ambivalence, both embody multiplicity: ambivalence is structured by multiple feelings or ideas in tension, an experience of contradiction. And strategic alterity involves a composer undermining some aspect of themselves to meet others’ expectations. Both implicate multiple interpretive possibilities. Polysemic readings require acknowledgement of analysis as incomplete, in progress or shifting. These multiple understandings defy some of music analysis’s deepest impulses: clarity, truth, and a unified explanatory power. This article leans into this incomplete status, with an aim of re-examining assumptions and attending to a different set of musical meanings. Keywords: musical modernism, strategic alterity, ambivalence, Mexico, Aaron Copland, United States, Carlos Chávez Malinterpretando a Revueltas: Polisemia y el Cuarteto de cuerda nº 2 Resumen El Cuarteto de cuerda nº 2 de Silvestre Revueltas se estrenó en Ciudad de México en 1931 y se interpretó un año más tarde en el Yaddo Festival de Aaron Copland en Saratoga Springs. Al escuchar la obra, Copland la describió como “muy entretenida… un pequeño drama mexicano, me lo puedo imaginar fácilmente bailado”. La descripción de Copland trata el cuarteto como un todo unificado que funciona perfectamente bajo la mirada estadounidense. Pero no detectó muchos elementos musicales –sobre todo la canción que da lugar al tema principal del primer movimiento, “Los Magueyes”–. La interpretación culturalmente estereotipada de Copland es típica en la recepción de Revueltas: los críticos resaltaban la supuesta naturalidad e inocencia, minimizando el esfuerzo y la habilidad de Revueltas e ignorando el abanico completo de características musicales, que van mucho más allá de sonidos asociados a la “mexicanidad”. Este artículo investiga varias interpretaciones analíticas alternativas, centrándose en la alteridad estratégica y la ambivalencia compositiva. Estos marcos de referencia incorporan la multiplicidad: la ambivalencia deriva de tensiones entre múltiples sentimientos o ideas, de una experiencia contradictoria. Y la alteridad estratégica resulta de la supresión por parte del compositor de algún aspecto de sí mismo para adaptarse a las expectativas de los otros. Ambos marcos implican múltiples posibilidades de interpretación. Las lecturas polisémicas exigen aceptar el análisis como incompleto, en proceso y cambiante. Este tipo de conocimiento múltiple desafía a algunos impulsos profundos del análisis: claridad, verdad y poder interpretativo unificado. Este artículo se apoya en este estado incompleto con el objetivo de re-examinar supuestos y prestar atención a otro conjunto de significados musicales. Palabras clave: modernismo musical, alteridad estratégica, ambivalencia, México, Aaron Copland, Estados Unidos, Carlos Chávez

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Visualizing Peter: The First Animated Adaptations of Prokofiev’sPeter and the Wolf

Cited by 2 publications

References 9 publications

Referential iconicity in music and speech

Referential iconicity in music and speech

Misreading Revueltas: Polysemy and the Second String Quartet

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