https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/16862 2026-06-05T00:46:56Z 2026-06-05T00:46:56Z Erwin, Max https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/147109 2026-06-04T12:28:49Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: «The true internationalism of music in our time» : politics and dodecaphony in Europe, 1947-1951 Authors: Erwin, Max Abstract: Introduction: The Wages of Dodecaphony; Histories of post-war music in Europe have long been buttressed by the claim that twelve-tone music exercised a near-dictatorial control over institutional music-making. While there have been numerous and extensive critiques of this narrative, there has been relatively less notice given to the finer details of how and why such a dominance came to be - or appeared to be - the case. That is where this article comes in. Using discursive analysis of texts written in and around the new centers of new music in post-war Europe, it nuances metanarratives of dodecaphonus ex nihilo, throwing light on the activity of expansive and conflicting international networks of musicians attempting to negotiate on the contingencies of a wide variety of musical practices competing for institutional support. These negotiations take place in two moves. The bulk of the chapter is occupied with the first, which involves the conflict between Schoenberg's practice - represented entirely in absentiaby a number of figures, most prominently Rene Leibowitz and Theodor W. Adorno - and various alternative methods of twelve-tone composition, especially those of Josef Matthias Hauer. Both Schoenberg's and Hauer's exegetes depicted their chosen method as an organic and inexorable evolution in music, while the rival's methods were portrayed as ex-centrically unmoored from historical progress. Significantly, Leibowitz and Adorno connected Schoenberg's practice to the internationalist discourse propagated by institutions of new music in post-war Europe. The second move, suggested in the conclusion, involves the shift from Schoenbergian dodecaphony to "post-Webernian" serialism.

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Erwin, Max https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/147098 2026-06-03T12:23:49Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: 2025 Darmstädter Ferienkurse Authors: Erwin, Max Abstract: Everybody said that it was a good year this year for Darmstadt. It’s hard to disagree – just about everything in the typical wall-to-wall-programming and the self-curated Open Spaces was not just enjoyable but creatively galvanizing. The level of musicianship, as always, was extremely high, and the tutors seemed particularly adept at inspiring their students. It’s probably precisely because there wasn’t some big totalizing effort to make a statement on The Future of Music that questions on the future of music were raised with such urgency and eloquence. As always, there was about sixteen days’ worth of music happening, so what follows is a very selective cross-section. I will start with the workshops.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/146610 2026-05-20T13:23:27Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: An interview with director Barbara Diana Abstract: Barbara Diana's colourful personality has obviously provided the staging of the opera Falstaff at the Manoel Theatre with its multiple hues. A musicologist by training, with a deep personal knowledge of operatic singing on the one hand. and theatre staging on the other, Signora Diana, or Barbara as she likes to be called, has even composed music herself. She has published two monographs on the 20th-century composer Benjamin Britten but admits that her favourite opera is Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito. Barbara starts out from an important principle: the main difference between opera and theatre dramaturgy lies in the music. Opera singers cannot choose the time it would take to say their lines; they are driven by the music and its tempo-rhythm, which is also conditioned by the orchestral colour that is applied to it. So how to work with the music of Falstaff and all that it provides? [excerpt]

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/143505 2026-02-06T09:25:02Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Reports from ICTMD national and regional representatives : Malta Abstract: Malta report (2026) for The International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD).

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z