Philip A. Ewell | |
|---|---|
 Ewell in 2020 | |
| Born | Philip Adrian Ewell February 16, 1966 DeKalb, Illinois |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Music theorist, academic professor |
Philip Adrian Ewell (born February 16, 1966) is an American professor of music theory at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He specializes in Russian and twentieth century music, as well as rap and hip hop. [1] [2]
Phillip Adrian Ewell was born on February 16, 1966, [3] and grew up in DeKalb, Illinois. [4] His father was an African American intellectual who had attended Morehouse College with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1948. [5] Ewell received a BA in music from Stanford University, an MA in cello performance from Queens College (City University of New York), and a PhD in music theory from Yale University. [1] His dissertation, Analytical Approaches to Large-Scale Structure in the Music of Alexander Scriabin, was advised by Allen Forte. [1] [6]
Ewell's published works include a number of articles on Russian music theory. He has translated Russian writings of and interviews with Russian theorists, such as Yuri Kholopov, [7] and musicians, such as Vasya Oblomov. [8] He has written about Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina [9] as well as Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. [10] His forthcoming works include a new undergraduate music theory textbook under contract with Norton and a book entitled On Music Theory under contract with the University of Michigan Press's Music and Social Justice series. [11] [12]
His public intellectual work has included appearances on BBC [13] and Adam Neely's YouTube channel. [14] In March 2021, Ewell contributed to RILM's blog in which he wrote about his Twitter project "Erasing colorasure in American music theory" [15] and delivered a public colloquium at Columbia University entitled "On Confronting Music Theory's Antiblackness: Three Case Studies". [16]
On November 9, 2019, at the 42nd annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Ewell participated in a plenary session entitled "Reframing Music Theory" which sought to "critique the confining frames within which [music theory] has been operating and explore ways in which to reframe what constitutes music theory". [17] [18] He presented a talk entitled "Music Theory's White Racial Frame". [19] In his talk and in subsequent publications, Ewell argues that the "white racial frame" – a term coined by sociologist Joe Feagin – shapes knowledge practices in Western music theory and its institutions. [19] [20] [21] Feagin defines the "white racial frame" as,
an overarching white worldview that encompasses a broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, images, interpretations and narratives, emotions, and reactions to language accents, as well as racialized inclinations to discriminate. [22]
Ewell's talk sparked the 2020 publication of fifteen responses in volume 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies . [23] [24] [25] [26] The volume's contributing authors included the journal's co-founders Timothy L. Jackson and Stephen Slottow, [23] [27] as well as Charles Burkhart, Richard Beaudoin (Dartmouth College, assistant professor of music), [28] Suzannah Clark, Nicholas Cook, and Jack Boss (University of Oregon, professor of music theory and composition), [29] as well as "An Anonymous Response to Philip Ewell", which itself drew criticism. [26] [30]
Ewell's work on music theory's white racial frame—and the ensuing controversy from the 2020 publication of Journal of Schenkerian Studies' twelfth volume—has received wide-ranging media attention from Alex Ross at The New Yorker , [26] The New York Times , [31] NPR, [32] and Inside Higher Ed . [33] The Society for Music Theory's executive board stated that it "condemns the anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks on Philip Ewell perpetuated in several essays included in the 'Symposium on Philip Ewell's 2019 SMT Plenary Paper' published by the Journal of Schenkerian Studies". [30] [34]
Ewell's publication has been criticized by black linguist and instructor of music history at Columbia University John McWhorter, who published the following in Substack :
"If Ewell's claim is that music is racist when involving hierarchical relationships between elements, then we must ask where that puts a great deal of music created by non-white people. Perhaps more important, the question is: just what do these hierarchical relationships in music structure have to do with human suffering?" [35]
Ewell's recent book On Music Theory And Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone was also criticized by John McWhorter in The New York Times [36] and by Don Baton in the City Journal . [37]
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship and United States citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a single, central triad is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized European classical music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".
The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation. Many have called the first-night reaction a "riot" or "near-riot", though this wording did not come about until reviews of later performances in 1924, over a decade later. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century.
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the ancohemitonic symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this symmetrical scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 43 enharmonically non-equivalent, transpositionally non-equivalent eight-note sets.
Heinrich Schenker was a Galician-born Austrian music theorist whose writings have had a profound influence on subsequent musical analysis. His approach, now termed Schenkerian analysis, was most fully explained in a three-volume series, Neue musikalische Theorien und Phantasien, which included Harmony (1906), Counterpoint, and Free Composition (1935).
Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how the "foreground" relates to an abstracted deep structure, the Ursatz. This primal structure is roughly the same for any tonal work, but a Schenkerian analysis shows how, in each individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the foreground. A key theoretical concept is "tonal space". The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad in the background form a tonal space that is filled with passing and neighbour tones, producing new triads and new tonal spaces that are open for further elaborations until the "surface" of the work is reached.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed in a relatively tonal, late-Romantic idiom. Later, and independently of his influential contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a much more dissonant musical language that had transcended usual tonality but was not atonal, which accorded with his personal brand of metaphysics. Scriabin found significant appeal in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk as well as synesthesia, and associated colours with the various harmonic tones of his scale, while his colour-coded circle of fifths was also inspired by theosophy. He is often considered the main Russian Symbolist composer and a major representative of the Russian Silver Age.
In music, the mystic chord or Prometheus chord is a six-note synthetic chord and its associated scale, or pitch collection; which loosely serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for some of the later pieces by Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. Scriabin, however, did not use the chord directly but rather derived material from its transpositions.
The Firebird is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois and others on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. It was first performed at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910 and was an immediate success, catapulting Stravinsky to international fame and leading to future Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaborations including Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913).
In music theory, prolongation is the process in tonal music through which a pitch, interval, or consonant triad is considered to govern spans of music when not physically sounding. It is a central principle in the music-analytic methodology of Schenkerian analysis, conceived by Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker. The English term usually translates Schenker's Auskomponierung. According to Fred Lerdahl, "The term 'prolongation' [...] usually means 'composing out' ."
John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. He is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. He has authored a number of books on race relations and African-American culture, acting as political commentator especially in his New York Times newsletter.
Richard Filler Taruskin was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as musical analysis that combines sociological, cultural, and political perspectives has incited much discussion, debate and controversy. He regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times. He researched a wide variety of areas, but a central topic was Russian music from the 18th century to the present day. Other subjects he engaged with include the theory of performance, 15th-century music, 20th-century classical music, nationalism in music, the theory of modernism, and analysis. He is best known for his monumental survey of Western classical music, the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music. His awards include the first Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society in 1978 and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2017.
Concerto in E-flat, inscribed Dumbarton Oaks, 8.v.38 (1937–38) is a chamber concerto by Igor Stravinsky, named for the Dumbarton Oaks estate of Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss in Washington, D.C., who commissioned it for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Composed in Stravinsky's neoclassical period, the piece is one of Stravinsky's two chamber concertos and is scored for a chamber orchestra of flute, B♭ clarinet, bassoon, two horns, three violins, three violas, two cellos, and two double basses. The three movements, Tempo giusto, Allegretto, and Con moto, performed without a break, total roughly twelve minutes. The concerto was heavily inspired by Bach's set of Brandenburg Concertos, and was the last work Stravinsky completed in Europe, started in spring 1937 at the Château de Montoux near Annemasse, near Geneva, Switzerland, and finished in Paris on March 29, 1938.
Music Theory Spectrum is a peer-reviewed, academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It is the official journal of the Society for Music Theory, and is published by Oxford University Press. The journal was first published in 1979 as the official organ of the Society for Music Theory, which had been founded in 1977 and had its first conference in 1978. Unlike many other journals, Music Theory Spectrum was initially published in an oblong (landscape) page format, to better accommodate such musical graphics as Schenkerian graphs.
The Journal of Schenkerian Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis, with a particular focus on Schenkerian analysis based on the ideas of Heinrich Schenker. It is published by the Center for Schenkerian Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music. Its first issue was published in 2005, under editor-in-chief Jennifer Sadoff. As of 2020, it has a paid circulation of approximately 30 copies per issue.
Suzannah Clark is a Canadian-British musicologist and music theorist specializing in the music of Franz Schubert, the history of music theory, and medieval music. She is currently Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music and in 2019 was named Harvard College Professor at Harvard University and from 2016–2019 served as chair of the Music Department at Harvard.
The Society for Music Theory (SMT) is an American organization devoted to the promotion, development and engagement of music theory as a scholarly and pedagogical discipline. Founded in 1977 by a group of distingushed theorists, among them Allen Forte and Wallace Berry, its members are primarily theorists in North American academic institutions and as of 2023 number over 1200. Among the SMT's publications are the Music Theory Spectrum and Music Theory Online journals, as well as the SMT Newsletter.
Charles Burkhart is an American musicologist, theorist, composer, and pianist. He holds the title of Professor Emeritus in the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is known especially as a scholar in Schenkerian analysis and as a successful lecturer and master class presenter.
Timothy L. Jackson is an American professor of music theory who has spent most of his career at the University of North Texas and specializes in music of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, Schenkerian theory, politics and music. He is the co-founder of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. In 2020, he became controversial for editing a special issue of that journal containing articles criticizing Philip Ewell's plenary talk "Music Theory's White Racial Frame".
Matthew G. Brown is a British-American music theorist, musicologist, educator, and artistic director. He is Professor of Music Theory at Eastman School of Music.
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