Eric Mckee

• Pennsylvania State University

This article examines the critical reception of love scenes in early Hollywood sound films (1928–1933). Why were love scenes so unsuccessful, and what did Hollywood do to fix the problem? Hollywood quickly responded and developed a new approach. In the second part, I consider the role of music in one common type of love scene—the ballroom love scen...

This chapter discusses how the polonaise served as an emblem of Poland's ruling class or as a template for genteel behavior. It also represented the nation of Poland, its people, customs, and history. Well aware of their shared noble associations, Polish dance commentators often began their discussion of the polonaise by comparing it to the minuet....

Fryderyk Chopin (1810–1849), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. This book reexamines Chopin and his music in light of the cultural narratives formed during his lifetime. These include the roma...

In his 1837 article ‘Strauss: His Orchestra, His Waltzes – the Future of Rhythm’, Berlioz advocates treating rhythm as an independent dimension just as fundamental to music as melody and harmony. He observes that ‘the combinations in the realm of rhythm must certainly be as numerous as melodic ones, and the links between them could be made as inter...

ABSTRACT A defining feature of Viennese ballroom minuets in the second half of the eighteenth century is the marked contrast between the first and second minuet (commonly called the trio). The type of contrast was standardised within a rather narrow and predictable range. Minuets were loud, employed the full orchestra and had walking bass lines in...

Notes 57.1 (2000) 97-99 Harald Krebs has spent a good deal of his professional life in the company of Robert Schumann, and his new book is a celebration of that relationship. The intellectual motivation behind Krebs's book, however, is not so much Schumann the composer but analytical method. Krebs has developed a powerful theoretical tool designed...

This article presents a revisionist approach to form in tonal music from a Schenkerian perspective. Following the work of William Rothstein, form in tonal music is defined as a dynamic interaction of two hierarchical tonal structures, inner and outer forms. The first part of the article defines these structures and their interaction. The second par...

In approaching tonal form from a Schenkerian perspective, three aspects of the music need to be considered: the articulations of harmonic/voice-leading levels from the background to the foreground, the articulations of the musical surface, and the nature and function of the interaction between the underlying levels of harmony and voice leading and...