Professional Documents
Culture Documents
10/10/14
York University. His main area of expertise is in eastern European music. Dr. Beckerman
In this article, Dr. Beckerman states his thesis right after his introduction. It is
my belief that certain qualities of the Czech national tradtion can best be explored under
the auspices of a search for the elusive quality that Einstein stopped short of articulating-
what Janacek called Czechness,(63 Beckerman). Even though that was the thesis his
goal is to give a model of what the Czech style is. He wants to do it in the ways that
Taruskin did it for Russian music, whom he also quotes in this article. In order to arrive
to his goal destination he decides to go into an in depth study of Smetana and of the
people that are associated with him. Throughout the article he talks about a lot of little
musical or historical details that make the music have Czechness. Some of which are the
facts that it is very programmatic and it uses a lot of folk melodies. There is also a big
emphasis on dance in Czech music. He also brings in the technical aspects. For example:
first beat accents, syncopated rhythms, avoidance of counterpoint, and Lydian dominate
modes (65). However, he brings an important point that lots of different types of music
have these things and yet these different types of music do not sound Czech. Through out
the article he brings in more important points. For example, German music is more
developed than Czech, which does not mean that it is better. He also notes the use of
bagpipes as a major influence on the music. All of this brings him to the conclusion that
none of these things are strictly Czech but with in a whole the help influence the style. It
is more about all of this relating to the history that was going on and how all of this
influence the Czech composers of the time, because they were tight knit. It is my personal
opinion that because they were so tight knit and close that they created a style because of
this.
Over the entire article was good. It felt like a discussion forum while reading this
article. It was a little informal because of this. It made me wonder whether this article
was meant for the academic crowd or if it was meant for more common reader. However,
have said this it did not bother me. He asked a lot of questions in the article. This also
contributed to the informality but I thought it still worked. The questions acted like his
train of thought and helped guide the reader through what he is going through in search
for answers on a very difficult subject. The article was exceptionally well organized. This
was probably the strongest point of the paper. It always went from subject to subject in a
discursive way. He almost guided the reader and made sure the main points were at the
beginnings of his paragraphs. Dr. Beckerman brought a lot of clarity on an unclear topic.
One of the biggest weaknesses of this article is the fact that the subject is so
esoteric to actually prove. Style is something of taste and it is hard to define when there
can always be exceptions. He even alluded to the fact that this music is something
palpable yet when closely looked at cannot be seen. In other words the music cannot be
easily defined. What Dr. Beckerman did do is give more of a historical context and
brought all the common elements of Czech music together in one article. All these things
are out in the public and seem relatively well known. In my perspective he did not add
anything particularly new to the world of music on what is Czech music. However, what
he did do that was great was clarify the information that was already there about Czech
music and with all those details helped clarify what influences music to have a Czechness
style.
speaks like a discussion forum where he is tring to find a answer by speaking his thought
aloud but not holding them back.
speaks in a dialogue type of fashion.
Very organized
Programmatic