Intertextuality is an integral part of Britten’s musical rhetoric in the War Requiem, for which he interpolated nine of Wilfred Owen’s poems about World War I within the Requiem text.

Britten created a dialogue between the Requiem text and the poems, and between the Requiem genre and other works—in particular the medieval planctus and Bach’s Matthäuspassion.

During the Middle Ages, texts in Latin and the vernacular were interpolated into liturgies as commentary, sometimes adding an emotional response to the ritual. The War Requiem expresses a similar theological dialogue between traditional and nontraditional imagery in the postmodern age. Britten presents the voice of Owen’s soldier as the voice of Christ, expressing the pity of war.

This according to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem: Parody and the transmutation of myth, Thomas Francis Rooney’s 1997 dissertation for Boston University.

Today is the 50th anniversary of War Requiem’s premiere. The work was commissioned for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, which had been destroyed in the Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1940. Above, the ruins of the original 14th-century structure; below, the same space as it looks today, serving as a courtyard adjacent to the new building.

BONUS: In the first section of the work’s Dies irae Britten contrasts the glorious trumpets of heaven in the Latin text with the bloody bugles of men in Owen’s Bugles sang; Mstislav Rostropovich conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel.

Theaterencyclopedie, a free online resource published in 2012 by the Theater Instituut Nederland, includes a complete database of all theatrical performances in the Netherlands since 1900, along with hundreds of biographies of singers, actors, and directors.

Audio and video clips are also included. Musical productions—opera, cabaret, and musical theater—are well represented.

In this centenary year of Wilson’s election, let’s eavesdrop on a rare musical moment during his presidency.

The harpist Melville A. Clark (inset), having performed at the White House with the Irish tenor John McCormack  a few months earlier, was invited back on 27 May 1914 to accompany the singing of Wilson’s eldest daughter, Margaret. The musicale was attended by 500 guests, including several visiting diplomats.

Clark now takes up the story, in an article published in the Christian Science monitor on 19 May 1945:

“When the last distinguished guest had depart­ed, the president asked me to take the harp and go with him to the rear portico of the White House. It afterward became plain that he was gravely worried over the possibilities of war between the United States and the coun­tries of the diplomats he had just entertained; and sought to relieve the tension by singing.

“I was counting it a great privilege, as well as a pleasure, to be able to give the president a lift at a time when he was burdened perhaps with the melancholy thought that his guests, that evening, might soon be his mortal enemies. But I assumed he wished merely to sit awhile in the soft Maytime air and listen to the harp.

“He asked me if I could play Drink to me only with thine eyes and I bent eagerly over the harp and began softly the familiar melody.

“Then I was surprised when the president began to sing the song in a clear lyric tenor voice.

“He suggested one song after another—Scottish and Irish songs and those of Stephen Foster. He sang easily and with faultless diction. It was nearly midnight when he stood up to go, amaz­ingly buoyant, relaxed, and unworried.”

This according to Pulling strings: The legacy of Melville A. Clark by Linda Pembroke Kaiser (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010; the chapter is reprinted in The American harp journal XXII/4 [winter 2010] pp. 36–40).

Related article: George Washington, dancer

In 2011 Biblioteca Musicale LIM launched Miscellanea Ruspoli, a series centered around the noble Ruspoli family of Florence, with Studi sulla musica dell´età barocca.

Edited by Giorgio Monari, the volume includes articles by Monari, Warren Kirkendale, Giulia Giovani, Ilaria Grippaudo, Ugo Piovano, and Alessia Silvaggi.

After the East India Company attained a firm foothold in Calcutta in 1757, an influx of English middle-class civil and military personnel brought Western classical music to the subcontinent.

A taste for arrangements of Indian melodies arose among these expatriates, prompting such publications as William Hamilton Bird’s The Oriental Miscellany: being a collection of the most favourite airs of Hindoostan, compiled and adapted for the harpsichord (Calcutta: Cooper, 1789).

In his introduction Bird complained that the songs’ brevity and “their want of variety” obliged him to compose variations for each one, and that their irregular rhythms cost him “great pains to bring them into any form as to time.”

This according to “Corelli in Calcutta: Colonial music-making in India during the 17th and 18th centuries” by Raymond Head (Early music XIII/4 [November 1985] pp. 548–553).

Above, Johan Zoffany’s Colonel Blair with his family and an Indian ayah (Calcutta, 1786), showing a square piano or clavichord. Below, Daniel Laumans performs a “Hindustan air” arranged by Sophia Plowden around the same time.

Related article: How far can a song travel?

Launched in 2012, Síneris is a monthly Spanish online musicology journal born from the experience of some of the members of the now-extinct Jugar con Fuego.

The journal aims to present research papers, essays, literary creations, opinions, interviews, and criticism of recent works, performances, and writings. It casts a wide net, including Western classical music, ethnomusicological topics, popular music, cinema, and dance.

Scrabble™-to-MIDI is a computer-emulated two-dimensional board game that generates MIDI music as the game is played.

The plug-in translator and its configuration parameters comprise a composition. Improvisation consists of playing a unique game and of making ongoing adjustments to mapping parameters during play.

Statistical distributions of letters and words provide a basis for mapping structures from word lists to notes, chords, and phrases. While pseudo-random tile selection provides a stochastic aspect to the instrument, players use knowledge of vocabulary to impose structure on this sequence of pseudo-random selections, and a conductor uses mapping parameters to variegate this structure in up to 16 instrument voices.

This according to “Algorithmic musical improvisation from 2D board games” by Dale E. Parson, an essay included in ICMC 2010: Research, education, discovery (San Francisco: International Computer Music Association, 2010). Above, a demonstration of Scrabble™-to-MIDI; below, the Pornophonic Orchestra demonstrates another Scrabble™/music interface.

Related articles:

• Lego™ music
• Circuit bending

Produced by the Appalachian College Association, the Digital Library of Appalachia provides online access to archival and historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region. The database’s contents are drawn from special collections of Appalachian College Association member libraries.

Above, the Bog Trotters Band in Galax, Virginia, in 1937. Below, the legendary Roscoe Holcomb at home in Kentucky.

Related articles:

• Bluegrass discography
• A fiddler’s Festschrift

On 23 April 1843 Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy made a ceremonial presentation of a monument to Bach in the courtyard of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach served as cantor and where his remains now lie.

Mendelssohn Bartholdy worked tirelessly to make the monument a reality. He offered suggestions about its details, gave concerts to raise the necessary funds, and handled much of the project’s organization. His many letters provide information about his commitment to it.

Now known as the Altes Bach-Denkmal, it may be the only example of a monument built by a composer to honor another.

This according to Ein Denkstein für den alten Prachtkerl: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und das alte Bach-Denkmal in Leipzig by Peter Wollny (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004). Above, a woodcut depiction from around 1850.

Related articles:

• The first Mozart monument
• Bach’s countenance

The beloved author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who died yesterday, was deeply influenced by Western classical music, particularly by the works of Mozart.

“Art has always been my salvation,” he said in an interview, “and my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain. I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.”

Above, Sendak’s Mozart in the garden (click to enlarge). Below, the full interview with Bill Moyers in 2004.