DEUMM Online digitizes, enhances, and extends the Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (DEUMM), the most important modern music dictionary in the Italian language. Comprising a broad range of entries (persons, topics, dances, genres, geographical locations, institutions, instruments, and works), DEUMM Online uses advanced and intuitive search and translation functionalities. This venerable music encyclopedia, which has set the standards in modern Italian music lexicography, is, in its new online format, once again an indispensable node in a comprehensive, international, networked research experience.
For those unable to join the Rome event in person, the event will be live streamed on YouTube by Fondazione Roma Tre Teatro Palladium, accessible directly from the following QR code:
The program (below) will include Daniele Trucco’s DEUMM-inspired music, greetings from Luca Aversano (President, ADUIM), Marcoemilio Camera (President, IAML Italia), and Tina Frühauf (Executive Director, RILM), as well as presentations by Zdravko Blažeković (Executive Editor, RILM), Stefano Campagnolo (Director, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma), Alex Braga (composer), and DEUMM Online’s general editors Antonio Baldassarre and Daniela Castaldo. Pianist Giuseppe Magagnino will also perform works by Ellington, Beethoven, The Beatles, and more.
And mark your calendars: DEUMM Online will be featured again at the following events:
19 November 2024: Turin, hosted by Istituto per i Beni Musicali di Piemonte at the Teatro Regio
21 November 2024: Milan, hosted by the Archivio Storico Ricordi in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense
The musical history of Basel, Switzerland dates back to the founding of the Augusta Raurica by Caesar’s general Munatius Plancus and the construction of an amphitheater where music, pantomime, and ballet performances took place after the city’s founding in 44 B.C. A diocese was established in Basel as early as the 4th century, and Gregorian chant was popularized there in the 9th century under the aegis of Haito (Bishop of Basel from 807 to 823). Little is known about the musical life of Basel in the first millennium; however, it appears to be similar to that of other bishoprics.
There were also several singing schools in Basel, and choral singing was practiced by monks. From the middle of the 13th century onward, the names of professional singers regularly appeared in the accounting books of the city’s church institutions, although the services of these musicians were probably already in demand earlier. Choral singing had become a permanent fixture in urban churches around the middle of the 15th century. Conrad von Zabern, author of Opusculum de monochordo (1462) and De modo bene cantandi (1474), apparently learned to sing at the Basel Cathedral. The surviving treatises and liturgical manuscripts belonging to the Carthusian, Preacher, and Dominican orders also document the diverse musical life of the urban monasteries.
Read on in an entry on Basel in MGG Online. Below is a video of contemporary choral singing at the 2023 European Festival of Youth Choirs held in Basel. Above is a panoramic map of Basel dating back to around the late 15th century.
On this day 100 years ago, a British excavation team exploring Egypt’s Valley of the Kings discovered a step that proved to be the beginning of a descending staircase. Thus began the opening of the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt— Tut’ankhamūn’s tomb.
Among the “wonderful things” that Howard Carter saw when he entered inner chamber were two trumpets—one made of silver, and one made of bronze.
Seeing the potential for an extraordinary recording, in 1939 the BBC persuaded the Matḥaf al-Miṣrī (Museum of Egyptian Antiquities) to schedule a world broadcast. The British Army bandsman James Tappern was engaged to perform on the historic instruments.
In what some people saw as the notorious “curse of King Tut”, five minutes before the live broadcast was to begin the watchmen’s lanterns failed and the museum was plunged into darkness; but candlelight saved the day, and enthralled listeners heard what were presumably sounds last heard more than 3,000 years earlier.
Above, a photograph of Tappern at the museum. Below, a narrative fleshes out the story; the recordings of Tappern playing the trumpets begin around 10:45.
A fragment of Pherecrates’s comedy Chiron, as quoted in Plutarch’s Peri mousikēs, provides insights into aesthetic controversies in ancient Greece.
The scene depicts Dame Music as she recounts to Dame Justice the torments she has undergone at the hands of certain musicians of the time: Melanippides seized, debased, and weakened her with 12 tones; Cinesias ruined her with badly composed modulations; Phrynis bent, twisted, and completely destroyed her by sounding all 12 tones on the kithara; and, most egregiously of all, Timotheus, with his shrill dissonances and sinfully high-pitched and piercing notes and whistles, crammed her with modulations just as a cabbage-head is crammed with caterpillars, depriving her of all decency with his 12 tones.
This according to “Studies in musical terminology in 5th-century literature” by Ingemar Düring, an essay included in Eranos Löfstedtianus: Opuscula philologica Einaro Löfstedt A.D. XVII kal. iul. anno MCMXLV dedicata (Uppsala : Eranos Förlag, 1945; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1945-34).
Each Olympic Games is an excellent opportunity for the host country to showcase its soft power; we saw the pop music elements in the opening ceremony of London 2012, a combination of local and international performances in the opening ceremony of Seoul 1988, as well as the German works presented by the Nazis through the music competition of Berlin 1936. Of course, the Olympics cannot be divorced from politics, and the Los Angeles, Moscow, and Munich Games were inevitably colored by the Cold War. What role did music play in this? And finally, what is the relationship between the individual and the times in these grand narratives?
-Mu Qian, Editor, RILM
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Porta Navarro, Amparo, José María Peñalver Vilar, and Remigi Morant Navasquillo. “Music of the inaugural ceremony of London 2012: A performance among bells”, International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music 44/2 (December 2013) 253–276. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2013-15376]
Abstract: The music of the Olympic Games, especially that of their grandiose rituals and ceremonies, can be considered a great study laboratory due to its relevance, selection of contents, production forms, diffusion, and also because of its capacity of being a synthesis of mediums, supports, and musical tendencies. This research studies the music of the inaugural ceremony of London 2012, and examines it by means of musical analysis and also content revision, studying the music that is listened to and its characteristics, the way it is built up, and its effects and tendencies. This ceremony would not make any sense without music. Music acts as an emotional catalyst and also as a metronome of the dynamism of the show and, finally, it shows its capacity to persuade, to move, and to become a symbol of identity, achievements, and agreements among cultures.
Dilling, Margaret. “The script, sound, and sense of the Seoul Olympic ceremonies”, Contemporary directions: Korean folk music engaging the twentieth century and beyond, ed. by Nathan Hesselink. Korea research monograph (Berkeley: University of California, 2001) 173–234. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2001-10756]
Abstract: From the outset, the scenario planning committee for the 1988 Games of the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul identified three crucial desiderata: a universal theme, a distinctly Korean approach, and a sense of something new and different. Musically, the first goal was met with the official song, Hand in hand with music by Georgio Moroder and lyrics by Tom Whitlock; the second by the inclusion of modified examples of indigenous Korean music and dance genres; and the third by the inclusion of music by contemporary Korean composers. The processes through which these elements were implemented are explored through interviews with those involved; particular attention is given to the controversies surrounding new works by Kang Sukhi and Hwang Byung-ki (Hwang Byeong-gi).
Gilbert, Janet Monteith. “New music and myth: The Olympic Arts Festival of Contemporary Music”, Perspectives of new music 22/1–2 (fall–winter–spring–summer 1983–1984) 478–482. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 1984-14276]
Abstract: Report on the festival held in Los Angeles in June 1984. Many of the works programmed expressed a common theme: the creation of mythological or cosmic music produced or supported by a sophisticated technology.
Kuharskij, Vasilij Feodos’evič. “Vospevaja idei mira, družby, gumanizma…”, Sovetskaâ muzyka: Organ Soûza sovetskih kompozitorov i Sektora iskusstv Narkomprosa 6 (1980) 2–5. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1980-20149]
Abstract: Deals with the tasks and goals of the cultural program for the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. Surveys the musical undertakings, concert programs, and the participation of well-known Soviet performers.
Wichmann, Siegfried, ed. World cultures and modern art: The encounter of 19th and 20th century European art and music with Asia, Africa, Oceania, Afro- and Indo-America—Exhibition on the occasion of the games of the 20th Olympiad, Munich 1972: June 16 to September 30, Haus der Kunst (München: Bruckmann, 1972). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1974-43]
Abstract: Abbreviated version of the German exhibition catalogue. Contains several additional contributions. The relevant chapters are Orientalism in music, Asia and music since Debussy, Music of Negroes and American Indians, and Sound Centre (an attempt at a synthesis of global music cultures). Contributions are by Ramón Pelinsky, Claus Raab, and Dieter Schnebel.
Lazzaro, Federico. “800 mètres d’André Obey: Drame sportif, grec et musical”, Les cahiers de la Société Québécoise de Recherche en Musique 20/1 (printemps 2019) 57–80. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2019-23489]
Abstract: 800 mètres is a sports drama born out of the stadium for the stadium, staged at Roland-Garros in 1941 together with Aeschylus’s The suppliants. The music for both plays, now lost, was by Arthur Honegger. Inspired by Greek tragedies in both its formal and dramaturgical conception, 800 mètres is the translation into words, gestures, and sounds of the thoughts that André Obey expressed at the time of the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Obey was one of the main actors in the reflection on the relationship between music and sport. In promoting sports among French intellectuals, Obey advocated for the birth of an Olympic art and elaborated a rich metaphorical portrait of sport as music. Based on textual, iconographic, and sound archival documents, the genesis of 800 mètres is reconstituted, how this drama stages Obey’s philhellenic ideas is shown, and the complex musical-dramatic conception of the work is discussed.
Heinze, Carsten. “Der Kunstwettbewerb Musik im Rahmen der Olympischen Spiele 1936”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 62/1 (2005) 32–51. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2005-1103]
Abstract: Although the Olympic Art Competitions were introduced in 1912, they generated little public interest until 1932. The Nazis were determined to set new standards with this concomitant event in 1936 and used the forum to present to the world the towering achievements of German art, which in the meantime had been purged of all elements considered degenerate. The exploitative process is reconstructed as it pertained to the musical segment of the competition, which culminated in a grand Olympic concert, the first of its kind. Leaving nothing to chance in their erection of a new monumental style, the Nazis awarded medals to each of the four German works submitted.
Jiang, Zhiguo. “Taiwan wuqu hesheng yanjiu”, Zhongguo yinyuexue/Musicology in China 1:82 (2006) 32–42. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-3847]
Abstract: Analyzes harmonic material in Jiang Wenye’s orchestral work Taiwan wuqu (Taiwan dances), op. 1 (1934). Jiang Wenye (1910–83) was a pioneer among Chinese composers using modern composition techniques, and his was the first Chinese work to receive a top prize in international competition, at the Olympic International Music Competition in Berlin, 1936.
The Beijing Winter Olympic Games have become one of the biggest hot spots in the world’s attention at the moment, and among musicians it is no exception. The Olympic Games and music have always been inextricably linked. In ancient Greek times, music was an essential part of the Olympics. The large crowds brought by the Olympics made it an ideal venue for musicians to perform as well. At the same time, many competitions were called by trumpeters to start.
For the modern Olympics, music is even more ubiquitous. Coubertin‘s Olympic ideology was directly inspired by the opera libretto L’Olimpiade; the Olympic Games from 1912 to 1948 included musical competitions and medals were awarded like sporting events; and today’s Olympic-related musical events are a constant source of cultural and commercial competition.
Let’s take a glimpse at the relationship between music and the Olympics through relevant literature included in RILM.
– Mu Qian, Editor, RILM
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Segrave, Jeffrey O. “Music as sport history: The special case of Pietro Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade and the story of the Olympic Games”, Sporting sounds: Relationships between sport and music, ed. by Anthony Bateman and John Bale (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2009) 113–127. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-1570]
Abstract: Pietro Metastasio’s popular 18th-century libretto L’Olimpiade publicized and transmitted a particular ideological and historicized conception of the Olympic Games that would ultimately contribute to the rationalization and legitimization of Pierre de Coubertin’s own idiosyncratic Olympic ideology, a philosophical religious doctrine that embraced a noble and honorable conception of sport at the same time as it served discrete class, race, and gendered ends. The hegemony of the contemporary Olympic Games movement is grounded in part on the appropriation of the classicism and Romanticism transmitted in Metastasio’s work. Musicological readings of opera, sociolinguistic conceptions of meaning, and postmodern social perspectives on material culture are addressed. Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade, in narrative, music, and production, sustained a particular image of the games, an image that nourished Coubertin’s own ideological formulation at the same time as it paved the way for further musical representations of the Games that to this day lend authority to the hegemony of the Olympics by appealing to a musically transmitted, mythologized, and Hellenized past.
Charkiolakīs, Alexandros. “Music in the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896: Cultural and social trends”, Mousikos logos 1 (January 2014) 51–64. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2014-4634]
Abstract: Music, without any doubt, has been one of the main features during both the opening ceremony and on the concert that was given in the end of the first day in the Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens. Actually, there were two new works commissioned for performance during that first day: the Olympiakos ymnos (Olympic hymn) by Spyridōn Samaras on a text of Kōstis Palamas and Pentathlon by Dionysios Lauragkas on poetry of Iōannīs Polemīs. Here, we show the cultural and social trends that are implied in these two works and are characteristic of the developing ideologies in Greece of that time. Furthermore, we emphasized our scope towards the impact that these two works had on the contemporary Athenian society of that time.
Segrave, Jeffrey O. “‘All men will become brothers’ (“Alle Menschen werden Bruder“): Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Olympic Games ideology”, Sport, music, identities, ed. by Anthony Bateman. Sport in the global society, contemporary perspectives (London: Routledge, 2015) 38–52. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-99]
Abstract: First performed in an Olympic context as part of the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has become a popular mainstay of modern Olympic protocol. Part of a ritualized entertainment spectacle that enhances the appeal and popularity of the Games, the Ninth Symphony elevates the prestige of the Games and helps to sustain the Olympic Movement’s political and commercial dominance within the panoply of institutionalized sport. It is argued here that the normalization of the Finale of the Ninth Symphony in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games not only transmits and reinforces the traditional Olympic ideology, but also reaffirms the ascendant hegemony of the Olympic movement within the world of elite international sport. This study is a critical reading of the Olympic musical ceremonial as a site of ideological production, especially as it pertains to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Dümling, Albrecht. “Zwischen Autonomie und Fremdbestimmung: Die Olympische Hymne von Robert Lubahn und Richard Strauss”, Richard Strauss-Blätter 38 (Dezember 1997) 68–102. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 1997-52827]
Abstract: When the Olympic Games were to be held in Berlin in 1936 Strauss was chosen as composer of an Olympic Hymn. Early in 1933 he agreed in principle, but on the condition that he was provided with an appropriate text. Four poems out of 3,000 entries were selected and sent on to Strauss with no mention of the poets’ names. He decided on a text, written by the hitherto unknown poet Robert Lubahn. Despite the favorable response of committees and German music critics, the belongs to Strauss’s weaker works.
Barney, Katelyn. “Celebration or cover up? My island home, Australian national identity and the spectacle of Sydney 2000″, Aesthetics and experience in music performance, ed. by Elizabeth Mackinlay, Denis Collins, and Samantha Owens (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005) 141–150. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2005-18443]
Abstract: Addresses the conflicts and complexities inherent in musical statements of Australian national identity as represented by Neil Murray’s My island home and Christine Anu’s performance of it at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Her performance functioned simultaneously as a site for celebration of indigeneity and Australian national identity yet also as a concealment or cover-up of the social and political positioning of indigenous Australians within Australian history and contemporary society. As it celebrated localized Torres Strait Islander culture and identity as part of the Australian national imagination, it also concealed the realities of indigenous issues and race relations within Australia.
Newman, Melinda and Michael Paoletta. “Goodsports”, Billboard: The international newsweekly of music, video and home entertainment 118/5 (4 February 2006) 22–23. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-2393]
Abstract: Established stars including Andrea Bocelli, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, and Lou Reed, as well as new and developing acts like James Blunt, Switchfoot, Flipsyde, Morningwood, the Donnas, Rock ‘N Roll Soldiers, We Are Scientists, and OK Go are hoping for a career boost from their ties to the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy. By using hip, under-the-radar acts, NBC hopes to connect with the much-coveted youth demographic. NBC uses music in four ways for the Olympics: network campaigns in advance of the Games; co-branding opportunities; features and interstitial footage broadcast during the athletic events; and nightly concerts.
Lawson, Francesca R. Sborgi. “Music in ritual and ritual in music: A virtual viewer’s perceptions about liminality, functionality, and mediatization in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games”, Asian music: Journal of the Society for Asian Music 42/2 (summer–fall 2011) 3–18. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2011-12007]
Abstract: Concepts such as liminality, functionality, and mediatization were clearly exemplified in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The fascinating use of the ancient practice of liminal integration of music and ritual in a modern mediatized performance illustrates both indigenous Chinese and contemporary Western performance theories. Despite the spectacular nature of the opening ceremony, however, it is doubtful that international viewers fully understood the complex messages communicated through this modern ritual performance.
Juzwiak, Rich. “Village Person says Y.M.C.A. isn’t about gays, is probably lying”, http://gawker.com/village-person-says-y-m-c-a-isnt-about-gays-is-pro-1493380284. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-293]
Abstract: A common reading of the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. (1978) posits the song as a post-Stonewall stealth attack on heteronormative America. From discos to weddings to sports arenas across the country, millions have contorted in acronymal glee, singing the praises of the male-only fitness center/boarding house where you can “hang out with the boys” and “do whatever you feel”. The song first appeared on an album titled Cruisin’. Despite the seemingly obvious subtext, members of the Village People deny any subtextual intent. Victor Willis, the first lead singer of the Village People who played the role of “cop” and co-wrote Y.M.C.A., recently spoke out against using the song as Team USA’s entrance music at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics–intended in protest of Putin’s anti-gay mandate and the rash of violent hate crimes in its wake (not to mention the Sports Minister’s threat to jail gay athletes). The author notes that “the inherent gayness of the Village People has been a point of contention between the people who were (and are) in the group and its creators, Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo. Morali, who died in 1991, was gay and in last year’s documentary about the politics of disco, Secret disco revolution, Belolo said that the Village People were Morali’s statement of his own gay pride, as well as an exercise in double entendre”.
Cottrell, Stephen. “Glad to meet you: North Korea’s pop orchestra warms hearts in the South”, The conversation (UK) (9 February 2018) https://theconversation.com/glad-to-meet-you-north-koreas-pop-orchestra-warms-hearts-in-the-south-91499. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-52079]
Abstract: Describes a performance by Samjiyon Band, a well-known fixture from North Korea’s cultural scene, on the first night of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
Saint Jerome was born in Stridon, a Dalmatian city that was destroyed by the Goths during his lifetime. Its exact location is unknown, and could have been in either modern Croatia or Slovenia. Though not a theologian, Jerome is mostly known for his authoritative translations of many texts, most importantly the scriptures, with several translations of the psalter. In iconography he is often depicted as a desert hermit. He, in fact, spent half of his life in the wilderness, but he was still very much engaged in intellectual and ecclesiastical discussions and controversies.
Jerome’s writings are filled with musical references, sometimes allegorical, sometimes in reference to the liturgy, sometimes in the context of moral instruction. He occasionally inserted musical analogies into his missives, comparing himself to a boatman or a shepherd, whose song had a particular purpose. He also frequently recommended the singing of psalms to those seeking his guidance, and these instructions have shed light on liturgical practice of the time.
As regards the content of his advice, which was rigorous at times, the topic could range from directing women away from the company of singers (cantors) and questionable performers who might be encountered in Rome, where he spent several years. In a paragraph to the young widow Furia, he turns an image from the enjoyment of music that praises worldly pleasures to a counter action—suggesting that she become a singer, and timbrel and lute player, modelling herself on the image of Miriam, who musically celebrated the liberation of Israel in the book of Exodus.
This according to James McKinnon’s Music in early Christian literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 1997-1322).
Today marks the 1600th anniversary of Jerome’s death (and his birth into eternal life) in Bethlehem. Above, Caravaggio’s Saint Jerome writing.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses an astonishing bronze figurine, perhaps unearthed in Cyprus: a nude woman playing a pair of cymbals, standing on a frog (inv. no. 74.51.5680). It was probably the handle of a mirror, and the craftmanship is typical of ancient Laconia.
Scholars have never explained the relationships between all the represented elements, but the figurine is obviously related to ancient Spartan music, or at least to its soundscape.
We may wonder whether there is a link between the frog and the cymbals in terms of sound. Did ancient Greeks perceive the croaking as a percussive sound? In Greek antiquity, frogs seem to be associated with several types of instruments.
Since the figurine might come from Cyprus and it depicts a nude woman, it is usually interpreted as Aphrodite. However, if it is a Laconian piece of art, it seems more relevant to recognize here one of the main goddesses of Sparta, Artemis Orthia. She stands on a frog, because her sanctuary was located in the marshlands of Sparta, a place appropriate for batrachia. This place had a specific soundscape of croaking frogs and water sounds. Further, there are remains of feline paws on her shoulders; the archaic Artemis is the mistress of wild beasts.
In the sanctuary, archaeologists found cymbals and auloi dedicated to the goddess for apotropaic purposes. It may be opportune to compare this piece with Asian drums decorated with frogs, which were used to ask for rain fertility: perhaps the cymbals associated with croaking had the same function in ancient Spartan marshlands.
This according to “Croaking and clapping: A new look at an ancient Greek bronze figurine (from Sparta)” by Sylvain Perrot (Music in art XLIII/1–2 [2018] pp. 175–83)
Below, an illicit visit to the sanctuary.
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The course of King Saul’s music therapy with the young shepherd David, as told in 1 Samuel, 16 and 18, exactly corresponds to the current state of psychotherapeutical knowledge, which holds that the quality of the relationship ultimately determines whether therapy succeeds or fails.
On the assumption that Saul’s affliction was the manifestation of an early, preverbal trauma (in today’s psychopathological terminology, a depressive breakdown in the context of a personality structure with damaged self-esteem), the initial therapeutic success is attributed primarily to the positive transference between therapist and patient, and only secondarily to David’s music-making. It follows logically that this therapy takes a malign course at the point when Saul’s positive transference becomes negative.
This according to “Heilung durch Musik? Der biblische Mythos von David und Saul als klinische Fallstudie” by Dagmar Hoffmann-Axthelm, an essay included in Rhythmus und Heilung: Transzendierende Kräfte in Wort, Musik und Bewegung (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005, pp. 83–92).
Above, Rembrant’s depiction of the episode; below, Händel imagines David’s therpeutic harp playing in Saul, HWV 53.
The record documents 音乐考古学与古代音乐遗迹研究 (Archaeomusicology and research on music relics) by 方建军 (Fang Jianjun) (Zhongguo yinyue/Chinese music 3:147 [2017] pp. 75–82, 106).
Fang’s article discusses the relationships between archaeological environments and musical functions, between ancient workshops and the building of instruments, and between soundscapes and music performance, with reference to archaeomusicological sites in Europe and Africa as well as China. China has many such sites, among them Xiaoshuangqiao of the early Shang dynasty (16th–11th century B.C.E.) in Henan province, Sanxingdui in Sichuan province, and the Neolithic tomb sites at Jiahu village, also in Henan province.
Above, flutes excavated at the Jiahu site; below, reproductions of bronze bells from a tomb dated around 433 B.C.E.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
