Category Archives: Curiosities

by | September 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

Rameau’s American dancers

Rameau by J.-J.Caffieri, 1760

The 1725 account in Mercure de France of two Native Americans dancing at a Paris theater provides a detailed link between the large corpus of earlier European descriptions of New World music and the composition of Rameau’s harpsichord piece Les sauvages.

The account and the composition constitute a significant episode in the prehistory of ethnomusicology. Rameau’s detailed characterization of the Indians’ performance in the piece develops initiatives by 17th-century French musicians, and his later operatic use of Les sauvages in Les Indes galantes mirrors the ambiguities of Europe’s response to the Americas in the 18th century.

This according to “Rameau’s American dancers” by Roger Savage (Early music XI/4 [October 1983] pp. 441–52).

Today is Rameau’s 330th birthday! Above, the 1760 bust of the composer by Jean-Jacques Caffieri (click to enlarge); below, his Rondeau des Indes Galantes, which is based on Les sauvages.

Related article: Ballet and sauvagerie

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by | September 9, 2013 · 1:00 am

Hens, noise, and music

Barn_hens

Two experiments explored the effects of specific sound stimuli on laying hens.

The first measured heterophil to lymphocyte ratio and tonic immobility duration in 216 36-week-old hens exposed to specific noise stimuli of 65 dB (background chicken vocalizations and fans, control) or 90 dB (background noises plus truck, train, and aircraft noises) for 60 minutes. The measurements showed that the hens exposed to 90 dB noise were more stressed and fearful than control hens.

The second experiment measured heterophil to lymphocyte ratio and tonic immobility duration in 108 36-week-old hens exposed to background noises (65 dB) or to classical music plus background noises (75 dB) between 9.00 and 14.00 for three days. The measurements showed that the hens exposed to classical music were more fearful than control hens.

Overall, the results indicate that loud noise causes stress and fear in laying hens, and classical music influences their fearfulness.

This according to “Effects of specific noise and music stimuli on stress and fear levels of laying hens of several breeds” by José Luis Campo Chávarri, et al. (Applied animal behavior science XCI/1–2 [May 2005] pp. 75–84. Below, Ravel’s orchestration of Musorgskij’s Балет невылупившихся птенцов (Ballet of the unhatched chicks).

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by | September 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Dance Your PhD

 

In 2008 Science magazine and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science hosted the first ever Dance Your PhD Contest in Vienna.

Calls for submission to subsequent annual Dance Your PhD contests followed suit, attracting hundreds of entries.

For these contests, practitioners transform their bodies into animating media and conduct body experiments to test their hypotheses. This body-work offers a medium through which they can communicate the nuanced details of their findings among students and colleagues. The Dance Your PhD contests expand and extend what it is possible for scientific researchers to see, say, imagine, and feel.

This according to “Dance Your PhD: Embodied animations, body experiments, and the affective entanglements of life science research” by Natasha Myers (Body & society XVIII/1 [2012] pp. 151–189). Above and below, the winning dance from 2017.

BONUS: John Bohannon, who started the contest, presents a TED talk about it here.

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by | September 1, 2013 · 1:00 am

Pachelbel and immune response

pachelbel

In an experiment, 80 students were each randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: no treatment (control), music only, imagery only, and music and imagery combined.

The first group was asked to sit quietly for 17 minutes. The second group listened to a recording of Pachelbel’s D-major canon. The third treatment used directed imagery to help the subjects visualize the bone marrow, a primary source of lymphocyte production, and the radiation of cleansing lymphocytes to various areas of the body. The fourth treatment combined the music and the directed imagery.

The second, third, and fourth treatments resulted in significant increases in the subjects’ immune response. The fourth treatment, however, did not show a significant increase over those of the second and third.

This according to “The effects of music and biological imagery on immune response (S-IgA)” by Chung Tsao Chien, et al., an essay included in Applications of music in medicine (Washington, D.C.: National Association for Music Therapy, 1991, pp. 85–121.

Today is Pachelbel’s 360th birthday! Below, Rob Paravonian discusses other uses of the celebrated canon in D.

BONUS: The notorious rubber-chicken performance.

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by | August 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

Wayne Shorter’s punishment

 

In a 2012 interview, Wayne Shorter described a life-changing incident.

One day when he was in high school, Shorter, who was not a musician at the time, was called to the vice-principal’s office, “and there’s my mother and father, and they had all the forged letters I wrote, signing a doctor’s name, my parent’s name, and everything like that.”

“I was put in the music [theory] class because I played hooky, and the teacher was a disciplinarian—when people were talking in the back of the room, he took the chalk and threw it at them.”

“This teacher said that music could take form in three avenues. He had a record of a lady from Peru named Yma Sumac; she had that range—high octaves and all that stuff. Then he brought out another record, Igor Stravinsky’s The rite of spring, which is happenin’. The third record he pulled out was Charlie Parker. And then, when he was talking, I was thinking of a movie unfolding. And I was like, ‘I want to be in that movie.’”

This from “Moment to moment: A conversation with the Wayne Shorter Quartet” by Renee Rosnes (JazzTimes XLIII/2 [March 2013] pp. 22–27).

Today is Shorter’s 80th birthday! Below, performing in 1986.

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by | August 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

St. Denis and Radha

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Presenting a hyperbolization of categories of otherness through mapping markers of race, Orientalism, and sexuality onto the white middle-class female body, Ruth St. Denis’s Radha functions as a site of the condensation and displacement of desire.

In this work, St. Denis achieved a combination of Delsartism’s transcendent spirituality with the Oriental orgasmic in the spectacle of a goddess delirious with her own sexuality who chooses to renounce the powerful pleasure of her body for a chaste union with the transcendent.

This according to “Dancing out the difference: Cultural imperialism and Ruth St. Denis’s Radha of 1906” by Jane C. Desmond (Signs: Journal of women in culture and society XVII/1 [fall-winter 1991] pp. 28–49; reprinted in Moving history/dancing cultures: A dance history reader [Middletown: Wesleyan University press, 2001] pp. 256–270.

Above, St. Denis performing Radha in 1908; below, a documentary contextualizes the work in her career and influences.

Related post: Ted Shawn and Native American dance

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by | August 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Primate dance

lemur

The only clear difference between human dance and primate dancelike behavior is that the former is culturally patterned; otherwise, attributes only vary in terms of their complexity.

Dance, therefore, is not a human invention—it is a human variation on a primate theme.

This according to “The origins of dance: The perspective of primate evolution” by Sandra T. Francis (Dance chronicle XIV/2–3 [1991] pp. 203–220). Above, a lemur trips the light fantastic; below, the story behind a popular YouTube video.

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by | August 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Mike Seeger, according to Bob Dylan

 

Although he was only eight years younger, Bob Dylan called Mike Seeger (1933–2009) a father figure, and considered him the ultimate embodiment of a folk-star persona. Recalling him in Chronicles. I (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), Dylan wrote:

“Mike was unprecedented. He was like a duke, the knight errant. As for being a folk musician, he was the supreme archetype. He could push a stake through Dracula’s black heart. He was the romantic, egalitarian, and revolutionary type all at once—had chivalry in his blood…”

“He played all the instruments, whatever the song called for—the banjo, the fiddle, mandolin, autoharp, the guitar, even harmonica in the rack….He played on all the various planes, the full index of old-time styles, played in all the genres and had the idioms mastered—Delta blues, ragtime, minstrel songs, buck-and-wing, dance reels, play party, hymns and gospel—being there and seeing him up close, something hit me. It’s not as if he just played everything well, he played these songs as good as it was possible to play them.” (pp. 69–71)

Today would have been Mike Seeger’s 80th birthday! Below, Seeger in 1976.

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by | August 7, 2013 · 1:00 am

Tudor’s psychological exploration

 

Dark elegies marked the culmination of Antony Tudor’s exploration into an approach to ballet choreography in which the psychology of the characters is more important than external circumstances and events.

Although the classic idiom was the basis for his experimentation, his quest for new movement—often based on one-on-one work that illuminated the propensities of specific dancers—resulted in virtually no use of classical vocabulary. Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder functions as a partner to the choreography, not as a guide.

This according to “Dark elegies (1938): Antony Tudor” by Rachel S. Richardson, an essay included in Choreography: Principles and practice (Guildford: National Resource Centre for Dance, 1987, pp. 206–217).

An excerpt from the work is below; other excerpts are here. We would be grateful if anyone can share a link to a complete version!

Related article: Graham and Freud

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by | August 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Bluegrass jamming etiquette

bluegrass

A number of people attend U.S. bluegrass festivals not for the stage show, but for the informal jam sessions in the campgrounds or parking lot.

The interactional etiquette that jammers follow is manifested both in the conventions that help strangers to come together and in choices made during group playing of bluegrass standards. Ethics and aesthetics are fused as jammers negotiate interactional guidelines to reach a heightened musical and social communion.

This according to “A special kind of courtesy: Action at a bluegrass festival jam session” by Michelle Kisliuk (TDR: The drama review XXXII/3 [fall 1988] pp. 141–155). Above and below, festival attendees jamming with that special courtesy.

Related articles are here.

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