Category Archives: Reception

by | November 21, 2010 · 8:39 am

Dancecult: Journal of electronic dance music culture

The Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London launched Dancecult: Journal of electronic dance music culture (ISSN 1947-5403), a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal, in 2009. The journal is a platform for interdisciplinary scholarship on the shifting terrain of electronic dance music cultures worldwide, including studies of emergent forms of electronic music production, performance, distribution, and reception.

The inaugural issue featured articles about rave, neotrance, psychedelia, DJ culture, and the concept of IDM (intelligent dance music). The journal is published biannually.

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by | October 15, 2010 · 7:37 am

La revue musicale

Founded in 1920 by the musicologist Henry Prunières (1886–1942), La revue musicale aimed to support the profound changes taking place in music at that time while simultaneously inspiring a love for the music of the past.

Eschewing the intransigent nationalism that marked French music before World War I, the journal became a beacon for a segment of the European musical milieu that might well have disappeared in its wake; but after 20 years of methodically constructing a new music firmly grounded in its attachment to the classicism of the Enlightenment, the events of World War II permanently extinguished its flame.

This according to “La revue musicale (1920–40) and the founding of a modern music” by Michel Duchesneau, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history. Two other articles in the volume explore further aspects of this journal: “Towards a topology of aesthetic discussion contained in La revue musicale of the 1920s” by Danick Trottier and “Dance in Henry Prunières’s La revue musicale (1920–40): Between the early and the modern” by Marie-Noëlle Lavoie.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Dance, Reception

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by | October 3, 2010 · 6:36 am

Postmodernism and performance

According to “Changing the musical object: Approaches to performance analysis” by Nicholas Cook, broad cultural developments associated with poststructuralism and postmodernism have placed an emphasis on reception—on performance rather than on inherent meaning—but the reflection of these developments in musicology has been skewed by that discipline’s retention of the concept of music as written text.

Cook argues that just as writings about music influence performances, so performance style has an impact on musicology, creating the prospect of a historiography predicated not on compositional innovation but on music as it is experienced in everyday life.

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson further explores the process wherein developments in performance precede changes in verbal interpretation in “Musicology and performance”; his examples are drawn from Schubert’s lieder and Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître. Both essays are included in our recently-published Music’s intellectual history.

Below, a performance of the final section of the Boulez work by the Montreal-based group Codes d’Accès.

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by | September 12, 2010 · 7:23 am

Mozart effect redux

 

“Spatial performance as a function of early music exposure in rats” (Third triennial ESCOM conference: Proceedings [Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1997], pp. 688–694) reports on an experiment in which 90 rats were randomly assigned to one of three groups: The Mozart group (30 rats) was exposed to a Mozart piano sonata 12 hours a day for 21 days in utero and 60 days after birth. The Glass and White Noise groups were similarly exposed to the music of Philip Glass or to white noise. The rats’ spatial performance in a 12-unit T maze was then assessed; the Mozart-bred animals ran significantly faster and made significantly fewer errors than the Glass-bred or white noise-bred animals.

In “Do rats show a Mozart effect?” (Music perception: An interdisciplinary journal 21/2 [2003], pp. 251–265), Kenneth M. Steele points out that the in utero exposure would have been ineffective because rats are born deaf. Further, a comparison of human and rat audiograms in the context of the frequencies produced by a piano suggests that adult rats are deaf to most of the pitches in the sonata.

“Spatial performance as a function of early music exposure in rats” (Third triennial ESCOM conference: Proceedings [Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1997], pp. 688–694) reports on an experiment in which 90 rats were randomly assigned to one of three groups: The Mozart group (30 rats) was exposed to a Mozart sonata for 12 hours a day—21 days in utero and 60 days after birth. The Glass and White Noise groups were similarly exposed to the music of Philip Glass or to white noise. The rats’ spatial performance in a 12-unit T maze was then assessed, and the Mozart-bred animals ran significantly faster and made significantly fewer errors than the Glass-bred or white noise-bred animals.
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Animals, Classic era, Curiosities, Nature, Reception, Science

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by | August 1, 2010 · 7:45 am

Musicology and fiction

Throughout the nineteenth century, parallels between the forms and contents of individual compositions and a variety of poems and prose tales were discussed. Liszt, Strauss, and other composers cited literary classics in the titles of their works and even published excerpts in their scores. As a consequence, certain critics came out in favor of musical programmism, while others advocated musical absolutism.

More recently, such discussions have been amplified by suggestions that certain works of fiction themselves employ musical structural principles, particularly sonata form. Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann (above) can be viewed in relation to Beethoven’s piano sonata op. 111, and several of Jane Austen’s novels can be compared with Mozart concerto movements. This approach suggests new ways in which musicologists might acquire a deeper understanding of such issues as musical representations of gender, the ways in which instrumental compositions may be said to embody character, and the problem of music and narrativity.

This according to “Musicology and fiction” by Michael Saffle, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history.

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by | July 20, 2010 · 6:38 am

Hans Christian Andersen, music critic

As many people know, Hans Christian Andersen, whose children’s stories have proven to be his most widespread source of fame, was the most prominent Danish author of the nineteenth century. As fewer people know, he enjoyed a brief career as an opera singer and dancer at Det Kongelige Teater in Copenhagen, and in later years he went on to produce opera libretti for the Danish and German stage. He made 30 major European tours, and on each of these trips he regularly attended opera and concert performances, recording his impressions in a series of travel diaries; a well-informed listener,  his reflections comprise valuable sources for the study of music reception during this period.

Over the course of his life Andersen embraced and later rejected performers such as Liszt, Maria Malibran, and Ole Bull, and his interest in opera and instrumental music underwent a series of dramatic transformations. In his final years he promoted figures as disparate as Wagner and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, while strongly objecting to Brahms. Although these changes in taste might be interpreted as indiscriminate, such shifts in opinion were not contradictory—rather, they were quite logical given the social and cultural climate.

This according to “Music history as reflected in the works of Hans Christian Andersen” by Anna Harwell Celenza, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history.

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by | June 9, 2010 · 9:45 am

Prague concert life, 1850–1881

Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and Cardiff University, Prague concert life, 1850–1881: An annotated database is a free resource for all those interested in nineteenth-century Czech music, history, and culture. The fullest possible information about each musical performance in Prague—from public concerts to private soirées, from large-scale festivals to everyday rehearsals, in venues ranging from local inns, guest houses, and restaurants to the most fashionable and successful society halls, parks, and gardens—is documented on the basis of articles in Czech- and German-language periodicals from 1850 through 1881; only musical theater events are excluded.

Entries typically list the date, time, and venue; the program and works that were presented; and the individuals, societies, and institutions that took part. Additional commentaries include clarifications of editorial decisions; supplementary factual data such as audience numbers, admission prices, and changes of venue or program; detailed information about individuals, venues, societies, and institutions, highlighting notable trends and occurrences within the city’s musical environment; outlines of the content and critical stance of descriptive reports and reviews; and evaluations of the source material from a scholarly perspective. Search and navigation tools include basic keyword search, advanced search, and hyperlinks.

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by | June 1, 2010 · 7:57 am

Operatic degeneracy I

An anonymous pamphlet from around 1733 titled Do you know what you are about? or, A Protestant alarm to Great Britain rails against the egregious inroads that Roman Catholic degeneracy, not least in the form of Italian opera, were making in England.

Händel and Senesino are particularly singled out for “playing at the dog and bear, exactly like the two kings of Poland contending for the Empire of Doremifa” in contrast to the humble, hardworking John Gay, whose praiseworthy Beggar’s opera reached the stage only through his own admirable toil and steadfastness.

This according to William Charles Smith’s “Do you know what you are about?: A rare Handelian pamphlet”, an article in The music review no. 98 (2 April 1964, pp. 114–19); the issue, which honors the 70th birthday of the English librarian, bibliographer, and honorary curator of the Royal Music Library Cecil Bernard Oldman (1894–1969), is covered in our recently published Liber Amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.

Above, a satirical depiction by John Vanderbank from around 1723 of Senesino, Francesca Cuzzoni, and Gaetano Berenstadt performing in a Händel opera (probably Flavio, re di Longobardi).

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Filed under Baroque era, Curiosities, Dramatic arts, Humor, Opera, Reception

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by | May 9, 2010 · 1:56 pm

Mangled Mozart

Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail was first performed in London at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 24 November 1827. Stephanie’s libretto was translated into English and quite freely adapted, and one C. Kramer made numerous and inexplicable changes to the score, editing Mozart’s music, substituting his own numbers for some of the original ones, and adding entirely new numbers. None the wiser, audiences and critics received the mangled work with great enthusiasm.

This according to “The first performance of Mozart’s Entführung in London” by Alfred Einstein (1880–1952) in Essays on music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1956), a collection of his writings issued as a memorial volume; the book is covered in our recently published Liber Amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.

Above, a nineteenth-century engraving depicting a production of the opera in London—perhaps the one that Einstein described. Below, Twyla Tharp and Milos Forman imagine the opera’s premiere in Amadeus.

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by | May 2, 2010 · 3:34 pm

Follow the drinking gourd

In 2008 the technology and publishing executive Joel Bresler created the multimedia website Follow the drinking gourd to share his research into the origins and history of the U.S. song, which was popularized by The Weavers and has been recorded some 200 times and reprinted in over 75 songbooks.

While providing ample documentation of the song’s reception history, this unusual resource probes persistent questions regarding the song’s provenance—not least, whether there is any basis for the idea that it was sung by African Americans during the Underground Railroad era. The site presents discussions by authoritative folklorists exploring such questions, and concludes with an invitation to collaborate by supplying further documentation.

Above, the first known publication of the song (Austin: Texas Folklore Society, 1928).

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