In 2009 the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll in Neukirchen, Germany, inaugurated the series Seebüller Hefte with Volker Scherliess’s Erdmann und Nolde, which documents the friendship between the artist Emil Nolde and the pianist Eduard Erdmann (1896–1958). The foundation’s museum occupies the house that Nolde designed for himself in 1927; it is now devoted to exhibitions of his works.
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Filed under New series, Visual art
Illustrated libretti for eighteenth-century opera performances comprise a specific and unusual type of visual art. Since these engravings were made before the performances, they cannot be interpreted as objective documentation—indeed, clear evidence points to discrepancies between these representations and what the audiences actually saw. Rather, they must be seen as conveying the intention of these occasions, in surprisingly subtle ways.
Christine Fischer demonstrates this way of reading libretto illustrations in “Engravings of opera stage settings as festival books: Thoughts on a new perspective of well-known sources” (Music in art XXXIV/1–2 [2009], pp. 73–88). In the above engraving by Johann Benjamin Müller of the final scene in Maria Antonia Walpurgis’s Talestri, regina delle amazzoni (1760), Fischer notes that the wide gap between the female Amazons and the male Scythians—their leaders both with drawn swords—demonstrates their opposition, but the bridge in the background indicates their impending reconciliation. The message below the surface involves reassurance that the composer’s ongoing consolidation of her political power in Dresden will be beneficial to all, and that her rule will be based on a deep knowledge of state affairs and peaceful collaboration with powerful men.
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Filed under Classic era, Dramatic arts, Literature, Opera, Politics, Reception, Visual art
Patent applications for new instruments—or for improvements to already existing ones—usually involve one or more technical drawings. These can be of historical interest for several reasons; for example, the article Piano wars: The legal machinations of London pianoforte makers, 1795–1806 by George S. Bozarth and Margaret Debenham (RMA research chronicle XLII, 45–108) makes use of original drawings and descriptions for patents by William Southwell (1794) and his son, William junior (1837), to reconstruct the issues and outcomes of legal actions involving many of England’s top piano manufacturers in the early nineteenth century.
Reproduced above is a page from Brian Hayden’s 1984 patent application for a new way of arranging the buttons on a concertina.
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Filed under Iconography, Instruments, Publication types
Cartoonists have always recognized music as a rich source for humor. The mere inclusion of an accordion or a banjo can make a situation comical, as Gary Larson’s The far side has repeatedly demonstrated, and caricatures of musicians have long been a staple of popular journalism.
The self-taught French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé (b.1932) has been drawn to musical subjects throughout his career; The musicians, a collection of his characteristically nuanced and captionless music-themed drawings, was published by Workman in 1980, and Phaidon Press issued a similar collection of postcards in 2006. Sempé’s cartoons, many with musical subjects, have graced nearly 100 covers of The New Yorker.
Filed under Humor, Visual art
Instrument makers’ catalogues can be important sources of iconography: they indicate what instruments people were making and buying at a given place and time, and sometimes they depict rare curiosities like the brass instruments in this 1867 catalogue from the Gautrot firm, reprinted in 1999 by Larigot. The mechanical organ pictured above comes from a catalogue issued by Limonaire Frères around the turn of the twentieth century, reprinted in 2009 by Das mechanische Musikinstrument.
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Filed under Iconography, Instruments, Publication types
Due to the widespread popularity of theories first expounded in Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe by Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectuals viewed portraits as presenting clear information on a variety of aspects of the subject’s personality—qualities that their usual approach to biography, which focused only on verifiable facts, omitted. This aspect of portraiture is largely lost on modern music historians.
For example, in 1871 the English cleric and writer Hugh Reginald Haweis provided this interpretation of George Dance’s portrait of Haydn (reproduced above): “The face of Haydn is remarkable quite as much for what it does not as for what it does express. No ambition, no avarice, no impatience, very little excitability, no malice.
“On the other hand, it indicates a placid flow of even health, an exceeding good-humour, combined with a vivacity which seems to say, ‘I must lose my temper sometimes, but I can not lose it for long’; a geniality which it took much to disturb, and a digestion which it took more to impair; a power of work steady and uninterrupted; a healthy devotional feeling; a strong sense of humour; a capacity for the enjoyment of all the world’s good things, without any morbid craving for irregular indulgence; affections warm, but not intense; a presence accepted and beloved; a mind contented almost anywhere, attaching supreme importance to one, and one thing only—the composing of music—and pursuing this object with the steady instinct of one who believed himself to have come into the world for that purpose alone.”
Related articles:
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Filed under Classic era, Iconography
With their dramatic action and vivid characters, operas have inspired a number of graphic novels, including books by P. Craig Russell and a series (now out of print) produced in collaboration with England’s Royal Opera House. The most noteworthy examples of this genre are not just illustrations of libretti; they are autonomous works of art in the graphic novel tradition.
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is particularly suited to the treatment it receives in The ring of the Niebelung by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane; set in a mythological time, with illustrious characters who can alter their physical forms, defy gravity, and survive without oxygen, it fits naturally into the medium’s world of fantasy and superheroes.
In some cases this drammata in pittura brings a powerful new dimension to Wagner’s drammata in musica—for example, the action that the audience must imagine during the Vorspiel of Die Walküre is fully depicted over the course of four textless pages. The cycle was first published in four installments by DC Comics.
Above, the opening of Act II of Die Walküre (click to enlarge); below, part of the 2011 production by the Metropolitan Opera.
Related article: The Ring recast
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Filed under Dramatic arts, Opera, Publication types, Romantic era, Visual art
Postcards are a form of music iconography that provides clues about reception. Their subjects have included popular musicians, groups, and composers and their works.
The 1909 Austro-Hungarian postcard reproduced above wryly depicts two aspects of Franz Liszt’s persona: the devout abbé of his later years and—if you look closely—the libertine of his scandalous youth. (Click to enlarge.)
Related article: Schubert deltiography
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Filed under Humor, Iconography, Reception, Romantic era
Ethnomusicological monographs are often published with transcriptions, photographs, and recordings; the printed texts present the primary information, while the other materials serve a secondary, supporting role. For ethnographic recordings, these functions are reversed: The recordings themselves are the primary concern, and the other materials fill in contextual or technical information.
Some publications occupy the border between these two types, where neither the printed texts nor the other materials can be definitively deemed secondary. The raga guide: A survey of 74 Hindustani ragas, published by Nimbus in 1999, is an example of such a multifunctioning publication. On its four CDs, each rāga is portrayed in a three- to six-minute rendition by a top-ranking performer; this is arguably the primary information, and RILM classified the publication as a sound recording. But the 196-page book in the package is hard to consider merely supportive—it includes analytical and historical notes for each rāga and its performance, including its basic structures shown in both Western and Indian sargam notation; full transcriptions of the ālāp (introductory) sections of each recording; and 40 full-color reproductions of rāgamālā paintings
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Filed under Asia, Ethnomusicology, Iconography, Publication types, Theory
Caricature is a type of iconography that involves distorting the features of recognizable people to exaggerate some aspect of their demeanor.
Opinions differ regarding the term’s applicability to other than real-life subjects; for example, Walt Disney considered his animated animals to be caricatures because in creating them he blended animal features with human ones, an inversion of the practice of caricaturing people by merging their features with those of animals.
In the caricature reproduced above by Albert Douat (1847–92, signed with the pseudonym J. Blass), Liszt consoles Wagner over the Parisian reception of Tannhäuser in 1861 and Lohengrin in 1891; both productions were disrupted by elements hostile to the composer. Liszt’s imposing stature and paternal attitude—particularly apt since by the time the drawing was produced he was Wagner’s father-in-law—contrasts with the dejected, little-boy look of the creator of Gesamtkunstwerk.
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Filed under Humor, Iconography, Reception, Romantic era
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