Rahsaan Roland Kirk and “Rip, rig, and panic”

Roland Kirk 1966

 

Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Rip, rig, and panic provides a rich example of irony in jazz, not least for its good-natured sendup of Edgard Varèse.

The work’s multipart form is punctuated by breaking glass, a siren, and Kirk’s multi-instrumental imitations of electronic sounds. Flanked by nonmetric improvisations, its two swing sections are counted down by Kirk on castanets.

In the album’s liner notes Kirk explained the title: “Rip means Rip Van Winkle (or Rest in Peace?). It’s the way people, even musicians are. They’re asleep. Rig means like rigor mortis. That’s where a lot of people’s minds are. When they hear me doing things they didn’t think I could do they panic in their minds.”

This according to “Doubleness and jazz improvisation: Irony, parody, and ethnomusicology” by Ingrid Monson (Critical inquiry XX/2 [winter 1994] pp. 283–313).

Today would have been Kirk’s 80th birthday! Above, performing at Ronnie Scott’s ca. 1969 or 70 (photo © Del de la Haye); below, the 1965 recording.

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Filed under Humor, Jazz and blues

Emma Abbott in the heartland

Emma Abbott

Stung by the mixed reviews of New York critics who apparently preferred their divas to be foreign-born, the operatic soprano Emma Abbott created a highly successful—and somewhat revolutionary—niche for herself.

In 1898 Abbott founded the Emma Abbott English Grand Opera Company with her husband, Eugene Wetherell, as business manager. There were precedents for translating operas into English, and even for Abbott’s role as both prima donna and production manager; the distinctive and brilliant move was to take her company to the U.S. heartland with the perfect persona for 19th-century American tastes.

Having grown up poor in Peoria, Illinois, she had the quintessential American dream narrative. She was openly both devout and patriotic, often interpolating beloved religious and U.S. songs into her opera performances. And the marital bliss projected by her close relationship with Wetherell further burnished the persona that her audiences relished.

As Abbott’s close friend and biographer Sadie E. Martin recalled, “The pleasing voice and manners of the operatic star, and her sympathetic nature, seemed at once to attract towards her the hearts of the public. She was from the first very popular, and after the first year there were many who watched, waited, and longed for her annual appearance, as for that of an old friend.”

By the time she retired, Abbott had officiated at the openings of more opera houses than any singer before her, and—owing also to her canny buisness sense—had amassed a fortune far beyond that of her European counterparts.

This according to Women in the spotlight: Divas in nineteenth-century New York by Andrea Saposnik (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing).

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Beethoven at the table

Beethoven’s conversation books indicate that he particularly liked pasta with parmesan cheese and salami.

He also liked veal, beef, liver, chicken, oysters, fish, spinach, fruit, cream, sugar, soup, eggs, very strong coffee and, last but not least, wine. He didn’t like pork and he was not really fond of beer.

This according to Die gute Kocherey: Aus Beethovens Speiseplänen by Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1988); the book includes several recipies.

Below, a chance to enjoy Beethoven’s music with some street food.

More posts about Beethoven are here.

 

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MusRef

MusRef

 

The successor to Music and Dance Reference, MusRef is a free online resource that includes listings of over 8000 print and Internet resources, a blog, an introduction to reference tools, links to unpublished bibliographies, and a Facebook page.

The site is hosted by Brigham Young University.

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Danse apache and violence

danse apache early 1950s

What is partnered social dance but a ritualized embodiment of the battle of the sexes? The inevitable symbolism of women and men moving and touching, from 18th-century cotillions and reels, to 19th-century European style waltzes, to the ragtime dances of the early 20th century, has repeatedly ignited accompanying public discourses rife with vexed questions about sexuality, gender roles, class, race, morality, and modernity.

The dramatic metaphoric possibilities of social dance reached one extreme in the danse apache of the early 20th century, which was a stylized imagining of the violent lifestyle of Parisian pimps and prostitutes. Here a male and female dancer participated in a dummy display of violence and sexual attraction, combining one-step dancing with gymnastics and theater.

This dance was appropriated by professionals, often as a cabaret act, and was interpolated into several films—sometimes mistaken for real violence by other characters that try to intervene to comic effect. Pretense or not, the footage of this dance displays an alarming level of violence that makes us fear for the dancers’ well-being.

This according to “Dancing with a vengeance: Ritualized sexual aggression in social dance of the ragtime era and beyond” by Eden E. Kainer, an essay included in Dance and the social city (Birmingham: Society of Dance History Scholars, 2012, pp. 141–148).

Above, souvenirs of a reconstructed danse apache from the early 1950s; below, a film from 1934.

BONUS: A 21st-century version.

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Frankie Yankovic, polka king

 

In his youth Frankie Yankovic moved from nearby South Euclid to Cleveland, Ohio, the capital of one of the two main branches of the American polka tradition, known as Cleveland-Slovenian. There he became proficient in accordion playing, and eventually established his own band, the Slovene Folk Orchestra.

After World War II, with the Yanks, he scored a crossover sensation with Just because, and for a while it seemed that his dream that “polkas should…be as popular as rumbas” could be realized. In spite of several “official” retirements, Yankovic continued to perform into his 80s.

This according to “Frank Yankovic, long reigning polka king, is dead at 83” by Ben Ratliff (The New York times CXLVIII/51,311 [15 October 1998] p. B:12).

Today would have been Yankovic’s 100th birthday! Below, Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks in 1985.

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Per Nørgårds skrifter online

 

Per Nørgårds skrifter online is an archive of nearly 500 writings, arranged alphabetically by article title. Full text is available for nearly 400 items. A chronological work list, 1949–2012, is included, along with a full biography of the composer.

The site is sponsored by Det Kongelige Bibliotek and edited by Ivan Hansen.

Below, the finale of his 8th symphony (2011).

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources

Natale Monferrato: Complete Masses

Natale Monferrato

Natale Monferrato was maestro di cappella at the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale Metropolitana Primaziale di San Marco Evangelista in Venice from 1676 to 1685.

An obscure figure of early Baroque history, Monferrato (who trained under Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli, among others) was, in fact, responsible for restoring discipline and musical standards in a chapel that had long succumbed to secular decay.

The type of Mass composition most commonly sung at San Marco was the a cappella form, as distinct from the messa concertata. Musicologists have long relied on a small corpus of music—notably containing two works by Monteverdi—for appraising the a cappella style at the 17th-century chapel.

In 2014 A-R Editions issued Natale Monferrato: Complete Masses, a definitive edition of Monferrato’s Masses. This edition—a total of eight settings from the composer’s opuses 13 and 19—provides a major boost to musical scholarship by presenting the most substantial testimony to the cathedral’s daily ritual during the Baroque era.

Below, Monferrato’s setting of Alma redemptoris mater.

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Dumbo and psychedelia

 

Some commentators have suggested that the films of Walt Disney led to the emergence of the youth counterculture in the 1960s.

The Disney film Dumbo (1941), particularly the sequence in which Dumbo the baby elephant mistakenly drinks alcohol, has a psychedelic dream, and learns to fly, is a case in point. The song Pink elephants on parade can be interpreted as an unleashing of Dumbo’s creative potential.

This according to “Disney psychedelisch: Musik und Rausch im Zeichentrickfilm” by Gregor Herzfeld (Acta musicologica LXXXVI/1 [2014] pp. 125–146). Below, Dumbo’s dream.

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American choral music, 1870–1922

choralmusic

American choral music, 1870–1922, a new open-access online resource, is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Choral Directors Association (ACDA).

In 2007 the ACDA and the Library began a collaborative effort to create a website devoted to choral music that would present music in the public domain, available for users to download. The site serves to highlight the collections of sheet music in the Library of Congress and to advance and promote the performance of choral music.

The 76 works presented are limited to a period beginning shortly after the Civil War and ending in 1922. The music selected reflects the diversity of choral music in the collections written during the later 19th- and early 20th centuries and includes accompanied, a cappella, sacred, and secular works for mixed choirs, women’s and men’s ensembles, and children’s choruses.

Below, Amy Beach’s Through the house give glimmering light, one of the works included on the site.

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Filed under Resources, Romantic era