Oscar Hammerstein and Carmen Jones

 

Oscar Hammerstein’s Americanization of Georges Bizet’s Carmen—68 years after its premiere—altered its form from the operatic genre to that of musical theater and transformed the place and time to a setting more familiar to a Broadway audience.

Instead of playing in Seville, Carmen Jones takes place in a city of the American South, African Americans become the sociological equivalent of Spanish gypsies, and the cigarette factory becomes the more topical World War II army parachute factory.

The change from bullfighting to boxing, a spectator sport that had become increasingly popular in America since the 1890s, demonstrates how Hammerstein distances the Carmen story from the world of Prosper Mérimée’s novella without diminishing its universal constants of human tragedy.

This according to “Carmen am Broadway: Oscar Hammersteins Carmen Jones” by Manfred Siebald, an essay included in Caecilia, Tosca, Carmen: Brüche und Kontinuitäten im Verhältnis von Musik und Welterleben (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2006, pp. 225–234).

Today is Hammerstein’s 120th birthday! Above, a portrait by Abbey Altson from 1943, the year of Carmen Jones’s premiere; below, an excerpt from Otto Preminger’s 1954 film version.

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Filed under Dramatic arts, Opera

Classical guitar music in printed collections

guitar music index

Classical guitar music in printed collections is an online, continuously updateable index to classical guitar repertoire in published collections and anthologies.

This open-access resource is intended for use in libraries and by aficionados of the instrument, and takes as its model and inspiration various print indexes of repertoire in collections. Entries are indexed by composer, work, and publication, and each entry includes an incipit and a link to the source collection.

Above, a screenshot showing two listings for guitar transcriptions of John Dowland’s The most sacred Queen Elizabeth, her Galliard; below, a performance of the work.

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Soap opera and social codes

 

The huge national prominence of popular music and soap operas in Brazil places both entertainment products as fundamental vectors of the social sharing of codes, values, lifestyles, and behavior.

For example, the interconnection between the song Você não vale nada mas eu gosto de você (You are worthless, but I like you) and the character Norminha in the soap opera Caminho das Índias (above) amplified a deep media debate about morality and sexuality, tempered with doses of humor and sympathy.

Through the plot and the soundtrack, a significant segment of Brazilian society interacted with strategies of sexual behavior as juxtaposed in the narrative with the vibrant sounds of electronic forró.

This according to “Sexualidad, moral y humor en la telenovela brasileña actual: Casamiento, traición, seducción y simpatía” by Felipe Trotta (TRANS: Revista transcultural de música/Transcultural music review 15 [2011]).

Below, Você não vale nada with stills from the show.

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Filed under Dramatic arts, Popular music

Sacra corona (Venice, 1656)

Sacra corona

Sacra corona (Venice, 1656) (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2015) is a complete edition of the anthology Sacra corona (Venice: Magni, 1656), comprising solo motets for two and three voices with continuo by some of the foremost Venetian composers of the period and by four composers who worked in the papally controlled states on the Adriatic coast.

A detailed study of contemporary documents reveals possible reasons for this somewhat idiosyncratic choice of composers, finding them in the family history of the publisher, Bartolomeo Magni (descended from a dynasty of Ravennese musicians), and in contemporary political relations between Venice and the Papacy, the former being dependent on the latter for funding in its ongoing military campaign against the Turks.

Above, the cover of the 1656 anthology; below, O bone Jesu by Francesco Cavalli, one of the works preserved in it.

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Filed under Baroque era, New editions

Willie Dixon, blues innovator

 

Using conventional musical devices for blues compositions as a basis, Willie Dixon expanded the possibilities for blues songwriting by introducing elements from pop song forms, using a quatrain refrain text form with longer musical structures than a 12-bar form, and amalgamating the 12-bar/a-a-b form with the 16-bar/quatrain refrain form in different sections of a composition.

Dixon also helped artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Koko Taylor to intensify their public images; his development of their performing personae is relevant to the tradition of the blues as a secular religion, and Dixon’s casting of them originated in traditional black badman tales circulated in the postbellum South.

This according to Willie Dixon’s work on the blues: From the early recordings through the Chess and Cobra years, 19401971 by Mitsutoshi Inaba, a dissertation accepted by the University of Oregon in 2005.

Today is Dixon’s 100th birthday! Below, he sings his own Back door man, first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1960; the song is a classic example of Dixon’s innovations in blues song forms.

BONUS: The inimitable Howlin’ Wolf recording:

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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers

Bach at the table

Bach food

The holdings of the Bachhaus in Eisenach include a polished goblet that was presented to J.S. Bach around 1735; the word VIVAT inscribed on it was meant as an invitation to enjoy a glass of wine.

Sources including letters, pay slips, stipends, and the 1750 catalog of his estate suggest that Bach’s life was sometimes cheerfully informal.  The table of this choral street-singer, organist, cantor, court musician, and municipal music director—whose salary as an employee was, throughout his life, paid not only in money but also in kind (grain, fish, beer, wine, wood)—was abundantly set for his large family and for the many welcome guests, and his comfortable standard of living was provided for on a corresponding scale.

This according to Zu Tisch bei Johann Sebastian Bach: Einnahmen und “Consumtionen” einer Musikerfamilie by Walter Salmen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2009).

Below, Bach’s jovial Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (“Bauernkantate”), BWV #212, which includes the encouraging words “Wave if you’re thirsty!”

More posts about J.S. Bach are here.

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Filed under Baroque era, Food

Yale journal of music & religion

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The Yale journal of music & religion (YJMR) is an open-access online publication issued twice yearly by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary graduate center that educates leaders who foster, explore, and study engagement with the sacred through music, worship, and the arts in Christian communities, diverse religious traditions, and public life.

YJMR is hosted by EliScholar, the Yale University Library institutional repository. YJMR accepts submissions of original scholarly research on sacred music spanning such disciplines as music theory, musicology, ethnomusicology, ritual studies, religious studies, theology, and liturgical studies.

Below, an extract from the Cisneros choirbooks, the subject of the first article published in the journal, with views of the Catedral de Toledo, the repertoire’s home base.

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Terry Riley’s moonshine dervishes

 

The title of Terry Riley’s improvisation template Descending moonshine dervishes  is rooted in several sources.

“Moonshine” may be considered a triple entendre referring to the mysticism of the shining moon, the ecstasy associated with U.S. moonshine liquor, and Riley’s property on Moonshine Road in the Yuba River country of California’s Sierra foothills, which he has dubbed Shri Moonshine Ranch.

Dervishes are adherents of Sufism, and although Riley subscribes to a general spirituality rather than any formal religious orientation the Sufi tradition has clearly been important to him, as evinced by his performances in mosques and with musicians more closely involved with Sufism. Riley has also used the word dervish in reference to his Hindustani music teacher, Pran Nath.

This according to “Terry Riley in the 70s” by Mark Alburger (21st-century music XI/3 [March 2004] pp. 4–7).

Today is Riley’s 80th birthday! Below, Descending moonshine dervishes as he performed it in Berlin in 1975 (Kuckuck, 1982).

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music

Announcing RILM’s Zine Initiative!

Joey Ramone Punk Magazine

Working with a top collector and specialist in the field, RILM has created a new document type abbreviated JZ, standing for Journal Zine—zine being the recognized short version of fanzine, which refers to the self-published fan magazines that proliferated in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s (when the Internet made them largely obsolete).

Much like the thriving music-journal culture that developed in 19th-century Europe, these low-circulation publications were produced and consumed by key players in the music cultures they took as their subject; today they serve as primary sources that provide valuable insights into the subcultures that shaped the sound of the late 20th century (in the case of punk rock, it was the New York-based zine Punk that provided the name for the nascent musical movement).

We are in the first stage of entering JZ records that give bibliographic information and detailed summaries of key zines in popular music history. A growing number of universities have begun acquiring collections of these important documents.

Above, Joey Ramone, drawn by John Holstrom for Punk #3 (April 1976; click to enlarge). Below, the Ramones at Max’s Kansas City the same year.

More posts about punk rock are here.

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Filed under Popular music, Publication types, RILM, RILM news

Pink Martini, seriously anti-serious

 

Mixing eras, cultures, and attitudes with trademark panache, Pink Martini offers joyous music in trying times.

Onstage, Pink Martini puts across a camp, seriously anti-serious aesthetic with over-the-top lush arrangements, sing-alongs, and conga lines.

The group’s 2013 album Get happy comprises 16 songs in 9 languages, and most of the tracks run deeper than they first let on.

This according to “Reimagining the past” by Zach Hindin (JazzTimes XLIII/10 [December 2013] pp. 11–12). Below, ¿Donde estas, Yolanda? featuring China Forbes, live in 2006.

BONUS: You want the whole concert? Sure! Don’t miss the dancers at the end!

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Filed under Humor, Popular music