In 2015 the Society for Music Theory launched SMT-V: Videocast journal of the Society for Music Theory, a peer-reviewed scholarly video publication that explores a wide range of topics in music theory and analysis.
Each video article is about ten minutes in length and accessible for free via the SMT website.
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Filed under New periodicals, Theory
American vernacular music manuscripts, ca. 1730–1910 is a free online resource supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The site presents digitized images of holdings of the American Antiquarian Society and the Center for Popular Music. It is searchable by keyword or title; advanced search options are also available.
Above, Sorrowing hearts at home weeping sad and lonely, or, When this cruel war is over, one of the most popular songs of the U.S. Civil War (click to enlarge). This manuscript, attributed to Charles Stewart of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, contains shape-note music and lyrics on ruled stationary and is inscribed “August 24th 1867, Saturday half past” and “June 9th 1868”.
Below, a concertina rendition of the song by Gary Coover.
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Filed under Popular music, Resources
In new video media there is a possibility for a profound change in the representation of sex, eroticism, gender, and sexuality. Freud’s concept of primary narcissism provides important insights into digital imagery, not least in the construction of female spectatorship.
For example, David Fincher’s video for Madonna’s Vogue enacts a sense of femininity as masquerade; the act of masquerade allows women to merely play a role rather than actually becoming it, thus simultaneously fulfilling and parodying expectations.
This according to “Rolling and tumbling: Digital erotics and the culture of narcissism” by Sean Cubitt, an essay included in Sexing the groove: Popular music and gender (London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 295–316).
Above and below, the video in question.
Filed under Popular music
In a 1997 interview, Bruce “Utah” Phillips (1935–2008) described himself as a “Catholic, anarchist, pacifist, draft dodger of two world wars, tax refuser, vegetarian, one-man revolution in America.”
“My body is my ballot,” he continued, “and I try to cast it on behalf of the people around me every day of my life.”
“I don’t assign responsibility to do things to other people; I accept the responsibility to make sure that things get done. I love to tell that to people who are frustrated with the ballot box. How many people do I know who have never voted for anyone who won, ever in their lives, and are really frustrated? It’s not the end of the road. There’s another way to go, and that’s with your own labor, your own sweat, your own body. I think there’s a lot of hope in that.”
Quoted in “Radical folk: A conversation with Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips, kindred spirits and collaborators on a daring new album” by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers (Acoustic guitar VIII/2:56 [August 1997] pp. 62–70).
Today would have been Phillips’s 80th birthday! Below, classic Phillips from 2005.
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Filed under Performers, Politics
Gabriel Fauré’s apparently irresistible appeal to women led to the kind of extramarital liaisons that were far from uncommon in the Third Republic; Alfredo Casella, one of his pupils, described the composer as having “the large, languid, and sensual eyes of an impenitent Casanova.”
Fauré’s friends and associates were not insensitive to the delicate situations that this predilection incurred; for example, some the composer’s most talented students at the Paris Conservatoire were rumored to be his illegitimate children.
This according to Gabriel Fauré by Jessican Duchen (London: Phaidon, 2000, p. 63).
Today is Fauré’s 170th birthday! Above, Fauré and Gustave Bret with the pianist Marguerite Hasselmans, the composer’s mistress for the last 24 years of his life; below, Fauré’s Fantasie, op. 111, which Hasselmans premiered in 1919.
Filed under Romantic era
Keith Jarrett began playing improvised solo concerts in 1973, establishing himself as a major figure in the jazz piano tradition.
The performances drew on a new conception of form suggested by free jazz, one which posited a new kind of relationship between a performer and the musical constraints suggested by a composition. This new approach to performance allowed musicians to reconfigure formal conception in the moment, rather than being tied to an invariant set of constraints.
Jarrett’s solo concerts also drew on an aesthetic view of performance that emerged from free jazz, which saw music making as tapping into a divine source of inspiration. The context in which he performed promoted this conception by giving such dramatic weight to the process of improvisation.
This according to Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts and the aesthetics of free improvisation, 1960–1973 by Peter Stanley Elsdon, a dissertation accepted by the University of Southampton in 2001.
Today is Jarrett’s 70th birthday! Below, part of the 1973 Lausanne concert, a performance analyzed in Elsdon’s dissertation.
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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers
For more than 40 years—ever since Wayne Willis discovered that he could play the guitar and wanted some people to play with—Wayne’s Body Shop in Portsmouth, Virginia, has hosted a regular jam session.
Just about everyone who can play old-time, country, bluegrass, or gospel music in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina has jammed at Wayne’s. The first rule is that there is no hierarchy and no noninclusion; everyone gets a chance to participate.
This according to “Saturday night at Wayne’s Body Shop in Portsmouth, Virginia” by Dan Margolies (The old-time herald IX/3 [Spring 2004] pp.14–18).
Above and below, Saturday night at Wayne’s.
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Filed under Curiosities
In 2014 Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego in Wrocław launched the series Wrocławska Muzykoterapia with Muzykoterapia: Stałość i zmiana (Music therapy: Stability and change), edited by Paweł Cylulko and Joanna Gładyszewska-Cylulko.
This inaugural volume presents papers read at the VII Międzynarodowe Forum Muzykoterapeutów (International Forum of Music Therapists), which was held from 23 to 25 April 2010 at the Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego.
The series is addressed to music therapists, music therapy students, and professionals in other fields who want to expand the scope of their knowledge and skills. It hopes to inspire studies that would deepen and broaden the discipline as well as contribute to therapeutical practice in Poland.
Below, the Polish band Muzykoterapia may or may not figure in future books in the series.
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Filed under New periodicals, Therapy
As ethnomusicology increasingly engages the topic of genre viability, the rhetoric used to characterize the issues must be carefully considered.
Parallel concerns in the field of linguistics have long involved the term language endangerment, and some linguists have argued for the use of more uncomfortable terms—language death, language murder, language genocide, and even language suicide—in an effort to convey strong messages about the agency and urgency of particular situations.
The current focus of some ethnomusicologists on ecological concepts such as sustainability is encouraging, but few scholars are bold enough to use more violent rhetoric when it is justified.
This according to “‘They don’t die, they’re killed’: The thorny rhetoric around music endangerment and music sustainability” by Catherine Grant (Sound matters 15 April 2015).
Above, Master-musician Sok Duck, 87 years old and one of the very few artists to survive the Khmer Rouge regime, continues to make efforts to pass on his skills to younger-generation Cambodians; below, the video for the SoundFutures research project draws on the ecosystem metaphor to argue for the need to support music sustainability.
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Filed under Ethnomusicology
Bruckner online is a large-scale Anton Bruckner Internet portal that includes complete digital copies of all manuscripts and first editions along with information on relevant persons and places. This new joint venture of the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung and the Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften aims to create unique opportunities for research and concert practice.
Currently 730 signatures are available, most with philological commentary. In addition, around 7,000 high-quality color illustrations of sources in Austrian archives are presented.
Comparisons of different versions of the same work are easily facilitated. A compilation of important episodes from the composer’s life and a literature database complete the current phase of the project.
Below, Sergiu Celibidache conducts Bruckner’s seventh symphony.
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Filed under Resources, Romantic era
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