by | September 25, 2014 · 6:00 am

Hating a nonexistant celebrity

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An Internet questionnaire aimed at measuring Hungarian responses to Hungarian celebrity culture gathered responses from 7317 people; the results are reported in “National characteristics of Hungarian celebrity culture” by Andrea Viniczai, an article included in History of stardom reconsidered (Turku/Åbo: Turun Yliopisto, 2001, pp. 90–96).

Several of the statistics that were generated could give pause; for example, respondents overwhelmingly voted that celebrities should be scandalous (97%), while fewer than 20% believed that they should be likeable, intelligent, or decent (see above).

Particularly notable were the responses to a fictitious celebrity—Lukács Bíró, Vinczai’s dentist—among a group of 29 well-known names. 25% of the respondents claimed familiarity with Bíró, and 60% of them expressed dislike for him. He was the 8th most rejected person in the group.

Below, Jimmy Zámbó, a formerly extant, but still potentially hateful, Hungarian celebrity who is profiled in the article.

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by | September 23, 2014 · 6:00 am

Capricornus strikes back

Samuel Capricornus

In 1657 Samuel Capricornus was summoned from Pressburg (now Bratislava) to take up the position of Kapellmeister to the Stuttgart court of Duke Eberhard III of Württemberg—to the surprise and disappointment of the organist of the Stuttgart collegiate church, Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, a distinguished composer in his own right, who had hoped to obtain the job himself.

Disputes quickly arose between Capricornus and Böddecker, as well as Böddecker’s brother David, a zinck player, who complained that Capricornus had required him outside the provisions of his contract to play the quart-zinck and to sing “such high-pitched, difficult passages” (so hohe und schwehre Stückh) that he was unable to comply “because of bodily weakness, short breath, and also declining vocal ability” (Leibsschwachheit, kurzem Athems, auch vergehende Stimme halber); and furthermore had insulted him publicly, saying he played the zinck “only like a cow-horn.”

Capricornus responded with a lengthy complaint of his own, presenting a gloomy picture of conditions in the ducal musical establishment and accusing the organist Böddecker of gluttony and drunkenness (Fressereien und Saufereien) and of being at the center of a whole network of intrigue against the Kapellmeister; moreover, “[he] did not deal especially gently with his inimical rival from the organ bench, and used all the arts of dialectic and learning to convict him of musical ignorance.”

This according to “Samuel Capricornus contra Philipp Friedrich Böddecker” by Josef Sittard (Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft III/1 [November 1901] pp. 87-128), which includes a complete edition of Capricornus’s grievance letter as found by the author in the ducal archives.

Below, Capricornus’s Magnificat.

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by | September 21, 2014 · 6:00 am

Leonard Cohen and performing ambiguity

 

Leonard Cohen’s recordings and performances in the 1960s were situated ambiguously between popular and art culture.

This division had traditionally been maintained through a strict hierarchy of socially enforced aesthetic barriers, but in the 1960s and 1970s popular genres staked a claim to high culture status by framing their creators as autonomous artists. In film this was achieved through auteur theory, where the director was viewed as the sole creative force, and in popular music through the rise of singer-songwriters such as Cohen, who both composed and performed their own material.

Another means of authenticating popular music in the 1960s was through the mythologizing of performance. In happenings and other gatherings, performance was valued for its apparent immediacy and lack of premeditation. On the other hand, performance is also understood in precisely the opposite manner—a clever performance is by implication not genuine, but calculating. This ambivalence is expressed repeatedly in Cohen’s own songs and performances.

This according to “Racing the midnight train: Leonard Cohen in performance” by Stephen Scobie (Canadian literature 152–153 [spring–summer 1997] pp. 52–68).

Below, performing Suzanne, an iconic song from the 1960s, in 2008.

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by | September 18, 2014 · 6:00 am

Men with guitar cases

 

An experiment tested the assumption that music plays a role in sexual selection.

Three hundred young women were solicited in the street for their phone number by a young male confederate who held either a guitar case or a sports bag in his hands or had no bag at all.

Results showed that holding a guitar case was associated with greater compliance to the request, thus suggesting that musical practice is associated with sexual selection.

This according to “Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context” by Nicolas Guéguen, Sébastien Meineri, and Jacques Fischer-Lokou (Psychology of music XLII/4 [July 2014] pp. 545–49).

Below, a study of men’s reactions to a man with a guitar case.

Related article: Sexual attraction by genre

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by | September 15, 2014 · 6:00 am

Bobby Short, saloon singer

 

Bobby Short, the cherubic singer and pianist whose high-spirited and probing renditions of popular standards evoked the glamour and sophistication of Manhattan nightlife, liked to call himself a saloon singer.

His “saloon” from 1968 to 2005 was one of the most elegant in the country, the intimate Cafe Carlyle in the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. There for six months each year, in a room where he was only a few feet from his audience, he sang and accompanied himself on the piano.

Over the years, Short transcended the role of cabaret entertainer to become a New York institution and a symbol of civilized Manhattan culture, attracting a chic international clientele that included royalty, movie stars, sports figures, captains of industry, socialites, and jazz aficionados. In Woody Allen’s films a visit to the Carlyle became an essential stop on his characters’ cultural tour—including a memorable scene in Hannah and her sisters that featured Short.

This according to “Bobby Short, icon of Manhattan song and style, dies at 80” by Enid Nemy (The New York times, 21 March 2005).

Today would have been Short’s 90th birthday! Below, the Hannah sequence.

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by | September 14, 2014 · 6:00 am

“The star-spangled banner” turns 200

 

Around 1775 John Stafford Smith wrote a melody for verses celebrating the Anacreontic Society, a London amateur musicians’ supper club. With its stirring tune, The Anacreontic song soon escaped the confines of club ritual, appearing in popular song collections and inspiring parodies in London’s many theaters.

By 1790 the melody had become part of the core of the active U.S. broadside tradition; by 1820 Anacreon, as the tune was then known, was the vehicle for more than 85 sets of American lyrics.

A number of these songs were nationalistic, praising early presidents and articulating partisan conflicts. The tune became widely associated with U.S. patriotism, making it a natural choice for Francis Scott Key for his commemoration of the nation’s surprise victory in the Battle of Baltimore in 1814. Originally titled Defense of Fort McHenry, the song quickly became a U.S. patriotic favorite as The star-spangled banner.

This according to “A star-spangled biennial” by Jerry Blackstone, Mark Clague, and Andrew Kuster (Choral journal LIV/9 [April 2014] pp.6–17).

Below, the original song, followed by two iconic performances of the U.S. national anthem.

Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl, 1991.

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, 1969.

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by | September 11, 2014 · 6:00 am

A Cuban instrument atlas

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Instrumentos de la música folclórico-popular de Cuba: Atlas provides a definitive overview of traditional instruments in Cuba, including discussions of their history, construction, musical characteristics, function in society, historical dissemination, and performance practice.

The accompanying atlas shows the numeric dissemination by county for every traditional instrument played in Cuba on geographical maps of the island. The set was issued by the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Música Cubana (CIDMUC).

Above, two of the atlas’s pages (click to enlarge); below, a Cuban group that features an unusual instrument—a leaf between the guitarist’s lips!

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by | September 8, 2014 · 6:00 am

Peter Maxwell Davies and sonata form

Throughout much of his career, Peter Maxwell Davies  has had a preoccupation with sonata form. He has exploited the tension between this form and his other conflicting musical preoccupations, such as a penchant for continuous development and an abhorrence of exact repetition.

In his earlier works, Davies at times referred to the presence of a “ghost” of sonata form, whereas more recently he directly states that some of his pieces are in this form. Throughout its evolution the salient elements of sonata form have been contrast, conflict, and resolution, all three of which apply in an examination of Davies’s use of it.

In his second Taverner fantasia, the first movement appears on the surface to be in sonata form, but is actually driven by other principles such as recurring chordal material. The opening movement of the first symphony has the general outline of a sonata form without adhering to its contrasting thematic implications. The more recent third quartet combines the formal and harmonic implications of a pre-Beethovenian, essentially binary, sonata form, with a highly complex and idiosyncratic serial technique derived from magic squares.

This according to “The ghost in the machine: Sonata form in the music of Peter Maxwell Davies” by Rodney Lister, an essay included in Peter Maxwell Davies studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) pp. 106–28).

Today is Sir Peter’s 80th birthday!

Above, photo courtesy of University of Salford Press Office, licensed under CC BY 2.0; below, Davies conducts the BBC Philharmonic in his first symphony.

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by | September 6, 2014 · 6:00 am

Early French trademarks

 

Cinématographes Phonographes et Pellicules trademark

The Archives de Paris holds 1200 registrations, mainly by instrument builders working in the former département of the Seine. The same company could have several different trademarks or hallmarks, either to differentiate among products or their quality, or due to various acquisitions or inheritances. In the 1890s trademarks for phonographic machines using cylinders or records, as well as for player pianos, were also registered.

These trademarks are rendered by labels, stamped imprints, dry point, and other means. They include various combinable elements: initials, patronyms, handwritten signatures, instrument names, common names or qualifying adjectives, names of cities, proverbs, or maxims. There are also figurative elements: notes, emblems, coats-of-arms, instruments, stars, animals, photographs, exhibition medals, certificates, and so on.

Les marques de fabrique des facteurs d’instruments de musique déposées au greffe du Tribunal de Commerce de Paris de 1860 à 1914 is an open-access online resource that includes a detailed chronological inventory of 1200 trademarks with illustrations and three indices: of names, of cities, and of figurative elements. The site is published by the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IREMUS).

Above, a trademark registered by La Compagnie Générale de Cinématographes, Phonographes et Pellicules in 1898 (click to enlarge).

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by | September 4, 2014 · 6:00 am

Milhaud and jazz

In a 1922 interview in New York City, Darius Milhaud described how jazz had recently taken the French musical scene by storm, to the delight of young composers like himself.

“Jazz interests us tremendously. We are fascinated and intrigued by the jazz rhythms and are devoting serious study to it. There are new elements of clarity and rhythmic power that were a real shock to us when we heard jazz for the first time.”

“It was in 1919, immediately after the war, that the first jazz band was heard in Paris. To us it was a musical event of genuine import. Music had long been under the domination of the impressionist school. Poetry was the predominating element. Jazz came to us as a good shock—like a cold shower when you have been half asleep with ennui.”

This according to “Jazz, says Darius Milhaud, is the most significant thing in music today” (The musical observer XXIII [March 1923] p. 23; reprinted in Jazz in print 1856–1929: An anthology of selected early readings in jazz history [Hillsdale: Pendragon press, 2002] p. 235).

Today is Milhaud’s 120th birthday! Above, the composer with his student Dave Brubeck (standing); below, La création du monde from 1923.

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