In 2013 the Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná at the Universidade Estadual do Paraná launched Revista Vórtex, an open-access online publication.
The journal encourages the submission of works from research areas including composition, computer music, musicology, theory, music education, and ethnomusicology. Vórtex accepts the submission of articles, translations, interviews, and scores in Portuguese, English, or Spanish. Concert, festival, CD, DVD, and book reviews are also accepted.
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, New periodicals
Bands such as The Chantels, Rosie and the Originals, The Shirelles, The Marvelettes, Little Eva, and The Chiffons were commonly referred to as girl groups.
The girl-group style flourished between 1958 and 1965 and reached its height with the Phil Spector-produced groups—The Crystals, The Ronettes, and Darlene Love backed by the Crystals—and with the blazing teen morality plays of The Shangri-Las.
Although the girl-group sound was producer-driven, with songs written by Brill Building songwriters and aimed at a female teen audience, the music that came out of this collaborative process is considered some of the best of an otherwise fallow period for rock ’n’ roll. The best of the girl groups’ songs are filled with an epic sense of emotional intensity that may have stemmed in part from discord between the singers—mostly young black girls—and white male producers.
This according to “The girl groups” by Greil Marcus, an essay included in The Rolling Stone illustrated history of rock & roll [New York: Random house, 1976] pp. 154–57). Above and below, The Ronettes in their heyday.
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Filed under Popular music
In 1944 Betty Comden and Adolph Green were performing in a Greenwich Village nightclub when their friend Leonard Bernstein stopped in to ask if they wanted to help him make a musical out of a ballet he had written for Jerome Robbins.
They had never attempted anything so ambitious, but since they weren’t exactly deluged with offers they decided it would be foolish to turn him down.
They developed a stage book based on Robbins’s ballet Fancy free, about three young sailors on a 24-hour leave in New York. The result was called On the town, and when it opened at the Adelphi Theater during the 1944 Christmas season they were also in the cast.
The show was hailed by critics, marking the beginning of a professional collaboration between the two that became, as The Chicago Tribune noted in 1990, “unchallenged as the longest-running act on Broadway.”
This according to “Adolph Green, playwright and lyricist, dies at 87” by Richard Severo (The New York times CLII/52,282 [25 October 2002] p. A32).
Today is Green’s 100th birthday! Above, the original On the town cast, with Comden and Green on the left. Below, one of their signature songs from the show.
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Filed under Dramatic arts, Humor
Allan Sherman was the Larry David, the Adam Sandler, the Sacha Baron Cohen of 1963.
Sherman led Jewish humor and sensibilities out of ethnic enclaves and into the American mainstream with explosively funny parodies of classic songs that won him extraordinary success and acclaim across the board, from Harpo Marx to President Kennedy.
Sherman’s legacy represents a touchstone of postwar humor and a turning point in Jewish American cultural history. He was a manic, bacchanalian, and hugely creative artist who sold three million albums in just 12 months, yet died in obscurity a decade later at the age of 49.
This according to Overweight sensation: The life and comedy of Allan Sherman by Mark Cohen (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2013).
Today would have been Sherman’s 90th birthday! Below, My son, the folk singer, the album that started it all.
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Filed under Humor, Performers, Popular music
While the public thinks of Macy’s as the main sponsor of NYC’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, not everyone realizes that the company’s own Department of Annual and Special Events is responsible for almost all aspects of the planning and execution of this annual tradition.
Employing over 50 people, this department is also charged with mounting flower shows, fireworks displays, and other events, but the parade accounts for most of its yearlong activities; these include designing, building, and organizing the handlers for the balloons and floats; managing celebrity appearances; and interviewing, reviewing, auditioning, and coordinating the high-school bands that travel to the city to participate.
This according to “In the wind…: Size matters. II” by John Bishop (The diapason XCVIII/6:1171 [June 2001] pp. 14–16). Below, Mickey and friends in 1935.
Filed under North America
Since its premiere in 1986, Alfred Schnittke’s Концерт для смешанного хора (Koncert dlâ smeŝannovo hora/Concerto for mixed chorus) has gained prominence as a masterwork in the choral repertoire.
Schnittke himself said that his goal was to provide the musical language with “deep roots”, an idea that is expressed in the relationship of the work to the sacred Russian choral tradition.
An analysis of the work confirms that it shares many characteristics with various genres of that tradition. The concerto’s modern influences, such as tone clusters, demonstrate an expansion of this tradition and highlight Schnittke’s individual compositional voice.
This according to Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for choir: Musical analysis and historical perspectives by Mark David Jennings, a dissertation accepted by Florida State University, Tallahassee, in 2002.
Today would have been Schnittke’s 80th birthday! Above, a 1972 portrait by Reginald Gray; below, the concerto’s third movement.
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music
In October 1939 Coleman Hawkins, “the father of the jazz tenor saxophone”, recorded Johnny Green’s Body and soul with his group. The recording became a surprise hit and sold over 100,000 copies in its first six months, a remarkable feat for a ballad with no singer and no big band.
Hawkins’s recording can be viewed as a milestone both in the history of modern combo jazz and of tenor sax ballad playing. Almost every influential tenor saxophone player of the swing era made a recording of Body and soul, and in the second half of the 20th century the song remained one of the essential jazz standards recorded by many important tenor players.
This according to “Body and soul and the mastery of jazz tenor saxophone” by Martin Pfleiderer, an article included in Five perspectives on Body and soul and other contributions to music performance studies (Zürich: Chronos, 2011, pp. 29–44).
Today is Hawkins’s 110th birthday! Below, performing the classic in 1967.
BONUS: Tony Bennet and Amy Winehouse continue the legacy in 2011.
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Filed under Jazz and blues
Some viola jokes disparage the instrument itself. (The difference between a viola and a trampoline: You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline.) More often, they disparage the player. (What do violists use for birth control? Their personalities.)
Violists are depicted as inherently nonmusical. (Why are violists’ fingers like lightning? They never strike in the same place twice.) Reverse viola jokes provide violists’ revenge. (Why are viola jokes so short? So violinists can remember them.)
Some viola jokes are narratives. (When the orchestra manager broke up a fight between a violist and an oboist the latter said that the violist had knocked his reeds all over the floor. “He had it coming,” cried the violist, “he retuned one of my strings and now he won’t tell me which one!”)
This according to “No laughing matter: The viola joke cycle as musicians’ folklore” by Carl Rahkonen (Western folklore LIX/1 [winter 2000] pp. 49–63).
Above, a viola joke by Charles Schulz; below, a particularly elaborate viola joke.
Related articles:
Filed under Humor, Instruments
In 2014 Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali inaugurated the series Telestes: Studi e ricerche di archeologia musicale nel Mediterraneo with Musica, culti e riti nell’Occidente greco, edited by Angela Bellia.
The articles address new perspectives on the music of ancient Greece, including social factors and regional distinctions.
Above, a group of clowns with an aulos player; below, a compilation of lyre music.
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Filed under Antiquity, New series
The importance of birds and bird song in Afghan culture is embedded in Afghanistan’s two official languages—Dari and Pashto—in which the nightingale, a central poetic symbol, occurs in texts sung by urban and rural singers.
The songs of particular birds are associated with calls to prayer, and mullahs confirm that birdsong is regarded within Sufism as a form of religious singing; birds are welcomed at Sufi shrines, where feeding them is considered an act of piety.
Sometimes caged birds are brought to musical performances in Herāt, and when they are stirred to sing by hearing music their sounds are heard as an integral and treasured part of the performance.
This according to “Afghan perceptions of birdsong” by John Baily (The world of music XXXIX/2 [1997] pp. 51–59).
Above, an Afghan dove with a friend; below, a nightingale competition in Afghanistan.
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