Leoš Janáček based vocal melodies in his operas on the concept of nápěvky mluvy (speech melodies)—patterns of speech intonation as they relate to psychological conditions—rather than on a strictly musical basis. He used such melodic motives, characterizing a specific person in a specific dramatic situation, in both vocal and orchestral parts, enabling him to integrate the two parts into a compact unit for the utmost dramatic effect.
This according to “Význam nápěvků pro Janáčkovu operní tvorbu” (The significance of speech melodies in Janáček’s operas) by Milena Černohorská, an essay included in Leoš Janáček a soudobá hudba (Leoš Janáček and contemporary music; Praha: Panton, 1963, pp. 77–80).
Janáček found the source of speech melodies in spoken phrases of people of various social and cultural backgrounds, recorded in real-life situations. During his ethnomusicological research in Moravia and Slovakia in 1920s, Janáček not only recorded songs and music, but also wrote down the melodies of dialogue fragments and of singers’ comments on specific songs.
Recently discovered autographs of Janáček’s fieldwork notes in the collection of the Etnologický ústav AV ČR, pracovišťě Brno with transcriptions of nápěvky mluvy were published in Janáčkovy záznamy hudebního a tanečního folkloru. I: Komentáře (Janáček´s records of traditional music and dances: I. Commentaries) by Jarmila Procházková (Brno: Etnologický ústav AV ČR, 2006).
Today is Janáček’s 160th birthday! Above, examples of nápěvky mluvy that he transcribed in Čičmany, Slovakia, on 20 August 1911; below, the finale of his Jenůfa, a work often cited for its use of the speech-melody concept.
In 2014 Edition text + kritik launched the series FilmMusik with Ennio Morricone, a collection of essays edited by Guido Heldt, Tarek Krohn, Peter Moormann, and Willem Strank. Compiled in the year of Morricone’s 85th birthday, the book encompasses traditional readings of his music as well as new perspectives on it.
Morricone became famous in the 1960s as the composer of the music for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Their unconventional sound is, however, only one aspect of his multifaceted work, which—in addition to more than 500 film and television scores—also includes classical orchestral music, avant-garde jazz, electronic music, and borrowings from contemporary pop music styles. The book explores the full diversity of Morricone’s oeuvre and lets the maestro speak for himself in an exclusive interview.
Below, an excerpt from Giuseppe Tornatore’s Malèna (2000), one of five of Morricone’s Oscar-nominated film scores (he received an honorary Oscar in 2007).
The German town of Hameln continues to re-enact the legend of the Rattenfänger, known in English as the Pied Piper, each weekend during the summer. A number of musicians have assumed the role of the piper since the 1950s, playing flute, oboe, or clarinet.
Since 1979 the role of the Rattenfänger has been played by the Pennsylvania-born clarinetist Michael Boyer, who performs on one of two U.S.-made metal clarinets: a Gladiator model from the 1930s or an American Standard model from the 1920s, both made by the H.N. White company of Cleveland, Ohio.
This according to “Hamelin’s Pied Piper: An unexpected American connection” by James Gillespie (The clarinet XLI/3 [June 2014] pp. 56–60). Below, Mr. Boyer’s summer job.
A hitherto unknown newspaper, Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns (Archive of human nonsense) provides a lively picture of Schubert’s circle. The newspaper is full of allusions to political events as well as parodies of classical works.
This according to Die Unsinnsgesellschaft: Franz Schubert, Leopold Kupelwieser und ihr Freundeskreis by Rita Steblin (Wien: Böhlau, 1998), which presents all 29 editions (1817–18) of the newspaper along with biographies of all the members of the society.
Above, Leopold Kupelwieser’s watercolor Neueste Erfindungen: Schubert als strenger Schullehrer mit Rohrstaberl und Kaleidoskop, Kupelwieser als Schulbube mit Draisine (Latest inventions: Schubert as strict teacher with Rohrstaberl and kaleidoscope, Kupelwieser as schoolboy with draisine). Below, a lighthearted scherzo.
The world’s largest water-powered cuckoo clock, built by Richard Pim for his Westbury Mill water gardens in Herefordshire, features a birdsong barrel organ from the W & A Boggis organ building firm.
A few minutes before the hour the doors open below the clock dial and the cuckoo emerges. It sings on the hour, and two minutes of bird song from the barrel organ follow. The valve for opening and closing the water supply to the driving wheel is controlled by two alternately emptying and filling Guinness cans.
This according to “The world’s largest singing bird? A garden folly in Herefordshire” by Christopher Proudfoot (The music box: An international journal of mechanical music XXVI/6 [summer 2014] pp. 230–231). Above and below, the clock in action.
BONUS: A closer look at the inner workings.
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A number of Oz musicals were staged between 1902 and 1918, beginning with Baum’s own The Wizard of Oz (1902; the full book and lyrics are here). A wide variety of silent Oz films followed between 1908 and 1925. While these are largely forgotten now, they figured in discussions when MGM began work on what was to become their classic Judy Garland vehicle.
This according to Oz before the rainbow: L. Frank Baum’s The wonderful wizard of Oz on stage and screen to 1939 by Mark E. Swartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Above, a poster for the 1902 production; below, the earliest known film of the story, which is thought to have been based on that stage version.
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, which reached a high pitch of political and social repression between 1965 and 1980, the songs of Chico Buarque became vehicles for a strong, albeit veiled, political activism.
Endowed with a phenomenal lyric gift and an ability to penetrate the psyche of the most diverse human beings, Buarque was also skilled in the use of metaphor, the double entendre, the between-the-lines song text. As a consequence, he was able to say a great deal in his songs, without seemingly spelling out anything.
The military censors kept a close eye on him, leading him to complain that, out of every three songs that he wrote, two would be censored. It is all the more surprising, then, that the censors allowed the release of the song Apesar de você (In spite of you, 1970), a very obvious diatribe against the military regime and, more specifically, against the then president Emílio Garrastazu Médici.
Buarque was interrogated several times and asked to explain who was the “you” to which the song consistently refers. According to one of the versions of the interview, he said that the “you” was a very authoritative and bossy wife, and the song was the rant of her unhappy husband. Needless to say, the censors did not buy the explanation, but there was nothing specific in the text of the song that they could point to as a direct attack on the government.
The song is emblematic of Buarque’s remarkable resiliency while navigating the political minefield of the time. Many of his songs from that period testify to this same ability. His highly nuanced, subtle, poetically charged song texts can indeed be read in many different ways, and could easily be construed as the depiction of a domestic, rather than a political, drama. Throughout the duration of the military regime he offered Brazilian society a vehicle in which its entire voice could reverberate, shielded from military scrutiny by the poetic beauty of the texts.
The text of Apesar de você is reproduced in Chico Buarque: Tantas palavras—Todas as letras (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006).
Today is Chico Buarque’s 70th birthday! Below, Maria Bethânia performs Apesar de você; a free English rendition of the song’s text appears under the video.
Apesar de você (In spite of you)
Tomorrow will be another day…
Today, you’re the one who calls the shots.
Whatever you say, it’s been spoken
And there’s no arguing.
Today, my people walk around
Talking sideways and looking toward the ground.
You who invented this situation
By inventing all darkness,
You who invented sin
Forgot to invent forgiveness.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day.
I ask you, where will you hide
From the great euphoria when it comes?
How will you forbid it
When the rooster insists on crowing?
New water will be flowing
And our people will be loving one another, nonstop.
When that moment arrives
I’m going to charge you
For all this suffering of mine,
And with interest to boot, I swear.
All this repressed love,
All these contained screams,
All this samba in the dark.
You who invented sadness,
Now do us the favor of “disinventing” it.
You’re going to pay double
For every tear that I’ve shed
In this anguish of mine.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
I can hardly wait to see
The garden in full bloom,
The one you didn’t want to see blooming.
You’re going to be tormented,
Seeing the day break
Without asking your permission
And I’m going to have my big laugh at you
Because that day is bound to come
Sooner than you think.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
You will be forced to see the morning reborn
And pouring out poetry.
How will you explain it to yourself
Seeing that the sky has suddenly cleared,
And there’s no more punishment?
How are you going to stifle the chorus of our voices
Singing right in front of you,
In spite of you?
In spite of you
Tomorrow is going to be another day
And you’re going to be out of luck.
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Zehn kleine Jägermeister by the punk band Die Toten Hosen, which led the German charts in 1996, is a children’s counting song musically and textually referring to the British-derived Zehn kleine Negerlein and the U.S. Ten little Indians, in which the original set of ten members disappears one at a time through mishaps that are either their own fault or purely accidental.
The ten glasses of Jägermeister, a popular German liqueur, disappear in the obvious and banal fashion; ultimately, the song evokes a meeting between death and the picture of an infantile typical German whose behavior is driven purely by greed, and seems to sound the possibility that the German people could vanish altogether.
This according to “Doitsu no hittokyoku o yomu: Zehn kleine Jägermeister no baai” by Okamura Saburō (Goken fōramu VII [October 1997] pp. 1–23). Below, Die Toten Hosen brings it.
The sounds produced by cicadas and other humming, clicking, or thrumming insects may be the basis for human rhythm, synchronization, and dance.
Fruitful areas of study include the acoustics of insect sounds, the imitation of insects and theme of insects in music, jazz performance with insects, and the interconnectedness of species.
This according to Bug music: How insects gave us rhythm and noise by David Rothenberg (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013). Below, Graeme Revell is a composer who likes bugs.
BONUS: Professor Rothenberg puts his clarinet where his mouth is.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
