Bibliolore

by admin | May 31, 2014 · 1:00 am

Vespro della Beata Vergine

In 2013 Bärenreiter issued a new Urtext edition of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, one of the most beloved sacred works of the 17th century.

The volume originated in a graduate seminar at the University of North Texas under the direction of the Monteverdi specialist Hendrik Schulze, who served as the book’s editor.

The edition combines the latest in musicological research specifically with the needs of the performer in mind, making a modern interpretation of this 400-year-old work possible. This new research has led, for instance, to a divergent evaluation of the Lauda Jerusalem oriented towards performance practice, with numerous additional accidentals and a new interpretation of the melodic variants from the different part books.

Below, John Eliot Gardiner leads a full performance of the work. Go ahead, you deserve it.

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Filed under Baroque era, New editions, Performance practice

Tagged as Claudio Monteverdi, Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610

by admin | May 29, 2014 · 1:00 am

ABBA’s film renaissance

ABBA’s music has often been denigrated as bland, mass market pop. However, viewed from the point of view of reception, the ABBA phenomenon is a highly complex text that offers contemporary music consumers diverse, even perverse, pleasures.

Between them, Stephan Elliott’s The adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and P.J. Hogan’s Muriel’s wedding (1994) suggest a broad spectrum of ABBA consumers, from the sincere and sentimental to the hip, camp, and kitsch, using this spectrum to map a series of interfaces between culture, identity, the performance of gender, and place.

This according to “Music and camp: Popular music performance in Priscilla and Muriel’s wedding” by Catherine Lumby, an essay included in Screen scores: Studies in contemporary Australian film music (North Ryde: Australian Film, Television, and Radio School, 1999, pp. 78–88).

Below, ABBA’s Waterloo in Muriel’s wedding.

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Filed under Popular music, Reception

Tagged as ABBA, Cinema of Australia, Film music, muriels wedding

by admin | May 26, 2014 · 1:00 am

The astrology of pop

Popular music underwent a profound transformation during the period between 1954 and 1969; this change can be understood through the prism of the extraordinary planetary position of February 1962, which some call the Age of Aquarius.

The seven inner planets formed a stellium (multiple conjunction of planets) in Aquarius at the time of a total solar eclipse. Opposite the stellium was Uranus, approaching its half-cycle with Jupiter on 14 March 1962 (above left; click to enlarge).

A chart for the Woodstock Festival (above right) has the Jupiter–Uranus connection writ large, with airy ideals in Libra. Its Sun–Neptune square is both idealistic and druggy.

This according to “The astrology of pop” by Neil Spencel (The mountain astrologer XXVII/3 [April–May 2014] pp. 25–33. Below, The 5th Dimension elaborates.

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Filed under Curiosities, Popular music

Tagged as Astrology

by admin | May 24, 2014 · 1:00 am

The Leonard Bernstein Collection

The Leonard Bernstein Collection is a free online resource comprising selections from The Library of Congress’s holdings related to the composer and conductor.

The collection’s more than 400,000 items—including music and literary manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, audio and video recordings, fan mail, and other types of materials—extensively document Bernstein’s extraordinary life and career, making available 85 photographs, 177 scripts from the Young People’s Concerts, 74 scripts from the Thursday Evening Previews, and over 1,100 pieces of correspondence, all browseable or accessible through the collection’s Finding Aid.

Above, Bernstein at the piano at a party at Tanglewood in August 1946 (photographer unknown); below, the opening of the first televised Young People’s Concert.

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Tagged as Composers, Conductors, Leonard Bernstein, Library of Congress, Mass media, Tanglewood, Young People's Concerts

by admin | May 22, 2014 · 1:00 am

Sun Ra’s utopianism

Sun Ra’s music and poetry can claim to create otherwise impossible utopian worlds; this contrasts with the European Romantic tradition in which compositions or poems seek to describe utopian worlds that remain unattainable.

Music and words in Sun Ra’s view of the arts—a view based on African aesthetics—both have a magical function: they do not portray impossibilities but strive to make them a reality.

This according to “Pictures of infinity: Sun Ras klangliche Umrahmungen der Grenzenlosigkeit” by Christian Zürner, an essay included in “Was du nicht hören kannst, Musik”: Zum Verhältnis von Musik und Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1999, pp. 205–238).

Today is Sun Ra’s 100th birthday! Below, the Arkestra in 1976.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Jazz and blues

Tagged as Arkestra, Birthdays, Composers, Jazz, Robert Mugge, Saturn, Sun Ra

by admin | May 19, 2014 · 1:00 am

Patuas’ paintings repurposed

In West Bengali tradition, a person known as a patua travels around the countryside to entertain with sung narratives illustrated with painted scrolls. The patua’s audiences are usually poor and illiterate, lacking access to televisions and films as well as to written entertainments.

Increasingly, however, patuas are finding that their scrolls are viewed as valuable folk art, and that their storytelling skills are in demand among the urban intellectual elite as a means of selling these illustrations, which thereby take on a new, passive function.

This according to “From oral tradition to folk art: Reevaluating Bengali scroll paintings” by Beatrix Hauser (Asian ethnology LXI/1 [2002] pp. 105–122). Below, a patua demonstrates her art.

BONUS: A more modern example of the patua’s skills used to raise ecological awareness, with English subtitles.

Related article: Bhāgavata purāṇa as performance

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Filed under Asia, Curiosities, Visual art

Tagged as Folk art, India, Patua, Visual arts, West Bengal

by admin | May 17, 2014 · 1:00 am

Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology

In 2013 Ēkhō Verlag launched the series Publications of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology (ISSN 2198-039X) with Music & ritual: Bridging material & living cultures, edited by Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos and Rupert Till.

The volumes in this series are anthologies of peer-reviewed articles focused on a specific topic. Reflecting the broad scope of music-archaeological research worldwide, they draw in perspectives from a range of disciplines, including newly emerging fields such as archaeoacoustics, but particularly encouraging both music-archaeological and ethnomusicological perspectives.

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, New series, Science

Tagged as Archaeology

by admin | May 14, 2014 · 1:00 am

RILM to publish MGG Online

In 2014 Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler, the publishers of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), entered a long-term partnership with RILM. MGG Online will include the content of the 1994–2008 print edition of MGG as well as future updates, revisions, and additions.

Regular updates will guarantee that MGG remains musicology’s foremost reference work. All entries from this widely consulted and cited encyclopedia will be accessible to users through the new online database beginning in 2017.

Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler will remain responsible for MGG’s content and will ensure that MGG Online continues to offer up-to-date and authoritative articles. RILM will bring its expertise to bear on the design of the online database and the creation of a user-friendly platform that will be fully equipped with the most advanced search and browse capabilities.

With its broad international experience, RILM will also be responsible for the worldwide marketing of MGG Online. Subscription details for libraries and other users will be issued soon.

More information is here (English) and here (German).

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Filed under RILM, RILM news

Tagged as MGG, Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, RILM, RILM history, RILM news

by admin | May 10, 2014 · 1:00 am

My homeland Tennessee

Perhaps more than any other state, Tennessee is associated with music. The state, its cities, natural features, and historical events have been the subject of thousands of popular songs written and performed in almost every style. The idea of Tennessee is so popular that it has inspired great songwriting and performances not only by native Tennesseans but by people from all over the world.

My homeland Tennessee: A research guide to songs about Tennessee preserves and presents historic documents and recordings that illuminate Tennessee as represented in blues, ragtime, rock’n’roll, rap, folk, country, jazz, rhythm and blues, and other styles. This open-access resource also includes a special section on the several official state songs of Tennessee.

Below, Tennessee’s own Dolly Parton.

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Tagged as Popular music, Tennessee

by admin | May 7, 2014 · 1:00 am

The Bonzo Dog Band

In the 1960s many rock bands were funny some of the time; only a few made humor about as much of the act as music was.

In the U.S., only two such bands did so with consistent brilliance: the Mothers of Invention and the Fugs. The international, and kinder and gentler, branch of that triangle of major rock comics was represented by England’s Bonzo Dog Band.

The Bonzos had only one big hit in the U.K. with I’m the urban spaceman, and some Beatles-glamor-by-association due to a cameo appearance in the Magical mystery tour film. In the U.S. they remained a cult band.

Sometimes compared to the Mothers of Invention, particularly in their zany stage shows and their facility for parodying multiple pop genres, the Bonzos lacked the savage cynicism that powered Frank Zappa’s brand of wit. As compensation, they offered a more whimsical, surreal take on the absurd that was in some ways more sonically versatile, encompassing not just rock but also prewar music hall, jazz, and spoken word.

This according to “The Bonzo Dog Band” by Richie Unterberger, an essay included in Urban spacemen and wayfaring strangers: Overlooked innovators and eccentric visionaries of ’60s rock (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000, pp. 109–121).

Below, the Bonzos perform Death cab for cutie, the song that the American alt-rock band took for its name; the performance starts around 0:50.