An assistant editor at RILM just accessed our 750,000th record, bringing our database to (and now beyond) three-quarters of a million bibliographic entries!
The milestone record is “Pierre Boulez: ‘One cannot refer to the biography to explain the music’”, an interview included in Gustav Mahler: The conductors’ interviews (Wien: Universal Edition, 2013, pp. 38–47).
Below, Boulez conducts Mahler’s second symphony.
In a 1993 interview, Marilyn Horne discussed her study of the few examples of Rossini’s written-out vocal ornaments.
“I knew that if I ornamented that much I would be highly criticized for it. And so I did just a little bit—and was highly criticized for that!”
“Oh yes, we couldn’t win. In the beginning, I fought those ‘ornament fights’. I had terrible battles about it, especially with Italian conductors, because they are still very much under the influence of Toscanini, who ‘cleaned up’ everything.”
“I remember one particular conductor, his name was Argeo Quadri, and he talked like this: ‘Ah, signora, non si puo cantarlo così.’ Finally I said to him ‘Maestro, I went to a medium last night’—his eyes got bigger and bigger—and I said ‘I talked to Rossini stesso, and he said “Vai, Marilyna, vai!”’ Quadri laughed. He didn’t know whether to take me seriously or not, but he said okay, you can do your ornaments.”
This according to “La Rossiniana: A conversation with Marilyn Horne” by Jeannie Williams (The opera quarterly IX/4 [summer 1993] pp. 64–91).
Today is Marilyn Horne’s 80th birthday! Below, the diva demonstrates.
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Filed under Opera, Performance practice
Thailand’s National Elephant Institute is the first government-sponsored organization dedicated to the long-term future of the domesticated elephant; but it also requires funds from tourism for its upkeep.
To establish an orchestra that could raise financial support from tourists, instruments were designed that could be operable with elephants’ trunks, and that were large and strong enough to stand up to very powerful animals and monsoons. The Thai Elephant Orchestra was soon a reality.
To teach them, a mahout demonstrates an instrument and the elephant begins to play almost immediately. The animals learn through experimentation how to make their instruments sound the best.
Once the group is assembled, the mahouts cue the elephants to begin and stop playing. They now perform daily concerts, and often refuse to stop when they are told to do so.
This according to “Eine kleine naughtmusik: How nefarious nonartists cleverly imitate music” by David Soldier (Leonardo music journal XII [2002] pp. 53–58). Above and below, the orchestra in action.
Related article: Pachyderm proclamations
Filed under Animals, Curiosities
Recorded in 1960 and first performed in 1961, Max Roach’s We insist! Freedom now suite moves from depictions of slavery to Emancipation to the civil rights struggle and African independence.
The work draws on both long-standing symbols of African American cultural identity and more immediate historical context. It is a modernist work as well, as Roach (1924–2007) and his musicians strove to make use of African and African American legacies in new ways.
Decades after the recording, We insist! still sounds fresh, modern, and haunting, reminding us that jazz tradition has always been in dialogue with the social and cultural movements going on around it, and has often been at its most inspired when engaged in social commentary.
This according to “Revisited! The Freedom now suite” by Ingrid Monson (JazzTimes XXXI/7 [September 2001] pp. 54–59,135; available online here).
Today is Roach’s 90th birthday! Below, a recording of the work.
BONUS: Roach was the first jazz musician to receive a MacArthur Fellowship! You can read about it here.Comments Off on Max Roach and “We insist!”
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Jazz and blues
In The music of the Temporalists by Andrei Covaciu-Pogorilowski (Charleston: Create space, 2011), a Parisian drugstore owner and amateur pianist experiences a two-year mental trip as an avatar in a parallel (Temporalist) world in which music is cultivated as the art of time rather than the art of sound.
There he meets a musicologist called Jean-Philippe and an old psychologist, Herr Sch…; they teach him all they can about their musical theory and its cognitive aspects so he can transmit what he has learned to his own music culture.
Within this imaginary frame an alternative to the classical bar-rhythm theory is proposed, based on an empirical study of key phenomena of temporal discretization, including entrainment, chunking, subjective accentuation, pulsatory inertia, and temporal gap perception.
Filed under Curiosities, Theory
Although the genre was yet to be named, the addition of Earl Scruggs (1924–2012) to Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys provided the crowning moment in the definition of bluegrass.
Scruggs astounded everyone. His extraordinary banjo style allowed him to roll out a rapid barrage of notes that nevertheless sounded out the melody as clearly as the fiddle.
What is now known as “Scruggs-style” banjo playing became the final critical component of Bill Monroe’s undeniably distinctive sound that would eventually be called bluegrass.
This according to Homegrown music: Discovering bluegrass by Stephanie P. Ledgin (Westport: Praeger, 2004).
Today is Scrugg’s 90th birthday! Above, Monroe, Lester Flatt, and Scruggs at the Grand Ole Opry in 1945; below, Scruggs and friends on David Letterman’s show in 2001.
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Filed under Popular music
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 60,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 22 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Routledge launched the series Routledge studies in popular music on 30 September 2013 with Popular music fandom: Identities, roles and practices, edited by Mark Duffett.
This series presents cutting-edge upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections covering topics in popular music. Offerings include innovative studies on emerging topics and dramatic interventions into established subjects considering performance, theory, and culture, and engaging topics such as gender, race, celebrity, fandom, tourism, fashion, and technology.
Filed under New series, Popular music
The newly discovered scenic collection of the Stadsschouwburg in Kortrijk, Belgium, comprises 13 backcloths, 21 borders, and over 298 framed units, plus authentic stage furniture, practicables, and sound effects.
This forgotten treasury houses a near-complete set of generic stock sets next to genuine production materials for Aida, La bohème, Carmen, Faust, and other blockbusters from the operatic repertoire. The décors were designed and executed by Albert Dubosq (1863–1940), an acknowledged master of the Parisian school of scenic painting,
Despite the groundbreaking research done at a few historical theaters, the study of operatic iconography still tends to focus on visual renderings—designs, artists’ impressions, and photographs—rather than on primary, scenic artifacts thereof, such as flats and drops. The discovery of these valuable holdings allows new examples of authentic scenery to be subjected to scholarly scrutiny.
This according to “Jumbo-sized artifacts of operatic practice: The opportunities and challenges of historical stage sets” by Bruno Forment (Music in art XXXVIII/1–2 [2013] pp. 115–125. Above, Dubosq’s Forêt asiatique for Lakmé; below, his Extérieur égyptien for Aida (both from 1921).
Related articles:
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Filed under Opera, Visual art
“None of us knew we were making history” said Earl “Fatha” Hines (1903–83) in a 1981 interview. “To us, every one of those sessions was just one more recording.”
Hines was speaking of the recordings that he made with Louis Armstrong in 1928 and the following years—recordings now considered enduring jazz masterpieces, not least due to the pairing of Armstrong’s trumpet and Hines’s avowed “trumpet-style” piano playing.
“My father was a cornet player, and I wanted to play that instrument when I was growing up. But playing it hurt me behind my ears, so I learned the piano instead. And I started playing on the piano what I had wanted to play on the cornet.”
In so doing, Hines freed the piano from its limited role as a rhythm instrument, playing hornlike phrases that cut across the regular patterns that the bass and drum were playing. He enriched his style further by using his classical training to introduce rich chords and piquant dissonances.
In 1924 Hines met Armstrong over a game of pool. Soon they were working together, for, as the pianist recalled, “he was playing the same style that I wanted to play.”
This according to “Fatha Hines: Stomping and chomping on at 75” by Robert Palmer (The New York times 28 August 1981).
Today is Hines’s 110th birthday! Below, Joe “King” Oliver’s Weather bird in a masterful 1928 duet with Armstrong.
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Filed under Jazz and blues
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