by | March 1, 2013 · 1:00 am

Accordion jokes

 

Jokes about accordions often involve their destruction. (The difference between an accordion and an onion: People shed tears when they chop up an onion.) Presumably this is due to their sound. (The difference between an accordion and a macaw: One makes, loud, obnoxious squawks; the other is a bird.)

Indeed, the very presence of the instrument is counted as a misfortune. (A man had to park on the street, and he left his accordion on the back seat. When he returned, he was shocked to see that one of the car’s back windows was smashed, and there were now two accordions on the back seat.)

But the sound of the accordion is identical to that of the reed organ once found in genteel parlors; the instrument’s true fault is its lower-class associations, often involving marginalized ethnic groups and non-mainstream music.

This according to “Accordion jokes: A folklorist’s view” by Richard March, an essay included in The accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, polka, tango, zydeco, and more! (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012 pp. 39–43).

Above, the view from The far side; below, “Werid Al” Yankovic discusses the misfortunes of accordion ownership.

Related article: Viola jokes

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by | February 27, 2013 · 1:00 am

Monumenta liturgiae et cantus

castel tirolo

Libreria Musicale Italiana launched the series Monumenta liturgiae et cantus in 2013 with I codici liturgici di Castel Tirolo by Marco Gozzi.

The volume presents facsimiles of sources used in Castel Tirolo, which was the historical seat of the counts of Tirolo and gave the region its name. Discussions of historical and musicological issues are also included.

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by | February 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

George Harrison’s diagnosis

 

Today we honor both George Harrison’s birthday and National Cancer Awareness Month.

In 1997 Harrison was diagnosed with throat cancer; it did not appear to be a large tumor, and it seemed harmless. Chemotherapy and radiation showed effective results.

But in 2000, while he was working on a reissue of All things must pass, he underwent treatment for another cancerous growth in the lung, which had migrated from his primary lesion of the throat. Later he was found to have an inoperable brain tumor as well.

Harrison underwent a new type of cancer treatment in a Swiss clinic, but he finally succumbed to his disease on November 29, 2001. If the original cancer had been screened and diagnosed in time, we might be celebrating his 70th birthday today.

This according to “George Harrison” by Anirudha Agnihotry, an article posted on the blog Oral cancer awareness drive (Oral Cancer Organization, 2013). Many thanks to Dr. Agnihotry for guest-writing this post!

Above, Harrison in 1974 (public domain); below, with a few friends.

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by | February 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

“Something wild” and identity shifts

 

Jonathan Demme included excerpts from over 40 recorded songs in the soundtrack for his film Something wild. As a late–20th-century update of screwball comedies, traits common to the genre—shifts in characters’ identities, the breaking down of social barriers—are supported and commented on musically.

This according to “Something new: Music as re-vision in Jonathan Demme’s Something wild” by Jeff Evans (Popular music and society XIX/3 [fall 1995] pp. 1-17). Above and below, The Feelies shift the identity of  David Bowie’s Fame in Demme’s film.

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by | February 21, 2013 · 1:00 am

Segovia’s gusto

segovia autograph 2

Writing for the centennial of Andrés Segovia’s birth, the guitarist and writer Alison Bert mused on a telling recollection.

“At the closing reception in the grassy courtyard, Segovia’s genteel aide stood at the refreshment table with its rich spread of chocolate candied pastries. As he placed one after another on his plate, he said ‘Not for me, not for me…’ When the dish was full, he said “These are all for the maestro—he loves this sort of thing.’

“At a nearby table, Andrés Segovia was enjoying his wine and refreshments surrounded by admirers on this breezy summer afternoon. I thought to myself, the man didn’t live this long eating bean sprouts and tofu. He lived with passion and he wasn’t afraid to break the rules. In life, too, Andrés Segovia was an artist.” (Guitar review 93 [spring 1993] p. 7)

Today is Segovia’s 120th birthday! Below, his celebrated arrangement of the chaconne from Bach’s partita in D minor, BWV 1004.

Related article: Schoenberg’s birthday bash

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by | February 19, 2013 · 1:00 am

Boccherini and embodiment

boccherini

Boccherini’s posthumous reputation has suffered because his works do not emphasize the structural coherence and teleology emblematic of 18th-century Classicism; but regarded through the lens of performance—the sensations and images involved in its bodily presentation—his works evoke those aspects of the era characterized by urgent, even volatile, inquiries into the nature of the self.

Contemporaneous theories of embodiment illuminate the heart of Boccherini’s oeuvre, the chamber music for strings, which presents sensibilité through repetitiveness, a hyperattention to details of dynamics and articulation, the grotesque and bizarre timbres and registral excesses, and Newtonian mechanistic philosophy through gestural enactments of rapidity and rigidity.

These works often distance and ironize the performer, particularly in regard to virtuosity. They thereby make a sophisticated contribution to the central Enlightenment tension between subjectivity and appearance so memorably articulated in Diderot’s Paradoxe sur le comédien.

This according to “‘One says that one weeps, but one does not weep’: Sensibile, grotesque, and mechanical embodiments in Boccherini’s chamber music” by Elisabeth Le Guin (Journal of the American Musicological Society LV/2 [summer 2002] pp. 207–54).

Today is Boccherini’s 270th birthday! Below, a work cited by Le Guin as an example.

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by | February 17, 2013 · 1:00 am

Corelli in the wilderness

Arcangelo_Corelli

On 26 April 1706, in a solemn ceremony in Rome, Arcangelo Corelli was accepted as a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia; as customary, he assumed a shepherd’s name: Arcomelo.

Forty years later, the Swiss Jesuit Martin Schmid copied several of Corelli’s works into his draft-book of music for the Indian community in Bolivia that he was fostering and overseeing—a community that was sometimes known as New Arcadia.

In Bolivia, Corelli’s Arcadian music was subjected to a radical metamorphosis by those who understood Indian performers and audiences. His works were thereby consigned to a museum of cultural symbols as objects of a revered past.

This according to “Arcadia meets Utopia: Corelli in the South American wildnerness” by Leonardo J. Waisman, an essay included in Arcangelo Corelli: Fra mito e realtà storica–Nuove prospettive d’indagine musicologica e interdisciplinare nel 350° anniversario dalla nascita (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2007, pp. 651–85).

Today is Corelli’s 360th birthday! Below, the original version of one of the works that was subjected to a Bolivian metamorphosis.

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by | February 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Music and delinquency

frankie-lymon-im-not-a-juvenile-delinquent

A four-year longitudinal study (n = 309) explored whether early adolescents’ preferences for nonmainstream types of popular music indicate concurrent and later minor delinquency.

The results showed that early fans of types of rock (e.g., rock, heavy metal, gothic, punk), African American music (rhythm and blues, hip-hop), and electronic dance music (trance, techno, hardhouse) showed elevated minor delinquency concurrently and longitudinally. Preferring conventional pop or highbrow music (classical music, jazz), in contrast, was not related to or was negatively related to minor delinquency.

Early music preferences emerged as more powerful indicators of later delinquency than early delinquency, indicating that music choice is a strong marker of later problem behavior.

This according to “Early adolescent music preferences and minor delinquency” by Tom F.M. ter Bogt, Loes Keijsers, and Wim H.J. Meeus (Pediatrics CXXXII/2, pp. e382–e389). Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for bringing this article to our attention!

Below, Jerry Lee Lewis introduces an earlier study.

BONUS: The Frankie Lymon classic pictured above.

Related article: Sexual attraction by genre

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by | February 11, 2013 · 1:00 am

Fred Astaire’s drunk dances

Astaire

In his comic depictions of drunk dancing, Astaire used choreography to project social views and feelings about drunkenness, and to set up tensions between those qualities of inebriation and the precision and agility that his dancing embodied.

Memorable examples include the solo number “One for my baby (and one more for the road)” in The sky’s the limit (1943, above and below).

This according to “Stepping high: Fred Astaire’s drunk dances” by Sally Banes, an essay included in Writing dancing in the age of postmodernism (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994, pp. 171–183).

BONUS: The astonishing New Year’s Eve dance from Holiday Inn.

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by | February 8, 2013 · 1:00 am

Stuttgarter Musikwissenschaftliche Schriften

Was bleibt

In 2011 Schott launched the series Stuttgarter Musikwissenschaftliche Schriften with Was bleibt? 100 Jahre Neue Musik, edited by Andreas Meyer.

Noting that the musical revolutions of Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg are over a century old, and that the experimentalism of the 1950s belongs to a bygone era, the authors assess the current new music scene and demonstrate how audiences have changed in recent years.

Below, Stockhausen’s pioneering Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56).

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