by | December 16, 2012 · 1:00 am

Zoltán Kodály, ethnomusicologist

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The arc of Kodály’s career as an ethnomusicologist appears to have been a consciously, even artistically, designed path.

In the early 20th century he traveled the Hungarian countryside along with Béla Bartók to document and research Hungarian musical traditions; both composers were influenced tremendously by this pursuit.

After World War II, the focus of Kodály’s ethnomusicological activities was the publication of A magyar népzene tára/Corpus musicae popularis Hungaricae, the critical edition of all Hungarian traditional music. For this undertaking he established the first scientific research group for ethnomusicology in Hungary, the Népzenekutató Csoport, which served as a workshop for the modern Hungarian school of ethnomusicologists.

This according to Kodály, a népzenekutató és tudományos műhelye by Olga Szalay (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004).

Today is Kodály’s 130th birthday! Below, a flash mob performance of his setting of Esti dal, a traditional song that he collected in northern Hungary in 1922.

Related article: Kodály and somatic eruption

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by | December 14, 2012 · 1:00 am

The Beatles and polylinearity

please please

In an experiment, three groups of music students transcribed the first 64 seconds of The Beatles’ Please please me.

Analysis of these transcriptions yielded a ninefold typology of polylinear listeners: holistic melodists, holistic formalists, impressionists, melodic conventionalists, semiprofessional generalists, nonmelodic semiprofessional generalists, nonprofessional melodic generalists, semiprofessional rhythmicians, and holistic graphicians.

This according to “Dynamics of polylinearity in popular music: Perception and apperception of 64 seconds of Please please me (1963)” by Tomi Mäkelä, an article published in Beatlestudies. III: Proceedings of the Beatles 2000 Conference (Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän Yliopisto, 2001, pp. 129–38).

Below, the boys get polylinear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Related article: The Beatles and “Please please me” November 1962

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by | December 12, 2012 · 1:00 am

An early portable radio

poussette-radio1

On 10 May 1921 student members of the Radio Club at Union College, Schenectady, rigged up a wireless receiving station on a baby carriage with a small megaphone mounted under the hood. A sympathetic mother loaded in her baby, and a student wheeled the carriage into the city’s business district.

At the same time, a young woman at the club’s sending station on the college grounds began singing a lullaby. Her singing was reproduced by the receiver on the carriage as it moved all through the city, for over a mile. Those present reported that the baby was “as good as could be” from start to finish.

This according to “Very latest in wireless: Union College students find a universal lullaby for babies” (New York times, 11 May 1921, p.12), which was reprinted in Music, sound, and technology in America: A documentary history of early phonograph, cinema, and radio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).

A digitized reproduction of the original article is here. Below, a modern version of the carriage.

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by | December 10, 2012 · 1:00 am

Franck and Rodin

rodin-franck

Both César Franck and Auguste Rodin belonged to the Symbolist movement of the late 19th century, with its sacred ideal and interest in phenomena of metamorphosis.

They also shared the same mythical view of woman and the same sensuality, with its consequent risk of damnation. Both are highly representative figures of their period, although they seldom made use of an aesthetic that verged on the modern.

This according to “Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) et César Franck  (1822–1890): Essai d’une étude comparée” by François Sabatier, an essay included in César Franck et son temps (Revue belge de musicologie/Belgisch tijdschrift voor muziekwetenschap XLV [1991] pp. 77–84).

While there is only circumstantial evidence that Franck and Rodin met, upon the former’s death the latter was commissioned to produce the commemorative medallion shown above.

Today is Franck’s 190th birthday! Below, Renée Fleming sings the “Panis angelicus” from Franck’s Messe à trois voix, op. 12.

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by | December 7, 2012 · 1:00 am

Folk music index

folkindex

Jane Keefer’s Folk music index is a database of U.S. old-time recordings that can be searched by title, recording, keyword, or publisher.

Cross references to alternate titles, related pieces, and similar melodies constitute around 18% of the nearly 39,000 titles in the title index. The recordings indexed generally have a major emphasis on tradition-based material from both commercial and non-commercial performers, including a considerable amount of old-time fiddle and banjo tunes.

Although most of the recordings included are LPs, many have been reissued as cassettes and CDs.

Below, Gid Tanner & the Skillet Lickers play Soldier’s joy in 1929—with a little help from some friends.

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by | December 5, 2012 · 1:00 am

Louie Louie and the FBI

 

Written by the Louisiana-born Richard Berry, Louie Louie was inspired by his hearing a Latino-Californian band performing a song with the soon-to-be iconic rhythm. Berry married the rhythm to an R&B-calypso fusion and composed lyrics from the perspective of a lonely Jamaican sailor.

Scoring a regional hit in 1957 with the original recording, the song was picked up—and amped up—by bands in the thriving garlouie louieage rock scene of the Pacific Northwest. Newly recorded versions included one by the Washington-based band The Kingsmen (1963), which rose to number two on the national charts.

The oddity of the left-field hit was exceeded only by the oddity of the nation’s response to it. Recording in only one take, the Kingsmen transformed Louie Louie from a laid-back calypso into a raucous frat anthem with a monomaniacal emphasis on the ten-note riff and a slurred, indecipherable vocal performance.

A two-year investigation by the FBI centered on the alleged obscenity of the lyrics but ultimately determined the song “unintelligible at any speed” in a 250-page report. Louie Louie made its way from being just another one-off novelty hit to a source of cultural anxiety, sexual fantasy, inspiration for hundreds of cover versions, and touchstone for both punk rockers and nostalgic baby boomers.

This according to “Louie Louie: The history and mythology of the world’s most famous rock’n’roll song” by Dave Marsh (New York: Hyperion, 1993). Below, a live performance from 1965.

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by | December 3, 2012 · 1:00 am

Stravinsky and recording

 

Even before he signed a contract with the Columbia Gramophone Company in 1928, Stravinsky was firmly convinced of the importance of documenting his performance wishes through recording; in the early 1920s he was already making piano rolls for the Pleyel firm.

In a brief 1930 essay originally published in German—“Meine Stellung zur Schallplatte” (Kultur und Schallplatte 1 [March 1930] p. 65)—he even anticipated a compositional development that would be facilitated more than a decade later with the advent of magnetic tape:

“It would be of the greatest interest to create music specifically for the phonograph, a music whose true image—its original sound—could only be preserved through mechanical reproduction. This would well be the ultimate goal for the phonographic composers of the future.”

The article is reproduced in an English translation in Music, sound, and technology in America: A documentary history of early phonograph, cinema, and radio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). Below, Stravinsky in a 1955 Columbia Records recording session.

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by | November 30, 2012 · 1:00 am

SoundEffects

Launched by Aarhus Universitet in 2011, SoundEffects: An interdisciplinary journal of sound and sound experience is a peer-reviewed online journal that brings together a plurality of theories, methodologies, and historical approaches applicable to sound as both mediated and unmediated experience.

The journal primarily addresses disciplines within media and communication studies, aesthetics, musicology, comparative literature, cultural studies, and sociology. To push the border of interdisciplinary sound studies into new areas, it also encourages contributions from disciplines such as psychology, health care, architecture, and sound design.

As the only international journal to take a humanities-based interdisciplinary approach to sound, SoundEffects responds to the increasing global interest in sound studies.

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by | November 28, 2012 · 1:00 am

Poisoning Lully

As one of the most powerful nonpolitical figures at Louis XIV’s court, Lully was far from immune to its culture of intrigue.

Henri Guichard, a perpetrator of various frauds and a rival at the court, hatched a plot to poison Lully in 1674, and approached a corrupt police officer, Sébastien Aubry, who had access to the Opéra and often saw Lully there. The unfolding of the plot, which involved a poisoned snuff box, had a strong element of farce as Aubry ineptly attempted to play both ends against the middle, jockeying for his own best interests while appearing to assist Guichard.

Eventually a mutual associate tipped off the composer, who formally accused Aubry of conspiracy to commit murder. Guichard exercised what influence he could, but Lully, as a close associate of the king himself, had the upper hand. In the end, the composer was able to delay the case until the only two dissenting judges finished their terms of duty.

This according to Jean-Baptiste Lully by Ralph Henry Forster Scott (London: Owen, 1973, pp. 76–83).

Today is Lully’s 380th birthday! Below, Boris Terral portrays the composer in Gérard Corbiau’s Le roi danse (2000).

Related article: Comedy versus opera

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by | November 26, 2012 · 1:00 am

Lloyd Miller and Oriental jazz

A multi-instrumentalist and multi-linguist who has lived and performed in Tehran, Paris, Geneva, Brussels, Stockholm, and Frankfurt, Dr. Lloyd Miller has been fusing jazz and world music since the early 1960s.

The California native finds that the modal music of Asia is completely compatible with the African American tradition. “It is all the same musical system,” he says. “The same spirit, the same feeling, the same notes, and some of the same melodic patterns and repetitive and mirroring phrases.”

Long documented only by rare recordings, Miller’s music can now be heard in the compilation A lifetime of Oriental jazz (Jazzman JMANCD 208).

This according to “Jazz in an unfamiliar key: The wanderings of Lloyd Miller” by Francis Gooding (The IAJRC Journal XLIV/2 [June 2011] pp. 9–13]). Below, a compilation of Miller’s broadcasts.

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