by | April 12, 2013 · 1:00 am

Caballé, Mercury, and Barcelona

 

After Queen’s 1985 tour of Spain, the group’s frontman Freddie Mercury amazed his fans by declaring on Spanish television that the Spaniard he most longed to meet was Montserrat Caballé. Mercury hoped to collaborate with the legendary diva, and in March 1987 he finally arranged a meeting in the Garden Room of the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona with a grand piano, state-of-the art recording and playback equipment, and a sumptuous buffet.

She later described the scene: “We spent the whole time listening to music, eating, and improvising…Barcelona as such did not exist at that time—it was only a musical sketch of just a few bars that Freddie sang. But I liked it and he promised to develop it for me to celebrate the Olympic success.” (Barcelona had just been selected for the 1992 Summer Olympics.)

Mercury worked quickly on the song, and Caballé’s recital in London later that month dovetailed with a recording session at his home. Working until 6:00 in the morning, they produced what effectively became Barcelona’s unofficial Olympic anthem.

This according to Montserrat Caballé: “Casta diva” by Stephen Taylor and Robert Pullen (London: Gollancz, 1995, pp. 302–05).

Caballé is 80 years old today! Below, a memorable performance of Barcelona.

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by | April 10, 2013 · 1:00 am

Bebop and taxes

Parker-Davis

With the U.S. tax season coming down to the wire, let’s note how taxes altered the jazz scene in the 1940s.

The demise of big bands and swing in the years following World War II was attributable not to changing musical tastes but to the imposition in 1944 of a 30% “cabaret tax” (later a slightly less ruinous 20%) on all receipts at establishments offering live performances and in which dancing was permitted.

An exception was made for recorded and purely instrumental music, assuming that no dancing took place. The heyday of bebop was one of the results.

This according to “How the taxman cleared the dance floor” by Eric Felten (The Wall Street journal 18 March 2013, p. A13). Above and below, beneficiaries of the cabaret tax.

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by | April 8, 2013 · 1:00 am

Stravinsky’s persona

 

Stravinsky has been widely characterized as enigmatic, a composer whose stylistic transformations were impossible to anticipate. He cultivated this image, not in a disingenuous way, but because his eccentricity was central to his self-definition.

More than any composer of 20th-century art music, Stravinsky was able to make the leap from a rarefied intellectual world to the status of a pop icon, widely respected by people who largely did not understand his music. He needed to be public, accepted, and popular, and a surprisingly large proportion of his archival documents reflects his efforts toward these goals.

Television producers in Europe and North America found in Stravinsky the ideal nonconformist film icon: droll, quirky, conversational, contentious, and pedestaled as the epitome of the rebellious hero. He was drawn to them as well, as a natural performer who needed and commanded the spotlight.

This according to “Truths and illusions: Rethinking what we know” and “Film documentaries: The composer on and off camera” by Charles M. Joseph, two essays included in Stravinsky inside out (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 1–34 and 162–195, respectively).

Below, the composer works the camera with some of his favorite things to say about Le sacre du printemps.

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by | April 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Marquis Yi’s instrumentarium

bronze-bells-marquis-yi-tomb

Dating from the 5th century B.C.E., the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Suizhou, Hubei, furnished some of China’s oldest musical instruments and earliest reliable musicological writings.

The instruments, found in two separate rooms, appear to represent two separate musical genres. Those in the large central chamber—65 bronze bells in graduated sizes ranging over more than five octaves, a large pole-drum and two smaller drums, seven large 25-string se (zithers), four sheng (mouth organs), two paixiao (panpipes), and two chi (transverse flutes)—match the description of a courtly ensemble described in the Shijing (551–479 B.C.);

The instruments in the smaller chamber containing the Marquis’s coffin—two mouth organs, one small frame drum, three se, and one five-stringed and one ten-stringed instrument—suggest a more intimate chamber genre such as that depicted in a 5th-century tomb in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. These two genres may correspond to the “old” music of the Zhou court (ca. 1050–256 B.C.) that Confucius preferred, and the “new” music of the surrounding states that he felt had a corrupting influence.

This according to “Different tunes, different strings: Court and chamber music in ancient China” by Jenny F. So (Orientations XXI/5 [May 2000] pp. 26–34). Above, replicas of the bells; below, a performance on the bell replicas and those of other instruments from the tomb.

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by | April 3, 2013 · 1:00 am

Honeyboy recognized

honeyboy

On a log sheet typed in the 1940s, Alan Lomax identified a man in a 50-second segment of silent color footage shot in Mississippi as “Charles Edwards” (above).

Mystified folklorists have been unable to find further references to Charles Edwards in Lomax’s materials or anyone else’s; but recently two American Folklife Center staff members noticed that he closely resembled a young David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and even played his guitar in the same way; perhaps Lomax had made a simple error.

To verify their theory, they sent screen captures to Honeyboy’s former agent, who shared them with Honeyboy’s stepdaughter. Her verdict: “That’s my daddy!”

This according to “‘That’s my daddy!’: American Folklife Center staff members identify early color film of David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards” by Stephen Winick (Folklife Center news XXXIII/3–4 [summer/fall 2011] pp. 8–9).

Below, Honeyboy performs in 2005.

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by | April 1, 2013 · 1:00 am

Rahmaninov and Tolstoj

rach-tolstoy

In January 1900 Rahmaninov and the bass Fëdor Ivanovič Šalâpin were invited to perform for a gathering at Tolstoj’s home; they were both 26 years old. Their excitement was tempered with no little trepidation about meeting the revered author, but they could not have foreseen what transpired.

Šalâpin recalled that after the performance Tolstoj accosted him and asked “What kind of music is most necessary to men—scholarly or folk music?”

Rahmaninov’s own experience was no less harrowing, as he later described it:

“Suddenly the enthusiastic applause was hushed and everyone went silent. Tolstoj sat in an armchair a little apart from the others, looking gloomy and cross. For the next hour I evaded him entirely, but suddenly he came up to me and declared excitedly: ‘I must speak to you. I must tell you how I dislike it all!’

“And he went on and on: ‘Beethoven is nonsense, Puškin and Lermontov also.’ It was awful….

“After a while Tolstoj came up to me again: ‘Please excuse me. I am an old man. I did not mean to hurt you.’ I replied: ‘How could I be hurt on my own account if I was not hurt on Beethoven’s?’”

This according to Sergei Rachmaninoff: A lifetime in music by Sergei Bertensson, Jay Leyda, and Sof’â Aleksandrovna Satina (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001 [reprint] pp. 88–89; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2001-23752).

Today is Rahmaninov’s 150th birthday! Below, Šalâpin sings one of his romances.

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by | March 29, 2013 · 1:00 am

Ballet and sauvagerie

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A semiotics of sex roles in French society was played out in 18th- and 19th-century ballet by projecting it onto imaginary Native American societies.

In the 18th century, sauvage culture became a canvas for the projection of utopian sentiment with subtle social texturing, allowing the expression of fantasies of less restrictive sexual roles; in the 19th century, sauvagerie became grotesque and increasingly unrefined, shifting the emphasis from cultural to racial difference and affirming the status quo.

This according to “Sauvages, sex roles, and semiotics: Representations of Native Americans in the French ballet, 1736–1837” by Joellen A. Meglen (Dance chronicle XXIII/2 [2000] pp. 87–132; XXIII/3 [2000] pp. 275–320).

Above and below, Rameau’s Les Indes galantes (1735).

Related article: Rameau’s American dancers

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by | March 27, 2013 · 1:00 am

A lullaby for world music

 

The term world music arose among academics in the 1960s as a way to promote interest in the study of diverse musics. By the 1980s, world music was a marketing category whose success was propelled by the interest and involvement of popular music stars; by the 1990s, it had become a booming commercial enterprise on its own. Critical and scholarly responses to this development involve two types of narrative: the anxious and the celebratory.

Creative responses have included examples like the inclusion of Hugo Zemp’s field recording of the song Rorogwela, available on the CD Solomon Islands: Fateleka and Baegu Music from Malaita (UNESCO/Audivis, 1990), as Sweet lullaby on the worldbeat CD Deep forest (Sony Music, 1992), where it was given drum machine and synthesizer accompaniment and backing vocals.

The marketing of tropes like green enviroprimitivism and spiritual new age avant-garde romanticism has created a situation where a “sweet lullaby” is a fitting metaphor for the soothing multicultural aura surrounding the industrialized globalization of music.

This according to “A sweet lullaby for world music” by Steven Feld (Public culture XII/1 [2000] pp. 145–171). Above, the 2012 WOMAD festival; below, the official Sweet lullaby music video.

Related article: Telek, Bridie, and schismogenesis

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by | March 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

Cape Fear redux

 

For his 1991 remake of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film Cape fear, Martin Scorsese had the Bernard Herrmann score of the original adapted by Elmer Bernstein.

The score was effectively re-composed for the later film, with Bernstein taking its basic components and redeploying them in often entirely new musical and filmic contexts, while also combining them with his own newly composed music and further preexisting material from Herrmann’s rejected score for Hitchcock’s  Torn curtain (1966).

Bernstein later said that Scorsese “wanted the atmosphere that [Herrmann’s 1962 score] provides” and that it was “much more appropriate for the remake…the first film was not up to the strength of that score.”

This according to “Cape Fear: Remaking a film score” by Jonathan Godsall (The soundtrack IV/2 [2011] pp. 117–135). Below, Cady’s ill-advised release from prison.

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by | March 21, 2013 · 1:00 am

Varieties of love

krishna radha

Earlier treatises placed śṛngāra (love/the erotic) among the aesthetic qualities known as  rasas, but the 11th-century Śṛngāraprakāśa, attributed to Bhojarāja, King of Malwa (inset), was the first to assert its supreme importance.

RajaBhojThe treatise includes highly detailed typologies of love—for example, chapter 22 alone discusses 64 stages of love, each subdivided into 8 categories, each of which is then subdivided into 8 more categories, with hundreds of illustrations from poetic works in Prakrit and Sanskrit.

This according to “Bhoja’s Sringara prakasa: A landmark in the evolution of rasa theory” by V. Subramaniam (Sruti 190 [July 2000] pp. 37–41). Above, a classic image of Krishna and Radha in the moonlight; below, the legendary T. Balasaraswati’s depiction of Krishna’s childhood provides an embodiment of śṛngāra in bharata nāṭyam (filmed by Satyajit Ray).

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