Bibliolore

by admin | January 2, 2013 · 1:00 am

John Cage, visual artist

Best known as an experimental composer and performer, John Cage (1912–92) was also a visual artist who created an extensive body of prints, drawings, and watercolors during the last 20 years of his life.

In all of his work, regardless of medium, Cage consistently dismissed conventional aesthetics by limiting or eliminating the artist’s choice in the creative process. In composing his watercolors, he relied on his signature method of chance operations, guided by a system of random numbers derived from the Yijing.

The sight of silence: John Cage’s complete watercolors by Ray Kass (Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 2011) reproduces all of the 125 signed watercolors that Cage created during four week-long sessions at the Mountain Lake Workshop, Virginia, between 1983 and 1990.

The included critical essay and accompanying workshop diaries relate the methods at play in Cage’s visual art to those of his musical compositions and theater pieces. The accompanying DVD offers a live view of Cage at work, featuring a public reading with audience discussion, as well as an interview with him about his watercolor paintings.

Below, Cage’s collaboration with the visual artist Marcel Duchamp for Hans Richter’s Dreams that money can buy.

Related articles:

- Paul Hindemith, visual artist

- Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, visual artist

- Woody Guthrie, visual artist

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Visual art

Tagged as Composers, John Cage, Visual arts, Watercolor painting

by admin | December 31, 2012 · 1:00 am

Exotic dance and civil liberties

Exotic dance is a theatrical art form that communicates within its own aesthetic. It is a multisensory nonverbal performance in which audience members may become active communicators.

But eroticism unleashes passions that defy the dictates of social conservatives, who have stoked public outrage and incited local and state governments to impose onerous restrictions on clubs with the intent of dismantling the exotic dance industry.

While the fight happens at the local level, it is part of a national campaign to regulate sexuality and punish those who do not adhere to conservative values. Ultimately, the separation of church and state is under siege and U.S. civil liberties—free speech, women’s rights, and free enterprise—are at stake.

This according to Naked truth: Strip clubs, democracy, and a Christian Right by Judith Lynne Hanna (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012). Below, exotic dancers in Las Vegas talk about their lives and work.

Related article: Subversive belly dancing

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Filed under Dance

Tagged as Civil liberties, Exotic dance, Judith Lynne Hanna, Separation of church and state, Sexuality and gender, Women's studies

by admin | December 28, 2012 · 1:00 am

Dead studies

Launched in 2011 by the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California Santa Cruz Library, Dead studies builds on momentum that has been growing among Grateful Dead researchers for some 15 years.

The annual Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conferences have seen the rise of a group that has come to be known as the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus; one of them, the historian and archivist Nicholas Meriwether, founded an irregularly published journal called Dead letters to disseminate their work.

Now, thanks to two anonymous donors and a dedicated Editorial Board, the Grateful Dead Archive has become the publisher of a continuation of Meriwether’s work, retaining him as Editor. The new journal aims to be “the definitive organ of Grateful Dead scholarship, as well as an important community resource.”

Below, the band in 1969.

Related article: Dead fiction

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Filed under New periodicals, Popular music

Tagged as Deadhead, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead Archive, Jerry Garcia

by admin | December 26, 2012 · 1:00 am

The woodwind hotel

“For our first breakfast on the sunny forecourt our host…brought us croissants, brioches, and six metal clarinets!”

So begins “Surrounded by woodwind in Normandy” by John Playfair (Clarinet & saxophone XXXV/1 [Spring 2010] pp. 36–37). The article describes a visit to Gîte d’Ivry (above), a bed and breakfast that now occupies part of the former Eugène Thibouville woodwind factory in Ivry-la-Bataille. Some 1200 of the maker’s instruments are on display, and many are available to be played by guests.

Below, Phillipe Perlot performs on a Thibouville flageolet.

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Filed under Curiosities, Instruments

Tagged as Ivry-la-Bataille, Normandy, Woodwind instruments

by admin | December 24, 2012 · 1:00 am

The twelve days of Christmas

While the popular carol The twelve days of Christmas is well known for its unusual cumulative structure, few carollers know that the lyrics’ original meaning involves an elaborate symbolic code.

The encoding of political messages in songs was frequent in Protestant England: examples include Rock-a-bye, baby, on the demise of King Henry VIII, and Ring around a rosy, on the plague of 1665. From at least the 1600s, Catholics in England disseminated their faith and politics in similarly encrypted form in catechism songs such as Green grow the rushes, O, and Go where I send thee.

Though first published only in 1909, The twelve days of Christmas is such a catechism song, and likely originated much earlier. The “true love” of the song is God, who bestows cumulative gifts. Each of the twelve gifts represents a particular image of Catholic faith. The ever-repeating “partridge in a pear tree” is Jesus: In English folklore the partridge feigns injury to lure predators from its young, and is thus willing to sacrifice itself to save those for whom it is responsible.

This according to “The twelve days of Christmas” by Hugh D. McKellar (The hymn: A journal of congregational song XLV/4 [October 1994] pp. 30–32). Below, a performance by the University of Washington Choral Program (with a little help from their friends).

Radio for cows

The cowboy practice of “singing the cattle down”—the night herder’s soft crooning to quiet the cows for sleep—received a new twist in 1926.

A fan letter sent to WGES in Chicago by Tom Blevins, a Utah cowman, reported that he had set up a portable radio on the range and was treating the cows to urban dance music in the evening.

“It sure is a big saving on the voice” Blevins wrote. “The herd don’t seem to tell the difference. Don’t put on any speeches, though. That’ll stampede ’em sure as shootin’.”

This according to “’Sing down the cattle’ by radio” (Popular radio October 1926, p. 615), which is reprinted in Music, sound, and technology in America: A documentary history of early phonograph, cinema, and radio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012) p. 279.

Below, evidence suggesting that cows continue to enjoy that era’s dance music.

Related articles:

Cowshed soundscaping

Kotas and cows

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Filed under Animals, Curiosities

Tagged as Cattle, Cows, Mass media, Nature, Radio

by admin | December 16, 2012 · 1:00 am

Zoltán Kodály, ethnomusicologist

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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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Ethnomusicology, Europe

Tagged as Birthdays, Composers, Hungary, Zoltán Kodály

by admin | December 14, 2012 · 1:00 am

The Beatles and polylinearity

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.

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Tagged as Beatles

by admin | December 12, 2012 · 1:00 am

An early portable radio

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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Filed under Curiosities

Tagged as Baby transport, Mass media, Radio, Union College

by admin | December 10, 2012 · 1:00 am

Franck and Rodin

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.