by | December 13, 2011 · 1:00 am

Sorabji resource site

Devoted to the English composer, pianist, writer, and critic Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988), Sorabji resource site is a complementary resource for the forthcoming critical biography by Marc-André Roberge.

The menu bar offers broad categories (Biography, People, Writings, Sources, Works, Performances, and Miscellaneous) that lead to some 85 pages, each with a search box,  presenting resources including lists, compilations, tables, and analytical charts related to various aspects of Sorabji’s life and works. A printed version of the entire site would produce a 350-page book.

Below, John Carey performs Sorabji’s Fantaisie espagnole.

Related article: Sorabji’s marathon premiere

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by | December 11, 2011 · 1:00 am

George Breed’s electrified guitar

On 2 September 1890 U.S. Navy officer George Breed (1864–1939) was granted a patent for a design for an electrified guitar (Method of and apparatus for producing musical sounds by electricity, patent no. 435,679); it appears to be the first application of electricity to a fretted string instrument.

Like the modern electric guitar and other similar instruments, Breed’s patent was based on a vibrating string in an electromagnetic field; but his design worked on very different musical and electrical principles (in particular the Lorentz force), resulting in a small but extremely heavy guitar with an unconventional playing technique that produced an exceptionally unusual and unguitarlike, continuously sustained sound.

Breed is now almost completely unknown as a musical instrument maker and designer; the significance of this instrument has largely remained underappreciated, and the circuitry unexamined.

This according to “George Breed and his electrified guitar of 1890” by Matthew Hill (The Galpin Society journal LXI [April 2008] pp. 193–203). Below, Dr. Hill discusses his research.

Related article: Ken Butler’s anxious objects

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by | December 9, 2011 · 1:00 am

New Haydn journal

Launched in 2011 by the Haydn Society of North America and based at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Haydn (ISSN 2163-2723) is dedicated to the dissemination of all areas and methodologies of research and performance considerations regarding the music, culture, life, and times of Joseph Haydn and his circle.

Each semiannual issue will include large and small articles, reviews, reactions to previous articles, and other new and pertinent information. The journal’s Web-based format is intended to take full advantage of current and emerging electronic media.

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by | December 6, 2011 · 1:00 am

The Nawāb’s musical bed

In 1882 Sadiq Muhammad Khan Abbasi IV, Nawāb of Bahawalpur, anonymously commissioned a bed in rosewood covered with about a third of a ton of chased and engraved sterling silver from La Maison Christofle in Paris. The bedposts were four life-size automatons, nude (though bewigged) female figures representing European types, powered by four crank-wound spring mechanisms in their pedestals.

Wires ran from these springs to a music box under the bed. Downward pressure on the center of the mattress activated the music box and caused the bedpost-women to begin shifting their eyes and fanning and whisking in time to the music (an unidentified excerpt from Gounod’s Faust). The performance lasted 30 minutes. A watercolor and several photos taken in 1882 for the Christofle firm are the only evidence of the bed, whose present whereabouts are unknown.

This according to “Asleep with painted ladies” by Carl A. Skoggard (Nest X [2000] pp. 100–105). Below, “Oh Dieu! Que de bijoux” (Jewel song), an aptly themed candidate for the Faust excerpt in question.

Related article: The Sultan’s pipe organ

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by | December 4, 2011 · 1:00 am

Clamor: Colección Digital de Música Española

Launched by the Fundación Juan March in 2011, Clamor: Colección Digital de Música Española presents open-access documentation of performances of over 800 Spanish works—mostly from the 20th or 21st century—at over 130 concerts presented by the Foundation since its inception in 1975.

In addition to the concert recordings, this resource presents pre-concert talks given by composers or specialists, program notes, scores, photographs, and over 230 composer biographies and works lists.

Below, Suzana Stefanović performs Jesús Rueda’s Love song nº 3 at the Foundation in October 2011.

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by | December 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

Jimmie Rodgers and semiotics

 

Jimmie Rodgers’s recordings present nearly all of the yodel types used by hillbilly singers, including nonsense-syllable strands, breaking voice registers while singing words, and brief falsetto grace-note descents into his natural voice. His yodels contain influences from both African American (falsetto upward leap at the end of words) and European (word-breaking) traditions.

Home tropes evoke themes of home, family, regret, return, or nostalgia; subdominant tropes represent carefree cheerfulness; blues tropes conjure masculine braggadocio themes.

Rodgers applies grace notes according to the pathos of the lyrics, and his hummed or moaned yodels are toned down for mainstream appeal. He was a carrier of tradition—his yodels connect to ragtime and blues, as well as to nineteenth-century European yodels, song types, and decorative devices.

This according to “Jimmie Rodgers and the semiosis of the hillbilly yodel” by Timothy Wise (The musical quarterly XCIII/1 [spring 2010] pp. 6–44).

Below, the Yodeling Brakeman offers a semiotic exegesis on the letter T.

Related article: Romy Lowdermilk redux

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by | November 29, 2011 · 1:00 am

Bach Cantatas Website

Bach Cantatas Website is a comprehensive open-access resource covering all aspects of  Bach’s cantatas and his other vocal works, including discussions and detailed discographies of each cantata and other vocal works, performers, and general topics.

The website also provides texts and translations, scores, musical examples, articles and interviews, and over 8,000 short biographies of performers of Bach’s vocal works and players of his keyboard and lute works, as well as of poets and composers associated with Bach.

Also included are relevant resources such as the Lutheran church year, a  database of chorale texts and melodies and their authors, detailed discographies and discussions of many Bach’s instrumental works—including solo keyboard and lute works as well as Die Kunst der Fuge and Musikalisches Opfer—and their performers, reviews, and transcriptions.

Further resources include lists of books and films on Bach, terms and abbreviations, concerts of Bach’s vocal works, Bach festivals, and cantata series; as well as a guide to Bach, a discussion of Bach in arts and memorabilia, and thousands of links to other relevant resources.

More posts about J.S. Bach are here.

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by | November 26, 2011 · 1:00 am

Berlioz’s aborted premiere

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, which was first performed on 5 December 1830, was originally slated for a concert on 20 May of that year. Musicologists have been trying to piece together the circumstances of the cancelled premiere, but until now two factors have eluded them: the size of the orchestra and the number of rehearsals that were held.

Recently discovered documents shed light on both questions. A prior advertisement from the performance venue called for a specific number of additional string players, settling the first question.

Also, the 1830 register of the Gand instrument firm has been found to include entries for several string instruments rented to one “Mr Berlioz” on 18 and 22 May, establishing these as the dates of the two rehearsals that the work received.

Taken together, these sources indicate that the aborted premiere would have included at least 22 violins, 10 violas, 9 or 10 violoncellos, and four or five double basses.

Below, Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1962 for Marche au supplice, the work’s fourth movement.

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by | November 24, 2011 · 1:00 am

Architectural modulations

The Western tonal system is founded on specific procedures for modulating from one key to another; the harmonic relationships involved have parallels in Western architecture’s classic proportional relationships, suggesting the idea of architectural modulation.

In the above examples, the floor plan on the left shows the width-to-length ratios of the principal spaces in a project from I Quattro libri dell’architettura by Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). The unexpected and somewhat disturbing angled wall of the rear courtyard space could function like a pivot chord, leading to the hypothetical addition shown on the right.

This according to “Modulation in music and architecture” by Radoslav Zuk, an essay included in Systems research in the arts. IV: Music, environmental design, and the choreography of space (Windsor: International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics, 2003, pp. 1–8).

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by | November 21, 2011 · 1:00 am

Early muzak

In 1760 the Swedish diplomat Count Ulrich zu Lynar reported on an ingenious system for Tafelmusik at the court of Ludwig VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (above, 1691–1768):

“Next [to the palace] is a small garden and in it a Lusthaus where the Landgravial family dines during the summer, and in the middle of which, where the table is set up, there is a small round hole that leads to a basement, out of which music is meant to sound very beautifully. To that end, in each of the four corners there is also an opening from which the sound can come.”

This pavillion, built in the early eighteenth century and apparently used during Ludwig’s reign as a special entertainment for visitors, was demolished in the nineteenth century. A surviving architectural plan, however, indicates an underground passageway to it from the palace’s main building, presumably intended for the serenading musicians.

This according to “The court of Hesse-Darmstadt” by Ursula Kramer, an essay included in Music at German courts, 1715–1760: Changing artistic priorities (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001, pp. 333–363).

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