by | August 25, 2011 · 1:00 am

Traditional Ghanaian sampling

The Ewe of Ghana have a long history of incorporating musical elements from other cultures into their traditions.

Recent developments among the Tagborlo family in the master drumming for agbadza funeral dancing (above), influenced to some extent by contacts with Western popular music, involve humor (including graphic sexual jokes), taunts, and quotations from popular songs in a manner resembling sampling procedures in rap music. These innovations are entirely within the tradition—the basic rhythmic structure, cultural context, and instrumentation remain the same.

This according to “’My mother has a television, does yours?’ Transformation and secularization in an Ewe funeral drum tradition” by James Burns (Oral tradition XX/2 [October 2005] pp. 300–319). Below, agbadza drumming and dancing at a funeral in Atsiekpui, Ghana; the master drummer on the far left conveys verbal messages through references to speech rhythms and tones.

Related post: Dagomba dance-drumming

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by | August 22, 2011 · 1:00 am

Lady Gaga’s social network

Lady Gaga went from nowhere to everywhere in just 18 months due to many factors—not least, to her unprecedented and canny use of social networking.

Gaga used Internet tools to craft her personal mythology, and continues to use them to keep in constant contact with her fans. She has millions of Twitter followers, and is the first musician ever to garner one billion hits on YouTube, where she uploads her videos for free.

This according to Poker face: The rise and rise of Lady Gaga by Maureen Callahan (New York: Hyperion, 2010). Below, the 2008 video that inspired the book’s title.

Related post: Social media, celebrity, and popular music

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by | August 14, 2011 · 1:00 am

Musica Concentrationaria

Survivors’ accounts tell us that among the deportees to Nazi concentration camps were prominent, less known, and unknown musicians and composers. These accounts also attest to the existence of compositions that were written in the camps, either spontaneously or on the orders of the camp’s commanders.

Musica Concentrationaria was established to research, study, and catalogue this vast repertoire, to demonstrate the role the music had on the life of the deported: a temporary escape from the horrors that surrounded them. Some 2,500 works have already been found, and reports of further works continue to arrive.

The project has resulted in the documentary Musica concentrationaria (2007, produced by Associazione Musikstrasse and directed by Ermanno Felli), which includes documents, original scores, and interviews with deported musicians or their relatives. A related project, KZ Musik: Encyclopedia of music composed in concentration camps 1933–1945 (distributed by Membran Music), will present performances of selected works on 24 CDs.

Above, from a Nazi propaganda film, Pavel Hass and the conductor Karel Ančerl at the premiere of Haas’s Studie pro smyčcový orchestr at Theresienstadt, a year before the composer died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Below, the trailer for the documentary.

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by | August 11, 2011 · 1:00 am

Bach’s countenance

In 2008 scholars at the Centre for Forensic and Medical Art at the University of Dundee used forensic techniques to produce a reconstruction of Bach’s face on the basis of his skull.

According to its author, Markus von Hänsel-Hohenhausen, Vom Sichtbaren zur Wirklichkeit: Das wahre Antlitz Johann Sebastian Bachs (Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Verlagsgruppe, 2009) raises fundamental questions relating to image theory, considering the power of the image, the possibility of accessing reality through subjectivity (that is, the objectivity that arises from a dual subjectivity), the rendering of real “presence” by means of technically accurate representation, and the physicality (and noticeable absence of spirit) that results from the application of technical methods alone, e.g., in the case of Andy Warhol’s work.

Beginning with reflections on the royal portrait, Christian ritual, and Jesus Christ’s crown of thorns, the book then delivers a clear statement about the significance of portraits of Bach, at the same time offering therein an answer to the question: Does a person really have a true countenance?

Above, the reconstruction with the 1746 portrait by Elias Gottlob Haußmann, the only portrait Bach is known to have sat for.

More posts about J.S. Bach are here.

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by | August 9, 2011 · 1:00 am

The first pipe organ recording

Capable of producing sounds beyond the range of human hearing, the pipe organ presents the ultimate challenge for sound recording. The first known attempt was the Columbia Records recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from late August and early September 1910, which included two organ solos played by John J. McClellan.

Probably the very first pipe organ recording was a test made on 30 August 1910, with McClellan playing Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture. Two enormous acoustic recording horns, five feet long and two feet wide, were suspended on a rope strung across the Tabernacle. Although the engineer deemed the recordings successful, apparently they were never approved for release.

This according to “The first recordings of organ music ever made” by John W. Landon (Theatre organ: Journal of the American Theatre Organ Society LIII/4 [July–August 2011] pp. 22–28). Above, the Mormon Tabernacle organ as it appeared at the time of the recording (two 15-foot wings were added in 1915).

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by | August 6, 2011 · 1:00 am

Carnatic Music Idol

The “Idol” television format has gone global, and since 2004 an Indian version has featured amateur singers of popular Indian film songs. Seeing this, the producer Subhashree Thanikachalam (left)—who had already pioneered three successful television series focused on Indian music—decided to try a version presenting young performers in the classical South Indian tradition.

The result, Carnatic Music Idol, has run for two highly successful seasons and is preparing a third one. The series has done much to raise awareness of the tradition and to help viewers to understand the technical intracacies of its performance. The final rounds even call for a full rāgam-tānam-pallavi, a tour de force that was formerly considered too esoteric for general audiences.

This according to “An idol among TV shows” by Gayathri Sundaresan (Sruti 321 [June 2011] pp. 55–58. Below, excerpts from the 2011 finals.

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by | August 4, 2011 · 1:00 am

Neue Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft

LIT Verlag inaugurated the series Neue Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft in 2011 with Wie Bilder klingen: Tagungsband zum Symposium Musik nach Bildern, edited by Lukas Christensen and Monika Fink. The book presents the proceedings of a conference held at the Archäologisches Museum, Universität Innsbruck, from 16 to 18 April 2010.

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by | August 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

Mortuary pipe organs

The heyday of the mortuary pipe organ was the 1920s and 1930s; only a few have been built since World War II. A uniquely American product, the instrument’s characteristics departed significantly from those of the conventional church organ, despite its quasi-liturgical setting and function.

U.S. organ builders, long known for their innovations, met the stringent tonal, space, and cost requirements of funeral homes, cemetery chapels, and mausoleums so successfully that their instruments displaced the reed organ and piano. Over 600 mortuary organs were sold during this period, contributing significantly to the industry’s survival during the Great Depression.

This according to “The mortuary pipe organ: A neglected chapter in the history of organbuilding in America” by Robert E. Coleberd (The diapason XCV/7:1136, pp. 16–19). Above, the Estey Upright Minuette, front and back; containing 231 pipes, including a 16-foot open stop, the organ measures only 7’0″ x 4’8″ x 5’7½”.

Below, a recently restored mortuary pipe organ.

Click here for more posts about organs and organ culture.

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by | July 30, 2011 · 1:00 am

An early Gaelic manuscript

The manuscript Original Highland airs collected at Raasay in 1812 by Elizabeth Jane Ross, which is preserved in the archives of the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, is now available for downloading at no cost, both in facsimile and in an extensively annotated typeset edition prepared by Peter Cooke, Morag MacLeod, and Colm Ó Baoill.

The earliest known staff-notated manuscript collection of Scottish Gaelic music, it contains  92 songs,  51 dance tunes, and 6 pibrochs; it probably represents well the musical repertory of Raasay, one of the islands of the Inner Hebrides. A major task for the editors involved locating, documenting, translating, and underlaying song texts which might have been known to Ross; she provided titles or first lines of verses or refrains for her airs, but not the texts themselves.

The Raasay residents James Macleod and his wife Flora were excellent musicians, and their niece Elizabeth Ross, who lived with them, was clearly a competent transcriber. Raasay was also the home of the great piper John MacKay, from whom Ross learned to play several pibrochs.

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by | July 27, 2011 · 1:00 am

Ghostcatching

To create the virtual dance installation Ghostcatching the digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar used a computer-based optical system to track the movements of the choreographer Bill T. Jones. The data from this motion-capture system formed the basis for three-dimensional digital animation.

The work challenges previous modes of commodification and enjoyment of the racialized other; it also provides a new generation in a genealogy of mechanized figures and automatons, as exemplified by the photographic work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904).

This according to “Ghostcatching: An intersection of technology, labor, and race” by Danielle Goldman (Dance research journal XXV–XXVI/2–1, pp. 68–87).

Above, some of Marey’s 1870 locomotion studies; below, excerpts from Ghostcatching.

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