by | May 10, 2011 · 1:00 am

Choreographic practices

Founded by Intellect in 2010, Choreographic practices (ISSN 2040-5669; EISSN 2040-5677) seeks to engender dynamic relationships between theory and practice, choreographer and scholar, so that these distinctions may be shifted and traversed. The journal is edited by Vida L. Midgelow and Jane M. Bacon.

Encompassing a wide range of methodologies and critical perspectives so that interdisciplinary processes in performance can be understood as they intersect with other territories in the arts and beyond—e.g., cultural studies, psychology, phenomenology, geography, philosophy, and economics—Choreographic practices  aims to illuminate an emerging and vibrant research area by opening up the nature and scope of dance practice as research and drawing together diverse bodies of knowledge and ways of knowing.

Comments Off on Choreographic practices

Filed under Dance, New periodicals

Tagged as ,

by | May 7, 2011 · 1:00 am

The Britannic organ

The long-lost pipe organ that belonged to the steamship Britannic, the sister ship of the Titanic, was identified in the collection of the Museum für Musikautomaten in Seewen, Switzerland, when restorers in 2007 discovered the inscription Britanik engraved on each beam under the instrument’s windchests.

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the British Admiralty requisitioned all large passenger ships as troop transports or hospital ships, so the Britannic was never outfitted for transocean luxury traffic. Around 1920 the organ, built around 1913 by M. Welte & Söhne, was installed in the villa of the camera manufacturer and designer August Nagel (1882–1943) in Stuttgart; around 1935 he returned it to the manufacturer for unknown reasons. In 1937 it was moved to the reception room of the Radium electric light company in Wipperfürth, where it remained in use until the 1960s.

When the Wipperfürth reception room was turned into a storeroom, the organ was offered for sale but attracted no buyers. Eventually it came to the attention of Heinrich Weiss, the founder of the Museum für Musikautomaten, who quickly acquired it for his collection; the instrument was completed and reinaugurated there On 30 May 1970, but its identity and history remained unknown for decades.

This according to “Orgel des gesunkenen Ozeanriesen Britannic entdeckt: 610 Meter über Meer im Museum für Musikautomaten Seewen in der Schweiz” by Christoph E. Hänggi (Das mechanische Musikinstrument: Journal der Gesellschaft für selbstspielende Musikinstrumente XXXIII/99 [August 2007] pp. 65–68; an English translation is here).

Below, the Britannic organ sings at last!

More articles about organs are here.

4 Comments

Filed under Instruments

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | May 5, 2011 · 1:00 am

Studien zum Dresdner Musikleben im 19. Jahrhundert

Verlag Dohr launched the series Studien zum Dresdner Musikleben im 19. Jahrhundert  in  2010 with Schumann und Dresden. Edited by Thomas Synofzik and Hans-Günter Ottenberg, the book presents papers from Robert und Clara Schumann in Dresden: Biographische, kompositionsgeschichtliche und soziokulturelle Aspekte, a conference held in Dresden from 15 to 16 May 2008.

Comments Off on Studien zum Dresdner Musikleben im 19. Jahrhundert

Filed under New series, Romantic era

Tagged as , , ,

by | May 2, 2011 · 1:00 am

Prokof'ev and Peter's premiere

Nowadays if a person has heard one work by Prokof’ev it is undoubtedly his symphonic tale  Петя и волк (Petâ i volk, Peter and the wolf), which had its premiere 75 years ago today. On that occasion, however, the composer’s initial enthusiasm was dampened.

“I composed the music quickly, approximately within one week,” Prokof’ev recalled, “and another week was spent on the orchestration. It was first performed at a matinée concert in the Moscow Philharmony on May 2, 1936, but the performance was rather poor and did not attract much attention” (translated by Rose Prokofieva in Autobiography, articles, reminiscences [Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2000] pp.88–89). He never could have imagined that Walt Disney and others would turn the piece into one of the most beloved children’s works in the orchestral repertoire!

Above, Sergej, Svâtoslav, Oleg, and Lina Prokof’ev in 1936, the year of the premiere, which occurred a few days after the composer’s 45th birthday.

BONUS FACTOID: People who grew up with the Disney version will recall that the wolf chases the duck, attacks off-camera, and returns licking his chops with the duck’s feathers in his mouth; at the end it turns out that the duck escaped and was simply in hiding for the rest of the story. But in Prokof’ev’s original version, as performed at the premiere, the duck is indeed eaten, and at the end the narrator says “if you listen very carefully you will hear the duck quacking inside the wolf’s belly, because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive.”

Related articles:

3 Comments

Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music

by | April 30, 2011 · 1:00 am

Transposition: Musique et sciences sociales

Created by PhD candidates at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and supported by the Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage, Transposition: Musique et sciences sociales (EISSN 2110-6134) was launched in February 2011. This biannual online journal aims to explore how societies perceive, establish, and illustrate relationships between music and society by considering the significance of music and musical practices in societal organization. Articles are published in French or English.

Each issue is based on a specific topic, enabling dialogue between different academic domains. The inaugural issue, Polyphonie et Société, includes articles dealing with Western classical music, jazz, pedagogy, perception, and linguistics; the table of contents is here.

1 Comment

Filed under New periodicals

Tagged as

by | April 27, 2011 · 1:00 am

On the road with Prokof’ev

Before his departure in 1918 Prokof’ev was fond of taking long walking tours of St. Petersburg with his friends. After he settled in France in the 1920s this hobby took on a new aspect—he bought an enormous car, a second-hand Ballot.

At first he drove around Paris and its environs with his friends, but soon he expanded his scope with trips to the countryside. Sometimes he would plan a route through a selected area and drive off with his wife Lina and some friends to visit historical places and sample the local cuisine. Breakdowns were frequent in those days, and cars were slow, so these trips typically lasted several days.

At the car’s 30th year Prokof’ev replaced the Ballot with a newer and more agile Chevrolet. “Ballot was an old aristocrat” he wrote, “and Chevrolet is a young democrat. It is a thousand times more comfortable to drive in the city and in the mountains, it is mobile and more powerful. But the friendly old Ballot was incomparable on the level road.”

This according to “A story” by Serge Prokofiev, Jr. (Three oranges journal 2 [November 2001] p. 7).

Today is Prokof’ev’s 120th birthday! Above, left to right: Vladimir Sofronitsky, the composer, Vladimir Dukelsky, and Lina Prokof’ev with the Ballot. Below, Svâtoslav Rihter plays Prokof’ev’s Pastoral sonatina, op. 59, no. 3—a work perhaps inspired by such excursions.

Related articles:

2 Comments

Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Curiosities

Tagged as , ,

by | April 24, 2011 · 1:00 am

Psychology and early ethnomusicology

Charles Samuel Myers, CBE (1873–1946), who coined the term shell shock during World War I, was among the psychologists whose work fed into comparative musicology and, later, ethnomusicology. He joined an anthropological expedition to the Torres Strait and Sarawak in 1898, and his studies of musical traditions in those places resulted in several articles.

“The ethnological study of music” presents a glimpse of how psychologists viewed ethnic music around the turn of the century. In this essay, Myers points out that unfamiliar music may seem as disorderly and meaningless as unfamiliar language, but in both cases sufficient study and habituation reveal inherent order and meaning. All music serves an expressive function, he states, and universal elements such as rhythm, harmony, scale, and tonal center may serve as bases for cross-cultural comparisons.

Myers goes on to argue that the documentation and study of non-Western musics is an urgent matter, as traditions are already becoming polluted by outside sources. Fortunately, he notes, the advent of sound recording has greatly facilitated this enterprise, making it unnecessary for the ethnographer to transcribe performances during fieldwork. Myers ends with step-by-step instructions and procedural recommendations for making field recordings with the Edison-Bell phonograph (above).

This essay appears in Anthropological essays presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in honour of his 75th birthday (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907, pp. 235–253); the book is documented in our most recent printed bibliography, Liber amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.

Related posts:

8 Comments

Filed under Ethnomusicology, Science

Tagged as , , , ,

by | April 21, 2011 · 1:00 am

Stravinsky the global dancer

Stravinsky the global dancer: A chronology of choreography to the music of Igor Stravinsky is a free online database that aims to list all dances choreographed to Stravinsky’s works, with references to about 100 compositions, about 1250 dances, and about 700 choreographers. Compiled by Stephanie Jordan and Larraine Nicholas, it is searchable by title of composition, year of composition, year of choreography, name of choreographer, dance company, and country.

Jordan’s “The demons in a database: Interrogating Stravinsky the global dancer” (Dance research XXII/1 [summer 2004] pp. 57–83) presents analyses of findings in the database regarding the distribution of new Stravinsky dance productions over the years, incidence of choreographing the narrative vs. the concert scores, distribution by choreographer, and distribution by country, along with case studies of the choreographic histories of Le sacre du printemps, Apollo, and Agon.

Above, the composer in his Ballets Russes days with Serge Diaghilev and Serge Lifar, who originated the role of Apollo. Below, the Houston Ballet performs an excerpt from Balanchine’s choreography for that work.

Related articles:

3 Comments

Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Dance, Resources

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

by | April 19, 2011 · 1:00 am

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann

 

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann, the largest group worldwide devoted to the preservation and promotion of Irish traditional music, is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

With hundreds of branches in 15 countries on 4 continents, the non-profit organization sponsors  classes, concerts, and sessions in local communities. It also hosts a website, which accounts for its presence in RILM. A page on their site titled The music includes links to tracks from their CDs, recordings of sessions, and tracks from the Comhaltas Traditional Music Archive; video recordings of some of today’s foremost performers; selections from their own tune books, as well as other tunes from historical sources; a photograph archive; and Treoir, the Comhaltas journal.

Below, Emma O’Sullivan dances a reel at a Comhaltas event. Note that this is not the rigid-posture style popularized by shows like Riverdance, which is considered by many to be a more recent development; this style is known as sean-nós, which means “old style”.

2 Comments

Filed under Dance, Europe, Resources

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | April 14, 2011 · 1:00 am

Grooves: Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili

Libreria Musicale Italiana inaugurated the series Grooves: Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili in 2011 with Jelly Roll Morton, la Old qaudrille e Tiger rag: Una revisione storiografica by Vincenzo Caporaletti. The book explores the longstanding question of whether Morton composed Tiger rag, which he claimed he adapted from an old quadrille, despite its having been copyrighted by Nick La Rocca.

Comments Off on Grooves: Edizioni di Musiche Audiotattili

Filed under Jazz and blues, New series

Tagged as , , ,