In his day, the blind Aragonese composer and organist Pablo Bruna (known as El Ciego de Daroca) was renowned for his organ playing at the Colegiata de Santa María de los Corporales in Daroca (above), for his important disciples, and for his keyboard works. Today is his 400th birthday!
A previously unknown work by Bruna—A de la casa, a villancico for soprano and tenor with unfigured bass—was discovered in 1990 in the musical archive of Barbastro Cathedral. The text stems from the custom of giving food to the poor, which in Bruna’s work is given a Eucharistic interpretation. Only three other vocal works by Bruna have survived: two other villancicos and a Benedicamus Domino.
This according to “A de la casa: Duo de Pablo Bruna—Una obra inedita del Ciego de Daroca” by Pedro Calahorra Martínez (Nassarre: Revista aragonesa de musicología VII/1 [1991], pp. 9–20). Below, Saskia Roures performs Bruna’s Tiento de falsas de 2º tono.
The Kronos Quartet has been politically engaged since its founding in 1973, and their forays into world music carry political messages as well as aesthetic ones. Inevitably, these ventures have enmeshed the group in the anxious narratives surrounding the world music phenomenon.
Critics cite the appropriation and alienation of non-Western musics and techniques as economic and cultural capital for first-world performers, entrepreneurs, and recording companies, while admirers cite sensitivity and homage, cultural exchange, and a faith in the intercultural transcendence of aesthetic values that enacts a basis for peaceful cooperation.
Although the group’s continuing commitment to crossing cultural borders and raising political issues has been branded as hypocritical in the context of their signing with Nonesuch Records, which is owned by the media giant Time Warner, their efforts should command respect from those who seek to discredit the myth that music can—and should—exist in an autonomous world apart from that of society.
This according to “Postmodern eclecticism and the world music debate: The politics of the Kronos Quartet” by David Bennett (Context: A journal of music research 29–30 [2005] pp. 5–15). Above, the quartet performs with the pipa player Wu Man; below, with the Azerbaijani muğam singer Alim Qasımov and his ensemble.
The Finnish band Eläkeläiset (The Pensioners) is known for playing humorous cover versions of well-known pop and rock songs—including heavy metal—to a fast humppa beat (a traditional Finnish polka-like dance style). The other thing Eläkeläiset is known for is public drunkenness: The group’s members are notably inebriated for all of their performances and recordings.
This according to Eläkeläiset: Suuri suomalainen juopottelukirja (Eläkeläiset: The great Finnish drinking book) by Ilkka Mattila (Helsinki: Like, 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2008). Below, Eläkeläiset’s version of Zombie by The Cranberries.
In 1996 Mira Omerzel-Terlep reported that a bone fragment excavated at the Divje Babe I cave site in Slovenia is considered to be the oldest man-made flute, dating from 45,000 years ago (“Koščene piščali: Pričetek slovenske, evropske in svetovne inštrumentalne glasbene zgodovine” [Bone whistles: Origins of the Slovenian, European, and world history of instrumental music], Etnolog: Glasnik Slovenskega Etnografskega Muzeja/Bulletin of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum VI, pp. 235–294). Further studies sought to demonstrate that the fragment had originally belonged to an instrument capable of producing a diatonic scale.
Other researchers were skeptical, though, and in 1998 Paola Villa et al. tried to put the speculation to rest, showing that the holes in the bone were the results of gnawing by animals (“A Middle Paleolithic origin of music? Using cave-bear bone accumulations to assess the Divje Babe I bone ‘flute’”, Antiquity LXXII/275 [March], pp. 65–79).
The argument has not abated. In 2002 a pair of essays staking out the opposing camps was issued in Archäologie früher Klangerzeugung und Tonordnung/The archaeology of sound origin and organization; Musikarchäologie in der Ägäis und Anatolien/Music archaeology in the Aegean and Anatolia (Rahden: Leidorf); April Nowell states that the results of taphonomic testing offered no viable proof that the bone fragment was an instrument (“Is a cave bear bone from Divje Babe, Slovenia, a Neanderthal flute?” pp. 69–81) while Robert Fink presents research supports the theory that it was (“The Neanderthal flute and origin of the scale: Fang or flint? A response” pp. 83–87).
More recently, an exhaustive study by Cajus G. Diedrich of Paleo-Logic, Independent Institute of Geosciences, ends with the conclusion that “The ‘cave bear cub femora with holes’ are, in all cases, neither instruments nor human made at all” (Royal Society Open Science, 2 : 140022; the paper can be read in full here).
Still, the controversy is alive and thriving on the Internet.
Below, Ljuben Dimkaroski performs on a reconstruction of the alleged original bone flute.
Part of the Library of Congress’s American Memoryseries, Fiddle tunes of the old frontier: The Henry Reed Collection is a multiformat collection of traditional fiddle tunes played by Henry Reed of Glen Lyn, Virginia, recorded by Alan Jabbour in 1966 and 1967, when Reed was over eighty years old. The tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of Virginia’s Appalachian frontier; many of them passed back into circulation during the fiddling revival of the later twentieth century.
The collection includes 184 sound recordings, 19 pages of field notes, and 69 transcriptions of Reed’s fiddling with notes on tune histories and musical features; an illustrated essay on Reed’s life, art, and influence; a list of related publications; and a glossary of musical terms.
Above, Reed with Bobbie Thompson (guitar) at the Narrows (Virginia) Fiddlers Contest, summer 1967. Below, Alan Jabbour performs a tune that he learned from Henry Reed.
Launched by Intellect in 2010, Journal of European popular culture (ISSN 2040-6134; EISSN 20406142)investigates the present and past creative cultures of Europe. Exploring European popular imagery, media, new media, film, music, art and design, architecture, drama and dance, fine art, literature and the writing arts, and more, this peer-reviewed journal is also of interest to those considering the influence of European creativity worldwide. It is edited by Graeme Harper, Owen Evans, and Cristina Johnston.
Comments Off on Journal of European popular culture
The eminent British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers, CBE (1873–1946), 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. Like many of his contemporaries, he suspected that the study of ethnic traditions could help to tease out universals and illuminate the origins of music.
In “The beginnings of music” (Essays and studies presented to William Ridgeway on his sixtieth birthday [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913, pp. 560–582]) Myers provides detailed descriptions of the musical traditions of the Meriam people of Murray Island, Australia, the Vedda people of Sri Lanka, and the peoples of Sarawak. The Vedda examples suggest an evolution of the scale as a synthesis of steps, the Sarawak examples suggest scalar evolution as a filling-in of larger intervals, and the Meriam examples suggest a synthesis of the two approaches.
Myers concludes that the beginnings of music depend on eight factors: (1) discrimination between tones and noises; (2) awareness of differences in pitch, volume, duration, and quality; (3) awareness of absolute pitch; (4) recognition and use of small, approximately equal intervals; (5) recognition and use of larger consonant intervals, and awareness of their relationships to smaller ones; (6) melodic phrasing; (7) rhythmic phrasing; and (8) musical meaning.
The article was reprinted in Music, words and voice: A reader, edited by Martin Clayton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008, pp. 21–23). Above, the Murray Island courthouse and community hall in a photograph from the 1898 expedition that Myers joined.
In 2010 Ústav Hudobnej Vedy of the Slovenská Akadémia Vied revived the scholarly periodical Musicologica Slovaca: Časopis Ústavu Hudobnej Vedy Slovenskej Akadémie Vied(ISSN 1338-2594), thereby providing a standard platform for publishing the most recent results of domestic music scholarship in a peer-reviewed, biannual journal. In 1992 its predecessor, the irregularly issued Musicologica slovaca et europaea, replaced the original Musicologica slovaca, which started in 1969. The renewed Musicologica Slovaca, starting as volume 1(27),maintains the continuity of the previous volumes.
The journal’s broad orientation, with topics including music history, ethnomusicology, and systematic musicology, reflects traditions of interdisciplinary communication among specialized disciplines of music scholarship in Slovakia. Musicologica Slovaca is edited by the ethnomusicologist Hana Urbancová, the Director of the Ústav Hudobnej Vedy SAV. It is published in Slovak with English abstracts and keywords.
The Expression Synthesis Project (ESP) involves a driving interface for expression synthesis, making high-level expressive musical decisions accessible to nonexperts. The user drives a car on a virtual road that represents the music with its twists and turns, and makes decisions on how to traverse each part of the road. The driver’s decisions affect the rendering of the piece in real time.
The pedals and wheel provide a tactile interface for controlling the dynamics and musical expression, while the display portrays a first-person view of the road and dashboard from the driver’s seat. This game-like interface allows nonexperts to create expressive renderings of existing music without having to master an instrument, and allows expert musicians to experiment with expressive choice without having to first master the notes of the piece.
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music inaugurated the series DIAMM facsimiles in 2010 with The Eton choirbook. Edited by Magnus Williamson, the book presents a full-color facsimile edition of Eton College Library MS 178, an iconic source of English choral polyphony composed during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that has been continuously in the possession of Eton College since it was first copied for use in the college chapel in the early 1500s.
The library of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris is home to an extensive collection of writings on music from the Arab world, a region stretching from the Atlas Mountains to the Indian Ocean. This series … Continue reading →
The Filipino ethnomusicologist and composer Jose Maceda created unique works that blended his fieldwork on Filipino and other music with his expertise in European avant-garde traditions. His compositions combined innovative techniques such as spatialization, a focus on timbre, and musique … Continue reading →
The Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, and politician Youssou N’Dour was born just six months before Senegal achieved independence. His mother hailed from a long line of griots, or gawlo, who served as hereditary musicians and custodians of oral history in … Continue reading →
Ellis Marsalis first learned to play the clarinet and saxophone but the piano later became his main instrument. From 1951 to 1955, he completed a bachelor’s degree in music education at Dillard University in New Orleans while receiving informal jazz … Continue reading →
