Bibliolore

by admin | January 12, 2011 · 7:08 am

Analytical approaches to world music

Founded in response to the excitement generated by the First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music in 2010, Analytical approaches to world music (ISSN 2158-5296) brings together disciplines including music theory, ethnomusicology, musicology, cognitive psychology, computer science, and mathematics for a cross-cultural dialogue that aims to promote and enhance understanding of the diverse collection of traditions that is commonly referred to as world music.

Edited by Lawrence Shuster and Rob Schultz, the inaugural issue of this peer-reviewed online journal includes articles by Robert Morris, Sarah Weiss, David Locke, Richard Widdess, Jay Rahn, and Michael Tenzer.

1 Comment

Filed under New periodicals, Theory, World music

Tagged as Ethnomusicology, Music analysis, Musicology, World music

by admin | January 10, 2011 · 6:15 am

Quaderni del Laboratorio MIRAGE

Libreria Musicale Italiana launched the series Quaderni del Laboratorio MIRAGE in 2010 with Luigi Nono: studi, edizioni, testimonianze. Edited by Luca Cossettini, the volume includes essays by Cossettini, Nicola Buso, Laurent Feneyrou, and Roberto Calabretto.

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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, New series

Tagged as Composers, Libreria Musicale Italiana, Luigi Nono

by admin | January 7, 2011 · 8:09 am

Vodici: A midwinter swim

In Macedonia the Synaxis of St. John the Baptist on 7 January is celebrated with Vodici, a musical ceremony that involves the high priest throwing a cross into a nearby body of water.

The waters are baptized through this act, but the real attraction is the local youths plunging into the icy water to retrieve the cross. The one who finds it becomes a local hero, and is believed to be blessed for the entire ensuing year.

This according to “Водичарски обреди и водичарско певање у Македонији” (The Vodici ritual and singing in Macedonia) by Rodna Veličkovska in Научни скуп Дани Владе Милошевића: Зборник радова (The conference Dani Vlade Miloševića: Collection of essays; Banja Luka: Akademija Umjetnosti, 2008).

Below, excerpts from the church and waterside ceremonies in Bitola.

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Filed under Europe, Sports and games

Tagged as Bitola, Eastern Orthodox, Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia, St. John the Baptist, Vodici

by admin | January 4, 2011 · 11:30 am

2010 in review

Below is an automatically generated report from our buddies at WordPress; we enjoyed it, and decided to share it with you.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 134 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 164 posts. There were 210 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 47mb. That’s about 4 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was May 4th with 689 views. The most popular post that day was Mozart’s flyswatter.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, twitter.com, google.com, and mail.live.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for petrucci music library, petrucci library, curt sachs, liszt caricature, and magrepha.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Mozart’s flyswatter March 2010
4 comments

Not a universal language August 2010
2 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com

Petrucci Music Library May 2010

Defining the folk June 2010

Ethnomusicological bananas May 2010
1 comment

2 Comments

Filed under RILM, RILM news

Tagged as WordPress.com

by admin | January 2, 2011 · 7:57 am

PianoForum

The 200^th anniversary of Chopin’s birth in 2010 inspired the launch of a new Russian-language quaterly dedicated to piano, PianоФорум (PianoForum). Published by Международная Муызкально-Техническая Компания (International Music-Technical Company) and edited by the musicologist, pianist, and pedagogue Vsevolod Zaderackij, the journal covers diverse aspects of contemporary pianism, including instrument building, piano repertoire and interpretation, piano competitions and festivals, and piano pedagogy from the beginning level to professional training. A description of the contents of issue no. 3 (2010) in Russian is here.

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Filed under Instruments, Musicologists, New periodicals, Pedagogy

Tagged as Piano

by admin | December 24, 2010 · 12:06 pm

Renaissance Christmas skits

Since the fifteenth century—perhaps even earlier—a group of young choirboys known as los seises has danced for feast days in the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede in Seville. These cantoricos were performing in Christmas Eve plays by the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Documents from 1505 record expenses for masks for the boys’ performance as singing and dancing shepherds, and toward the middle of the sixteenth century the Council Acts indicate performance of a farsa de Navidad. As described in 1541, these brief skits were often associated with lively dance numbers from the contemporaneous Spanish theater. These diversions appear to have caused some offense, as a 1549 decision banned the performances, allowing only devotional singing.

This according to “Los seises in the golden age of Seville” by Lynn Matluck Brooks (Dance chronicle V/2 [1982], pp. 121–155). Below, los seises perform in 2010.

Related articles:

The twelve days of Christmas

Folia de reis and family

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Filed under Dance, Dramatic arts, Renaissance

Tagged as Catedral de Santa María de la Sede, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Lynn Matluck Brooks, Sevilla, Seville

by admin | December 21, 2010 · 7:17 am

Ringtones redux

Cell phone ringtones have been the subject of scholarly investigation for at least a decade; approaches to them have ranged from the practical to the postmodern.

The earliest academic study that we know of is “On the ringtones of cell phones (携帯電話着信メロディーについて)” in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan (社団法人日本音響学会) LVII/11 (2001), pp. 725–728. Legal aspects were explored the following year in “Die Lizenzierungspraxis der GEMA bei Ruftonmelodien: Rechteeinräumung und Rechtefluß” by Jürgen Becker in Recht im Wandel seines sozialen und technologischen Umfeldes: Festschrift für Manfred Rehbinder (München: C.H. Beck, 2002, pp. 187–198).

Then the cultural theorists began to take note. The stage was set by discussions of aspects of postmodernism and colonialism in “The semiotics of cell-phone ring tones” by Erkki Pekkilä in Musical semiotics revisited (Helsinki: International Semiotics Institute, 2003, pp. 110–120). Recent cultural analyses have included “The musical madeleine: Communication, performance, and identity in musical ringtones” by Imar de Vries (Popular music and society XXXIII/1 [February 2010], pp. 61–74) and “What does answering the phone mean? A sociology of the phone ring and musical ringtones” by Christian Licoppe (scheduled for future publication in Cultural Sociology).

Above, heeding the summons of a ringtone in Bangladesh.

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Filed under Curiosities, Popular music, Reception, Science

Tagged as Cell phone, Cultural theory, Mobile phone, Ringtone, Semiotics, Sociology, Technology

by admin | December 18, 2010 · 7:09 am

Ken Butler’s anxious objects

With his background as a professional jazz guitarist and his MFA in painting, Ken Butler had a long-standing interest in combining his two passions, but he couldn’t find the right connection. Then one night an axe in his basement caught his eye.

In about an hour and a half he had added a bridge, strings, and a contact microphone to the axe. As he describes it, “Suddenly the world opened up to me in terms of “That’s a cello. That’s a violin.’”

Since that night Butler has built hundreds of hybrid instruments, which he describes as “anxious objects”. While all of them can be played, he considers most of them to be primarily collage sculptures; but some of them sound good enough that he considers them real instruments, and performs on them. His raw materials have included a toy Uzi, a motorcycle manifold, and parts of discarded mannequins (inset).