by | November 17, 2010 · 6:48 am

OHS monographs in American organ history

In 2010 the Organ Historical Society Press launched its series OHS monographs in American organ history with Organbuilding along the Erie and Chenango Canals by Stephen L. Pinel. The book chronicles the careers of the organ builders Alvinza and George N. Andrews of Utica, New York, and their innovative use of the canals to undercut their Boston and New York competition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sponsored by the Organ Historical Society, the Press also publishes a quarterly journal, an annual study of organs by locale, and CDs featuring historic American instruments.

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by | November 12, 2010 · 7:22 am

Vexing the pianist

For an experiment involving both acoustical and MIDI data, the German pianist Armin Fuchs made an uninterrupted recording of Satie’s Vexations, fulfilling the composer’s apparent indication that the piece should be repeated 840 times; the performance lasted nearly 28 hours.

Tempo and loudness remained stable over the first 14 hours of alertness; after 15 hours a state of trance ensued, resulting in a destabilization of tempo followed by uncontrolled deviations in loudness.

This according to “Tempo and loudness analysis of a continuous 28-hour performance of Erik Satie’s composition Vexations” by Reinhard Kopiez, Marc Bangert, Werner Goebl, and Eckart Altenmüller (Journal of new music research XXXII/3 [September 2003], pp. 243–258).

Above, the full text of Satie’s composition. The official Satie website, which includes rare film footage, is here.

Below, a brief exposition of the work.

 

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by | November 9, 2010 · 6:52 am

Sephardic music: A century of recordings

Sephardic music: A century of recordings showcases and discusses over 100 years of recorded Sephardic music, from the 78 rpm era to the present. Created by Joel Bresler, this resource includes information on repertory and performance practice and a comprehensive discography of Sephardic 78s in Hebrew and Ladino ordered by label, song, or artist. Numerous illustrations are provided, including reproductions of record labels and covers.

Above, the label from Haim Effendi’s 1907 recording of the popular Sephardic song A la una; the recording can be heard here.

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by | November 6, 2010 · 6:43 am

Organ: Žurnal ob organnoj kul´ture

The Russian-speaking organ community has a new platform for professional information and dialogue on organ culture in Russia and abroad: the quarterly periodical Орган: Журнал об органной культуре (Organ: Journal of organ culture). Launched in 2009 by the Московское Музыкальное Общество (Moscow Musical Society) , the Гocударственный Центральный Музей Музыкальной Культуры им. М.И. Глинки (Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture), and Союз Московских Композиторов (Moscow Composers’ Union), the journal is published by Стейдж-Мастер/Stage Master with assistance from Le chant du monde.

Organ is published in Russian with a collective summary in English; it is edited by the musicologist, organist, and pedagogue Evgeniâ Krivickaâ. Introducing instruments from around the world with specifications and photographs, and providing interviews and reports on organ events, the journal addresses a wide range of readers, from organists and organ builders to students and teachers, and everyone interested in organ music.

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by | November 3, 2010 · 6:55 am

Waiting for qi

Houqi (waiting for qi) was a technique employed by Chinese authorities in the fourteenth century to determine the onset of spring by measuring the emanations of qi, the active principal of life. A set of standard pitchpipes, each corresponding to a specific calendar period, was filled with ashes and buried in a sealed chamber; when the sun entered the second two-week period of a given month the seminal force of qi was supposed to rise and expel the ashes from the pipe that matched the calendar period.

Unfortunately, the method failed to produce the desired results, and a great deal of discussion over the millennia as to what kind of soil to use, where to place the pitchpipes, and so on, failed to improve it. Ultimately the great music theorist Zhu Zaiyu (朱載堉, 1536–1611) criticized houqi as a poor example of scientific method.

This according to “Origins of the controversy over the houqi method (候气法疑案之发端)” by Tang Jikai (唐继凯) in Jiaoxiang: Journal of Xi’an Conservatory of Music (交响：西安音乐学院学报), vol. 22, no. 3:101 (fall 2003), pp. 27–31. Above, a calligrapher’s rendition of the Chinese character for qi.

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by | November 1, 2010 · 6:57 am

Folkstreams

Folkstreams is an archive of hard-to-find documentary films about traditional cultures that gives them new life by streaming them on the Internet. Founded in 2002 by the filmmakers Tom and Mimi Davenport, the idea grew out of “our love of filmmaking, a respect for the traditional culture of ordinary Americans, and a desire to get our work to the general public.”

Partnering with Ibiblio, the School of Information and Library Science, and the Southern Folklife Collection, all based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Folkstreams preserves and disseminates priceless historical documents, including many whose subjects are music and dance.

Above, the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, sings “Jezebel” in  A singing stream: A black family chronicle (Tom Davenport, 1986).

Related post: Pete Seeger, filmmaker

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by | October 29, 2010 · 7:48 am

Rediscovering sonoristics

When he coined the term sonorystyka in the 1950s, Józef Michał Chomiński (1906–94) considered sonoristics a new branch of study centered on the sound technique of a composition. Discernible as early as certain works by Debussy, sonoristics involves a whole new layer of a musical work that emphasizes its actual sound, transcending older approaches in which structural elements were considered independently of their sonorous realization.

Among his expositions of his sonoristic theories, Chomiński showed how the first six measures of Webern’s Die Sonne (op. 14, no. 1) present no traces of melody or harmony in the traditional sense; rather, they embody a full transformation of both concepts into a sonic universe regulated by timbre, rhythm, and register contrasts.

This according to “Rediscovering sonoristics: A groundbreaking theory from the margins of musicology” by Zbigniew Granat, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history. Below, a performance of Webern’s op. 14; Chomiński’s example begins the set.

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by | October 23, 2010 · 6:37 am

A Renaissance sense of history

Pietro Gaetano’s Oratio de origine et dignitate musices (ca. 1568)—“an almost unknown text from an almost insignificant individual”—illuminates relationships between music and a sense of history in the Renaissance. Unlike Tinctoris, Gaetano tried to integrate a notion of organic evolution into music historiography, along with a sense of periodization—both concepts that added substance to a historical view that was already dominated by the idea of a lineage of great composers and their works.

This according to “To write historically about music in the 16th century: Pietro Gaetano” by Philippe Vendrix, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history. Above, the first page of Gaetano’s manuscript (I-Vmc, Provenienza Cicogna, MS 1049; click to enlarge).

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by | October 20, 2010 · 6:42 am

A Charles Ives resource

Charles+IvesThe Charles Ives Society maintains an online resource that includes a biography by Jan Swafford; a list of tunes borrowed by Ives from other composers, with sound files; a catalogue of Ives’s published works ordered by medium, also with sound files; a descriptive  catalogue by James Sinclair ordered by genre, with incipits, performance data, and other listings; and a programming guide that suggests relationships between Ives’s works and specific holidays, months, seasons, topics, and anniversaries.

Above, a rare performance of one of Ives’s pieces for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, played by the Paratore brothers. Today is the composer’s 136th birthday.

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by | October 17, 2010 · 5:32 pm

The perfect-pitch puzzle

Absolute pitch is considered a rare endowment, but its provenance is unclear. A series of experiments with Mandarin, English, and Vietnamese speakers and a consultation of writings on critical periods in speech development and the neurological underpinnings of lexical tone suggests that absolute pitch originally evolved as a feature of speech analogous to other features—such as vowel quality—and that speakers of tone languages naturally acquire this feature during the critical childhood period for speech acquisition.

It follows that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universally present at birth; its realization could depend on enabling the child to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for speech acquisition.

This according to “Absolute pitch, speech, and tone language: Some experiments and a proposed framework” by Diana Deutsch, Trevor Henthorn, and Mark Dolson (Music Perception XXI/3 [Spring 2004] pp. 339–56).

Above, a visualization of Vietnamese speech tones from “Tones and voice quality in modern northern Vietnamese: Instrumental case studies” by Nguyễn Văn Lợi and Jerold A. Edmondson (Mon-Khmer Studies XXVII, pp. 1–18).

Related article: Pitch perception B.C.E.

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