The Italian publisher L’Epos launched the series Dal grammofono al lettore: Discografie ragionate in 2009 to present annotated discographies that illustrate aspects of the history of sound recordings. The first book in the series, Bach Goldberg, Beethoven Diabelli by Carlo Fiore, illuminates the interpretation and reception histories of these two landmark sets of keyboard variations.
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Filed under Baroque era, Classic era, New series, Reception
Carlo Minasi (1817–91) was a London-based pianist and concertina player who also taught both instruments, a prolific composer and arranger for the concertina and other instruments, the author of 21 instrumental tutors (13 for the concertina), and a talented inventor. He produced 42 albums of songs and tunes—22 for the English concertina, 10 for the German concertina, and 10 for general use—and he obtained patents on concertinas of his own design and on several specific improvements. He also patented improvements in firearm and furniture design, as well as one for a poultry incubator.
Despite his accomplishments, Minasi is not profiled in any of the standard music encyclopedias; as far as we know, the only comprehensive source for information about him is Randall C. Merris’s Carlo Minasi: Composer, arranger, and teacher, concertina and piano in Papers of the International Concertina Association volume 6 (2009), pp. 17–45.
Filed under Curiosities, Instruments, Romantic era
Published by the L’Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi, Arte Organaria Italiana was launched in 2009 to provide a forum for research on organs in Italy.
Articles in the first issue include a discussion of pedaling in Frescobaldi’s organ works, a study of organs in the Cattedrale di Mantova during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an exploration of nineteenth-century organ case aesthetics.
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Filed under Architecture, Instruments, New series
Thanks to funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Magazine Fund, the SOCAN Foundation Publications Assistance Program, and the Canada Periodical Fund, Musicworks has been issuing articles, reviews, and scores focusing on Canadian music since 1978; since 1983, issues have included sound recordings as well. While Canadian composers and performers are most often featured, the magazine also covers Canadian traditional music in both native and non-native cultures.
Recently Musicworks sent us a full run of their back issues; now we are confident that all of their articles are fully covered by RILM.
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Music magazines, RILM news
Patent applications for new instruments—or for improvements to already existing ones—usually involve one or more technical drawings. These can be of historical interest for several reasons; for example, the article Piano wars: The legal machinations of London pianoforte makers, 1795–1806 by George S. Bozarth and Margaret Debenham (RMA research chronicle XLII, 45–108) makes use of original drawings and descriptions for patents by William Southwell (1794) and his son, William junior (1837), to reconstruct the issues and outcomes of legal actions involving many of England’s top piano manufacturers in the early nineteenth century.
Reproduced above is a page from Brian Hayden’s 1984 patent application for a new way of arranging the buttons on a concertina.
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Filed under Iconography, Instruments, Publication types
With the 2009 publication of L’organo Luigi Montesanti 1813 della chiesa di San Tommaso in Acquanegra sul Chiese, the Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi launched the series Antichi organi mantovani. Edited by Federico Lorenzani, the book includes articles by Maurizio Isabella, Silvio Micheli, Francesco Melli, and Lorenzani himself. Montesanti’s organ for the Basilica di Sant’Andrea di Mantova is shown above.
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Filed under Architecture, Instruments, New series
Generally, Festschriften fall into three categories: memorial volumes, issued shortly after the death of the honoree, and often comprising personal tributes and reminiscences; commemorative volumes, published to honor some milestone in the deceased dedicatee’s life; and Festschriften proper, presented to a living recipient on the occaision of a birthday, anniversary, or transitional event. For more about this publication type, see the Preface to RILM’s Liber amicorum, the first volume in our retrospective Festschriften project.
Above is a reproduction of the frontispiece for Beethoven-Album: Ein Gedenkbuch dankbarer Liebe und Verehrung für den grossen Todten, a commemorative volume published in 1846; the book includes poems and compositions dedicated to the composer, including works by Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Czerny.
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Filed under Publication types, Romantic era
Cartoonists have always recognized music as a rich source for humor. The mere inclusion of an accordion or a banjo can make a situation comical, as Gary Larson’s The far side has repeatedly demonstrated, and caricatures of musicians have long been a staple of popular journalism.
The self-taught French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé (b.1932) has been drawn to musical subjects throughout his career; The musicians, a collection of his characteristically nuanced and captionless music-themed drawings, was published by Workman in 1980, and Phaidon Press issued a similar collection of postcards in 2006. Sempé’s cartoons, many with musical subjects, have graced nearly 100 covers of The New Yorker.
Filed under Humor, Visual art
Beethoven-Haus in Bonn is one of RILM’s newest subscribers.
Besides maintaining a museum in the house where the composer was born and keeping up with writings about him and his works, the organization offers an online digital archive where visitors can listen to Beethoven’s music and view manuscripts, correspondence, and images—over 5,000 documents on 26,000 scans and about 7,600 text files and 1,600 audio files.
More posts about Beethoven are here.
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Filed under Classic era, Resources
The DART-Europe e-thesis portal provides discovery services for open-access research e-theses from repositories all over Europe. Managed by University College London, it is the European Working Group of the Networked Digital Library of Dissertations (NDLTD) and it works closely with the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER). The project’s membership primarily comprisees consortia and national libraries, although individual universities are increasingly involved.
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Filed under Resources
featured – Bibliolore