Launched by ArkivMusic in 2009, Listen: Life with classical music (ISSN 1947-4431) is a lifestyle publication covering all the ways that people’s lives are touched by Western art music, including profiles of people, places, and events and recommendations of recordings, books, and films. Edited by Ben Finane, the magazine was named one of the top 10 in Library journal’s “Best of magazines 2009”.
Filed under Music magazines, New periodicals
The magrepha of ancient Hebrew ritual has been variously described as a percussion machine, signal gong, bell, tympanum, kettle drum, or hand drum—but also as a pneumatic organ, water organ, steam organ, composite woodwind instrument, pipework, or controllable siren. For centuries, scholars were unable to reach a solution that squared with ancient texts.
In “The magrepha of the Herodian temple: A five-fold hypothesis”, Joseph Yasser settled the matter by showing that the earliest sources mention the magrepha as a shovel for removing ashes and describe the thunderous sound caused when it was thrown to the floor at a particular point in the service; this sound apparently symbolized the vengeful actions of an angry God, aligning the ritual act with passages in Ezekiel. Later sources unmistakably characterize the magrepha as a type of wind instrument with multiple openings, each producing multiple sounds; Yasser’s proposed reconstruction is shown above.
The article appeared in A musicological offering to Otto Kinkeldey upon the occasion of his 80th anniversary, a special issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society (vol. 13, no. 1–3 [1960], pp. 24–42; the issue is covered in our recently-published Liber amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.
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Filed under Antiquity, Curiosities, Instruments, Source studies
Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and Cardiff University, Prague concert life, 1850–1881: An annotated database is a free resource for all those interested in nineteenth-century Czech music, history, and culture. The fullest possible information about each musical performance in Prague—from public concerts to private soirées, from large-scale festivals to everyday rehearsals, in venues ranging from local inns, guest houses, and restaurants to the most fashionable and successful society halls, parks, and gardens—is documented on the basis of articles in Czech- and German-language periodicals from 1850 through 1881; only musical theater events are excluded.
Entries typically list the date, time, and venue; the program and works that were presented; and the individuals, societies, and institutions that took part. Additional commentaries include clarifications of editorial decisions; supplementary factual data such as audience numbers, admission prices, and changes of venue or program; detailed information about individuals, venues, societies, and institutions, highlighting notable trends and occurrences within the city’s musical environment; outlines of the content and critical stance of descriptive reports and reviews; and evaluations of the source material from a scholarly perspective. Search and navigation tools include basic keyword search, advanced search, and hyperlinks.
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Filed under Reception, Resources, Romantic era
After Haydn’s funeral in Vienna his former employer, Prince Esterházy, obtained permission to have the body exhumed and moved to Eisenstadt. The matter apparently then slipped his mind until, 11 years later, a distinguished visitor remarked to him that it was fitting that he possessed the composer’s remains.
Not wishing to contradict his guest’s assumption, Esterházy quickly arranged for the coffin to be brought to Eisenstadt; but when it was opened for identification, the horrified officials discovered a headless body—only Haydn’s wig remained. Inquiries led to the revelation that two students of phrenology had bribed the gravedigger and stolen the composer’s head a few days after the funeral.
Esterházy was furious, and demanded that the skull be returned, but efforts to claim it were thwarted when the wife of its keeper secreted it in her straw mattress and lay down on top of it, feigning illness. When Esterházy offered a bribe, he was given the skull of an old man, and this was placed in Haydn’s coffin. The composer’s skull was not reunited with his other remains until 1954.
This according to “An incongruous postlude” in Haydn: A creative life in music by Karl and Irene Geiringer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). For more on Haydn’s physiognomy, see this Bibliolore post.
Above, a drawing of the marble tablet—now lost—erected by Haydn’s devoted pupil Sigismund von Neukomm at the composer’s Viennese resting place in 1814 (click to enlarge). The inscription includes Haydn’s favorite quotation from Horace, non omnis moriar, set by Neukomm as a puzzle canon.
More posts about Haydn are here.
Filed under Classic era, Curiosities, Science
In 1970 Ira Sabin, a Washington, D.C., record store owner, started a newsletter called Radio free jazz to update customers on new jazz releases and provide a liaison between local radio programmers and the music industry. Over the following decade the newsletter grew substantially, becoming an international publication; in 1980 these developments prompted a change to the name JazzTimes.
Today the magazine is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading jazz periodicals, featuring state-of-the-art graphics and extensive coverage of jazz news, along with performer interviews and reviews of recordings, videos, instruments, books, and performances.
Related article: John Abbott, jazz photographer
Filed under Jazz and blues, Music magazines
An anonymous pamphlet from around 1733 titled Do you know what you are about? or, A Protestant alarm to Great Britain rails against the egregious inroads that Roman Catholic degeneracy, not least in the form of Italian opera, were making in England.
Händel and Senesino are particularly singled out for “playing at the dog and bear, exactly like the two kings of Poland contending for the Empire of Doremifa” in contrast to the humble, hardworking John Gay, whose praiseworthy Beggar’s opera reached the stage only through his own admirable toil and steadfastness.
This according to William Charles Smith’s “Do you know what you are about?: A rare Handelian pamphlet”, an article in The music review no. 98 (2 April 1964, pp. 114–19); the issue, which honors the 70th birthday of the English librarian, bibliographer, and honorary curator of the Royal Music Library Cecil Bernard Oldman (1894–1969), is covered in our recently published Liber Amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.
Above, a satirical depiction by John Vanderbank from around 1723 of Senesino, Francesca Cuzzoni, and Gaetano Berenstadt performing in a Händel opera (probably Flavio, re di Longobardi).
Related articles:
Filed under Baroque era, Curiosities, Dramatic arts, Humor, Opera, Reception
An initiative of the Department of Special Collections of the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project presents digital remasters of nearly 8000 cylinders that are catalogued according to standard library rules for sound recordings. The collection may be searched by keyword, author, title, subject, year, or call number, or it can be browsed by genre, instrument, topic, or language. The recordings can all be heard and downloaded for free; the project is happy to receive donations of further recordings and financial support.
Among the collection’s rare gems are 225 recordings of pre-1902 popular music, including cylinders of Sousa’s Grand Concert Band.
Related article: John Philip Sousa, violinist
Filed under Popular music, Resources, World music
According to “Humorous reflections on laughing records” by Abigail Cooke (ARSC journal 32/2 [winter 2001], pp. 232–242, three types of sound recordings involving laughter were produced between 1904 and 1923: (1) laughing songs, in which stylized laughter is integrated into the song; (2) spoken comedy routines with laughing audiences; and (3) laughing records, in which apparently genuine laughter spirals out of control.
The classic model for the latter genre, The Okeh laughing record (Okeh, 1922)—which may have originated in a real situation where the recording engineer continued to record a botched session—begins with a man playing a slow, melancholy cornet solo that is quickly interrupted by a woman’s giggle. He continues to play, but she is unable to control herself, and soon is laughing aloud; this causes him to flub a note and join her in laughing, occasionally attempting to continue playing, until the two are utterly hysterical.
Below, The Okeh laughing record.
Filed under Humor, Publication types
Bach’s use of a musical motive based on his name, B–A–C–H, is well known, and several other composers have used it in tributes to the Baroque master. As connoisseurs of French chamber music also know, Ravel made similar use of the technique of deriving musical material from a composer’s name in his Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faure and Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn.
Far less known is the further use of this technique by both Debussy and Ravel in more enigmatically titled pieces. For example, several of their works bearing the words hommage or tombeau include musical material derived from the honoree’s name. Such formerly puzzling titles, which have led the curious on wild-goose chases in their attempts to understand what on earth the music had to do with the named composer, may now be understood as sly references to uses of this technique.
This according to “Widmungsstücke mit Buchstaben-Motto bei Debussy und Ravel” by Paul Mies, an essay included in Festschrift für Erich Schenk (Studien zur Musikwissenschaft: Beihefte der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, vol. 25 [1962], pp. 363–368); this journal issue dedicated to the Austrian musicologist Erich Schenk (1902–74) on the occasion of his 60th birthday is covered in our recently published Liber Amicorum: Festschriften for music scholars and nonmusicians, 1840–1966.
Below, Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, one of the works discussed in the article.
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Filed under Curiosities, Impressionism, Source studies
Produced under the Australian government’s Broadband Production Initiative, Ether Multimedia’s The pure drop is a free online resource that describes itself as “an exploration and celebration of traditional and world music”.
The site is organized around eleven short videos—all under six minutes—that explore topics such as instruments, lyrics, and transmission; links to further information about the specific topics in the videos are provided, and study guides, maps, a hyperlinked index of persons, and other supporting materials are included.
While this resource is clearly intended for use in secondary schools, and is so used throughout Australia, it is available to anyone interested in video interviews, performances, and mp3 audio by traditional, neotraditional, and popular musicians such as Billy Bragg, Värttinä, and Yothu Yindi.
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Filed under Pedagogy, Popular music, Resources, World music
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