by | December 3, 2009 · 12:08 pm

Res musica

Res musica (ISSN 1736-8553), a peer-reviewed annual journal, was launched by the Eesti Muusikateaduse Selts and the Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia in 2009; its editor-in-chief is Urve Lippus (above). The journal aims to be a widely disseminated forum for Estonian researchers in all areas of music, making a unique contribution to the international discipline by synthesizing German- and English-language scholarly traditions with Estonian musicological discourse. Articles in volume 1 focused on historical studies of Baltic music, pedagogy, and musical life.

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by | November 30, 2009 · 1:36 pm

Musicalia: Časopis Českého muzea hudby

The České Muzeum Hudby in Prague launched its semiannual journal Musicalia: Časopis Českého muzea hudby (ISSN 1803-7828) in late 2009. Founded in 1976, the museum owns about 750,000 items including music and nonmusic manuscripts, books, iconography, composers’ estates, instruments, sound recordings, and press clippings; the Muzeum Bedřicha Smetany and the Muzeum Antonína Dvořáka are under its auspices. Musicalia, which is published bilingually in Czech and English, is devoted to sources for the history of music and musical culture and to information about the museum’s acquisitions, exhibitions, conferences, and publications. The journal is edited by Jana Vojtěšková and Dagmar Štefancová; its first issue includes essays about Martinů, Dvořák, Vinzenz Maschek, the Missale Olomucense, and a piano played by Mozart.

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by | November 25, 2009 · 12:28 pm

Conference reports

Conference reports illuminate intellectual history with a window on a particular moment. Since conference papers present the most current scholarship, a collection from a single conference provides a glimpse of the state of research on many topics at that time.

RILM recently published the papers from our first conference in Music’s intellectual history, and our retrospective coverage of conference reports, Speaking of Music: Music conferences, 1835–1966, was issued in 2004. The preface to the latter book provides an overview of this publication type.

The photo above is from the American Musicological Society‘s International Congress of Musicology in 1939. Standing: Harold Spivacke, Otto Kinkeldey, Otto Gombosi, Knud Jeppesen, Fernando Liuzzi, Gustave Reese. Seated: Edward J. Dent, Carleton Sprague Smith, Curt Sachs, Alfred Einstein, Dayton C. Miller.

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by | November 17, 2009 · 3:01 pm

The choral scholar

 

The choral scholar (ISSN 1948-3058), a peer-reviewed journal launched in 2009 by the National Collegiate Choral Organization, is dedicated to “presenting outstanding scholarship related to the study and performance of choral music”—including such topics as conducting and pedagogy, in addition to musicological research; it also welcomes studies that directly involve choral music from fields other than music. The journal’s first issue includes articles on vocal physiology, performance practice, repertoire, and compositional style.

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by | November 16, 2009 · 3:12 pm

Album covers

fela-zombie

Record album covers comprise a genre of music iconography that shows how musicians wish to be perceived—or how their producers wish them to be perceived. This type of iconography makes no claim to objectivity; rather, it explicitly presents images meant to arouse specific associations with the recorded music inside.

For example, the cover of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s 1977 album Zombie shows him brightly dressed, singing and gesturing defiantly, facing images of Nigerian soldiers: the zombies of the scathing title song, which satirizes these enforcers of the military government. The singer appears as a vibrant, strong leader, while the soldiers are depicted in a jagged, grey collage—as dehumanized and sinister as the zombies of horror fiction.

Below, Sahr Ngaujah and the cast of Fela! perform Zombie on Broadway.

Click here for more on music iconography.

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by | November 12, 2009 · 12:09 pm

Opera musicologica

opera musicologica

In 2009 the Sankt-Peterburgskaâ Gosudarstvennaâ Konservatoriâ imeni N.A. Rimskogo-Korsakova launched Opera Musicologica (ISSN 2075-4078). This peer-reviewed quarterly journal aims to provide a platform for dialogues between different schools and areas of musical scholarship, to present a wide spectrum of topics and methods, and to give space to understudied areas, new scholarly problems, and interdisciplinary approaches. Edited by the scholar of twentieth-century American music Olga Manulkina, Opera Musicologica is published in Russian with Russian and English abstracts. The first issue presents archival documents and essays highlighting the Conservatory’s history on the eve of its 150th anniversary; the issue’s table of contents and English abstracts are here.

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by | November 10, 2009 · 2:37 pm

Submissions: The old days

Before RILM set up online forms for sending us citations and abstracts, all submissions were made by writing or typing on forms like the one pictured above. We had forms in all necessary languages, color-coded for sorting. As was the case with most manual typewriters, corrections and diacritics all had to be added by hand. After we received completed forms, everything had to be retyped into the database (and, for non-English titles and abstracts, translated into English) at the International Center.

Over the years, countless volunteers have made such contributions to RILM, including some very distinguished figures in musicology and ethnomusicology. The example above was submitted by the preeminent Spanish musicologist José López-Calo (b.1922) for the retrospective project undertaken by RILM’s founder Barry S. Brook in the 1970s—a project that finally reached fruition with the publication of Speaking of Music: Music conferences, 1835–1966 in 2004.

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by | November 5, 2009 · 12:33 pm

Music's intellectual history

MIH_medium

RILM has just inaugurated its series RILM perspectives with Music’s intellectual history: 66 essays offering insights into the history of music scholarship from the Renaissance to the twentieth century and demonstrating the natural partnership of RILM and historiographic investigation. The contributions address an array of subjects and perspectives that indicate the directions music scholarship has taken in the past, reveal the precedents of current scholarly habits, and suggest future paths. A full table of contents is here.

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by | November 2, 2009 · 6:22 pm

Rāgamālā paintings

Bhairavi

Rāgamālā painting is a form of iconography that arose around 1600 in northern India.

These visual depictions of rāgas involve the various extramusical associations that theorists have assigned to them; for example, this visualization of the Hindustani rāg bhairavī from about 1610 depicts women worshiping at a shrine to Śiva, embodying the rāga’s association with both Śiva and feminine energy, and evoking the colors of its traditional early-morning context.

Below, the śahnāī player Bismillāh Khān (1915–2006) renders rāg bhairavī.

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by | November 1, 2009 · 6:11 pm

Music and medicine

Launched in 2009, Music and medicine (ISSN 1943‑8621) is a peer-reviewed journal published by the International Association for Music and Medicine (IAMM). The journal is intended for medical professionals, aiming to be “an integrative forum for clinical practice and research initiatives related to music interventions and applications of clinical music strategies in medicine.” While it naturally includes research in music therapy, the journal also invites work on “cultural implications of music in medicine in research and practice” as well as opinion papers on controversial topics.

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