by | March 3, 2022 · 6:00 am

Sounding a history of Ukrainian sovereignty: An annotated bibliography

Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)*

 For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound,
 The first string I touch is for thee.
 The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound,
 The song from my heart will gush free.

 My song o’er the earth’s distant reaches will fly in its task
 With my dearest hopes as its guide;
 Wherever it speeds o’er the world among mankind, ’twill ask
 “Know ye where good fortune doth bide?”
  
 And there somewhere yonder my song solitary will meet
 With other such wandering lays,
 And then, joining in with that loud-singing swarm, will fly
 Away over thorn-studded ways.
  
 ’Twill speed over ocean’s blue bosom, o’er mountains will fly,
 And circle about in free air;
 ’Twill soar ever higher far up in the vault of the sky
 And maybe find good fortune there.
  
 And finding it somewhere, that longed-for good fortune may greet
 And visit our dear native strand,
 May visit and greet thee, Ukraine, O thou mother most sweet,
 Ill-starred and unfortunate land. 

By Lesâ Ukraїnka, translated into English by Percival Cundy in Spirit of flames: A collection of the works of Lesya Ukrainka (New York: Bookman Associates, 1950)

*Uncle Michael was Ukraїnka's Uncle Mihajlo (Mihajlo Dragomanov, 1841-95), a significant Ukrainian cultural and political figure.

_______________________________________

  • Noll, William. “Cultural contact through music institutions in Ukrainian lands, 1920–1948”, Music-cultures in contact: Convergences and collisions, ed. by Margaret J. Kartomi and Stephen Blum. Australian studies in the history, philosophy and social studies of music 2; Musicology: A book series 16 (Sydney: Currency Press; New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994) 204–219. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1994-4762]

Abstract: In the first half of the 20th century, the networks of music institutions in the two zones of the Ukraine were largely conceived and implemented by urban-born and urban-trained activists who were consciously creating institutionalized links with rural populations. The music and dance practices developed and distributed through these institutions were derived from rural populations, although they were stylized, notated, and arranged by urban dwellers in ways that were thought to appeal to both urban and rural groups. Most of the musical performances took place in local centers that were part of a widespread national network. Activists in western Ukraine used music to help establish and maintain a Ukrainian national identity among a large rural population with ethnic minority status in the Polish state. In eastern Ukraine the music network was intended to be the primary shaping force of village musical culture.

  • Poljak, Dubravka. “Aspekt samoupravnosti u baladnih junaka ukrajinske narodne balade”, Zbornik od XXV kongres na Sojuzot na Združenijata na Folkloristite na Jugoslavija/Rad XXV kongresa Saveza Udruženja Folklorista Jugoslavije, ed. by Lazo Karovski and Goce Stefanoski (Skopje: Sojuz na Združenijata na Folkloristite na Jugoslavija, 1980) 109–112. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1999-31936]

Abstract: Examines the theme of self-determination in the Ukrainian heroic ballads.

  • Berthiaume-Zavada, Claudette. “Résonances de la bandoura ou la mémoire vive d’un peuple”, Construire le savoir musical: Enjeux épistémologiques, esthétiques et sociaux, ed. by Monique Desroches and Ghyslaine Guertin. Logiques sociales: Musiques et champ social (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003) 129–142. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2003-16721]
Reproduction of an old-world style bandura made in Toronto by William Vetzal

Abstract: Considers the Ukrainian duma as a cultural artifact that reveals how knowledge can be built on the basis of and by means of music. The duma is a musical genre, a half-sung, half-recited epic with different accompaniments depending on the period (the lira, the kobza, and, more recently, the bandura). The bandura, a Ukrainian national symbol, is the guardian of the collective memory of the Cossack epics and of historical events. The Ukrainian duma is an example of a multifunctional form of expression in which the musical aspect is inseparable from the social, and where a musical instrument and a musical form can convey the values of a people and provide trails for the researcher to follow in understanding the behavior of a population.

  • Ostashewski, Marcia. “Identity politics and Western Canadian Ukrainian musics: Globalizing the local or localizing the global?”, TOPIA: Canadian journal of cultural studies 6 (fall–winter 2001) 63–82. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2001-22653]

Abstract: Explores how Ukrainian musicians in Western Canada use music to construct local senses of identity and Ukrainianness, while participating in a more global sense of Ukrainian history and nationhood.

  • Bajgarová, Jitka. “Ukrainische Musik: Idee und Geschichte einer musikalischen Nationalbewegung in ihrem europäischen Kontext—Lipsko, 7.–9. května 2006”, Hudební věda 2/43 (2006) 215–216. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2006-30845]

Abstract: A report on the conference on Ukrainian music and nationalism, which took place in Leipzig from 7 to 9 May 2006.

  • Helbig, Adriana. “The cyberpolitics of music in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution”, Current musicology 82 (fall 2006) 81–101. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-8421]

Abstract: Analyzes the relationship between political activism and what the author terms cybermusicality—an engagement with Internet music and its surrounding discourses that enables musical creativity both online and off. By looking into cybermusical phenomena in a non-Western context, this study moves beyond geographically and culturally limited analytical approaches that privilege Web-based music in the West and promote an uncritical celebration of the Internet as a technology of only the developed world. Music and the Internet played crucial roles in Ukraine’s 2004 Pomarančeva Revolûcia (Orange Revolution) when nearly one million people protested against election fraud, mass government corruption, and oligarchic market reforms. Prior to 2004, media outlets in Ukraine such as television, radio, and newspapers were government-controlled and censored. In contrast, the Internet grew in popularity as a technology that people could trust and helped activate the masses in anti-government protest. The article analyzes the revolution’s music and recordings disseminated on the Internet and examines the representative power of political song. This repertoire functioned as a particularly salient expression of citizen empowerment through the interpretation and evaluation of truth (pravda), a concept understood in the rhetoric of the revolution as the public’s “right to know” what is at the core of post-Soviet Ukrainian government propaganda.

  • Kiânovs’ka, Lûbov Oleksandrìvna. “Soziokulturelle Funktionen der ukrainischen nationalen Chorbewegung in Galizien nach 1867”, Chorgesang als Medium von Interkulturalität: Formen, Kanäle, Diskurse, ed. by Erik Fischer, Annelie Kürsten, Sarah Brasack, and Verena Ludorff. Berichte des interkulturellen Forschungsprojekts Deutsche Musikkultur im östlichen Europa 3 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2007) 403–411. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2007-34444]
Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus 1999

Abstract: After 1867 cultural areas with a strong national patriotic component began to develop within the Ukrainian choral movement. Numerous Polish choirs (Echo, Lutnia (Lute), Lwowski chór męski (Lemberg men’s choir), etc.), and Ukrainian choirs (Teorban, Bojan, Bandurist, etc.) emerged which pursued national goals in addition to societal and social objectives. The socio-cultural functions of Ukrainian choirs, which were representatives of an ethnic group without a state of their own, are examined. Their functions can be summed up as follows: establishing a national mind-set, aided by the choral culture, which was the focus of the political elite; promoting the formation of a national identity and a national memory by reviving the (ethnic) song culture; furthering general musical education by providing knowledge of the great international and national works, previously inaccessible to many; musical education—the professional musical academies of the Ukraine subsequently developed from the music schools and choirs, stimulating musical creation—a whole host of “national” compositions were composed especially for choirs; representative tasks; the “transfer” of the political and socio-cultural structures of choirs to other organizations with a similar orientation such as publishing houses, museums, and libraries.

  • Wickström, David-Emil. “Drive-ethno-dance and Hutzul punk: Ukrainian-associated popular music and (geo)politics in a post-Soviet context”, Yearbook for traditional music 40 (2008) 60–88. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2008-8821]
Ruslana in London, October 2016

Abstract: Focuses on how Ruslana, Gajdamaki, and Svoboda—contemporary groups playing Ukrainian popular music—fashion themselves based on their country of (perceived) origin and what role politics, history, and traditional music play in that process. Using a postcolonial perspective, the author argues that the identity constructed by Ruslana and Gajdamaki functions to assert Ukrainian sovereignty and thus distinguishes the Ukraine from its former colonizer Russia, while Russian-based Svoboda exoticizes the Ukraine by drawing on colonial representations of the country.

  • Kušnìruk, Ol’ga. “Refleksìâ nacìonal’nogo v muzičnomu diskursì”, Studìï mistectvoznavčì 4:28 (2009) 43–47. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-21736]

Examines the category of nationalism in music from the perspective of non-Russian musicology and proposes to introduce this category into the terminological apparatus of the modern Ukrainian musicology.

  • Wickström, David-Emil. Okna otkroj!—Open the windows! Scenes, transcultural flows, and identity politics in popular music from post-Soviet St. Petersburg (Ph.D. diss., University of Copenhagen, 2009). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-22095]

Abstract: Focuses on music production in post-Soviet St. Petersburg from the perspective of local groups, the processes that enable these groups to tour Central Europe, as well as how the groups respond to social and cultural changes in their creative work. The aim is to provide a better understanding of popular music’s role in society, especially related to music, migration, and transcultural flows, specifically focusing on the ties to the post-Soviet emigrant community in Germany. These findings also provide a deeper understanding of cultural processes in the second decade after the fall of the Soviet Union. The first part examines popular music production from a scene perspective as theorized by Will Straw (1991, 2004) and others. This is done based on experiences with the St. Petersburg group Svoboda. By tracing the social networks and hubs, as well as underlying discourses, an overview of music production in the St. Petersburg rock scene is given. The same approach is applied to the scene approach to the Russendisko, a fortnightly discotheque in Berlin run by two emigrants from the former Soviet Union playing post-Soviet popular music, with a high percentage of St. Petersburg groups. The Russendisko is special since it targets a German and not an emigrant audience. The focus is both on the Russendisko itself as well as related events in Germany. Drawing on Ulf Hannerz’s theorization of transcultural flows (1992, 1996) some of the (cultural) flows to and from St. Petersburg are traced. Here the focus is on the flow of music aided by media and people within the frames “form of life” and “market” to both St. Petersburg and Berlin. Since influences from the music style ska were quite prominent in the music heard at the Russendisko, the discussion centers around the presence of reggae and ska in St. Petersburg. Here again Svoboda, whose self-proclaimed style is Ukra-ska-Pung (Ukrainian ska punk) is used as the link between the two cities, especially since some of the group’s songs are also played at the Russendisko. An important connection between St. Petersburg and Berlin that has provided the basis for the Russendisko is the massive emigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany after 1990, which is also briefly discussed. The final part turns to identity constructions, especially how bands from St. Petersburg create a band image and market themselves. Here the focus is on how these constructions relate to concepts of collective identities, especially how groups assert their origin (from St. Petersburg/Russia) and ideas of Russian national identities. One notion of Russian national identity is that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus historically belong together. Inspired by post-colonial theory, the relationship to Ukraine is given special attention by comparing representations of Ukraine by the Russian group Svoboda and the Ukrainian performer Ruslana. The last section returns to Germany and examines first how the band identities shift when promoted to a primarily non-Russian speaking audience within the Russendisko scene. At the same time the Russendisko seems to be part of a broader German and Austrian musical focus on the East–especially linked with music from the Balkans–and the discussion is broadened to include this perspective. Returning to the post-Soviet musicians living in Berlin, the discussion is rounded off by examining why the term diaspora is not applicable within the post-Soviet emigrant community. A related monograph is cited as RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-78783.

  • Yekelchyk, Serhy. “What is Ukrainian about Ukraine’s pop culture? The strange case of Verka Serduchka”, Canadian-American Slavic studies/Revue canadienne-américaine d’études slaves 44/1–2 (spring–summer 2009) 217–232. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-342]
Vêrka Serdûčka

Abstract: The Ukrainian cross-dressing and language-mixing pop star Vêrka Serdûčka (played by male actor Andrij Danilko) is the most controversial product of Ukrainian post-Soviet mass culture. Ukrainian nationalists reject Serdûčka as a parody of their nation, while Russians took umbrage at her 2007 Eurovision entry, which allegedly contained the words “Russia goodbye”. This article interprets the character of Serdûčka as a jester, who makes audiences laugh at their own cultural stereotypes and prejudices, and at the same time as a representative of Ukraine’s living traditional culture, reflecting an ambiguous national identity of this essentially bilingual country.

  • Lastovec’ka-Solans’ka, Zorâna Mykolaїvna. “Rol’ tradyciї ta nacional’nyh cinnostej u duhovnij kul’turi ukraїnciv”, Naukovij vìsnik Nacìonal’noï Muzičnoï Akademìï Ukraïni ìmenì P.I. Čajkovs’kogo 85 (2010) 36–50. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2010-16673]

Abstract: Discusses the Ukrainian sociocultural values through the prism of their traditions. Sociocultural dynamics of cultural development, individual ethnic-aesthetic culture, nation’s genetic memory, national self-identification, and their expression in musical art are analyzed.

  • Radzievskij, Vitalij Aleksandrovič. “Muzykal’naâ kul’tura na ukrainskom Majdane”, Muzykal’naâ kul’tura v teoretičeskom i prikladnom izmerenii. I, ed. by Irina Gennadievna Umnova (Kemerovo: Gosudarstvennyj Universitet Kul’tury i Iskusstva, 2014) 88–96. [RILM abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-80333]

Abstract: Describes the musical components of the majdan culture as the main sociocultural dimensions of the Ukrainian culture. The music of the Èvromajdan is discussed.

  • Schwanitz, Mirko. “Rüben sammeln und Sex Pistols hören: Die ukrainische Revolution und der Mut ihrer Künstler”, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 69/2 (2014) 62–64. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-11161]

Abstract: Discusses the poet and writer Serhìj Žadan, who is considered one of the most powerfully eloquent poets in Europe, with reference as well to selected Ukrainian artists and their situation. Ukraine is presented as the country where most poets, authors, and singers are fighting fiercely for their vision of a new and freer homeland. The translator and author Ûrìj Prohas’ko figures as one of the most important cultural mediators between Ukraine and the German-speaking countries. Andrej Kurkov, internationally the best-known and most-translated Ukrainian author, offered prescient warnings about the scenario that has now come to pass.

  • Morozova, Lûbov’ Sergeevna and Katarzyna Kramnik. “Sounds of Maidan”, Glissando: Magazyn o muzyce współczesnej 26 (2015) http://glissando.pl/en/tekst/sounds-of-maidan/. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-3900]

Abstract: Discusses the soundscape of the Majdan Nezaležnostì (Independence Square) in Kiïv during Èvromajdan.

  • Sonevytsky, Maria. “The freak cabaret on the revolution stage: On the ambivalent politics of femininity, rurality, and nationalism in Ukrainian popular music”, Journal of popular music studies 28/3 (September 2016) 291–314. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2016-5972]
The Dakh Daughters at Rudolstadt-Festival 2016.

Abstract: In the winter of 2013, as dramatic political demonstrations overtook central Kiïv, Ukraine, screens around the world projected live video feeds of the protests first referred to as Èvromajdan, and later simply as Majdan. Social media was pivotal in inciting the groundswell of opposition that eventually led to the abdication of power by President Vìktor Ânukovič. As part of the broad social contest over meaning that has characterized the Ukrainian Majdan and the ongoing war in Ukraine’s eastern borderlands, online communities have interpreted Majdan-themed music videos in dialectically opposing ways, engaging in bitter feuds over the meanings of politically charged tropes on the comment boards of websites and social media feeds, each side accusing the other of propagandizing on behalf of either Putin’s Russia or the US and European Union. This polarized battle over interpretation often mirrored the entrenched discourse over Ukraine’s liminal geopolitical position: forever the quintessential borderland, buffering an expanding Europe from the Russian sphere of influence. This article considers one such contested performance that circulated in the form of an edited music video, the Èvromajdan performance of the piece Gannusâ by the Ukrainian freak cabaret act known as the Dakh Daughters, a Kiïv-based collective of female actors and musicians known for their dramatic, collage-based musical performance pieces.

  • Kiânovs’ka, Lûbov Oleksandrìvna. “Verluste des ukrainischen Musiklebens in der Periode der ‘Hingerichteten Renaissance’: 1930er Jahre und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg”, Musicology today: Journal of the National University of Music Bucharest 7/3:27 (July–September 2016) 241–258. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2016-34688]

Abstract: Describes the tragic events of the Ukrainian musical culture in the period of Stalin’s terror. The author explains—from a social and political perspective—the reasons why Ukrainian art and the Ukrainian intelligentsia had been subjected to repression. Most of the prominent artists were murdered; other examples of reprisal are considered, against the director, actor, public figure Les’ Kurbas, and against choreographer, composer, manager Vasil’ Mikolajovič Verhovinec’. The cruel extinction of blind kobza-players under Harkìv is also described. Even after World War II, repressions against Ukrainian artists hadn’t been stopped, as we find out from the case of the composer Vasil’ Oleksandrovič Barvìns’kij.

  • Sonevytsky, Maria. Wild music: Sound and sovereignty in Ukraine. Music/culture (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2019). [RILM abstracts of Music Literature, 2019-11778]

Abstract: What are the uses of musical exoticism? This book tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of wildness as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, the author assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, the author proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

– Compiled by Katya Slutskaya Levine, Editor, RILM

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by | February 28, 2022 · 6:00 am

Wrapping llamas in song

llama+woman

The women herders of ayllu Qaqachaka in highland Bolivia sing to their llamas in various ceremonial occasions during the year, and also on a more pragmatic daily basis to accompany their herding activities.

But their songs have other, more magical functions, involving the increase of the flocks, when they become a part of the body-centered knowledge and practices that comprise a female aesthetics and poetics of creation that parallels men’s more destructive activities in war.

Many of the principal singers are elderly midwives, and in a lifetime of learning they practice the art of wrapping their animals in song. This wrapping in song also serves to transform and domesticate the spirits of dead enemies, embodied in the animals, and to rebirth them into human society.

Key concepts such as jawi, that glosses as both fleece and river, are ontological expressions of flowing musical sound in woven substance. A mating song for the female llamas, a marking song for the ewes, and a song of blessing for the female llamas reveal how specific musical and lyrical structures express the women’s preoccupations with the generation of beautiful fleece and its weaving into sung wrappings.

This according to “Midwife singers: Llama-human obstetrics in some songs to the animals by Andean women” by Denise Y. Arnold, an essay included in Quechua verbal artistry: The inscription of Andean voices/Arte expresivo Quechua: La inscripción de voces andinas (Aachen: Shaker media, 2004, pp. 145–179).

Below, a visiting delegation passes through Chucura.

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by | February 22, 2022 · 6:00 am

Joe Wilder, barrier breaker

Distinguished for his achievements in both the jazz and classical worlds, Joe Wilder performed as lead trumpet and soloist with Lionel Hampton, Jimmy Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie.

He was also a pioneer who broke down racial barriers. Wilder was a founding member of the Symphony of the New World, the first racially integrated orchestra in the U.S., where he played first trumpet; the first African American to hold a principal chair in a Broadway show orchestra; and one of the first African Americans to join a major network studio orchestra

Wilder’s modesty and ability to perform in many musical genres may have prevented him from achieving popular recognition, but his legacy and contributions to music and culture are far-reaching.

This according to Softly, with feeling: Joe Wilder and the breaking of barriers in American music by Edward Berger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014).

Today is Wilder’s 100th birthday! Above, performing in 2006 (photo by Professor Bop, licensed under CC BY 2.0); below, playing the jazz standard Cherokee in 1956.

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by | February 18, 2022 · 6:00 am

Olympics and music: A brief history. II

Each Olympic Games is an excellent opportunity for the host country to showcase its soft power; we saw the pop music elements in the opening ceremony of London 2012, a combination of local and international performances in the opening ceremony of Seoul 1988, as well as the German works presented by the Nazis through the music competition of Berlin 1936. Of course, the Olympics cannot be divorced from politics, and the Los Angeles, Moscow, and Munich Games were inevitably colored by the Cold War. What role did music play in this? And finally, what is the relationship between the individual and the times in these grand narratives?

-Mu Qian, Editor, RILM

__________________________________________

  • Porta Navarro, Amparo, José María Peñalver Vilar, and Remigi Morant Navasquillo. “Music of the inaugural ceremony of London 2012: A performance among bells”, International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music 44/2 (December 2013) 253–276. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2013-15376]

Abstract: The music of the Olympic Games, especially that of their grandiose rituals and ceremonies, can be considered a great study laboratory due to its relevance, selection of contents, production forms, diffusion, and also because of its capacity of being a synthesis of mediums, supports, and musical tendencies. This research studies the music of the inaugural ceremony of London 2012, and examines it by means of musical analysis and also content revision, studying the music that is listened to and its characteristics, the way it is built up, and its effects and tendencies. This ceremony would not make any sense without music. Music acts as an emotional catalyst and also as a metronome of the dynamism of the show and, finally, it shows its capacity to persuade, to move, and to become a symbol of identity, achievements, and agreements among cultures.

  • Dilling, Margaret. “The script, sound, and sense of the Seoul Olympic ceremonies”, Contemporary directions: Korean folk music engaging the twentieth century and beyond, ed. by Nathan Hesselink. Korea research monograph (Berkeley: University of California, 2001) 173–234. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2001-10756]

Abstract: From the outset, the scenario planning committee for the 1988 Games of the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul identified three crucial desiderata: a universal theme, a distinctly Korean approach, and a sense of something new and different. Musically, the first goal was met with the official song, Hand in hand with music by Georgio Moroder and lyrics by Tom Whitlock; the second by the inclusion of modified examples of indigenous Korean music and dance genres; and the third by the inclusion of music by contemporary Korean composers. The processes through which these elements were implemented are explored through interviews with those involved; particular attention is given to the controversies surrounding new works by Kang Sukhi and Hwang Byung-ki (Hwang Byeong-gi).

  • Gilbert, Janet Monteith. “New music and myth: The Olympic Arts Festival of Contemporary Music”, Perspectives of new music 22/1–2 (fall–winter–spring–summer 1983–1984) 478–482. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 1984-14276]

Abstract: Report on the festival held in Los Angeles in June 1984. Many of the works programmed expressed a common theme: the creation of mythological or cosmic music produced or supported by a sophisticated technology.

  • Kuharskij, Vasilij Feodos’evič. “Vospevaja idei mira, družby, gumanizma…”, Sovetskaâ muzyka: Organ Soûza sovetskih kompozitorov i Sektora iskusstv Narkomprosa 6 (1980) 2–5. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1980-20149]

Abstract: Deals with the tasks and goals of the cultural program for the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. Surveys the musical undertakings, concert programs, and the participation of well-known Soviet performers.

  • Wichmann, Siegfried, ed. World cultures and modern art: The encounter of 19th and 20th century European art and music with Asia, Africa, Oceania, Afro- and Indo-America—Exhibition on the occasion of the games of the 20th Olympiad, Munich 1972: June 16 to September 30, Haus der Kunst (München: Bruckmann, 1972). [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1974-43]

Abstract: Abbreviated version of the German exhibition catalogue. Contains several additional contributions. The relevant chapters are Orientalism in music, Asia and music since Debussy, Music of Negroes and American Indians, and Sound Centre (an attempt at a synthesis of global music cultures). Contributions are by Ramón Pelinsky, Claus Raab, and Dieter Schnebel.

  • Lazzaro, Federico. “800 mètres d’André Obey: Drame sportif, grec et musical”, Les cahiers de la Société Québécoise de Recherche en Musique 20/1 (printemps 2019) 57–80. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2019-23489]

Abstract: 800 mètres is a sports drama born out of the stadium for the stadium, staged at Roland-Garros in 1941 together with Aeschylus’s The suppliants. The music for both plays, now lost, was by Arthur Honegger. Inspired by Greek tragedies in both its formal and dramaturgical conception, 800 mètres is the translation into words, gestures, and sounds of the thoughts that André Obey expressed at the time of the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Obey was one of the main actors in the reflection on the relationship between music and sport. In promoting sports among French intellectuals, Obey advocated for the birth of an Olympic art and elaborated a rich metaphorical portrait of sport as music. Based on textual, iconographic, and sound archival documents, the genesis of 800 mètres is reconstituted, how this drama stages Obey’s philhellenic ideas is shown, and the complex musical-dramatic conception of the work is discussed.

  • Heinze, Carsten. “Der Kunstwettbewerb Musik im Rahmen der Olympischen Spiele 1936”, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 62/1 (2005) 32–51. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2005-1103]

Abstract: Although the Olympic Art Competitions were introduced in 1912, they generated little public interest until 1932. The Nazis were determined to set new standards with this concomitant event in 1936 and used the forum to present to the world the towering achievements of German art, which in the meantime had been purged of all elements considered degenerate. The exploitative process is reconstructed as it pertained to the musical segment of the competition, which culminated in a grand Olympic concert, the first of its kind. Leaving nothing to chance in their erection of a new monumental style, the Nazis awarded medals to each of the four German works submitted.

  • Jiang, Zhiguo. “Taiwan wuqu hesheng yanjiu”, Zhongguo yinyuexue/Musicology in China 1:82 (2006) 32–42. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-3847]

Abstract: Analyzes harmonic material in Jiang Wenye’s orchestral work Taiwan wuqu (Taiwan dances), op. 1 (1934). Jiang Wenye (1910–83) was a pioneer among Chinese composers using modern composition techniques, and his was the first Chinese work to receive a top prize in international competition, at the Olympic International Music Competition in Berlin, 1936.

Part I is here.

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by | February 16, 2022 · 6:00 am

Music theory with attitude

Although the notion that Musicae rudimenta was written by Nicolaus Faber has persisted for centuries, internal evidence points conclusively to the Bavarian historian and philologist Johannes Aventinus (Johann Turmair or Thurmayr, 1477–1534) as its author. One of the first music treatises to use German as well as Latin, it borrows heavily from other sources, usually with due citations.

The author’s unequivocal style is striking: for example, the table of contents lists Chapter 1 as “The origins of music, a subject about which the barbarians err disgracefully, not to say ignorantly”, while other entries include such observations as “I am embarrassed to report what empty, fatuous things some writers have to say on this topic” and “In this matter, the run-of-the-mill singers are like night owls in the sunlight—blind!”

Nor does he spare himself, noting of his second chapter that “Most of the things here are quoted from others and are not very important, being pedantic and technical.” His preface concludes: “Look me over and buy me, the price is so low. Believe me, you won’t regret it.”

This according to “Musicae rudimenta: Augsburg, 1556” by T. Herman Keahey in Paul A. Pisk: Essays in his honor (Austin: University of Texas, 1966).

Above, an illustration from the treatise.

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by | February 10, 2022 · 6:00 am

Olympics and music: A brief history. I

The Beijing Winter Olympic Games have become one of the biggest hot spots in the world’s attention at the moment, and among musicians it is no exception. The Olympic Games and music have always been inextricably linked. In ancient Greek times, music was an essential part of the Olympics. The large crowds brought by the Olympics made it an ideal venue for musicians to perform as well. At the same time, many competitions were called by trumpeters to start.

For the modern Olympics, music is even more ubiquitous. Coubertin‘s Olympic ideology was directly inspired by the opera libretto L’Olimpiade; the Olympic Games from 1912 to 1948 included musical competitions and medals were awarded like sporting events; and today’s Olympic-related musical events are a constant source of cultural and commercial competition.

Let’s take a glimpse at the relationship between music and the Olympics through relevant literature included in RILM.

– Mu Qian, Editor, RILM

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  • Segrave, Jeffrey O. “Music as sport history: The special case of Pietro Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade and the story of the Olympic Games”, Sporting sounds: Relationships between sport and music, ed. by Anthony Bateman and John Bale (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2009) 113–127. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2009-1570]

Abstract: Pietro Metastasio’s popular 18th-century libretto L’Olimpiade publicized and transmitted a particular ideological and historicized conception of the Olympic Games that would ultimately contribute to the rationalization and legitimization of Pierre de Coubertin’s own idiosyncratic Olympic ideology, a philosophical religious doctrine that embraced a noble and honorable conception of sport at the same time as it served discrete class, race, and gendered ends. The hegemony of the contemporary Olympic Games movement is grounded in part on the appropriation of the classicism and Romanticism transmitted in Metastasio’s work. Musicological readings of opera, sociolinguistic conceptions of meaning, and postmodern social perspectives on material culture are addressed. Metastasio’s L’Olimpiade, in narrative, music, and production, sustained a particular image of the games, an image that nourished Coubertin’s own ideological formulation at the same time as it paved the way for further musical representations of the Games that to this day lend authority to the hegemony of the Olympics by appealing to a musically transmitted, mythologized, and Hellenized past.

  • Charkiolakīs, Alexandros. “Music in the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896: Cultural and social trends”, Mousikos logos 1 (January 2014) 51–64. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 2014-4634]

Abstract: Music, without any doubt, has been one of the main features during both the opening ceremony and on the concert that was given in the end of the first day in the Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens. Actually, there were two new works commissioned for performance during that first day: the Olympiakos ymnos (Olympic hymn) by Spyridōn Samaras on a text of Kōstis Palamas and Pentathlon by Dionysios Lauragkas on poetry of Iōannīs Polemīs. Here, we show the cultural and social trends that are implied in these two works and are characteristic of the developing ideologies in Greece of that time. Furthermore, we emphasized our scope towards the impact that these two works had on the contemporary Athenian society of that time.

  • Segrave, Jeffrey O. “‘All men will become brothers’ (“Alle Menschen werden Bruder“): Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Olympic Games ideology”, Sport, music, identities, ed. by Anthony Bateman. Sport in the global society, contemporary perspectives (London: Routledge, 2015) 38–52. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2015-99]

Abstract: First performed in an Olympic context as part of the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has become a popular mainstay of modern Olympic protocol. Part of a ritualized entertainment spectacle that enhances the appeal and popularity of the Games, the Ninth Symphony elevates the prestige of the Games and helps to sustain the Olympic Movement’s political and commercial dominance within the panoply of institutionalized sport. It is argued here that the normalization of the Finale of the Ninth Symphony in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games not only transmits and reinforces the traditional Olympic ideology, but also reaffirms the ascendant hegemony of the Olympic movement within the world of elite international sport. This study is a critical reading of the Olympic musical ceremonial as a site of ideological production, especially as it pertains to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

  • Dümling, Albrecht. “Zwischen Autonomie und Fremdbestimmung: Die Olympische Hymne von Robert Lubahn und Richard Strauss”, Richard Strauss-Blätter 38 (Dezember 1997) 68–102. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text, 1997-52827]

Abstract: When the Olympic Games were to be held in Berlin in 1936 Strauss was chosen as composer of an Olympic Hymn. Early in 1933 he agreed in principle, but on the condition that he was provided with an appropriate text. Four poems out of 3,000 entries were selected and sent on to Strauss with no mention of the poets’ names. He decided on a text, written by the hitherto unknown poet Robert Lubahn. Despite the favorable response of committees and German music critics, the belongs to Strauss’s weaker works.

  • Barney, Katelyn. “Celebration or cover up? My island home, Australian national identity and the spectacle of Sydney 2000″, Aesthetics and experience in music performance, ed. by Elizabeth Mackinlay, Denis Collins, and Samantha Owens (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2005) 141–150. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2005-18443]

Abstract: Addresses the conflicts and complexities inherent in musical statements of Australian national identity as represented by Neil Murray’s My island home and Christine Anu’s performance of it at the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Her performance functioned simultaneously as a site for celebration of indigeneity and Australian national identity yet also as a concealment or cover-up of the social and political positioning of indigenous Australians within Australian history and contemporary society. As it celebrated localized Torres Strait Islander culture and identity as part of the Australian national imagination, it also concealed the realities of indigenous issues and race relations within Australia.

  • Newman, Melinda and Michael Paoletta. “Goodsports”, Billboard: The international newsweekly of music, video and home entertainment 118/5 (4 February 2006) 22–23. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2006-2393]

Abstract: Established stars including Andrea Bocelli, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, and Lou Reed, as well as new and developing acts like James Blunt, Switchfoot, Flipsyde, Morningwood, the Donnas, Rock ‘N Roll Soldiers, We Are Scientists, and OK Go are hoping for a career boost from their ties to the Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy. By using hip, under-the-radar acts, NBC hopes to connect with the much-coveted youth demographic. NBC uses music in four ways for the Olympics: network campaigns in advance of the Games; co-branding opportunities; features and interstitial footage broadcast during the athletic events; and nightly concerts.

  • Lawson, Francesca R. Sborgi. “Music in ritual and ritual in music: A virtual viewer’s perceptions about liminality, functionality, and mediatization in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games”, Asian music: Journal of the Society for Asian Music 42/2 (summer–fall 2011) 3–18. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2011-12007]

Abstract: Concepts such as liminality, functionality, and mediatization were clearly exemplified in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The fascinating use of the ancient practice of liminal integration of music and ritual in a modern mediatized performance illustrates both indigenous Chinese and contemporary Western performance theories. Despite the spectacular nature of the opening ceremony, however, it is doubtful that international viewers fully understood the complex messages communicated through this modern ritual performance.

  • Juzwiak, Rich. “Village Person says Y.M.C.A. isn’t about gays, is probably lying”, http://gawker.com/village-person-says-y-m-c-a-isnt-about-gays-is-pro-1493380284. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2014-293]

Abstract: A common reading of the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. (1978) posits the song as a post-Stonewall stealth attack on heteronormative America. From discos to weddings to sports arenas across the country, millions have contorted in acronymal glee, singing the praises of the male-only fitness center/boarding house where you can “hang out with the boys” and “do whatever you feel”. The song first appeared on an album titled Cruisin’. Despite the seemingly obvious subtext, members of the Village People deny any subtextual intent. Victor Willis, the first lead singer of the Village People who played the role of “cop” and co-wrote Y.M.C.A., recently spoke out against using the song as Team USA’s entrance music at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics–intended in protest of Putin’s anti-gay mandate and the rash of violent hate crimes in its wake (not to mention the Sports Minister’s threat to jail gay athletes). The author notes that “the inherent gayness of the Village People has been a point of contention between the people who were (and are) in the group and its creators, Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo. Morali, who died in 1991, was gay and in last year’s documentary about the politics of disco, Secret disco revolution, Belolo said that the Village People were Morali’s statement of his own gay pride, as well as an exercise in double entendre”.

  • Cottrell, Stephen. “Glad to meet you: North Korea’s pop orchestra warms hearts in the South”, The conversation (UK) (9 February 2018) https://theconversation.com/glad-to-meet-you-north-koreas-pop-orchestra-warms-hearts-in-the-south-91499. [RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2018-52079]

Abstract: Describes a performance by Samjiyon Band, a well-known fixture from North Korea’s cultural scene, on the first night of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

Part II is here.

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by | February 7, 2022 · 6:00 am

Dickens and music

Charles Dickens’s works attest to a keen familiarity with the ballads and traditional songs of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Less obvious from his writings is his deep love of Western classical music—he adored the lieder of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, he championed Arthur Sullivan, and he reported being “overcome” by Gounod’s Faust.

Still, Dickens found a rich vein of humor in the music making of the common folk—not least in the character of Mr. Morfin in Dombey and Son:

“He was a great musical amateur in his way…and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private party.”

“He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and, having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping consolation out of its deepest notes…[but] his landlady…was fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances than a sensation of something rumbling in her bones.”

This according to “Dickens and music” by Charles Cudworth (The musical times CXI/1528 [June 1970] pp. 588–590. Today is Dickens’s 210th birthday!

Related article: Musicology and fiction

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by | February 2, 2022 · 6:00 am

Joyce’s musical sirens

In the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses James Joyce made words represent music by playing with or even overcoming certain conventional features of language. Particularly notable are Joyce’s representation of polyphony, melody, rhythm, and of music’s traditional absence of conventional meaning.

The essence of Joycean onomatopoeia in “Sirens” is not that it represents music iconically, but that it makes music linguistically. Joycean onomatopoeia is not the natural union of meaning and form, of signified and signifier—it is the signifier freeing itself from the link with the signified.

“Sirens” is a step toward absolute form and abstraction; it breaks with the representational conventions of naturalistic and realistic fiction and points the way toward modernism.

This according to “Strange words, strange music: The verbal music of ‘Sirens’” by Andreas Fischer, an essay included in Bronze by gold: The music of James Joyce (New York: General Music, 1999).

Ulysses was first published 100 years ago today! Above, Nora Barnacle, Joyce’s wife and muse, on their wedding day in 1931; the novel takes place on the day they met in 1904. Below, Cathy Berberian reads an excerpt from the “Sirens” episode.

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by | January 31, 2022 · 3:35 pm

RILM to publish DEUMM Online!

RILM has acquired the full rights to the Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti (DEUMM), published between 1983 and 2005 by the renowned Italian publisher of reference works UTET Grandi Opere under the editorship of Alberto Basso. With its three thematic sections (Le biografie; Il lessico; and I titoli e i personaggi) containing some 35,000 entries, DEUMM is the most important modern music dictionary in the Italian language. 

The content of the original printed edition, along with some updated and new entries, will be the starting point for DEUMM Online, to be offered as one of RILM’s suite of reference works. RILM plans to launch DEUMM Online in winter 2023 on RILM’s platform Egret, which offers advanced search and browse capabilities. DEUMM Online will be an essential electronic resource for music scholarship world-wide.

The founding editor of DEUMM, Dr. Alberto Basso, said “I feel particularly honored and therefore happy to have been included among the initiatives that RILM is proposing to the world in the context of scholarship and musical history. The fact that DEUMM has been taken into consideration satisfies me in a particular way and certainly would have satisfied the management of the former UTET that is unfortunately no longer present on the market. I hope that the work I have done creating DEUMM some forty years ago will continue and that DEUMM will be updated.” (The original interview with Dr. Basso may be heard below.)

Dr. Alberto Basso

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by | January 29, 2022 · 6:00 am

Delius’s taste

Today, on Delius’s 160th birthday, let’s eavesdrop on the reminiscences of his friend Percy Grainger.

“Composer never had truer colleague than I had in Frederick Delius, and when he died I felt that my music had lost its best friend.”

“Our outlook on life was very similar, our artistic tastes met at many points. Both of us considered the Icelandic sagas the pinnacle of narrative prose. Both of us knew the Scandinavian languages and admired the culture of Scandinavia as the flower of Europeanism.”

“Both of us worshipped Walt Whitman, Wagner, Grieg, and Jens Peter Jacobsen. Both of us detested music of the Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven period. ‘If a man tells me he likes Mozart, I know in advance that he is a bad musician’ Delius was fond of saying.”

“One year he would ask for Bach; the next year he would say ‘You know, Bach always bores me.’ But Chopin and Grieg he never turned against. He preferred Ravel to Debussy. He had no patience with Richard Strauss, Mahler, or Hindemith.”

This from “About Delius”, reprinted in Grainger on music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999, pp. 361–368). Above, Grainger and Delius in 1923. Below, Delius’s On hearing the first cuckoo in spring.

Related article: Esoteric orchestration

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