by | November 13, 2016 · 6:00 am

Mary Wigman and Ausdruckstanz

ernst_ludwig_kirchner_-_die_tanzende_mary_wigman_-_1933

Early in Mary Wigman’s career, her performance works could have been classified as either dance or Expressionist theater. By positioning herself as a dance artist she was able to consolidate power over her creative output in ways that would not have been possible in a less feminized art form.

Wigman’s choices regarding all aspects of her career and creative output were predicated on the practicalities of realizing her primary concern: maintaining creative and financial independence as a female artist. These practical considerations included style, genre, and her relationships to bourgeois culture, the physical culture movement, and the image of the Neue Frau. Her navigation of circumstance in the Weimar era enabled her to successfully negotiate the available opportunities, and therefore to become enshrined as the primary progenitor of Ausdruckstanz.

This according to “Mary Wigman: Expressionist, feminist, theatre artist” by Janet Werther (Studies in musical theatre VIII/3 [2014] pp. 261–70). This issue of Studies in musical theatre, along with many others, is covered in our new RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text collection.

Today is Wigman’s 130th birthday! Above, a 1933 portrait by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; below, excerpts from her iconic Hexentanz.

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by | November 10, 2016 · 6:00 am

Early years of the Society for Ethnomusicology

SEM founders

In its third issue the Journal African music published a brief article about a new professional society—“Society of [sic] Ethnomusicology” by Willard Rhodes (I/3 [1956] pp. 70–71).

In 1953 a group of anthropologists including Rhodes, David P. McAllester, and Alan P. Merriam, along with the musicologist Charles Seeger, had issued Ethno-musicology newsletter no. 1, a modest 10-page mimeographed pamphlet. In two years the mailing list had grown to almost 600 addresses, so a formal organization seemed warranted. The Society for Ethnomusicology was founded in 1955.

Rhodes was pleased to announce that the newsletter, which originally presented only Notes and News, Bibliography, and Discography, was recently enabled by the growth of the Society’s membership to over 260—plus a small grant—to include articles and book reviews. Hopes were expressed that this newsletter might one day follow African music’s path by expanding into a journal.

Above, the original core group in 1971 (left to right, Seeger, Merriam, Rhodes, and McAllester). Below, one of Rhodes’s field recordings was included on the Voyager golden record.

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by | November 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Tecnocumbia and Ecuadorian identity

 

Peruvian tecnocumbia arrived in Ecuador in the 1990s, and the ensuing tecnocumbia boom fostered a new music scene that revitalized Ecuadorian popular music (EPM) and contested Ecuadorians’ perception of its national music.

Social, economic, and political factors triggered the increasing production and consumption of this music, and EPM, a stigmatized music that was barely heard in the mainstream media in the 1970s and 1980s, came to be perceived as música nacional by the working classes. The historical contexts, social relations, political economies, and physical landscapes that generate and maintain the EPM scene illuminate how working-class musicians, entrepreneurs, and fans from Quito responded to the social and economic crisis in the country that brought about a massive wave of emigration in the late 1990s.

This according to “The Ecuadorian popular music scene in Quito: Contesting the national imaginary” by Ketty Wong, an essay included in Made in Latin America: Studies in popular music (New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 89–98).

Above and below, Quito native Jaime Enrique Aymara, known as el rey de la tecnocumbia.

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by | November 7, 2016 · 6:00 am

MGG Online

mggnotaghomepage

The encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart is now available as an online database.

 MGG Online, a digital encyclopedia containing the entire second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart along with updated and new content, was launched on 1 November 2016 on a powerful platform with the most up-to-date search and browse functions, integrated translation, sortable works lists, and much more.

Further information is here.

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by | November 6, 2016 · 6:00 am

Ray Conniff makes it big

 

In the late 1940s Ray Conniff made an intense study of hit records to discover the key to successful recording.

In 1953 he became musical director for Columbia Records, and in 1955 he was responsible for the arrangements on Don Cherry’s Band of gold, a million seller; the next year he was allowed to produce his own album, ’S wonderful, which sold half a million copies.

Conniff made many LPs that developed the swing-era formula he had devised, starting a trend that was widely copied. His 1966 version of Somewhere my love, an arrangement of the vocal version of Maurice Jarre’s Lara’s theme from the film Doctor Zhivago, became one of the most famous successes in the history of film background music.

This according to “Conniff, Ray” by Reuben and Naomi Musiker (Conductors and composers of popular orchestral music: A biographical and discographical sourcebook [New York: Routledge, 2013] pp. 47–51); this reference work is one of many resources included in RILM music encyclopedias, an ever-expanding full-text compilation of reference works.

Today would have been Conniff’s 100th birthday! Below, Conniff demonstrates his signature use of voices as big-band instruments.

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by | November 3, 2016 · 6:00 am

Performing premodernity online

performing-premodernity

Performing premodernity online, an open-access journal launched in January 2015, publishes papers given at Performing Premodernity conferences as well as reports from workshops and other events.

Performing Premodernity is a research project based at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. It is one of eight premodernity projects funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences). Concentrating on both academic and artistic research, the project aims to contribute to the revitalizing of historically informed performance today.

The journal’s first volume includes papers from a conference that was held in København in February 2014 on Francesco Cavalli’s opera Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne. Below, Soledad Cardoso performs an aria from the work.

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by | October 31, 2016 · 6:00 am

Liszt’s Totentanz

holbein-totentanz

The medieval Dance of Death and variation form always belonged together, and Franz Liszt’s Totentanz is a splendid example.

In the European cultural tradition, the Dies irae is closely bound up with the experience of death. Liszt’s use of motive transformation—particularly the practice of modal reshaping—permitted him to unfold this theme in a series of ever new character variations, with their contrasts oriented around a common denominator.

This according to Haláltánc: Variáció, épitkezés, modális transzformáció Liszt Ferenc zenéjében by József Ujfalussy (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990).

Happy Halloween from RILM! Above, a woodcut from Hans Holbein the younger’s Danse macabre series, one of the visual works that inspired Liszt. Below, a performance by Beatrice Berrut.

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by | October 27, 2016 · 6:00 am

P-funk tears the roof off

 

In the 1970s George Clinton took funk to a new level when he formulated the P-funk concept, which was defined by a philosophy, attitude, culture, and musical style.

Grounded in the ideology of Black Power, P-funk advocated self-liberation from the social and cultural restrictions of society, creating new social spaces for African Americans to redefine themselves and celebrate their blackness.

P-funk had its own language, fashion, dances, and mythical heroes and villains, who Clinton presented as black science-fiction characters. The mastermind and producer of five P-funk groups, Clinton combined these cultural components to create stories about black people and black life from a black perspective.

This according to “Funk” by Portia K. Maultsby (The Garland encyclopedia of world music III [New York: Routledge, 2013] pp. 680–86); this encyclopedia is one of many resources included in RILM music encyclopedias, an ever-expanding full-text compilation of reference works.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the opening of the P-Funk Earth Tour, whose production budget was the largest amount ever allocated for a black music act to tour at that time. Below, an excerpt from the tour’s performance in Houston shortly after it opened in New Orleans.

BONUS: Wishing for more? Here’s the whole concert.

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by | October 24, 2016 · 6:00 am

Instrumentarium de Chartres

chartres-cathedral-rose-window

Built during the 12th and 13th centuries, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

Among the cathedral’s precious treasures dating from the 12th through the 16th centuries are the statues of the Portail Royal and its three stained glass windows, the largest collection of stained glass from the 13th century, and several hundred 16th-century bas-reliefs in the choir. These unique elements contain 312 catalogued depictions of 26 musical instruments representing a veritable history of French instrument making from the High Middle Ages through the Renaissance.

Preliminary research led to a 1966 proposal by Julien Skowron to reconstruct some of the instruments depicted in the cathedral’s visual arts; six instruments were built, and in 1977 the Instrumentarium de Chartres was born. Today the collection of some 40 string, wind, and percussion instruments comprises the most complete and most played instrumentarium in Europe; it also serves an important pedagogical function for the curious of all ages who enjoy hands-on experience with the collection. The success of the project attests to the fine medieval and Renaissance artistry that makes modern reconstruction of this rich historical collection possible.

Instrumentarium de Chartres is an open-access online presentation of this collection, presenting images of the original artworks and the newly reconstructed instruments, and many other resources for scholars, performers, and the general public.

Above, a rose window from the cathedral that includes several images of instruments (click to enlarge); below, a brief demonstration of some of the instruments.

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by | October 20, 2016 · 6:00 am

Turandot in China

 

Chinese presenters have made their bid for grand opera’s international ranks with the very piece that marks the end of that tradition—Puccini’s Turandot.

The irony reaches further. In the country where Chinese singers have the greatest advantage, these productions have primarily featured Western performers; a piece that had been conspicuously absent from the country where it purports to take place has wound up essentially becoming China’s national opera; and the original story was never about China in the first place—it came from a French translation of a Persian folk tale that was adapted by an Italian playwright and later reinvented by a German writer whose version inspired Puccini.

This according to “A princess comes home” by Ken Smith (Opera LXIII/12 [December 2012] pp. 1473–1479). Below, excerpts from Turandot at the Forbidden City, directed by Zhang Yimou.

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