by | April 24, 2016 · 6:00 am

Elliott Carter studies online

carter studies

Elliott Carter studies online, an open-access journal devoted to the music, life, and times of the American composer Elliott Carter, posted its inaugural issue in 2016.

The journal welcomes submissions on a wide range of topics—there are no restrictions on disciplinary perspective or format—and possibilities include history, theory, performance practice, personal essays, aesthetics, biography, criticism, analysis, and media.

Performers, composers, musicologists, historians, theorists, and “friends of Elliott” are encouraged to submit full-length articles for anonymous peer review, as well as short essays and notes, commentary, analytical vignettes, oral history, reviews, and media. Submissions may be specifically about Elliott Carter and his music or may focus on broader topics of relevance to Carter Studies, such as music and politics, music and philosophy, music and poetry, or theoretical work that bears on Carter’s music.

Below, Carter’s Variations for orchestra, the subject of one of the articles in the first issue.

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by | April 22, 2016 · 6:00 am

Yehudi Menuhin, conductor

 

By the late 1960s the legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin was conducting regularly, and by the 1980s he had led most of the world’s great orchestras and had recorded with many of them. In the early 1990s he retired from playing the violin in public and concentrated on conducting.

While Menuhin mostly focused on standard repertory, he could surprise listeners with his adventurousness. For example, as part of his 80th-birthday celebration at the 1996 Lincoln Center Festival he conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in a program of 14 new works composed in his honor. The composers were a strikingly diverse group that included Lukas Foss, Karel Husa, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Somei Satoh, David Del Tredici, Giya Kancheli, and John Tavener.

This according to “Sir Yehudi Menuhin, violinist, conductor, and supporter of charities, is dead at 82” by Allan Kozinn (The New York times CXLVIII/51,460 [13 March 1999] pp. A:1, 12).

Today would have been Menuhin’s 100th birthday! Below, conducting part of Elgar’s cello concerto.

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by | April 19, 2016 · 6:00 am

Early sources for African instruments

Le triumphe de la noblissement des Gentilhommes

Among the various musical instruments depicted in early documents (bells and double bells, drums, scrapers, horns, flutes, xylophones, and bow-lute), the double bell is of particular interest because of its relatively good pictorial documentation.

In 1687 a double bell from the Congo-Angola area called longa was first mentioned in print. Even today the Ovimbundu people call the double bell alunga (sing. elunga), and give it an important role in the enthronement of the king.

Early pictorial sources and later reports indicate four types of double bell—those with stem grip, bow grip, frame grip, and lateral bar grip—and of these the stem grip double bell, found in the Congo-Angola areas as well as Rhodesia, represents the older type of double bell and probably has its origin in Benin-Yoruba. It appears that the Portuguese, who got to know the double bell as an important court instrument in the Guinea area, brought this instrument, together with other court appurtenances, to Luanda, their new base of operations after the breakdown of the Congo kingdom.

This according to “Early historical illustrations of West and Central African music” by Walter Hirschberg (African music IV/3 [1969] pp. 6–18).

Above, Le triumphe de la noblissement des Gentilhommes, published by Pieter de Marees in 1605. Below, Nigerian double bells and other instruments.

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by | April 17, 2016 · 6:00 am

Whitney Balliett’s jazz metaphors

 

In more than 40 years at The New Yorker, Whitney Balliett encouraged readers to hear jazz through his vividly metaphorical writing.

Writing during the years of jazz’s greatest development and ferment, Balliett used comparatively little technical vocabulary, favoring a sensual rendering. Of the trumpeter Roy Eldridge, he wrote: “His tone at slow tempos still supplicates and enfolds and at fast speeds hums and threatens.” The trumpeter Doc Cheatham’s solos were “a succession of lines, steps, curves, parabolas, angles, and elevations.”

Balliett also used metaphor to great effect in describing appearances. Of Teddy Wilson: “His figure, once thin as a stamp, has thickened, and his hawklike profile has become a series of arcs and spheres.” And of the drummer Big Sid Catlett, who inspired some of his finest writing, he wrote: “Everything was in proportion: the massive shoulders, the long arms and giant, tapering fingers, the cannonball fists, the barn-door chest and the tidy waist, his big feet, and the columnar neck.”

This according to “Whitney Balliett, New Yorker jazz critic, dies at 80” by Ben Ratliff (The New York times 3 February 2007).

Today would have been Balliett’s 90th birthday! Below, Big Sid in action (wait for him trading fours near the end).

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by | April 13, 2016 · 6:00 am

Al Green’s “Take me to the river”

Written and recorded by Al Green (guitarist Teenie Hodges gets a co-writing credit), Take me to the river straddles the line between sacred and secular—between sultry soul music and ecstatic gospel release. The sound is R&B with lashings of subtlety; it doesn’t sound like a band playing, it sounds like a lot of instruments humming.

Despite never being released as a single, Take me to the river was covered in turn by several other R&B musicians. Still, it took a band of CBGB-dwelling art school grads to fully realize the song’s potential.

Produced by Brian Eno, the Talking Heads version turns the original production inside out. In the original version, the strings, horns, organ, guitars, and Green’s wild-honey voice blend into a single swinging, winning thing, whereas the Heads/Eno version emphasizes open space and distinct sounds.

This according to “Take me to the river” by Tim De Lisle, an essay included in Lives of the great songs (London: Penguin, 1995 pp. 21–25; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1995-20152).

Today is Green’s 70th birthday! Above, Green in 2010 (photo credit: Kingkingphoto&celebrity-photos.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0).

Below, the original recording, followed by the Talking Heads version.

BONUS: Talking Heads in Stop making sense (1984).

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by | April 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Ginastera and Argentine traditions

 

Three categories of Argentine traditional elements are evident in Alberto Ginastera’s sonata for guitar, op. 47.

Characteristics of the criollo guitar tradition and of the guitar itself play important roles in the construction of the piece. Elements of the andino cantos de caja, the baguala, and the vidala are used in the development of important thematic material as well. Finally, the malambo and other criollo dances generate the rhythms of the energetic closing movement.

This according to Alberto Ginastera’s use of Argentine folk elements in the sonata for guitar, op. 47 by Mark Grover Basinski, a dissertation accepted by the University of Arizona in 1994.

Today is Ginastera’s 100th birthday! Below, Manuel Espinás performs the sonata.

BONUS: The composer with one of his more temperamental critics (click to enlarge).

Ginastera

 

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by | April 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Yip Harburg, the Lemon-Drop Kid

 

Born Isidore Hochberg, the lyricist changed his name to Edgar Yipsel “Yip” Harburg when he married in 1923. In spite of a close childhood friendship—and some collaboration—with the Gershwin brothers, he did not consider making a living with poetry until the stock market crash in 1929 wiped out his profits as an industrial inventor and entrepreneur.

His first hit song was Brother, can you spare a dime?, with music by Jay Gorney. Although radio networks tried to ban the song for being sympathetic to the unemployed, Harburg was not discouraged from political commitment: He wrote one of the first antiwar musicals (Hooray for what!, 1937); the first all-black Hollywood musical for general audiences (Cabin in the sky, 1943); the first musical about feminism (Bloomer girl, 1944); and the first stage song about the emerging civil rights movement (The eagle and me from Bloomer girl). He was also the first to mount a fully integrated Broadway musical (Finian’s rainbow, 1947).

Harburg is best remembered for his collaboration on 111 songs with Harold Arlen, including those for The wizard of Oz.

This according to “The lemon-drop kid” by John Lahr (The New Yorker LXXII/29 [30 September 1996] pp. 68–74).

Today is Harburg’s 120th birthday! Below, Pete Seeger sings Brother, can you spare a dime?

BONUS: The classic Harburg wit.

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by | April 6, 2016 · 6:00 am

Finnish nationalism and neotraditional music

 

Music has played a critical role in the shifting spaces between the Finnish national imagination and the global marketplace.

The ways in which neotraditional musicians think and talk about past and present practices, the role of music in the representation of national identity, and the interactions of Finnish musicians with performers from around the globe illuminate the multilayered processes that have shaped and are shaped by new traditional music in Finland, illuminating the connections between music, place, and identity.

This according to Ilmatar’s inspirations: Nationalism, globalization, and the changing soundscapes of Finnish folk music by Tina K. Ramnarine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Below, JPP—the group serves as one of the book’s case studies.

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by | April 4, 2016 · 6:00 am

Children and music-animal pairs

 

In a study of the development of children’s ability to relate musical forms to extramusical concepts, four- and six-year-old children matched appropriate animal pictures to excerpts from Sergej Prokof’ev’s Petya i volk (Peter and the wolf) significantly better than chance, but identified the wolf and bird more readily than the cat and duck excerpts.

Three-year-olds participating in a simplified version of the task experienced a comparable order of difficulty in matching the various music-animal pairs.

A third experiment replicated the first, but with the less familiar music of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Le carnaval des animaux. Again, performance was above chance, increasing the likelihood that children’s success in the first two experiments was not attributable to previous exposure to the music.

This according to “The development of referential meaning in music” by Sandra E. Trehub and Laurel J. Trainor (Music perception: An interdisciplinary journal  IX/4 [summer 1992] pp. 455–70).

Below, the Saint-Saëns work.

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by | March 31, 2016 · 6:00 am

The roots of Goa trance

DJ Laurent

To understand how a menagerie of Western misfits, searchers, junkies, and fugitives ended up dancing to a mutant strain of proto-techno on a beach on the Arabian sea, you have to go back to the all-night psychedelic rock jams played over massive beachside sound systems during the 1970s.

By the late 1980s electronic music and DJs had taken over the Goa dance scene. With the dust and heat of the coastal setting, vinyl was not a viable option for deejaying. Instead, DJs used cassette tapes played on professional Walkmans, which allowed for pitch manipulation and precise edits (vocals were often cut out of songs and hypnotic trance-like sections extended).

The key player in the early Goa trance scene was DJ Laurent. Playing to a crowd tripping on LSD and charas, he was a master at weaving eclectic musical sources into an organic progression that could last from dusk until dawn; from ominous twilight grooves to blissed-out, sun-kissed climaxes.

This according to “Unveiling the secret: The roots of trance” by Dave Mothersole (Dancecult: Journal of electronic dance music culture IV/1 [2012]). Above and below, DJ Laurent in action.

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