by | March 3, 2016 · 6:00 am

Translingual discourse in ethnomusicology

TDE

 

Translingual discourse in ethnomusicology is a new peer-reviewed scholarly e-journal aiming at encouraging discourse across language barriers by publishing English translations of ethnomusicological papers that have originally appeared in other languages and therefore probably not received their due recognition.

Papers are selected from proposals made by our Editorial Board and undergo a double-open peer-review process. The English translations are usually accompanied by the original version and are freely available (open access) in both HTML and PDF format.

This journal is jointly published by the musicology department at Universität Wien and the ethnomusicology department at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz, and is sponsored by the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung.

Below, the Dubrovnik-area linđo, the subject of one of the articles in the inaugural issue.

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by | March 1, 2016 · 12:00 am

Mitropoulos and the ethos of performance

Valuable conclusions can be reached on the aesthetic and moral perceptions of Dimitri Mitropoulos from the study of his commercial and private recordings and his concert programs.

Mitropoulos was a unique interpreter who combined respect for significant works of historical Western music with the fight to project characteristic examples of the musical language of the 20th century. Far from the dictates of popular and easy recognitions, he gave us his own, often idiosyncratic, point of view of a morally honest and aesthetically valuable interpretation.

This according to “Ο Δ. Μητρόπουλος και το ήθος της ερμηνείας” [Dimitri Mitropoulos and the ethos of performance] by Stathīs A. Arfanīs and Giōrgos Maniatīs, an essay included in Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος (1896-1960): πενήντα χρόνια μετά [Dimitris Mitropoulos (1896–1960): Fifty years later] (Athīna: Orpheus Edition, 2012).

Today is Mitropoulos’s 120th birthday! Below, rehearsing and performing with the New York Philharmonic.

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by | February 28, 2016 · 6:00 am

Svend Asmussen and Benny Goodman

 

In 1948 Benny Goodman invited the Danish jazz violinist Svend Asmussen to consider coming to the U.S. to play in his band. Asmussen agreed, but he soon discovered that the U.S. Musicians Union had other ideas.

To play in Goodman’s band musicians had to be union members; but the union required foreigners to live in the U.S. for one year and have a sponsor to pay them before they could join. As Asmussen recalled, “That means you had to spend a year in America without playing or making any money.”

The two finally had a chance to perform together in Copenhagen in 1981; it was Goodman’s last recorded live performance.

This according to “Svend Asmussen: Phenomenal jazz fiddler” by Richard J. Brooks (Fiddler magazine XII/1 (Spring 2005) pp. 4–12).

Today is Asmussen’s 100th birthday! Below, history in the making.

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by | February 25, 2016 · 6:00 am

Pueri concinite

 

pueri concinite

In 2015 A-R Editions issued a new critical edition of Pueri concinite by Johann von Herbeck (1831–77). This edition is the first to present the piece in its original orchestration with complete scholarly apparatus.

Herbeck was a major musical figure in Vienna in the third quarter of the 19th century. He was, at various points in his career, conductor of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, conductor of the Singverein, musical director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, musical director of the Hofmusikkapelle, and director of the Hofoper.

Pueri concinite has proved to be Herbeck’s best-known and best-loved work. The tenor soloist in the first performance, on Christmas Day 1868, was Gustav Walter, who was associated with the Hofoper. Walter was the first in a long line of tenor soloists, including Placido Domingo in modern times, who have sung this piece in the Wiener Hofkapelle and other venues.

Below, Domingo sings the work with the Wiener Sängerknaben.

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by | February 22, 2016 · 6:00 am

Boy bands and the critics

 

While the boy band genre has mutated and evolved, its popular portrayal has altered little since groups like New Edition and New Kids on the Block conquered the charts back in the late 1980s.

Recent critical commentaries suggest that four discourses—youth, exploitation, gender, and fandom— interlock to determine how writers discuss the genre. Collectively their result is a relative stasis in critical commentary that helps to allay wider anxieties about the idea that, in a capitalist society, any of us can actively and pleasurably engage with a musical genre led by its own marketing.

This according to “Multiple damnations: Deconstructing the critical response to boy band phenomena” by Mark Duffett (Popular music history VII/2 [August 2012] pp. 185–97). Below, New Edition in the 1980s.

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by | February 18, 2016 · 6:00 am

Toothwalker sounds

 

In 1996 a two-week expedition to the Walrus Islands in the Bering Sea was undertaken to record the sounds of Pacific walruses, both for use in musical compositions and to add to the baseline data on acoustic disturbance and walrus behavior collected by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

There was an opportunity during the expedition to use a hydrophone to record the animals’ underwater communications, which include a gonging sound, whistling, grunting, roaring, and clacking of teeth.

This according to “Toothwalkers” by Douglas Quin (Terra nova: Nature and culture II/3 [summer 1997] pp. 88–96). Toothwalker refers to Linnaeus’s designation of the walrus as Odobenus rosmarus (tooth-walking sea horse).

Below, the celebrated E.T. demonstrates his repertoire and expertise.

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by | February 15, 2016 · 6:00 am

Dortmunder Schriften zur Musikpädagogik und Musikwissenschaft

Ludwig Uhland und seine Komponisten

In 2015 Technische Universität Dortmund launched the series Dortmunder Schriften zur Musikpädagogik und Musikwissenschaft with Ludwig Uhland und seine Komponisten: Zum Verhältnis von Musik und Politik in Werken von Conradin Kreutzer, Friedrich Silcher, Carl Loewe und Robert Schumann by Burkhard Sauerwald.

The large number of settings of his poems is one indication of the significance of the poet, politician, and scholar Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862) in 19th-century intellectual history.

The composers employed a variety of compositional strategies to convey the linguistic characteristics of Uhland’s poetry, such as their folk-like vocabulary and design. A detailed excursus of the Uhland–Silcher song Der gute Kamerad provides a representative example of the history of the political reception of Uhland settings.

Below, Richard Tauber sings Der gute Kamerad.

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by | February 13, 2016 · 6:00 am

John Reed and Gilbert and Sullivan

john reed

The great Gilbert and Sullivan singer John Reed was renowned for urbanity, verbal inanity, touching humanity, antic insanity, and a singular lack of theatrical vanity.

Among the attributes that equipped Mr. Reed spectacularly well for the job were an elfin physique, fleetness of foot (he had been a prize-winning ballroom dancer as a young man) and, perhaps most important, the elocution lessons he had taken in his youth, which let him sail through the patter songs that are the hallmarks of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic baritone roles.

This according to “John Reed, master of Gilbert and Sullivan’s patter songs, dies at 94” by Margalit Fox (The New York times CLIX/54,965 [20 February 2010] p. A26).

Today would have been Reed’s 100th birthday! Above and below, one of his signature roles: Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, in The Mikado.

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by | February 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Meeting the Simpsons

 

The one-minute opening of The Simpsons, a luscious symphonic overture complete with sound effects, introduces the five family characters plus the small-town suburban culture that surrounds them.

Inscribed within Hollywood’s cinematographic language, the music is a powerful generic marker often projecting absurdity and irony. Notwithstanding the pantomimic effect, these comedic contradictions address the dysfunctional life of the Simpsons, defining the American Dream in ways distinct from other television shows from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

This according to “Trope and irony in The Simpsons’ overture” by Martin Kutnowski (Popular music and society XXXI/5 [December 2008] pp. 599–616). Below, the sequence in question.

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by | February 8, 2016 · 6:00 am

Arias for Stefano Mandini

Arias for Stefano Mandini

Arias for Stefano Mandini: Mozart’s first Count Almaviva (Middleton: A-R Editions. 2015) presents 13 arias that portray the voice of Stefano Mandini, who created the role of Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in 1786.

stefano mandiniDating from the peak of Mandini’s career in the 1780s, the arias were composed by Giuseppe Sarti, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Antonio Salieri, and Vicente Martín y Soler. Taken together, they show a versatile singer who sang serious and comical roles in both tenor and baritone ranges.

The arias are presented in the form of vocal scores, some taken from 18th-century editions and some made from orchestral scores. The edition and commentary are by Dorothea Link.

Below, Saper bramate from Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782), one of the arias included in the collection.

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