by | January 12, 2016 · 6:00 am

Morton Feldman’s “The viola in my life”

 

Morton Feldman’s four compositions with the title The viola in my life comprise a series-like cycle.

Unlike his earlier Intermissions, this series is constituted less through compositional and representational procedures than through small pregnant melodic objects that are assembled montage-like in the solo viola part over a homogeneous sonic background; these formal strategies show parallels to the combine paintings of Robert Rauschenberg.

This according to Morton Feldman: The viola in my life (1970–71) by Oliver Wiener (Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag, 1996).

Today would have been Feldman’s 90th birthday! Above, the composer in 1976; below, a performance of The viola in my life 2.

Related post: Morton Feldman and Persian carpets

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by | January 10, 2016 · 6:00 am

2015 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 77,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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by | January 7, 2016 · 6:00 am

Bobo Jenkins and “Democrat blues”

Bobo Jenkins

In an interview, Bobo Jenkins discussed the genesis of his first song and hit recording, Democrat blues.

He wrote the song on election day in 1952, while Eisenhower was being elected. He explained that it was really a song about the Great Depression and the especially hard economic times that plagued the poor during Republican administrations.

“I was workin’ out to Chrysler…and I sat down at the end of the line and wrote that song…The whirrin’ of the machines gives me the beat. It’s like listening to a band play all day. Every song I ever wrote that’s any good came to me on the assembly line.”

In 1954, with the help from John Lee Hooker, he went to Chess Records with his new song. “So I goes to Chicago with my guitar and a little amplifier, and the man says ‘What you got now? Usually everybody comes from Mississippi and brings a hit with them.’ I said, well, ‘I’m from Mississippi.’ See, I was lyin’ ‘cause I was livin’ in Detroit, but it sound good to hear it.”

This according to Bobo Jenkins: A bluesman’s journey by Fred Reif (Detroit: Detroit Music History, 2001).

Today would have been Jenkins’s 100th birthday! Below, the original Chess recording.

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by | January 4, 2016 · 6:00 am

Slim Gaillard on the road

 

In On the road (New York: Viking, 1957), Jack Kerouac described an encounter with the pianist, guitarist, and percussionist Slim Gaillard, “a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ‘bout a little bourbon-arooni.’”

“Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing C-Jam blues and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages.”

“Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’ and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.’”

“Finally the set is over…Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody’s head as people come to talk to him. A bourbon is slipped into his hand. ‘Bourbon-orooni—thank-you-ovauti.’”

Quoted in “Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is” (Literary kicks, 1994).

Today would have been Gaillard’s 100th birthday! Below, some rare early footage, perhaps from 1962 (see the comment below).

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by | December 31, 2015 · 6:00 am

Music and wine choice

 

If you plan to welcome the new year with a ritual libation, you might consider whether subliminal factors are at play.

In an experiment, French and German music was played on alternate days from an in-store display of French and German wines over a 2-week period. French music led to French wines outselling German ones, whereas German music led to the opposite effect on sales of French wine.

Responses to a questionnaire suggested that customers were unaware of these effects of music on their product choices. The results may be discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for research on music and consumer behavior and their ethical implications for the use of in-store music.

This according to “The influence of in-store music on wine selections” by Adrian C. North, David J, Hargreaves, and Jennifer McKendrick (Journal of applied psychology LXXXIV/2 [April 1999] pp. 271–76).

Below, what would you pair with the German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach’s Glou! Glou! Je suis le vin (Glug! Glug! I am the wine)?

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by | December 28, 2015 · 6:00 am

Gender wayang music of Bapak I Wayan Loceng

Loceng

Gender wayang music of Bapak I Wayan Loceng from Sukawati, Bali: A musical biography, musical ethnography, and critical edition by Brita Renée Heimarck (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2015) is at once a memorial to I Wayan Loceng (1926–2006) and a tribute to his great musical genius.

This new critical edition documents nine compositions from the esteemed Balinese gender wayang repertoire. The music derives from the musical mastery of Loceng, arguably the most renowned gender wayang expert in Bali, who lived in the village of Sukawati.

This edition places the music within a historical, cultural, and biographical context and introduces a broad theoretical framework that contains a new definition for the discipline of ethnomusicology, and substantial discussion of the genres of musical biography, musical ethnography, and ethnomusicology of the individual.

The book also introduces pertinent scholarly perspectives, offers biographical information pertaining to Loceng, delineates the cultural concepts and contexts for performance and background of the shadow play tradition in Bali, and clarifies key aspects of the music itself.

Above and below, I Wayan Loceng in action.

More posts about Bali are here.

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by | December 26, 2015 · 6:00 am

William Kimber and the morris revival

kimber

Happy Boxing Day! On this day in 1899 Cecil Sharp witnessed a performance by the Headington Quarry Morris Dancers at the home of his mother-in-law. Intrigued by the tunes, he invited William Kimber, the group’s concertina player, to return the next day so that Sharp could notate them.

Sharp did not begin his folk song collecting until four years later, and in 1905 Mary Neal, an organizer at the Espérance Club for girls, asked Sharp if there were any dances to go with the tunes he had collected. Sharp referred her to Kimber, who traveled to the club to teach the dances, thus beginning the revival of traditional dance in England.

This according to “Absolutely classic” by Derek Schofield (English dance and song LXI/2 [summer 1999] pp. 8–9). Above, the Headington Quarry Morris Dancers in 1916, With Kimber and his concertina front and center. Below, Kimber plays Getting upstairs in 1946.

BONUS: The Headington Quarry team in 2008.

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by | December 24, 2015 · 6:00 am

A Christmas Eve reconciliation

Gebhartshagen_Nicolaikirche_Merian

A musical event 330 years ago today sought to forge a bridge between the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany.

In the second half of the 17th century it became customary to perform music on Christmas Eve at the Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano. The repertoire was embued with Arcadian sensibility, as the choice of the Nativity theme makes clear, and had an explicit didactic aim: to edify listeners through references to Holy Scripture and the basic principles of Christianity, both ethical and religious. Quite often, too, a desire was evident to celebrate the greatness of the Pope himself.

One of these Christmas Eve compositions, Li pastori alla cuna del Redentore, set to music by Giuseppe Pacieri, had an unusual fate: In 1685, two years after its performance in Rome, it was heard again in the ducal chapel in Wolfenbüttel (above) under a new title, Musica alla vigilia del Sto. Natale, and the praises of Pope Innocent XI at the end of Pietro Giubilei’s text ended up being sung at a Lutheran court.

An exceptional witness to and commentator on the event was the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whose interest in musical events and unwavering commitment to the cause of religious reconciliation between the different Christian churches in Germany are well known. The 1685 performance was probably not accidental—it was likely a sign of the desire for politcal renewal on the part of Prince Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. The performance therefore represents an extraordinary event in the history of music at German Protestant courts.

This according to “La cuna del Redentore a Wolfenbüttel (1685) e i tentativi di conciliazione religiosa in Germania” by Andrea Luppi (Rivista italiana di musicologia XXIV/5 [1999] pp. 47–66).

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by | December 21, 2015 · 6:00 am

Coughing at concerts

Etiquette demands that audiences at Western classical concerts avoid inept noises such as coughs. Yet coughing in concerts occurs more frequently than elsewhere, implying a widespread and intentional breach of concert etiquette.

Listening to music evokes identity, prestige, exclusion, conformity, affirmation of values, and shared aesthetic experiences. In Western classical music, both the norms of concert courtesy (not to cough, say) and individual disobedience to these rules (the deliberate cough) reflect these social phenomena.

This according to “Why do people (not) cough in concerts? The economics of concert etiquette” by Andreas Wagener (Association for Cultural Economics International, 2012).

Many thanks to Improbable research for bringing this to our attention! Below, a very unfortunate cough.

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by | December 19, 2015 · 6:00 am

Édith Piaf’s persona

 

Édith Piaf’s is probably the best-known voice that France has produced, yet there has been little insightful analysis of her either in terms of her identity as a star or her gendered identity. This lack may be attributed to the scant amount of work done on French stars in France from a star studies perspective, and the tendency of French feminism to focus on a psychoanalytic rather than a cultural studies approach.

A gender-and-society–based analysis fruitfully focuses on the lyrics and background to her songs, as well as on the myths that have grown around her life and the role of nostalgia in her reception,  drawing in particular upon Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as a possible pre- or intertext for her star persona that is likewise rooted in an image of vulnerable womanhood.

This according to “Flaubert’s sparrow, or the Bovary of Belleville: Édith Piaf as cultural icon” by Keith Reader, an essay included in Popular music in France from chanson to techno: Culture, identity and society (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, pp. 205–223).

Today would have been Piaf’s 100th birthday! Below, performing La foule, one of the songs discussed in the essay.

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