Per Nørgårds skrifter online is an archive of nearly 500 writings, arranged alphabetically by article title. Full text is available for nearly 400 items. A chronological work list, 1949–2012, is included, along with a full biography of the composer.
The site is sponsored by Det Kongelige Bibliotek and edited by Ivan Hansen.
Below, the finale of his 8th symphony (2011).
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Resources
Natale Monferrato was maestro di cappella at the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale Metropolitana Primaziale di San Marco Evangelista in Venice from 1676 to 1685.
An obscure figure of early Baroque history, Monferrato (who trained under Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Rovetta, and Francesco Cavalli, among others) was, in fact, responsible for restoring discipline and musical standards in a chapel that had long succumbed to secular decay.
The type of Mass composition most commonly sung at San Marco was the a cappella form, as distinct from the messa concertata. Musicologists have long relied on a small corpus of music—notably containing two works by Monteverdi—for appraising the a cappella style at the 17th-century chapel.
In 2014 A-R Editions issued Natale Monferrato: Complete Masses, a definitive edition of Monferrato’s Masses. This edition—a total of eight settings from the composer’s opuses 13 and 19—provides a major boost to musical scholarship by presenting the most substantial testimony to the cathedral’s daily ritual during the Baroque era.
Below, Monferrato’s setting of Alma redemptoris mater.
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Filed under Baroque era, New editions
Using conventional musical devices for blues compositions as a basis, Willie Dixon expanded the possibilities for blues songwriting by introducing elements from pop song forms, using a quatrain refrain text form with longer musical structures than a 12-bar form, and amalgamating the 12-bar/a-a-b form with the 16-bar/quatrain refrain form in different sections of a composition.
Dixon also helped artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Koko Taylor to intensify their public images; his development of their performing personae is relevant to the tradition of the blues as a secular religion, and Dixon’s casting of them originated in traditional black badman tales circulated in the postbellum South.
This according to Willie Dixon’s work on the blues: From the early recordings through the Chess and Cobra years, 1940–1971 by Mitsutoshi Inaba, a dissertation accepted by the University of Oregon in 2005.
Today is Dixon’s 100th birthday! Below, he sings his own Back door man, first recorded by Howlin’ Wolf in 1960; the song is a classic example of Dixon’s innovations in blues song forms.
BONUS: The inimitable Howlin’ Wolf recording:
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Filed under Jazz and blues, Performers
The holdings of the Bachhaus in Eisenach include a polished goblet that was presented to J.S. Bach around 1735; the word VIVAT inscribed on it was meant as an invitation to enjoy a glass of wine.
Sources including letters, pay slips, stipends, and the 1750 catalog of his estate suggest that Bach’s life was sometimes cheerfully informal. The table of this choral street-singer, organist, cantor, court musician, and municipal music director—whose salary as an employee was, throughout his life, paid not only in money but also in kind (grain, fish, beer, wine, wood)—was abundantly set for his large family and for the many welcome guests, and his comfortable standard of living was provided for on a corresponding scale.
This according to Zu Tisch bei Johann Sebastian Bach: Einnahmen und “Consumtionen” einer Musikerfamilie by Walter Salmen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2009).
Below, Bach’s jovial Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (“Bauernkantate”), BWV #212, which includes the encouraging words “Wave if you’re thirsty!”
More posts about J.S. Bach are here.
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Filed under Baroque era, Food
The title of Terry Riley’s improvisation template Descending moonshine dervishes is rooted in several sources.
“Moonshine” may be considered a triple entendre referring to the mysticism of the shining moon, the ecstasy associated with U.S. moonshine liquor, and Riley’s property on Moonshine Road in the Yuba River country of California’s Sierra foothills, which he has dubbed Shri Moonshine Ranch.
Dervishes are adherents of Sufism, and although Riley subscribes to a general spirituality rather than any formal religious orientation the Sufi tradition has clearly been important to him, as evinced by his performances in mosques and with musicians more closely involved with Sufism. Riley has also used the word dervish in reference to his Hindustani music teacher, Pran Nath.
This according to “Terry Riley in the 70s” by Mark Alburger (21st-century music XI/3 [March 2004] pp. 4–7).
Today is Riley’s 80th birthday! Below, Descending moonshine dervishes as he performed it in Berlin in 1975 (Kuckuck, 1982).
Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music
A catalogue of Mass, Office, and Holy Week music printed in Italy, 1516–1770 focuses on the vast repertoire (comprising approximately 2000 sources) of music for the Office, Holy Week, and the Mass published in Italy from 1516 to the cessation of the printing of such repertoire in the latter part of the 18th century. Even by the end of the first quarter of the Settecento, Italian prints of sacred music were quite rare.
Compiled by Jeffrey G. Kurtzman and Anne Schnoebelen for the JSCM Instrumenta series, this free online resource includes a wide range of indices, from academic references to publishers.
Above, Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Secondo libro, an edition covered in detail in the catalogue (click to enlarge); below, his Ave Maris stella, one of the works preserved in this edition.
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Filed under Baroque era, Renaissance, Resources
From 1 November 1879 to 31 December 1883 the teen-aged Carl Nielsen was employed as a bugler and trombonist in Odense, with the 16th battalion and the 5th regiment, respectively.
In the long run his modest position in the military could not satisfy him, so he traveled to København to continue his musical training at the conservatory. However, in many ways his time as a military bandsman in Odense was a particularly good basis upon which to build his future.
This according to “Spillemand Carl August Nielsen” by Ida-Marie Vorre (Fynske Minder 2008, pp. 49–63).
Today is Nielsen’s 150th birthday! Above, a photograph from ca. 1880; below, Helios, op. 17, a work in which the orchestra’s brass section figures prominently.
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Filed under Curiosities, Romantic era
Launched by the New World Symphony in 2015, Making the right choices: A John Cage celebration is a free online resource dedicated to Cage’s music.
In celebration of the composer’s 100th birthday, Michael Tilson Thomas and the NWS presented a week-long festival of Cage’s music in February 2013. That festival was the starting point for the videos presented on the site.
Some of the videos primarily capture the live event. Others take the performances much further, adding layers of visual interpretation that provide deeper insight into the spirit of his works.
Below, one of his orchestral works (the NWS videos are not available for embedding).
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In a 2011 interview, Anthony Braxton described his recent work as “a trans-temporal music state that connects past, present, and future as one thought component. This idea is the product of the use of holistic generative template propositions that allow for 300 or 400 compositions to be written in that generative state.”
“The Ghost trance musics would be an example of the first of the holistic, generative logic template musics. The Ghost trance music is concerned with telemetry and cartography, and area space measurements.”
Quoted in “Anthony Braxton: Music as spiritual commitment” by Josef Woodard (DownBeat LXXIX/3 [March 2010] pp. 32–37).
Today is Braxton’s 70th birthday! Above, Composition no. 228 from the Ghost trance series; below, a performance and discussion of more works from the series.
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Filed under 20th- and 21st-century music, Jazz and blues, Performers
Gabriel Fauré’s apparently irresistible appeal to women led to the kind of extramarital liaisons that were far from uncommon in the Third Republic; Alfredo Casella, one of his pupils, described the composer as having “the large, languid, and sensual eyes of an impenitent Casanova.”
Fauré’s friends and associates were not insensitive to the delicate situations that this predilection incurred; for example, some the composer’s most talented students at the Paris Conservatoire were rumored to be his illegitimate children.
This according to Gabriel Fauré by Jessican Duchen (London: Phaidon, 2000, p. 63).
Today is Fauré’s 170th birthday! Above, Fauré and Gustave Bret with the pianist Marguerite Hasselmans, the composer’s mistress for the last 24 years of his life; below, Fauré’s Fantasie, op. 111, which Hasselmans premiered in 1919.
Filed under Romantic era
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