Tag Archives: Composers

by | July 30, 2012 · 1:00 am

DayDay MoeMoe’s boingboxes

David Moore (a.k.a. DayDay MoeMoe, a.k.a. Umburkus) is a musician, artist, furniture maker, and visionary hermit hidden away in a secretive corner of a haunted-looking house in the fading Delta cotton town of Rosedale, Mississippi.

The inquisitive, anarchic child of a family that once held considerable sway there, Moore now lives alone in a house covered in vines and filled with his own artwork alongside untold numbers of sweetly unnerving semicollectibles, a trusty dog, and myriad musical instruments and furniture of his own invention, including his signature schizoid zither, a.k.a. buzzstick,  a.k.a. boingbox. The music that he plays with them is unique and unforgettable.

This according to “SoLost: Discovering a visionary hermit musician-artist” by Dave Anderson (Oxford American, 25 July 2012). Below, Umburkus discusses his oeuvre.

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by | July 25, 2012 · 1:00 am

Wagner and Eros

Wagner’s obsession with sexuality prefigured the composition of operas such as Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal. Daring to represent erotic stimulation, passionate ecstasy, and the torment of sexual desire, Wagner sparked intense reactions from figures like Baudelaire, Clara Schumann, Nietzsche, and Nordau, whose verbal tributes and censures disclose what was transmitted when music represented sex.

Wagner himself saw the cultivation of an erotic high style as central to his art, especially after devising an anti-philosophical response to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of sexual love. A reluctant eroticist, Wagner masked his personal compulsion to cross-dress in pink satin and drench himself in rose perfumes while simultaneously incorporating his silk fetish and love of floral scents into his librettos. His affection for dominant females and surprising regard for homosexual love likewise enable some striking portraits in his operas.

In the end, Wagner’s achievement was to have fashioned an oeuvre which explored his sexual yearnings as much as it conveyed—as never before—how music could act on erotic impulse.

This according to Wagner and the erotic impulse by Laurence Dreyfus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). Below, Kirsten Flagstad’s historic recording of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.

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by | July 16, 2012 · 1:00 am

Beethoven does the details

The increasing range of Beethoven’s performance indications paralleled the growing depth of expression in his music. While his predecessors had been content with four basic tempos—adagio, andante, allegro, and presto—he began to add qualifiers, indications of gradual tempo change, and descriptive words and phrases in German.

Still unsatisfied, he began to rely on metronome markings, although he stressed that they only provide a point of departure for a performance in which “feeling also has its beat, which cannot wholly be conveyed by a number”.

He started to favor graphic treatments of crescendo and diminuendo, ensuring dynamic shapes that would not necessarily be intuited by the performer. He used sforzando in structural as well as expressive ways, and expanded volume markings beyond the range from pp to ff.

His pedaling indications usually reinforce harmonic contexts, though sometimes they cause harmonic areas to overlap; this might explain why some of Beethoven’s contemporaries complained that his pedaling resulted in a confused sound. His articulation markings often reinforce motivic structure and development.

All of these performance indications are most fully understood in the context of the particular instrument he was using at the time.

This according to “Interpreting Beethoven’s markings: A preliminary survey of the piano sonatas” by Tallis Barker (The music review LV/3 [August 1994] pp. 169–182). Below, Sviatoslav Richter demonstrates his approach to Beethoven’s performance indications.

More posts about Beethoven are here.

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by | June 28, 2012 · 11:26 am

Rousseau and Aunt Rhody


The American traditional song Go tell Aunt Rhody originated as a gavotte composed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau for his opera Le devin du village (1752).

An English version of the opera was produced in London in 1766; subsequently the melody attracted various English texts, including Sweet Melissa (ca. 1788), and inspired a set of variations by the London piano virtuoso Johann Baptist Cramer (Rousseau’s dream, 1812).

Around 1825 the tune—identified as Greenville or Rousseau—began appearing in U.S. hymnals. The Aunt Rhody version has appeared in numerous American traditional song anthologies, and is still often found in children’s song collections.

This according to “Go tell Aunt Rhody she’s Rousseau’s dream” by Murl Sickbert, an essay included in Vistas of American music: Essays and compositions in honor of William K. Kearns (Warren: Harmonie Park, 1999, pp. 125–150).

Today is Rousseau’s 300th birthday! Below, the classic Woody Guthrie recording of his immortal gavotte.

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by | June 27, 2012 · 1:00 am

Brahms and Breitkopf

Responding to enthusiastic recommendations from Robert and Clara Schumann, Breitkopf & Härtel published several of Brahms’s early works; but after the hostile public reaction to the 1859 premiere of his D-minor piano concerto the publisher became more cautious, accepting some works and rejecting others.

Brahms’s frustration reached a peak in 1865, when the publisher accepted his G-major string sextet sight unseen and then asked to be released from the obligation to publish it, citing outside opinions that were not attributed or detailed. Brahms responded with a furious letter and never submitted his work to the publisher again.

This according to “Brahms and the Breitkopf & Härtel affair” by George S. Bozarth (The music review LV/3 [August 1994] pp. 202–213). Above, the composer around the time of the decisive incident; below, the final movement of the sextet that the publisher spurned.

More posts about Brahms are here.

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by | June 20, 2012 · 1:00 am

A Springsteen resource

 

Library of hope and dreams: A comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarship about Bruce Springsteen is a free online annotated bibliography of scholarship published in English about The Boss.

A continuously updated resource, as of 7 June 2012 the bibliography had 250 entries including books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, and web publications. All items are described in full bibliographic detail, abstracted, and indexed by subject keywords and by song and album when appropriate.

Library of Hope and Dreams was created by Denise D. Green at Staley Library, Milikin University.

BONUS: Read about this resource in Hungarian here.

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by | June 17, 2012 · 1:00 am

Stravinsky and Les Apaches

Stravinsky’s collaborations with the Ballets Russes were only a part of his life between 1910 and 1914; he was also involved with the Parisian avant-garde group known as Les Apaches (The Apaches), an interdisciplinary society that included Ravel, Falla, and the poet Léon-Paul Fargue.

Les Apaches’ support was vital for Stravinsky’s composition of Le sacre du printemps, and its aesthetic preoccupations helped to motivate his decision to set Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise.

This according to “Stravinsky and The Apaches” by Jann Pasler (The musical times CXXIII/1672 [June 1982] pp. 403-407).

Today is Stravinsky’s 130th birthday! Above, the composer at work in Paris in 1911; below, Evelyn Lear sings the Trois poésies with members of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Craft.

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by | May 11, 2012 · 1:00 am

The first Bach monument

 

On 23 April 1843 Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy made a ceremonial presentation of a monument to Bach in the courtyard of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach served as cantor and where his remains now lie.

Mendelssohn Bartholdy worked tirelessly to make the monument a reality. He offered suggestions about its details, gave concerts to raise the necessary funds, and handled much of the project’s organization. His many letters provide information about his commitment to it.

Now known as the Altes Bach-Denkmal, it may be the only example of a monument built by a composer to honor another.

This according to Ein Denkstein für den alten Prachtkerl: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy und das alte Bach-Denkmal in Leipzig by Peter Wollny (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004). Above, a woodcut depiction from around 1850.

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by | May 9, 2012 · 12:19 pm

Sendak and Mozart

The beloved author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who died yesterday, was deeply influenced by Western classical music, particularly by the works of Mozart.

“Art has always been my salvation,” he said in an interview, “and my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain. I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.”

Below, the full interview with Bill Moyers in 2004.

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by | · 1:00 am

Dialettica del suono

The first Russian-language electronic journal for contemporary art music, Dialettica del suono, was launched in 2011 as a joint project of the independent creative association Диалектика Звука (Dialectic of Sound) and the Молодежное Отделение Союза Композиторов (МолОт/The Youth Department of the Union of Composers).

The journal, edited by Дионис Афоничев, is published twice a year and is available online in PDF format.  Dialettica del suono provides a publication platform mainly for young professional musicians, musicologists, composers, and critics. A supplement with scores by young Russian composers is appended to each issue.

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