Tag Archives: Composers

by | June 22, 2011 · 1:00 am

A composer’s quadricentennial

In his day, the blind Aragonese composer and organist Pablo Bruna (known as El Ciego de Daroca) was renowned for his organ playing at the Colegiata de Santa María de los Corporales in Daroca (above), for his important disciples, and for his keyboard works. Today is his 400th birthday!

A previously unknown work by Bruna—A de la casa, a villancico for soprano and tenor with unfigured bass—was discovered in 1990 in the musical archive of Barbastro Cathedral. The text stems from the custom of giving food to the poor, which in Bruna’s work is given a Eucharistic interpretation. Only three other vocal works by Bruna have survived: two other villancicos and a Benedicamus Domino.

This according to “A de la casa: Duo de Pablo Bruna—Una obra inedita del Ciego de Daroca” by Pedro Calahorra Martínez (Nassarre: Revista aragonesa de musicología VII/1 [1991], pp. 9–20). Below, Saskia Roures performs Bruna’s Tiento de falsas de 2º tono.

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by | March 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

J.C. Bach goes to law

The youngest and most versatile of J.S. Bach’s sons, Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782) is well known among musicologists for the influence of his forward-looking works on the musical life of his adopted home, London, and on the young Mozart. Less known is his decisive influence on English copyright law.

In 1773 Bach filed a lawsuit against the music publishers John Longman and Charles Lukey. At that time a copyright act from 1710 protected legal rights for “books and other writings” for up to 28 years, but music was often excluded from coverage. Common law allegedly protected publications beyond the 28 years, but there was a great deal of disagreement as to common law’s scope and validity. Royal privilege was also hotly debated, and provided little assurance to composers trying to protect their musical property.

The suit involved a work that Bach identified as “a new Lesson for the Harpsichord or Piano Forte”. Longman and Lukey contested the case and repeatedly requested more time, delaying the settlement for three years. In 1777 the case was decided by the renowned William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, who unequivocally placed music under the copyright act of 1710. Bach’s case served as a benchmark in English musical copyright law for the next 60 years.

This according to “J.C. Bach goes to law” by John Small (The musical times CXXVI/1711 [September 1985] pp. 526–529). Many thanks to Joseph T. Orchard for his help with this post!

Below, Emile Naoumoff performs J.C.Bach’s keyboard sonata in G Major, op. 17, in Paris in 2010.

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by | February 15, 2011 · 1:00 am

African American women composers

From spirituals to symphonies: African American women composers and their music by Helen Walker-Hill (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007) challenges the assumption that black women’s only significant musical contributions have been in the worlds of blues, jazz, pop, and traditional music.

The book includes detailed discussions of the lives and works of Undine Smith Moore (left), Julia Perry, Margaret Bonds, Irene Britton Smith, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Valerie Capers, Mary Watkins, and Regina Harris Baiocchi, all of whom have combined the techniques of Western art music with their own cultural traditions and individual gifts.

This post is part of our series celebrating Black History Month. Throughout February we will be posting about resources and landmark writings in black studies. Click here or on the Black studies category on the right to see a continuously updated page of links to all of our posts in this category.

Below, Tichina Vaughn performs Dream variations, Bonds’s setting of the poem by Langston Hughes.

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by | January 10, 2011 · 6:15 am

Quaderni del Laboratorio MIRAGE

Libreria Musicale Italiana launched the series Quaderni del Laboratorio MIRAGE in 2010 with Luigi Nono: studi, edizioni, testimonianze. Edited by Luca Cossettini, the volume includes essays by Cossettini, Nicola Buso, Laurent Feneyrou, and Roberto Calabretto.

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by | December 4, 2010 · 7:04 am

Falla: Grabaciones históricas

The Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía released Manuel de Falla 1876–1946: Grabaciones históricas in 2009 as part of its series Documentos Sonoros del Patrimonio Musical de Andalucía. The earliest recording included is Fantasía Bética, performed by Mark Hambourg in 1923; the most recent is Fuego fatuo, recorded by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Televisión Española, directed by Antoni Ros Marbà, in 1976.

The accompanying booklet provides complete discographical information, numerous historical photographs, and notes in Spanish, English, and French by Andrés Ruiz Tarazona. Additional performers include Andrés Segovia, the Orquesta Bética de Cámara de Sevilla, which Falla founded in 1923, and the composer himself at the piano.

Above, Alicia de Larrocha performs Falla’s own piano transcription of “Danza del fuego” from his El amor brujo.

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by | November 29, 2010 · 6:13 am

Muzycy Wrocławscy

In 2009 the Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego in Wrocław launched Muzycy Wrocławscy, a series devoted to musicians of Wrocław and edited by Anna Granat-Janki.  The inaugural volume, Ryszard Bukowski: Szkice do portretu, is dedicated to the composer, pedagogue, and publicist (1916–1987) who was one of the foremost leaders of postwar Polish culture. The volume collects papers presented at a conference held in 2007 at the Akademia commemorating the twentieth anniversary of  Bukowski’s death; a table of contents in English is included.

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by | October 20, 2010 · 6:42 am

A Charles Ives resource

Charles+IvesThe Charles Ives Society maintains an online resource that includes a biography by Jan Swafford; a list of tunes borrowed by Ives from other composers, with sound files; a catalogue of Ives’s published works ordered by medium, also with sound files; a descriptive  catalogue by James Sinclair ordered by genre, with incipits, performance data, and other listings; and a programming guide that suggests relationships between Ives’s works and specific holidays, months, seasons, topics, and anniversaries.

Above, a rare performance of one of Ives’s pieces for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, played by the Paratore brothers. Today is the composer’s 136th birthday.

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by | September 30, 2010 · 6:22 am

William Yeates Hurlstone

During the 1890s the Royal College of Music’s first Professor of Composition, Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924), had a stellar roster of students that included Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; but Stanford considered William Yeates Hurlstone (1876–1906) to have been his best pupil. Hurlstone’s name is now largely forgotten; his promising career was cut short by bronchial asthma when he was 30.

The Royal College of Music Library, in conjunction with RCM’s Centre for Performance History, has sought to rectify this situation with a new online resource. Launched in May 2010, William Yeates Hurlstone includes a biography of the composer, a catalogue of his works, recordings made as part of RCM’s Hurlstone Centenary day in 2006 featuring performances by RCM staff and students, and reproductions of documents and concert programs from the collections of the two sponsoring institutions.

Below, Hurlstone’s Four characteristic pieces.

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by | August 11, 2010 · 8:21 am

Hugo Wolf: Briefe

Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag launched the series Hugo Wolf: Briefe (1873–1901) in 2010 with Briefe 1873–91 (ISBN 978-3-902681-20-1), edited by Leopold Spitzer. The series is being issued in conjunction with the publisher’s complete edition of Wolf’s works.

Above, the composer with the mezzo-soprano Frieda Zerny, possibly holding a letter from him (see Wolf and Zerny, Briefe an Frieda Zerny [Wien: Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag , 1978]).

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by | August 8, 2010 · 8:31 am

Macunaíma and brasilidade

In Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caráter (Macunaíma, the hero without character) by the Brazilian musicologist, ethnomusicologist, poet, and cultural activist Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), the title character leaves his home deep in the jungle for a mystical quest to São Paulo to retrieve the muiraquitã, an amulet said to embody all of the history and traditions of his culture. Macunaíma succeeds in his mission, but in the process he undergoes a series of dramatic transformations; finally, he is changed into a constellation. He leaves for the firmament with a cryptic remark: He was not brought into the world to be a stone.

The story can be read as a metaphor for the cultural developments that Andrade helped to shape: He advocated bringing the jungle to the city to create the modernist aesthetic of brasilidade that informed the growth of the Brazilian creative arts and the parallel development of musicology and ethnomusicology there. Like Macunaíma, Brazilian modernism did not come into the world to be a stone, with all its implications of rigidity, contour, and well-defined boundaries—rather, brasilidade relishes improvisation, exploration, and fluid boundaries that can be perpetually transformed.

This according to “Macunaíma out of the woods: The intersection of musicology and ethnomusicology in Brazil” by James Melo, an essay included in our recently published Music’s intellectual history.

Related article: Tropicália and Bahia

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