Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Fri, 6 Nov 1992 08:58:38 EST
From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject:      Kilopost

If The Bloom writes megaposts, this must be a kilo- :-).  And gee it only took
a couple of weeks to put together. . .

From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      I'll deal with the political question later, but...

>From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
>Subject:      Re: speaking of Bela

>>How was O'Connor?  He's definitely got the talent, but hasn't put together the
>>blockbuster CD yet, for some reason. . . .  A pity he can't hook up with the
>>right group instead of all his solo stuff.

>Pshaw. He already was with the right group, the Dregs, but then they had to go
>and break up. I believe O'Connor's ego was cited as a cause-- maybe it was just
>the way he tore up a picture of Earl Scruggs at rehearsal one day, screaming
>"Fight the real enemy!" :-)

A quick question:  what albums is O'Connor with the Dregs on?  I missed
out on the short time he was with those guys.

From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      The dam just broke! Answers to queries...

>From:         Little Inquisitor <U17801@UICVM.BITNET>

> > I am interested in source material to learn about the "dance of the dead" in
> > its various incarnations.  I know this motif finds its way into music,
 dance,
> > art, and literature; my interest is reasonably broad based--if you have a
> > good source on ANY of these aspects, I'm interested( this includes,
> > incidentally, any killer recordings you might have run across).  I'm also
> > searching for information on the "saltarello", and the myths of the Sybyl.

>The saltarello is one of the few bits of early music to have entered the
>(semi-)popular repertoire. There's a nice version by John Renbourn from his
>album _Sir John Alot of Merrie Englande's Musick Thynge and Ye Greene Knight_
>(or something like that; add archaic final E's to taste) which has just been
>reissued on CD by Shanachie. Dead Can Dance also did it on _Aion_ (see below).
>And that's all I can tell you about it.

Umm--the Saltarello was a *kind* of music, not the name of a particular
piece.  What is often called the saltarello is actually "Lamento di
Tristan," often followed by a piece called "La Rota."  Both of these
pieces are on the Renbourn =Lady and the Unicorn=, not =Sir John Alot=,
etc.  Dead Can Dance did "Lamento," also calling it "Saltarello."
IMHO, they didn't do the most sensitive job w/ it:  not enough freedom
to make it really sing, not enough feeling to make it a medieval re-
creation.  After working with it for a while, I find I like it w/ lots
of melisma, or changed to triple meter and seguey'ed into from
"Scarborough Fair".  But it's such a damn nice little tune that almost
anything will work.

From:         mjferzig@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU
Subject:      Re: Sampling and rip-offs

>I'm new here, so I thought I'd put my two cents in. Being a really bad
>amateur composer, I pay a lot of attention to music comp styles. Almost at
>50's songs have the same chord structure - I, IV, V, I or I, VI, IV, V, I.
>A V7 is a novelty!
>Marsha

Uhh--a V-I w/o inversions or any other funkiness is a perfect authentic
cadence, the most final sounding way to end a song in western tradition,
for the past, oh, 600 years or more, so I'm not surprised--how else you
gonna end it?  And I-IV is nearly as common a start.

From:         Rick <MMLRICK@UBVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Opera and other singing debates
>Marsha's 2 questions:
>>1) What do you all think of the old comment that singers and drummers are
>>not musicians?
>      About the "singer" comment: This is an attitude put forth by a lot of
>        insecure instrumentalists, many of whom should know better. I remember

Actually, it's a very old joke. . . and I'm astonished that anyone on
list took it seriously.

>>
>>2) Does anyone else have a problem with operas where characters sing in a
>>language obviously alien to their ethnicity? (Ex. "Madame Butterfly" -
>>she's Japanese, he's American -- they sing in Italian!!!)
>       If so, they probably also have a problem with thousands of novels and
>       Hollywood movies for the same reason. "What? 'Ben Hur', and it's not
>       in Aramaic? Forget it! Makes no logical sense whatsoever!!"
>
>         But isn't the same also true of the Shakespearean stage? There too,
>         you can be poisoned or shish-kebabed and still have to burble out
>         your final death speech for a couple of minutes in full stage voice
>         before you finally become dead meat. Why scapegoat opera alone for
>         this?

Nope, not really.  Most people skewered by the Bard expire about as
quickly as you would expect.  Mercutio does have a longish speech, but
his wound is plausibly not instantaneously fatal.  Shakespearean drama
does demand a suspension of disbelief, as Will himself was well aware--
check out the Prologue to =Henry V= with the pun on "this wooden O" or
perhaps =The Tempest=.  But most opera I have seen, heard, or read
demands total gullability.  And not just because people rarely sing
out their intentions, hopes, fears & idle chitchat about the weather
in quotidian life; the plots themselves are pretty thin.  Either you
pass over this, or you probably won't like opera.  I myself found it a
hard slog until falling in love with a singer; even now my operatic
tastes are sharp and fairly narrow:  Mozart & Rossini, some Verdi and
Puccini, Meyerbeer--decidedly not under any circumstances Wagner.

From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Let me introduce his frogness
>Brecht, who was big on the "artificiality" of the theater, wanted his songs to
>resist smooth performance. Some Brecht scholars hate Marc Blitzstein's popular
>translation of _Threepenny_ (including the "Mack the Knife" Bobby Darin sang)
>because it's too singable! You may have noticed that the _Lost in the Stars_
>Weill tribute used alternate translations, which are more accurate renditions
>of the original German, and somewhat clumsier language, by intention.

Uhhhh--no, I can't quite buy it.  Brecht used slangy German, absolutely,
but not *clumsy* German, either to speak or as artifice.  If anything,
the slang rolls easier off the tongue.  It's quite true that Brecht
wanted to destroy the illusion of naturalism and of audience identification
with the character, because he wanted people to *think* while enjoying
themselves, not to dissolve in bathos.  Hence the "A-effect":  alienate
the audience, prevent catharsis, and encourage theatre-goers to join the
Revolution, having reasoned out (with Brecht's help!) that capitalist
society sucks hard and needs to be trashed.  Naive, possibly; effective,
definitely.

From:         "(Russ Gelinas)" <R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU>
Subject:      languages

>   My 2 bits on the "musicality" of language is a comment on the
>pronounciation of the word "butterfly" in English, French, and German.
>English - Butterfly     but-er-fli
>French - Papillon       pap-e-ohn
>German - Mitternich     mit-errrr-nichchchchckkkkkkkkkk
>Which one is the least musical?   ;-)

Define "musical".  Personally, I love alliteration, and I don't really
get much of it from the Romance languages.  Let's hear it in Old Norse,
if you please, maestro!

From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Elvis sighted at Dylan tribute

>From:         Rick <MMLRICK@UBVM.BITNET>
>Subject:      Re: Let me introduce his frogness
>
>> "Oh, NOW you tell us!"--Schubert, Weber, Wagner, Mahler, Schonberg, Brahms,
>>              Berg, etc. etc. etc.
>
>Jeez, go ahead, make me look like a dork.

Wouldn't touch that one with a ten foot pole :-)

>But riddle me this: how come Verdi
>and Puccini constitute so much of the standard repertoire? And I presume
>Mozart, who lived in Austria, was a native speaker of German (although not
>really severe high German). But his operas have Italian librettos, do they
>not? At least _Cosi Fan Tutti_...
>
V & P wrote real strong stuff for singers, hence their acclaim.  Mozart
wrote "Die Zauberflote" in German, for the popular crowd.  His court
operas are in Italian, because that is what the court wanted.

From:         crispen <crispen@EFFTOO.BOEING.COM>
Subject:      Re:  What? Italian is musical...?

>The only reason I have to disagree with English as the most musical
>language is the relative difficulty of getting anything to rhyme!
>Inflected languages have pretty close to automatic rhymes (unless
>they're like (what was it?) Old Persian which had its endings in
>the middles of words).

Oh puh-leeeeeze!  Don't tell me you still insist on *rhymes*!!! :-)

From:         "OUT,  OUT - YOU'LL NOT FEEL THE FALL-OUT..." <OLIVOTTO@ITNCISCA.B
Subject:      But then...

>        My idea is that the rhyme is not the only problem. I think that a large
>majority of English words are very short (2-3 syll.) and, also, there are some
>"universal" (and hyper-short!) words one can fit almost anywhere (well, but,
>just...). I think this makes them easier to handle inside the song pattern.
>        Possibly, it's the freer structure of language which allows me to
>write acceptable lyrics in English and astounding rubbish in my *own* language.
>Or what...? ;)
>
>        Ciao, Marco

And this is where I came in, back in February, as I recall!  I assert
that the natural syllabic rhythms of English constrain one fairly
tightly--you can't just plunk down anything you like & fit the song's
metrical structure.  But if you find it easy, more power to you & keep
on truckin'.
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