bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Piano Quartet and Quintet
Authors: Smallman Basil
Published: November 2023

Designed as a companion volume to the author's earlier study, The Piano Trio, this book surveys the development of the piano quarlet and quintet from their relatively modest beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Developments during the first four decades of the nineteenth century resulted not only in Schubert's renowned `Trout' Quintet, but also in works of much brilliance by Dussek, Hummel, Weber, and others in which the piano predominates in a concerto-like role. Subsequently, Schumann's epoch-making quintet of 1842 initiated a broadly `symphonic' style, with large-scale structures and closely integrated textures, which was taken up by many later composers, including Brahms, Dvor'ak, César Frank, Fauré, and Elgar. The author also examines the numberous changes in the nature of the genres which have occurred in recent times, and gives special consideration to a number of works by leading 20th-century composers, in which `mixed' media are formed by combining wind instruments with the normal strings-and-piano ensembles. Within his broad historical narrative Professor Smallman provides descriptive analyses of key works, many with music examples, and also comments perceptively on local trends and developments. His book is likely to be of interest to all those who are fascinated by this important repertoire - performers, students, and listeners, as well as the general reader.
Introduction
Authors: Gillies Malcolm , Pear David
Published: November 2023

Although despising the very language in which these lines were written, the pianist-composer Percy Grainger would certainly have sympathized with their sentiment— ‘Even while we talk Time, hateful, runs a mile. I Don’t trust tomorrow’s bough for fruit. Pluck this, here, now.’ Grainger is one of the twentieth century’s outstanding carpe diem figures. His frenzied life, kick-started by a domineering mother and maintained by her memory, shows the ‘pluck this, here, now’ mentality carried to an extreme of long-term career sacrifice and possibly even fragmentation of personality. For sixty years Grainger lived the ‘slave-life’ of professional pianism, performing in over three thousand concerts, fearing to trust the allures of tomorrow for fear that today’s failure might make him yester day’s man. Although he would often grumble about how ‘the treadmill of earning one’s living’ was ‘so unremitting’,2 he clung tenaciously to concert life and only stopped performing in public when senility finally forced him out, at the age of 77 after many ‘retirements’.
An Introduction to Brahms and his Early Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

Unlike the observer of the centenary of Brahms’s birth in 1933, the witness of the sesquicentenary year of 1983 might well have been familiar with different views of the composer’s significance. The first - long-established and still the most familiar in the English-speaking world - portrays him as the great classic figure of nineteenth-century German music, a retrospective master of traditional forms in a period when they seemed increasingly outmoded by new aesthetic attitudes: a figure of the past. Thus Gerald Abraham summed him up as follows just before the Second World War: ‘So ... great a figure as he is, Brahms contributed little to the historical development of music [and he] stands practically alone. [Those] who came under his influence all seem to have, been nonentities. Only the young Reger and the Hungarian Dohnanyi really owe much to him.’
Orchestral Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

The status of the Piano Quartet in C minor in spanning an entire era and symbolising Brahms’s struggle for mastery of the formal treatment of powerfully expressive ideas finds a striking parallel in the history, key and moods of the First Symphony. Although we cannot be sure that its earliest part, the first Allegro, was conceived at the same time as the Quartet - the familiar ‘1855’ derives from Kalbeck’s view only1 - the overtly Beethovenian spirit does not contradict a possible date in the 1850s: and the final resolution likewise took until the 1870s. Further, it was not Brahms’s first attempt in the genre.
Songs and Piano Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

With the completion of the First Symphony, Brahms had established himself without question as the leading composer not only of choral, but also of instrumental, music in Germany and was increasingly regarded as the symbolic figure of the opposition to the aesthetic outlook of the New Germans. For not only had he demonstrated remarkable command of the forms of keyboard, chamber and orchestral composition but he had done so through a scope of historical absorption and synthesis with few parallels, drawing from it very individual modes of working capable of application to many different contexts. One major consequence of this richness was the complexity of his textures.
Chamber Music
Authors: Musgrave Michael
Published: November 2023

The balance between the quality and output of chamber and orchestral music achieved enables very clear, common, phases of work to be discerned, phases which show a marked extension of the composer’s expressive range. With the completion of the First Symphony, a very marked lyric phase is to be discerned whose main representations are the Second Symphony, the Violin Concerto and the G major Violin Sonata. Although this lyricism remains throughout the period as a deep spring of expressive significance, from 1880 there is a move toward a more heroic, and serious style, involving a new openness, a new almost symbolic kind of main idea. This is naturally most immediately apparent in the orchestral sphere.
Prologue
Authors: Samson Jim
Published: November 2023

Books on Chopin proliferate. There is even a book about the books. Yet surprisingly few of them examine his music in any but a loosely descriptive, impressionistic fashion. Biography has proved more alluring. From the Liszt book of 1852 onwards the flood of biographies has continued to swell and it shows little sign of abating. In English alone there have been five books since 1976.2 Quality is another matter. I seriously doubt whether an adequate biography can be rendered by anyone whose understanding of the music is casual. If there is a single overwhelming defect of recent English biographies it is their exiguous and shallow treatment of creative process, which is after all central to the ‘life’ of any composer. In this and in other respects they fall short of the high standards set by Gastone Belotti in his three-volume study in Italian and by Jozef Chominski in his concise but penetrating book in German.3 Perhaps translations are the answer.
Sources, Controversies, and Speculations: The Early and Modern History of Monteverdi’s Vespers
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The two seventeenth-century sources for Monteverdi’s Vespers are discussed and compared in the critical notes to my Oxford University Press edition of the Vespers. The primary source, the only one containing all of the music, is the original 16 IO print by Ricciardo Amadino, complete and partial copies of which are located in a number of European libraries.
A Brief History of Vespers in the Sixteenth Century
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The early history of polyphonic music for vespers reaches back before 1430, to the time of Dunstable, Dufay, and Binchois. The surviving vesper music of the entire fifteenth century has been studied in a dissertation by Masakata Kanazawa,1 but need not detain us here. Suffice it to summarize Kanazawa’s findings very briefly in noting that by the middle of the fifteenth century, some of the best-known manuscripts, scattered now throughout Europe and England, included a sizeable repertoire of Magnificat and hymn settings, as well as a few antiphons and the very first, rare settings of psalm texts, almost always the fifth psalm for Sunday vespers, In exitu Israel. Thus, considerable quantities of polyphonic settings of items for the liturgy of vespers began to appear in the generation of Dunstable and during the early part of the careers of Dufay and Binchois, with all three of these composers, but especially Dufay, contributing significantly to the repertoire.2 Manuscripts from the third quarter of the century testify to the increasing emphasis placed on vesper music not only by Dufay and Binchois, but also by numerous anonymous composers of their generation. Dunstable, too, continues to be represented posthumously in several of these manuscripts. During this period we still find a concentration on hymns, Magnificats, and, to a lesser extent, antiphons. Psalm settings remain rare.
Compositions Based on a Cantus Firmus: The Hymn and the Sonata sopra Sancta Maria
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The treatment of the cantus firmus in the hymn Ave maris stella is quite different from its use in the psalms and the Magnificats. In the hymn, the plainchant always appears in the topmost part as the principal melody, harmonized in an essentially chordal fashion. This manner of setting the Ave maris stella melody can be traced all the way back to Dunstable’s alternatim version, which adds a modest degree of ornamentation to the plainchant. Monteverdi, however, adheres strictly to the notes of the chant itself, which is a first-mode melody evidently derived not from the Roman rite, but from the liturgy of Santa Barbara in Mantua, prepared specifically for the Gonzaga ducal church in the late sixteenth century.
Compositions not Based on a Cantus Firmus: Pulchra es, Duo Seraphim, Audi coelum
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The three remaining motets from Monteverdi’s 1610 print, Pulchra es, Duo Seraphim, and Audi coelum, exhibit many of the same methods of construction uncovered in Nigra sum in the last chapter. Therefore, my discussion of these pieces will be more limited, confined to salient points unique to each motet, and the interested reader may explore these compositions further in terms of their modal implications, octave species, and reciting notes.
Voices and Choirs
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

The most important feature distinguishing church choirs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from modern choirs was, of course, the exclusive use of male singers, resulting in altogether different sonorities from those of the modern mixed choir.1 Soprano parts were sometimes sung by boys, at times by adult males singing falsetto, and at times by castrati. Alto parts were sung by adult falsettos or castrati; boys may also have sung alto parts on occasion, although documentary evidence is lacking. The sonority and balance of the choir was therefore affected by whether boys, falsettos, or castrati sang the upper parts.
Historical Pronunciation
Authors: Kurtzman Jeffrey
Published: November 2023

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the historical pronunciation of texts of vocal music as scholars and singers of early music have become more aware of the impact on performance of historical pronunciation.
Three Poems of Robert Frost (1942) Elliott Carter (born 1908) Text by Robert Frost
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This cycle is brief, colourful and highly accessible. Those familiar with Carter’s later, extremely complex music need have no fears, because this earlier, neo-classical idiom is not exacting and will not tax the inexperienced singer.
Six de la Mare Songs (Nos. 1-4 and 6, 1966-71; no. 5, 1985) Elaine Hugh-Jones (horn 1927) Text by Walter de la Mare
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

It is a rare and special pleasure to discover a major songwriter, and I am much indebted to my colleague John Potter for introducing me to the work of Elaine Hugh-Jones. Her songs show complete mastery and understanding of voice and piano writing. Although they are firmly based on a traditional musical style - that of English post-Romantic - the songs are not in the least derivative. The composer shows a wonderful assurance and freshness of approach and an exceptionally sensitive response to words.
Letters found near a Suicide (1954) Earl Kim (horn 1920) Text by Frank Horne
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The wonderful directness of expression of this Korean (now US) composer is abundantly illustrated in this extended scena. Kim sets three poems in a continuous span, so the work is properly a song cycle (in the same sense as Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte). Clearly the composer has an intimate understanding and a love of the voice, as is demonstrated by the comfortable lie of the lines throughout the tremendously wide range of dramatic colours.
First Dream of Honeysuckle Petals Falling Alone (1978) Ronald Caltabiano (born I 9 59) Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson (nos. 1, 3 and 4) and William Howard (no. 2)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The musical texture of this short cycle by a gifted young American composer is rather fuller than is often found in settings of Japanese poems. The vivid piano writing is most exciting and the abundant melismas in the voice part make it rewarding for the singer in exactly the same way as the belcanto writing of the past. Despite being brief, each song is eventful.
Come in here child (1968) David Bedford (born 1937) Text by Kenneth Patchen
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Bedford has an unusually fine ear for vocal sound. Though at first sight the music may appear dauntingly avantgarde, it is simple and straightforward to perform. The lines flow smoothly and note patterns are constantly repeated, giving ample chance for secure pitch orientation.
Songs of Summer (1954) Iain Hamilton (born 1922)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

The music of Iain Hamilton’s charming song cycle is eminently practicable and direct in its appeal. Written in a nee-classical idiom, the lines ring out brightly and with exuberance. The large number of high passages would suggest that, at least initially, a tenor might sing the pieces with more ease than a soprano.
Mirabai Songs (1982) John Harbison (horn I 938) Translation by Robert Bly
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

It is a real pleasure to find a substantial song cycle by one of the leading American composers of the middle generation; Harbison’s music is heard less frequently in the United Kingdom than he deserves. This work has also been scored for instrumental ensemble because, as the composer states somewhat ruefully in the introduction, the voice and piano duo seems to be on the decline.
A Vision of Time and Eternity Op. 6I (I972) William Mathias (1934--92) Text by Henry Vaughan
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This skilful and attractive work is written in a continuous span but it contains many contrasting sections and can either be considered as a cycle or a short cantata. The voice is used in the most imaginative and colourful way and the singer’s tone must be light and flexible enough to move speedily.
Three Greek Epigrams (I937) Priaulx Rainier (1903-86) Translation by Richard Aldington from Anyte ofTegea
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

These songs are typical of the originality and subtle craftsmanship of this most distinguished composer. Despite their brevity they are quite demanding technically, and the vocal lines need great control to sustain their intensity. Completely contrasting vocal styles are required for each song: the first flows smoothly with supple rhythms, the second involves florid coloratura and the last is an extrovert outburst of some strenuousness. So much detail and feeling are poured into each song that the cycle makes a substantial impression; in no sense could it be described as a set of miniatures.
Care Charmer Sleepe (I978) Peter Lawson (horn I9SI)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This substantial and strikingly original song cycle by a young com poser whose Work deserves to be more widely known is not published, but has been broadcast and performed several times. Its appeal is immediate, and closer scrutiny reveals frequent use of subtle nuances, both verbal and musical.
On the Beach at Fontana (I929) Roger Sessions (I896-I985) Text by James Joyce
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

This splendid song was originally part of the special collection written as a tribute to James Joyce, called The Joyce Book, which existed only in a limited edition. It is fortunate that the song is now available to a wider public. Sessions was one of the most cosmopolitan and influen tial of senior American composers, and he is sadly missed. It is perhaps surprising that this is his only song for solo voice and piano.
Graves Songs Set II op. 22 (I977-82) Hugh Wood (born I932) Text by Robert Graves
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Wood’s five short songs make a stirring impact in their response to the passionate and extremely moving poems. The set seems to represent the composer in his most romantic vein. Always an excellent vocal stylist, here he finds an even more lyrical expression than in earlier works for voice and piano. The texts are comfortably set to enhance vocal tone and colour and to allow uninhibited interpretation.
Love,s Philosophy op. 19 (1968-73) Paavo Heininen (born 1938)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: November 2023

Love’s Philosophy, a short cycle of three extremely well-known poems, is a splendid example of this leading Finnish composer’s work. His care for detail is always most conspicuous; the smooth and lyrical lines show his great sensitivity to the sound of the voice. The numerous phrases that focus on the top of the stave indicate that a tenor would be slightly more comfortable than a soprano. The musical idiom is well disciplined and highly chromatic; the intonation may require much attention. Rhythms are straightforward and there is scope for supple shaping of vocal phrases. The piano writing is full of character and exciting rhythmic details. The accompaniment is more intricate than the voice parts, allowing the singer to devote care to tone quality.
Early Papal Motets
Authors: Bent Margaret
Published: November 2023

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were perhaps the most protracted period of instability the papacy has ever suffered. For much of the four teenth century the papal residence was not in Rome but at Avignon. During the Great Schism from 1378 there were two popes, one in Avignon and one in Rome. Instead of ending the Schism, the election of a third pope at Pisa in 1409 ushered in a period of threefold division, since neither of the other popes was prepared to resign; but at least,briefly it gave occasion for celebration and optimism. This threefold Schism lasted until the election of Martin Vin 1417 at the Council of Constance.
Music for the Papal Chapel in the Early Fifteenth Century
Authors: Planchart Alejandro Enrique
Published: November 2023

A common view of the papal choir in the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance is that it represented, as did for example the chapel of the dukes of Burgundy, one of the most important centres of musical com position of its time, an institution that was dominated by composers and out of which came an important repertory of works. Such a view is misleading and applies, if it applies at all, to a narrow period covering the few decades that go from the end of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth.
A Curious Incident in the Institutional History of the Papal Choir
Authors: Sherr Richard
Published: November 2023

The papal singers occupied a somewhat unique position among choirs of the sixteenth century in that they were organized as a college; that is, even though they were technically the pope’s private singers and merely one group within the capella papalis under the jurisdiction of the papally appointed maestro di cappella (until 1586 a high cleric, usually a bishop, who was not a musician),2 they had a particular corporate structure, headed by a dean, internal rules and procedures codified in documents but also sanctioned by custom, and a collection of papal privileges granted to them as a group.
Introduction
Authors: Woodfield Ian
Published: November 2023

After the granting of its charter in 1600, the East India Company sent out ships to India every year with a view to establishing regular commerce. Music played a prominent part in these early missions, with consorts of musicians acting as diplomatic ‘extras’ to ambassadors, and lavish keyboard instruments being transported to India as presentation gifts to Mughal rulers. Having been granted the right to trade, the Company set up its first permanent settlement in the flourishing port of Surat, and this was followed by the opening of many small stations, to manage the so-called ‘country’ trade. It was difficult to sell European products in India (other than luxury goods to the European community there), and it was only through engaging in local trade that the Company was able to finance shipments back to Europe. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the larger stations or ‘factories’ as they were widely known began to develop a musical life almost multi-cultural in character, which made prominent use of Indian dancers and musicians. On public occasions, such as the annual parade to mark the birthday of the sovereign, it was the practice to hire a full ‘naubat’. Only in the mid-eighteenth century did London officials begin to quibble over the cost of the elephants.
Dancing and Dance Music in Purcell’s Operas
Authors: Semmens Richard
Published: November 2023

Information about the dancing that adorned Henry Purcell’s theatre works is not abundant, so the topic has not attracted the scholarly attention that otherwise might be expected.
Waiting for Figaro
Authors: Zaslaw Neal
Published: November 2023

ON 21 December 1782 Mozart wrote to his father that, a few days after the extremely successful, fourteenth performance of Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serai/ eleven days earlier, Count Rosenberg, who was in charge of the Burgtheater, had spoken to him suggesting that he should write an Italian opera. Mozart continued:I have already commissioned someone to procure for me from Italy the latest opera buffa librettos to choose from, but as yet I have not yet received any, although I myself wrote to Ignaz Hagenauer [in Venice] about it. Some Italian male and female singers are coming here at Easter. Please send me Lugiati’s address at Verona, for I should like to try this channel too.1
Satie the Bohemian
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian subculture of Montmartre, with its artists’ cabarets and cafés-concerts. Yet apologists have all too often downplayed this background as potentially harmful to the reputation of a composer whom they regarded as the progenitor of modern French music. Whiting argues, on the contrary, that Satie’s two decades in and around Montmartre decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies. He gives the fullest account to date of Satie’s professional activities as a popular musician, and of how he transferred the parodic techniques and musical idioms of cabaret entertainment to works for concert hall. From the esoteric Gymnopédies to the bizarre suites of the 1910s and avant-garde ballets of the 1920s (not to mention music journalism and playwriting), Satie’s output may be daunting in its sheer diversity and heterodoxy; but his radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in the fascinating context of bohemian Montmartre.
From the Auberge du Clou to Arcueil
Authors: Whiting Steven Moore
Published: November 2023

If the Chat Noir had nurtured Satie’s nonconformist spirit, the Auberge du Clou was the arena in which he began vigorously to assert that spirit, by committing ‘all his natural and spiritual resources’ to ‘a public role of heterodoxy’. The Clou was the backdrop to most of the eccentric exploits by which Satie is still remen1bered in anecdotes, and to most of the decisive developments in his bohemian career: the encounters with Debussy and with numerous painters; the Rosicrucian adventure and its aftermath in the Metropolitan Church; the striving for an esoteric style of composition to match his esoteric persona. Satie made still other noteworthy contacts during these years.
Performing Music
Authors: Dunsby Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Shared Concerns: Performing Music is about aspects of music-making that have not previously been considered together and in an accessible form. It deals with `performance studies' as a coherent subject, exploring such issues as the ideas of anxiety and artistry, recent thought in the musical literature, tensions between Romanticism nad Modernism, and the sound and design of music. It is written in non-technical language so that the lay reader will be able to gain an insight into how performers think, and what they think about. It is performers who bring classical music to a worldwide public, and yet the public is largely unaware of what it feels like to perform music, what aspects of the activity are a mystery even to the musicians themselves, and which are amenable to scrutiny, experiment, and improvement. The book offers a sustained but compact argument in a rich and entertaining narrative.
Anxiety and Artistry
Authors: Dunsby Jonathan
Published: November 2023

The Western musical performer, in the modern world, is often in an uneasy state of mind, and I propose to explore here reasons for this, and what it may amount to in actuality.

Many writings in what may broadly be called the aesthetics of music ignore musical anxiety and elaborate instead on the deep artistic satisfaction to be found in music, on its capacity to preoccupy the mind, rid it of words, and put in their place a passage of time filled with a different, unique ‘language’. This is what I call the Ecstasy school of musical thought.
Recent Thought
Authors: Dunsby Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Chapters 2 and 3 have outlined the challenges, both ‘disciplinary’ and mental and artistic, awaiting those who are interested in investigating performance studies-in its very general sense pertaining as much to the listener as to the practitioner. I have had to present so far an account largely of what is ‘missing’; we can now turn for most of the rest of this volume to what is present. If I have had to insist so far on problematics, as an antidote to the customary starting point in one or another related text, which so often strikes me as a complacent starting-point, this doesn’t mean that we should ignore much that is positive and purposeful in the existing literature, and in the debates that are in the air currently. Some of this will now be addressed.
Design in Music
Authors: Dunsby Jonathan
Published: November 2023

Near the beginning of the first chapter I indicated that there are cases where an improved theoretical understanding of music is bound to be useful in such circumstances as complex harmony, refractory text, or weak composition. I want now to ask what are the general features of music that are amenable to conceptual and when possible theoretical under standing, that is, to some further purpose.
The Music of Benjamin Britten
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: November 2023

Peter Evans discusses all the published compositions in subdivisions of genre and period, and devotes a separate chapter to each opera. With the help of over 300 music examples and diagrams, he demonstrates Britten’s mastery of the art of composition - tonal and harmonic structures, thematic cast and transformation, textual variety and the imaginative deployment of voices and instruments. Since this book’s appearance in 1979, Britten’s publishers have made available a considerable number of works withheld during the composer’s lifetime; some are juvenilia, but others date from a late as the Peter Grimes period. In a postscript to this first paperback edition, Peter Evans assesses the creative stature of these works and their significance in Britten’s development. The catalogue of works now includes these additional titles, and the selective bibliography has been revised.
The Turn of the Screw
Authors: Evans Peter
Published: November 2023

Britten’s early impatience with the unduly self-conscious nationalism and the restricted emotional range of much English music in the thirties had encouraged him to seek out a music at once more full-blooded and more nervously tense: his discovery of Mahler was reflected in the phraseology of much of his early music, and it was Mahler’s individual orchestral manner (rather than, say, the chamber orchestration of either Stravinsky or Schoen berg) that developed Britten’s keen sensitivity in the use of the small orchestra of solo tone colours. So much was evident at many moments of the first two chamber operas, while in the Spring Symphony the method had been extended to a full orchestral palette.
Tchaikovsky’s Last Days
Authors: Poznansky Alexander
Published: November 2023

Tchaikovsky’s death in October 1893 in St Petersburg, shortly after the première of his sixth symphony, the ‘Pathétique’, is one of the most thoroughly documented deaths of a prominent cultural figure in modern times. He was treated by no fewer than four physicians and surrounded by a group of relatives and friends. The official account of his death was that he died from cholera, possibly by drinking infected water, but almost since the day of his death there have been rumours that it was not accidental. It is alleged by some that Tchaikovsky either committed suicide or was murdered in order to avoid the scandal and disgrace of being unmasked as a homosexual. Alexander Poznansky is the first Western scholar to have gained access to the Tchaikovsky archives in Klin, Russia. He provides much hitherto unknown documentary material—memoirs, diary entries, letters, and newspaper reports—and adds his own commentary on the status of homosexuality in nineteenth-century Russia and on the various conspiracy theories that have been advanced to account for Tchaikovsky’s death. His conclusion is that there is no factual evidence to support the notion that Tchaikovsky’s death was caused by anything other than cholera.
James Brown’s ‘Superbad’ and the Double-Voiced Utterance
Authors: Brackett David
Published: November 2023

JB was proof that black people were different. Rhythmically and tonally blacks had to be from somewhere else. Proof that Africa was really over there for those of us who had never seen it—it was in that voice. (Thulani Davis, quoted Guralnick 1986: 242–3) If there is any black man who symbolizes the vast differences between black and white cultural and aesthetic values, Soul Brother No. 1 (along with Ray Charles) is that man.
‘Maybellene’: Meaning and the Listening Subject
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: November 2023

There appeared in the summer of 1982 a song written and performed by three German structuralists, a song characterized by the simplicity—to the point of banality— of its musical structure and instrumentation. Intended as a critical intervention in the production of ordinariness in popular music, ‘Da Da Da’ reached number one in the British charts, and Trio’s appearance on the British TV show, Top of the Pops , was no more threatening than that of Captain Sensible or any other novelty act: welcome to the whacky world of deconstructive minimalism. Clearly the intended meanings of the song were not always the ones it evoked for the listener. Recordings have a way of taking on a life of their own in their meetings with the public; in Voloshinov’s phrase, the production of meaning is intersubjective, involving artists, promotional campaigns, disc jockeys, and the audience. This article addresses particularly the role of the listening subject in the construction of a song’s meanings.
Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Coding in the Work of Jimi Hendrix
Authors: Whiteley Sheila
Published: November 2023

But like, the blues is what we’re supposed to dig…sometimes the notes might sound like it, but it’s a different scene between those notes. (Hendrix quoted in Pidgeon 1967: 2) Discussion of the 1960s generally identifies progressive rock as the prime organ of communication within the counter-culture. At the same time, musical analysis of the genre is an underdeveloped field of study, including only an identification of musical characteristics (Willis 1978), Mellers’ analysis of the Beatles (1973) and Middleton and Muncie’s analysis of five representative songs in the Open University’s course, Popular Culture (1981).
Postcolonialism on the Make: The Music of John Mellencamp, David Bowie, and John Zorn
Authors: Hisama Ellie M
Published: November 2023

When we acknowledge that an idea, history or tradition is not ours, we distance ourselves from it. When we then proceed to use, incorporate or represent it, we arrogate the right to employ what we acknowledge as not ours. It is not something we do despite the foreignness of our subject; it is something we do because of our perception of it as other. The implicit hierarchical nature of otherness invites seemingly innocuous practices of representation that amount to (often unknowing) strategies of domination through appropriation.
The Quest For Voice
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: November 2023

What is musical meaning? Where does it reside and how can it be known? Does it make a difference to its meaning if the music is composed with or without words, as a symphony or a song? Why is it claimed that music can express human feelings with an immediacy not possible in other languages or arts? What is contained in the claim that music is autonomous, or that it is prophetic and can articulate a ‘politics for the future’? Concentrating on the music, politics, and philosophy of Richard Wagner, Lydia Goehr addresses these classic questions of German Romanticism. On the way, she offers an account of the peculiar relation that was established between philosophy and music in the nineteenth century; a philosophical and political reading of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger; an account of the Wagner-Hanslick debate on musical formalism; an argument for resituating musical autonomy, in the spirit of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk; an account of the competing performance ideals embodied in Wagner’s Bayreuth, and an interpretation of Wagner’s legacy as experienced by composers exiled from Nazi Germany. Goehr’s historical and musicological enquiries are unified by a philosophical study of the impact of the transcendental or critical perspective on philosophical theory. She argues that philosophy needs to take its limits seriously to accommodate the primacy of music’s practice.
Conflicting Ideals of Performance Perfection in an Imperfect Practice
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: November 2023

In 1965 Glenn Gould predicted that ‘the public concert as we know it today would no longer exist a century hence [because] its functions would have been entirely taken over by electronic media’.
The Sound of Medieval Song
Authors: Mcgee Timothy J
Published: November 2023

The Sound of Medieval Song is a study of how sacred and secular music was actually sung during the Middle Ages. The source of the information is the actual notation in the early manuscripts as well as statements found in approximately 50 theoretical treatises written between the years 600-1500. The writings describe various singing practices and both desirable and undesirable vocal techniques, providing a fairly accurate picture of how singers approached the music of the period. Detailed descriptions of the types and uses of improvised ornament indicate that in performance the music was highly ornate, and included trill, gliss, reverberation, pulsation, pitch inflection, non-diatonic tones, and cadenza-like passages of various lengths. The treatises also provide evidence of stylistic differences in various geographical locations. McGee draws conclusions about the kind of vocal production and techniques necessary in order to reproduce the music as it was performed during the Middle Ages, aligning the practices much more closely with those of the Middle East than has ever been previously acknowledged.
From Medieval to Renaissance: A Continental Excursus, I480–1530
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

Towards the end of the fifteenth-century lute technique underwent a fundamental change from one suited to playing a single line to one which allowed a solo player to play two or more parts at once. The new technique may have originated first among lutenists at the Burgundian court in the 1460s and 1470s, but was then developed in Italy in the closing decades of the fifteenth century and early years of the sixteenth. During the first half of the sixteenth century the technique was adopted throughout western Europe, and the old monophonic style, normally associated with the use of a plectrum, was gradually discontinued. This development is part of the general move from monophony to polyphony that characterizes the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, a transition that saw the emergence of new families of string and wind instruments that were specifically designed to play polyphonic music.
The Theorbo
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

The type of large lute with an extended neck, known in England in the seventeenth century as the theorbo, originated in Italy in the final decades of the sixteenth century. In Italy the word ‘tiorba’ was synonymous with ‘chitarrone’, the name popularly used for the same instrument in the first three decades of the seventeenth century. The name chitarrone, from the Greek ‘kithara’, reflects the idea, strong in the minds of the instrument’s inventors, that the instrument was the modern counterpart of the kithara used by the self-accompanying poets of classical antiquity.
The Decline of the Lute in England after 1660
Authors: Spring Matthew
Published: November 2023

At the Restoration Charles II initially tried to return the royal household to the situation in 1642 as nearly as possible, and to continue as if there had been no Interregnum. He reinstated as many of the old appointees as could be found, and recommenced their salaries at what they had been in 1642. In instances where musicians had died in the meantime, or were untraceable, new appointments were made.
The Violin Explained
Authors: Beamnt Jams
Published: November 2023

Throughout its history the violin has had a mystique with many curious beliefs. Physicists have now discovered how it produces its sound, though this knowledge is largely inaccessible to makers and players. This book explains how strings vibrate and the roles of the bow, bridge and body, glue and varnish, without assuming the reader has any scientific background. But physical sound is a poor indicator of the sensations it produces, and the core of the book explains how that sound relates to the sensations we hear. This leads to the conclusion that most of the myths are groundless, but also that nothing can be achieved by applying any modern technology to making or playing; indeed, it would be a disaster if that happened. Practical advice on strings, maintenance, purchase, and children's instruments conclude the discussion.
The Oratorio in Bologna (1650-1730)
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

In the seventeenth century Bologna developed a rich and diverse musical culture through the enterprise of musicians attached to the Basilica of S. Petronio and affiliated to the Accademia de’Filarmonici. Their achievements in the field of instrumental music (sonata, concerto) and festive church music (concerted mass) are well documented, but little of their output in the fields of oratorio, amounting to 300 performances in the period 1659-1730, has been subjected to critical scrutiny. This book relates the genesis and development of oratorio in Bologna to the city’s religious, political, and cultural aspirations. The oratorio repertory is surveyed in three historical phases: under Cazzati (1657-74), Colonna (1675-95), and Perti (1696-1730), and eight oratorios by the city’s leading composers are analysed in detail. A chronological list of performances is given in the Appendix.
Colonna’s Latin Dialogue Adstabat Coram (1668)
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

The dialogue was published in 1668 as the final item in an anthology of sacred Latin pieces (Sacri Concerti) selected by Marino Silvani and printed by Giacomo Monti in Bologna. The anthology also featured works by Monferrato, Cavalli, Rovetta, and Pietro Ziani from Venice, Cazzati, Cossoni, and Filippuzzi from Bologna, Trabatone from Varese, and Oratio Tarditi from Faenza. The twelve items were clearly intended for use in the liturgy: Cavalli’s ‘O bone Jesu’ was advertised in the index as suitable for use in the Mass (‘Del Santissimo’), Tarditi’s ‘Spargite flores’ for use on a feast of the Virgin Mary (‘Della B.V.’), and Colonna’s ‘Adstabat coram’ for use at all sea sons (‘per ogni tempo’).
The Colonna Era, 1675-1695
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

The Fabbriceria in San Petronio hesitated for three years after dismissing Cazzati before they found a suitable replacement. The six senators considered the petitions of musicians from near and far (Legrenzi was among the foreign candidates rejected) before electing Giovanni Paolo Colonna by five votes (for) to one (against) in October 1674.
Degli Antonii’s L’Innocenza Depressa (1686)
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

Laments of the Virgin Mary and laments of Mary Magdalene had been central components of the Catholic Church’s passiontide devotions for centuries, prior to being incorporated in the spiritual exercises of the Oratorians in the late sixteenth century. The great soprano castrato, Loreto Vittori, is reputed to have reduced a large audience to tears when he sang a lament of Mary Magdalene at the Chiesa Nuova in Rome in 1645. It seems that the Italian Passion-oratorio grew from the fertile seed of the Marian lament, the librettists simply enlarging the circle of mourners to include the male disciples and, perhaps, the centurion guarding the cross.
Bononcini’s Il Giosué (1688)
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

Giovanni Bononcini’s second oratorio, II Giosue, was composed when he was 17 years old. It was performed both at Bologna for the Oratorians and at Modena for the court in 1688. The surviving score at Modena (I-MOe, Mus.F.103) contains Bononcini’s dedicatory address to the duke, thanking him for his patronage and paying tribute to the excellent musical tuition he has received from Colonna in Bologna. The author of II Giosue, Tomaso Stanzani (or Stanzini), was an important literary figure in Bologna, mentioned in state papers as Chancellor of Senate in 1690. Stanzani began his literary career in the 1670s, writing secular librettos for academies and the Formagliari Theatre. II Giosue was his first oratorio libretto.
Conclusions
Authors: Crowther Victor
Published: November 2023

As the Italian oratorio spread from its birthplace in Rome to Florence in the 1650s, to Venice in the 1660s and to Perugia in the 1680s, the branches of the Congregation of the Oratory in those cities were in the vanguard of the enterprise. In Bologna, however, the earliest performances in the 1660s were sponsored by the nobility and by a number of small charitable fraternities. At that time, the Oratorians practised their spiritual exercises in Madonna di Galliera and in the open air in the summer season, but little is known about the music performed at their devotional gatherings.
Percy Grainger
Authors: Bird John
Published: November 2023

This extensively revised edition of John Bird’s acclaimed biography of Percy Grainger gives the first circumstantial account of the life and works of one of the strangest figures in twentieth-century music. Behind Grainger’s highly original compositional achievements, folksong collecting and glittering career as a virtuoso concert pianist lay a tragic and chaotic personal life--long domination by his mother, unorthodox sexual predilections, an eccentric athleticism, a demonic spiritual drive and wildly inconsistent personal philosophy with Anglo-Saxon obsessions such as his famous Blue-Eyed English’. A list of published compositions, a current discography of performances by Grainger, and a selection of his seminal writings complete what has already proved to be a standard work. In their Prefatory Note to the first edition, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears wrote: `In his sympathetic and tactful biography John Bird has beautifully balanced the brilliance with the turbulence of this unbalanced genius--we are grateful to him’.
Improving Violin Trading and Repairing Standards
Authors: Harvey Brian W , Shapreau Carla J
Published: November 2023

The effective closure in 1990 of a well-established Midlands stringed instrument dealing business1 as a result of an investigation by Trading Standards Officers, and ensuing national publicity, prompted yet again discussion amongst traders of ways to improve the ‘image’ of violin dealing. There are two associated problems. The first is that of author itative authentication. Enough has been said in Chapter 6 to show the difficulties of authentication in the fine art world. The inherent and inevitable difficulties involved in authentication have given rise to the second problem, which is a reluctance in some quarters to erect a disciplined professional framework within which respectable dealers can work. The result is a tend ency to decry each other’s goods when a customer asks for an opinion on an instrument obtained from some other source, or possibly even on a purchase or part-exchange transaction.
Auctions
Authors: Harvey Brian W , Shapreau Carla J
Published: November 2023

Instruments of the violin family and their bows are regularly sold at auction and disputes regarding authenticity, provenance, condition, value, and title may arise.1 Three relationships exist in the auction context from which disputes generally occur: the relationship between the auctioneer and the seller/consignor; the relationship between the buyer and the auctioneer; and the relationship between the seller/consignor and the buyer. The sale of violins is governed by UCC section 2-328 in most states.2 In addition, some states have enacted additional legislation that may have an impact on conduct in the auction setting.
Shostakovich and Us
Authors: Taruskin Richard
Published: November 2023

‘I wish, Ladies and Gentleman, I could cure myself of the habit of speaking ironically,’ Max Beerbohm once teased a radio audience. ‘I should so like to express myself in a straightforward manner.’ Earlier, just as straightforwardly, he had written (in Zuleika Dobson) that ‘one is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally’. Every letters column, every writer’s mailbag, overflows with corroboration. Recently, a Bay Area columnist tried kicking at the budget cuts that are hobbling the state of California’s public library system with a burst of fulsome mock-approval. Her next column naturally consisted of apologies to all the book-lovers and librarians she had offended. ‘I was being ironic,’ she tried explaining to one. ‘If you were, I would know it,’ her caller retorted. Surely one of the most striking features of the theatre historian Isaak Glikman’s 1993 edition of Shostakovich’s letters, the first major post-Soviet contribution to the literature on the greatest of all Soviet artists, is the frequency with which the editor (one of the composer’s closest friends) intervenes to explain that Shostakovich, you see, was making a joke.