Biographies Of Composers Research Articles

Asian American Female Composers and Digital Memory

Asian American Female Composers and Digital Memory

The Cultural Canon of Russian Music in the Series “The Lives of Wonderful People” (From the End of the 19th to the First Decades of the 21st Century)

The subject of the study is the modeling and transformation of the cultural canon in the field of academic music by the example of the series “The Lives of Wonderful People.” The main sources used were biographies of Russian and Soviet composers, published between 1892 and 2019. Analysis of these texts is carried out within the framework of receptive research; cultural-historical and historical-genetic methods, and the theory of cultural recycling are applied. Florenty Pavlenkov’s narratives about Russian composers have already become an important part of the formation of the musical picture of the world among the readership of the Russian Silver Age. These biographies (of Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Serov and Alexander Dargomyzhsky) account for almost a third of the total number of books about musicians in the series, whereas one single author – Sergei Bazunov – forms the narrative canon. In the Soviet period, with the change of the mass reader orientation and the presence of rigid ideological attitudes, a different cultural canon of selected composers was elaborated. In period of Stalin they were Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Piotr Tchaikovsky. In the second half of the 20th century (before 1991), the following composers were added to the list: Dmitri Bortnyansky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Sergei Prokofiev. Subsequent political changes have entailed the transformation and rebranding of the biographical canon of this series. In the post-Soviet era, there has been a rapid expansion of the circle of musical names: both composers of the beginning of the 20th century (Alexander Scriabin) and from the Soviet period (Isaak Dunaevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Tikhon Khrennikov, and Valery Gavrilin) have been included there. A recycling of biographical narratives of the Soviet era (for example, Tchaikovsky and Glinka) has been carried out. Along with the composers, an array of biographies of those artistic activists without whom Russian music of the Silver Age would not have taken place – philanthropists, producers and performers (for example, Sergei Diaghilev, Savva Mamontov, and Fyodor Chaliapin) – has also emerged. Keywords: biographies of composers, the series “The Lives of Wonderful People,” cultural recycling, the Soviet canon

Vocal Art of Armenian Composers

The three volumes of the Vocal Art of Armenian Composers present the works of post- genocide first generation composers, such as Komitas, Alemshah, Ganatchian, and Berberian, to enrich the art song repertoire of the musical community at large. The repertoire is presented for the first time in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) phonemes accompanied by literal, poetic, and idiomatic English translations. The volumes also include information on Armenian music and historic events relevant to the repertoire, composer biographies, and sources. Classical singers, vocal coaches, and voice teachers will find this Anthology helpful in learning and teaching Armenian art songs. This article describes the process of putting together the volumes, elucidates linguistic and grammatical intricacies of the Armenian language, and provides an IPA transliteration key that will greatly simplify the learning process.

Analysis of Mozart’s Biography with Becker’s Theory of “Art Worlds”

<div><!--block-->Historical musicology, which is a method within the discipline of musicology, is based on composer biographies and works, whereas systematic musicology, which includes analytical and empirical methods, is based on the musical analysis of works. These historical and analytical studies represented the relationship between music and science from the 19th century to the 20th century. After the 20th century, researches about the science of music moved to a new, critical and multi-faceted field in social, cultural, political and artistic contexts as well as historicity ones. The evaluations of composer biographies that constitute the historical knowledge of music have been handled in a holistic and multi-faceted framework with this new orientation. In this article, which is prepared based on a new, critical, multi-disciplinary way of thinking within the framework of New Musicology, the determinant composer of the Classical Period W. A. Mozart was evaluated according to Becker’s Art Worlds, which is sociological theory. W.A. Mozart’s way of thinking shapes his art life and this was examined through the slices of his life and through his own words using the categories of Integrated Professionals and Incompatibles in Becker’s classification of artist behavior. This article aims to create a functional and interdisciplinary meaning for the formation processes of W. A. Mozart’s art life far from philosophical, aesthetic and value judgments. It is considered that this evaluation will bring a different perspective to biography studies in the contexts of generally accepted (canonical) thought.</div>

Beethoven and His Music in the Plays of Gert Jonke

Gert Jonke’s concern with music can be seen as a continuation of the modernist critique of language and concomitant exploration of its possibilities. Musical inspirations, from the biographies of composers to specifi c musical forms and structures, broaden the scope of literary art. A common theme of Jonke’s works under discussion is the life and achievement of Ludwig van Beethoven. Jonke’s plays Gentle Rage (1990) and Choir Phantasy (2003) explore the dissonance between idea, metaphorized as striving for absolute art, and matter, as it emanates from the mundane reality. Jonke combines romantic idealism and modernist melancholy with postmodern irony and parody to highlight the moments of transgression when art is liberated from the artist’s influence.

МУЗИЧНО-ПЕДАГОГІЧНІ ПОСІБНИКИ СХІДНОЇ ГАЛИЧИНИ ПЕРШОЇ ПОЛОВИНИ ХХ СТ.

In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of textbooks on major musical disciplines, such as solfeggio, the theory of music, and the history of music, appear. Most of them are written for the needs of the M. Lysenko Higher Music Institute (including solfeggio textbooks and the theory of music by S. Lyudkevych). The manuals of S.Lyudkevych are innovative in their approach to solving their tasks. The teacher and composer, S. Lyudkevych, in detail studies the available English, German, Czech, Polish materials and on this basis creates his own methodology. Composite talent helps him to develop constructive exercises that are not devoid of musicality. Also, as a musical material, many melodies from Ukrainian and world music literature have been used. In this way, Lyudkevych introduces Ukrainian music into the auditory memory of the younger generation. Three different approaches to filing the history of music are shown by V. Barvinskiy, B. Kudrick, F. Steshko. Using the historical approach, each of them chooses another way of disclosing the material through different goals of their work. The “Review of the History of Ukrainian Church Music” is based on a detailed review of the historical situation, composer biographies and a deep comprehensive analysis of musical works, as it is a textbook. “Music” by V. Barvinskiy is a section “The History of Ukrainian Art”, edited by I. Krypyakevych, and a generalizing approach is chosen here. “Music” in, a concise form, allows us to trace the ways of developing Ukrainian music from ancient times to the present in the context of world music. F.Steshko focuses on comparing the works of Ukrainian composers with their contemporaries (for example, Berezovskiy and Mozart). Their value is in combination with proven long-standing practice of European techniques with Ukrainian musical material. Today, these textbooks, which undoubtedly can and must be part of the Ukraine, need to return to scientific circulation and educational practice.

Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning by Robert Stuart Thomson

Reviewed by: Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning by Robert Stuart Thomson Elena Retzer Thomson, Robert Stuart. Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning. Victoria: Godwin, 2015. Pp. 126. ISBN 978-0-96967-749-9. Robert Stuart Thomson’s Love Songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning contains a selection of twenty four beautiful Spanish-language boleros, tangos, rancheras and other love songs (on an accompanying CD), around which a lesson is built. The author has provided general background information for each of the songs, as well as some specific language notes for learners of Spanish. Among the songs there are such classics as Gardel’s “Mi Buenos Aires querido” and “El día que me quieras,” Agustín Lara’s “Granada” and Ernesto Lecuona’s “Siboney” (both in Plácido Domingo’s rendition), as well as the birthday standard “Las mañanitas.” Each of the 24 lessons is accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the composer or performer; a Spanish song lyric with an English translation; Thomson’s notes about the historical context of each composition; his interpretation of the song meaning, and several grammar- and lexicon-related outlines (e.g., about idioms). The author, a music lover, writes that the idea for [End Page 700] the volume originated some decades ago when he became familiar with Spanish-language songs during his travels in Mexico and wanted to consult a book with composer biographies, original lyrics and an analysis of the poetic elements of each song. I wholeheartedly agree that target-language songs can provide a memorable, emotion-charged supplementary teaching method. Thomson’s suggestions for how the text could be used include a cloze text, in which an instructor can white out specific words or phrases from the lyric (such as different past-tense forms of verbs, etc.). Although the author recommends that students print the translation of nouns and verbs as the instructor plays any given song several times (109), this need not be the main goal of the activity, depending on the learning objectives of any language program. “Students will need space to write in an accurate translation” (111), writes the author, and, in a grammar-translation course this might be a worthwhile goal, albeit not universally applicable. Other interesting, fun suggestions are song-related projects (for intermediate or advanced levels of proficiency), such as assigning essays about the life and work of a composer or recording artist; the origins of different musical genres, or simply about why a learner finds a song meaningful (117) or how it has been used in a film soundtrack. A thought-provoking prompt is “what to appreciate in the songs.” Thomson poses such questions as: “What is the song about? What does the song reflect about the culture which gave rise to it? What makes the song typically Mexican, Argentinean, Catholic, tropical . . . ?” (11). These are, of courses, very broad questions that could lead to fascinating explorations of what students believe is “typically” Mexican or Catholic and thus question their own assumptions and biases. Such topics would work very well, I believe, in mixed groups composed of heritage and non-heritage learners. Some analysis questions, such as: “Does the songwriter use personification and apostrophe, i.e. pathetic fallacy,” (11) or whether the song is written in a major or minor key, use concepts that should be defined beforehand so that learners can benefit from thinking about them. Others are truly difficult to answer, such as: “Are the lyrics original or unusual?” (11), or “does the music seem original”? The answers will depend, of course, on each listener’s experience and exposure to art in Spanish, as well as what each individual learner may consider (un)usual or (un)original. Some statements may be found problematic for certain learners. For instance, a reference to a “commonly held idea in Mexico” (23) that “certain regions of the country produce the most beautiful women” may spark interesting discussion. I believe that the use of the diminutive form farolito in “Mi Buenos Aires querido” is not an example of a pathetic fallacy, defined as “the composer attributes emotion to an object (el farolito);” it is a simple use of the diminutive...

Tin Pan Alley and the Philippines: American Songs of War and Love, 1898–1946: A Resource Guide by Thomas P. Walsh (review)

Tin Pan Alley and the Philippines: American Songs of War and Love, 1898-1946: A Resource Guide. By Thomas P. Walsh. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. [xxv, 411 p. ISBN 9780810886087 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9780810886094 (e-book), $94.99.] Bibliographic references, indexes. Thomas Walsh has uncovered a vast forgotten repertoire of popular that serves as an exciting contribution to the growing scholarship on Tin Pan Alley and the intersections of U.S. imperialism, popular culture, and global popular music. This volume covers the period of U.S. colonial rule in the islands, from 1898 to 1946, and includes entries for approximately 1,400 whose lyrics or titles deal in some way with the Philippines. By grouping these together for the first time, Walsh provides scholars with a starting point from which to further explore the ways in which popular song served as a medium to negotiate, perform, and experience the logics and ideologies of U.S. imperialism. The bulk of Walsh's easy-to-use volume consists of individual song entries listed alphabetically by year. These include soldier written by American soldiers during the Philippine-American War and well-distributed Tin Pan Alley hits such as Ma Filipino Babe and Old Manila. One of Walsh's primary contributions is revealing the widespread engagement with this musical subject matter by uncovering a wealth of unpublished sent off for copyright at the Library of Congress that remained unseen and unheard. In addition to popular songs, Walsh also includes a small number of other media, such as recordings, musicals, and classical works. Very little of this repertoire has appeared in earlier discographies. Walsh generated his entries by combing through sheet music archives, examining records of copyrights, and by building a large private collection of Tin Pan Alley pieces. While the subtitle describes the volume as songs of war and love, the majority of these were written around times of formal warfare during the Spanish-American/Philippine-American Wars from 1898 to 1902 and World War II from 1941 to 1946. These eleven years take up 66 percent of the 363 pages of entries, and the earlier period alone comprises almost half the book. Song entries feature standard discographic information, but many also include descriptions of cover art, lyrics for in the public domain, and links to digitized recordings, online sheet music, or primary sources with information about the entry. His inclusion of such information provides scholars access to crucial resources beyond those that could be reasonably included in a printed guide. These links to Web sites hosted by universities and large archives will likely be accessible to scholars well into the future. In addition to this extra information, for about half of the pieces, Walsh offers brief biographies of composers, historically situates events referred to in the lyrics, or analyzes cover art iconography. Much of this is new research, and helps to provide context for lesser-known composers and esoteric subject matter. Walsh concludes with a two-page afterword about popular song and the Philippines from 1947 to 1950, and an eleven-page bibliography of books, articles, discographies, and Web sites on music and U.S. and Philippine popular culture. There are two indexes, one organized by song title, the other by composer, lyricist, and arranger. Walsh more than fulfills his modest goal of providing] a fresh perspective from which to view and analyze how American popular culture recorded its thoughts . …

Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack (review)

THEATRICAL MUSIC Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World. By Howard Pollack. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. [618 p. ISBN 9780199791590. $39.95.] Illustrations, bibliographical references, index. Just as composer Franz Liszt was more than a transcriber of Beethoven symphonies, Schubert lieder, and Wagner arias, Marc Blitzstein, translator of Die Dreigroschenoper, deserves far more recognition as a composer in his own right than he has so far received. hi fact, it may be time to reconsider statement of his eminently more successful longtime friend and supporter Leonard Bernstein, who appeared to dismiss Blitzstein's musical achievement when he described his former mentor's career as a long chain of beautiful work-failures (p. 186). Despite this implicit criticism, it should be noted that Bernstein clearly admired at least one dimension of Blitzstein's legacy when he praised his friend as the greatest master of setting of American language to (p. 500). Bernstein's (and nearly everyone else's) seemingly contradictory assessment of Blitzstein can be found in Howard Pollack's magisterial and revelatory new 600-page biography, Marc Blitzstein: His life, His Work, His World, a biography which follows (and surpasses) Eric Gordon's earlier 600-page well-researched, enlightening, and pioneering study of America's first (and perhaps only, to date) major Jewish-Communist-gay COM poser (Mark Music: The Lift and Work of Marc Blitzstein [New York: St. Martin's Press, 19891). For those who are wondering why we need, for example, a combined total of nearly ten pages to help us decipher plot of Reuben, Reuben, Pollack, who uses his predecessor's research effectively, respectfully, and selectively on an as-needed basis, answers this fundamental question clearly, simply, and tactfully at end of his new study: As to Gordon's book itself, commentators extolled author's extensive research, even if a few missed more substantial discussion of (p. 496). Pollack has previously authored an impressive list of composer biographies, including definitive portraits of two indisputable giants of American music, Aaron Copland (1999) and George Gershwin (2006), and before that lesser-known Walter Piston and John Alden Carpenter. In notable contrast to Gordon, Pollack incorporates into his study of artist's life a meaningful musical examination of virtually every work, large and small of this prolific hut still largely unknown American original, who possessed a special predilection and passion for many forms and genres of theater music (for a list of works as well as other interesting biographical and critica1 information, however, one may still wish to keep Gordon handy). Pollack's exceptional command of primary manuscripts as well as secondary sources enables him to trace many and surprisingly early origins of later works in Blitzstein's career as well as to provide rich analytical and critical discussions and histories, especially of major theater works: labor musical The Cradle Will Rock (1936), which merits two chapters; radio opera I've Got Tune (1937); musical No for an Answer (1937-40), which closed after three nights and three years of work on its in journey to Broadway; Airborne Symphony (1943-46), a wartime cantata for male chorus and Blitzstein's only major orchestral success, which was premiered and twice recorded by Bernstein; Regina (1946-49), highly praised and regularly produced adaptation of Lillian Hell mart's The Little. Foxes (1939), arguably Blitzstein's major ticket to operatic canon (also two chapters); disappointing fiasco Reuben, Reuben (1949-55), which closed before reaching Broadway; and Juno (1957-59), which many, including present reviewer, consider to be an underrated and revivable Broadway adaptation of Sean O'Casey's classic play, firm, and Paycock (192.11. …

Crossing Musical Worlds: Ottoman Jewry, Music Making, and the Rise of the Nation

Based on a larger project investigating music making as an integral part of Ottoman and Turkish social history, this article seeks to understand surviving musical resonances across ethnoreligious communities in Turkey today. It specifically explores Jewish religious music and its interconnections with a wider Ottoman-Turkish musical culture that has sustained historical traces in Turkish synagogues today. Focusing primarily on a Jewish musical form with close links to Ottoman court music, the Maftirim repertoire, the study investigates the changing urban landscape of intercommunal music making as the Ottoman Empire ended and the Turkish nation was built. Through composer biographies and ethnographic methodologies of oral history within an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, the analysis seeks to articulate the places and people circulating in a late Ottoman music world and sharing patterns of patronage, aesthetic understandings, professional specialization, and master-pupil relations. The social ethos of this art world provides the foundation for tracing Ottoman-Turkish-Jewish music making in the republic. By pursuing not only minority human and cultural losses in the twentieth century but also the musical lives of those Jews who remained in Turkey, the article elucidates continuities in Ottoman lines of transmission and interethnic music making to explain the performance of Maftirim in Istanbul today. It argues that it was through alternative patrons and civic spaces that Turkish Jewish religious musicians participated with their non-Jewish counterparts in sustaining at-risk, albeit changing, Ottoman cultural forms in the face of state and commercial cultural interests.

Monitor: The Creation of the Television Arts Documentary

Monitor (BBC, 1958–65), a series which showcased the arts and their creators and was presented by Huw Wheldon, is now remembered as the flagship of late 1950s and early 1960s arts documentary television broadcasting. In Arts TV: A History of Arts Television in Britain, John Walker describes Monitor as ‘a crucially important early series’ (1993: 45), arguing that ‘no one could deny its ground-breaking achievements’ (ibid.: 49). John Wyver, in Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain, called Monitor ‘among the BBC’s most celebrated contributions to “good broadcasting’’ ’ (2007: 27). In the edited collection Experimental British Television, Jamie Sexton refers to Monitor as the ‘BBC’s critically acclaimed arts series’ (Mulvey and Sexton 2007: 90), while Kay Dickinson, in the same collection, refers to it as a ‘well respected fortnightly Sunday arts magazine programme’, pointing out that this was where Ken Russell first made his name (ibid.: 70). Indeed the series is now most admired for Russell’s innovative composer biographies, the highlight of which is generally accepted to be his film on Elgar (BBC, 11 November 1962). Indeed, this film was chosen to mark the hundredth edition of the programme.

Guide to the euphonium repertoire: the euphonium source book

Contents Foreword, R. Winston Morris Preface Acknowledgments, Lloyd E. Bone Jr. Acknowledgments, Eric Paull 1. A Short History of the Euphonium and Baritone Horn, Michael B. O'Connor 2. Music for Euphonium and Keyboard, Lloyd Bone Works Listed by Composer Works Listed by Title Euphonium and Keyboard Collections Euphonium and Organ French Euphonium Solos with Keyboard 3. Music for Euphonium and Wind Band, Adam Frey 4. Music for Euphonium and Brass Ensemble, Adam Frey 5. Music for Euphonium and Orchestra, Adam Frey 6. Music for Euphonium in Mixed Ensemble, Seth D. Fletcher Two Players Three Players Four Players Five Players Six Players Seven Players Eight Players Nine Players Ten Players Eleven Players Twelve Players Thirteen Players Fourteen Players 7. Music for Unaccompanied Euphonium, Neal Corwell 8. Music for Euphonium and Electronic Media, Neal Corwell 9. Music for Multiple Euphoniums, Seth D. Fletcher Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Eight Part Nine Part Twelve Part 10. Recommended Repertoire Written for Other Instruments, Sharon Huff Euphonium with Piano Unaccompanied Solos Collections Method Books Two Euphoniums Three Euphoniums Four Euphoniums 11. Methods and Studies, Brian Bowman 12. Band and Orchestral Excerpts, Brian Bowman 13. Recommended Basic Repertoire For the High School Student, Carroll Gotcher and Atticus Hensley For the University Student, Brian L. Bowman For U.S. Military Band Auditions, Brian L. Bowman For High School and College Tuba/Euphonium Quartets, Sharon Huff 14. Discography, Eric Paull Euphonium Recordings by Artist Euphonium Recordings by Title Euphonium Recordings by Composer Addresses of Recording Companies/Distributors 15. Bibliography, Kenneth R. Kroesche Books Dissertations, Theses, and Research Projects Articles References 16. Euphonium Composer Biographies, Mark Walker 17. Biographical Sketches of Professional Euphoniumists, Bryce Edwards 18. Guide to Trombone/Euphonium Doubling, John Mueller 19. The Euphonium in Jazz, Marcus Dickman 20. Equipment, Demondrae Thurman Euphonium Manufacturers and Distributors and Their Products Euphonium Mouthpieces and Accessories Specialized Repair Sources Appendix A: Composers', Publishers', and Manufacturers' Addresses, Joseph Skillen Appendix B: Recording the Euphonium, Neal Corwell Appendix C: Continuing Symposia, Competitions, Events, Festivals, and Summer Study, Lisa M. Hocking and Matthew J. Tropman Appendix D: The Freelance Euphoniumist, Bryce Edwards Contributors Index, Kelly Thomas

El sonido del realismo mágico (review)

Reviewed by: El sonido del realismo mágico David P. Appleby Tomas Marco. El sonido del realismo mágico. Madrid: Fundación Autor, 2006. 222 pp. ISBN 84-8048-703-8. Catalogue of works, alphabetical catalogue, discography, bibliography of writings by Marlos Nobre, general bibliography, compact disc. Tomas Marco is well qualified to write the first Spanish language biography of Brazil's most internationally acclaimed living composer, Marlos Nobre. Marco is winner of several awards as a composer and is well known in Spain as a critic for Radio Nacional de España for eleven years. He was also professor of history of music in la Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia. This biography derives its title, "El sonido del realismo magico," from a term more readily familiar to readers of contemporary literature than music. Marco also mentions in his preliminary notes (13) the composition by Alberto Ginastera, "Cantata para America Mágica," as a source of inspiration for his title. Marlos Nobre was one of the Latin American composers selected for a period of study at the Centro de Altos Estudios Musicales del Instituto Torcuato de Tella de Buenos Aires during the years 1963–1964. The association with Alberto Ginastera and his fellow young composers was a period of intense stimulation and stylistic growth for Marlos Nobre. Marlos Nobre's output as a composer has embraced all major instrumental and vocal media with the exception of opera. Whereas the life of Villa-Lobos, with whom Marlos Nobre is often compared, was one of incessant compositional activity, Marlos Nobre's output has been one interrupted by periods of reflection and periods of intense compositional activity fulfilling major commissions. Marco's biography refers to the special [End Page 150] importance of the Tomás Luis de Victoria prize in 2005, awarded to "one of the greatest composers of contemporary Latin America: En atención a la excelente trayectoria, trascendencia y proyección de su obra, a sus altos valores en el campo de la composición musical, reflejados en su catálogo; a la originalidad de su pensamiento estético que sitúa la creación iberoamericana en un lugar de preferencia y supone una importante contribución a la música contemporánea (7). The organization of Marco's biography presents an evaluation of Nobre's contribution as a composer of piano music, vocal music, works for guitar, orchestral works, works for percussion, chamber music, and "musica aplicada," a chapter in which Marco discusses principally works for ballet and film. While Marco's biography provides an excellent introduction to the important contributions of Marlos Nobre as a major composer, one hopes that future editions of the biography improve the system of indexing. Two indexes of works (Catálogo de obras) are provided for reference. The first index is chronological. Unless one knows the date when a work was composed or published, a work cannot easily be found in the first Catálogo de obras. The second Catálogo de obras is alphabetical and provides the opus number and date of a work. After obtaining this information, the reader then must return to the first Catálogo de obras where information about dates of performance and awards in competitions, as well as other information, is to be found. The inclusion of a compact disc in recent biographies of composers is a welcome addition and enhances the value of the Tomas Marco biography. The CD provides a representative sample of various styles in Nobre's development as a composer and closes with one of his most effective works, "Passacaglia for orchestra" (1997). In the post-Nationalist period in Latin America, one of the important contributions of the Marco biography is the fact that, whereas Heitor Villa-Lobos created works that were recognized in the twentieth century as being Brazilian in inspiration and style, Marlos Nobre is convincingly portrayed as a major post-Nationalist Latin American composer whose style embraces elements of various Latin American cultures. Copyright © 2007 University of Texas Press

Analysing and Transcribing Electroacoustic Music: the experience of the Portraits polychromes of GRM

Portraits polychromes are a series of books associated with multimedia documents presented on the Internet site of the GRM since 2001. In releasing this collection, our primary concern was to increase awareness of the electroacoustic repertoire and the reserves in the GRM archives. The GRM, being a pioneering centre of electroacoustics, is fortunate to possess a consistent and significant reserve dating back to the beginning of the 1950s. At present, the catalogue contains around 2,000 works, accompanied with supplementary documents: composer's biographies, reviews, photographs, documentary movies, radio broadcasts, recorded public lectures, theoretical research work, transcriptions and analyses. In addition to the heritage value of the GRM's collection, the enterprise of the Portraits polychromes, with the aid of multimedia tools, aims to advance the progress of research on analysis and the transcription of musical works.

The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians

This work contains almost 30,000 articles containing over 25 million words on musicians, composers, musicologists, instruments, places, genres, terms, performance practice, concepts, acoustics and more. All the articles are written by experts in their subject. There are over 500 biographies of composers, performers and writers on music and over 1,500 articles on styles, terms, and genres. It also includes: over 500 articles on ancient music and church music over 700 articles on regions, countries and cities over 2,000 articles on instruments and their makers and performance practice over 650 articles on printing and publishing over 1,200 articles on world music over 1,000 articles on popular music, light music and jazz over 250 articles on concepts 85 articles on acoustics 126 articles on sources and a one volume index.

International encyclopedia of violin-keyboard sonatas and composer biographies

International encyclopedia of violin-keyboard sonatas and composer biographies

Charles William Bunn, 15 January 1905 - 13 April 1990

Charles William Bunn’s career was an unusual one. Trained as a chemist, he was largely self-taught in crystallography, a subject dominated during his scientific lifetime by the pupils of W. H. and W. L. Bragg. His own researches bore an individual stamp, coloured by an instinctive feel for the way in which molecules arrange themselves and pack. He was unusual, also, in the extent to which he made use of optical and other non-X-ray methods to solve structural problems. Bunn spent the majority of his working life in the research departments of ICI, at first in the Alkali Division at Winnington, Northwich, and later in the Plastics Division laboratories at Welwyn Garden City. Though working in industrial laboratories, his principal researches were basic and fundamental studies on polymers and on crystal growth. He was much loved and respected by his colleagues and collaborators but, because of his shyness and exceptional modesty he was a difficult man to get to know well, even under conditions where colleagues were often also neighbours. He was a private person who lived for his twin interests in science and in music. His musical tastes were for 19th- and 20th-century composers. Throughout his life his favourite composer was Vaughan Williams and in his younger days he had little liking for what he called ‘the complex and sophisticated music of the Germans, which tends to academic dullness in Bach and courtly formalism in Haydn and Mozart’. However, in his last decade his piano playing turned almost exclusively to the keyboard sonatas of Haydn and Mozart. He played the violin in several orchestras such as the Welwyn Garden City Music Society orchestra. He also composed a little, but none of his compositions appear to have survived. From boyhood he built his own radio receivers to listen to broadcast concerts; later, he built up an extensive collection of gramophone records. Bunn was an ardent reader; in fiction his taste was for long novels such as those of Galsworthy and Tolstoy; he read War and peace four times. He enjoyed biographies of composers and scientists and was widely read in mediaeval English history and in archaeology. Bunn had little time for formal religion, theology or philosophy. His views were that ‘theology is quack philosophy, and philosophy is quack science’. However, he had a strong belief in personal freedom and tolerance and suffered himself just from hearing of any strife. He was an ardent admirer of Gandhi and of the philosophy of non-violent passive dissent, and was disgusted by violent sports such as boxing. He was a vegetarian from conviction; although he was a keen gardener he refused any space to vegetables and concentrated entirely on flowers. He was much too reserved and diffident to take an active part in politics. Recognition came rather late to him. He left Oxford without working for a D.Phil. and took an Oxford D.Sc. only in 1953, largely because others felt that someone in his position and of his eminence must be a doctor. He was a Fellow of the Chemical Society and of the Institute of Physics, becoming a member of the first committee of the X-ray Analysis Group of the latter, and its chairman in 1959-62. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1967, in recognition of his work on natural and synthetic regular polymers. In 1969 he was awarded the Ford Prize by the American Physical Society, for contributions to polymer science.