Composer Of Songs Research Articles

The Irving Berlin Reader ed. by Benjamin Sears (review)

Reviewed by: The Irving Berlin Reader ed. by Benjamin Sears Ann van der Merwe The Irving Berlin Reader. Edited by Benjamin Sears. (Readers on American Musicians.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. [xi, 219 p. ISBN 9780195383744. $35.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. When compiling a volume of essays, an editor faces two primary challenges: which writings to include, and how to organize them. For The Irving Berlin Reader, Benjamin Sears has chosen an eclectic mix of materials, including excerpts from major scholarly studies on Berlin, recollections of his professional peers, reviews of his work printed in the mainstream press, and some of his own published words. Sears has arranged them in a rough chronology, not according to their dates of composition but rather according to how they pertain to Berlin’s life. The result is an informative collection that touches on a wide range of topics yet still reads nicely, and almost biographically, from beginning to end. Part 1 contains essays related to Berlin and his early career, highlighting his 1911 hit “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” as well as his Broadway successes Watch Your Step and the Music Box Revues. Excerpts such as those written by Charles Hamm and Margaret Knapp make it clear that Sears’s primary goals in this section are to distinguish fact from fiction in this phase of Berlin’s life, and to begin presenting evidence that Berlin’s musical understanding was far deeper than was and is often believed. Sears also wants his readers to get to know Berlin’s personality, though, so these weighty issues are balanced by more casual anecdotes from people who knew and worked with him such as Rennold Wolf and Harry B. Smith. Part 2 moves forward in time, with writings that pertain to his successes during the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. Sears provides an admirable blend of depth and breadth here. Appropriately, many songs, shows, and events receive mention, but a few receive the special attention they deserve, including the ballads “Say It Isn’t So” and “How Deep is the Ocean,” the special occasion songs “Easter Parade” and “God Bless America,” and the musical Annie Get Your Gun. Howard Pollack’s study of the aforementioned ballads continues the argument introduced in part 1 concerning Berlin’s musical craftsmanship, though other themes also emerge here, most notably the respect afforded Irving Berlin by his peers. Sears includes comments from fellow song-writers Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers as well as stage and screen personalities such as Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, and George S. Kaufman, and they all portray Berlin as a professionally talented and kind man. Part 3 features essays that look back on Berlin’s career as a whole. Some, such as Joshua Logan’s contribution, highlight later projects such as Mr. President—Berlin’s last Broadway show, a collaboration with Logan. Generally, though, the focus here is not so much on his later work as on how he had come to be known by the last years of his life, which songs and biographical episodes had endured, and how the public celebrated the hundredth year of his birth. Some writings again come from his Tin Pan Alley colleagues, including a compilation of tidbits from Irving Caesar, Burton Lane, [End Page 581] John Green, Sammy Fain, and Jule Styne originally published in honor of the Berlin centenary. An essay by Josh Rubins from the New York Review of Books is the most comprehensive and noteworthy piece in the section, however. Through detailed discussions of several of Berlin’s best songs, Rubins extends the recurring argument of the volume that Berlin was not merely a commercial success but an intelligent composer of songs. Part 4 contains excerpts from Berlin’s writings, including published articles and private correspondence. In the former, he explains his songwriting process and in so doing reveals his profound interest in the appeal of his work. These are not notes from someone arguing for the artistry of his output; rather, they are thoughts from a man whose primary goal is to entertain. The letters also reveal a man concerned with the opinions of others and, perhaps as a result, generous with his compliments. Collectively, these pieces add...

“Playing the Football of Love on the Field of the Body”: The Contemporary Repertoire of Baul Songs

Abstract This article analyzes the contemporary repertoire of a very popular genre of Bengali folk songs, performed by itinerant singers and practitioners of an esoteric cult known as Bauls. Considering the recent popularization and commercialization of Baul songs and their interference with the urban milieu, the discourse on the authenticity of Baul songs is explored from an inter-disciplinary perspective that embraces orality-literacy studies as well as social studies on cultural tourism, underlining the limits of previous academic works on the subject. This article offers, as an original contribution, the first results of ongoing fieldwork among the disciples of a śākta saint and composer of Baul songs known as Bhaba Pagla. Through discussion of the lyrics of songs performed in contemporary Baul festivals, this article argues that the contamination of Baul songs by urban élites and middle-class audiences, far from deteriorating the oral tradition, may enrich the vocabulary of the compositions and reinforce the underlying belief system. Contrarily to the popular and academic view of today’s Bauls, that labels the entertaining performer as a corrupted ally of show business, the priority of gānsādhanā (singing as a practice for self-realization) may be interpreted as an efficient way to conceal heterodox esoteric rituals vis-à-vis the increasing interest of cultural tourists in Baul culture and performances, protecting the secrecy of the tradition through an innovative and negotiated version of sandhyā-bhāṣā (twilight-language), the literary device that has accompanied Bengali esoteric songs since their origins.

Artistic and Creative Paradigms of Oral Narrative Performances: The Relevance of the Bakor Song Composer to His Contemporary Milieu

Performance has been recognized as the bedrock of Oral Literature thus contextual performance situations become the best avenues for the appropriate assessment and analysis of pre-literate traditions and their artistic endowments. In the past, Oral performances of the so-called pre-literate societies were erroneously classified as fossils and lacking artistic or aesthetic appeal. This paper, therefore, attempts an assessment of Bakor Song compositions within their contextual performance situations with a view, not only to bring out the artistic and creative potential of the artists but also to portray the contemporary relevance of the artists and their compositions

"Take Me Out to the Ball Game"

Every summer, in ballparks across the country, a familiar refrain is heard during the seventh inning of every game:Take me out to the ball game,Take me out with the crowd.Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,I don't care if I never get back,Let me root, root, root for the home team,If they don't win it's a shameFor it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,At the old ball game.Although this memorable chorus of peanuts and Cracker Jack is part of our national consciousness, the song's little-known verses tell a deeper story, about a woman and her desire to be part of the crowd. Her name was Katie Casey, and in 1908 she was affirmably baseball's biggest fan.Katie Casey was base ball mad,Had the fever and had it bad;Just to root for the home town crew,Ev'ry sou Katie blew.On a Saturday, her young beauCalled to see if she'd like to go,To see a showBut Miss Kate said no,I'll tell you what you can do 1Take Me Out to the was Katie's well known reply, but in 1908, a woman at the ballpark and cheering was neither a common sight, nor was it fully accepted. Take Me Out to the advertises just the opposite: that a woman's place was indeed in the grandstand at the ballpark and not just safe at home.Take Me Out to the GameAt the turn of the 20th century, as more women gained access to higher education, participation in the general workforce, and political activism, an emergent ideal of the Woman began to take hold that imbued a women's activity in the public domain with a new sense of female self, a woman who was independent, athletic, sexual, and modern.2 According to the song's second verse, the fictional Katie Casey had all those qualities, and expressed them fully through her passion for the game of baseball.Katie Casey saw all the games,Knew the players by their first names;Told the umpire he was wrong,All along good and strong.When the score was just two to two,Katie Casey knew what to do,Just to cheer up the boys she knew,She made the gang sing this song:Take Me Out to the made its appearance at a time in the spring and summer of 1908 when everyone was talking about baseball's hotly contested pennant race-a-three-way National League extravaganza between John McGraw's mighty New York Giants, the Pittsburgh Pirates with their star Honus Wagner, and the reigning world champion Chicago Cubs. All this excitement surely inspired vaudevillian Jack Norworth to write his sensational baseball song, as it was billed by the publisher and appeared on the sheet music. But the story behind Take Me Out to the waited some fifty years before the song's lyricist explained to the press how his famous words came to be written. By that time the song's composer, Albert Von Tilzer, dead for two years, was unable to corroborate.3Norworth recounted that in the spring of 1908 he was riding a New York City elevated subway train when he spotted a sign that called out Ball Game Today-Polo Grounds. Norworth claimed he had never been to an actual game but that he needed a song for his act at the Amphion Theater in Brooklyn. According to Norworth, he the time was right for a baseball song and an idea struck him that he thought was pretty good. Before the subway ride was finished, baseball's biggest female fan and Take Me Out to the had come to life.4 He brought the lyrics to composer Albert Von Tilzer, who set them to music.Later that fall, when the first sound recordings of Take Me Out to the were issued, the National Recording Company reviewed the Edison cylinder recording sung by Edward Meeker in its September 1908 catalog.The base-ball hit of the season-a home run at least. Katie Casey is a true-blue, dyedin-the-wool base-ball fan, and can give her big brothers pointers on rooting for the home team. …

Memorializing Mary Tudor: William Byrd and Edward Paston's 'Crowned with Flowers and Lilies'

The manuscript books compiled by Edward Paston (1550–1630) shed light on the musical interests of a Norfolk gentry family at the turn of the seventeenth century, as well as on the contemporary circulation of the music of William Byrd. This article interprets one of the composer’s English-texted songs unique to the collection—the elegy for Mary Tudor, Crowned with Flowers and Lilies —against the context of the Pastons’ religious identity as Catholics. As a through-composed setting of an English sonnet, most likely written by Edward Paston himself, this musical memorial for the late queen reveals another aspect of Byrd’s craft as a composer of vernacular song. The circumstances behind the song’s survival in Paston sources, and analysis of Byrd’s responsive word-setting, suggest a degree of creative collaboration between the two men, including connections with Lady Penelope Rich and the court of Mary Tudor.

Sir William Ramsay and the noble gases.

Sir William Ramsay was one of the world's leading scientists at the end of the 19th century, and in a spectacular period of research between 1894 and 1898, he discovered five new elements. These were the noble gases, helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon; they added a whole new group to the Periodic Table of the elements, and provided the keystone to our understanding of the electronic structure of atoms, and the way those electrons bind the atoms together into molecules. For this work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904, the first such prize to come to a British subject. He was also a man of great charm, a good linguist, and a composer and performer of music, poetry and song. This review will trace his career, describe his character and give and account of the chemistry which led to the award of the Nobel Prize.

Towards a German Romantic Concept of the Ballad: Goethe’s “Johanna Sebus” and Its Musical Interpretations by Zelter and Reichardt

Towards a German Romantic Concept of the Ballad: Goethe’s “Johanna Sebus” and Its Musical Interpretations by Zelter and Reichardt Francien Markx In the midst of the political turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, the force of nature took its toll on the French-occupied lower Rhine region. On January 13, 1809, the dam near Cleve (lying today in Germany near the Dutch border) collapsed, and the icy waters of the Rhine devastated the village of Brienen and flooded several other villages nearby. A seventeen-year-old village girl, Johanna Sebus, saved her mother’s life but died herself trying to rescue her neighbors. Three months later, her body was found, and she was buried with honor near the old Gothic church in Rindern.1 Her selfless deed was not forgotten, which was especially due to the efforts of the magistrate of the Cleve district, Baron Charles de Keverberg, who brought the events to the attention of the French authorities. In 1811, a monument was erected to Johanna’s memory. Designed by Dominique Vivant-Denon, whom Napoleon had appointed as first director of the Louvre Museum (at that time known as the Musée Napoléon), it is over three meters high, featuring a French text, and a marble medallion depicting a rose floating on the waves.2 Johanna’s death continues to be commemorated, most recently with an exhibition in Cleve on the 200th anniversary of her demise.3 Her courageous act has also inspired many painters, sculptors, and authors.4 The most famous and influential contribution was penned by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who honored Johanna with a ballad in May 1809. Goethe learned about Johanna’s tragic death from his acquaintance Christiane von Vernejoul, who sent him the report of the events written by Baron Keverberg and requested in an accompanying letter: “Mögten Sie die rührende That werth finden von dem ersten Dichter der lebenden Welt, in einer Ballade verewigt zu werden—so wäre dießem edlen Mädchen ein Denckmal errichtet, welches in jedes fühlenden Menschen Brust Bewunderung für die Heldin, und heißen Danck für den Großmüthigen Dichter erwecken würde.”5 Goethe honored the request6 and sent his ballad to Keverberg in Cleve, where it was read at a memorial service for Johanna.7 Among the composers who were inspired by the ballad were Goethe’s contemporaries Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814).8 Both were well acquainted with Goethe, and at [End Page 1] some point in their lives his most important musical advisor. Reichardt, Kapellmeister to three Prussian kings, was a renowned music critic and song composer, and had worked closely together with Goethe during the late 1780s and early 1790s on the Singspiele Claudine von Villa Bella and Erwin und Elmire.9 Goethe, however, abruptly ended the collaboration after Reichardt’s sympathies with the French revolution and its democratic cause had become public and his subsequent dismissal as Prussian Hofkapellmeister in 1794. Around this time, the master mason Zelter turned to composing Lieder, and his songs soon came to Goethe’s attention. A close friendship developed, resulting in an extensive correspondence that lasted over thirty years. Zelter was an important figure in Berlin’s musical and cultural life; he took over the direction of the Berlin Singakademie in 1800, was appointed Professor of Music at the Royal Prussian Akademie der Künste in 1809 and responsible for the founding of several musical institutions in Berlin. Together with Johann Abraham Peter Schulz (1747–1800), Zelter and Reichardt were the main representatives of the zweite Berliner Liederschule (ca. 1770–1814). In their Lieder, this second generation of song composers in Berlin tried to find an adequate musical idiom for the new subjective expression of the literature of Empfindsamkeit and Sturm und Drang. The natural, artless quality of the Volkslied, with its regular strophic structure and simple and singable melody, was the ideal for this new form of art song, which nurtured the awakening feelings of German self-awareness and cultural identity.10 For both Reichardt and Zelter, texts by Goethe formed an important inspiration in their search for a new...

Reflections on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Women Making Music

What a pleasure it is be here as a plenary speaker for the twentieth anniversary of the Feminist Theory in Music Conference. It has been so heartening experience the new work in the field as younger generations continue rise the challenges of our discipline. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. My remarks come at the end of an extraordinary four-day conference of scholarship about women making music. Do look my Irena Poldowski--a still obscure composer--wrote, and Jane Bowers and I quoted her for the opening line of Women Making Music. (1) Now so many of us have accepted that genteel request as a responsibility. Even though Poldowski herself did not benefit, she lent her deathbed wish us as a vital mandate. The official title of my talk today promises reflections on Women Making Music, acknowledging its twenty-fifth anniversary year of getting and staying in print. And it happens that on Amazon.com there are only 450,269 books that sell more copies than this one. (This chart position improves by 300,000 that of a few years ago.) Not bad. Women Making Music (WMM) has accrued cultural capital. An interest statement conveying that other kind of capital called money is also a good thing. Every year I go out for a nice lunch on the royalty check. I would like use WMM as a prism of women's history, this time to look after the past and offer an informal overview of feminist scholarship from the 1970s and 1980s--what we now call second-wave feminism. I offer this through my own eyes as a scholar of American music studies and will be suggesting links between scholarship and the larger society. Now it's time for two backstory anecdotes. WMM began with an intrepid traveler who had just returned from searching archives all over Europe for music by women composers. Visiting me in New York City in the spring of 1974, Jane Bowers realized she could not write a single-author narrative on the history of women composers in Western music. As graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley, we were formed by a generation of scholars who themselves were trained by mostly German emigre scholars. We practiced traditional musicology, needing the security of control over the material. We believed--and still do--in grounding research in data and archival discovery. Of course it was overwhelming think of writing Ms. Grout at that point. I suggested instead an anthology of essays as a starting point. I don't remember the time lapse between that thought and her response, asking me if I would sign on as a co-editor. Jane has recently reminded me that she wanted the larger story of institutions and social history and asked me collaborate particularly for that reason. Jane has also reminded me how many more essays we solicited than eventually got published. Reader reviews for our first publisher, the University of California Press, forced out an excellent essay on jazz by Lewis Porter; a creative overview of medieval music production by Edith Borroff; a long, pioneering, analytic bibliography of orchestral compositions by Laurine Elkins Marlow; and Ellen Lerner's essay on French song composers, including the Boulanger sisters. We kept right on. And I learned a lesson about criticism, namely, that sometimes well--and not-so-well-meaning criticism from reviewers who demanded foundational comprehensiveness from scholarship intended map out new territory could constrain the exploration of new ways of thinking. It took us a long time, but we ended up with a strong list, including essays by two senior male scholars in the field. (2) There were six essays on early music, a foreshadow of its prominence in the field today, including Bowers's pioneering research on female composers in Italy. By the time we handed in the manuscript the University of California Press, its academic board membership had changed. On the board came a cranky composer. …

Songs as Sources of Ijebu-Ode Fashion History

This paper examines the relevance of certain songs as data in studying the fashion history of Ijebu-Ode community. The songs documented dress-fabrics once worn at certain events and times, showing their social ratings, such as velvet, a highly expensive material; nylon which was a body see-through material; and apola, a less popular stripe patterned fabric. One of the songs eulogized the role of one of the Ijebu textile merchants. In some cases, the song composers were the wearers of the dress-fabrics to which assumed or real qualities were given, thus showing glimpses of the state of the art of fabrics of those times. This espousal of textile technology is a significant aspect of costume history. On the whole, the paper has demonstrated the potential of the content of indigenous songs as sources of dress-fabric, fashion trends and event-dress in their wider socio-cultural contexts.

Tessier's travels in Scotland and England

This article explores the implications of a newly discovered autograph letter from the French song composer Guillaume Tessier to William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, leader of the ultra-Protestant faction at the Scottish court and, for a short period after August 1582, de facto head of government in Scotland. The letter, written from London in February 1583, shows Tessier's efforts to navigate patronage networks in France, England and Scotland at a dangerously volatile political moment, and indicates an interest in occult philosophy that links him to one of the most significant intellectual controversies of the period. At the same time, the new source helps to explain some unusual features of Tessier's only extant publication, the Premier livre d'airs tant Francois, Italien, qu'Espaignol (1582), which, although published in Paris, bore a dedication to Elizabeth I of England. It also sheds light on the cultivation of French music abroad, both among those closest to the young James VI of Scotland, and in English milieux frequented by major lute-song composers, confirming links that allowed one of Tessier's melodies to serve as model for a song in Philip Sidney's great sequence Astrophil and Stella.

EEG Correlates of Song Prosody: A New Look at the Relationship between Linguistic and Musical Rhythm

Song composers incorporate linguistic prosody into their music when setting words to melody, a process called “textsetting.” Composers tend to align the expected stress of the lyrics with strong metrical positions in the music. The present study was designed to explore the idea that temporal alignment helps listeners to better understand song lyrics by directing listeners’ attention to instances where strong syllables occur on strong beats. Three types of textsettings were created by aligning metronome clicks with all, some or none of the strong syllables in sung sentences. Electroencephalographic recordings were taken while participants listened to the sung sentences (primes) and performed a lexical decision task on subsequent words and pseudowords (targets, presented visually). Comparison of misaligned and well-aligned sentences showed that temporal alignment between strong/weak syllables and strong/weak musical beats were associated with modulations of induced beta and evoked gamma power, which have been shown to fluctuate with rhythmic expectancies. Furthermore, targets that followed well-aligned primes elicited greater induced alpha and beta activity, and better lexical decision task performance, compared with targets that followed misaligned and varied sentences. Overall, these findings suggest that alignment of linguistic stress and musical meter in song enhances musical beat tracking and comprehension of lyrics by synchronizing neural activity with strong syllables. This approach may begin to explain the mechanisms underlying the relationship between linguistic and musical rhythm in songs, and how rhythmic attending facilitates learning and recall of song lyrics. Moreover, the observations reported here coincide with a growing number of studies reporting interactions between the linguistic and musical dimensions of song, which likely stem from shared neural resources for processing music and speech.

Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia (review)

Reviewed by: Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia Alyson Payne Art Song Composers of Spain: An Encyclopedia. By Suzanne Rhodes Draayer. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. [xxviii, 518 p. ISBN 9780810863620. $75.] Music examples, bibliography, discography, works list, indexes. As compared with German lieder or French mélodies, Spanish art song, also called canción lírica, has received scant attention from performers, teachers, and scholars. Suzanne Draayer has done much to remedy this situation, publishing articles on Joaquín Rodrigo's vocal music as well as regularly performing his and other Spanish composers' works. Additionally, Draayer has edited several volumes of nineteenth-century Spanish art song for high and low voice, entitled Canciones de España: Songs of Nineteenth-Century Spain (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003–2007). Her latest endeavor, Art Song Composers of Spain: An [End Page 794] Encyclopedia, dovetails nicely with her work as an editor, and the two projects complement each other well. In this work, Draayer presents extensive information on the composers of the canción lírica, tracing the genre and its creators from 1775 until the mid-twentieth century. Draayer begins the book with an introduction to nineteenth-century Spanish history, detailing the political and cultural climate in which the canción developed. Though brief, the introduction covers the main events that shaped Spain from the liberation of the colonies in the 1800s to the Spanish Civil War and Francisco Franco's ensuing dictatorship. This review helps refresh those familiar with Spain's history and serves as a starting point for those who haven't any prior knowledge of the subject. She then summarizes important Spanish literary figures and visual artists during the same period. Unfortunately, Draayer does not explore the connections among the arts, especially the relationship between poets and composers. Next, Draayer discusses the characteristics of Spanish dances such as the bolero, seguidilla, polo, and tirana, which often influenced a composer's rhythmic and melodic writing. The introduction concludes with a discussion of Spaniards who went abroad, such as Fernando Sor and Manuel García, and their contribution to the dissemination of Spanish music. Introduction aside, Draayer devotes the majority of the book to essays on individual art song composers, dividing the composers by generation, grouping those born from 1775 to 1800 in one school, and the rest in successive twenty-five year increments. She further parses each generation into major composers and minor composers. The idea of major and minor composers has been problematized by musicology, and her approach carries with it the danger of instilling her personal opinion on this largely unexplored area of music history. Each entry begins with a biographical sketch; these contain much detail, on par with The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and are written in a language that would be accessible to the enthusiast as well as the scholar. Her discussion of the music often includes score examples, which works especially well when discussing guitar techniques, such as rasgueado and punteado, that have been translated into the piano accompaniment. Draayer concludes each entry with a works list, categorizing compositions by genre. She additionally includes discographies, though unfortunately many composers in this volume have yet to be recorded. In the same vein, Draayer's appendix, "A Selected Guide to European Spanish Song," offers a list of the published collections of Spanish art song, including the ISBN, which facilitates purchase of the music by an interested performer or teacher. Draayer's biographies rely on her own scholarship, especially in Rodrigo's entry. She also draws from important works by Celsa Alonso, such as his La canción lírica española en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Ediciones del ICCMU, 1998) and entries in the Diccionario de la música española e hispano-americana (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999–2002). The entries on better known composers, such as Felipe Pedrell, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel de Falla, cite a variety of sources as more scholarship exists on them. For composers such as Vicente Costa, Conrado del Campo, or Oscar Esplá, little scholarship exists save a few sources in Spanish. By publishing in English, Draayer has opened up access...

Japanese Devils and American Wolves: Chinese Communist Songs from the War of Liberation and the Korean War

This article analyzes anti-American songs from China's protean mobilization for the Korean War. After constructing the historical context of Maoist attitudes toward music and exploring Japan's role as an idée fixe for Chinese song, the article arrives at the Korean War via an analysis of song tunes and texts from the Chinese home front in 1950, emphasizing the role of wolf and devil imagery in anti-American song propaganda. From student amateurs to the conservatory administrator Ma Ke, song composers under communist rule used music and lyrics to drape China's new American enemies in the garb of past Japanese foes, suggesting that Chinese songs from the Korean War extend beyond buoyant patriotism, evoking past traumas and prefiguring the animistic fury of the Cultural Revolution.

Model Development of Isan Country Song Compositions for Economic, Social and Cultural Value-Added

Problem statement: Country Song was related to history, society, culture and economic. The objectives of this study were: (1) the historical background in composing the Isan Country Song, (2) the current situation and problem of composing style of Isan Country Song and (3) the development of composing pattern the Isan Country Song for elevating the economic value. Approach: The research area consisted of Isan Region including Chiaya Phume, Ubon Rachatani, Amnat Charoen and Sri-Sa-ket Provinces. The samples providing information included 170 persons. The instruments using for collecting data included: The Survey Form, Interview Form, Focus Group Discussion and Participatory Workshop. The data were classified into groups. Qualitative data were analyzed according to the specified objectives. The research findings were presented in descriptive analysis. Results: The research findings found that the historical background of Isan Country Song, reflected lifestyle, social situation, ideal, and Thai Culture with the rhyme developed from traditional Country Song blending with Big Brand Music Band mixing with the local singing words and rhythm. The current situation and problem after listening to the Country Song was more increasing popular since there were many song composers and chords. There were advertisements through the media as radio, television, mobile phone and internet network. Therefore, the buying and selling of song were easier and quicker. For the song composing, the text of a song didn’t focus on the rhyme and lacked of morality enhancement. The supplementary music sometimes lacked of beauty based on aesthetic principle. For the commercial problems, there were many violations of right. Consequently, the entrepreneur sometimes faced with the lost. For development, the god points of Isan Country Song were analyzed both of the text and rhyme. The composed song model was created by bringing Pentatonic scale mixing with message of Dorian Mode. The musical instrument using for playing consisted of Isan Country Song and Western Music. Conclusion/Recommendations: Isan Country Song was still necessary for opposing the entertainment like the villager representatives. Besides, it could be developed for beauty based on music principle. In some viewpoints, it could be used as commercial usefulness. Therefore, in order to maintain the identity of Country Song which needed to be studied for knowing the development of song work, it would be good. This research could be able to be a model for new style Country Song.

Central African Guitar Song Composers, the Second and Third Generation. Field recordings 1962-2009. Gerhard Kubik and associates. Department of Musicology, University of Vienna, Vienna Series in Ethnomusicology 3, 2009. 49 pp. CD 25 tracks, booklet, photographs.

Central African Guitar Song Composers, the Second and Third Generation. Field recordings 1962-2009. Gerhard Kubik and associates. Department of Musicology, University of Vienna, Vienna Series in Ethnomusicology 3, 2009. 49 pp. CD 25 tracks, booklet, photographs.

John Esputa, John Philip Sousa and the Boundaries of a Musical Career

From the standpoint of the twenty-first century, the breadth of John Philip Sousa's career seems remarkable and unprecedented. His marches, of course, continue to dominate concert band programmes around the world. But Sousa was also a notably profitable composer of dances, songs and descriptive works that were once performed not only by bands, but also by orchestras, soloists and parlour musicians. His successful run as a theatre violinist, operetta composer, novelist and commentator made the Sousa name omnipresent in late nineteenth-century American cultural life. Given his considerable breadth and remarkable fame, it is hardly surprising that Sousa's name is found in seven of the 20 chapters that comprise the recent Cambridge History of American Music (second only to Charles Ives).

Half way: Appreciating the poetics of Northern Kimberley song1

In a series of discussions between 1999 and 2002 Scotty Martin—an expert composer of junta songs in the northern Kimberley—dictated the texts of his jadmi style songs to first Linda Barwick and then myself so that they could be accurately transcribed. In the course of these discussions, Martin identified five short sections of text that he described as ‘half way’. In each case, this ‘half way’ description refers to the fact that, when sung, the text differs from its spoken form. The question of differences between sung and spoken language has been the focus of much recent research on Australian Aboriginal song by musicologists and linguists, and a number of recent detailed studies have identified textual and rhythmic factors that guide the rhythmicization of texts. As well as deepening understanding of the technical processes of song text construction and performance, this line of inquiry has also enabled linguists and musicologists to turn more closely to the poetics and aesthetics that permeate the relationship between and delivery of text and rhythm in songs. In this article I investigate the relationship between rhythmic modes and text structures in Martin's jadmi repertory to determine whether correlations between these two elements may play a role in the ‘half way’ singing of words, and then consider other creative factors—musical and non-musical (ancestral and foundational)—that may also play a role, in relation to Martin's own explanations of how and why ‘halfway’ text occurs. I argue that an understanding of how text/rhythm correlations are combined and negotiated by the composer and an awareness of the broader creative foundations of jadmi songs and singing are core to appreciating what ‘halfway’ (in the context of sung versus spoken language) means, and that these also contribute to appreciating the poetics and aesthetics of the jadmi song tradition and northern Kimberley song more broadly.

Macropedius and Music: Georgius Macropedius as a Composer of Songs for the Theatre and Other School Performances

In this paper Georgius Macropedius, rector of the Hieronymus Latin School in Utrecht (c. 1530 1557), is examined as the presumed composer of the music in his plays, both comedies as well as serious religious plays. Choral music played an important role in the separation of the play into five acts and provided an opportunity for moral reflection on the subject matter presented. Macropedius kept the music extremely simple. The frequent reuse of melodies suggests that he often lacked either the time or the inspiration to compose afresh. In his annual school songs, however, Macropedius seems to have given his compositional skills a bit more of a workout.

National Metrical Types in Nineteenth Century Art Song

William Rothstein's article National metrical types in music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (2008) proposes a distinction between the metrical habits of 18 th and early 19 th century German music and those of Italian and French music of that period. Based on theoretical treatises and compositional practice, he outlines these national metrical types and discusses the characteristics of each type. This paper presents the results of a study designed to determine whether, and to what degree, Rothstein's characterizations of national metrical types are present in 19 th century French and German art song. Studying metrical habits in this genre may provide a lens into changing metrical conceptions of 19 th century theorists and composers, as well as to the metrical habits and compositional style of individual 19 th century French and German art song composers. Submitted 2009 October 8; accepted 2009 November 19.

The uses of lute song: texts, contexts and pretexts for 'historically informed' performance

Because English solo songs from the Golden Age period (c.1600–20) are chiefly familiar from printed books clearly intended for domestic use, modern scholars and performers have tended to assume that composers had the literary interests, practical needs and technical limitations of upper-class amateurs in mind right from the start of the creative process. According to this view, lute ayres are the musical equivalents of early 17th-century miniature portraits: objets d’art for personal contemplation (the self-accompanying singer) or special sharing with special friends. This article explores the lute song repertory from a different angle, as the domesticated tip of a professional and (at the time) a publicly appreciable iceberg much of which melted away with the professional performers originally responsible for its semi-improvisatory effectiveness. The manuscript Oxford, Christ Church Mus.439 is studied in particular—a source with probable professional provenance, preserving some highly ornamented versions of songs now much better known in their plainer printed versions and (at the other extreme) some songs from which the fully written-out lute parts familiar from the printed books have been removed. What sorts of alternative were improvised in their place? While lute song publishers assumed a ‘minimalist aesthetic’ and sensibly encouraged their customers to do the same, lute song composers were aware of other possibilities and those with a theatrical leaning (Campion, Rosseter, Johnson, for instance) might even have preferred them. Today’s historically informed performers have a wider range of interpretative choice legitimately open to them than perhaps they realize.