Musical Life Research Articles

International Networking in Russian Music Theatre around 1800: Sheremetev, Yusupov and Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich

This article investigates the role played by aristocrats in the exchange of repertoire and musical personnel between Russia and Western Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It discusses the involvement of three significant figures in the political and cultural milieus of the Russian Empire: Count Nikolay Petrovich Sheremetev (1751–1809), Prince Nikolay Borisovich Yusupov (1750–1831) and the Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich Romanov (who ruled as Paul I from 1796 to 1801). The central focus is on Sheremetev, whose correspondence with Marie-François Hivart, a Parisian cellist he met during a grand tour, allows us to reconstruct a clear picture of how French opera was imported and adapted at his estate theatres in the Moscow area. Yusupov and the grand duke likewise established international musical contacts during their European tours of the 1770s and 80s, and exploited them in their private and public theatrical activities in Russia. Yusupov, who was particularly fond of Italian opera, may be regarded as Sheremetev's counterpart in St Petersburg, while Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich channelled the musical contacts he established in Italy to the Russian court and crown theatres.Together, these cases suggest some of the ways in which Russia was entangled in European musical life around 1800, revealing mechanisms of exchange in which grand tours, diplomatic contacts and the personal interests of patrons played a significant part.

Honouring Christopher Kobla Dewornu

Christopher Kobla Dewornu, a retired Inspector General of Police for Ghana and a member of the Council of State, is a multi-talented musician-composer, lead singer and drummer. Since his national political responsibilities overshadowed his public musical practice and visibility, a concert was organised in November 2016 in Accra to honour his contribution to the musical arts, while also raising an awareness of his musical impact on his community. This article focuses on the concert in which he performed a selection of his oral-based compositions with Christian texts, which were set to Anlo Ewe traditional melodic idioms within a domesticated environment. Dewornu also sang a few Akpalu songs that inspired audience participation. Restricted by his political work environment, involving moderate social distancing, Dewornu had to navigate his ethnic, professional and religious identities to strategically shape his public musical life.

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52

Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52

Families as small-community quarantine pods of sociomusical engagement

This article considers the musical lives of eleven US-based families, micro-communities of sorts, as they were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated physical isolation directives. With a focus on family pods as sites and sources of community, we employed processes of virtual ethnography including interviews, observations and the distribution of cameras to help empower participants, especially the children, to become active collaborators in a research study called Project COPE. Families indicated that musical practices during this time of learning, listening, moving and creating with instruments, voices and one another served a variety of purposes. These included self-regulation, identity formation, transmission, social cohesion, emotional bonding, embodied communication, well-being and a recognition of communal music expression as a human need. We note that in some cases, this rupture has been an opportunity for refocusing, reworking and re-envisioning in ways that impact community music practice. In returning to in-person music making, practitioners should be aware of the creative ways in which families were musically active during this time apart. We urge diligent community musicians to continue responsive practices in relation to the ways in which families facilitate their own musical lives and community in the home.

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Gina Oselio and Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Norway

AbstractIn 1888, Norwegian newspapers eagerly announced the arrival of ‘Miss Gina Oselio’, who was returning to Norway ‘after seven years of staying abroad’. Oselio (Ingeborg Aas (1858–1937)) had achieved tremendous success as an opera singer in Europe and her performance on the Norwegian concert stage did not disappoint. Her new popularity positioned the singer as a member of the country's cultural elite and introduced a new complexity to her operatic identity. Unlike other Norwegian musicians who were treated primarily in terms of their nationality, her ‘Norwegianness’ had been largely incidental during her career. Oselio's private papers, however, offer new insights into the complex relationship between the singer and the nation. Together with her reception history, these materials invite a fresh examination of Oselio's position in fin-de-siècle Norwegian musical life. They show how she cultivated her career and her identity outside Norway, as well as her deliberate decision to assert her ‘Norwegianness’. They demonstrate the roles that Oselio wished to occupy on the country's stages and how other Norwegians responded to these roles. Ultimately, they document a period of transition, as artists, critics and audiences sought to determine the place that opera would occupy within the nation.

M.A. Balakirev: the way to create a new school of composition

The subject of the article is the role of M.A. Balakirev in the development of Russian musical culture. The purpose of the article is to analyze the multifaceted activities of M.A. Balakirev, whom history itself has put forward to accomplish great things for the benefit of musical culture and musical education in Russia. In accordance with the theme and purpose, the following methods were used: retrospective analysis of the musical life of Russia in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries; analysis of memoir sources of M.A. Balakirev's contemporaries; generalization of modern scientific research on the topic stated in the article. The methodology of the research consists of : memoirs of students and associates of M.A. Balakirev – Ts.A. Kui, N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, V.V. Stasov; memoirs of Russian researchers – P.D. Bobrykin, Yu.V. Vasiliev, E.M. Gordeeva, Yu.V. Keldysh, I.F. Kunin. The novelty of the research lies in the identification of aesthetic contradictions between the established approach not only in the creative association of composers, but also in the musical art of that era. The materials of the article can be included in the course of lectures and seminars on the history of Russian music, advanced training courses for music teachers, teachers of secondary specialized and higher educational institutions. The conclusions of the study are : the purpose and creative activity of the composers of the "Mighty Bunch" under the leadership of M.A. Balakirev is characterized as a reflection of the Russian democratic culture of the era of revolutionary populism; the activity of the creative community "Mighty Bunch" is presented as embodying the ideological platform of the new Russian direction in music of the XIX century; the main methods of "composer" training and education applied by M.A. Balakirev.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

Katalin Incze G.: Portrait af a Composer

"The aim of our study is to examine a complex issue, namely, the scarcity of female composers as a phenomenon, highlighting several historical and social factors that have led to the peculiar situation of our present time: women’s social role has been discriminated against, and they have been excluded from the artistic world. For the longest time in history, art was the privilege of men. This situation has in some ways improved and changed, but to this day, when we talk about composers, we almost certainly think of men. This study analyses the biography and work of Katalin Incze Gergely, a prominent figure in Cluj’s musical life, a composer, conductor, and music director, while also highlighting the fate and role of contemporary women composers in the musical field. The important stages and milestones of her career are mentioned; her relationship with music gives us an insight into what it means to be a woman composer today in a world that once prevented women from pursuing their creative aspirations. Keywords: Katalin Gergely Incze, female composer, composing, contemporary music "

The Forgotten Youth of Sándor Veress

Abstract Although Sándor Veress achieved his first significant successes in Hungary and abroad at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, musicological research still remains indebted to the detailed analysis of the composer's career related to the history of Hungarian music and cultural life. Based on press and archival documents, letters and recollections, and the historical literature of the period as well, the present study attempts to explore the socio-cultural environment that characterized and helped to unfold Veress's development. My study looks at the composer's network of contacts, his family ties and the political-ideological movements and relations with the Reformed Church that promoted his career, and examines their direct influence on Sándor Veress's works composed during this period, especially The Miraculous Flute (1937), the Japanese Symphony (1940) and Térszili Katica (1943).

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The article solves the problem of authenticity of Ossetian traditional musical instruments, which is directly linked to their morphology. Within the framework of the mythological approach, where sound itself appears as one of the instruments of primordial creation, providing a transition from chaos (cacophony) to cosmic order (euphony), musical instruments are directly derived from the thunderstorm myth. From this point of view, they imitate the sounds of a thunderstorm, like thunderclaps (percussion), and the crackling accompanying the passage of lightning (rattles), as well as wind gusts, inevitable in any thunderstorm (brass). These archaic features manifest themselves both in the choice of material for their manufacture, and in the technologies used in this process, in the elements of their design and methods of sound production, all that is associated with the tradition of their use in musical life. In this regard, it seems very appropriate to refer to the Scythian pommel from Bald Mountain, the composition of which includes a male figure with a beard with a bell in each of his hands. An even more informative and revealing source is the iconic bronze tips of standards with bells from the Kazbek treasure, decorated with sculptural groups with figures of people located on twisted ram horns. Ultimately, there is a very high probability of a connection, existing between musical instruments and the rite of sacrifice as the main way to renew the world. The proposed provisions are based not only on the materials of the oral folk art of Ossetians (primarily the epic of the Narts), but also on the first-hand information that was received from informants and published by researchers not so long ago.

Music and national identity in early modern Rome

This volume represents a culminating point of the interest that has grown in recent decades in the national institutions in Rome during the early modern era, and in their ‘collective identities’ and complex relationship with Roman society. The volume aims to present for the first time a global study on this topic, especially giving attention to how the musical life of the national churches contributed to promoting a sense of identity through music, sharing performances, rituals and devotions. The book is organized around three key areas: the musical life of the national churches; the relationship between music and identity construction; and the role of these institutions in the maintenance of networks and promotion of cultural exchange. Some of these churches (particularly S. Luigi dei Francesi, S. Maria dell’Anima and S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli) have already been studied, while others, such as S. Antonio dei Portoghesi and especially S. Giuliano dei Fiamminghi, S. Claudio dei Borgognoni and S. Ivo dei Bretoni, have been almost neglected until now.

Philo’s Hellenistic-Jewish Approach in On the Decalogue and On the Contemplative Life: Blending Wisdom of Solomon’s Critique against Idols with a Hellenistic Notion of Moderation

Abstract Philo draws on the Wisdom of Solomon in his tripartite critique against idols found in On the Decalogue and On the Contemplative Life. As he fashions these critiques in the pursuit of upholding Mosaic law, Philo not only criticizes Greek and Egyptian forms of worship, he also integrates the notion of moderation evident in Hellenism and Hellenistic-Egyptian Isis worship. This essay demonstrates ways in which the pursuit of moderation and Isis as lawgiver are integrated into Philo’s concepts of Moses as lawgiver and pursuit of law in opposition to Roman forms of excess. The essay considers various texts, including excerpts from Greek philosophers and Hellenistic Egyptian hymns to Isis, in addition to considerations of contemporary Roman excesses vis-à-vis Philo’s Decalogue, Contempl. Life, and his uses of Wis. Philo’s Hellenistic Judaism emerges from a simultaneous criticism yet also integration of both Hellenistic and Hellenistic-Egyptian concepts and traditions.

Il velo del silenzio. Abusi, violenze, frustrazioni nella vita religiosa femminile by Salvatore Cernuzio

Reviewed by: Il velo del silenzio. Abusi, violenze, frustrazioni nella vita religiosa femminile by Salvatore Cernuzio Claudia Giampietro, JCL Il velo del silenzio. Abusi, violenze, frustrazioni nella vita religiosa femminile. By Salvatore Cernuzio. Edizioni San Paolo, 2021. Pp. 208. €20. A veil of silence lies on the reality of abuse that torments many women who embrace the path of religious life. Superiors general, novice mistresses, treasurers, and other members of female religious communities of both apostolic [End Page 208] and contemplative life are described as thirsty for power and perpetrators of unbearable discriminations in the eleven short stories anonymously told to journalist Salvatore Cernuzio by current and former religious sisters. They come from different countries, sometimes transferred to places very far from their homeland to join an international novitiate. Not even an unshakeable ability to adjust to challenges would be enough to deal with the intolerable conditions recounted, in which a life of spiritual perfection, total submission to authority, and denial of fundamental freedoms seems to be the wished-for goal by their major superiors who lost the vision and understanding of the radical following of Christ. The stories collected by C., an Italian reporter who works for the Holy See's media office, leave one astonished in reading about the incredible pain experienced by women who are defined as "departed" (72) because of their decision to leave their congregations to receive care and assistance once they fall prey to burnout and psychiatric disorders. Such decisions are harshly judged by their superiors and sometimes justified with a distorted interpretation of biblical passages and criticism of the younger generations who, in their words, would not be generous enough to follow God with an undivided heart. Many of the women C. interviews find themselves having to choose between being forced "to remain in a place that they do not see any more as ideal to seek God's will" (154) or enter into a kind of non-existence outside the institute, where they have few resources to help themselves. It is easy to imagine the "departed" members as a new category of souls lingering in Dante's Limbo, a place that materializes on this earth whenever women who choose to leave a given institute are labeled as lost for the rest of their lives, or unworthy of being listened to because they could only be capable of expressing anger and desire for vengeance. The sad reality is that often religious institutes do not plan any support measures for the members who leave and who therefore find themselves without family or friends to rely on for a safe shelter. In some cases, they are told to gather their belongings overnight and leave without any money or the possibility to have further contact with people with whom they shared a considerable part of their life journey (38). There are a few structures that provide former religious sisters and nuns with the help needed. This is the case of the Chaire Gynai (in English "Welcome, woman") integration project in Rome, managed by the Scalabrinian Sisters to welcome women in conditions of fragility and of any status, age, or origin (45). In the eyes of their major superiors, hesitation, mental issues, difficulty in bending one's will to all-powerful leaders represent dead ends after years of impeccable commitment and self-giving (81). While evaluating the causes of such abuse, Italian psychiatrist and psychotherapist Prof. Tonino Cantelmi [End Page 209] affirms: "In female congregations the incapacity of authentic integration is very frequent, and above all it is possible to identify a clamorous short-sightedness of superiors general in handling the talents of sisters or nuns" (171–72). C.'s narratives indicate there are institutes that do not consider the diversity of talents of their members, and in this way hinder a new flourishing of the institutes. This is an evil from both an individual and collective perspective. There is a common frustration among religious women forced to satisfy senseless demands imposed by a tunnel-visioned leadership. For those who do not follow this unspoken rule by manifesting their skills and desire to improve them for the sake of the institute, the consequence is being marginalized or...

Dissidentskaya sub"ektivnost': moral'nye poiski i konstruirovanie lichnosti v zhizni, avtobiograficheskih tekstah i poezii Aleksandra Esenina-Vol'pina (1930-e — 1960-e gg.)

Based on archival sources introduced for the first time, the author identifies-lasting conceptions of personality, which Alexander Esenin-Vol’pin, the founder of the Soviet Human Rights movement, asserted in life, poetry and autobiographical texts. In his youth, out of his passion for mathematics and adoration for the oeuvre of the decadent and romantic poets, Esenin-Vol’pin formulated the self-conceptions of therationalistand the romanticist. Following the self-conception of the rationalist, he asserted the primacy of reason over emotions and professed the ideal of “contemplative life” in the name of science, detached from practical use. The interconnection between the self-conceptions of the rationalist and the romanticist produced the image of a person isolated from social reality and detached from the materialism of everyday life, which lay the ground for his dissident subjectivity.

Витальность музыки: от истоков к реалиям нон-классики

The subject of the article is the phenomenon of vitality in music. It is considered as a generic feature of music dating back to its origins and early forms. The historical evolution of musical vitality is briefly described, presented on individual examples, starting from the late Baroque, the works by I. Haydn, L. Beethoven, R. Wagner, A. Scriabin up to D. Shostakovich and the composers of the second half of the 20th — first third of the 21st centuries, to whom the main attention is paid. The purpose of the article is to identify specific, relatively stable forms of vitality’s manifestation which materialize both in individual elements of the musical language (such, for example, is the new monody that arose with the birth of opera at the beginning of the 17th century), and in integral phenomena of a systematic order. Among the stylistic events of the second kind, the article is specifically examined the concept of creation, the gesture of birth. Gradually, it crystallizes in music as thematic constant (based on biblical mythology, as in Haydn’s Creation of the World oratorio), but eventually emancipates from the plot basis, acquiring the universal significance. The result of the research is the identification of the mythological origins of the concept of creation; in some cases they come to the forefront (Introduction to the opera The Rhinegold by Wagner; Stimmung for six vocalists and electronics by K. Stockhausen). Another version of the concept of creation is formed in line with the romantic tradition. Then the birth of the world is associated with the lonely voice of the hero — the initial monologue of the solo instrument dramatically opposed to the orchestral mass (works of the concert genre by A. Schnittke, S. Gubaidulina, W. Lutosławski, B. Tishchenko, E. Denisov). In all such cases, the heightened sense of vitality is enhanced by special performing techniques. In the new music, the concept of creation is further developed and logically completed. The gesture of creation is no longer answered by the final statement of existence but by the gesture of destruction, annihilation of sound material — attenuation, acoustic extinction. The feeling of vitality in such compositions is specific, since musical material lives in them according to its own laws as if it doesn’t need a mirror of the subject (large orchestral compositions by Ch. Ives, Ya. Ksenakis, V. Tarnopolsky). The new music “brings to play” other non-classical aspects of vitality associated with threshold states on the verse of life and death. Starting with I. Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring the vitality of transgression becomes a noticeable phenomenon of contemporary music.

Godsends: From Default Atheism to the Surprise of Revelation by William Desmond

Reviewed by: Godsends: From Default Atheism to the Surprise of Revelation by William Desmond Jeffrey Dirk Wilson DESMOND, William. Godsends: From Default Atheism to the Surprise of Revelation. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021. xii + 297 pp. Cloth, $65.00 Godsends comprises an introduction and eight chapters, much of it a reworking of previously published material, but this is no mere compendium of what is available elsewhere. Desmond offers a "second think" that refreshes and challenges the reader. Each chapter begins with a brief creative offering—chapter 1 in prose, the rest in poetry. Then in chapter 6, this commitment to the creative in conversation with the philosophical explodes into "Dream Monologues of Autonomy: Variations on the Prodigal Son," in which Desmond offers "dreams" that "imaginatively redouble the more dutiful scholarly account that puts them [Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche] to the question." Desmond notes that "default atheism" is the state of "advanced intellectuals." At the same time, religion is booming in other quarters. As [End Page 812] ever, Desmond looks to the "in-between" as fertile ground for philosophical reflection. He seeks a companioning relationship of philosophy and theology in which to discover "the constitutive porosity between the human and the divine." Chapter 1 seeks to get beyond "Default Atheism" through a consideration of four hyperboles—"hyperbole" as what throws us above—of being, (1) "the idiocy of being" (the fundamental "thatness" of reality whatever that reality may be), (2) "the aesthetics of happening" (the flesh of being), (3) "the erotics of selving" ("our own 'to be' and the promise of the 'to be' beyond our own being"), and, finally, (4) "the agapeics of communication" ("self-relation" is not possible without "other-relation"). Throughout this book, Desmond seeks to recover a respectability for the contemplative life and for allowing religion and philosophy to speak to each other. There is covenant (chapter 2, "Solitudes: Thresholds between Selving and the Sacred"), prayer (chapter 4, "Mysticism and the Intimate Universal: On the Arnhem Mystical Sermons and Sri Aurobindo"), dream as window onto wisdom (chapter 6). In chapter 7, "Exceeding Virtue: On Aquinas and the Beatitudes," he discusses St. Thomas Aquinas's exposition of the Beatitudes in the commentary on St. Matthew and in the Summa Theologiae. Both Plato and Aristotle seem to suggest that virtue, rightly understood, is sufficient for happiness, but—Desmond observes, makarios exceeds eudaimonia. That excess Desmond discovers in the peace that comes to us as "a transcendence that descends," in other words as a godsend. In the final chapter, Desmond discovers the interior nature of "godsend" as word, idea, and story. What is the relationship of reason and revelation (and the faith inspired by revelation): parallel lines, a married couple, unmarried companions, opposites? Desmond concludes—as had Aquinas before him—that at the end of the day, reason too is revelation. That conclusion, however, is at odds with the modern concept of reason as what is immanently self-determined. Rupture occurs. Something from outside breaks in ("Surprise!") and "an infinity of mystery" seems just possible enough to generate wonder; reason is never the same again. In this context, he returns to the four hyperboles of being: what throws us above the immanent frame. The chapter—and the book—ends with a lyrical reading of Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation": a dawning as the sun goes down. Given his love of word-play—and I may have missed it—I am surprised that Desmond does not speak about the doubleness of the word "Godsends." He fully explores "God sends," but there is also "God's ends." He may have left that for the reader to discover and explore. Mimicking the world in which we live, Desmond creates myriad niches of rich ambiguity such that the reader is never certain what he discovers and what he provides in companionship with the author. If you have read none of Desmond's books, read this one because here he integrates the major themes of his work over decades. If you have read all of his books, read this one because he moves beyond his earlier works, [End Page 813] surmounting them with this synthesis. In addition, Godsends manifests compositional...

Bede on Sickness, Episcopal Identity and Monastic Asceticism

The value of bodily affliction as a means for integrating an active life of good works on earth with the contemplative values of heaven, prior to the return of Christ and the world's end, remains relatively unexplored, despite suffering saints being a common medieval trope. Using the work of Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede, this article seeks to explore the interrelation of an active contemplative life and bodily affliction to shed light upon Bede's use of Gregory and his presentation of Cuthbert's episcopate to forge a distinctive understanding of the links between bodily illness, episcopal identity and the biblical ordering of time, as that ordering finds expression in biblical eschatology and apocalyptic.