Musical Past Research Articles

The Streams of Our Lives: Visualizing Listening Histories in Context

The choices we take when listening to music are expressions of our personal taste and character. Storing and accessing our listening histories is trivial due to services like Last.fm, but learning from them and understanding them is not. Existing solutions operate at a very abstract level and only produce statistics. By applying techniques from information visualization to this problem, we were able to provide average people with a detailed and powerful tool for accessing their own musical past. LastHistory is an interactive visualization for displaying music listening histories, along with contextual information from personal photos and calendar entries. Its two main user tasks are (1) analysis, with an emphasis on temporal patterns and hypotheses related to musical genre and sequences, and (2) reminiscing, where listening histories and context represent part of one's past. In this design study paper we give an overview of the field of music listening histories and explain their unique characteristics as a type of personal data. We then describe the design rationale, data and view transformations of LastHistory and present the results from both a lab- and a large-scale online study. We also put listening histories in contrast to other lifelogging data. The resonant and enthusiastic feedback that we received from average users shows a need for making their personal data accessible. We hope to stimulate such developments through this research.

Lovelorn Lamentation or Histrionic Historicism? Reconsidering Allusion and Extramusical Meaning in the 1854 Version of Brahms's B-Major Trio

Abstract Although it has long been accepted that the 1854 version of Brahms9s B-Major Piano Trio contains references to Beethoven9s An die ferne Geliebte and Schubert9s Schwanengesang , it has escaped notice until now that the piece also alludes, clearly and in a structurally significant manner, to Domenico Scarlatti9s Sonata in C Major, K. 159. Strong musical evidence for this additional allusion is corroborated by Brahms9s long-term, multifaceted engagement with Scarlatti9s music as demonstrated by his correspondence, music library, performance repertoire theoretical studies, and other compositions. The revisions Brahms made to the Trio in 1889 are also highly suggestive: for the first time, the three theme groups replaced by altogether new material can be understood to correspond precisely to those containing the clearest allusions to the music of other composers. Identification of the Scarlatti reference necessitates reevaluation of the oft-proposed idea that the Trio9s song references function as a lament for Brahms9s own ““distant beloved,”” Clara Schumann. The reference to Scarlatti, while potentially supportive of such a program, also suggests an alternative interpretation: perhaps the Trio9s allusions are best understood within the context of the young composer9s struggle to reconcile his relationship to his predecessors in the heady period surrounding the publication of Schumann9s ““Neue Bahnen.”” If the original Trio represents an elegy for the musical past, rather than——or even in addition to——a lament for Clara, then the 1889 revisions, no longer to be understood simply as Brahms9s attempt to expunge an embarrassing confession of love, must be considered in terms of the historical perspective of the mature composer.

The Female Exotic: Tradition, Innovation and Authenticity in the Reception of Music by Judith Weir

Judith Weir's music embraces the unusual, from libretti drawing on the medieval past to fantastic narratives set within diverse stylistic frames. Her musical language has been praised and criticised in almost equal measure for its versatility and humour. Weir's music seems tied to the musical past, but in ways so divergent between pieces that critics struggle to engage with it as fully as with the music of other British composers of recent decades. Focusing on several works, I explore the often fraught sense of historical subjectivity in Weir's music and its reception. I also examine the critical discourse relating to Weir's music, in particular works based on historical or non-Western stimuli, arguing that these texts (even the words of the composer herself) are tied closely to a historical line that continues to feel anxious about the creative powers of women composers.

A THOUSAND DISSONANCES

A THOUSAND DISSONANCES

OUTLIVING GENERATIONS

This essay aims to contextualize the debate of urban spaces experiencing cultural, social, political and economic changes in the East African region. With different population groups utilizing these spaces they become contested sites in the continued production of cultural knowledge, regional mutuality, and representation. In order to substantiate this argument, urban centres as nodal points for global networks promoting cosmopolitan lifestyles are seen to attract a growing number of youth musicians. In the fluid urban atmosphere, these youth musicians purposely beam their compositions beyond local geographies to avoid being muted or muffled since musical identity creates for them a subculture and creative space within which they thrive. Central to this drive given the historical musical past is the Kiswahili language. Contemporary modified Kiswahili sung music from Dar-es Salaam or Bongo Flava, distinctly articulates ensembles of class and power, while being embraced across all ethnic, religious, gender, socio-economic, age and political divides in the East African region. It is argued that shifting, any musical brand within the region, demands selected acclaimed musicians acquiring broadened felicity in music. Consequently, differences exist, in these translocational movements that reflect individual artists’ styles, but which find space and meaning in borrowing and modification. By focussing on the emergence of youth musicians as agent involved in the construction of glocalized spaces the discussion situates the collective ability of youth as artists in taking advantage of opportunities in urban settings and appropriating spaces by the creation of a transversal urban cultural identity. The overriding quest for self-identity through labels and language by youth artists provides continual analysis into their metaphorically, African ‘brewed’ music as a partial solution in the deconstruction of obsessive-ness with Western domination and idols in music thus mapping out a future for regional musical artists.

Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France (review)

FRENCH MUSIC Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France. By Katharine Ellis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. [xii, 298 p. ISBN 0-19-517682-0. $60.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Anyone setting out to explore France and the French, whether from a historical perspective or in the present, will sooner or later come up against what we might term the three P's of Philosophy, Politics, and Paris. Each of these, either alone or in potent, inherently unstable combination, exerts its influence on a fourth P, which is Patriotism. It is thus not at all surprising to find all four P's playing their pan in Katharine Ellis's fascinating exploration of early music in nineteenth-century France. This is a book that succeeds on many levels. Readers requiring a straightforward, digestible narrative to introduce them to the main events of this story-sometimes divertissement, more often melodrama-and to the idealists, ideologues, and people in between who form its dramatis personae, will be grateful for the first three chapters, which respectively cover 1800-46, 1846-78, and 1878-1900. If 1846 seems to have been chosen fairly arbitrarily (though it does have the benefit of dividing the three chapters into manageable chunks of around forty pages each, which probably suited the publisher), 1878 is more artfully selected, for at least two reasons. First of all, it makes musical sense: readers with any knowledge of France's cultural life will immediately recognize 1878 as the year of an Exposition universelle, and Ellis skillfully uses this as a jumping off point for her third chapter, which opens with an account of Alexandre Guilmant's six organ recitals at that event. With these recitals, Guilmant began what was to be a twenty-year exploration of the organ repertory of Handel, Bach, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Clerambault, and modern (p. 81), something obviously germane to the book's subject matter. second, using 1878 neatly avoids overemphasizing the caesura of 1871 that historians, especially political historians, usually impose when discussing nineteenth-century France. Ellis is keen to avoid giving undue prominence to 1871 in her narrative, surely a wise decision given that 1871 and its aftermath have long been presented in music historiography as the time when the Societe nationale de musique and others were promoting new composers of undeniably French pedigree, rather than bringing forward the music of earlier times. By avoiding the 1871 problem, Ellis reinforces the notion that, at least for the topic under discussion in her book, other dates may have equal or greater significance. The second set of chapters develops themes expounded in the first three, but now freed from the constraints imposed by those chapters' chronological arrangement. This half of the book proceeds by means of four case studies, respectively La musique francaise at the Crossroads (pp. 119-46); Sources of Frenchness (pp. 147-77); Defining Palestrina (pp. 179-207), which deftly negotiates the minefield of church politics and skillfully exposes the different attitudes of Ultramontanes and Gallicans in regard to early music; and Baroque Choral Music: the Popular and the Profound (pp. 209-40). A persistent theme of these studies, and of this book as a whole, is that things are never as simple as they appear on the surface. Such a statement will come as no surprise to students of French musical culture, but even they may be somewhat taken aback by the sheer number of levels of complexity that have to be negotiated in order to get to the bottom of things. For the narrative proves time and again that whether a particular composition was perceived as a masterpiece or not depended very little on its musical qualities. Pieces of music became battlegrounds for critics, politicians, and churchmen, all of whom were engaged in a struggle to impose their own point of view on wider issues. Small wonder that some composers were sacrificed in the process. …

Elsewhere and Erstwhile

The article reviews the books Encounters at the 1989 Paris World's Fair, by Annegret Fauser and Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France, by Katherine Ellis.

Book review - Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia 1836-1970

Normally a book on improvisation would grapple with the question “what is improvisation?” with direct reference to recorded or at least widely heard music. In Playing Ad Lib, John Whiteoak takes on the comparatively awkward task of examining improvisatory modes of music making in Australia that have gone unrecorded—music, in other words, that he could not hear. His first four chapters discuss “The Approved Genres before Jazz” (the title of his opening chapter). The last three chapters discuss jazz and its influences, commencing from around 1918. He has a special focus on Australia, and more particularly on Melbourne, his home city; but this is only deeply apparent in the last parts of the book that deal with the avant-gardes of that city. He “points to the special character of Melbourne's musical past,” but also aims to provide a “benchmark for improvisatory music in Australia” (xiii). Whiteoak also provides useful pointers to the literature on Australian music that complements his own work.

Review of Tim Brooks. 2004. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 . Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press

The post-civil rights era gave rise to a surge in revisionist scholarship devoted to African American music, much of it inspired by Eileen Southern’s seminal Music of Black Americans ([1971] 1997). Southern and the scholars who followed in her wake restored lost musicians, lost images, lost words, lost scores, and lost experiences to the historical record, which radically changed how we study, perceive, and teach American music. Tim Brooks’s magnificent new book on America’s earliest black recording artists, Lost Sounds, is a treasure chest of new information that reminds us, should we feel complacent, that there is still much work to be done in recovering and understanding America’s musical past.

Interpreting the musical past: early music in nineteenth-century France

In an era of heightened patriotic fervor following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Parisians packed concert halls to hear performances of Handel's oratorios and Bach's organ works. At the same time, both royalists and republicans called for the re-evaluation of the once detested musique francaise of the ancien regime. Musicologist Katharine Ellis examines these unlikely aspects of cultural life in the new Republic as part of a broader study of the early music revival in nineteenth-century France. This revival gives us a vivid sense of how music's cultural meanings were contested, distilled into dominant visions, and then often revised. Peppering the century are famous fakes, pastiches and other creative negotiations between past and present. Descriptions of these phenomena by contemporary witnesses reveal how dissent could run along social, religious and political lines, and why certain genres became idealized while others were disparaged. After providing an overview of trends and contexts throughout the century, Ellis examines specific repertoires that evoked unusually spirited advocacy and debate. She explores the attempts to revive French Baroque stage music in the 1870s; arguments on the appropriateness of Palestrina's liturgical music; the reception of Bach and Handel, and their relation to French choral activity; and, finally, musical Frenchness. Four case-study chapters focus on key debates and repertories stretching from Adam de la Halle to Rameau, via Josquin, Janequin, Palestrina, Bach and Handel. Interpreting the Musical Past discusses what is at stake in the construction of a musical heritage, and how ideology informs musical value judgements. In its focus on the nature of musical experience and the meaning of music in society, the book explores amateur and professional music-making; working-class, aristocratic and bourgeois cultural life; national pride; religious politics; and ritual, both liturgical and secular. Based on extensive primary research in Paris and the French regions, Interpreting the Musical Past is at once a history of culture, of reception, and of historiography. Covering five centuries of music (from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries) and a century of French history, it explains long-term changes of cultural meaning while celebrating the richness of local detail. This study of musical revivalism offers a penetrating analysis of what lies at the heart of the construction, championing, and development of a musical cultural memory.

German modernism: music and the arts

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Ambivalent Modernism: Perspectives from the 1870s and 1880s 2. German Naturalism 3. Convergences: Music and the Visual Arts 4. Bach, Regeneration, and Historicist Modernism 5. Ironic Germans 6. Dancing in Chains: Strauss, Hofmannsthal, Pfitzner, and Their Musical Pasts Notes Bibliography of Works Cited Index

'Ströme durch die Konvention jagen'--Some Remarks About the Use of Conventions and Their Modification in Lachenmann's Orchestral Works from 1969 to 19891

My article focuses on the most fecund period in Helmut Lachenmann's oeuvre, in terms of orchestral works: from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. I do not discuss every work from this period, but instead focus on a few examples and give information about the development of his thoughts therein. I explain how the increasing influence of the musical past in his orchestral music from the 1970s both embraces music history and renews the music of the present and set up his current musical period.

Was it really like that?

In an attempt to re-think ways in which the popular music past is represented, Mike Brocken looks at Lonnie Donegan’s recording of ‘Rock Island Line’ and questions the historical purposes that this seminal recording appears to have served for subsequent popular music writers and historians. Donegan, according to Brocken, is afforded very little historical authenticity due to his flirtation with the mainstream, while ‘Rock Island Line’ is historicized only as a form of 'ur-history’ to apparently more authentic soundtracks that appeared to follow. By focusing more upon space, time and synchronic fact (and away from the ‘event’ that can be more easily narrated), Brocken suggests that our historical knowledge of this seminal recording has been constructed in very specific ways. He concludes by suggesting that the epistomological, methodological and ideological factors concerning the historiography of skiffle, Donegan and ‘Rock Island Line’ in serving ‘rock-ist’ and ‘folk-ist’ narratives, all require urgent investigation.

Reger's Historicist Modernism

In an article in 19th-Century Music published in 2002, I began to explore what I called modernism in music.1 This concept encompasses works composed in the Austro-German sphere in the years around 1900, which were intended and received as modern, but which derived their compositional energy primarily from techniques of a more remote past. Historicist modernism should be distinguished from neoclassicism, a somewhat later practice that crystallized around 1920. Exemplary neoclassical works, such as those by Stravinsky and Hindemith written in the decades between the world wars, tend to distance the musical past through a cosmopolitan lens. Works of modernism have a more urgent, elemental, and intense connection with the past, as in those of Max Reger that probe his psychic and musical relationships to Bach. We should briefly unpack the components of the term historicist Modernism as a phenomenon has been treated in a vast number of critical and historical writings. Die Modeme, as it was often called in German, refers to a set of beliefs and principles that in the broadest sense were shared by many creative artists in Europe from about the 1850s on. Many commentators point to Baudelaire's conception ofmodem, articulated in 1859, as foundational for this phase of For Baudelaire, (not yet an -ism) connoted not merely the presentness of an era, but rather a special quality ofle transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent that could be found in any period.2 The modem was thus set against not the old, but the eternal. The adjective modern and the substantive die Moderne appear frequently in German writings both from within and about the period 1880 to 1920. The nominal form can have the connotation of either or both of the English words modernity and modernism. In English, however, these words can have different meanings. I tend to understand modernity more as the condition or state of being modern; in this sense, comprises a situation that is almost passive, inevitable. Modernism is a more ideologically charged and voluntary phenomenon. It is in many cases an actual movement, propelled by a group of like-minded thinkers, artists, or critics. But modernism can also suggest a broader tent: in the years around 1900, among composers, critics, and the general public, it could encompass figures as different as Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Hans Pfitzner, Max von Schillings, Alexander Zemlinsky, Ferruccio Busoni, and Gustav Mahler.3

Izdelovalci glasbil na Slovenskem 1606–1918

Proučevanje zgodovine izdelovanja inštrumentov in posameznih izdelovalcev na Slovenskem nima dolge tradicije. Na ta del glasbene preteklosti je strokovno in drugo javnost prvi opozoril Josip Mantuani ob 60-letnici ljubljanske Glasbene matice leta 1932, ki je ob tej priložnosti v Narodnem domu v Ljubljani organizirala veliko razstavo Razvoj glasbe pri Slovencih, kjer so bili z izdelki predstavljeni tudi nekateri starejši in sodobni domači izdelovalci inštrumentov. Med najmanj razvitimi segmenti muzikologije na Slovenskem sta organologija glasbenih inštrumentov in zgodovina izdelovanja glasbil. Večje strokovne pozornosti so bile deležne predvsem orgle in orglarji. Orglarstvo in posamezne mojstre so od sedemdesetih let naprej proučevali Ladislav Šaban, Milko Bizjak in Edo Škulj, v zadnjem desetletju pa se stopnjuje zanimanje še za izdelovalce drugih inštrumentov, ki so v preteklih stoletjih delovali na ozemlju današnje Slovenije. Rezultati posameznih študij so objavljeni v različnih publikacijah, revijah, zbornikih in leksikonih, nekaj podatkov o izdelovalcih pa najdemo tudi v tuji literaturi. Da bi bilo poznavanje zgodovine izdelovanja glasbil in posameznih mojstrov bolj pregledno in dostopnejše, je nujno, da objavljene dosežke strnemo v obliki gesel z vsemi najbolj vitalnimi podatki, s čimer bodo imeli uporabniki boljši dostop do informacij. Pri oblikovanju gesel je bila upoštevana metodologija, ki se je uveljavila v nemški in angleški leksikografski literaturi. Imena izdelovalcev so zapisana v izvirni obliki, ponekod pa so dodane še različice priimkov in imen, ki jih najdemo v primarnih virih. Pri rojstnih podatkih so navedene letnice rojstva in smrti ter natančni datumi, kadar so znani. V primerih, kjer čas rojstva ni ugotovljen, so pomembne letnice delovanja posameznika. Primer: CAJHEN, (Zeichen), Martin (1855–1863). Pri poklicu je mogočih več navedb, npr. izdelovalec orgel, organist, trgovec z glasbili ... Kadar so posamezniki delovali v manjših krajih, je zaradi boljše preglednosti omenjeno bližnje večje mesto. Pri pomembnejših mojstrih sta strnjena vrednotenje njihovega dela ter pomen za slovenski oz. širši evropski prostor. Med vitalnimi podatki so rojstni kraj, pomočniška potovanja, pridobivanje meščanskih in mojstrskih pravic (pri mojstrih tudi okoliščine, kako je prišel do obrtnih pravic: npr. nakup, poroka z vdovo obrtnega mojstra). Sledijo vrste izdelkov, ki so jih izdelovali v posamezni delavnici (npr. klavirji, orgle, harmoniji …), območje delovanja (pri orglarjih so omenjeni kraji in cerkve, kjer so bile orgle postavljene, kam so jih prestavljali in kje so ohranjene danes), velikost delavnice, proizvodnja (npr. velikost opusa pri orglarjih), število pomočnikov in vajencev ter njihova imena. Nato so iznajdbe in izboljšave pri inštrumentih, razstave, priznanja, nagrade ter preimenovanje delavnice in nasledniki. Posebna rubrika je namenjena navedbi ohranjenih inštrumentov v javnih zbirkah, pri čemer so upoštevane muzejske in zasebne zbirke doma in na tujem. Orglarska dediščina je predstavljena pri območju delovanja posameznika. Sledi naslov delavnice in morebitne selitve. Na koncu so v kronološkem redu navedeni viri, in sicer literatura (samostojne publikacije, članki v periodiki, diplomska dela, razstavni katalogi, zborniki in leksikografska gesla), revije in časopisi ter arhivski viri.

Dancing the Symphonic: Beethoven-Bochsa's Symphonie Pastorale, 1829

Abstract . On 22 June 1829, the legendary French harpist, convicted forger and escaped felon, Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa performed his most infamous musical offense: a rendition of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony with stage action. Since Grove, this surprisingly early reworking of the Sixth as a ballet-pantomime has not gone down well in the literature. As the twentieth century unfurled, the moment steadily receded into obscurity, losing all cultural and contextual meaning to the point where it is now remembered (if at all) as a lesson in the rogue potential of performance—a pockmark on the historical map. This article will reverse the general slide into amnesia by first excavating this vanished but important moment of the musical past, and then recuperating its seriousness. Enough evidence from the 1820s and 30s suggests that Bochsa's Symphonie (performed at London's King's Theatre) was representative of much more than itself. Far from historically inexplicable, it can be read as an extreme manifestation of a strongly defined ballet-concert exchange that characterized the artistic trends of the late 1820s. By taking on abstract and “musical” forms, dance was becoming more concertlike. Concerts, meanwhile, were developing balletic traits in their increasing use of picturesque effects, and their growing fascination for the visual or bodily aspects of musical performance. A rapprochement took place that reshaped the nature of listening and figured the emerging concept of the musical work in a curiously plastic, objective way—as the case study exemplifies.

Recall and Repetition in Some Works by Kurtág

Kurtág's musical language contains layers of memories. The result is a music filled with reference to the musical past and present (from medieval to avant-garde, to Hungarian folk music) and to subjective life experiences. These are made obvious by the homages and dedications, the titles and the annotations slipped into the score. The fact that the music does contain layers of personal memories leads to different forms of recall or repetition: quoting works of other composers and his own; developing musical ideas or entire pieces from his mental repertoire; extending a former work by presenting each phrase in the original order and elaborating on each in turn. This paper studies the forms of repetition used in some of Kurtág's instrumental music, particularly the String Quartet, opus 28. The analyses focus on the forms of recall used and on the way in which Kurtág achieves continuity in works that at first may appear to be collages of quotations and references.

Romancing the folk: public memory & American roots music

In American music, the notion of has been a powerful refrain, but just what constitutes our true musical traditions has often been a matter of debate. As Benjamin Filene reveals, a number of competing visions of America's musical past have vied for influence over the public imagination in this century. Filene builds his story around a fascinating group of characters--folklorists, record company executives, producers, radio programmers, and publicists--who acted as middlemen between folk and popular culture. These cultural brokers discovered folk musicians, recorded them, and promoted them. In the process, Filene argues, they shaped mainstream audiences' understanding of what was authentic roots music. Filene moves beyond the usual boundaries of folk music to consider a wide range of performers who drew on or were drawn into the canon of American roots music--from Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, to Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, to Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Challenging traditional accounts that would confine folk music revivalism to the 1930s and 1960s, he argues instead that the desire to preserve and popularize America's musical heritage is a powerful current that has run throughout this century's culture and continues to flow today. |Benjamin Filene examines the competing visions of America's musical past--and the cultural middlemen who shaped these visions--that have vied for influence over the public imagination in this century. This book brings to light the relationship between folk or roots music and popular culture.

Healey Willan's Inscribed Copy of John Coulter's Deirdre of the Sorrows

Healey Willan's Inscribed Copy of John Coulter's Deirdre of the Sorrows. Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 12, numéro 1, 1992, p. 1-159) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Musical Instruments and Music in Hungarian Folk Tales

The musicality of spoken language and the speech-like character of music represent a borderline case, in the research of which linguistics and musicology meet. For the question is to what e2atent intonation can be looked upon ae a linguistic phenomenon and at which point it becomes qualitatively different, i.e. m¢sic. To investigate such peripheries is an ungreatful task for musicology since, instead of approaching real melodies from the genetical, stylistic, formal or generic angles, the researcher must be content with analyzing melodies which are unmelodious in the musical sense and inartistic in the aesthetic sense. In investigating this sphere, a significant task is conferred upon folklore too. For the sphere mentioned above includes all the declaimed tes:ts, be they nursery rhymes or greetings in rhyme preented ceremoniously, indicating the elevated character of events and feasts, just to mention a few examples. It is a well-known fact that the strong intonation, rhythmical lining of declaimed verses or rhyming prose preserve musical beginnings and indicate a kind of common musical ancient past in the tradition of every people. To some extent this holds true for folk tales too, whose presentation also includes an intonation different from that of everyday speech. Naturally, this intonation is at the same time dependent upon the given language dialect as well as the individual range and register of voice of the performer, also representing his or her individual tone dynamics. It is definitely different from everyday speech since its aim is to arouse attention. Thus strong declamation, the changing of different shades of tone serve the purpose of emphasizing the turning points of the plot and at the same time become the possible means of arousing a,ttention and maintaining interest continuously. After what has been said so far, it would seem purposeful to examine our folk tales from the point of view of intonation. Still, this is not the subject of my venture. For no matter how much folk tales overreach everyday speech, it is primarily a spoken language which, of course, possesses certain musical elements. However, our folk tales have a more hidden musical layer which does