Music Reference Research Articles

Baldur's Song: A Saga by David Arnason (review)

Reviewed by: Baldur's Song: A Saga by David Arnason Gudrun Björk Gudsteins David Arnason . Baldur's Song: A Saga. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2010. 236 pp. Photos. $19.00 sc. David Arnason's novel has covers showing a guitar in shades of grey and dun, giving little indication of the colourful story awaiting the reader; it brings home the old adage that one should not judge a book by its cover. Yet it is entirely appropriate as it foregrounds the importance of the main character's musical talent—an uncanny aptitude for whistling, even in infancy, and later for singing as well as playing the accordion and the guitar. This talent opens to him a number of unexpected doors in places high and low. But the musical reference also suggests the social and historical importance of the author's cultural enterprise as he joins the voices of his Icelandic "family" with Canada's multicultural chorus. [End Page 245] History has a strong presence in this novel. It is made concrete and visible in shades of greys in the numerous photographs that are credited in roughly equal measures to the Manitoba Archives and the author's family album. But the characters are so boldly drawn and with such vitality that before long you are convinced that the black-and-white eyes in the photographs sparkle life, colour and energy. After making a brief autobiographical start, describing his entry into the world in Gimli Hospital in Manitoba, Arnason asserts that he cannot continue with his own story until he has paid due homage to his "ancestors who suffered mightily" so that he could be born in Canada (4). Told by Arnason, past events assume mythic, tall-tale, comic proportions. His ancestors back in Iceland were lovers who would climb every mountain, ford every stream—or else wait and suffer—until their stars were uncrossed; wizards who knew when to quit passing on the family tradition of conjuring; and sisters and brothers so tall and strong that they had difficulties finding their match in life. Arnason explains, "People live a long time there, and memories are passed from generation to generation, as if they were still fresh" (14). Arnason's Icelandic ancestors were also "named for someone else, because that's one way of keeping the dead alive" (12). His great grandmother "gathered up all the lonely and abandoned ghosts in Iceland and brought them with her" to Canada, and "she never looked back" (13). The quiet center of the book is Baldur, the main character of the main story, who has an uncanny memory and an early ability to communicate with the dead. He is born and raised in Gimli but spends most of his adult life in Winnipeg. Through his consciousness, from infancy through maturity, Arnason provides us with an overview of the history of Icelanders in Manitoba: the early difficulties when smallpox struck the New Iceland settlement and decimated nearby Indian settlements; the fileting and preparation of fish for market in Gimli; work on the railways and sewers and construction of apartment blocks in Winnipeg; life in the Winnipeg Flats, in seedy side-streets, as well as in affluent homes. Without prejudice, Baldur observes and accepts people from all walks of life, and receives many a windfall by catching and running with the opportunities when they come his way rather than pursuing them single-mindedly. In Winnipeg, Baldur meets a number of historical persons, including Lord and Lady Governor General Stanley of Preston and the Right Honourable John Sparrow David Thompson, Prime Minister of Canada. In Boundary Creek and Gimli, he meets Arnason's legendary great-grandfather and entrepreneur, Captain Baldi Anderson, and, in Iceland, he meets yet another Arnason relative, Thorarinn Kristjan Eldjarn, father of the third President of Iceland. On the surface it would seem that Baldur's Song is the family saga of the Arnason clan; the author tells us that Baldur is his great-grandfather and there are certainly [End Page 246] clear and visible historical traces of Arnason and his family. But above all this is the saga of the rebirth or revival of the "family" of Icelanders in their new homeland. Baldur says...

Oscar Wilde, Music, and the ‘Opium-Tainted Cigarette’: Disinterested Dandies and Critical Play

This article shows how the musical references in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray are important to the identity of the dandy, especially in relation to the literary-critical work of Matthew Arnold, whose guiding presence in Wilde's oeuvre has traditionally been somewhat underestimated. Wilde's male characters, although famously fond of music, reveal ‘disinterestedness’ in earnest musical pursuits, similar to the ‘Indian virtue of detachment’ outlined by Arnold in his exploration of ‘The Function of Criticism at the Present Time’ (1864, in Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. by Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 26–51). Furthermore, the critical attitude of the dandy–aesthete intersects with the implications that we can read into the posture of the lounging opium smoker. Extensive scholarship has already established the relationship between the East and opium in fictional works by Thomas de Quincey, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde...

International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text (review)

International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text. ProQuest LLC, 2010. http://iimpft.chadwyck.com (Accessed August 2009 to March 2010). [Requires a Web browser, an Internet connection, Adobe Reader plug-in to view PDF files, Adobe Flash plug-in to view animated content, and Apple Quick Time Player or Windows Media Player to listen to audio content. Pricing: dependent on the type of library and the size of its user population.] International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP) joined the field of music periodical in late 1996 as a competitor to Music Index and RILM Abstracts. IIMP has always been an electronic product and was never available in print. Alter a couple of mergers, the publisher, Chadwyck-Healey, is now part of ProQuest. The database claims to provide indexing and abstracts for more than 440 international music periodicals, plus full text for 130 journals (from the product description at http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/iimp_ft.shtml). CONTENT The database essentially contains two separate groups of records: records--which generally include abstracts and subject descriptors--from 1996 on, and retrospective records from before 1996, which do not include abstracts or subject headings. In the early days of the product, the two sets were separate files, but they have long since been merged into a single database. So what is the breakdown between retrospective and current? Is the database more useful for newer records or older ones? Fortunately, the ability to do blank searches (with no search terms but with a range of dates), makes these questions fairly easy to answer. In February 2010, 622,968 (74 percent) of the 840,200 total citations were current records from 1996 on. In contrast, breaking the pre-1996 records down into live-year periods shows that coverage from 1991 to 1995 contains 57,963 citations. The number decreases for each preceding five-year span, as results sets drop below 20,000 hits for 1981-85 and below 10,000 hits for 1951-55. These numbers can be contrasted with the span 2001-05, which indexes 228,557 articles. So clearly, the bulk of the citations are within the last fifteen years. On the one hand, the value of the retrospective citations is diminished by the absence of subject headings and abstracts, yet that deficiency is counterbalanced by the presence of full text for some of the records (providing one subscribes to the full-text version). Coverage in IIMP overlaps substantially with Music Index and RILM, but there is also a fair amount of divergence in titles indexed. For details on overlap and on currency of indexing, see Alan Green's article Keeping Up With the Times: Evaluating Currency of Indexing, Language Coverage and Subject Area Coverage in the Three Music Periodical Index Databases (Music Reference Services Quarterly 8, no. 1 [January 2001]: 53). The basic database content of IIMP is also supplemented by an assortment of resources under the heading Reference. These adjuncts are currently all taken from Naxos Music Library (NML), and they include a glossary, a collection of opera synopses, music fundamental terms, and a pronunciation guide. These rudimentary resources may be helpful to a user confronted by unfamiliar terms or concepts, particularly while outside the library; they are not, however, a substitute for the many quality resources found in music libraries (or elsewhere online). IIMP also includes links from subject headings for composers to the corresponding composer pages in Naxos Music Library. This rather broad approach may be helpful, but the user will have to do some digging to find specific works. INDEXING IIMP can be searched through a quick search function that offers only the ability to enter keyword terms into a single search box, but most users (and most searches) will benefit from the use of the Search Articles page. This search option offers the ability to restrict a search to particular indexes (author, title, journal, broad subject and narrow subject) as well as limiting by date, language, publication type, and other criteria. …

Quotation and Framing: Re-contextualization and Intertextuality as Newness in George Crumb's Black Angels

George Crumb's Black Angels: Thirteen Images from the Dark Land for Electric String Quartet (1970) are individually original, but also representative for compositional practices for the twentieth century. As in his other compositions, Crumb has integrated musical quotations and various musical styles, including a web of references that extend into other media in such a way that they form an indispensable part of the basic construction of the work: these components form part of its newness. In Black Angels the composer—among other well-known pieces of music—quotes the medieval `Dies irae' sequence and the second movement of Schubert's string quartet in D minor (D. 810). The musical and intermedial references are framed with striking modernistic sounds exploring instrumental possibilities far beyond the traditional, thus creating a framework of extreme contrasts. The paper will contextualize, analyze and interpret Black Angels—which the composer explicitly linked to the Vietnam War—in a broad context of music, intermediality, religious symbolism, and cultural memory, pointing to the cultural meaning of this technique of recontextualization as a break with, as well as a continuation of, modernity.

György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages (review)

Reviewed by: György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages Péter Laki György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages. By Bálint András Varga. (Eastman Studies in Music, v. 67.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009. (xi, 166 p. ISBN 9781580463287. $75.) Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. Bálint András Varga is a master at interviewing composers. His book-length conversations with Witold Lutoslawski, Luciano Berio and Iannis Xenakis are classics of the literature on those composers, and his interview collection 3 kérdés, 82 zeneszerző (3 Questions, 82 Composers [Budapest: Zeneműkiadó, 1986]) have set new standards of breadth and depth in writings on contemporary music. With this new book, Varga has truly "come home." A Hungarian long associated with Editio Musica Budapest before joining Universal Edition, he has been promoting György Kurtág's music since the 1970s and has considered his fellow countryman Kurtág a primary musical reference for decades. For many years, the Hungarian composer refused to give any interviews and acquired the reputation of a notoriously difficult person to get close to; the compilation of the present volume required a friend with uncommon patience, sensitivity, and a deep devotion to, as well as familiarity with, Kurtág's work—a combination of qualities that very few writers possess. The interviews contained in the book cover a time span of more than twenty-five years. The conversation began in 1982, when Kurtág (b. 1926) was one of the eighty-two composers to whom Varga addressed his three questions. Those questions were revisited in 1996, when Kurtág [End Page 764] gave new (and sometimes startlingly different) answers to them. It is very helpful to see both sets of answers, printed separately in publications now hard to find, reunited in a book that offers the most complete collection of the composer's statements ever published in English. Kurtág was the recipient of the 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. His Kafka Fragments conquered Carnegie Hall in a spectacular dramatization by Peter Sellars a few years ago. These are indications that Kurtág, who has long been revered in Europe, is finally beginning to receive his due in the United States as well. His music combines the ideal of "organicity" (where everything derives from a single musical premise) with a rare expressivity and communicative power. He is also one of the most literary and polyglot composers active today. He has set to music texts in seven languages (Hungarian, German, Russian, English, French, ancient Greek, and Romanian), all of which he knows intimately. Also a legendary coach of chamber music, Kurtág has an exceptional ear for nuance that also informs his compositional work—in his music, every single note seems to be a matter of life or death. The pages of the book reveal a life marked by World War II and Communism in Kurtág's native Romania as well as in Hungary, where he resettled in 1945. Yet Western Europe has loomed large on the horizon ever since an early year of studies spent in Paris (1957–58); in the 1990s he finally moved to the West and now makes his home in southwestern France). We are treated to an impressive portrait gallery of teachers, colleagues, friends, and government functionaries, benevolent and otherwise, and, like the proverbial fly on the wall, we catch glimpses of what Kurtág calls his "personal mythology" as the private becomes public. Kurtág's wife of more than sixty years, the pianist Márta Kurtág, with whom the composer has frequently appeared in piano-duet recitals, plays a crucial part in these conversations; she offers many important insights, amplifying, completing, and sometimes even contradicting her husband's thoughts. For a book of composer interviews, the volume is remarkable for its concentration on the internal rather than the external. That is to say, it is not primarily a listing of where and by whom Kurtág's music has been performed in the world or the awards and prizes he has received. The focus, rather, is on the feelings behind the works, the literary and musical associations...

Musical References in Brucioli’s Dialogi and Their Classical and Medieval Antecedents

Among the distinguished intellectuals of sixteenth-century Italy was Antonio Brucioli, renowned for participating in the gatherings in the garden of the Rucellai in Florence during the second decade of the sixteenth century. Since Delio Cantimori’s fundamental article and Giorgio Spini’s fundamental monograph, Brucioli’s Dialogi have been valued for the insight they afford into the discussions of the Rucellai group. Twice in the Dialogi Brucioli offers a revealing discussion of music. The references reflect intellectual traditions of great significance and longevity and afford valuable insight into the late-Renaissance reception of such venerable doctrines.

Songs, Song-Texts, and Lovesickness in Agustín Moreto's Yo por vos y vos por otro

In recent years, a considerable amount of scholarship has been produced on the function of music in the drama of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca. But songs, dances, instruments, and other music references abound in the works of other important Spanish Golden Age dramatists. Because of the significant role music plays in many of his plays, special attention should be devoted to the repertoire of the preeminent dramatists Agustín Moreto. This essay focuses on the relationship between music and text in Yo por vos y vos por otro (1676), and particularly on how music is utilized during critical junctures as a way to underscore, on the one hand, the work's references to period notions of lovesickness, and on the other, to support the work's dramatic structure and technique. The function of music in this play is an example of the need for further study and reevaluation of a significant portion of Moreto's repertoire.

Naming That Tune: Mobile Music Information Retrieval Systems

It is a typical but often dreaded music reference question—‘‘Can you help me figure out what this song is?’’—accompanied by the humming of a sometimes unrecognizable tune segment. Print resources like thematic catalogs and notation indexes can help identify a small group of classical music works, but successful use of these sources requires a combination of mathematics, transcription, and luck. However, technology has made it easier to answer this kind of question when one is faced with the plethora of popular music melodies, even when the patron cannot recall the lyrics to a particular song. Harnessing, organizing, and providing access to an unwieldy amount of recorded music has seemed nearly impossible. For years, research in music information retrieval (MIR) systems has been underway using experimental tools and creative programs that address such complicated issues as multiple recordings of the same work, differences in recording quality, tempo variances, and algorithm creation. MIR is the umbrella over a variety of more specific topics from metadata to programming, with a fascinating history and innovative projects on the horizon (see Resource List for further reading). The MIR systems discussed in this column—Midomi and Shazam—are only two of many, but I selected them because they are free and mobile. Both systems have applications for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and other cell phone brands so that music discovery, identification, and sharing can take place anywhere. These two systems can thus be used on the go, and they can also assist librarians trying to answer that [in]famous reference question.

Best of Music Reference Services Quarterly Volume 11

Best of Music Reference Services Quarterly Volume 11

Music Library and Research Skills , and: A Guide to Library Research in Music (review)

Reviewed by: Music Library and Research Skills, and: A Guide to Library Research in Music Donna Arnold Music Library and Research Skills. By Jane Gottlieb. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009. [xiii, 370 p. ISBN: 9780131584341. $56.67.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, indexes. A Guide to Library Research in Music. By Pauline Shaw Bayne. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008. [xiv, 274 p. ISBN: 9780810861480. $35.00.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, indexes. The publication of two new books by highly-respected members of the music library profession would be good news at any time, but these books are particularly welcome just now. This is because nothing has truly superseded the exemplary Duckles as the essential book for teaching music research. Unfortunately, its most recent revision is now twelve years old (Vincent H. Duckles and Ida Reed, Music Reference and Research Materials: an Annotated Bibliography, 5th ed. [New York: Schirmer Books, 1997]), and vast changes due to computer technology, if nothing else, would render it outdated. Teachers of music research classes and students or scholars who are learning, honing, or updating research skills have an urgent need for excellent and current sources, and both of these new books fit those criteria. In them Jane Gottlieb and Pauline Bayne both give masterful overviews of present-day serious music research. Gottlieb will endear herself to every music librarian by her impassioned insistence at the beginning of chapter 1 that music libraries and music librarians are essential to such research. Both authors astutely acknowledge the vital importance of online resources early on. Gottlieb engagingly points out in her preface (p. xi) that the ancient library of Alexandria was the model for the Internet’s Alexandria Digital Library and that Project Gutenberg honors Johannes Gutenberg, who launched the age of printing ( http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/ and http://www.gutenberg.org [both accessed 19 February 2009]). Both authors skillfully cover the essential types of music research resources such as bibliographies, major dictionaries and encyclopedias, databases, and thematic catalogs. Neither attempts to replace Duckles by being comprehensive, but instead each cites what she considers to be particularly important sources in various categories. Their selections are well chosen. While each book purports to be a textbook, each has a different focus. Gottlieb addresses intellectually-inclined advanced students and scholars who want more than a mere listing of resources and lessons in research, giving important historical background and in-depth detail about topics such as the publication history of the Grove dictionaries or the accomplishments of master researchers of particular types of music reference sources. A reader who is attuned to the world of serious scholarship, though perhaps not yet accomplished in it, can learn important principles of original research throughout the book. By contrast, Bayne’s work is more overtly a textbook. Each chapter begins with a preview that defines the subject matter to come for a true beginner who may not yet know anything about research. To illustrate, she begins her chapter on thematic catalogs (p. 173) by defining what they are. Gottlieb, however, opens her chapter on the same subject (p. 246) with a summary of Barry S. Brook’s impressive accomplishments [End Page 761] as a researcher of thematic catalogs. Bayne’s book has extensive material specifically designed to help students write papers. This includes pointers on picking and developing a topic, practical information on scholarly writing, and even writing examples. There are review questions and learning exercises at the end of each chapter. While some readers might find these distracting, classroom teachers might want to use them as written, or modify them to create learning exercises of their own. Any librarian who helps patrons do advanced research in a music library will perceive the extensive music reference experience that guided each of these authors. Both provide information in abundance that reference librarians need to find quickly, practical advice they want to give, insight they want to offer, and citations for sources they want to recommend. For instance, Bayne has an appendix that outlines the Library of Congress M-class (pp. 217–21), which would help many would-be browsers. Her explanation of why we use journal indexes instead of library catalogs to look up articles...

Music Research: A Handbook (review)

Reviewed by: Music Research: A Handbook Gerry Szymanski Music Research: A Handbook. By Laurie J. Sampsel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. [xxvii, 323 p. ISBN-13: 9780195171198. $39.95.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, discography, index. Laurie Sampsel's Music Research: A Hand book is unique in that, unlike so many excellent recent bio-bibliographies and "guides to research" that now grace the shelves of music libraries everywhere, her book is designed for practical, in-classroom use. As such, it splendidly fills a gap in the textbook literature for a graduate-level course that many conservatories, universities, and comprehensive music schools require from their students. The publishers at Oxford University Press have also anticipated the fast-paced world of publishing, creating a companion Web site to support the text (http:// www.oup.com/us/musresearch [accessed [End Page 298] 20 August 2008]). The site offers lists of links for "Core Music Journals," "Links in Music Research," "Major Professional Music Associations," and "Research Tools by Composer." As of this writing (20 May 2008), the sections "Supplemental Links" and "Updates to Bibliographies and Readings" were unfinished and marked "Coming Soon." Realizing the broad scope and often confusing array of resources confronting the student researcher, Sampsel has broken down the elements of the music reference section into distinct chapters in the text that correspond with an average sixteen-week college semester. Furthermore, she divides Music Research into two broad sections: "Research Process and Research Tools" and "Writing, Style Manuals and Citation." Part 1 consists of roughly three-quarters of the book, and while it outlines research methods and techniques (such as tips for searching the various major ILS vendor library catalogs), its main strength comes from a staggering 644 detailed entries of reference books, series and sets, databases, and online resources. In addition, over 160 "titles marked with asterisks (*) are major research tools that [faculty members] might emphasize in class" (p. xx). The entries cover virtually every facet of music reference from monumental editions to thematic catalogs to online streaming of digital audio. Detailed explanatory passages open each chapter with helpful descriptions of what subjects are covered and why the sources cited are important. (e.g., "Discographies are essential to the study of music because recorded performances are integral to research and performance," p. 165). Various formats are discussed, and Library of Con gress (LC) subject headings are given for each set of reference tools (e.g., "Music—Discography—Catalogs," p. 166). The location of sources on library shelves by LC call number is also given (e.g., "ML 156–158 is used for discographies," p. 167). Indexed entries are organized into separate sub-categories and smaller subsets depending on the topic. For example, Sampsel categorizes Nicholas Slonimsky and Laura Kuhn's Music Since 1900 (6th ed.) in "Music Histories, Source Readings and Chronologies—Music Chronologies—Special Topic Music Chronologies—Twentieth-Century Music Chronologies." Sometimes a smaller sub-category ("Canadian Music Bibliographies") will have only one entry, while the broader "Single-Composer Thematic Catalogs" grouping features seventeen sources organized by composer's last name. Each indexed entry features an accurate and full citation; of particular note are the exhaustive citations for multi-volume sets such as The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and Musikgeschichte in Bildern. Lively and detailed annotations follow for each source cited, and form the real strength of Music Research. They demonstrate the "why," explaining the reasons behind each carefully chosen resource, be it an author's qualifications or the scope or detail covered. More important, a reference pointing to reviews in an academic journal is also noted. Some annotations are quite complimentary ("A model bibliography by an expert compiler" [p. 148]), others are less so ("Advanced search options are not as good as those of Google." [p. 220]). Sampsel doesn't fear pulling punches when sources are flawed ("[images] too small a size to be useful" [p. 190], "problems with the indexing" [p. 143], "uneven in quality" [p. 147]), but is quick to point out the reasons for their inclusion ("well respected" [p. 141], "excellent color photos" [p. 191], "includes art-works not reproduced elsewhere" [p. 190]). Extremely helpful are the summary "evaluation checklists," many of which are based on...

Bacchanalian sentiments: musical experiences and political counterpoints in Trinidad

Preface ix Note on Music References xiii Introduction. Initial Connections 1 1. Governmental Organization of Spontaneity 43 2. Bacchnalian Counterpoints to the State 69 3. Parang: Christmas in Anamat 119 4. Bakrnal: An Example of Changing Opinions 149 5. Chukaipan, Lootala, and the Counterpoint of Mix Up 182 6. Concluding Relations 212 Appendix 227 References 229 Index 249

Lute music for a princess

This attractively produced facsimile contains a comprehensive selection of lute and vocal music associated with the court of Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse (1573–1638), for whose daughter, Princess Elisabeth (1596–1625), it was compiled. Moritz himself is well known to lute players as the composer of the first of the pavans in Robert Dowland's collection Varietie of lute-lessons (1610), ‘made by the most magnificent and famous Prince Mauritius, Landgrave of Hessen, and from him sent to my Father’, which makes musical reference to John Dowland's famous ‘Lachrimae’ pavan. The elder Dowland's friend, Henry Peacham (himself a composition pupil of Orazio Vecchi), in The compleat gentleman (1622), after noting the talents of other royal musicians, including Henry VIII and the Prince of Venosa (i.e. Gesualdo), declared that ‘above others, who carryeth away the Palme for excellency … is the yet living Maurice, Landgrave of Hessen, of whose owne composition I have seen eight or ten severall sets of Motets, and solemne Musicke, set purposely for his own Chappell; where for the great honour of some Festivall, and many times for his recreation onely, he is his owne Organist. Besides, he readily speaketh ten or twelve severall languages … I passe over his rare skill in Chirurgery, he being generally accounted the best Bone-setter in the Country.’ Not surprisingly, this most widely talented ‘Renaissance man’ ensured that his daughter's education included serious study of both music and languages; her natural inclination was in fact in the field of letters, and a good deal of poetry by her survives in the Kassel archives. Education was something of an obsession for the Landgrave, and this applied not just to members of his own family, but to many of his court servants, including the boy singers of the Hofkapelle, for whom Moritz provided a thorough education at Kassel's Collegium Mauritianum, and often gave them scholarships to study elsewhere; Heinrich Schütz, most famously, was thus given the opportunity to study for a few years with Giovanni Gabrieli in Venice.

Cat, Cole, fiddle, soul

This is the first in a series of articles exploring different pairs of nursery rhymes as a resource for activities using all the early learning goals. The first two rhymes combine nonsense words with musical references.

The Rape of Lucretia, premier « opéra anglais » de Britten ?

The Rape of Lucretia is Britten’s second opera, composed in the wake of the popular success of Peter Grimes and amidst the composer’s difficulties in sustaining his ambitious project to restore English opera and to set up his own opera company despite the dire post-war economic context. As Britten’s first chamber opera and the only one that retells a story from Roman Antiquity it stands apart in the Britten canon. But the collaboration of designer John Piper for the scenery and of Ronald Duncan for the libretto, the resort to dramatic verse, the borrowings from Blake, Donne and Shakespeare, as well as the musical references to English oratorio and Purcell and to Britten’s own personal questioning contribute to making it Britten’s first “English opera”.

African American Music Reference

African American Music Reference

MUSIC AND MUSICAL METAPHOR IN GOETHE'S WORK OR: WHEN IS A LANGUAGE NOT A LANGUAGE?

This paper argues that Goethe's musical reference is metaphorical: i.e.it uses aspects of music to explore phenomena in other domains, and sometimes vice versa. It suggests that such metaphor is extensively deployed by Goethe as part of the 'rhetoric' of his texts, and should be read as an aspect of his thought and language (without prejudice to composers' settings of his work). The main focus is on one of Goethe's metaphor groups, the idea of music as like or unlike language; and on an attempt to recover the force of these metaphors from nineteenthcentury models which have obscured them. From a consideration of the writers and communities in whose thought and language Goethe encountered this analogy, it emerges that such metaphors hung on aspects of oral language and of musical sound: on timbre and pitch, on voice modulation, tempo and melody, and on diverse types of 'song'. Goethe attaches traditional value associations to these aspects of music and language, as well as developing some of his own. Particularly in 'Faust', 'Wilhelm Meister' and 'Novelle', they become part of his strategy for a 'mannigfaltige Sprache' which both acknowledges and counters the limitations of language.

Hannah Arendt and the Cultural Style of the German Jews

Michael P . Steinberg Hannah Arendt and the Cultural Style of the German Jews BETWEEN BERLIN AND VIENNA In October 1943, in New York, halfway through her 18-year trajectory as a stateless person but already as a master of idiomatic, polemical English, Hannah Arendt composed a withering review of a popular memoir written by a fellow émigré thinker. The book was Die Welt von Gestem (The World ofYesterday). The author: Stefan Zweig, born in Vienna in 1881 and recently a suicide in his place of exile—Petropolis, Brazil. The famous biographer and storyteller had attracted significant atten­ tion in the double Liebestod he staged along with his second wife. That attention peaked with the publication of his suicide note, in which he declared his inability to live outside the bounds of his native language. Arendt, who could so easily have sympathized with Zweig’s predic­ ament, instead turned on him with surging venom. The fact that he pinned his existence to his native language did not move her. Arendt’s own bilinguality was a function of both linguistic and emotional prow­ ess. She held onto German even as she mastered English. After all, she told a German interviewer in 1964, it was not the language that went crazy (see Arendt, 2000). Zweig’s attachment to his native language was, for Arendt, a symptom of his regressive sentimentality, the emotion that governed his sense of the world in general. He had never under­ stood the world he lived in, she wrote, and, moreover, he showed no understanding for the past he now brought to life with inflamed nostal­ social research Vol 74 : No 3 : Fall 2007 879 gia in The World ofYesterday. He confused political dignity with personal and social privilege; such had been his own undoing. In his writing, he confused the aesthetic and aestheticizing claims of Habsburg Vienna with social and political reality. He took his models from the stage and thought that the world of the Burgtheater carried a revival of demo­ cratic Athens: the rebirth of the polis that had once produced the art of tragedy, the polis that in fact lodged at the core ofArendt’s own norma­ tive political philosophy. But the theatrical world of fin de siècle Vienna that Zweig compared to Athens, Arendt asserted, was in fact its oppo­ site. It was—and here is her most devastating punch line—Hollywood. Zweig, wrote Arendt, overlooked the fact that the Athenians attended the theatre for the sake of the play, its mythological content and the grandeur of its language, through which they hoped to become the masters of their passions and molders of their national destiny. The Viennese went to the theatre exclu­ sively for the actors. . . . The star system, as the cinema later perfected it, was completely forecast in Vienna. What was in the making there was not a classical renaissance but Hollywood (Arendt, 1978a: 117). All Schein (appearance), she would have said were she still writing as a German philosopher, and no Sein (being). Arnold Schoenberg expressed this tension in his theoretical writ­ ings as that between idea and style. On stage he personified it in the opposing protagonists Moses and Aaron. The young Berlin-born artist and memoirist Charlotte Salomon built her life’s work around the same tension, choice or decision: Leben? Oder Theater?, which became the title and theme of her Singspiel, consisting of some 800 gouache paint­ ings with text and musical references recounting her life and the life and milieu of a privileged Jewish family in Weimar and early National Socialist Berlin (see Steinberg, 2007, esp. chap. 5; see also Steinberg and Bohm-Duchen, 2006). 880 social research Not that Arendt (or Schoenberg, or Salomon) was hostile to the theatrical. In fact, the political sphere she strove throughout her career to defend and restore depended upon on the performative abilities of its participant speakers. But Arendt’s theatricality is that of the speech act, not of the stage in a literal sense, where—pace performance stud­ ies—original utterances and originary deeds are not primarily at stake. (Indeed, they were less thinkable as such before the theatrical innova­ tions of the 1950s and 1960s, in which...

The Violin: A Research and Information Guide (review)

Violin: A Research and Information Guide. Mark Katz. (Routledge Music Bibliographies.) New York: Routledge, 2006. [x, 410 p. ISBN 0-8153-3637-3; ISBN-13 978-0-8153-3637-2. $85.] Indexes, references. Surprisingly few examples exist of bibliographies about literature for violin. most recent edition of Music and Research Materials: An Annotated Bibliography by Vincent Duckies and Ida Reed (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997) lists only two examples of violin bibliographies. Of course, many lists of violin music have been assembled, but before publication of Mark Katz's Violin: A Research and Information Guide, there was only one notably substantial bibliography of literature. venerable work bearing this distinction is De Fidiculis Bibliographia: Being an Attempt Towards Bibliography of and All Other Instruments Played With Bow in Ancient and Modern Times by Edward Heron-Allen (London: Griffith, Farran, 1890-94; reprint, London: Holland Press, 1961). Katz's bibliography of violin is first published attempt to achieve some measure of control over literature of instrument since Heron-Allen's day. In introduction, Katz frames his work as a comprehensive research guide to with caveat, By comprehensive, however, I do not mean complete (p. 2). Katz does an admirable job of presenting wide range of literature, an admittedly daunting task. Researchers beware author's caveat! While including representative literature on many aspects of violin, this work does not list everything and should be used as guide only. Katz mentions many works about violin in annotations to his entries, either by author of cited work or by other authors, without listing those works as separate entries. Katz also serves researcher by providing citations to reprints and translations of works in his entries. no means, however, does he do this exhaustively. He generally acknowledges cases where he does not list all existing editions. Katz's work contains 1,698 entries arranged by subject classification. classification scheme groups works by chapter, and within each chapter, by headings and subheadings. Within most specific level of classification, entries are arranged chronologically, with exception of first ten entries, which are general reference sources. He explains: There are just few exceptions to chronological ordering: entries 1-4, which cite general music reference works, are in order of their relative applicability, as I deem it, to research someone using this book might conduct; and entries 5-10, all electronic resources, are in alphabetical order-because they are constantly updated chronological ordering would be difficult and provide little useful information. (p. 3) Chapters include: Reference and Studies, The Violin: Acoustics and Construction, Violin Playing and Performance Practice, Violin Music, and Violinists, Violinist-Composers, and Teachers. first chapter, Reference and Studies, after above-mentioned first ten entries, includes headings for General Bibliographies,-where Katz includes an entry on Heron-Allen's historic bibliography (entry 11)-Discography, Periodicals, and General Studies of Violin. In total, this first chapter contains fifty-six entries. All of entries are annotated with short summaries ranging from sentence or two to longer remarks of about half page. Those consulting these annotations should be aware of some inaccuracies, however. In his annotation to entry on JSTOR (entry 6), Katz writes, the entire contents of these [sic] journals have been electronically scanned, but he does not mention anything about JSTOR's moving wall, which determines JSTOR's currency (see JSTOR: Moving Wall for more information, available at http://www .jstor.org/about/movingwall. …

The violin: a research and information guide

Introduction Part 1: Reference and General Studies General Music Reference. Electronic Resources. General Violin Bibliographies. Discography. Periodicals. General Studies of the Violin. Part 2: Acoustics and Construction Acoustics and Mechanics. Violin Making: Construction and Repair. Violin Makers. The Bow. Collecting and Dealing. Authentication: Frauds and Forgeries Part 3: Violin Playing and Performance Practice History of Violin Playing. Pedagogy. Competitions. Health Issues. Violin Playing and Recording Technology Part 4: Violin Music Reference: Lists and Guides. General Surveys. Studies by Genre. Studies by Period. Studies by Region. Studies by Composer Part 5: Violinists, Violinist-Composers, and Violin Teachers Reference. Collective Biographies. Studies by Region. Women Violinists. Violinists of African Descent. Folk Violinists. Individual Biographies. Author Index. Name Index. Subject Index