Paris Conservatoire Research Articles

Musical Stained-glasses by Olivier Messian

Musical Stained-glasses by Olivier Messian

Deconstructing the Grammatologies of Music: A Tool for Composing

Research Article| July 01 2018 Deconstructing the Grammatologies of Music: A Tool for Composing Fabien Lévy; Fabien Lévy Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, Germany Fabien Lévy studied composition with Gérard Grisey at the Paris Conservatoire. He was resident at the Villa Medici/French Academy in Rome and in Berlin with the DAAD Artist Program. His works, published by Billaudot and Ricordi Germany, have been performed by the Ensemble Recherche, the neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, the Argento Ensemble, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (among others). He won the 2004 Förderpreis from the Ernst von Siemens Förderpreis Foundation for music. He taught at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns-Eisler in Berlin (Germany), was 2006–12 Assistant Professor of Composition at Columbia University in New York, 2012–17 Senior Professor for Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in Germany, and is currently Senior Professor for Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” in Leipzig. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Christopher Swithinbank Christopher Swithinbank Translator Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, Germany Christopher Swithinbank is a musician and graduate student at Harvard University with a compositional training in the aesthetic traditions of the European avant-garde. He has studied at the University of Manchester and at the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique in Paris. His music can be found online at www.chrisswithinbank.net. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2018) 18 (2): 99–106. https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.18.2.0099 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Fabien Lévy, Christopher Swithinbank; Deconstructing the Grammatologies of Music: A Tool for Composing. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 July 2018; 18 (2): 99–106. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.18.2.0099 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressCR: The New Centennial Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Michigan State University Board of Trustees Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Toward a Revolutionary Model of Music Pedagogy

Established in 1795 in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Paris Conservatoire emerged from a training school for National Guard musicians. Aligned with the French Republic’s broader educational reforms, the Conservatoire was marked by its secularization, standardized curriculum, military-style discipline, and hierarchical organization. Among its most ambitious achievements was the publication of new instruction treatises from 1799 to 1814. Covering elementary theory, solfège, harmony, and all the major instruments, these methods articulated the Conservatoire’s pedagogy and circulated widely in nineteenth-century Europe. Hugot and Wunderlich’s Méthode de flûte (1804) exemplifies the Conservatoire’s approach, making a distinct break from methods published only a few years earlier: abstract technical drills predominate, evenness of tone quality in all key areas is emphasized, and the instruction of improvisation is curtailed. Airs, brunettes, and other pieces typical of ancien régime tutors are replaced with exercises demanding repetitive practicing. Meticulous instructions for the mastery of the flute’s four-key mechanism bear a striking resemblance to rifle-handling directions in contemporary military training and combat manuals by Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, and others. The Conservatoire instruction manuals serve not only as guidebooks to historical fingerings and period performance style; they also can be read as social and political texts. Meant to advance a more rational music pedagogy, these treatises show the extent to which the military model permeated everyday life in post-revolutionary France. Further, they demonstrate a new conception of musical training beyond personal development toward the creation of professional musicians serving a patriotic, republican function. The treatise thus becomes what Michel Foucault calls a “simple instrument,” disciplining musicians’ bodies for the political goals of the state.

Clarinet charms

Philipp Jakob Riotte (1776–1856) is little known today, but in his lifetime enjoyed success in every musical form then in favour. After early tuition in Frankfurt and Offenbach, he held positions in Gotha, Danzig and Magdeburg, before moving to Vienna in 1808, where he worked at the court opera and then as music director at the Theater an der Wien (1818–21 and 1824–6). Riotte’s obituary in the Neue Wiener Musik-Zeitung noted that his compositions ‘were distinguished by much melody and pleasing harmonious flow, though calculated for entertainment and for the moment, without depth and significant substance’. Riotte’s association with the clarinet and clarinettists began early in his career. His first clarinet concerto in By major was played by Johann Georg Gottfried Hoffmann in Frankfurt around 1804–6 and was published in 1809 by Simrock as op.26 and by Breitkopf & Härtel as op.24. To add to the confusion, when Dieter Klöcker recorded the work in 2003 it was labelled op.28. Although the performing material for this first concerto is freely accessible, the Clarinet Concerto in C minor, op.36 has not previously been available. As editor Martin Harlow observes, this later work is of special historical significance, having been given its 1809 premiere by Iwan Müller on his new clarinet, designed in collaboration with the maker Johann Baptist Merklein. This 13-keyed By clarinet was famously claimed by Müller to be omnitonic, making redundant clarinets in C and A. The Paris Conservatoire initially rejected Müller’s invention on the grounds that the loss of the different tone qualities of the various pitches of clarinet would be unacceptable. But there are technical issues as well; one wonders whether, for example, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto k622 could ever be fluently performed in A on any design of By clarinet.

Libertango par Frédérique Deghelt

Jesus conveys a loveliness and innocence and Mary Cassatt’s baby boys often reflect an incipient ambition, Mordersohn-Becker’s little girls seem weighed down in a contemplation , whose exact nature, due again to the eyes, is never quite clear. It could be the grim future, which most likely awaits these children from poor backgrounds, or perhaps their somber faces reflect a much too young awareness of the normal difficulties and disillusionments that await them in life. Modersohn-Becker’s women and children often appear to be less individuals than types as she provides a variety of images conveying her personal sense of what it meant to be a woman at the dawn of the twentieth century. Florida State University, emeritus William Cloonan Deghelt, Frédérique. Libertango. Arles: Actes Sud, 2016. ISBN 978-2-330-06329-0. Pp. 304. 22,50 a. Deghelt infuses her novel about a great conductor with a realism evoked in part by reference to figures of renown on the international music scene and to familiar social and political events spanning the life of its fictional protagonist. This richly developed detail pulls the story away from becoming a fable of untrained“genius”that inexplicably achieves artistic productivity and fame. The story: Luis Nilta-Bergo, born in 1935, grows up in Paris, his Spanish parents having fled Franco’s repressive regime. An only son, Luis finds no favor with his family for reasons of a congenital hemiplegia that hampers his mobility and his speech. His parents respond to his disability with undisguised repulsion and shame; his elder sister treats him with cruelty; only a younger sister discreetly expresses affection for him. Years of schooling confirm his status as resident pariah and scapegoat. Luis compensates for his isolation by retreating into the music he can capture on an old radio. These ill-starred beginnings and their profound effect on Luis’s psyche never quite fade from his life, but his focused attention to music enhances an exceptional ability to hear the distinctiveness of sound and silence in music and to feel in a non-physical realm what music can create. The narrative then follows Luis’s journey from uncanny hearer of music to gifted conductor, without traditional training as instrumentalist or even as vocalist. At his lowest point in youth, Luis serendipitously meets a down-and-out Astor Piazzolla who encourages his musicality (the novel’s title thus references an exquisite tango of Piazzolla’s). Later, Luis learns to listen to and coach pianists under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger. He plucks what education he can from the rigidly codified training of the Paris Conservatoire, training he challenges by also indulging in jazz performances. He is mentored by no less than Sergiu Celibidache, the great Rumanian conductor, and eventually comes up with the idea for an Orchestre du monde that will bring great music to the suffering masses around the world, express solidarity, and alleviate however briefly their pain. This project is, of course, rooted directly in his own experience: 268 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 269 “[La musique] était ce qui échappait à nos âmes chevillées à notre corps, notre liberté d’être nu, d’être immatériel, enfin libre”(205). This fictionalized“biography”requires vigilance on the reader’s part. One must follow a chronology scrambled by association and memory and further broken up by a variety of forms (letters, journal entries, film interviews) and different narrators (Luis, a documentary filmmaker, an omniscient narrator).Additionally, there is that familiar difficulty of translating one medium into another (music into text). As the descriptors of music Deghelt uses are non-technical and intentionally allude to the ineffable, she sometimes risks losing us in recondite descriptions of Luis’s music. On balance, she demonstrates that the ineffable can be far from ineffective on human well-being. Lawrence University (WI) Eilene Hoft-March Ernaux, Annie. Mémoire de fille. Paris: Gallimard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-07-014597-3. Pp. 160. 15 a. Durant l’été 58, la jeune Annie Duchêne, âgée de 19 ans et monitrice de colonie de vacances, vit un éveil à la sexualité désastreux. Elle s’abandonne au désir d’un Autre sans comprendre...

Premier Livre d'Orgue (1699), with references to the copies of J. S. Bach and J. G. Walther. Musical text eds. by Wayne Leupold and James David Christie

Nicolas de Grigny. Premier Livre d'Orgue (1699), with references to the copies of J. S. Bach and J. G. Walther. Musical text edited by Wayne Leupold and James David Christie. Preface by H. Joseph Butler, Lenora McCroskey, and Sandra Soderlund. Colfax, NC: Wayne Leupold Editions, 2015. [Acknowledgments, p. iv; preface, p. v-lxxiii; editorial principles, p. lxxiv-lxxv; score, p. 1-121; editorial and interpretive commentary, p. 122-59; bibliog., p. 160-62; appendix, p. 163-66. Pub. no. WL 500025. $55.] The extant repertory of French baroque organ music is substantial. The contents of various livres d'orgue, from Guillaume Gabriel Nivers to Andre Raison, published between the 1660s and the 1710s, number well over one thousand pieces. In addition, there are significant collections in manuscript, notably the 400 works of the so-called Livre d'orgue de Montreal. And yet this represents but a tiny proportion of the music turned out by Parisian, let alone French organists over this period. The alternatim performance of liturgical items at First Vespers, Matins, Lauds, Terce, the Mass, and Second Vespers, and maybe also Compline required on a principal feast day the performance of some one hundred separate organ versets. There were many feast days during the year. And the ordinary Sundays were also celebrated with much organ music. In the course of a year, an organist would be required to turn out thousands of pieces. He could not survive such demands without being a fluent improviser. Which raises the question, what were all these published livres d'orgue for? Or more interestingly, how did their contents relate to the music commonly improvised within the liturgy? Insights into this aspect of the practice are afforded by the manuscript collections, some of which provided clearly working musical resources for the loft, used by their owners, on the job. Such a collection might be MS Paris Conservatoire, Res. 476, which reveals two important aspects of the practice: the first, that organ versets were ordinarily short (the Mass Offertory always the exception) taking up scarcely more time than the plainchant with which they alternated (bearing in mind the slow tempo adopted in those days for the chant); the second, that the level of musical development was modest. We can also see something of these characteristics in the printed sources, in for instance the first and third livres d 'orgue of Nivers, collections of versets gathered together according to their church tone. It does not mean that the music lacks interest, sophistication, or indeed beauty, but it does mean that it is modest in scope. After all, it has a clear role to play in the liturgy, part of which is to not unreasonably extend the ritual. But as we get to the end of the seventeenth century, we encounter in the 1690 Pieces d'orgue of Frangois Couperin a new development in the tradition. Couperin's organ versets (for the Mass) are at least twice as long, and twice as elaborate, as Nivers's (a tendency also revealed in the contemporaneous published work of Jacques Boyvin and Gilles Jullien, 1689 and 1690 respectively). Couperin was twentyone, but now well-established at St. Gervais in Paris, where he had been playing since his early teens. He was clearly a remarkable musician, and fluent improviser. Why did he choose to publish a book of pieces which on the face of it were too elaborate for normal use, or which at least pushed the boundaries of what was required of alternatim practice? The preface by Michel Richard de Lalande makes that clear: to project to a wider public his superlative qualities as an organist and composer. Lalande's approbation speaks of the pieces as being very beautiful and fully worthy of publication. And the gambit paid off. Three years later, in 1693, Couperin was appointed one of the king's organists at Versailles. So, a publication could be as much about showing off prowess as about providing for the liturgy. This is how we must view Nicolas de Grigny's Premier livre d'orgue of 1699. …

The Medical and the Musical: French Physiology and Late Nineteenth-Century Operatic Training

AbstractIn 1892, physician Achille Gouguenheim (1839–1901) was invited to teach a course on the physiology and hygiene of singing at the Paris Conservatoire. By that time, scientists had been interested in the mechanics of the ‘invisible’ singing voice for years, initially experimenting on human and animal cadavers using strings and weights to make dead larynges sing. By mid-century, with the development of better quality artificial lighting and mirrors, physicians and physiologists finally developed a better understanding of the relationship between voice and physiology. Meanwhile, by 1890, a growing number of connoisseurs and medical professionals alike were concerned that there was a crisis ruining French operatic singing. Gouguenheim and others argued that the key to improving the situation rested on embedding medical knowledge and its relationship to the proper functioning of the larynx and voice into pedagogy at the Conservatoire. Drawing upon archival documents, debates in leading periodicals and Gouguenheim’s published lecture notes, we examine the marriage between medical science and artistic pedagogy during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Overall, we argue that this evidence reveals a strand of French vocal training that merged the fields of science and artistry, if ever so briefly, creating pedagogical methods that for a few years offered the promise of rescuing French opera performance.

Afternoon of a faun: how Debussy created a new music for the modern world

Claude Debussy was the father of the modern era in classical music. His innovations liberated Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartok to write their iconoclastic works, and his harmonic inventions are still heard in American jazz. Though he was among the most compelling figures of the Belle Epoque, his life is little known to all but scholars; and of his considerable musical output, only Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, La mer, and Clair de lune are widely known. Harvey Lee Snyder addresses this cultural neglect by presenting the composer and his music, without jargon or biographical trivia, in a richly detailed, accurate narrative that reads like a novel. Here is the story of a poor, unschooled Parisian boy swept by odd coincidences to the Paris Conservatory at age ten. Here is a brilliant man struggling to invent a tonal language capable of expressing his unique musical vision, finding inspiration not in Bach and Beethoven but in Mallarme's poetry and the paintings of Whistler and Turner; a man determined to end two centuries of Germanic domination of European music. Here is a reclusive, gentle man whose misguided love affairs ended in scandal and scorn. His hard work failed to end decades of poverty and debt, but when he died in 1918, he was and has remained the foremost French composer of the twentieth century.

Collectionner la musique: Érudits collectionneurs [Collecting Music: Erudite Collectors] ed. by Denis Herlin, Catherine Massip, Valérie De Wispelaere (review)

INSTRUMENTS, ORCHESTRAS Collectionner la musique: Erudits collectionneurs [Collecting Music: Collectors]. Edited by Denis Herlin, Catherine Massip, and Valerie De Wispelaere. (Collectionner la musique, vol. 3.) Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. [580 p. ISBN 9782503553276. i 100.] Illustrations, index.This book is the third volume in a series of proceedings from three successive conferences dedicated to the practice of collecting in the field of music. All three of these conferences took place at the Royaumont Foundation in France, an institution that holds the rich of musical autographs formerly belonging to the late pianist Francois Lang (1908-44). The first volume (Collectionner la musique: Histoires d'une passion, ed. Denis Herlin, Catherine Massip, Jean Duron, and Dinko Fabris [Turnhout: Brepols, 2010]), concentrated on the figure of the erudite collector of musical materials in Europe from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. The second volume, Collectionner la musique: au coeur de l'interpretation, ed. Denis Herlin, Catherine Massip, and Jean Duron [Turnhout: Brepols, 2012]), focused on performers who were also collectors, and whose collecting impulse was often an outgrowth of their historical approach to music. The third volume, like the first, is again dedicated to erudite musical collectors from the sixteenth century to the present. The eighteen articles that comprise the third volume are divided, somewhat artificially, into three parts: Assembling and Constructing Knowledge (p. 27; all translations are my own), Erudition and Society (p. 257), and Erudite Collectors: Portraits (p. 359).Although the majority of the collections described in this volume are composed of books and music scores (both autographs and early editions), some collections also include musical autographs such as composers' letters, and one article is devoted to collections of musical instruments. All articles are in French, including those by English authors on decidedly non-French topics, such as Graham Sadler's study of Charles Burney's music library.Many of the contributors to the volume share a similar methodology. The author begins with lists or catalogs of works that once made up a music library, a library that may or may not still exist. The author then proceeds to draw various conclusions from these lists in order to shed light on the collector and his possible motives. The analyses of the composition of these collections, however, are necessarily based on a certain amount of guesswork. The absence of instrumental works, for example, may indicate that the collector in question was not himself a practicing musician. But does the appearance of a book or a score in a necessarily mean that it was read, studied or used for a performance? Contributors to this volume are sensitive to this question to varying degrees.In her opening essay, Catherine Massip presents a wide survey of musical collectors, attempting to determine the moment when erudition and the necessary gathering of research materials are transformed into an actual passion for collecting. She does this by analyzing the correspondence of several collectors, for example that between nineteenth-century music publisher Aristide Farrenc (1794-1865) and the collector and music historian Gaetano Gaspari (1807-s81). Massip's considerable experience as head of the music department of the Bibliotheque nationale de France over many years is evident, as she retraces the history of collections that have enriched that library from the nineteenth century to the present, placing an emphasis on the dynamism and synergy between private and public collections. Indeed, many articles in the volume retrace the history of private collections that ended up in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, often by way of the library of the Paris Conservatoire, which merged its collections with the larger intuition in 1935. Massip ends her essay by underscoring the role of the individual collector's judgment, reminding the reader that the word collection is derived from the verb colligere, to choose. …

Mélodies et duos, Volume 1, Premières mélodies: 1861–1875 by Gabriel Fauré, and: Vocalises by Gabriel Fauré, and: Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882 by Gabriel Fauré, and: Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882 by Gabriel Fauré (review)

Reviewed by: Mélodies et duos, Volume 1, Premières mélodies: 1861–1875 by Gabriel Fauré, and: Vocalises by Gabriel Fauré, and: Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882 by Gabriel Fauré, and: Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882 by Gabriel Fauré Mary Dibbern Gabriel Fauré. Mélodies et duos, Volume 1, Premières mélodies: 1861–1875. Édition critique établie par Mimi S. Daitz et Jean-Michel Nectoux. (Musica Gallica.) Paris: J. Hamelle, worldwide dist. by Alphonse Leduc, 2010. [Acknowledgements in Fre., Eng., p. iii–iv; pref. in Fre., Eng., p. vii–xii; plates, p. xiii–xviii; score, p. 1–127; song texts in Fre., Eng., p. 129–52; editorial principles in Fre., Eng., p. 153–66; crit. notes in Fre., p. 167–206. ISMN 979-0-2307-9729-0; pub. no. HA 9 729. €60.79.] Gabriel Fauré. Vocalises. Voice and Piano = Chant et piano = Singstimme und Klavier. Critical edition by = Édition critique de = Kritische Ausgabe von Roy Howat, Emily Kilpatrick. First edition = Première publication = Erstveröffentluchung. London: Peters Edition Ltd., 2013. [Introd. by François Le Roux, p. iii; plate, p. v; pref. in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. vi–xiii; list of progressive musical challenges in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. xiv; contents with ranges, tempos, dates, p. xv; score, p. 2–35; appendix 1, unattributed vocalises probably by Fauré, p. 36–48; appendix 2, dictations, p. 49–51; crit. commentary in Eng., p. 52–56; chronological index, p. 57; ISMN 979-0-57700-445-7 (back cover), ISMN 979-0-014-11441-1 (title page verso); pub. no. EP 11385. $19.96.] Gabriel Fauré. Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882. Medium Voice = voix moyennes = mittlere Stimme. 34 songs for voice and piano = 34 mélodies pour chant et piano = 34 Lieder für Singstimme und Klavier. [End Page 221] Critical edition by = Édition critique de = Kritische Ausgabe von Roy Howat & Emily Kilpatrick. London: Peters Edition Ltd., 2014. [Plates, p. iv–v; general pref., and pref. to vol. 1 in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. vi–xxv; index with ranges, p. xxvi–xxvii; song texts in Fre., Eng., Ger., and Tuscan, p. xxviii–xli; bibliog., p. xlii; score, p. 1–127; table of known chronology and dedicatees in Eng., p. 128–29; crit. commentary in Eng., p. 130–51; appendix, p. 152. ISMN 979-0-014-11761-0; pub. no. EP 11391b. $26.53.] Gabriel Fauré. Complete Songs, Volume 1: 1861–1882. High Voice = voix élevées = hohe Stimme. 34 songs for voice and piano = 34 mélodies pour chant et piano = 34 Lieder für Singstimme und Klavier. Critical edition by = Édition critique de = Kritische Ausgabe von Roy Howat & Emily Kilpatrick. London: Peters Edition Ltd., 2014. [Plates, p. iv–v; general pref., and pref. to vol. 1 in Eng., Fre., Ger., p. vi–xxv; index with ranges, p. xxvi–xxvii; song texts in Fre., Eng., Ger., Tuscan, p. xxviii–xli; bibliog., p. xlii; score, p. 1–127; table of known chronology and dedicatees in Eng., p. 128–29; crit. commentary in Eng., p. 130–51; appendix, p. 152. ISMN 979-0-014-11760-3; pub. no. EP 11391a. $26.53.] In recent years since the end of the extension of copyright for Gabriel Fauré’s works, his mélodies have been the subject of two critical editions, published by Hamelle and Peters. Jean-Michel Nectoux and Mimi S. Daitz prepared Hamelle’s Mélodies et duos, volume 1, Premières mélodies 1861–1875, which begins with Le papillon et la fleur (1861), the composer’s first romance, and ends with Au bord de l’eau of 1875. Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick have completed the first volumes of Peters’s Gabriel Fauré, Complete Songs with Volume 1: 1861–1882 (high- and medium-voice versions), and also edited the premiere publication of all of Fauré’s accompanied Vocalises, forty-five in total, only one of which, the well-known Vocalise-Etude of 1907, had been intended for publication. In their preface to the Vocalises, Howat and Kilpatrick explain that these mostly short exercises were written between 1906 and 1916 when Fauré was the director of the Paris Conservatoire. Although they were originally intended for use in sight...

Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande: Secrecy, mystery and ambiguity in Debussy's life and art

Debussy attempted to conceal the stresses of his early life: his father leaving to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, his younger siblings being sent to live with an aunt, and Debussy remaining alone with his mother. His early-discovered musical talent provided him with a sense of continuity throughout his life. However, he felt his training at the Paris Conservatoire to be restrictive and rebelled against it in the musical style he developed. Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande gave him an opportunity to creatively depict these thwarted passions and his aversion to restriction.

Schema Theory as a Construction Grammar

Construction grammar, recently described as “the fastest growing linguistic and interdisciplinary approach to language” (Goldberg 2013, 30) has its foundations in the psychology of human categorization and other general cognitive abilities. So does schema theory in music. In the first extended comparison of these research programs, we present six central principles of construction grammar and demonstrate their relevance and applicability to schema-theoretic studies of music: 1) grammatical constructions, 2) surface structure, 3) a network of constructions, 4) cross-linguistic variability and generalization, 5) usage-based knowledge, and 6) exemplar models. Because studies in child development have played such an important role in changing how scholars view language acquisition and grammar formation (Tomasello 2003) we have chosen to illustrate many of the arguments with musical examples drawn from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conservatories. An orphan at one of the eighteenth-century conservatories in Naples, the prodigy Henri Fissot at the Paris Conservatory in the 1850s, and the young Rachmaninoff at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1890s all learned the art of composition through the age-old practice of child apprenticeship. From the musical utterances made by these apprentices in response to exercises and contests one can infer much about the grammar being acquired. Extensive musical examples suggest that construction grammar can provide a model for how a large repertory of learned patterns of varying dimensions can collectively function as a flexible and adaptive music grammar.

Opera Production and Civic Musical Life in 1870s Montreal

This article explores the origins and productions of the Société Canadienne d'Opérette et d'Opéra de Montréal, a short-lived opera company active in the late 1870s. Headed by Calixa Lavallée and Frantz Jehin Prume, the Société was established in part as a result of a decree that forbade the use mixed choirs throughout the archdiocese, and consequently made obsolete Lavallée's choir at Saint-Jacques Church. Following the success of their first production, Lavallée and Prume realized that the company might be used as a stepping-stone to the creation of a government-funded music school, modelled on the Paris Conservatoire. This article explores the social and political context in which the Société was created, and details the staging and reception of its productions of Gounod's Jeanne d'Arc and Boieldieu's La Dame blanche. In selecting these works for performance, the organizers responded to demands and constraints of a society accustomed to popular entertainment from the US and under pressure from the conservative and influential Catholic Church. They were works that were feasible to produce and likely to be successful in a city whose population was divided by religion, language and cultural traditions.

David Wessel (October 6, 1942 – October 13, 2014): Tributes and remembrances.

Biographical Compilation and Remembrances From Johanna Devaney, Former Postdoctoral FellowDavid Wessel was an innovative researcher, composer, and improviser; his work had a major impact on the fields of both music psychology and computer music. He applied his training in psychoacoustics to pioneering work on the perception of musical timbre and worked extensively on questions of human-computer interaction for musical improvisation. He passed away on October 13, 2014, aged 72.David Wessel was born October 6, 1942, in Belleville, Illinois. While attending the University of Illinois, where he earned a B.S. degree in Mathematical Statistics in 1964, he heard Lejaren Hiller give a talk on computational analysis of music. He would later relate in a 2005 interview for Cycling 74 that this event was pivotal to his developing research interests: was studying information theory at the same time in another class and well . . . suddenly it just connected up my interest in music and science and technology. That was sort of the first piece of connective tissue (Taylor, 2005).After graduating from the University of Illinois, Wessel pursued graduate work at Stanford University, culminating in a Ph.D. in Mathematical and Theoretical Psychology in 1972. At Stanford, he worked with famed learning theorist William K. Estes and joined the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences. Although his doctoral work focused on detection of signals in briefly presented visual arrays (Wessel, 1972a), his time at Stanford also afforded him the opportunity to explore his musical interests through interactions with John Chowning. Wessel first met Chowning when enrolled in his percussion class, but subsequent conversations with Chowning introduced him to computer music. In reference to his introduction to computer music, Wessel would later observe that, heard about the idea of doing it before, but it became real. I decided at that point that I really wanted to orient my work in psychology and perception toward musical problems (Taylor, 2005).During the period of his doctoral work at Stanford, Wessel taught at San Francisco State University in 1968 and then Michigan State University from 1969. While at Michigan State he began working directly on music perception and cognition, focusing on the application of psychoacoustics to the perception of musical timbre (Wessel, 1972b, 1973). He also organized the inaugural International Computer Music Conference at Michigan State in 1974.In 1973, Wessel read about Pierre Boulez's ambitious plans for the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris and arranged a sabbatical to visit in 1976 and was subsequently involved in its creation in 1977. As program chair for the IRCAM/GALF Symposium on Musical Psychoacoustics that summer, he created a forum for discussion of the relationship between psychoacoustics and musical creation. He officially joined IRCAM in 1979, as the head of the Pedagogy group. While at IRCAM he continued his research into timbre, including collaboration with Jean-Claude Risset (Risset & Wessel, 1982/ 1999; Wessel & Risset, 1979), and he placed a particular focus on the application of multidimensional scaling to produce lowdimensional representations of timbre that could be used for synthesis control (Ehresman & Wessel, 1978; Wessel, 1979; Wessel, Bristow, & Settel, 1987). Wessel was also actively engaged in promoting the use of personal computers for real-time computer music. This latter interest led him away from the Pedagogy group to start the Personal Computing Systems and Development group in 1986. Throughout his time at IRCAM, he continued to be actively involved with the field of computer music. He organized the International Computer Music Conference for a second time in 1984 and taught the first course in computer music at the Paris Conservatory. In recognition of his work at IRCAM, Wessel was made a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture. …

Desuete Names in the Musical Culture History of the Russian Far East: The Khabarovsk Professional Musical Education from the End of the 19th Century to the 1930s

Deals with the first period of the musical education history in Khabarovsk, which is analysed within the frame of the general historical and cultural processes in the Far East. Basing on the local archives documents, the author reconstructs the life and activities of the Khabarovsk musical school founder Jadwiga Sventorzhezkaya, the alumna of the Paris Conservatory who was born into the noble Polish family. The names of the Khabarovsk Musical College professors Nikolsky and Shveinik persecuted in 1937 for political reasons are re­introduced to the regional culture history.

Pierre Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame by Anthony Hammond (review)

Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame. By Anthony Hammond. (Eastman Studies in Music, vol. 91.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012. [x, 346 p. ISBN 9781580464055. $85.] Music ex- amples, illustrations, work lists, appendices, bibliography, index.The French organist, improviser, com- poser, and pedagogue Cochereau (1924-1984) was, in his lifetime, feted, re- viled, and generally successful. Because he wrote little and published seldom, Coche- reau's legacy as a composer rests almost en- tirely on the improvisations with which he concluded his recitals and amplified church services at Notre-Dame de Paris, where he was organist from 1955. Cochereau has been held accountable by some for the long neglect, then perhaps overly radical renova- tion of the historic Cavaille-Coll instrument at Notre-Dame. He further provoked with his idiosyncratic recordings of early music, such as multiple renditions of Francois Couperin's Messe pour les couvents and Messe pour les paroisses, usually played excruciat- ingly slowly and occasionally with their lively dotted rhythms (notes inegales) simply ignored and played straight.Cochereau is mostly forgotten today ex- cept for his recorded improvisations, which are thrilling, and for charming quirks such as his penchant for touring rural France with his own portatif organ, which he towed in a custom-made trailer. Anthony Hammond has taken up the challenge of examining Cochereau anew and from many angles, constructing a layered and af- fectionate portrait not only of this signifi- cant and gifted musician but of the musical and cultural environments in which he smoothly operated.Hammond is not impeded by the lack of secondary literature. In fact, he is clever enough to benefit from Cochereau being not widely known or at least not well under- stood. This is not a biography, although there is a life-and-career chapter; rather, Hammond lets an impression of Coche- reau's legacy build gradually and organi- cally by approaching his subject through the various musical and administrative roles Cochereau played in his life, in six chapters and five appendices. These last include the first complete list of Cochereau's record- ings of works by other composers as well as of Cochereau's own improvisations and film soundtracks.Cochereau was educated largely at the Paris Conservatoire. He studied harmony with Maurice Durufle, analysis and aes- thetics with Olivier Messiaen, and organ with Marcel Dupre from 1943 to 1950. For a long span of chapter 2, Cochereau's name does not appear at all. Instead, Hammond revels in the administrative doc- uments Dupre generated at the Conserva- toire, now in the collection of the Biblio- theque nationale de France. Exam notes and sample extemporization plans (how to accompany Gregorian chant, how to impro- vise a fugue) illustrate the text. Nearly every page of chapter 2 contains a music exam- ple, a diagram, or a table. I question why this was thought necessary, as there is al- ready a masterful two-volume documentary study of these and similar materials, Odile Jutten's 871-page-long L'enseignement de l'improvisation a la classe d'orgue du Con- servatoire de Paris, 1819-1986. D'apres la the- matique de concours et d'examens (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Sep- tentrion, 2000). It is true that Jutten's study is a synthesis, gathering the perspectives of many teachers and students, whereas Hammond prefers to concentrate on Cochereau alone. Still, Hammond does not add much to our knowledge of Dupre's teaching methods and the chapter does not serve his project; instead, it bears the unappetizing taint of having been too much research to throw away.Chapter 3, Pierre Cochereau as Inter- preter, is more original and much more satisfying. Breaking down Cochereau's repertoire by composer, Hammond evalu- ates the recordings for content (fidelity to the score, choice of organ) and offers some context (the writing of the sleeve notes by Thurston Dart, various musicologists' opin- ions on rhythmic flexibility in baroque music at the time of recording). …

Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation, 1900-1930: Documents historiques et administratifs by Anne Bongrain (review)

Le Conservatoire national de musique et de declamation, 1900-1930: Documents historiques et administratifs. By Anne Bongrain. (MusicologieS.) Paris: Vrin, 2012. [750 p. ISBN 9782711623983. [euro]58.] Illustrations, tables, summaries, appendices, bibliographical references, indexes. Rare are the figures in French musical life not educated, at least in part, at the Paris Conservatoire, and even the exceptions to this rule are better understood when one has a clear grasp of what the institution and its instruction represented to French musicians. During the first thirty years of the twentieth century, under the successive directions of Theodore Dubois, Gabriel Faure, and Henri Rabaud, the conservatory was in constant evolution. Changes included the increasing integration of women in the conservatory classes (with the enrollment of female students steadily rising to ultimately outnumber their male colleagues from 1925 onward), adjustments accommodating the profound social and demographic impact of World War I, and the opening of conservatory classes to foreign auditors starting in 1929, not to mention pedagogical changes that were less visible from the outside but no less influential upon determining the school's mission. In publishing this complete, annotated version of more than five hundred pages of anonymous manuscript, tentatively attributed to the administrators Gaston Barman and Paul Hugon-Roydor and rediscovered during the Paris Conservatoire's move to its current location at the Cite de la Musique in 1996, Anne Bongrain is the last in a line of researchers and administrators who have patiently worked to compile a reference tool which effectively covers the period 1900-1930. Her work continues in the footsteps of Constant Pierre's invaluable 1900 text, Le Conservatoire notional de musique et de declamation; Documents historiques et administratifs, which addresses the history and function of the institution during the nineteenth century in au almanac format inspired by the conservatory's yearly annuaires. Bongrain's volume opens with an informative introductory essay that discusses die major events, figures, and changes at the conservatory between 1900 and 1930. This introduction also clarifies a number of potentially confusing: issues such as the roles of various administrators or the differences between counterpoint, fugue, and composition classes. Even those researchers who will not immediately have use for the reference sections would profit from reading this text, as I have rarely seen the complicated details of conservatory function treated with such precise concision. The contents of the book are divided into a series of sections where information is provided first in chronological order, then broken down and summarized in individual indexes and syntheses. These sections include: the complete official regulatory texts governing the conservatory's operations (compiled with the meticulous aid of Remy Campos); lists showing the influential figures who were part of die institution's administrative board (the Conseil superieur), as well as its exam committees and juries: the composition of the conservatory's administration and faculty: the complete programs of official concerts given by conservatory students (exercices publics des eleves); the results of the year-end juries arranged by discipline with a summarized palmares for each student; the texts of official speeches and concert programs that marked commencement ceremonies (distribution des prix); a list of laureates for the individual special prizes endowed by the conservatory's private donors; information on provincial conservatories and music academies with official ties to the Paris Conservatoire, accompanied by the regulatory texts indicating the legal nature of those ties; and finally, a series of six appendices treating other topics such as enrollment and the names of former students killed on the battlefield during World War I. …

The Vocal Score for Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise

Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2007. Volume 1: Acte I: 1er tableau, 2e tableau, 3e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, analyse du premier tableau, 4 p.; analyse du deuxieme tableau, p. 92; analyse du troisieme tableau, p. 149-50; score, p. 1-244. ISMN 979-0-046-29603-1; pub. no. AL 29 603. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2010. Volume 2: Acte II: 4e tableau, 5e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. iv-vi, xi-xii; analyse du quatrieme tableau, p. xi-xii; analyse du cinquieme tableau, p. 93-94; score, p. 1-187. ISMN 979-0-046-29604-8; pub. no. AL 29 604. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2011. Volume 3: Acte II: 6e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. iv-vi; analyse du sixieme tableau, p. ix-xii; score, p. 1-231. ISMN 979-0-046-29605-5; pub. no. AL 29 605. i72.51.]Olivier Messiaen. Saint Francois d'Assise (Scenes Franciscaines): Opera en 3 actes et 8 tableaux. Partition piano et chant. Reduction par Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 2012. Volume 4: Acte III: 7e tableau, 8e tableau. [Personnages, resume de l'action, p. v-vi; analyse du septieme tableau, p. ix-x; analyse du huitieme tableau, p. 107-8; score, p. 1-269. ISMN 979-0-046-29606-2; pub. no. AL 29 606. i72.51.]When I was ten, he [Jehan de Gibon] also gave me a score of Pelleas et Melisande. That was something quite unlike the Estampes! A provincial teacher had placed a veritable bomb in the hands of a mere child (Olivier Messiaen, Music and Color: Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasow [Portland, OR: Amadeus, 1994], 110). The giftof the vocal score for Pelleas et Melisande is among the most striking of Messiaen's favored anecdotes from his childhood. The opera was less than two decades old and, as Messiaen recalled in 1952, the time it was the height of daring (rather like serial music, or musique concrete, or a sonata by Pierre Boulez nowadays) (Obituary for Jehan de Gibon in L'echo du Pays de Redon, 26 January 1952, cited by Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005], 15). The young Messiaen fell in love with the score, repeatedly playing through it, singing all of the parts, and it became a staple of his classes at the Paris Conservatoire. Nearly a century later, a modern-day Jehan de Gibon could present the vocal score of Messiaen's own opera, Saint Francois d'Assise, though a tenyear-old might buckle under the weight.Saint Francois is a large work in every respect, so it is little surprise that the four volumes of its vocal score collectively tip the scales at eight-and-a-quarter pounds, each coming close to the two-and-a-quarter pounds of the vocal score of Pelleas et Melisande. Using a more conventional measure, the Saint Francois vocal score contains just short of 1,000 pages, the volumes consisting respectively of 244, 187, 231, and 269 pages of music along with the initial identical pages listing the characters and providing a brief synopsis. For comparison, the manuscript full score weighs about twenty-five pounds and contains approximately 2,500 pages, while the printed full score (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1988-92) runs to 1,450 pages not including the 20 or so pages in each of the eight volumes listing characters, costumes, and scenery details along with a synopsis of the opera and Messiaen's analysis of each tableau. The opera contains more than four hours of music, scored for an orchestra of 119 and a choir of 150 in addition to the seven vocal soloists. The sheer magnitude of the orchestra, including many bulky instruments, causes problems in even large opera-house pits. …

As Duas Fontes dos Ensinamentos de Delsarte: observações e metafísica

RESUMO Este texto apresenta o trabalho expressivo de Delsarte e suas duas fontes principais: um sistema empírico de observações e um quadro teórico de ordem metafísica. Apresenta-se o sistema empírico de observações de Delsarte que tem suas origens nos primeiros anos de sua vida, passando por uma mudança decisiva nos seus estudos no Conservatório de Paris. Descreve-se o modo como Delsarte, a partir de suas observações, de um lado, consegue escapar de um sistema escravizante de aprendizado baseado na imitação dos professores, e, de outro, reeducar sua voz cantada arruinada pelo ensino oficial de canto. Esse sistema empírico de observação é articulado, em seguida, à teoria delsarteana, de ordem metafísica, cuja origem se situa na conversão de Delsarte ao catolicismo, segundo o qual o corpo humano ocupa uma posição central. Com efeito, observações e metafísica se encontram em Delsarte para alimentar toda sua pedagogia e definem a dinâmica geral do seu trabalho: a espiritualização do ser humano através da arte.

Jadin and Hansel string quartets

The present-day string quartet repertory is firmly founded on the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with any extensions to the canon taken from later periods. Yet the late 18th century was the heyday of the quartet as a form of social music-making, with many composers throughout Europe contributing extensively to the genre. Because of this, new editions of lesser-known Classical quartets are especially welcome, for study and, hopefully, performance. Hyacinthe Jadin, younger brother of the better-known Louis-Emmanuel Jadin, was born in 1776 in Versailles, where his father held the post of Ordinaire de la Musique du Roy. An accomplished pianist, he forged a career in 1790s Paris, appearing as accompanist at the Theatre Feydeau, composing music for revolutionary fêtes, and being appointed as professor of piano studies at the newly established Paris Conservatoire in 1795. He died of tuberculosis five years later, leaving among his most noteworthy works nine piano sonatas and these twelve string quartets, published between 1795 and 1798 in four sets of three works each. Op.1 is dedicated to Haydn, and it seems remarkable that Jadin took as his starting point not the Parisian quatuor concertant (usually in two or three movements, featuring an easy melodious style with the interest shared out between the different instruments) but the more demanding four-movement quartet fostered by Haydn and Mozart, with its intense instrumental dialogue and dramatic manner.