Notes articles from December 1997

Notes archives from December 1997

Mid-nineteenth-century American periodicals: a case study.
December 1, 1997... The two decades prior to the American Civil War were years of staggering social and cultural transition, whose details nevertheless tend to be glossed over in the broader historical surveys of American music. A chronology of significant events...

Other musical Chadwicks: John M. and George M. of central New York.
December 1, 1997... Musical life in nineteenth-century America has been thoroughly surveyed during the past two decades through the work of Gilbert Chase, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Richard Crawford, and others.(1) Scholars have devoted less attention, however, to regional...

Trends in the price of monographs and scores as reflected in Notes, 1992-1996.
December 1, 1997... This article is the third in a series of annual price-trend analyses based on data drawn from the "Book Reviews," "Books Recently Published," "Music Reviews," and "Music Received" features in Notes. As in the previous installments, the data are...

Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra.
December 1, 1997... Richard Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions is a spectacular achievement, unique in its integration of cultural history, biography, and music analysis. The primary goal of the book is to solve the riddle of Stravinsky's musical...

Classical Music Criticism: With a Chapter on Reviewing Ethnic Music.
December 1, 1997... As usual, that remarkable man of English letters and criticism, Ernest Newman, cut to the heart of the matter: Young men sometimes come to me and ask how they can become music critics. I invariably try to persuade them to give up the idea;...

The Attentive Listener: Three Centuries of Music Criticism.
December 1, 1997... As usual, that remarkable man of English letters and criticism, Ernest Newman, cut to the heart of the matter: Young men sometimes come to me and ask how they can become music critics. I invariably try to persuade them to give up the idea;...

Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1845-80.
December 1, 1997... As usual, that remarkable man of English letters and criticism, Ernest Newman, cut to the heart of the matter: Young men sometimes come to me and ask how they can become music critics. I invariably try to persuade them to give up the idea;...

Music Criticism in Vienna 1896-1897: Critically Moving Forms.
December 1, 1997... As usual, that remarkable man of English letters and criticism, Ernest Newman, cut to the heart of the matter: Young men sometimes come to me and ask how they can become music critics. I invariably try to persuade them to give up the idea;...

Opera in the Flesh: Sexuality in Operatic Performance.
December 1, 1997... As discussions of lesbian and gay sexuality continue to inform new approaches to music criticism, two books devoted entirely to opera place sexuality at the center of inquiry, speculation, and analysis. Unabashedly queer and multidisciplinary,...

En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera.
December 1, 1997... As discussions of lesbian and gay sexuality continue to inform new approaches to music criticism, two books devoted entirely to opera place sexuality at the center of inquiry, speculation, and analysis. Unabashedly queer and multidisciplinary,...

Opera and the Culture of Fascism.
December 1, 1997... Here are two books with distinctly opposite strengths and weaknesses. About the only things they have in common are that Richard Wagner appears prominently in both (in fact, as the sole topic of the second) and that both authors come to their...

Wagner.
December 1, 1997... Here are two books with distinctly opposite strengths and weaknesses. About the only things they have in common are that Richard Wagner appears prominently in both (in fact, as the sole topic of the second) and that both authors come to their...

The Music of the Troubadours.
December 1, 1997... Not since Jean Beck's La musique des troubadours: Etude critique (Paris: H. Laurens, 1910), has an in-depth study of the songs of the troubadours appeared, and Elizabeth Aubrey's The Music of the Troubadours, itself almost a decade in the...

Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
December 1, 1997... Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance comprises sixteen essays, twelve of which were presented at a 1994 conference on the motet held at Washington University in St. Louis. According to Dolores Pesce, the...

Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre.
December 1, 1997... The latest volume in Harvard University Press's Convergences series represents one of the more eloquent contributions to nineteenth-century musicology submitted in book form in recent years. A compilation of essays originally published between...

Die Pianistin Clara Wieck-Schumann: Interpretation im Spannungsfeld von Tradition und Individualitat.
December 1, 1997... Research on women in music has made enormous strides in recent years. Already three women composers are arguably part of "the canon." Hildegard von Bingen, surprisingly, is even treated as a popular composer, her music much used as source...

How Shall We Sing in a Foreign Land? Music of Irish Catholic Immigrants in Antebellum United States.
December 1, 1997... Of all the ethnic groups that comprise the American people, few have contributed as much to the nation's music, either directly or indirectly, as the Irish. Not only did the Irish bring folk ballads and dance tunes, fiddles and flutes to the new...

'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920.
December 1, 1997... Of all the ethnic groups that comprise the American people, few have contributed as much to the nation's music, either directly or indirectly, as the Irish. Not only did the Irish bring folk ballads and dance tunes, fiddles and flutes to the new...

General Bibliography for Music Research.
December 1, 1997... A good bibliography is far more than a listing of books and periodical articles. It can be the key to unlocking new fields of inquiry, as well as the means of organizing vast amounts of information. Sometimes a bibliography expands one's...

Women and Music: A Selective Annotated Bibliography on Women and Gender Issues in Music, 1987-1992.
December 1, 1997... A good bibliography is far more than a listing of books and periodical articles. It can be the key to unlocking new fields of inquiry, as well as the means of organizing vast amounts of information. Sometimes a bibliography expands one's...

Festival Fever: The Ultimate Guide to Musical Celebrations in the Northeast.
December 1, 1997... Festival Fever looks like the Manhattan phone directory with a cover suggesting the graphics of Wired magazine! Its formidable contents lead the reader to 1,439 events (more about what a festival is follows) in New England and New York State. But...

Laborare fratres, in unum: Festschrift Laszlo Dobszay zum 60. Geburtstag.
December 1, 1997... In this volume, members of the research group Cantus Planus honor Laszlo Dobszay's remarkable contributions to chant scholarship - in particular his leadership role in organizing conferences of the group that have taken place in Hungary since...

Musicology and Archival Research: Colloquium Proceedings, Brussels 22-23.4.1993
December 1, 1997... As Andrew Wathey points out in the opening essay of this volume, "the use of archival documents in musicology has not always had a good press" (p. 3). To redress the balance is one of the unstated aims of this collection and of the 1993...

British Keyboard Music to c. 1600: Sources and Thematic Index.
December 1, 1997... The 340 years from the Robertsbridge Codex (c. 1320) to the end of the Commonwealth comprise the most glorious period in the history of British keyboard music. From a bibliographical standpoint it has often been difficult to find one's way...

Music in the English Courtly Masque: 1604-1640.
December 1, 1997... Peter Walls is well known for his work involving the relationship between words and music in early seventeenth-century England. This has now been brought to fruition in the book under review. The title - being not quite what one would expect...

La musique a Venise et l'imaginaire francais des Lumieres: D'apres les sources venitiennes conservees a la Bibliotheque nationale de France (XVIe-XVIIIe siecle).
December 1, 1997... There are several worthwhile studies on Venetian music, such as Ellen Rosand's Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) or Jane L. Baldauf-Berdes's study of the ospedali, Women Musicians of Venice (New...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Neue Ausgabe samtlicher Werke: Serie X, Supplement; Werkgruppe 33: Dokumentation der Autographen Uberlieferung; Abteilung 2: Wasserzeichen-Katalog.
December 1, 1997... For several decades, Alan Tyson has explored Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's autograph manuscripts and the paper on which they were written, elegantly interpreting the results of his research in a series of important articles (most of them gathered...

The Music of Antonio Rosetti (Anton Rosler) ca. 1750-1792: A Thematic Catalog.
December 1, 1997... Antonio Rosetti was one of the most successful composers of the late eighteenth century. As shown in Sterling Murray's exhaustive new thematic catalog of Rosetti's works, he was a versatile and prolific composer. In his forty-two years he...

Niccolo Piccinni: Catone in Utica: Quellenuberlieferung, Auffuhrungsgeschichte und Analyse.
December 1, 1997... Niccolo Piccinni was one of the most important composers working in the second half of the eighteenth century. His career in Italy and Paris spanned forty years and several style changes. The libretto for Catone in Utica was an early and...

Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787-1799.
December 1, 1997... Any mention of French revolutionary songs customarily elicits images of large crowds gathered on the Champs de Mars performing the "Marseillaise." In her fine study of popular-song culture in the final decade of the eighteenth century, Laura...

Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio.
December 1, 1997... With all its many musical glories and despite its frequently acknowledged dramatic weaknesses, Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera remains, along with perhaps Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischutz (1821), the only regularly performed remnant of...

Choreography and Narrative: Ballet's Staging of Story and Desire.
December 1, 1997... Dance history is currently exploring many questions about meaning in classical canon paralleling those in music inquiry. Writing dance history, however, often requires methods different from writing music history since many phases of dance...

The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England.
December 1, 1997... Monographs on the concertina are rare. Allan Atlas has produced a fascinating treatise that embodies a comprehensive and meticulous account of the Wheatstone English concertina in Victorian England. Virtually every aspect of the concertina is...

William Sterndale Bennett: A Descriptive Thematic Catalogue.
December 1, 1997... "The most promising young musician 1 know" was Felix Mendelssohn's verdict on the twenty-year-old William Sterndale Bennett in 1836. An orphan who became a child prodigy and whose talents, both pianistic and compositional, were fostered at the...

The Last Trumpet: A History of the English Slide Trumpet.
December 1, 1997... Art Brownlow has written an exhaustive and scholarly treatise on the history, technique, performers, and repertory of the English slide trumpet. The history of the slide trumpet dates back to the slide trombone, which is merely a large trumpet...

The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt: 1884-1886, Diary Notes of August Gollerich.
December 1, 1997... With his translation of The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt, Richard Zimdars has made available for the first time in English this important firsthand account of the teaching of Franz Liszt. August Gollerich, student and secretary to Liszt in...

Gustav Mahler's Symphonies: Critical Commentary on Recordings Since 1986.
December 1, 1997... This work is a sequel to Lewis M. Smoley's The Symphonies of Gustav Mahler: A Critical Discography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986). The earlier volume included the three hundred known recordings of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler...

Beloved Tyranna: The Legend and Legacy of Isabelle Vengerova.
December 1, 1997... "Beloved Tyranna" was Leonard Bernstein's nickname for Isabelle Vengerova, his piano teacher at the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia. As an expression of the ambivalent feelings of most of her students it provides an inspired title for Joseph...

Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times.
December 1, 1997... The British music critic Peter Heyworth was asked by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to interview the great but complicated conductor Otto Klemperer beginning in 1969. Out of these and follow-up interviews, Heyworth published several...

Dear Rogue: A Biography of the American Baritone Lawrence Tibett.
December 1, 1997... Biographies of two important singers of this century have appeared simultaneously. Both men had the same tragic flaw, the problem of alcohol abuse. Lawrence Tibbett lived a long life, and we saw what the problem did to this superb American...

Jussi.
December 1, 1997... Biographies of two important singers of this century have appeared simultaneously. Both men had the same tragic flaw, the problem of alcohol abuse. Lawrence Tibbett lived a long life, and we saw what the problem did to this superb American...

Musical Creativity in Twentieth-Century China: Abing, His Music, and Its Changing Meanings.
December 1, 1997... Abing (1893-1950) occupies a central place in the native musical mythology that is reproduced in the central institutions of power in contemporary China. This blind street musician and his music, it is said, embody the greatness - and the essence...

The World of Villa-Lobos in Pictures and Documents.
December 1, 1997... A recent biographical study of Heitor Villa-Lobos states that "no fewer than sixty-six books on Villa-Lobos in eight different languages have been published all over the world" (Gerard Behague, Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical...

Popular Music and the Underground: Foundations of Jazz, Blues, Country, and Rock, 1900-1950.
December 1, 1997... Writing the history of American popular music - even defining the term - is a daunting proposition, but one that has not dissuaded as many as it should, given the proliferation of mediocre books on the topic. The most successful endeavors have...

Charlie Parker: His Music and Life.
December 1, 1997... Just when jazz aficionados thought that the last word on Charlie Parker (aka "Bird") had been written, saxophonist and jazz historian Carl Woideck produces this new publication about the bebop legend. As the saying goes, "Bird Lives," and...

Conversations with Madeleine Milhaud.
December 1, 1997... Even if Madeleine Milhaud had, as she suggests, "from the age of seventeen to ninety devoted herself entirely to one man" (p. 103), her recollections would be a valuable addition to the biography of her husband, composer Darius Milhaud. Yet...

Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers.
December 1, 1997... William Duckworth's collection of interviews with sixteen American composers is the latest addition to an already impressive list of such books to appear in the last fifteen years, among them: Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras, Soundpieces: Interviews...

Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice.
December 1, 1997... The smaller the interval, the sweeter the harmony. Such is, in a nutshell, the claim underlying the six books of Don Nicola Vicentino's famous treatise (one on music theory, five on musical practice), first published in 1555. In a highly...

Crazy for Ragtime. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
December 1, 1997... Publishers of CD-ROMs about vernacular music are finally starting to become competitive. The last few years have seen the appearance of products about specific artists such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Prince, Brian Eno, Peter...

Total Joplin: The Complete Works of Scott Joplin. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
December 1, 1997... Publishers of CD-ROMs about vernacular music are finally starting to become competitive. The last few years have seen the appearance of products about specific artists such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Prince, Brian Eno, Peter...

Computer Music: An Interactive Documentary. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
December 1, 1997... Computer Music: An Interactive Documentary contains a wealth of information useful to anyone interested in using computers in conjunction with musical composition, performance, or recording. Instructional sound and video clips cover many...

Overture. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
December 1, 1997... Overture is a relatively recent addition to the half dozen or so programs commonly used in academic music libraries and computer labs. Although the company has had a steering influence among music-software manufacturers for about a decade,...

Handel: Il pastor fido. (Giacomo Rossi conductor; Case Western Reserve University Baroque Orchestra)
December 1, 1997... In 1712, Handel produced his second opera in London, Il pastor fido. In 1734, he twice revised this work, the first time adding arias, sinfonias, and choruses (many taken from other of his works), the second time making additional changes and...

The JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Africa.
December 1, 1997... It is an enormous task to compile a video anthology of "world" music and dance. Yet the original JVC project, the JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance (Tokyo: JVC Victor Company of Japan, 1988 [production company]; Cambridge, Mass.:...

Bossa Nova: Music and Reminiscences.
December 1, 1997... In the late 1950s, a new sound emerged from Rio de Janeiro's nightclubs. Dubbed bossa nova ("new style" or "new attitude"), it combined traditional Brazilian rhythms with decidedly non-traditional harmonies, and its cool, reserved tone...

The JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of Europe.
December 1, 1997... There is currently a broad interest in music and dance genres outside the Western art and mass-mediated traditions. The JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance has therefore become an important resource tool. In its original thirty-volume...

Symphonie Nr. 1, C-moll, Opus 68.
December 1, 1997... Hans Gal's edition of Johannes Brahms's symphonies for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, which formed the first two volumes of the Brahms Samtliche Werke (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1926?), has been available for over two decades in an...

Almira, Konigin von Kastilien: Oper in drei Akten, HWV 1.
December 1, 1997... George Frideric Handel composed his first opera, Almira, in Hamburg when he was just nineteen. Early evidence of Handel's developing musical style is decidedly slim before he went to Italy in 1706, for almost all of his youthful works are lost....

Symphonien, I.
December 1, 1997... During the past half century, scholars and publishers have been assiduous in providing critical editions of the complete works of significant composers, or in the case of the most important ones, in replacing the old collected editions spawned by...

Arien, Duett, Terzett.
December 1, 1997... Marking the first appearance in a single volume of Ludwig van Beethoven's seven concert arias and single duet and trio with orchestral accompaniment, this unprecedented publication (even in the context of the Beethoven Gesamtausgabe) meticulously...

Vesperi a otto voci con basso continuo, 1675.
December 1, 1997... Next to Claudio Monteverdi, Pier Francesco Cavalli was the most prominent Italian composer of the seventeenth century. Like Monteverdi, he served as maestro di cappella at St. Mark's in Venice (166876), and like Monteverdi, Cavalli not only...

Moosburger Graduale: Munchen, Universitatsbibliothek, 2o Cod. ms. 156.
December 1, 1997... Were it not for the special value of this manuscript, I should feel tempted to exclaim "Not another Gradual!" The business of producing facsimiles of medieval liturgical books, perhaps following the lead of church scholars for whom the liturgy...

Ringed by the Flat Horizon for Full Orchestra (1979-1980).
December 1, 1997... On the cover of the score of George Benjamin's Ringed by the Flat Horizon is a striking photograph that served as one of the inspirations for the work: a dramatically desolate New Mexico desert landscape with dark, brooding clouds pierced by a...

Autumn Refrain for Clarinet.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Pathways and Untended Variations for Solo Clarinet.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Dancing Solo for Solo Clarinet.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Fantasy: Spontaneous Lines for Bflat Clarinet and Piano.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Sonata for Bflat Clarinet and Piano.
December 1, 1997... Concert works for unaccompanied clarinet comprise a small but significant portion of the repertory for the instrument. While finding a competent accompanist and planning for rehearsals need not concern the performer, playing an unaccompanied...

Requiem pour soli, choeur et orchestre de chambre, op. 48. Version 1893.
December 1, 1997... Gabriel Faure was once popularly known as the "French Brahms" due to the large body of piano and chamber music he composed, even though he spent forty years of his long life making his living as a church musician. By the late 1880s Faure found...

Yiddish Theater in America: David's Violin (1897) and Shloyme Gorgl (189-).
December 1, 1997... Mark Slobin has written voluminously on the world of American Jewish music, including Tenement Songs: Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982) and Chosen Voices: The Story of the American Cantorate...