Notes articles from June 1996

Notes archives from June 1996

Samuel Wesley and the European Magazine.
June 1, 1996... In her 1990 Notes article "The Musical Press in Nineteenth-Century England" Leanne Langley described music in Victorian England as a "dark and weedy patch in the garden of European music," traditionally avoided by music historians.(1) In the...

Archival guidelines for the music publishing industry.
June 1, 1996... The history of the music publishing industry resides not just in the printed scores, which have been assiduously collected by libraries for decades, but also in the business records of the companies and in the personal recollections of the...

Obituary index. (a list of deceased musicians for 1995)(Obituary)
June 1, 1996... This index lists 1995 obituaries for musicians and other in the music world. References following the double bar (||) are to dictionary and encyclopedia articles about the deceased. The 1994 supplement contains additions and corrections to the...

The Romantic Generation.
June 1, 1996... When I was a graduate student in the early 1970s, I was privileged to witness Charles Rosen deliver a spellbinding lecture-demonstration at Harvard relating the Romantics' fascination with ruins to formal experiments in Schumann's piano music....

The American Musical Landscape.
June 1, 1996... In The American Musical Landscape Richard Crawford has devised a strikingly original way to raise fundamental issues by investigating the role of the marketplace in American musical life past and present. His approach proceeds on different...

Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists.
June 1, 1996... The realities of jazz are often obscured by or interwoven with the mythologies of the music and its culture. The stereotypical image of the jazz musician is usually of a black male; while the history of the music and the embodiment of its...

What to Listen for in Jazz.
June 1, 1996... Writings on jazz have for the most part been biographical or anecdotal, even when they have a style (New Orleans, Kansas City, West Coast) as the focus. Barry Kernfeld's new book joins a short list of primarily analytical works such as Thomas...

Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz and Vaudeville.
June 1, 1996... Christopher Ballantine brings to light a fascinating story of black South African jazz and vaudeville in a small book and its accompanying sound recording. "Marabi" is the term generally understood to mean the repetitive I-IV-I 6/4-V progression...

Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance.
June 1, 1996... In his latest book on the aesthetics of music, Peter Kivy presents an argument not for authenticity but for authenticities of performance, including authenticities of intention, sound, practice, and the authenticity of personal interpretation in...

Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles and Contexts.
June 1, 1996... The fourteen essays gathered here cover the time span of ca. 1450 to 1600 and the geographical area of "German-speaking lands" (deutsche Sprachgebiet), including Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and eastern European lands. While that time period is...

Musica Practica: The Social Practice of Western Music from Gregorian Chant to Postmodernism.
June 1, 1996... Michael Chanan is an intelligent and elegant writer, and in Musica Practica he has synthesized a tremendous amount of information in a way that is both enjoyable and informative. He has, however, set himself a monumental, perhaps even impossible...

The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music.
June 1, 1996... Rarely does a reference work of this importance and usefulness appear. Victor Coelho's book is much more than a bibliography of lute sources; it is an invaluable tool for research in many areas: dance music, social history, manuscript...

German Poetry in Song: An Index of Lieder.
June 1, 1996... Lawrence Snyder's index of lieder will be especially useful to singers and accompanists. Its roughly 9,800 songs are, according to the author, locatable "by an industrious library patron." Accordingly, the intention has not been to be as...

Index of Composers' Titles: Supplement to German Poetry in Song: An Index of Lieder.
June 1, 1996... Lawrence Snyder's index of lieder will be especially useful to singers and accompanists. Its roughly 9,800 songs are, according to the author, locatable "by an industrious library patron." Accordingly, the intention has not been to be as...

Thesaurus of Abstract Musical Properties: A Theoretical and Compositional Resource.
June 1, 1996... Jeffrey Johnson's Thesaurus of Abstract Musical Properties is an interesting book, the value of which may not be immediately obvious. The Thesaurus is a compilation of tables, presenting various properties of the twelve-tone equal-tempered...

The Organ in Western Culture: 750-1250.
June 1, 1996... The title of this work is accurate, but deceptively simple, for in actuality this is an interdisciplinary tour de force that ranges through a variety of Western subcultures, many of them but distantly related to each other. There is, of course,...

English Musicians in the Age of Exploration.
June 1, 1996... Ian Woodfield's fascinating English Musicians in the Age of Exploration breaks new ground. Thumbing through the footnotes (there is no bibliography) one soon discovers that previous research on the topic is almost nonexistent. Woodfield's central...

J.S. Bach's Precepts and Principles for Playing the Thorough-Bass or Accompanying in Four Parts, Leipzig: 1738.
June 1, 1996... The field of Bach studies has been greatly enriched by the appearance of these two books. In 1738 Johann Sebastian Bach apparently dictated to his student Carl August Thieme a set of rules and instructions for playing the thoroughbass and...

The Social and Religious Designs of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.
June 1, 1996... The field of Bach studies has been greatly enriched by the appearance of these two books. In 1738 Johann Sebastian Bach apparently dictated to his student Carl August Thieme a set of rules and instructions for playing the thoroughbass and...

Das Silbermann-Archiv: Der Handschriftliche Naclass des Orgelmachers Johann Andreas Silbermann.
June 1, 1996... With the publication of this magnificent book, an unusual and very important primary document source for the famed Silbermann family of organ builders is now available. The "Silbermann" name is generally associated with the family's Saxon branch,...

A Catalogue of Handel's Musical Autographs.
June 1, 1996... With more than 8,700 surviving leaves of music in George Frideric Handel's hand, it is astonishing that the task of cataloguing Handel's autograph manuscripts has ever been undertaken. While previous catalogues of Handel's manuscripts are...

Mozart's Requiem: Historical and Analytical Studies, Documents, Score.
June 1, 1996... Of all the events surrounded by a fog of controversy, myth, and contradictions, the final work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Requiem, K. 626, must rank as one of the most popular. Left incomplete at the composer's untimely death, the work's...

Mozart and Manheim. Kongress-bericht Mannheim 1991.
June 1, 1996... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first visited Mannheim in July 1763 (but only briefly) during the family's famous European tour. He stayed there again on the leisurely journey with his mother to Paris, this time for four and one-half months over the...

Le Conservatoire de Musique de Paris: Regards sur une institution et son histoire.
June 1, 1996... When Yves Gerard was named professor of musicology at the Conservatoire, in 1975, many of us working in French music were delighted that this generous historian of international distinction - an alumnus of the Conservatoire, a researcher at the...

Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884.
June 1, 1996... Readers with enthusiasms for Franz Liszt, the piano, and the social context of music study in late nineteenth-century Germany will take delight in this book, one with an unusual history. In 1970, G. E. Schroeder of Eschwege published Mein Leben...

A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe.
June 1, 1996... James Reese Europe (1880-1919) has enjoyed a fragile and quixotic fame. His name - like too many others in the annual Black History Month litany - is known to many people who have little idea who he really was or what he accomplished. He is...

The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger.
June 1, 1996... As the end of the twentieth century draws near, we need to place its artistic achievements into a more balanced perspective. In particular, we must fully assess the contributions of composers outside what we now regard as the mainstream. Among...

Janacek and Czech Music: Proceedings of the International Conference (St. Louis, 1988).
June 1, 1996... In the first week of May 1988, more than seventy scholars and musicians from five countries gathered at Washington University in St. Louis to participate in the first conference and festival ever to take place in the United States on the Moravian...

Webern and the Lyric Impulse: Songs and Fragments on Poems of Georg Trakl.
June 1, 1996... Much has been written about the music of Anton Webern (1883-1945) since he was catapulted as a prophetic figure onto the world stage in the 1950s. Most of the more extensive studies of his music focus on certain selections from the twelve-tone...

Szekely and Bartok: The Story of a Friendship.
June 1, 1996... Zoltan Szekely, Hungarian born and now in his nineties, had an energetic and successful career as violin soloist in Europe before joining the Hungarian String Quartet as first violinist in 1937. From then until the ensemble's disbanding in 1972,...

Black Conductors.(Brief Article)
June 1, 1996... During a varied career as a flutist, writer, arts administrator, and college teacher, D. Antoinette Handy has maintained a continuing interest in encouraging the careers of black musicians by disseminating their accomplishments. Her previous...

Blues and Evil.
June 1, 1996... Blues scholarship has increased remarkably during recent decades. Issues of blues and literary criticism or blues and gender have been part of the broadening avenues of research. Jon Michael Spencer's Blues and Evil does not purposely attach...

Confronting Silence: Selected Writings.
June 1, 1996... The late composer Toru Takemitsu was internationally known for his evocative music that often combined elements of traditional Japanese music with Western art music to create tantalizing new forms. He received commissions from major orchestras...

Modern Harpsichord Music: A Discography.
June 1, 1996... Modern Harpsichord Music is a discography of 825 recordings of some 600 twentieth-century harpsichord compositions and arrangements of other works performed on harpsichord. Entries are listed alphabetically by composer and composition with the...

Etudes for Piano Teachers: Reflections on the Teacher's Art.
June 1, 1996... This short collection contains revised versions of twenty-seven articles that were published between 1973 and 1982 in The American Music Teacher, as well as more than half a dozen new essays. The essays are concerned with the pianist's essential...

Ear Training for the Body: A Dancer's Guide to Music.
June 1, 1996... Collaboration among visual artists, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, as well as any number of other artistic specialties has long been accepted as part of the milieu of performing arts. To consider the most basic collaboration, that between dancer...

The Singing Cure: An Introduction to Voice Movement Therapy.
June 1, 1996... The first half of Paul Newham's The Singing Cure introduces some theoretical paradigms behind the psychotherapeutics of singing and vocal expression, while the second half explains the process of voice movement therapy, described as a synthesis...

Making Simple Musical Instruments.
June 1, 1996... Bart Hopkin's Making Simple Musical Instruments is one of a small but appreciable genre of "do-it-yourself" books for the technically curious who grew up during the alternative-happy 1960s and 1970s, and it is one of the best. Earlier books in...

Music Theory and Analysis: The Limitations of Logic.
June 1, 1996... The field of music theory and analysis has been going through a period of self-scrutiny lately. This may be due, in part, to the influence of postmodern intellectual currents that have made their way into the discipline from literary criticism...

Multimedia Strauss: Three Tone Poems.(Interactive Multimedia and Software Reviews.) (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1996... In spite of the fast pace at which electronic information is now speeding around the globe, the pace of the release of commercially viable interactive multimedia products in the field of music has been relatively slow. Hypercard, the application...

Billboard/Phonolog Music Reference Library on CD-ROM.(Interactive Multimedia and Software Reviews) (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1996... The Billboard/Phonolog Music Reference Library is the CD-ROM version of the Phonolog Reporter, the large loose-leaf reference source found in many record stores. It gives information on almost 100,000 CD, over 75,000 cassette, and 25,000 LP...

Multimedia Mozart: The Dissonant Quartet.(Interactive Multimedia and Software Reviews) (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1996... First released by the Voyager Company in 1991 for Macintosh, then by Microsoft in 1994 for IBM PC and compatibles, Robert Winter's interactive exploration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's great String Quartet in C Major, K. 465, is a pioneering...

20th Century Music.
June 1, 1996... Those interested in keeping up with contemporary music, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area or New York, will find much to like in this magazine. Although the editor is not named in the magazine, he is Mark Alburger, who contributed two...

Early Music America: The Magazine of Historical Performance.
June 1, 1996... This well-written and interesting magazine is aimed at music professionals, scholars, and amateurs such as concertgoers and listeners. The organ of Early Music America, Inc., an organization founded ten years ago "to foster and promote early...

melos: En Musiktidskrift.
June 1, 1996... This magazine, too, will appeal to a broad audience. An international group of contributors have written articles on Bartok, who is the featured composer of the sample issue (No. 12-13, 1995). (An earlier issue was devoted to Shostakovich and...

TuTTi.
June 1, 1996... The former CEO of Burger King (Barry Gibbons) and a Dutch magazine entrepreneur (Maurice Keizer) have launched TuTTi, which styles itself "Classical Music for the Rest of Us." And just who are "the rest of us?" "Those of us who are not classical...

Index to CD reviews.
June 1, 1996... The index has two sections. The first is a listing by label with entries subarranged by compact disc (CD) number. The second is a listing by composer of the contents of the first section, with cross references to the manufacturer number. Under...

Mikrokosmos: 153 Progressive Piano Pieces.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Rumanische Volkstanze fur kleines Orchester.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Dance Suite for Piano Solo.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Funf Lieder, op. 15, Gesang und Klavier.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

IIIe Quatuor [fur] Streicher.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

44 Duos fur zwei Violinen.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Concerto for Orchestra.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

15 ungarische Bauernlieder fur Klavier solo.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Piano Concerto No. 3.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Sonata for Solo Violin.
June 1, 1996... New editions of Bartok's music have been infrequent in the years following his death in 1945. The periodic appearance, in recent decades, of handsome facsimile editions or licensed reprints with scholarly supervision has done little to dispel the...

Collected Works, 2 vols.
June 1, 1996... Philip Van Wilder (ca. 1500-1553) was the most important of several foreign musicians active at the court of Henry VIII of England. In a thirty-year career as lutenist, composer, and courtier (and survivor, as editor Jane Bernstein remarks), he...

Ghirlanda de madrigali a quatro voci.
June 1, 1996... Four hundred years after the publication of her madrigals, Vittoria Aleotti could ask for no better treatment from posterity than this outstanding edition. Contributing to our deepening understanding of the central role of female musicians in...

Neue Ausgabe samtlicher freien Orgelwerke.
June 1, 1996... "Why are there so many Buxtehude editions?" is a question I tried to answer during the Dietrich Buxtehude anniversary year celebrations in 1987 (The American Organist 21 [May 1987]: 87-91). The remarkable number of editions then (and still)...

Samtliche Werke fur Tasteninstrumente.
June 1, 1996... "Why are there so many Buxtehude editions?" is a question I tried to answer during the Dietrich Buxtehude anniversary year celebrations in 1987 (The American Organist 21 [May 1987]: 87-91). The remarkable number of editions then (and still)...

Quartet for Strings (in one movement), op. 89.
June 1, 1996... Suddenly, so it seems, Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, discovered by her musical great grandchildren after years of neglect and even disdain, is enjoying something of a revival with occasional performances and, more often, recordings. In her own day she was...

Trois pieces pour quatuor a cordes: Skizzen, Fassungen, Dokumente, Essays.
June 1, 1996... In recent years, the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel has established itself as a master producer of musical and other documentary facsimiles. The Stiftung's first major (co-)publication, the catalogue of the Basel exhibition in the Kunstmuseum in...

Studio introduttivo ed edizione in facsimile a cura di Agostino Ziino.
June 1, 1996... The publication of a new source is always a significant event in musicology. In the case of the paper reinforcements extracted from an old binding owned by Dr. Alfredo Boverio of Alessandria (Italy), and housed, since 1991, at the Biblioteca...

Requiem: Neun geistliche Konzerte fur Klavier solo, konzertierende Trompete und grosses Kammerorchester (1990-92).
June 1, 1996... It is difficult to overestimate the position Hans Werner Henze has carved out for himself in contemporary music. With significant contributions to virtually every genre (eight symphonies, a number of large-scale operas, choral and orchestral...

Preludes, Book One for Piano.
June 1, 1996... A composer publishing a work titled Preludes in 1995 demonstrates courage, because any piece with the name invites comparison to the masterworks of many past composers. The benchmark for our century remains Claude Debussy's still-astonishing...

Twelve Preludes for Piano Solo.
June 1, 1996... A composer publishing a work titled Preludes in 1995 demonstrates courage, because any piece with the name invites comparison to the masterworks of many past composers. The benchmark for our century remains Claude Debussy's still-astonishing...

The Machine Age: A Set of Short Piano Pieces for Our Time.
June 1, 1996... William Albright is a composer of many talents and as many personae. One of the most proficient American composers of our day for the organ, he is a remarkable composer of music for the church, including both new hymnody and larger choral works....

Frammenti da "Chiara" for Two Antiphonal Choirs of Female Voices a cappella, opus 19a (1975/86).
June 1, 1996... Here are two fiercely difficult choral works for virtuoso choral groups or for study by choral groups wishing to raise their level of musicianship. Oliver Knussen, best known in North America for his instrumental music and for organizing...

On the Sheer Threshold of the Night, Madrigal for Four Solo Voices and Twelve-part Chorus.
June 1, 1996... Here are two fiercely difficult choral works for virtuoso choral groups or for study by choral groups wishing to raise their level of musicianship. Oliver Knussen, best known in North America for his instrumental music and for organizing...