Notes articles from June 1997

Notes archives from June 1997

Obituary index. (musicians and others in the music world)
June 1, 1997... This index lists 1996 obituaries for musicians and others in the music world. References following the double bar (||) are to dictionary and encyclopedia articles about the deceased. The 1995 supplement contains additions and corrections to the...

Knowing Music, Making Music: Javanese Gamelan and the Theory of Musical Competence and Interaction.
June 1, 1997... Knowing Music, Making Music is really two books in one. Benjamin Brinner presents both a general theoretical study of musical cognition and a case study of Javanese musical knowledge and competency. Brinner summarizes, critiques, and expands upon...

Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance.
June 1, 1997... How to find the right tempo? This basic and vexing question, one that confronts all musicians every time they make music, lies at the core of David Epstein's new book. And in the pages of Shaping Time Epstein claims not only to have found an...

La Reforme cistercienne du plain-chant: etude d'un traite theorique.
June 1, 1997... Think of medieval plainchant theory, and the word "mode" is likely to spring into consciousness, reflecting the ultimate target or focal theme of numerous treatises, beginning in the mid-ninth century with Aurelian of Reome's Musica disciplina....

Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
June 1, 1997... The two citations that head this review exemplify a rather exasperating conceit in publishing, all too common nowadays, that one might call the "trophy title" - eye-catching, but revealing little or nothing about the book it decorates. Or it may...

Singing the Meaning: A Layman's Approach to Religious Music.
June 1, 1997... The two citations that head this review exemplify a rather exasperating conceit in publishing, all too common nowadays, that one might call the "trophy title" - eye-catching, but revealing little or nothing about the book it decorates. Or it may...

The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation.
June 1, 1997... Symbolizing the emergence of a new sub-discipline of performance studies - the primary concern of which is the theory and analysis of performance - this volume exhibits both strengths and weaknesses, but is nonetheless a worthwhile addition to...

Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources.
June 1, 1997... Laszlo Somfai's intention is to provide a scientific musicological framework for the divergent specializations in Bartok research, one of which deals with the collection of available biographical data or with extramusical speculation, the other...

W.A. Mozart: Cosi fan tutte.
June 1, 1997... In this impressive study of Cosi fan tutte, Bruce Alan Brown draws on a wide variety of sources to assemble a lively and compelling portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera, making this book a welcome companion to the study and full...

Thematisches Verzeichnis der Kompositionen von Franz Danzi (1763-1826).
June 1, 1997... Of the many composers overshadowed by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Danzi would appear to offer attractive prospects for study. A man liked and respected during his lifetime, he was a capable and proficient composer whose music continues to please...

The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music Compositions.(Brief Article)
June 1, 1997... The Da Capo Catalog of Classical Music Compositions is a collection of works lists for 132 major composers. Chronologically the list runs from Claudio Monteverdi to Karlheinz Stockhausen and covers a broad spectrum of Western art composers. The...

International Encyclopedia of Violin-Keyboard Sonatas and Composer Biographies, 2d ed.
June 1, 1997... With the second edition of this encyclopedia, violinist Alan Pedigo attempts to provide a complete reference source for "all the facets of music written in duo-sonata form" (p. ii) for violin and keyboard. Clearly a labor of love for Pedigo - an...

Medieval Liturgical Music of Zamora.
June 1, 1997... Kathleen Nelson's study of medieval liturgical music connected with the town of Zamora in northwestern Spain is based on her University of Adelaide dissertation. The central source consists of some 135 folio and bifolio fragments collected in one...

Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries.
June 1, 1997... Music in the Castle contains in greatly revised, expanded, and updated form three public lectures given by F. Alberto Gallo during a stay at Harvard University in 1988. First published in 1992 as Musica nel castello: Trovatori, libri, oratori...

Strumenti musicali a Venezia nella storia e nell'arte dal XIV al XVIII secolo.
June 1, 1997... The present work is a collection of six essays rather than a composite treatment of one subject, the topic and the nature of the evidence presented being different for each. Stefano Toffolo's expertise is primarily in the area of plucked...

For ye Violls: The Consort and Dance Music of William Lawes.
June 1, 1997... The reputation of William Lawes, unjustly sullied by Charles Burney, has now been restored in some measure, thanks to the work of David Pinto, among others. Pinto is generous in his praise for Murray Lefkowitz and also for Arnold Dolmetsch, who...

Introduction to the Art of Singing.
June 1, 1997... Julianne Baird has an unenviable task in attempting to translate and annotate Johann Friedrich Agricola's version of Pier Francesco Tosi's Opinioni de' cantori antichi e moderni. The difficulties are manifold, chief of which is Agricola's German,...

Musica sublime. Metamorfosi di un'idea nel Settecento musicale.
June 1, 1997... With this book, Michela Garda of the Turin Conservatory has made an important contribution to the recent burst of research into that bewildering complex of aesthetic attributes collectively known as "the sublime." Hers is the first book that...

The "Galitzin" Quartets of Beethoven: Opp. 127, 132, 130.
June 1, 1997... Daniel K. L. Chua presents detailed analyses of the three string quartets commissioned by Prince Nikolai Galitzin of St. Petersburg from Ludwig van Beethoven and completed between 1823 and 1825. Aside from the opening paragraphs, which relate the...

Palestrina und die klassische Vokalpolyphonie als Vorbild kirchenmusikalischer Komponisten im 19. Jahrhundert.
June 1, 1997... In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many competent artists who could paint neo-Renaissance (perhaps neo-Raphael) murals for Roman Catholic churches. In those same years, there were some composers, mostly in places where...

Brahms: The Vocal Music.
June 1, 1997... Numerous publications, conferences, and concerts will celebrate the centenary of Johannes Brahms's death this year. The books by A. Craig Bell and Lucien Stark anticipate these festivities, with both authors firmly conveying their adoration of...

A Guide to the Solo Songs of Johannes Brahms.
June 1, 1997... Numerous publications, conferences, and concerts will celebrate the centenary of Johannes Brahms's death this year. The books by A. Craig Bell and Lucien Stark anticipate these festivities, with both authors firmly conveying their adoration of...

Beethoven in German Politics: 1870-1989.
June 1, 1997... An unusual number of historians, especially those at the start of their careers, have taken up subjects in music history recently. The formidable range of approach, from intellectual to cultural to political and social history, and often...

Teaching New Classicality: Ferruccio Busoni's Master Class in Composition.
June 1, 1997... Ferruccio Busoni's prodigious talent is reflected in his multifaceted musical career. An internationally celebrated pianist, Busoni (1866-1924) also conducted, composed, wrote essays, and taught piano and composition. Virtually every aspect of...

The Music of Gershwin.
June 1, 1997... After numerous biographies of George Gershwin we now can welcome Steven E. Gilbert's The Music of Gershwin, a book accurately described on its dust jacket as "the first in-depth analysis of Gershwin's entire compositional oeuvre." Gilbert's...

Das private Logbuch: Briefe an seine Frau Gertrud.
June 1, 1997... In recent years, under the directorship of Giselher Schubert, the Paul Hindemith Institute has accelerated publication of texts from the composer's estate. Letters, contracts, and similar documents naturally play a role in the ongoing Samtliche...

Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith.
June 1, 1997... In recent years, under the directorship of Giselher Schubert, the Paul Hindemith Institute has accelerated publication of texts from the composer's estate. Letters, contracts, and similar documents naturally play a role in the ongoing Samtliche...

Hindemith, Hartmann and Henze.(Brief Article)
June 1, 1997... Phaidon Press, known as an art publisher, might be expected to bring good production values to its new series, 20th-Century Composers. Indeed, Guy Rickards's book on three German composers (the "3 Hs," I suppose, to replace the old "3 Bs") gives...

Hanns Eisler: A Miscellany.
June 1, 1997... "No composer has suffered more from the post-1945 cultural cold war," concludes David Blake in his New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) article on Hanns Eisler, the star pupil of Arnold Schoenberg who revolted...

The Music of Per Norgard: Fourteen Interpretative Essays.
June 1, 1997... This is the only substantial publication in English devoted entirely to the music and ideas of the Danish composer Per Norgard (b. 1932). Coming of age just after World War II, he benefitted from the teaching of Vagn Holmboe, whose influence,...

The Edinburgh International Festival: 1947-1996.
June 1, 1997... The Edinburgh International Festival, held for three weeks in August and September each year, is one of the most prestigious arts festivals in the world. In addition to attracting many of the most gifted musicians, actors, dancers, producers, and...

Singers of the Century.
June 1, 1997... John Steane continues his study of the great singers of this century. In previous volumes he has analyzed their performances through recordings and through the writings of contemporary critics. Now he provides fifty short essays on fifty-one...

Notable Twentieth-Century Pianists: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook.
June 1, 1997... John and Anna Gillespie, who have previously coauthored several collections and anthologies (John Gillespie is also the author of the venerable Five Centuries of Keyboard Music [Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1965; reprint, Dover...

Musical Resources for the Revised Common Lectionary.
June 1, 1997... The Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year cycle of biblical passages (lessons) for public reading at Christian services of worship. With some variation, the common lectionary is used around the world by Roman Catholics and most mainstream...

Putting Popular Music in Its Place.
June 1, 1997... Twenty of Charles Hamm's essays on aspects of popular music are presented in Putting Popular Music in Its Place. All but three items have been published previously, but many in places not normally con-suited by historical musicologists. Since...

In Garageland: Rock, Youth and Modernity.
June 1, 1997... In Garageland: Rock, Youth and Modernity is a significant contribution to the understanding of the place of rock music in youth culture. It is clear from the outset that the book belongs primarily to the fields of sociology and psychology; we...

Arabische Musik und Notenschrift.
June 1, 1997... Arabische Musik und Notenschrift focuses on the "estrangement" of a musical culture from music notation. Issam El-Mallah provides three main chapters, in which he pursues a different aspect of the notation of Arabic music. First he inquires into...

Musica Ficta (Figures of Wagner).
June 1, 1997... Musica Ficta (Figures of Wagner) grows out of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's earlier studies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. In "The Echo of the Subject" ("L'Echo du sujet," in Le Sujet de la philosophie [Paris: Aubier-Flammarion,...

The Music Index on CD-ROM: A Subject-Author Guide to Music Periodical Literature. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1997... While other disciplines have embraced the technological era and have advanced beyond the vision of an electronic index to secondary literature, the discipline of music continues to plod along without access to a well-designed, comprehensive...

Carl Orff: Leben und Werk/Life and Work. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1997... This CD-ROM presents a rich and colorful scrapbook that includes over four hundred visual presentations (stage sets, scores, manuscripts, and photographs), sound, and full-motion video clips. It functions like a coffee-table book, full of...

ROCKnROM: The Ultimate Database of Popular Music. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
June 1, 1997... ROCKnROM is an interactive searchable database of popular music artists and their works, intended "for professionals in the business of music," as stated on the opening window of the program. Michael Wadleigh, producer of the film documentary...

Freeing the Caged Bird: Developing Well-Coordinated, Injury-Preventive Piano Technique.
June 1, 1997... A tremendous number of people play the piano. Musical America and the College Music Society Directory currently list thousands of professional performers and pedagogues; every year, universities and conservatories in this country graduate tens of...

Khmer Court Dance: Cambodian Royal Court Dances.
June 1, 1997... A group of Khmer dancers and musicians, all resident in the United States, came together in 1984 and again in 1992 to document their art. The result is Khmer Court Dance, video recorded in a studio in California. This videotape provides a record...

EM: Annuario degli Archivi di Etnomusicologia dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
June 1, 1997... The "rich patrimony of popular music" at the Archives of Ethnomusicology of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia in Rome provides the guiding focus for this new annual. Indeed, the first number includes several articles devoted to the archives,...

Musique, Images, Instruments.(Brief Article)
June 1, 1997... This journal dealing with Western organology and musical iconography is published by the Laboratoire d'organologie et d'iconographie of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), directed by Florence Getreau. The editor hopes to...

Hommage a Mihaly Andras: 12 Mikroludien fur Streichquartett.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

Jozsef Attila-toredekek szopran szolora, op. 20.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

Kafka-Fragmente fur Sopran und Violine, op. 24.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

Drei alte Inschriften fur Gesang und Klavier, op. 25.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

...quasi una fantasia ... fur Klavier und Instrumentengruppen, op. 27.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

Ligatura - Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question), op. 31/b.
June 1, 1997... Gyorgy Kurtag, though still insufficiently known in the United States, has long been one of the most widely acclaimed European composers. Born in Transylvania in 1926 and a resident of Hungary since 1946, Kurtag has been honored by every...

Verstummelte Nachrichten fur Bariton und Instrumente.
June 1, 1997... I have heard that these days Mauricio Kagel talks only about himself - his contemporaries complain that at dinner parties, when the subject drifts from the master and his works, Kagel stares into space in a bored and abstracted manner. This may...

Camera oscura: Chromatisches Spiel fur Lichtquellen mit Darstellern. 1965.
June 1, 1997... I have heard that these days Mauricio Kagel talks only about himself - his contemporaries complain that at dinner parties, when the subject drifts from the master and his works, Kagel stares into space in a bored and abstracted manner. This may...

Tudor Keyboard Music c. 1520-1580.
June 1, 1997... In this typically meticulous and handsome volume of Musica Britannica, the Oxford University musicologist John Caldwell has rendered historians of Tudor music a great service by editing all the pre-Fitzwilliam Virginal Book keyboard works not...

Neue Ausgabe samtlicher Clavier- und Orgelwerke, 2 vols.
June 1, 1997... With the publication of Johann Jacob Froberger's books of keyboard music issued in 1656 and ca. 1658, Siegbert Rampe completes the portion of the new complete edition based on sources defended by the editor as Froberger autographs. The first...

The Collected Works for Keyboard.
June 1, 1997... With the publication of Johann Jacob Froberger's books of keyboard music issued in 1656 and ca. 1658, Siegbert Rampe completes the portion of the new complete edition based on sources defended by the editor as Froberger autographs. The first...

Four Pieces: Capriccio's sopra'il cucu: Battaglia; Ciaccona; Passacaglia.
June 1, 1997... With the publication of Johann Jacob Froberger's books of keyboard music issued in 1656 and ca. 1658, Siegbert Rampe completes the portion of the new complete edition based on sources defended by the editor as Froberger autographs. The first...

Transkriptionen, I: Transkriptionen der Werke von Hector Berlioz. Hrsg. von Laszlo Martos and Imre Mezo.
June 1, 1997... "Liszt is the alter ego (der nachste Wahlverwandte) of Berlioz and knows best of all how to perform his music." So observed Heinrich Heine in 1838 (Heinrich Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, ed. Manfred Windfuhr, vol. 12, pt. 1...

Anthology of Goethe Songs.
June 1, 1997... The last decade has witnessed an outstanding array of publications on nineteenth-century lieder, with scholars such as Susan Youens, Richard Kramer, and Deborah Stein demonstrating that these works can be studied through a variety of historical...

Liederalbum fur Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient: Faksimile der Handschrift 4 Ms. Mus. 282 aus der Handschriftenabteilung der Landesbibliothek und Murhardschen Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel (Gesamthochschulbibliothek).
June 1, 1997... The last decade has witnessed an outstanding array of publications on nineteenth-century lieder, with scholars such as Susan Youens, Richard Kramer, and Deborah Stein demonstrating that these works can be studied through a variety of historical...

Songs of Claude Debussy.
June 1, 1997... Among its many assets, James Briscoe's new edition of Claude Debussy's songs includes a previously unpublished version of "Fantoches" (from Fetes galantes pour Madame Vasnier, dated 1882, nine years before the more familiar setting in Fetes...

Early Songs.
June 1, 1997... Most of Irving Berlin's first 190 published songs, composed between 1907 and 1914, are surprisingly unknown today. Granted, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (no. 60) and "When I Lost You" (no. 127) have remained all-time Berlin hits since they first...

Fourteen Motets from the Court of Ferdinand II of Hapsburg.
June 1, 1997... Steven Saunders (together with A-R Editions) has produced an exemplary edition of music from a repertory that he has spent years studying, and to good effect. These small-scale motets with continuo (one, Giovanni Valentini's O vos omnes, is for...

Frankfurter Festmusiken zur Geburt eines kaiserlichen Prinzen 1716, I: Kirchenmusik "Auf Christenheit! begeh ein Freudenfest.".
June 1, 1997... Two recent volumes devoted to occasional vocal music appearing in print for the first time form welcome musical additions to Barenreiter's ongoing selective edition of Georg Philipp Telemann's works. In keeping with the established parameters of...

Musik zum Konvivium der Hamburger Burgerkapitane 1730, TWV 15:5: Oratorio und Serenata.
June 1, 1997... Two recent volumes devoted to occasional vocal music appearing in print for the first time form welcome musical additions to Barenreiter's ongoing selective edition of Georg Philipp Telemann's works. In keeping with the established parameters of...

Collected Works.
June 1, 1997... Daniel Read's influence on early American psalmody was second only to that of William Billings. Indeed, a check of the core repertory of the most-published American psalm tunes before 1810 (Richard A. Crawford, The Core Repertory of Early...

The Lavrsky Troitsky Kondakar.
June 1, 1997... Gregory Myers's recent facsimile edition of a late twelfth-century manuscript known as the Lavrsky Kondakar (originally owned by the Trinity [Troitsky] St. Sergius Monastery [Lavra] is already well known to Slavic and Byzantine chant specialists;...

Aphorisms for Solo Alto Recorder.
June 1, 1997... As noted by Harry Haskell, twentieth-century composers have produced works for antique instruments since the very beginning of the early music revival at the turn of the century (The Early Music Revival [London: Thames & Hudson, 1988]). The...

Fantasia for Recorder Quartet (SATB).
June 1, 1997... As noted by Harry Haskell, twentieth-century composers have produced works for antique instruments since the very beginning of the early music revival at the turn of the century (The Early Music Revival [London: Thames & Hudson, 1988]). The...

Tombeau for Baroque Flute and Harpsichord.
June 1, 1997... As noted by Harry Haskell, twentieth-century composers have produced works for antique instruments since the very beginning of the early music revival at the turn of the century (The Early Music Revival [London: Thames & Hudson, 1988]). The...

To Invoke the Clouds for Solo Baroque Flute (flauto traverso).
June 1, 1997... As noted by Harry Haskell, twentieth-century composers have produced works for antique instruments since the very beginning of the early music revival at the turn of the century (The Early Music Revival [London: Thames & Hudson, 1988]). The...

Various Leaves: A Collection of Brief Pieces for Piano by Contemporary American Composers.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

Expressions for Piano.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

Five Short Piano Pieces.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

Dude 'Tudes for Piano.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

Sunrise or Deepest Night.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

Music for Piano.
June 1, 1997... The scores under consideration here are all published by Fallen Leaf Press in Berkeley, California, and all present piano music written mostly since 1990. The first score is a collection of thirty-one short pieces, each by a different composer....

cummings ist der Dichter: fur 16 Solostimmen oder gemischten Chor und Orchester: Texte aus Poems 1923-1954 von e.e. cummings.
June 1, 1997... Pierre Boulez has won his reputation as one of the finest and most challenging post-World War II composers in the Western musical tradition on the basis of compositions such as Pli selon pli and cummings ist der Dichter. Don, the first of five...

Pli selon pli (portrait de Mallarme): No. 1, Don, pour soprano et orchestre.
June 1, 1997... Pierre Boulez has won his reputation as one of the finest and most challenging post-World War II composers in the Western musical tradition on the basis of compositions such as Pli selon pli and cummings ist der Dichter. Don, the first of five...