Notes articles from March 1995

Notes archives from March 1995

Everything you ever wanted to know about opera: a review-essay of recent reference works.
March 1, 1995... It is hard to believe that the English-reading world suddenly needs four compendious new reference works on opera.(1) All four of these encyclopedic dictionaries, published in the last few years, tend to be described by both publishers and...

Comprehensive discographies of jazz, blues and gospel.
March 1, 1995... PART TWO 50 Years of Recorded Jazz: 1917-1967. Compiled and collated by Walter Bruyninckx. Mechelen, Belgium: self-published, undated [1968-mid-1970s]. [8000 p.](1) 60 Years of Recorded Jazz: 1917-1977. Compiled and collated by Walter...

Vom Einfall zum Kunstwerk: Der Kompositionsprozess in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts.
March 1, 1995... How does the composer's initial creative impulse (Einfall) eventually lead to the completed work of musical art? This is the question that Hermann Danuser poses in his essay "Inspiration, Rationalitat, Zufall," that opens this book on...

Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England.
March 1, 1995... This is a fascinating book, full of ideas and theories about the distinctions between scribal and printed publication, and about their implications for contemporaries. Its avowed subjects are specific English repertories, including viol consort...

Divisions of the Tetrachord: A Prolegomenon to the Construction of Musical Scales.
March 1, 1995... The tetrachord of this book's title - literally, four strings of a lyre or harp - is that of the ancient Greek theory of music, a series of four neighboring notes (A-G-F-E, for example) that fill in the interval of a perfect fourth. Divisions of...

Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers: Southern Culture and the Roots of Country Music.
March 1, 1995... Bill Malone's most recent book consists of three essays originally delivered at Mercer University's Lamar Memorial Lecture Series (a thirty-seven-year-old series devoted to the preservation of southern culture, history, and literature) in October...

I Libretti italiani di Georg Friedrich Handel e le loro fonti, vol. 1, Da Vincer se stesso e la maggior vittoria (1707) a L'Elpidia, overo Li rivali generosi (1725).
March 1, 1995... This is the first of three double volumes in which the first-performance librettos of George Frideric Handel's Italian operas and the earlier librettos on which they were based are to be reprinted in their entirety. The enterprise, funded by the...

Haydn and the Classical Variation.
March 1, 1995... The American branch of Joseph Haydn literature has experienced significant increase recently. In addition to good articles on style and genres, long-awaited major books by renowned authors are appearing, such as James Webster's pioneering study...

Funktionelle Atonalitat: Analytische Strategien fur die frei-atonale Musik der Wiener Schule.
March 1, 1995... A wry, knowing smile was Milton Babbitt's only comment on Paul Hindemith's tonal analysis of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone Piano Piece, op. 33a in a class lecture over twenty-five years ago (Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition,...

Musica getutscht: A Treatise on Musical Instruments (1511).
March 1, 1995... One year after Musica getutscht was published it got a devastating review in the preface to Arnolt Schlick's Tabulaturen etlicher Lobgesang (Mainz, 1512). Not only, wrote Schlick, are Sebastian Virdung's illustrations not represented by the true...

The Art of Playing the Fantasia (Libro Llamado El Arte de Taner Fantasia).
March 1, 1995... Little is known about the Dominican friar Thomas de Santa Maria (ca. 1500-1570), other than what may be gleaned from his incisive treatise on improvisation on the clavichord and other instruments capable of playing three or more parts. He served...

Gallusov Katalog: Seznam Gallusovih Skladb.
March 1, 1995... Edo Skulj's Gallusov Katalog could be classified as a synthesis and terminus of all past efforts toward comprehensiveness and organization in the presentation of information about the texts of Jacobus Gallus Carniolus (1550-1591), more often...

Thematisches Verzeichnis der Musiksammlung von Bartfeld (Bartfa).
March 1, 1995... Until recently, many archives within east central Europe were not easily accessible to scholars and, in addition, the available information was frequently based on older and incomplete inventories. In addition, many significant collections in...

The Court Musicians in Florence During the Principate of the Medici, with a Reconstruction of the Artistic Establishment.
March 1, 1995... This sumptuous book is the richest compilation of archival material on Florentine music history since those by Angelo Solerti (Le origini del melodramma: tesimonianze dei contemporanei [Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1903], and Gli albori del melodramma...

La cappella musicale nell'Italia della Controriforma.
March 1, 1995... The study of post-Tridentine Italian church music is considerably advanced by this important collection of papers given at a conference in Cento, a town between Bologna and Ferrara (and one perhaps best known as the birthplace of the painter Gian...

Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain.
March 1, 1995... Louise K. Stein's Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods is an important contribution to our understanding of Spanish music and Baroque musical theater. Seventeenth-century musical theater in Italy, England, and other countries is represented in...

Bachanalia: The Essential Listener's Guide to Bach's 'Well-tempered Clavier.'
March 1, 1995... This unusual and, it must be said, narcissistic and nervy book is an introduction to the fugues of The Well-tempered Clavier for nonmusicians, by a nonmusician, written in a rambling, jes'-folks, ever-enthusiastic style that will set elderly...

The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England.
March 1, 1995... Donald Davie, heralded in the blurb as "the foremost literary critic of his generation and one of its leading poets," has turned his attention - not for the first time - to a form of poetry usually treated as secondary by serious critics, if they...

Franz Schubert, "Alfonso und Estrella": Eine fruhe durchkomponierte deutsche Oper. Geschichte und Analyse.
March 1, 1995... We can hardly expect that 1997 will produce quite the spate of books, publications of music, release of recordings, and general junketings that characterized the Mozart Year of 1991, yet the signs are that Franz Schubert is to be placed more...

Sitar and Sarod in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
March 1, 1995... Organological and historical studies in ethnomusicology have receded in prominence and numbers during the last decade. This fact alone makes Allyn Miner's Sitar and Sarod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries a welcome addition to South...

Great Flute Makers of France: The Lot and Godfroy Families, 1650-1900.
March 1, 1995... Tula Giannini is an accomplished professional flutist, scholar, and former curator of the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Her book about the Lot and Godfroy families of flute makers in France makes...

Piano-Beds and Music by Steam: An Index with Abstracts to Music-Related United States Patent Records, 1790-1874.
March 1, 1995... The United States Patent Office and the patent libraries scattered across the country comprise an unmatched repository of technological information. Some of it is monumentally important, and some amusingly trivial. The several million United...

Beethovens Neunte Symphonie: Die Geschichte ihrer Auffuhrung und Rezeption.
March 1, 1995... Ludwig van Beethoven's late works from the sonatas and quartets to the Missa Solemnis - were born into the public consciousness as ideas, their thorny reputation preceding their presence in the repertory m a way that served to prepare audiences...

Isaac Albeniz: Chronological List and Thematic Catalog of His Piano Works.
March 1, 1995... In the late 1970s Kalmus reprinted in separately bound collections many piano works by the Spanish composer and virtuoso pianist Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). One such volume, A Book of Waltzes (Kalmus Piano Series 9476, published by Belwin Mills),...

Grieg and delius: A Chronicle of Their Friendship in Letters.
March 1, 1995... Lionel Carley, adviser and archivist to the Delius Trust, has written or edited four previous books on Frederick Delius (1862-1934). This book deals with the friendship between Delius and Edvard Grieg (1843-1907), mainly through their...

A Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill Studien.
March 1, 1995... The book's bilingual title is significant, for it touches upon one of the most important aspects of Kurt Weill's reception since 1950, Weill's two worlds. The English A Stranger Here Myself paraphrases one of the songs in Weill's 1943 musical One...

Zwischen Tradition und Avantgarde: Die Kammermusik Alexander Zemlinskys.
March 1, 1995... Historical narratives are a sanctioned means for forgetting the inconvenient. The dominant narrative of later twentieth-century music history - a product of the immediate post-World War II years, one hastily devised to cover the ruptures of the...

Marguerite Long: A Life in French Music, 1874-1966.
March 1, 1995... New music has always needed its champions, and never was there a more enthusiastic or tireless supporter of twentieth-century French piano literature than Marguerite Long. Uniquely qualified by private study with the greatest composers of her...

W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman: Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W.H. Auden, 1939-1973.
March 1, 1995... If W.H. Auden had not cowritten the libretto for Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, his reputation as a librettist may well have been similar to that of Emile Zola, who collaborated with Alfred Bruneau: that of a great writer who also...

EJS: Discography of the Edward J. Smith Recordings: The Golden Age of Opera, 1956-1971.
March 1, 1995... EJS is a very important book that presents in an exemplary fashion documentation on a most unconventional series of recordings, though the title does little to inform the casual reader of this. Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to burden a...

Das Verhor in der Oper: Die Debatte um die Auffuhrung "Das Verhor des Lukullus" von Bertolt Brecht und Paul Dessau.
March 1, 1995... Das Verhor in der Oper, edited with notes by Joachim Lucchesi, documents the genesis and the reception of the opera Das Verhor des Lukullus (The Trial of Lucullus) composed in 1951 by Paul Dessau on a libretto by Bertolt Brecht. The book's title...

Die Grundlegung der Musik Karlheinz Stockhausens.
March 1, 1995... The German musicologist Christoph von Blumroder has worked closely with Karlheinz Stockhausen in recent years; he is the editor of volumes 4-5 of the composer's Texte (Cologne: DuMont Schauberg, 1978, 1989). The advantage of this close relation...

The Duke Ellington Reader.
March 1, 1995... One of the great benefits of The Duke Ellington Reader, edited by Mark Tucker, is the damage that it does to the myths of the jazz musician as inarticulate hipster and of jazz itself as insubstantial art. Weighing in at over five hundred pages,...

Sondheim.
March 1, 1995... In addition to its many musical illustrations, tables, and charts, its comprehensive list of songs and sources, useful bibliography, and meticulous documentation, Stephen Banfield's pioneering Sondheim's Broadway Musicals offers a wide-ranging...

Save the Last Dance for Me: The Musical Legacy of the Drifters, 1953-1993.
March 1, 1995... These four books are very different in their approaches and intents. Both Doo-Wop and Save the Last Dance for Me are biographical and historical accounts written not by academically trained scholars, but from the perspective of well-informed and...

World Music Musics of the World: Aspects of Documentation, Mass Media and Acculturation.
March 1, 1995... Do not be misled by the title. This book is neither a guide to the "world music" section of your record shop nor an attempt to provide a one-volume guide to the musics of the world. It comprises papers presented at a conference organized by the...

Daniel Kachamba Memorial Cassette - Kaseti ya Nyimbo za Chikumbutso cha Malemu Daniel Kachamba.
March 1, 1995... This little book about music in a little-known country in east-central Africa contains five brief discussions of widely-differing genres, and a chapter on "Documentation of Music/Dance and Oral Literature in Malawi." The book seems directed at a...

Cultural Cognition in Music: Continuity and Change in the Gurung Music of Nepal.
March 1, 1995... The Gurung people of Nepal have an international reputation as Gurkhas, elite soldiers. In Nepal, they are considered one of the most musical and merry of the country's numerous ethnic groups. Some Nepalese music traditions disintegrated before...

Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad.
March 1, 1995... Calaloo is a thick soup made of dasheen leaves, okra, crab, or pig tail with seasoning mixed in coconut milk. This odd mix is a mainstay of the Creole cuisine in Trinidad, the southernmost and biggest island of the Lesser Antilles. The word...

Where Have All The Flowers Gone? A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies.
March 1, 1995... Taken together, these two paperbacks summarize what Pete Seeger has to say about music, about singing, and about a host of other topics from copyright to politics to raising children. Even though the materials within them come from publications...

The Third Line: The Opera Performer as Interpreter.
March 1, 1995... Daniel Helfgot and William O. Beeman decry opera's "sacred monsters" and "illiterate parrots," that is, "a few mature stars who manage to hold a major position in the field without much in the way of acting ability" (p. 10). In The Third Line:...

Nightingale 1.4. (music notation software) (Software Review) (Evaluation)
March 1, 1995... Although no single music notation program can accommodate the requirements of every user, musicians working in an academic setting will find Nightingale an inviting software package that offers a viable compromise between ease and power. It...

Practica Musica 3.0.3, Listen 2.2, MacGamut Melodic Dictation 1.0 and MacGamut Intervals, Scales, and Chords 2.0. (Ear training software) (Software Review) (Evaluation)
March 1, 1995... Serious and effective training in aural skills is best achieved through interaction in a workshop setting, the traditional milieu being one in which some outside person performs exercises and examples that test students' aural recognition. In...

Le Gratie d'amore (The Graces of Love): European Court Dance of the Late Renaissance.
March 1, 1995... Currently on the market are two Renaissance dance videotapes that librarians may acquire with confidence for their early music and dance history patrons. Each vividly introduces viewers to sixteenth-century European social dances, giving...

The Men Who Danced: The Story of Ted Shawn's Male Dancers, 1933-1940.
March 1, 1995... Even though he has been called the father of American modern dance, Ted Shawn (1891-1972) is now relegated to a relatively minor status in dance history. While he choreographed over 195 solos, group pieces, and dance-dramas, few of these works...

Tryin' to Get Home: A History of African American Song.
March 1, 1995... Kerrigan Black has written and performed a one-man show that presents explicit contemporary accounts of various evolutionary aspects of African-American song. It also demonstrates Black's prowess as a master educator, talented musician, and as a...

Paris Dances Diaghilev.
March 1, 1995... Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, the first to develop the one-act ballet that has become the choreographic norm today, occupy a seminal position in the development of ballet and ballet choreography. It was Diaghilev who first showed the world...

Mary Wigman, 1886-1973: "When the Fire Dances Between Two Poles."
March 1, 1995... In narrating this video herself, Mary Wigman not only retraces the manifold phases of her artistic career, but gives an overview of the world of the modern expressionist dance movement as well. Her individual style of language, combined with...