Notes articles from March 1996

Notes archives from March 1996

Early American wind and ceremonial music, 1636-1836: phase 2 of The National Tune Index.
March 1, 1996... Some years ago Kate Keller was having difficulty matching the titles of some eighteenth-century fife tunes to the actual melodies. Quite frustrated by the lack of any reference tools, Keller made an index of the melodies and titles in whatever...

Information literacy for undergraduate music students: a conceptual framework.
March 1, 1996... "The prime objective of all educational programs in music is to provide the opportunity for every music student to develop individual potentialities to the utmost."(1) This statement, one of the objectives of the National Association of Schools...

Whither bibliographic instruction for musicians?
March 1, 1996... The subject of bibliographic instruction for musicians has occasioned much reflection over the years, engendering a literature that I shall not try to summarize in this brief commentary. Presumptuously, perhaps, I hope simply to propose a way of...

Trends in the price of music monographs and scores as reflected in 'Notes,' 1987-1994.
March 1, 1996... Veteran readers of Notes remember with gratitude the price indexes created by George R. Hill and Joseph M. Boonin that were published in the March issues of this journal from 1979 through 1987. Readers whose professional duties included...

Distant Cycles: Schubert and the Conceiving of Song.
March 1, 1996... Aestheticians who like to make clear distinctions between music and literature often claim that it is easier to paraphrase verbal discourse in words because linguistic texts (in contrast to music) are already constructed of words. Yet as I try to...

Die Sinfonie im 18. Jahrhundert: Von der Opernsinfonie zur Konzertsinfonie.
March 1, 1996... This volume initiates another of Laaber-Verlag's revivals of well-known German series from the past, following upon the recently completed Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, edited by Carl Dahlhaus. The new series is loosely based on the...

Performance Practices of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
March 1, 1996... It is now thirty years since Frederick Neumann began publishing on the performance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music and nearly twenty since I have been criticizing him; it is hard to believe that it's all over. This is his last book....

An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt.
March 1, 1996... In a narrow sense, Andrew Mead's An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt is a useful book. Avowedly neither a biography nor an attempt to put its subject composer in historical context, the book works its way through a survey of analytical...

Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music: Biography, Documents, Style.
March 1, 1996... In the introduction to Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music: Biography, Documents, Style, Jeanell Wise Brown lists the contributions to Beach scholarship that she intends to make with this volume (originally a D.M.A. thesis, University of Maryland,...

The Remarkable Mrs. Beach, American Composer: A Biographical Account Based on Her Diaries, Letters, Newspaper Clippings, and Personal Reminiscences.
March 1, 1996... In the introduction to Amy Beach and Her Chamber Music: Biography, Documents, Style, Jeanell Wise Brown lists the contributions to Beach scholarship that she intends to make with this volume (originally a D.M.A. thesis, University of Maryland,...

Music Publishing and Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel.
March 1, 1996... This collection of nine essays honors the sixty-fifth birthday of Don Krummel and a career devoted to music bibliography. Krummel's own many distinguished studies are recorded in a bibliography of his writings at the end of the volume, and the...

The Recorder: A Guide to Writings about the Instrument for Players and Researchers.
March 1, 1996... With a publication record stretching back almost thirty years, David Lasocki (Indiana University) is highly respected for the depth and breadth of his historical and bibliographical research on the recorder. He has joined Richard Griscom...

A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage Works By, About, or Involving African Americans.
March 1, 1996... Bernard Peterson's A Century of Musicals in Black and White is an ambitious book, and, on the whole, it succeeds. Its aim is to provide information about every musical theater production involving black performers between 1873 and 1992. It is the...

Encyclopedia of Percussion.
March 1, 1996... John Beck's Encyclopedia of Percussion is a welcome addition to the meager shelf of percussion reference books. With contributions from twenty - nine individuals, this informative volume is divided into three major sections: "Alphabetical Listing...

Chamber Music for Solo Voice and Instruments, 1960-1989: An Annotated Guide.
March 1, 1996... The stated aim of this reference book is to help singers and teachers of voice to "profitably explore this new literature for solo voice and chamber ensemble" (p. xi). In order to achieve this laudable goal, Kenneth S. Klaus examined over seven...

The Music Business - A Legal Perspective.
March 1, 1996... Only a few years ago, the only reference book about the music business was This Business of Music by Sidney Shemel and M. William Krasilovsky (New York: Billboard Books, 1964). Now in its sixth edition, This Business of Music is still a valuable...

Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China.
March 1, 1996... In Anne Birrell's words, "The folk-songs and ballads in this book belong to the oral tradition of the Hah period [202 B.C.E. 220 C.E.!, when the first great dynasty of China was founded and the empire was formed" (p. 1). They represent the...

Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece.
March 1, 1996... The music of ancient Greece has fascinated and baffled generations of scholars. The fascination, of course, is inherent in the tradition that ancient Greece is the cradle of Western civilization; the bafflement comes mainly from the fragmentary...

Baroque Music: From Monteverdi to Handel.
March 1, 1996... A 1994 survey of Baroque music raises expectations and invites comparison. During the past decades musicological research has grown by leaps and bounds, and new, historiographic approaches have been introduced. Two recent historic studies shun...

Benedetto Vinaccesi: A Musician in Brescia and Venice in the Age of Corelli.
March 1, 1996... Who was Benedetto Vinaccesi (1666-1719)? A search in standard biographical sources and period histories rarely reveals even a brief mention of his name. Yet Michael Talbot treats this "musician in Brescia and Venice in the age of Corelli," his...

Continuo Realization in Handel's Vocal Music.
March 1, 1996... Patrick Rogers's study of George Frideric Handel's continuo practices is in two large sections: part 1, "Bass Figuring in Handel Source Materials," is a study of the figuring in autographs, conducting scores, continuo parts, scribal copies,...

Untersuchungen zu Musikbeziehungen zwischen Mannheim, Bohmen und Mahren im spaten 18. und fruhen 19. Jahrhundert: Symphonie, Kirchenmusic, Melodrama.
March 1, 1996... This collection of nineteen essays by German and Czech scholars stems from a colloquium held at Mannheim in early 1987, the subject of which was the relationship between Mannheim on the one hand and Bohemia and Moravia (including portions of...

Le Piano de style en Europe des origines a 1850: Etude des elements decoratifs et mecaniques.
March 1, 1996... Recognizing the dearth of works about the piano as decorative art, Pascale Vandervellen established a twofold aim for this study: "on the one hand, to trace the evolution of the different types of piano, from its origins to 1850, as much from the...

The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini.
March 1, 1996... The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini is the latest volume in a series of opera guides by Charles Osborne that includes books on the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Strauss, and...

The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song.
March 1, 1996... Jon W. Finson casts a wide net in this historical survey of popular song. Ranging from Henry Russell's bel canto style for "The Old Arm Chair" (1840) to Stephen Foster's take on "Negro melodies" for "Camptown Races" (1850), he places...

Antonin Dvorak 1841-1991: Report of the International Musicological Congress, Dobris, 17th-20th September 1991.
March 1, 1996... This is one of three books presenting papers from international conferences held in 1991 to commemorate the Dvorak sesquicentennial, along with Dvorak-Studien, ed. Klaus Doge and Peter Jost (Mainz: Schott, 1994) from Saarbrucken, and Rethinking...

Philipp Spitta: Leben und Wirken im Spiegel seiner Briefwechsel. Mit einem Inventar des Nachlasses und einer Bibliographie der gedruckten Werke.
March 1, 1996... By any measure, Philipp Spitta must rank as a monumental figure in German musicology. As author of Johann Sebastian Bach, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1873-80), editor of Dietrich Buxtehude, Orgelcompositionen, 2 vols. (Leipzig:...

Music in the Jewish Community of Palestine, 1880-1948: A Social History.
March 1, 1996... Beginning late in the nineteenth century, a genre of Jewish music appeared in concord with the modern Zionist movement, at first as an ad hoc expression of heritage and hope, but soon as an artistry shaped by issues and events. The apparent aim...

Kongressbericht Feldkirch/Voralberg 1992.
March 1, 1996... This volume of conference proceedings represents the written versions of papers read at the tenth congress of the Internationalen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung und Forderung der Blasmusik (International Society for the Research and Promotion of...

Magic Music from the Telharmonium.
March 1, 1996... The Telharmonium, developed by the inventor Thaddeus Cahill starting around 1890, was one of the first electronic musical instruments. But it was more than that phrase would suggest. The Telharmonium was a hugely ambitious project. Several...

Albert Schweitzer, Musician.
March 1, 1996... This book is a labor of love and will be cherished by those who revere the memory of Albert Schweitzer. It will also be read keenly by organists interested in the aesthetics of organ building and playing in the first half of the twentieth...

King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era.
March 1, 1996... I recall the beginnings of Edward Berlin's research on this new Scott Joplin biography. In 1988, I attended the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, the most concentrated gathering ever of world-class ragtime performers and...

Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural Analysis.
March 1, 1996... I first reviewed this study, which is based on Jeff Titon's doctoral dissertation, when it was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1977. It was an important book then and, despite the passage of time and the amount of blues...

Swing Changes: Big-Band Jazz in New Deal America.
March 1, 1996... David Stowe's provocative, pioneering cultural history of swing music argues that swing inspired an important ideology, "express[ing] reverence for . . . liberty, democracy, tolerance, and equality," particularly racial equality, as well as "the...

Traditional Anglo-American Folk Music: An Annotated Discography of Published Sound Recordings.
March 1, 1996... Norm Cohen's most recent, carefully researched foray into the recording industry and Anglo-American folk music is a very functional volume, though I wish that Cohen had limited it to vinyl discs and cassettes and had not included compact discs....

The Sounds of People and Places: Readings in the Geography of American Folk and Popular Music.
March 1, 1996... Let me "come clean" (as the book review editor put it), and confess that an essay of mine on the commercial recording industry and field recordings in Memphis in the late 1920s, which first appeared in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin some...

Sardinian Chronicles.
March 1, 1996... This translation of Bernard Lortat-Jacob's Chroniques sardes (Paris: Julliard, 1990) provides the English-speaking reader with an important and highly self-reflective ethnography of a number of places and traditional musicians on the island....

Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues.
March 1, 1996... Since the publication of Alan Merriam's The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1964) there have been a number of fine books applying cultural anthropology to the study of music. Many of these works use the...

Prairie Nights to Neon Lights: The Story of Country Music in West Texas.
March 1, 1996... Alan Munde and Joe Carr chronicle the rise and evolution of country music in the Panhandle and South Plains region of Texas. The authors bring an unrivaled background to their project. Cart is a master of several stringed instruments, while Munde...

Dissonant Identities: The Rock 'n' Roll Scene in Austin, Texas.
March 1, 1996... Any book that begins with a Reality Sandwich at Austin's famed Hole in the Wall nightclub displays much promise (the ingredients are footnoted on p. 254). Indeed, Dissonant Identities is an informed, largely successful attempt to use postmodern...

You Really Got Me: An Illustrated World Discography of the Kinks, 1964-1993, Part One.
March 1, 1996... Nineteen ninety-four marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Kinks' debut on record. Part of the British Invasion, heralded by the Beatles, the Kinks have not achieved the fame of the Beatles, but they have endured and still are in existence as a...

Gay Music Guide.
March 1, 1996... Will Grega's Gay Music Guide reviews and supplies order information for ninety-nine independently produced gay and lesbian recordings (80 percent of them recorded since 1990), working artist profiles, and cultural commentary into the reviews....

High Definition Compact Disc Recordings: Sound Quality Evaluations of Over 1,400 of the Most Technically Excellent Digital Recordings.
March 1, 1996... In this day of high technology it is not surprising that someone has decided that there is a public for evaluations of the technical quality of recordings, rather than of the musical performances they embody. In his introduction Howard Ferstler...

Sound Recording Practice.
March 1, 1996... As with every thriving modern technology, audio technology has undergone incredible change in recent decades. In particular, like all things touched by the ongoing computer revolution, audio technology has become both highly complex and...

Managing Performing Arts Collections in Academic and Public Libraries.
March 1, 1996... In her introduction, Carolyn A. Sheehy states that this work "attempts to provide a practical perspective on managing performing arts collections in academic and public libraries that are not solely devoted to the performing arts," and that "the...

The Music of the Heavens: Kepler's Harmonic Astronomy.
March 1, 1996... There are still people who feel uneasy when they learn that Isaac Newton spent most of his intellectual energy on alchemy and biblical prophecies, and that Johannes Kepler's three laws of planetary motion are embedded in elaborate theories...

Musical Perceptions.
March 1, 1996... This is at least the fourth book of its kind. The Psychology of Music, ed. Diana Deutsch (New York: Academic Press, 1982), Musical Structure and Cognition, ed. Peter Howell, lan Cross, and Robert West (London: Academic Press, 1985), W. Jay...

Two Faces of Thailand: A Musical Portrait.
March 1, 1996... In the days where the word "micromusic" is coming to replace "subculture" as the more equitable term in ethnomusicological discourse, classroom materials that survey only the world's major mainstream classical traditions are no longer...

Sukiyaki and Chips: The Japanese Sounds of Music.
March 1, 1996... In the days where the word "micromusic" is coming to replace "subculture" as the more equitable term in ethnomusicological discourse, classroom materials that survey only the world's major mainstream classical traditions are no longer...

No. 17 Cotton Mill Shanghai Blues: Music of China.
March 1, 1996... In the days where the word "micromusic" is coming to replace "subculture" as the more equitable term in ethnomusicological discourse, classroom materials that survey only the world's major mainstream classical traditions are no longer...

The Composers.
March 1, 1996... Anyone seeking to make a video about music must address a fundamental issue posed by the medium: how to document aural events while effectively utilizing video's visual possibilities. The standard video tends to use music in a supporting role -...

The Unbroken Circle.
March 1, 1996... This video is an introduction to selected Vermont vernacular musical traditions popular during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using performer narration, instrumental and vocal performances, as well as historical recordings and...

Giandomenico Martoretta.
March 1, 1996... Cultural peripheries often reveal as much about a dominant musical style as do the central sources of a tradition. Thus, we find the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Parisian organum and motet repertory preserved in a manuscript from the British...

Beneventanum troporum corpus I: Tropes of the Proper of the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000-1250.
March 1, 1996... The south of Italy in modern times has seemed a region slighted by fortune... where "Cristo si e fermato." In early medieval times, it was a robust Lombard duchy that at its northern extreme stretched almost to Rome and in the south took in all...

Jacobus Gallus. Opus Musicum.
March 1, 1996... On Septuagesima Sunday 1589, the thirty-nine-year-old Slovenian-Austrian composer Jacob Gallus (also known as Jacob Handl) published his first secular collection of vocal music which he called Moralia. In his preface to the edition, Gallus not...

Jacobus Gallus. Selectiores quaedam missae.
March 1, 1996... On Septuagesima Sunday 1589, the thirty-nine-year-old Slovenian-Austrian composer Jacob Gallus (also known as Jacob Handl) published his first secular collection of vocal music which he called Moralia. In his preface to the edition, Gallus not...

George Philipp Telemann. Douze solos, a violon ou traversiere.
March 1, 1996... The two collections of music under review are products of the mid-1730s, perhaps the busiest period in Georg Philipp Telemann's career. In Hamburg, where he was employed from 1721 until his death in 1767, Telemann's duties included serving as...

George Philipp Telemann. Zwolf Fantasien fur Violine solo.
March 1, 1996... The two collections of music under review are products of the mid-1730s, perhaps the busiest period in Georg Philipp Telemann's career. In Hamburg, where he was employed from 1721 until his death in 1767, Telemann's duties included serving as...

Gustav Mahler. Facsimile Edition of the Seventh Symphony.
March 1, 1996... In the last few years Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony has been accorded much attention, such that it seems to have shed its previous status as the "Cinderella" of his symphonies, as Deryck Cooke once called it. The subject of two international...

Don Quixote.
March 1, 1996... Far from being a culturally disengaged body of musical works, Roberto Gerhard's music is a rich and complex web of cultural references encompassing history, myth, literature, folklore, and contemporary social issues. L'alta naixenca del Rei En...

Pentecost Music.
March 1, 1996... Giles Swayne first attracted wide public acclaim with Cry (1979), his wordless evocation of the book of Genesis for twenty-eight solo voices premiered in 1980. On either side of this remarkable work came the two orchestral pieces listed here:...

Naaotwa Lala for Orchestra.
March 1, 1996... Giles Swayne first attracted wide public acclaim with Cry (1979), his wordless evocation of the book of Genesis for twenty-eight solo voices premiered in 1980. On either side of this remarkable work came the two orchestral pieces listed here:...

Kakadu for Orchestra.
March 1, 1996... The orchestral works of Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) are in many respects related to the development of Australian orchestras since mid-century, including major orchestras in Sydney (where he lives), Melbourne, and elsewhere, and to the emergence...

Play It Again, Sam: Viola Solo.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

Lamentations of Jeremiah for Solo Viola.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

Monodia Per Viola Solo.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

Sonata for Solo Viola.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

Chin Music for Viola and Piano.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

l. Sonate fur Viola und Klavier.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

2. Sonate fur Viola und Klavier.
March 1, 1996... The viola, particularly playing alone, has done well in recent additions to a number of publisher's catalogues. Milton Babbitt's Play It Again, Sam is the composer's first addition to the viola's solo repertory since his monumental Composition...

Windhover for Solo Soprano Saxophone or Solo Flute.
March 1, 1996... Although the saxophone was invented in France and much of its early repertory comes from that country, the last few decades have proven the United States to be another center of classical saxophone repertory and performance. This is due in part...

Sonata for E-flat alto saxophone and piano.
March 1, 1996... Although the saxophone was invented in France and much of its early repertory comes from that country, the last few decades have proven the United States to be another center of classical saxophone repertory and performance. This is due in part...

Serenade and Capriccio for Alto Saxophone and Piano.
March 1, 1996... Although the saxophone was invented in France and much of its early repertory comes from that country, the last few decades have proven the United States to be another center of classical saxophone repertory and performance. This is due in part...

Echoes from the Gorge: Percussion Quartet.
March 1, 1996... In many ways, Chou Wen-chung's percussion quartet Echoes from the Gorge serves as a paradigm of music in the latter half of the twentieth century, in which the element of sound has been elevated to a position of eminence. This view of sound,...

Stuck fur drei Schlagzeuger.
March 1, 1996... In many ways, Chou Wen-chung's percussion quartet Echoes from the Gorge serves as a paradigm of music in the latter half of the twentieth century, in which the element of sound has been elevated to a position of eminence. This view of sound,...

Fourscore for Percussion Quartet.
March 1, 1996... In many ways, Chou Wen-chung's percussion quartet Echoes from the Gorge serves as a paradigm of music in the latter half of the twentieth century, in which the element of sound has been elevated to a position of eminence. This view of sound,...

Scherzo fur Schlagzeugensemble (1956) nach den Skizzen vervollstandigt von Wilfried Hiller.
March 1, 1996... In many ways, Chou Wen-chung's percussion quartet Echoes from the Gorge serves as a paradigm of music in the latter half of the twentieth century, in which the element of sound has been elevated to a position of eminence. This view of sound,...