Notes articles from March 1998

Notes archives from March 1998

Beyond the score. (cataloging of music)
March 1, 1998... Ever since libraries first began collecting materials other than books (so-called "other formats" or "nonbook materials"), librarians have grappled with the descriptive issues these materials have raised.(1) Librarians have traditionally...

Wagner's Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts.
March 1, 1998... The reader who picks up Thomas S. Grey's Wagner's Musical Prose would do well to reflect on the title's qualifying phrase "Texts and Contexts." The author's investigation focuses not upon the proselike quality (in the technical, Schoenbergian...

The Musical Temperament: Psychology and Personality of Musicians.
March 1, 1998... As a psychologist with little formal knowledge of music, I approached the task of reviewing The Musical Temperament by perusing my mother's old Music Lovers' Encyclopedia by Rupert Hughes, revised and edited by Deems Taylor and Russell Kerr (New...

All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing.
March 1, 1998... Over the last twenty years, scholars of a revisionist turn have tackled the complex problem of "The Charles Ives Myth." Like most myths, this one has long been embraced with religious fervor and piety, for the Charles Ives of myth symbolizes the...

Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition.
March 1, 1998... Over the last twenty years, scholars of a revisionist turn have tackled the complex problem of "The Charles Ives Myth." Like most myths, this one has long been embraced with religious fervor and piety, for the Charles Ives of myth symbolizes the...

Collected Editions, Historical Series and Sets and Monuments of Music: A Bibliography.
March 1, 1998... At long last, we have it: the magnum opus, at least in part. George Hill, Norris Stephens, and their cohorts have tackled the formidable task of bringing Anna Harriet Heyer's estimable Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments' of Music:...

Orchestral Music: A Handbook, 3d ed.
March 1, 1998... The third edition of this valuable reference work fulfills the promise enunciated in the second edition's forward of providing "in one handy location the sorts of information necessary to plan orchestral programs and organize rehearsals:...

"The Play of Daniel": Critical Essays.
March 1, 1998... It is generally - and rightly - agreed that the Play of Daniel is easily the most impressive medieval liturgical drama that survives and in any event was probably the best. It stands far above the others musically, dramatically, and in many other...

Music in Renaissance Cities and Courts: Studies in Honor off Lewis Lockwood.
March 1, 1998... As befits the dedicatee, this is a most impressive volume with an all-star cast of authors, all connected as students or colleagues to Lewis Lockwood. The list of twenty-seven authors reads like a who's who of American Renaissance music history....

Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
March 1, 1998... Over the past half century Marc-Antoine Charpentier has steadily emerged from his undeserved obscurity. Of the many talented composers to have a career suppressed by the power and intrigues of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Charpentier may have been the...

Performing the Music of Henry Purcell.
March 1, 1998... This volume was generated by and now commemorates a conference of the same title held at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1993. After an introductory essay by Nicholas Kenyon, the book is divided into sections on "Performing the Music" and "Staging the...

Georg Friedrich Handel - ein Lebensinhalt. Gedenkschrift fur Bernd Baselt (1934-1993).
March 1, 1998... The tragically early death of Bernd Baselt in 1993 robbed the music world of one of its most outstanding Handel scholars, a man of exceptional industry and no less exceptional modesty. Had he lived another year, Baselt would surely have been...

Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.
March 1, 1998... How does an audience's ways of listening to an operatic performance affect its reception of that performance? Conversely, how does the performance affect an audience's ways of listening to it? As James H. Johnson's Listening in Paris skillfully...

Schubert's Poets and the Making of Lieder.
March 1, 1998... Most of us are drawn to lieder by the music, but when we study or write about this repertory we often begin, as the composers themselves did, with the poetry. Nevertheless, musicians still know relatively little about the lives and works of many...

Robert Schumann: Herald of a "New Poetic Age."
March 1, 1998... This is a substantial new biography. The range of its topics and the depth of its analyses of Robert Schumann's works, particularly those that have been ignored or dismissed in previous studies, make it a significant contribution to our...

Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture.
March 1, 1998... Despite the efforts of several biographers, Stephen Collins Foster remains an elusive figure, and his compositions still await competent music analysis. Ken Emerson has not changed this situation. In his closing pages he writes, "No one who has...

Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Study.
March 1, 1998... Within weeks of Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's untimely death in 1893 (he was but fifty-three years old), rumors began to circulate that he had committed suicide, not died from cholera as officially reported. Several factors at the time abetted the...

Karlowicz: Young Poland and the Musical Fin-de-Siecle.
March 1, 1998... The aloof figure of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909) resists the sort of contextual placement that the title of Alistair Wightman's welcome monograph promises. Alone among composers in partitioned Poland just before the generation of Karol...

Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians.
March 1, 1998... This portly reference book is the first in a series of chronologically specialized volumes representing classical musicians and people associated with Western art music. Editor Laura Kuhn anticipates that when the volumes on earlier centuries...

A History of European Folk Music.
March 1, 1998... To paraphrase the Kalevala, ancient epic of the Finnish people: Mankind is mortal, but the songs that have mastered the souls of the people do not pass away. As this century draws to a close, many European historians are looking backward to...

Central European Folk Music: An Annotated Bibliography of Sources in German.
March 1, 1998... To paraphrase the Kalevala, ancient epic of the Finnish people: Mankind is mortal, but the songs that have mastered the souls of the people do not pass away. As this century draws to a close, many European historians are looking backward to...

The Music of Israel: From the Biblical Era to Modern Times, 2d ed.
March 1, 1998... This second, revised edition of Peter Gradenwitz's The Music of Israel: Its Rise and Growth through 5000 Years (New York: Norton, 1949) is a comprehensive overview of Jewish music from the time of Abraham up to the Israeli composers of our...

Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life.
March 1, 1998... The life of Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong unfolded like a Hollywood screenplay. He was born into stark poverty in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, but at his death in 1971, he had one of the most recognized faces (and voices) on the planet. His...

Allen Sapp: A Bio-Bibliography.
March 1, 1998... Greenwood's ever-growing series, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, is a boon to researchers, particularly of twentieth-century music. These volumes by Alan Green and Susan Hayes Hitchens are products of excellent bibliographic work by two thoroughly...

Ross Lee Finney: A Bio-Bibliography.
March 1, 1998... Greenwood's ever-growing series, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, is a boon to researchers, particularly of twentieth-century music. These volumes by Alan Green and Susan Hayes Hitchens are products of excellent bibliographic work by two thoroughly...

Sound and Light: La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela.
March 1, 1998... Over twenty years ago, John Rockwell, writing in the New York Times (2 May 1974), summarized, "[La Monte] Young's influence is unquestioned . . . his role as father-figure for the younger avant-garde is surpassed only by John Cage." Still, the...

Sonets, avec une chanson ... livre premier (1952); Chansons, stanses, sonets, et epigrammes ... livre second (1592).
March 1, 1998... Asked to name an important Flemish musician of the second half of the sixteenth century, students of that era might well outline the career and musical production of Orlando di Lasso, Philippe de Monte, or Giaches de Wert. Few would even mention...

Bicinia seu duarum vocum cantiones aliquot sacrae.
March 1, 1998... Asked to name an important Flemish musician of the second half of the sixteenth century, students of that era might well outline the career and musical production of Orlando di Lasso, Philippe de Monte, or Giaches de Wert. Few would even mention...

Il primo libro di madrigali, canzoni e motetti a tre voci.
March 1, 1998... Asked to name an important Flemish musician of the second half of the sixteenth century, students of that era might well outline the career and musical production of Orlando di Lasso, Philippe de Monte, or Giaches de Wert. Few would even mention...

Chansons, odes, et sonetz de Pierre Ronsard.
March 1, 1998... Asked to name an important Flemish musician of the second half of the sixteenth century, students of that era might well outline the career and musical production of Orlando di Lasso, Philippe de Monte, or Giaches de Wert. Few would even mention...

Ermione: Azione tragica in due atti di Andrea Leone Tottola: prima rappresentazione Napoli.
March 1, 1998... While a new volume of the complete works of Gioachino Rossini is always a welcome arrival, the latest installment, Patricia Brauner and Philip Gossett's edition of Ermione, fills an especially frustrating void in the Rossini bibliography. Over...

Choral Works with Keyboard.
March 1, 1998... The purpose of a good scholarly edition is to offer an authoritative reading of a composer's work while incorporating the latest available research. This is exactly the standard Ian Rumbold brilliantly upholds in his recent contribution to the...

Beneventanum troporum corpus II: Ordinary Chants and Tropes for the Mass from Southern Italy, A.D. 1000-1250, 2 vols.
March 1, 1998... The two volumes edited by John Boe as the third installment of the collection of Ordinary chants and tropes for the Mass in the Beneventanum troporum corpus project deliver much more than their simple title Preface Chants and Sanctus implies....

Early Medieval Chants from Nonantola.
March 1, 1998... The two volumes edited by John Boe as the third installment of the collection of Ordinary chants and tropes for the Mass in the Beneventanum troporum corpus project deliver much more than their simple title Preface Chants and Sanctus implies....

Treatises on Singing: A Select Collection of the Most Admired Songs, Duetts and The Singer's Preceptor, 4 vols.
March 1, 1998... Domenico Corri (1746-1825), singing-master, composer, and publisher, was part of a family prominent in the musical life of Edinburgh and London during the latter part of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries. Born in Rome,...

Kammersinfonie II.
March 1, 1998... One of the more intricate tasks in postwar music, and one that is entirely new in musicology, is the interpretation and evaluation of works by Asian composers who combine Western and Asian materials, instruments, and aesthetics. Consider Toru...

Konzert fur Oboe/Oboe d'amore und Orchester.
March 1, 1998... One of the more intricate tasks in postwar music, and one that is entirely new in musicology, is the interpretation and evaluation of works by Asian composers who combine Western and Asian materials, instruments, and aesthetics. Consider Toru...

Quartett fur Horn, Trompete, Posaune und Klavier.
March 1, 1998... One of the more intricate tasks in postwar music, and one that is entirely new in musicology, is the interpretation and evaluation of works by Asian composers who combine Western and Asian materials, instruments, and aesthetics. Consider Toru...

Trio fur Klarinette, Fagott und Horn.
March 1, 1998... One of the more intricate tasks in postwar music, and one that is entirely new in musicology, is the interpretation and evaluation of works by Asian composers who combine Western and Asian materials, instruments, and aesthetics. Consider Toru...

Sonnet de Ronsard pour 3 voix de femmes.
March 1, 1998... Spanning several decades and two generations of composers, the five vocal works here under review provide an intriguing (albeit by no means representative) cross-section of twentieth-century French music. Although Andre Jolivet (1905-1974),...

La mule de Lord Bolingbroke pour voix et piano.
March 1, 1998... Spanning several decades and two generations of composers, the five vocal works here under review provide an intriguing (albeit by no means representative) cross-section of twentieth-century French music. Although Andre Jolivet (1905-1974),...

Les trois propheties de la sibylle pour 2 sopranos, piano et percussion.
March 1, 1998... Spanning several decades and two generations of composers, the five vocal works here under review provide an intriguing (albeit by no means representative) cross-section of twentieth-century French music. Although Andre Jolivet (1905-1974),...

Les battements du coeur de Jesus pour double choeur, trompette si bemol et trombone tenor.
March 1, 1998... Spanning several decades and two generations of composers, the five vocal works here under review provide an intriguing (albeit by no means representative) cross-section of twentieth-century French music. Although Andre Jolivet (1905-1974),...