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Hans Keller: Britten: essays, letters and opera guides
No full textA selection of Hans Keller's writings on Benjamin Britten including previously unseen correspondence and reprints of long unavailable writings.
It was hearing an early performance of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes that turned the young emigré writer and musician Hans Keller from psychology to music. Thereafter he became the composer's most fervent advocate, devoting to him a whole issue of Music Survey (the journal he edited with Donald Mitchell) and the first comprehensive book on his music (again edited with Mitchell). This volume is a selection of the best of his writings, dealing with Peter Grimes through to Death in Venice and the Third String Quartet. It also includes an illustrated study by A. M. Garnham of the extensive correspondence between Britten and Keller (most of it hitherto unknown), are print of the handbooks on The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring (long out-of-print), and items from the Hans Keller Archive in the University of Cambridge. The book is illustrated with drawings from life by Milein Cosman
'James Culwick', 'Victor Herbert', 'Kodály Method', 'Suzuki Method', 'Association of Irish Choirs', 'Culwick Choral Society' and 'St James Gate Choir'
No full textMultiple entries throughout both volumes of the encyclopaedia
Così fan tutte und der Charakter von E-Dur: Klangfarben der Klarinette
No full textMozart's ensemble writing for single-reed instruments almost exclusively employs clarinets pitched in A, Bb, and C, together with the basset horn in F. Nonetheless, in both Munich and Vienna, Mozart also had access to the clarinet in B natural. This instrument appears in two numbers in Idomeneo (nos. 15, 19) and one in Così fan tutte (no. 25), all of which are in the key of E major. However, in the Terzettino (no. 10) in Così fan tutte, which is also in E, Mozart opts for the A clarinet. This paper draws on experience of performance on historical instruments as well as evidence from contemporary documentary source materials as regards key characteristics. Ambiguity regarding perceptions of E major is noted, as well as the wide range of tonalities employed by Mozart in Così fan tutte, which are indicative of his acute perception of the nature of each individual clarinet's timbre
'Now swift, now hesitating': the stylus phantasticus and the art of fantasy
No full textThe term 'stylus phantasticus' was used by writers on music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a category to describe works which could not be explained within the norms of more clearly defined structures. As an explanation of these artistic phenomena, its early use was concerned with the 'fantasy' or imagination of the composer and his composition while later theorists expanded the term to articulate the freedom of creativity and improvisation which they considered to exemplify good performance
Two different roads to new musicals in 2011 London: London Road and Road Show
No full textLondon Road, a collaboration between documentary playwright Alecky Blythe, composer Adam Cork and director Rufus Norris, opened at the National Theatre in April 2011. Road Show, by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, directed by John Doyle, opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory in July 2011 (a transfer of the 2008 New York production). This article explores their production histories, considering the relationships to historical events within both performance texts, and the intricate relationship between content and form in both cases. It briefly discusses the questions of place that impact upon both the performance texts and the material spaces of production and reception. Finally, it considers the relationship between these works and the 'imagined Broadway musical', in the context of what both pieces represent for musical theatre production in contemporary London
BBC Radio 3 record review: building a library: Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2
No full textWilliam Mival surveys recordings of Rachmaninov's second symphony and makes a recommendation in this programme broadcast in 2012. This discussion is also available (UK only) on the Record Review Podcast, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02tmnrs
The music exams of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 1859–1919
No full textThe Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce was the original title of the Royal Society of Arts, today contracted to the acronym RSA. Between 1859 and 1919, the Society offered written music examinations: theory, rudiments, elementary musical composition, harmony and counterpoint; and, from 1879 until 1914, it also ran practical instrumental and vocal exams. Today few are aware that these exams ever existed. Cyril Ehrlich’s groundbreaking social history of the music profession in Britain notes their presence, while remarking simply that ‘for reasons which remain obscure these examinations never became popular’. Now the Society’s music exams have been largely forgotten, as has the fact that their pioneering nature and distinctive purpose meant that for a time they made a particular contribution to the development of the Victorian musical environment
Book review: 'Classical and Romantic music: the library of essays on music performance practice' edited by David Milsom
No full textRethinking ‘career’ for music students: identity and vision
No full textDescription of book: An essential resource for helping musicians realize their dreams of success, Life in the Real World is the only music career guide offering a truly international perspective. With the linking theme of exploring one’s professional identity, the book explores crucial issues for global musicians and provides 35 creative learning prompts for educators, coaches, and readers worldwide for use with both individuals and groups. Editor: Dawn Bennett, Curtin University (Australia) Contributing authors: Glen Carruthers, Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada) Michael Hannan, Southern Cross University (Australia) Angela Myles Beeching, Manhattan School of Music (USA) Rosie Perkins, Royal College of Music (UK) Rineke Smilde, Prince Claus Conservatoire in Groningen and the Royal Conservatoire (Netherlands) Janis Weller, McNally Smith College of Music (USA)
Musical history: historical music
No full text"I am convinced that 'historical' performance today is not really historical; that a thin veneer of historicism clothes a performance style that is completely of our own time, and is in fact the most modern style around; and that the historical hardware has won its wide acceptance and above all its commercial viability precisely by virtue of its novelty, not its antiquity". Richard Taruskin's once notorious yet now widely-accepted views can justifiably be applied to those most tangible of artefacts - the instruments themselves. As long ago as 1932 Arnold Dolmetsch's pupil Robert Donington remarked of his teacher's reconstructions; "the old harpsichord has certain limitations [and produces] a jangle, slight in the treble but audible in the bass. The new instruments, which remedy these historical oversights, have proved both purer and more sustained than any previous harpsichord". Two generations later Robert Barclay drew attention to the finger-holes often placed on copies of the Baroque trumpet, so that "the so-called out-of-tune harmonics of the natural series will not be unpleasant to modern sensitivity. The result is a trumpet which resembles its baroque counterpart only superficially." During the heady days of recording activity in the early 1990s Clive Brown issued a timely warning that the characteristics of some of the orchestral instruments employed in Beethoven cycles by The Hanover Band, Christopher Hogwood and Roger Norrington would certainly not have been familiar to musicians in Beethoven's Vienna and that the public was in danger of being offered "attractively packaged but unripe fruit".
During Sir Nicholas Shackleton's lifetime the worlds of the collector and professional period instrumentalist sometimes diverged in quite radical fashion. Clarinets were among the instruments that began to be widely copied within a musical environment where few period conductors showed much organological interest, ever anxious to be acceptable to modern ears. The regularisation of historical pitches, (for instance to A=415 or A=430) has been ironic, given that Quantz in 1752 lamented the lack of a uniform standard, which he reckoned was detrimental to his work as a flautist and to music in general. For today's players it is perhaps unfortunate that organological evidence in the public domain has tended to focus upon such matters as key mechanisms, bores and visual impact, with insufficient attempt to communicate the subtle quality of different instrumental sounds. Of course, words struggle to communicate certain aspects of art, whether quality of timbre or those tiny differences in emphases and timing that distinguish a great performance from a merely good one. As Daniel Türk put it in 1789, "certain subtleties of expression cannot really be described; they must be heard". The fascination with different nationalities of instrument which was a central focus of Nick's life as a collector has been largely ignored in the studio, with composers as diverse as Cherubini, Rossini and Beethoven routinely recorded on the same set of "period" instruments. Unripe fruit indeed