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Trombones and the English court c.1480 – c.1680
No full textA preliminary overview of documentary evidence on how sackbut or trombone playing fitted into the music culture of the English court from the late 15th century to the late 17th century, with a chronological table of known players between 1510 and 1605
Behind the beard (review article)
No full textBooks reviewed: 'Johannes Brahms: a biography' by Jan Swafford; 'The Cambridge Companion to Brahms' edited by Michael Musgrave; 'The compleat Brahms: a guide to the musical works of Johannes Brahms' edited by Leon Botstein; 'Brahms studies 2' edited by David Brodbeck
Ravel's operatic spectacles: L'heure and L'enfant
No full textDiscussion of Ravel's dramatic works 'L'heure espagnole' and 'L’enfant et les sortilèges.' Influences, compositional techniques, and psychoanalytical dimensions are explored
Schoenberg at UCLA: reminiscences from Leonard Stein [interview]
No full textLos Angeles is the city of paradox. Where else could Shirley Temple, the Marx Brothers, and other Hollywood luminaries live in the vicinity of eminent Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg? Indeed, many influential artists, musicians, and cultural critics of the European avant garde found themselves in the land of palm trees and Hollywood glitz during the massive upheavals that led up to the Second World War. Leonard Stein, who was born in Los Angeles, was an active participant in the intellectual émigré community, and his close association with Arnold Schoenberg in particular make him an invaluable asset to those interested in the city’s art music life.
Stein is a pianist who studied with Schoenberg at UCLA and assisted the composer in his musical and scholarly activities. He was one of the first performers in the Evenings on the Roof concert series, which continues to this day at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Maiko Kawabata performed Schoenberg’s last composition, the Violin Phantasy, Op. 47, with Stein in the spring of 1999 as part of this distinguished series. But it is his role as a keeper of Schoenberg’s legacy that makes Stein important to historians of the European avant garde
Proms: Louis Andriessen's 'Trilogy of the Last Day'
No full textDiscussion of 'Trilogy of the Last Day' by Louis Andriessen, after its first UK performance at the BBC Proms in 1999
The narrating voice in Rimsky-Korsakov's Shekherazade
No full textIn the well-known legend of 1,001 Arabian nights, a young woman is empowered and saved by her extraordinary narrating voice. In his Šeherazada, op. 35, Rimskij-Korsakov captures the quality of protagonist's storytelling in his lavish orchestral suite by casting a solo violin in the role of narrator and by organizing musical time in support of her need to avoid narrative closure. Questions concerning how instrumental music can tell stories are discussed
Alternative voices: contemporary vocal techniques
No full textComposers very often write music with specific performers in mind. Performers' particular gifts, perhaps an outstanding technique or an individual quality of interpretation, can stimulate and open up a composer's imagination. The written-out ornamentation Monteverdi supplied for Orpheus's central aria ‘Possente spirto’ in Orfeo poses a technical challenge which suggests why its likely first singer, Francesco Rasi, was so admired by his contemporaries. In our own century, Poulenc's intuitive response in setting the difficult poetry of Apollinaire and Eluard was also shaped by his experience of Pierre Bernac's sensitive projection of texts. The genesis of these examples, both of which belong firmly to the ‘traditional’ rather than the ‘alternative’ vocal tradition, only reinforces the point that very many alternative developments come out of the creative nexus between composer and intended interpreter. So even though most of today's alternative voices sound more radical to an audience's ears than does the Monteverdi (despite its stunningly wacky quality) or the Poulenc, artistically there is common ground in the shared concern to exploit the expressive possibilities of the musical situation, both vocally and compositionally. But the particular experience of the twentieth century is the move away from defining mainstream singing in terms only of bel canto. Certainly the rich, almost bewildering, variety of written and improvised styles that has now been opened up, as well as the opportunities for these styles to interact in new and fertile ways, point to the fact that vocal quality can be just as freshly or differently expressive, away from the constraints of the bel canto style