Musicology Commons^™

Carlo Barone (1955–2022), Adrian Walter

Soundboard Scholar

Carlo Barone (1955–2022) was a pioneering performer, researcher, and educator in the nineteenth-century performing practice of the guitar. In this tribute, his friend and collaborator Adrian Walter describes Barone's career.

Issues In Transcribing German Lute Tablature, Kurt Dorfmüller

Soundboard Scholar

Kurt Dorfmüller's essay is from Le luth et sa musique, a volume of proceedings from the 1957 research symposium of the same name that gathered a number of eminent scholars at the beginning of the modern era of lute scholarship and performance revival. In it, he inquires into the unique nature of German lute tablature, its mostly latent capacity for expressing polyphony, and the types of music for which it is more or less suited. He ends by proposing a set of guidelines for establishing a "mainstream practice" for transcription not only from German tablature but also from tablature …

Le Donne E La Chitarra, James Akers, Romantic Guitar, Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

No abstract provided.

Athénaïs Paulian’S Airs And Variations, Op. 1, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces Airs et Variations, op. 1, by Athénaïs Paulian (Bonn: Simrock, c. 1829), with a brief historical commentary and notes on performance. The commentary includes notes on Paulian's role in the Parisian guitar scene of Sor, Aguado, de Fossa, and others; the Italian soprano Angelia Catalani; and the popularity of the aria "Das klinget so herrlich," from Mozart's Singspiel Die Zauberflöte.

“Learning Is Doing:” A Scholar’S Impact On The Arts, Anthony R. Deldonna

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

No abstract provided.

Elsa Just’S Ständchen For Guitar Trio, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces a serenade from an early twentieth-century German guitar magazine. It is for guitar trio and of moderate difficulty. The introductory commentary attributes the piece to Elsa Just (1894–1919) and includes a translation of the entry on Just from Zuth's 1926 Handbuch der Laute und Gitarre.

Rudolph Süss’S Lyrische Suite No. 2, Op. 24, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces the Lyrische Suite no. 2, op. 24, by the Austrian composer Rudolph Süss, with a short introductory commentary. First published in Vienna around 1921, this suite is a fine example of the enthusiasm for the guitar in early twentieth-century Austria and Germany, which resulted in much music that has been overlooked, overshadowed as it was by the emerging Spanish repertoire.

J.N. Bobrowicz’S Grand Polonaise, Op. 24, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article presents an edited version of a Grand Polonaise by the Polish guitarist-composer Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz (1805–81), preceded by a short commentary and notes for performance. The commentary includes a translation of the biographical entry for Bobrowicz in Sowiński’s Les musiciens polonais et slaves (Paris, 1857).

Carlos Pedrell’S Al Atardecer En Los Jardines De Arlaja, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article reproduces Al atardecer en los jardines de Arlaja by the Uruguayan composer Carlos Pedrell, preceded by a commentary. Together with Pedrell's other guitar works, this piece enriches our picture of Latin American guitar repertoire in the early twentieth century. In the case of Pedrell, we have a work written by a composer who studied in Paris and who wrote for three of the major guitarists of his time—Segovia, Pujol, and Llobet.

New Information On Sor And Gil Blas, Erik Stenstadvold

Soundboard Scholar

A contemporary London newspaper report clarifies the extent of Fernando Sor's contribution to the operatic drama Gil Blas.

This letter is an addendum to Erik Stenstadvold, "Fernando Sor on the Move in the Early 1820s" Soundboard Scholar, no. 1 (2015), https://doi.org/10.56902/SBS.2015.1.7.

A Rondo Allegro By François Molino, Matanya Ophee

Soundboard Scholar

This article presents an edited version of a Rondo-Allegro from Molino's Grande méthode complette (Paris, c. 1833). The rondo theme bears some resemblance to the famous melody "Das klinget so herrlich" from Mozart's Singspiel Die Zauberflöte. Ophee discusses the many versions of this theme to be found in the guitar's nineteenth-century repertoire, by composers such as Sor, Giuliani, and Paulian, drawing attention to composers' use of both the sung melody and the instrumental introduction.

Luigi Legnani's Missing Opus 9, Robert Coldwell

Soundboard Scholar

The guitar composer Luigi Legnani (1790–1877) published some 250 works with opus number, most of them for solo guitar. His catalog, however, contains many gaps. This article explores the particular circumstances of the discovery of Legnani's opus 9, focusing on Legnani’s possible contact with the French guitarist Luigi [Louis] Sagrini (1809–74).

Matanya Ophee’S Contributions To Soundboard Magazine: A Retrospective, Stanley Yates

Soundboard Scholar

The guitar historian Matanya Ophee's writings in Soundboard span almost his entire career as a researcher. In this restrospective, Stanley Yates surveys Ophee's work in general before offering a bibliography and commentary on his contributions to Soundboard: articles, reviews, and columns.

English And Russian Guitars In Poland: A Summary Of Sources Using Open-G Tuning, From The Nineteenth Century To The Present Day, Wojciech Gurgul

Soundboard Scholar

Polish sources related to the guitar in open-G tuning are a little-explored area of guitar scholarship — one, however, well worthy of introduction. We can distinguish two groups of such sources, according to the period and the type of guitar intended: the first group consists of publications and manuscripts for the English guitar from the first two decades of the nineteenth century; the second consists of publications for the Russian seven-string guitar from the first four decades of the twentieth century. These two instruments were cultivated in Poland contemporaneously with the Spanish guitar. The Spanish guitar, however, garnered a significantly …

Joyful, Joyful! The Musical Significance Of Beethoven's Ninth, Allison N. Zieg

Musical Offerings

Almost everyone is familiar with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the famous four note motif that represents fate knocking at the door. His Third Symphony, or “The Heroic Symphony” that was originally written for Napoleon Bonaparte, enjoyed great success and helped shape the future of classical music. However, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony which contains the well-known tune “Ode to Joy” most drastically impacted classical music’s future. Beethoven was a master at taking simple ideas and combining them with past musical traditions to create something extravagant and new. This is most evident in his Ninth Symphony. In this work, Beethoven did something that …

Tomorrow Our Seeds Will Grow: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill And The Changing Landscape Of Hip-Hop, Emma Beachy

Musical Offerings

The release of Lauryn Hill’s 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was a watershed moment in the history of hip-hop and the intersection between music and race. On this album, Hill created a narrative that embraced Black love, attempted to educate audiences, and drew on Black musical heritage, elevating Black womanhood and nuancing perceptions of Blackness in American culture. Through musical and lyrical analysis, this paper explores the importance of Miseducation's narrative within the cultural milieu of the late 1990s and its continuing impact on hip-hop and Black American culture.

Medieval Methods: Guido D’Arezzo’S Innovative Approaches To Music Education, Lydia C. Kee

Musical Offerings

Music education has been influenced by many people throughout history, but arguably none of them have done so as much as the monk, Guido D’Arezzo. His teaching methods have been embraced and developed by music educators throughout the centuries. For example, it is recorded that Guido was the first to use the five-line staff as we use it today. This was especially groundbreaking in a world of rote memorization. Today it is used globally in music education. The roots of solfege are also found in Guido’s writings; his syllables have been adapted by Zoltan Kodály. Not only that, but John …

“An Attractive And Varied Repertoire”: Full-Data List, Christopher Page

Soundboard Scholar

This document presents the complete set of data analyzed in Christopher Page, “‘An Attractive and Varied Repertoire’: The Guitar Revival of 1860–1900 and Victorian Song,” Soundboard Scholar, no. 8 (2022), https://digitalcommons.du.edu/sbs/vol8/iss1/3.

“An Attractive And Varied Repertoire”: The Guitar Revival Of 1860–1900 And Victorian Song, Christopher Page

Soundboard Scholar

Most modern histories of the classical guitar are devoted to solo playing. They therefore forego a different kind of history based upon the guitar used as an accompaniment for a singer. This article explores how that alternative history might be framed with reference to England during the long reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). This is the ideal laboratory for such an experiment, not least because the compositions of Catharina Pratten (1824–1895), the most influential guitar player of the day, are often thought to reveal a late-Victorian public with little interest in the guitar as a solo resource. Yet the newspaper …

Congregational Music As Phatic Communication: Affect, Atmosphere, And Relational Ways Of Listening And Being, Anna E. Nekola

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Much of the scholarship of congregational music focuses on participatory music in organized corporate worship. This article draws on theories of communication and affect to examine the secondary, background music that happens alongside other events in a worship service or in places other than the space of the sanctuary. Instead of understanding affects as an individual emotion, this article argues that music is made meaningful through a socio-cultural and relational affective process. This in turn enables one to understand how musics, particularly secondary non-participatory musics, work beyond language and representation in phatic ways that can engender powerful feelings of human …

Contributors To Issue 2, Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal Digitalcommons.Fiu.Edu/Mmp

Music & Musical Performance

No abstract provided.

‘Brillez, Astres Nouveaux!’ Arias And Other Excerpts From Eighteenth-Century French Operas By Rameau, Leclair, Boismortier, And Others. Aparte Cd Ap223, 2020 [Review], Ralph P. Locke

Music & Musical Performance

No abstract provided.

Romances For Voice And Guitar, Arranged By Hector Berlioz. Atma Classique Acd2 2800, 2020 [Review], Peter Bloom

Music & Musical Performance

No abstract provided.

Ludwig Van Beethoven: Leonore. Harmonia Mundi 902414, 2019 [Review], Ralph P. Locke

Music & Musical Performance

No abstract provided.

A “Free Artist Of Color” In Late-Eighteenth-Century Saint-Domingue: The Life And Times Of Minette, Bernard Camier

Music & Musical Performance

This article sets forth, for the first time in detail, the life and career of Minette, who was the main female opera singer in Port-au-Prince at the end of the eighteenth century. The city was the capital of the thriving and wealthy French colony of Saint-Domingue (which, upon gaining independence in 1804, took the name Haïti). Theatrical activity in Port-au-Prince was comparable to what one could find in any large provincial city, and the success that Minette gained was all the more remarkable for her being categorized as colored (mestive). The details of Minette’s origins, life, and career …

Hearing Tolkien In Vaughan Williams?, Keri Hui

Journal of Tolkien Research

In recent years, musicians and Tolkien readers alike have associated Ralph Vaughan Williams’ music, particularly Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910), The Lark Ascending (1914), and Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934), with Tolkien’s fantasies. This article explores this tendency to hear Tolkien’s Middle-earth in Vaughan Williams’ musical fantasies, calling attention to the similarities in their shared devotion to the idea of English consciousness, interest in combining ecclesiastical and folk materials, and pastoral vision. A juxtaposition of their approach and philosophies not only helps explain the musical echoes, however, but also confirms an appealing mark of Tolkien’s craft is its …

Haydn’S Schemata And Hexachords: Two Analytical Case Studies, Gilad Rabinovitch

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Two analytical case studies, from Haydn’s minuet al roverso (from the Symphony Hob. I: 47) and the opening movement of the String Quartet Op. 50, no. 6, show the interaction of galant schemata (Gjerdingen 2007) and the hexachordal solmization of the solfeggio tradition (Baragwanath 2020). Haydn plays upon conventional galant schemata—presumably elements of style shared by listeners who are closely familiar with the idiom (even if they do not have explicit schema labels); he also plays upon a more esoteric element of his own training and that of many other musicians in the period: hexachordal solmization. By considering both schemata …

The Jubilee Singers: Free Or Enslaved?, Micaiah H. Jones

Musical Offerings

This paper intends to inform the reader about the great impact that the Fisk Jubilee Singers had on developing and understanding American music, specifically African American slave songs and culture, during their years of performance and travel. It also seeks to highlight the contradiction of the Fisk singers’ situation during that period of their lives; many of them were recently released from slavery, yet they were obligated to tour as a group for years after their education had ended. This resulted in most of the members altogether forfeiting their diplomas. This paper focuses on the difficulty which the Jubilee singers …

Total Artwork: Wagner's Philosophies On Art And Music In The Ring Cycle, Soraya A. Peront

Musical Offerings

Richard Wagner is one of the most renowned composers of the Romantic period, due to his intensely emotional music, captivating operatic plots, and his unique idea to combine visual art, vocal music, and instrumental music in an unprecedented way. His music is acclaimed for being highly progressive for its time; Wagner also held unique philosophical beliefs which formed the foundation for his music. Wagner’s pioneering ideas about art, music, and the way they should be paired together led to the composition of many operas that still have a place in the permanent repertoire today, including Der Ring des Nibelungen, or …

Copland And Communism: Mystery And Mayhem, Emilie Schulze

Musical Offerings

In the midst of the second Red Scare, Aaron Copland, an American composer, came under fire for his communist tendencies. Between the 1930s and 1950s, he joined the left-leaning populist Popular Front, composed a protest song, wrote Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, traveled to South America, spoke at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, and donated to communist leaning organizations such as the American-Soviet Musical Society. Due to Copland’s personal communist leanings, Eisenhower’s Inaugural Concert Committee censored a performance of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait in 1953. HUAC (The House Committee on Un-American Activities) brought Copland to …