Musicology Commons^™

Revolutionary Songs From Myanmar: Reconsidering Scholarly Perspectives On Protest Music, Heather Maclachlan

Music Faculty Publications

Since the February 1, 2021 military coup in Myanmar, Burmese musicians have been creating and circulating anti- coup songs. This article describes a representative sample of these songs, explaining how the lyrics reference important tropes in Burmese life and history. Further, the article argues that these anti-coup songs, while they can be understood as protest music, do not fit precisely into categories previously delineated for protest songs. Nor do these songs provide a neat answer to the question that scholars so often pose of protest music, to wit: do these songs work to persuade listeners to take an anti-authoritarian position? …

Louis Armstrong, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Despite his lifelong claim of 4 July 1900 as his birthday, Armstrong was actually born on 4 August 1901 as recorded on a baptismal certificate discovered after his death. Although calling himself “Louis Daniel Armstrong” in his 1954 autobiography, he denied knowledge of his middle name or its origin. Nevertheless, evidence of “Daniel” being a family name is strong: Armstrong's paternal great-great-grandfather, a third generation slave brought from Tidewater Virginia for sale in New Orleans in 1818, was named Daniel Walker, as was his son, Armstrong's great-grandfather. The latter's wife, Catherine Walker, sponsored her great-grandson's baptism at the family's home …

Musical Voyages And Their Baggage: Orientalism In Music And Critical Musicology, Jonathan D. Bellman

Music Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Medievalism And Exoticism In The Music Of Dead Can Dance, Kirsten Yri

Music Faculty Publications

In 1991, the alternative rock band Dead Can Dance released an album that caught the attention of music reviewers by constructing an aural allegiance to the Middle Ages. Suitably called A Passage in Time, the album was described as imitating medieval chant, troubadour music, Latin hymns and courtly songs and included Dead Can Dance’s hybrid medieval songs as well as performances of actual medieval repertoire. In modeling their songs and sounds after historical recordings of medieval music, Dead Can Dance also adopted some of the ideological parameters of these performances and historical reconstructions. Examining the output of Dead Can Dance …

The History Of The Marimba, Daniel Rager

Music Faculty Publications

The author presents an international and historical history of one of the earliest melodic percussion instruments made by man. His research suggests the instrument was widespread throughout Asia and Africa, although many other regions claim it to have originated in their country.

Known by many names and created from an endless array of materials, this paper reflects the marimbas evolution from the fourteenth century to present day. The writer’s research encompasses the marimbas social roles, musical functions, timbres and styles across many countries as well as its evolution into the twenty-first century.

The Composing Of "Musick" In The English Language: The Development Of The English Cantata, 1700-1750, Jennifer Cable

Music Faculty Publications

The cantata as cultivated by Alessandro Scarlatti and his contemporaries Alessandro Stradella and Giovanni Bononcini was the model for the early development of the English cantata, "which remained a solo vocal genre in England throughout the eighteenth century, namely 1710-1800. By focusing on specific musical elements, such as cantata format (recitative-aria-recitative-aria or aria-recitative-aria), song forms, motivic use, textual content, instrumental requirements and performance venues, the evolution of the English cantata can be observed during the first half of the eighteenth century, developing from a simple imitation of the Italian form to a genre in its own right.¹

Convergence And Divergence In Peter Mennin's Canzona, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

In a brief but perspicacious study of Mennin' s music in 1954, Walter Hendl describes the composer as "a consummate craftsman who devotes great attention to the organization of materials." Although Hendl may not have known Canzona, which had been premiered in 1951 but not published until the year of his essay, the author's statement could well have been written with Mennin's sole piece for band specifically in mind. Not only is every aspect of Canzona integrally related to every other, but the relationships are deployed with a remarkable economy of means.

The Origin Of Armstrong's Hot Fives And Hot Sevens, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

It has been almost fifty years since Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings of 1925-1928 were first recognized in print as a watershed of jazz history and the means by which the trumpeter emerged as the style's first transcendent figure. Since then these views have only intensified. The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens have come to be regarded as harbingers of all jazz since, with Armstrong's status as the “single most creative and innovative force in jazz history” and an “American genius” now well beyond dispute. This study does not question these claims but seeks, rather, to determine …

Stride! Fats, Jimmy, Lion, Lamb, And All The Other Ticklers By John L. Fell And Terkild Vinding, Giant Strides: The Legacy Of Dick Wellstood By Edward Meyer (Book Reviews), Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

As their titles suggest, these books focus on stride pianists rather than on the style itself. Well researched and written by experienced jazz enthusiasts, the books approach their subject from opposite points of view. Stride! provides a brief survey of the idiom followed by biographical sketches of players identified or associated with stride; Giant Strides recounts the life of a player who concluded the stride legacy.

Chopin And His Imitators: Noted Emulations Of The "True Style" Of Performance, Jonathan D. Bellman

Music Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resonances In The British Invasion, 1965-1968, Jonathan D. Bellman

Music Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From Jazz To Swing: African-American Jazz Musicians And Their Music, 1890-1935 By Thomas Hennessey (Book Review), Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

According to Hennessey, the purpose of the present text, an extension of his dissertation, "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and Their Music, 1917-1935" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1973), is to trace the interaction between the enormous sociological changes in America and the music of African American musicians from the origin of jazz to the beginning of the swing era. He claims that "the transformation of jazz from a primarily local music rooted in black folk traditions to the tightly managed product of a national industry controlled by white businessmen and aimed at a predominantly white mass market paralleled …

The Triumph Of Timelessness Over Time In Hindemith's "Turandot Scherzo" From The Symphonic Metamorphosis Of Themes By Carl Maria Von Weber, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Hindemith's title of his four-movement von Weber suite of 1943 poses a problem. The composer's characteristic reticence about his sources delayed their documentation for some twenty years, whereupon it was found that the Symphonic Metamorphosis was based, not only on themes, but on complete pieces. Rather than "thematic transformation," the "metamorphosis" of the title would thus be more accurately regarded as "recomposition," in which changes of tone system, timbre, harmony, rhythm, and form, in addition to the melody itself, transform every level and component of the original composition's structure. This study attempts to demonstrate how Hindemith achieves such a metamorphosis …

Blues For You Johnny: Johnny Dodds And His "Wild Man Blues" Recordings Of 1927 And 1938, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Shortly after Johnny Dodd's death Sidney Bechet invited Johnny's brother to join his New Orleans Feetwarmers in a recording honoring Bechet's hometown musical colleague and lifelong friend. Although Baby Dodds pronounced "Blues for You, Johnny," recorded in Chicago on September 6, 1940, a "fine tribute," Down Beat found vocalist Herb Jeffries "from hunger on blues." A more fitting memorial would have been "Wild Man Blues" cut by Bechet a few months previously. Said to be his favorite number, "Wild Man Blues" was recorded by Dodds three times in 1927 and once again in 1938. This study examines Johnny Dodds's style …

Musical Metamorphoses In Hindemith's "March" From The Symphonic Metamorphosis Of Themes By Carl Maria Von Weber, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

From the composer we learn nothing about his approaches to the construction of this piece or about specific methods of musical metamorphosis. Hindemith, in fact, considered such knowledge useless, as he trenchantly observed in an early autobiographical note: " ... for people with ears my things are perfectly easy to understand, so an analysis is superfluous. For people without ears such cribs can't help." Indeed, one is struck, not by the differences, but by the similarities between the March and its prototype, von Weber's Marcia from Huit pièces for piano duet, Op. 60, No. 7, composed in 1819. But while …

The Genesis Of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

Although far from overlooked by jazz writers, the origins of Oliver's Creole Band remain confused and obscure. This article attempts to clarify the Creole Band's lineage by collating and interpreting relevant material from oral histories, newspapers, census records, photographs, and other primary sources. To the extent that there may exist undiscovered and unexamined documents, these findings must remain incomplete and should be considered a report in progress.

Toward A Lexicon For The Style Hongrois, Jonathan D. Bellman

Music Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.