Category: Music

Some links: 55

  • I was looking for packing material at my cousin’s place and came across a Saturday edition obit for Jerry Ragovoy; otherwise I would have missed it altogether. Ragovoy co-wrote “Piece of My Heart,” which was recorded in a wrenching live performance by Janis Joplin and later, more regrettably, by a country pop singer.
  • Linda Himelstein reports on research that looks at how dyslexics master syllable-based writing systems (and their languages) as opposed to character-based system.
  • Alan Feuer filed a fine report on the natural areas of Jamaica Bay, still the only National Wildlife Refuge that you can get to via subway. Mylan Cannon adds a great photograph of conservationist Don Riepe, an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) on a ground-level nest, and a passenger jet in the background.

    Jamaica Bay’s conservationists — fishermen and firefighters, limousine drivers and owners of small boats — are not your typical tree-hugging types, not “Upper West Side, Park Slope, brownstone Brooklyn people,” as Mr. Riepe put it. They are people like Mr. Lewandowski from the canoe club, a transit official…

Cole Porter in Japanese

Is it an opera or a musical? Anthony Tommasini offers a distinction that might settle the argument discussion that Leta and I regularly have:

Both genres seek to combine words and music in dynamic, felicitous and, to invoke that all-purpose term, artistic ways. But in opera, music is the driving force; in musical theater, words come first.

This explains why for centuries opera-goers have revered works written in languages they do not speak. Though supertitles have revolutionized the art form, many buffs grew up without this innovation and loved opera anyway.

To be free

A slightly belated tribute to Billy Taylor, who passed away this week after a long long career, as reported by A Blog Supreme. Several years ago, I attended a series of “jazz appreciation 101” talks by Dr. Taylor, given in Kennedy Center rehearsal space. He was a welcoming, generous teacher. One of the things I remember is his observation that you can learn a lot about jazz harmony just by mastering Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.”

Slippery

In the European classical tradition, the piano, with its twelve precise divisions of the octave—inflexible, immovable—has dictated musical thinking for several centuries. Once developed, the piano quickly became a machine of almost tyrannical influence throughout the Western world. Its division of the octave into twelve intervals, each mathematically equidistant from its neighbors, forces one to regard pitches as discrete entities, like nations with strictly policed [borders]. A piano-generated melody goes from point to point with no expressive sliding in between. This is not a fault—Bach and Mozart built their entire work on the notion—rather, it is a stylistic choice. Since the advent of the black-and-white keyboard… Western instrumental music has had to state itself according to the twelve discrete, individual pitches of the scale, resulting in a more limited universe of emotional expression.

—John Adams, Hallelujah Junction, ch. 10, “The Machine in the Garden”

The B feature

Via Arts & Letters Daily, Lucie Skeaping recaps what we know of 17th century jigs, bawdy theatrical afterpieces.

Were jigs recited over the tunes, did they contain song interludes, were they through-sung like mini-operas, or did all three of these at various times apply? Of the 12 surviving English jig texts roughly half contain specific tune titles printed at various points alongside the text, that is, the names of popular ballads or dance tunes of the day.