Pub Date : 2022-04-08DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000074
R. Ebright
{"title":"Met Opera on Demand https://www.metopera.org/season/on-demand/","authors":"R. Ebright","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000074","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"244 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47181254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-08DOI: 10.1017/S1752196322000037
Rebecca Anna Schreiber
Abstract In the folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights, the narrator Scheherazade escapes the Sultan's physical and sexual brutality through her storytelling; in the dramatic symphony Scheherazade.2, composed by John Adams (2014), the music and its programmatic commentary evoke modern images of women facing violence and oppression. Through a musical story of empowerment and a construction of gender and ethnic identity, Adams utilizes program music's narrative and representational components to challenge contemporary power dynamics on a global scale. Typically, a work like this might be viewed through one of two methodological lenses. A feminist critique of Scheherazade.2 might examine the ways in which the piece confronts misogyny and offers reparation. An orientalist critique might examine the ways in which the piece's invocation of Scheherazade combines with musical and programmatic exoticism to project a cultural “Other.” This article blends these two lenses, using the framework of feminist orientalism to examine the intertwined implications of both angles of critique in the context of transnational feminism. As a Western project alluding to the Arabian world of Scheherazade and the Sultan to tell a story about misogyny, Scheherazade.2 effectively construes such issues of misogyny as “Eastern.” The effect of displacing these problems of violence and oppression onto the East arguably provides a more palatable way for Western audiences to critique the West itself, but ultimately impedes transnational efforts. While seeking broad-scale reparation and advocacy, therefore, Scheherazade.2 nevertheless reinscribes orientalist stereotypes through the constructed narrative of a gendered and ethnic “Other.” A feminist orientalist critique draws out the paradoxical nuances of Scheherazade.2, parsing the dynamic network of musical and extra-musical factors that shape interpretations of the piece and its reparative potential. By considering the complex layers of agency, identity, and interaction that create new meanings in different contexts, this critique highlights the ways in which Scheherazade.2 works to redress issues of misogyny while also perpetuating discourses of essentialization and appropriation. This article argues overall that, by recognizing the feminist orientalist implications of Scheherazade.2, the reparative potential of the piece can be foregrounded and genuinely realized in a transnational context.
{"title":"A Multiplicity of Stories: Reading Feminist Orientalism in Scheherazade.2","authors":"Rebecca Anna Schreiber","doi":"10.1017/S1752196322000037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196322000037","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights, the narrator Scheherazade escapes the Sultan's physical and sexual brutality through her storytelling; in the dramatic symphony Scheherazade.2, composed by John Adams (2014), the music and its programmatic commentary evoke modern images of women facing violence and oppression. Through a musical story of empowerment and a construction of gender and ethnic identity, Adams utilizes program music's narrative and representational components to challenge contemporary power dynamics on a global scale. Typically, a work like this might be viewed through one of two methodological lenses. A feminist critique of Scheherazade.2 might examine the ways in which the piece confronts misogyny and offers reparation. An orientalist critique might examine the ways in which the piece's invocation of Scheherazade combines with musical and programmatic exoticism to project a cultural “Other.” This article blends these two lenses, using the framework of feminist orientalism to examine the intertwined implications of both angles of critique in the context of transnational feminism. As a Western project alluding to the Arabian world of Scheherazade and the Sultan to tell a story about misogyny, Scheherazade.2 effectively construes such issues of misogyny as “Eastern.” The effect of displacing these problems of violence and oppression onto the East arguably provides a more palatable way for Western audiences to critique the West itself, but ultimately impedes transnational efforts. While seeking broad-scale reparation and advocacy, therefore, Scheherazade.2 nevertheless reinscribes orientalist stereotypes through the constructed narrative of a gendered and ethnic “Other.” A feminist orientalist critique draws out the paradoxical nuances of Scheherazade.2, parsing the dynamic network of musical and extra-musical factors that shape interpretations of the piece and its reparative potential. By considering the complex layers of agency, identity, and interaction that create new meanings in different contexts, this critique highlights the ways in which Scheherazade.2 works to redress issues of misogyny while also perpetuating discourses of essentialization and appropriation. This article argues overall that, by recognizing the feminist orientalist implications of Scheherazade.2, the reparative potential of the piece can be foregrounded and genuinely realized in a transnational context.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"206 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45197855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-07DOI: 10.1017/s1752196322000086
Sarah Suhadolnik
The voices of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886–1939) and Bessie Smith (1894–1937) loom large in the music of the United States. In life, these performers dominated U.S. vaudeville theater circuits and made 200+ commercial blues records between them (with sales numbering in the millions). In my lifetime, these queer Black women—pioneers in their respective musical fields—have been newly embraced as the type of underrepresented historical figures that can, and should, anchor more inclusive notions of our collective past, present, and future. The side-by-side streaming of George C. Wolfe’sMa Rainey’s Black Bottom and Dee Rees’s Bessie in 2020 brings such efforts into sharp relief. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the product of an agreement between the estate of U.S. playwright August Wilson and actor Denzel Washington that will facilitate the production of film adaptations of all ten of Wilson’s plays. Prior to the 2020 release of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, only Fences and The Piano Lesson had received such treatment—limiting the extent to which Wilson’s influential work, and the experiences it illuminates, can be disseminated to a broad public audience. Bessie represents a similar commitment to more equitable public representations of Black American music, ultimately requiring more than twenty years to develop as a film and produce. As such, the pairing constitutes a compelling opportunity to examine the role of sound in bringing these powerful stories to life. Both films focus the viewer’s attention on the past and present economics of U.S. popular music and associated celebrity. Where Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom makes the film’s music a window onto another moment in time, Bessie makes music inextricable from the identity and performance of the film’s lead. The film of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom derives most of its atmospheric realism from Branford Marsalis’s film score. Indeed, the visual setting for the film is sparse. Suggestive snapshots of select street corners, Ma Rainey’s hotel, car, and the industrial backdrop of early twentieth-century Chicago are all that deepen the historic character of the stark brick, concrete, wood-paneled recording studio, and basement rooms in which the bulk of the film’s action takes place. Marsalis’s scoring makes strategic use of this. The underscoring is provocatively stripped down in similar ways, giving the patter of Wilson’s gripping dialogue—adapted by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and performed by acting powerhouses Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, and Glynn Turman—additional weight and resonance. Once one’s eyes adjust to the noticeable lack of supersaturated, twenty-first-century special effects, one’s ears immediately begin to pick up on how the score cues the viewer in to the flow of life that carries the plot along. For instance, impressionistic piano and percussion are all that signal the synchronized, mechanized, rhythms of factory work, which serve as a larger backdrop for life on the Chicago street-corner where the recordi
{"title":"George C. Wolfe. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Netflix, 2020. 1 hr, 34 min - Dee Rees. Bessie HBO Films, 2015. 1 hr, 55 min.","authors":"Sarah Suhadolnik","doi":"10.1017/s1752196322000086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196322000086","url":null,"abstract":"The voices of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886–1939) and Bessie Smith (1894–1937) loom large in the music of the United States. In life, these performers dominated U.S. vaudeville theater circuits and made 200+ commercial blues records between them (with sales numbering in the millions). In my lifetime, these queer Black women—pioneers in their respective musical fields—have been newly embraced as the type of underrepresented historical figures that can, and should, anchor more inclusive notions of our collective past, present, and future. The side-by-side streaming of George C. Wolfe’sMa Rainey’s Black Bottom and Dee Rees’s Bessie in 2020 brings such efforts into sharp relief. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the product of an agreement between the estate of U.S. playwright August Wilson and actor Denzel Washington that will facilitate the production of film adaptations of all ten of Wilson’s plays. Prior to the 2020 release of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, only Fences and The Piano Lesson had received such treatment—limiting the extent to which Wilson’s influential work, and the experiences it illuminates, can be disseminated to a broad public audience. Bessie represents a similar commitment to more equitable public representations of Black American music, ultimately requiring more than twenty years to develop as a film and produce. As such, the pairing constitutes a compelling opportunity to examine the role of sound in bringing these powerful stories to life. Both films focus the viewer’s attention on the past and present economics of U.S. popular music and associated celebrity. Where Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom makes the film’s music a window onto another moment in time, Bessie makes music inextricable from the identity and performance of the film’s lead. The film of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom derives most of its atmospheric realism from Branford Marsalis’s film score. Indeed, the visual setting for the film is sparse. Suggestive snapshots of select street corners, Ma Rainey’s hotel, car, and the industrial backdrop of early twentieth-century Chicago are all that deepen the historic character of the stark brick, concrete, wood-paneled recording studio, and basement rooms in which the bulk of the film’s action takes place. Marsalis’s scoring makes strategic use of this. The underscoring is provocatively stripped down in similar ways, giving the patter of Wilson’s gripping dialogue—adapted by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and performed by acting powerhouses Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, and Glynn Turman—additional weight and resonance. Once one’s eyes adjust to the noticeable lack of supersaturated, twenty-first-century special effects, one’s ears immediately begin to pick up on how the score cues the viewer in to the flow of life that carries the plot along. For instance, impressionistic piano and percussion are all that signal the synchronized, mechanized, rhythms of factory work, which serve as a larger backdrop for life on the Chicago street-corner where the recordi","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"246 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42403081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S1752196321000456
R. Beaudoin
Abstract American bass-baritone Dashon Burton's 2015 recording of the song sermon “He Never Said a Mumberlin’ Word” provides a case study of the interaction between sung melodies and audible breaths in the expression of a lyric. Acknowledging the relationship between Burton's performance and earlier notated arrangements by Roland Hayes, J. Rosamond Johnson, William Arms Fischer, and John W. Work, this study draws an arc from the macro-level of the song sermon's oral and notated history to the micro-level of Burton's sung syllables and, finally, to a spectrographic examination of his individual breaths. One of these, the solemnizing breath that inaugurates the fifth stanza of the work, is pinpointed as the expressive denouement of Burton's track. A contrast is drawn between the liturgical framework of Hayes's arrangement and the images of anti-racist protest marches that accompany Burton's recording. An emphasis on the granular aspects of Burton's voice invokes Sanden's concept of corporeal liveness, Barthes's writings on cinematic sound, and Bain's recognition of breath sounds as music. Studying the narrative totality of Burton's utterance engenders a connection between singer and orator, and builds a historical continuity between Burton and his antecedents.
{"title":"Dashon Burton's Song Sermon: Corporeal Liveness and the Solemnizing Breath","authors":"R. Beaudoin","doi":"10.1017/S1752196321000456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196321000456","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract American bass-baritone Dashon Burton's 2015 recording of the song sermon “He Never Said a Mumberlin’ Word” provides a case study of the interaction between sung melodies and audible breaths in the expression of a lyric. Acknowledging the relationship between Burton's performance and earlier notated arrangements by Roland Hayes, J. Rosamond Johnson, William Arms Fischer, and John W. Work, this study draws an arc from the macro-level of the song sermon's oral and notated history to the micro-level of Burton's sung syllables and, finally, to a spectrographic examination of his individual breaths. One of these, the solemnizing breath that inaugurates the fifth stanza of the work, is pinpointed as the expressive denouement of Burton's track. A contrast is drawn between the liturgical framework of Hayes's arrangement and the images of anti-racist protest marches that accompany Burton's recording. An emphasis on the granular aspects of Burton's voice invokes Sanden's concept of corporeal liveness, Barthes's writings on cinematic sound, and Bain's recognition of breath sounds as music. Studying the narrative totality of Burton's utterance engenders a connection between singer and orator, and builds a historical continuity between Burton and his antecedents.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42539000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196321000535
I. Mosley
{"title":"The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America by Melissa D. Burrage, Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2019.","authors":"I. Mosley","doi":"10.1017/s1752196321000535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196321000535","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"123 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43879004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196321000572
{"title":"SAM volume 16 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1752196321000572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196321000572","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":" ","pages":"b1 - b5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44555863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S1752196321000481
León F. García Corona
Abstract From September 24 to October 2, 1968, two apparently unrelated events took place in an area of less than two square miles in downtown Mexico City: Duke Ellington performed in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Mexican army massacred hundreds of protesting students. The student-driven movement of 1968 attracted people from different backgrounds in Mexican society. Their desire for freedom of speech and civil liberties echoed the struggles of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Received as El rey del jazz (the King of Jazz), Ellington's visit to Mexico constituted a musical place of cultural encounters. In this essay, I explore the connections between jazz, cultural diplomacy, race, and social justice. I argue that neither paradoxes nor seeming contradictions account for the fluidity of social activism on both sides of the border and its connections with playing and listening practices of jazz; rather I look at this social phenomenon as an example of an audiotopia, borrowing Josh Kun's term for a musical space of differences where contradictions and conflicts don't cancel each other out—a kind of identificatory contact zone. I do so by setting aside nationalistic approaches to music and viewing jazz as more than an emblem of U.S. national identity; rather, I explore the transnational aspects of the cultural artifacts resulting from these exchanges and the dynamic processes that took place in Ellington's visit with and among Mexicans.
{"title":"Duke Ellington, El Rey del Jazz and the Mexico City Massacre of 1968","authors":"León F. García Corona","doi":"10.1017/S1752196321000481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196321000481","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract From September 24 to October 2, 1968, two apparently unrelated events took place in an area of less than two square miles in downtown Mexico City: Duke Ellington performed in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and the Mexican army massacred hundreds of protesting students. The student-driven movement of 1968 attracted people from different backgrounds in Mexican society. Their desire for freedom of speech and civil liberties echoed the struggles of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Received as El rey del jazz (the King of Jazz), Ellington's visit to Mexico constituted a musical place of cultural encounters. In this essay, I explore the connections between jazz, cultural diplomacy, race, and social justice. I argue that neither paradoxes nor seeming contradictions account for the fluidity of social activism on both sides of the border and its connections with playing and listening practices of jazz; rather I look at this social phenomenon as an example of an audiotopia, borrowing Josh Kun's term for a musical space of differences where contradictions and conflicts don't cancel each other out—a kind of identificatory contact zone. I do so by setting aside nationalistic approaches to music and viewing jazz as more than an emblem of U.S. national identity; rather, I explore the transnational aspects of the cultural artifacts resulting from these exchanges and the dynamic processes that took place in Ellington's visit with and among Mexicans.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"69 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44746782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s175219632100050x
L. Caplan
{"title":"Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz By Katherine A. Baber. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.","authors":"L. Caplan","doi":"10.1017/s175219632100050x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s175219632100050x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"115 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43216975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/S1752196321000493
V. Ivanova
Abstract This article illuminates an underexplored moment in the formation of the well-known archive of recordings of incarcerated people collected by the folklorists John and Alan Lomax. In 1934, John Lomax wrote to 350 correctional institutions across the country, asking officials to transcribe the texts of songs “current and popular among prisoners or ‘made up’ by them.” Despite contacting institutions incarcerating people of many races, ethnicities, genders, and ages, however, the Lomaxes ultimately continued to center on music performed by Black men in Southern prisons. Because of this, I position the letter as a critical juncture in the formation of the Lomaxes’ prison work. Choices made by prison officials (whether to respond to the letter and in what manner to respond) and by the Lomaxes themselves (whether to express interest in songs addressed by correspondents) were influenced by perceptions of the role of music in relation to criminality, imprisonment, reform, and race. These perceptions in turn defined the boundaries of the Lomax prison project. The correspondence considered in this article therefore offers a counternarrative to popular representations of music and incarceration and suggests the limits of the well-known Lomax prison song collection.
{"title":"Defining the Songs of Incarceration: The Lomax Prison Project at a Critical Juncture","authors":"V. Ivanova","doi":"10.1017/S1752196321000493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196321000493","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article illuminates an underexplored moment in the formation of the well-known archive of recordings of incarcerated people collected by the folklorists John and Alan Lomax. In 1934, John Lomax wrote to 350 correctional institutions across the country, asking officials to transcribe the texts of songs “current and popular among prisoners or ‘made up’ by them.” Despite contacting institutions incarcerating people of many races, ethnicities, genders, and ages, however, the Lomaxes ultimately continued to center on music performed by Black men in Southern prisons. Because of this, I position the letter as a critical juncture in the formation of the Lomaxes’ prison work. Choices made by prison officials (whether to respond to the letter and in what manner to respond) and by the Lomaxes themselves (whether to express interest in songs addressed by correspondents) were influenced by perceptions of the role of music in relation to criminality, imprisonment, reform, and race. These perceptions in turn defined the boundaries of the Lomax prison project. The correspondence considered in this article therefore offers a counternarrative to popular representations of music and incarceration and suggests the limits of the well-known Lomax prison song collection.","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"92 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43977576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-01DOI: 10.1017/s1752196321000547
David Thurmaier
The symphonies of Charles Ives have undergone a recording renaissance in the past five years, with commercial releases coming from three prominent conductors and orchestras. The first set, recorded by Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony in 2014 and 2016, featured the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies over two separate albums. Three years later (2019), Michael Tilson Thomas, whose recordings of the symphonies from the 1980s have been touchstones for years, rerecorded the Third and Fourth Symphonies with the San Francisco Symphony. The latest entry into the Ives symphony collection may surprise at first blush; after a series of concerts and events focusing on connections between the music of Dvořák and Ives, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic recorded all four Ives symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon in February 2020, just before the coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic shut down the ensemble. It was released later that year on streaming services, and in early 2021 on CD. Of all the recent entries, Dudamel’s is perhaps the most exciting, given his celebrity status as a conductor as well as his previously unknown interest in Ives’s music. On the whole, this recording does not disappoint and presents these works vividly, with a freshness that captures their charm, craft, diversity, and riches. It may seem like an odd time for this renewed attention to Ives’s orchestral music given the significant focus these days on composers unlike Ives (with respect to race and gender). However, Ives’s symphonies resonate in more modern and striking ways than ever through the lens of our fractured and confusing 2022 world. The symphonies aurally depict a panorama of American music, aesthetic choices, and inspirations that mirror many elements of their creation, from the distinct European models of the First, the hybrid of European models and American source materials of the Second, the subdued spirituality of the Third, and the enigmatic Fourth with its myriad performance challenges and fusion of different styles. These works illustrate the four musical traditions in Ives’s music identified by J. Peter Burkholder in his 1996 essay for Charles Ives and His World: the American experimental tradition, American hymnody, European classical music, and American popular music. Listening to this collection today reminds one of how extensive Ives’s musical knowledge was, on the one hand quoting Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, and on the other quoting Stephen Foster, protestant hymns, and ragtime licks. One concrete way to compare the musical interpretations of these three different recent Ives symphony recordings is to examine their lengths for insight into performance tempi. Here are timings for Ives’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Third Symphony: Ives, Symphony #3 Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony (2016)
{"title":"Charles Ives, Complete Symphonies Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel, conductor. Deutsche Grammophon, 2 CDs, B0033369-02, 2020.","authors":"David Thurmaier","doi":"10.1017/s1752196321000547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1752196321000547","url":null,"abstract":"The symphonies of Charles Ives have undergone a recording renaissance in the past five years, with commercial releases coming from three prominent conductors and orchestras. The first set, recorded by Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony in 2014 and 2016, featured the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies over two separate albums. Three years later (2019), Michael Tilson Thomas, whose recordings of the symphonies from the 1980s have been touchstones for years, rerecorded the Third and Fourth Symphonies with the San Francisco Symphony. The latest entry into the Ives symphony collection may surprise at first blush; after a series of concerts and events focusing on connections between the music of Dvořák and Ives, Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic recorded all four Ives symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon in February 2020, just before the coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic shut down the ensemble. It was released later that year on streaming services, and in early 2021 on CD. Of all the recent entries, Dudamel’s is perhaps the most exciting, given his celebrity status as a conductor as well as his previously unknown interest in Ives’s music. On the whole, this recording does not disappoint and presents these works vividly, with a freshness that captures their charm, craft, diversity, and riches. It may seem like an odd time for this renewed attention to Ives’s orchestral music given the significant focus these days on composers unlike Ives (with respect to race and gender). However, Ives’s symphonies resonate in more modern and striking ways than ever through the lens of our fractured and confusing 2022 world. The symphonies aurally depict a panorama of American music, aesthetic choices, and inspirations that mirror many elements of their creation, from the distinct European models of the First, the hybrid of European models and American source materials of the Second, the subdued spirituality of the Third, and the enigmatic Fourth with its myriad performance challenges and fusion of different styles. These works illustrate the four musical traditions in Ives’s music identified by J. Peter Burkholder in his 1996 essay for Charles Ives and His World: the American experimental tradition, American hymnody, European classical music, and American popular music. Listening to this collection today reminds one of how extensive Ives’s musical knowledge was, on the one hand quoting Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, and on the other quoting Stephen Foster, protestant hymns, and ragtime licks. One concrete way to compare the musical interpretations of these three different recent Ives symphony recordings is to examine their lengths for insight into performance tempi. Here are timings for Ives’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Third Symphony: Ives, Symphony #3 Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony (2016)","PeriodicalId":42557,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Society for American Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"126 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42937218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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