January 31

RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
Émigré Composers in America, 1933-1945

From 1933 to 1945, the period of Nazi Germany, a number of prominent European composers fled their homelands and sought refuge in the United States. Many were subjects of interest in the American journal Modern Music (New York, 1924-1946).  Sketches by Viennese artist Benedikt Fred Dolbin (a pen name for Fred Pollack), a composition student of Arnold Schoenberg, include some of the most well-known composers of the period. After establishing a successful career drawing for a number of Austrian and German publications–including Der Wiener Tag, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, and Berliner Tageblatt–Dolbin, of Jewish descent, received a Berufsverbot order, which prohibited his artwork from appearing in the German press.  Soon after, Dolbin, like the composers he sketched below, emigrated to America.

 

    

   

Modern Music, Vol. XVIII No. 2 (January-February 1941): [104-105].

RIPM search tip: To view more illustrations in Modern Music, access RIPM’s Retrospective Index and Online Archive, and fill in the following fields: Periodical = Modern Music [1924-1946]; Type = Illustration.  For more information on Modern Music, click here.

Click here to subscribe to RIPM’s Curios, News, and Chronicles! 

When is our next posting? To find out, follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

***

RIPM is an international non-profit organization preserving and providing access to music periodicals published in more than twenty countries between approximately 1760 and 1966, from Bach to Bernstein. Functioning under the auspices of the International Musicological Society, and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, RIPM produces four electronic publications: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals, Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text, European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (Preservation Series, forthcoming).
WWW.RIPM.ORG
Category: Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
Émigré Composers in America, 1933-1945
January 24

RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
French Colonial Musical Life
as Depicted in L’Illustration

The Parisian journal L’Illustration was the first illustrated newsweekly in France. Between 1843 and 1899, the journal published over 3,350 engravings of musical interest, offering an expansive visual account of contemporary musical life. The journal’s focus on French culture included that of musical life in the French colonies. We bring the following images to your attention not only because of their historical importance, but also because the illustrated press is an excellent, though neglected source for the study of (post)colonialism, race, diaspora, and ethnomusicology.

A Buddhist ceremony, first published in Charles Lemire’s L’Indochine (1884)
L’Illustration, Vol. LXXXIV (25 October 1884): 276.

 

Trumpeters of the King of Boussa, in Niger
L’Illustration, Vol. CIX (9 January 1897): 17.

 

Chinese musicians
L’Illustration, Vol. LXII (20 September 1873): 197.

 

A trio of musicians from Madagascar
L’Illustration, Vol. CVI (9 November 1895): 379.

 

Musicians in performance from Tétouan, Morocco
L’Illustration, Vol. VII (18 April 1846): 104.

 

Guinean King Dinah-Salifou, his Queen, and their retinue, including musicians
L’Illustration, Vol. XCIV (6 July 1889): 12.

 

RIPM search tip: To access more on non-Western musics, search the name of a country as a keyword.  For example, a search for “Madagascar” as a keyword in RIPM’s Retrospective Index and Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals reveals 180 records in German, English, French, and Italian journals.

Click here to subscribe to RIPM’s Curios, News, and Chronicles! 

When is our next posting? To find out, follow us on Twitter and Facebook

***

RIPM is an international non-profit organization preserving and providing access to music periodicals published in more than twenty countries between approximately 1760 and 1966, from Bach to Bernstein. Functioning under the auspices of the International Musicological Society, and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, RIPM produces four electronic publications: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals, Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text, European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (also Preservation Series, forthcoming).  
WWW.RIPM.ORG
Category: Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
French Colonial Musical Life
as Depicted in L’Illustration
January 17

RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
Horse Racing on the Opera Stage
How Did They Do It?

One of the scenes in Monréal and Blondeau’s Paris port de mer, which played at the Parisian Théâtre des Variétés in 1891, involves a horse race.

L’Illustration, Vol. XCVII (14 March 1891): 236.

An engraving published in L’Illustration beautifully depicts this realistic and motion-filled horse race from the perspective of the audience. From this view, however, it is difficult to discern exactly how this event was produced. Are the horses mechanical? Are they real, but restrained in some way? How did they do it? The next image reveals the technology used to create the illusion. When you think you have it all figured out, scroll down!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ibid.

Astoundingly, the stage of the Théâtre des Variétés was rigged with three separate treadmills, upon which three living, breathing horses, ridden by three likely-professional jockeys, galloped unrestrained. To create the illusion of the horses running on a track, the pickets of the fence in the foreground were attached to a belt, which moved concurrently to the 95 yards of scenery canvas being unwound in the background. So, as the horses seemingly move in one direction, the sliding fence pickets and scenery canvas moved in the opposite direction, giving the feeling of motion . Et voilà, a horse race on stage!

Did you figure it out? Let us know on our Twitter or Facebook!

 

RIPM search tip: A combined search for “horse race” as a keyword in RIPM Retrospective Index and Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals generates a list of 109 results, including a four-verse song published in an 1824 issue of the London journal The Harmonicon entitled, “The Race-Horse”.

Click here to subscribe to RIPM’s Curios, News, and Chronicles! 

***

RIPM is an international non-profit organization preserving and providing access to music periodicals published in more than twenty countries between approximately 1760 and 1966, from Bach to Bernstein. Functioning under the auspices of the International Musicological Society, and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, RIPM produces four electronic publications: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals, Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text, European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (forthcoming).  
WWW.RIPM.ORG
Category: Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
Horse Racing on the Opera Stage
How Did They Do It?