June 28

Debussy and Saint-Saëns as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America

Today from Viafora’s “Gallery of Celebrities in Musical America we present the artist’s caricatures of the distinguished French composers Claude Debussy and Camille Saint-Saëns. We also include several interesting and amusing texts about them from Musical America. Why was Debussy “the most misunderstood man in the artistic world”? Why did Saint-Saëns insist on bringing his toothbrush to an evening soirée? Read on to find out!


Claude Debussy
Vol. 24 No. 26 ( 28 October 1916): 7; Vol. 18 No. 23 (11 October 1913): 2.

“Keeping in Touch with World’s Music Growth Through the Piano,”
Vol. 13 No. 13 (4 February 1911): 13.

Vol. 13 No. 22 (8 April 1911): 7. 

The following article was written by the soprano Maggie Teyte, whom Debussy personally chose to replace Mary Garden in the role of Mélisande for his opera, Pelléas et Mélisande.


Vol. 18 No. 23 (11 October 1913): 2. 

Read more from this article by clicking here: Maggie Teyte Corrects Some False Ideas About Debussy

Below, Mary Garden, who originated the role of Mélisande, speaks about her relationship with Debussy.

Debussy playing Debussy…

 

*         *         *


A 1900 photograph of Saint-Saëns alongside Viafora’s caricature of  the composer as “Samson” 
(left) Camille Saint-Saëns. photographed by Pierre Petit (1900); (right) Vol. 25 No. 2 (11 November 1916): 7.


“Echoes of Music Abroad,” Vol. 16 No. 11 (20 July 1912): 11. 

 

 


Vol. 35 No. 9 (24 December 1921): 1. 

Read more from this article by clicking here: “Musical World Loses Grand Old Man”

 

 

With the conclusion of this post, RIPM’s Curios, News and Chronicles signs off for a brief summer hiatus.  We will be back in September with more compelling and entertaining material from the musical press. In the meantime, the staff at the RIPM Center wishes you a wonderful summer!

 

RIPM search tip: In the event that you wish to pursue research on these two composers, note that the name Debussy appears in the RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals in 2,020 citations, and that of Saint-Saëns in 2,787 citations.  In RIPM’s European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), Debussy’s name appears on 17,767 pages, and Saint-Saëns on 31,692 pages! 

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, RIPM European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (Preservation Series, forthcoming).

WWW.RIPM.ORG

Category: Curios and Chronicles, Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on Debussy and Saint-Saëns as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America
June 20

RIPM’s Recent and Forthcoming Publications 
Part II: 2016-2017

Editor (Baltimore): To date, RIPM offers access to some 291 full-text searchable music periodicals, to over 1.1 million full-text pages online and to some 901,000 annotated citations. Over the past two years, RIPM’s Associate Editor Nicoletta Betta has presented a paper dealing with RIPM’s recently completed and current indexing projects at the annual congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML, held respectively in Rome, 2016; and Riga, 2017). 

Today we continue with the second installment of this series. 

*             *             *

In 2016, fourteen journals were indexed and will be available in the Retrospective Index, along with, in most cases, the full-text of the indexed titles.

In my presentation, I will provide basic publication information for all periodicals, the name of the RIPM editor or collaborator responsible for its indexing, and then select one or more journals for discussion, explaining why they were chosen for inclusion in RIPM. For clarity, the journals are grouped by country of publication.

RIPM collaborators Peter Sühring (Berlin) and Alexander Staub (Leipzig) continued indexing the monumental Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (NZM) by expanding its index to include the “Kleine Zeitung” (little newspaper), a section dedicated to reporting on musical life in Germany. This column, which increased in length and content year after year, regularly contains information about concerts, tours of composers and performers, obituaries, music festivals, and new opera productions. After indexing the “Kleine Zeitung” sections, our colleagues indexed the “Tagesgeschichte” (daily history) and “Vermischtes” (miscellaneous) sections. The Neue Zeitschrift für Musik is currently available in the Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text from the years 1834 to 1859.

Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Vol. LIV No. I (1861): 7.

*   *   *

Two Viennese publications were also treated: Sühring indexed Musikalischer Kurier (Vienna, 1919-22); and Staub, Musikbote (Vienna, 1924-26).

Edited by Max Graf, a pupil of Eduard Hanslick and Anton Bruckner, Musikalischer Kurier typified the complex nature of post-World War I Austria, by reflecting both the desire to preserve the old values of Austro-German musical culture and the need to accept modernist ideas. Below is the cover of the special August 1921 issue, which contains writings on the then-new Salzburg Festival.

Vol. 3 Nos. 31-35 (August 1921).

*   *   *

Collaborator David Sommerfield (Washington, D.C.) completed the index to the English-language journal, Opera Magazine (New York, 1914-16).  This periodical focused on bolstering a distinctly American musical identity by reporting on musical events in this country, such as opera productions, and repertoire, as well as singers. Alongside the sample cover below is a photo of Léonide Massine, Leon Bakst, and Igor Stravinsky from the 1916 American tour of the Ballets Russes.

 
Vol. 3 No. 3 (March 1916): 15.

*   *   *

Four Italian journals have been indexed; three by RIPM collaborator Elvidio Surian (Pesaro, Italy) and I indexed Rassegna Musicale.

The monumental Musica d’Oggi, with a publication run of over forty years, represented something new for the influential Milan publishing house, Ricordi.  While Ricordi’s previous periodicals were mainly informative bulletins, Musica d’Oggi was more scholarly, focusing principally on contemporary music.

An article in Musica d’Oggi dedicated to the namesake of the Ricordi publishing house on its 150th anniversary
Vol. 1 No. 1 (January 1958): 5.
*   *   *

La Melodia had a brief publication life, and was printed in an older newspaper-style layout. Generally, its content included information about local music events and Italian musical life, and numerous music examples.

Vol. 1 No. 3 (1 August 1869)

  
Vol. 1 No. 1 (1 July 1869): [1]; Vol. 1 No. 3 (1 August 1869): [1]. 

*   *   *

Each issue of L’Arte pianistica, published in Napoli, included a biographical article of a distinguished musical figure.  Below is just an example: the medieval music theorist Guido D’Arezzo.

Vol. 1 No. 24 (15 December 1914.

*   *   *

RIPM’s Editor of French periodicals Doris Pyee (Bordeaux) indexed the Belgian journal Sirène (Brussels, 1937-46; title changed during publication to Syrinx) and the French title, Le Domaine musical (Paris, 1954).

Sirène was founded by a group of young Belgian composers, which included Albert Huybrechts, Marcel Poot, Fernand Quinet, and André Souris. While primarily an informative bulletin about these composers’ activities, the journal also contained information about new music produced abroad, music bibliography, concerts, radio programs, and recordings. Its cover displays a distinctly modern design.

Issue 1 (March 1937).

*   *   *

Le Domaine musical focused on contemporary music.  It was founded by the late composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, and includes contributions from influential composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen.  The journal also contains photographs, including the one below of Stockhausen’s experimental music studio in Cologne, Germany.

Issue 1 (1954): [1p] 128/129.

*   *   *

Finally, RIPM added one Argentinian, one Chilean, and two Russian journals. Gabriel Caballero (New York) indexed Revista de Musica (Buenos Aires, 1927-28, 1930) and Musica Chile (Santiago, 1920-23) and collaborator Natalia Ostroumova (Moscow) treated Russian musical vestnik (1880-82) and Muzikal’naya nov (1923-24), both published in Moscow.

The main aim of La Revista de Musica was to inform its readers about foreign musical trends: the decline of the tonal system, the flourishing of new harmonic theories, and the birth of new media. The journal also reported on Western artists performing on tour in Argentina.

Vol. 1 No. 1 (July 1927): 1. 

 

For all RIPM publications, visit:
http://ripm.org/?page=AllTitles&SortBy=date

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: RIPM News | Comments Off on RIPM’s Recent and Forthcoming Publications 
Part II: 2016-2017
June 13

Leoncavallo and Montemezzi as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America

Last week, we featured Gianni Viafora’s caricatures of Puccini and of Mascagni from the artist’s “Gallery of Celebrities” in Musical America. Today we showcase his drawings of two more Italian composers, Ruggiero Leoncavallo and Italo Montemezzi. We also include several texts about the composers from Musical America, a remarkable, though little-explored documentary resource, and include links to articles sampled below! Read a section of a remarkable review of Montemezzi’s now-rarely performed opera, L’amore Dei Tre Re, “one of the most deeply affecting and full-blooded scores since Wagner,” and an absolutely scathing obituary of Leoncavallo, a man whose passing was, for one writer, “of no significance to music.”

 


Ruggiero Leoncavallo
Vol. 24 No. 11 (15 July 1916): 7; Vol. 4 No. 9 (14 July 1906): 5.

Vol. 18 No. 25 (25 October 1913): 3.

 

 

Vol. 4 No.9 (14 July 1906): 10. 

Vol. 30 No. 16 (16 August 1919): 2.

“…the demise of Leoncavallo is of no significance to music. So far as he mattered artistically the man might have died a quarter of a century ago.”

Read the entire blistering obituary here: Leoncavallo Passes

 

Another Viafora caricature of Leoncavallo
Vol. 18 No. 25 (25 October 1913): 4.

 

 

*           *           *

 

Vol. 19 No. 10 (10 January 1914): 3. 

Read a section of this article by clicking here: Montemezzi “Success Unequivocal”

 


Italo Montemezzi
Vol. 24 No. 23 (7 October 1916): 7; Vol. 19 No. 10 (10 January 1914): 3.

 

“Let Simplicity Be the Composer’s Constant Objective, Adjures Italo Montemezzi,” Vol. 31 No. 4 (22 November 1919): 3. 

 

 

Vol. 19 No. 10 (10 January 1914): 4. 

A photograph of Montemezzi (left; in red) and Viafora (right; in red)
Vol. 31 No. 4 (22 November 1919): 3.

 

RIPM search tip: For more on Viafora and his drawings in Musical America, access the RIPM Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals, as fill in the following fields: Periodical: Musical America (New York, 1898-1899, 1905-1922 [-1964]), Keyword(s): Viafora.

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, RIPM European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (Preservation Series, forthcoming).

WWW.RIPM.ORG

Category: Curios and Chronicles, Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on Leoncavallo and Montemezzi as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America
June 6

Puccini and Mascagni as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America

Last week, we introduced Gianni Viafora and his “Gallery of Celebrities” in Musical America.[1] Today we showcase his drawings of Puccini and Mascagni and compare them with contemporary photographs of the composers. We leave you to compare the skill and amusing refinement with which this all-but-forgotten artist depicts his subjects. We also include several texts from Musical America, a remarkable, though little-explored documentary resource, dealing with lesser-known elements of the composers’ lives. And, for the first time, we provide links to entire articles sampled below, no subscription required!

 


Giacomo Puccini
24 Vol. No. 1 (22 July 1916): 7; Vol. 29 No. 8 (21 December 1918): 1.

Note that Puccini is pictured lake-side, across from which is depicted his villa on Torre del Lago. Note also the tiny singing duck, perched on the end of the composer’s hunting rifle!

Puccini the Hunter
“…duck shooting, which he pursued with more energy than his composing…”

Watch this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqIdOI_Rdw
Please use your browser’s back arrow to return to this post.
(Warning: If you do not you will be watching random videos for days to come, over which we have no control!)

An anecdote:

“Personalities,” Vol. 13 No. 13 (4 February 1911): 20.


Vol. 13 No. 7 (24 December 1910): 8.

To read the entire article, click here: “Puccini at Home”

 

*       *       * 

 


Pietro Mascagni 
Vol. 24 No. 14 (5 August 1916): 7; Vol. 24 No. 2 (13 May 1916): 29. 

Vol. 23 No. 25 (22 April 1916): 19. 

Two anecdotes:

     
“What the Gossips Say,” Vol. 6 No. 6 (22 June 1907): 14; “Echoes of Music Abroad,” Vol. 15 No. 24 (20 April 1912): 12. 

 
Vol. 16 No. 11 (20 July 1912): 27; Vol. 15 No. 24 (20 April 1912): 29. 

To read both articles, click here: Mascagni’s (in)fidelity

 

Mascagni at the piano…

More Viafora coming soon…

RIPM search tip: For more on Viafora and his drawings in Musical America, access the RIPM Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals, as fill in the following fields: Periodical: Musical America (New York, 1898-1899, 1905-1922 [-1964]), Keyword(s): Viafora.

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, RIPM European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (Preservation Series, forthcoming).

WWW.RIPM.ORG

[1] See H. Robert Cohen, “Viafora’s ‘Gallery of Celebrities’ in Musical America (1915-1920),” Music Cultures in Sounds, Words and Images: Essays in Honor of Zdravko Blažeković, (Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2018): 535-569.

Category: Curios and Chronicles | Comments Off on Puccini and Mascagni as Seen by Viafora 
in Musical America
May 30

Viafora’s Caricatures in Musical America 
RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week” 
(Part One)

It was in this way that Gianni Viafora, arguably the most important caricaturist of musical personalities during the first quarter of the twentieth century, was introduced to the readers of Musical America, a journal to which he contributed extensively. [1]

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce one of the cleverest caricaturists in this city, Mr. Viafora, who is to draw pictures exclusively for Musical America… The fine satire and subtle humor of Mr. Viafora’s sketches have long since made him a favorite with operagoers and opera artists alike and the readers of two continents, especially those of Italian and American nationality, are familiar with the name of the great artist. [2]

Gianni Viafora was born in 1870 in Cosenza, a city in Calabria, Italy; in 1899 he married the well-known soprano Gina Ciaparelli; and, three years later the Viaforas settled in New York.  After contributing caricatures to publications in Chicago and New York and to magazines in Italy, Viafora became a regular contributor to Musical America in 1911.

Viafora (top left) with the Bass Pompilio Malatesta, the baritone Riccardo Stracciari, and Theodore Bauer, Representative of the Boston Opera House (Photo taken between 1915 and 1920)
Bains Collection, Library of Congress, LC-B2-4472-1. hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.26104, accessed 29 May 2018.

His most extensive contribution to the popular music magazine appeared in a regular column entitled “Musical America’s Gallery of Celebrities,” which contains 222 numbered caricatures of some of the most celebrated musical personalities active in the musical life of the period. As demonstrated by his first and last caricatures drawn for this series, Viafora’s range of subjects extended from the most revered (Enrico Caruso) to those, while well-known at the time, all but forgotten today (Umberto Sorrentino).


Vol. 23 No. 7 (18 December 1915): 7; Vol. 32 No. 4 (22 May 19120): 7.

Furthermore, the manner in which Viafora drew his subjects clearly reflected his kind nature. For his drawings do not depict his subjects by grotesquely exaggerating a physical feature, which is the manner we today often recognize a caricature. Rather, his drawings often attempt to depict an aspect of the inner character of his subjects. Of course, there is the occasional big belly or large nose here and there. But more often than not it is a wrinkle, a frown, the position of a hand, the stance of an artist while performing, a slightly troubled countenance, a characteristic facial expression or a glimmer or a smile or sparkling eyes that reveals something special and unique about the nature of the subject. Here are a few more examples of drawings from Viafora’s “Gallery.”

(L-top) The Polish pianist, composer, statesman, and politician Ignacy Paderewski; (R-top) Victor Maurel, the celebrated French operatic baritone; (L-bottom) the iconic American band composer John Philip Sousa; (R-bottom) internationally acclaimed violinist Maud Powell
Vol. 23 No. 9 (1 January 1916): 7; Vol. 29 No. 4 (23 November 1918): 7; Vol. 24 No. 6 (10 June 1916): 7; Vol. 25 No. 6 (9 December 1916): 7. 

More caricatures of this marvelous artist will appear in future postings.  You can expect to see contemporary photos of Viafora’s subjects alongside the artist’s depiction of them, which allows one to appreciate the delicacy of his approach.  And, accompanying each image will be brief texts from Musical America which we hope will offer insights into this extraordinarily rich and surprisingly little-explored documentary resource.

As you can see, no musical contemporary was safe from Viafora’s pen, not even his wife!

Vol. 27 No. 26 (27 April 1918): 7. 

 

RIPM search tip: For more on Viafora and his drawings in Musical America, access the RIPM Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals, and fill in the following fields: Periodical: Musical America (New York, 1898-1899, 1905-1922 [-1964]), Keyword(s): Viafora.

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

 

[1] This post and ongoing series relies heavily on a recently published essay by RIPM’s Founder and Director, H. Robert Cohen. For more, see H. Robert Cohen, “Viafora’s ‘Gallery of Celebrities’ in Musical America (1915-1920),” Music Cultures in Sounds, Words and Images: Essays in Honor of Zdravko Blažeković, (Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2018): 535-569.

[2] Musical America, Vol. 15 No. 2 (18 November 1911), 21.

Category: Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on Viafora’s Caricatures in Musical America 
RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week” 
(Part One)
May 16

RIPM’s Recent and Forthcoming Publications: 
2015-2017 (Part I)

To date, we have included only Curios and Chronicles in this publication. Today we focus for the first time on News items related to RIPM. Next week we will return to Curios with an interesting and ongoing feature.

Editor (Baltimore): Today, RIPM offers access to some 280 full-text searchable music periodicals (over 1,000,000+ full-text pages online) and some 875,000 annotated citations. Over the past three years, RIPM’s Associate Editor Nicoletta Betta has presented a paper dealing with RIPM’s recently completed and current indexing projects at the annual congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML, held respectively in New York, 2015; Rome, 2016; and Riga, 2017). 

This series is in three parts, the first of which follows.

*                *               *

Nicoletta Betta (Torino): In 2015, twenty-three journals were indexed and will be available in the Retrospective Index, along with, in most cases, the full-text of the indexed titles.

In my presentation, I will present basic publication information for all periodicals, the name of the RIPM editor or collaborator responsible for its indexing, and then select one or more journals for discussion, explaining why they were selected for treatment by RIPM. For clarity, the journals are grouped by country of publication.

RIPM collaborators Peter Sühring (Berlin) and Alexander Staub (Leipzig) have made significant progress in our ongoing indexing of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, focusing this time on the so-called “Brendel years,” from 1845 to 1868. After assuming ownership of the journal from Robert Schumann in 1844, Franz Brendel continued to publish content that set it off as an alternative to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. By the late 1850s, Brendel began therein promoting the ideas of the New German School—the Neudeutsche Schule—a term he himself introduced. Currently, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik is available in the Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text from the years 1834 to 1854.

Vol. 23 no. 2 (1845): [5].

Nine English-language journals published in the United States were indexed by a number of RIPM staff members (Baltimore): Senior Editor Richard Kitson; Managing Associate Director Benjamin Knysak; Publications Manager Justin Nurin, as well as collaborators Ruth Henderson (New York), Mary Davidson, and David Sommerfield (Washington, D.C.).

Interestingly, two publications—International Music & Drama, and Musicians/Musica e Musicisti—are published both in English and in Italian, requiring additional indexing by longstanding collaborator Elvidio Surian (Pesaro, Italy) and RIPM’s Associate Editor.

English and Italian mastheads of the same issue of Music and Musicians/Musica e Musicisti
Vol. 4 No. 2 (18 January 1918).

The bi-lingual format of International Music & Drama, and Music and Musicians/Musica e Musicisti was designed to report on Italian musical life for Italian immigrant communities in the United States. These journals also regularly followed the events of World War I, as well as the immigration status of European singers, musicians, and composers.

RIPM’s collaborator Elvidio Surian and I have collectively indexed six Italian-language journals this year.

Musica e Scena was published by the influential Milan-based publishing house, Sonzogno. This journal contains numerous photographs of opera scenes and portraits of singers and composers, particularly those representing the Italian Giovane scuola (Young School) of composers: Ruggero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano and Giacomo Puccini.

Vol. 1 No. 11 (November 1924): 1.

Despite its short publication run of only four issues between 1956 and 1960, Incontri Musicali’s contributors include a number of well-known twentieth-century composers. Founded by Luciano Berio,  Incontri Musicali was dedicated to contemporary music—electronic, serial, and aleatoric, specifically—and contains articles by, among others, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ernest Krenek, Henri Pousseur and John Cage.

.

A sample cover page of Incontri Musicali and a musical example from an article by Henri Pousseur
Issue 1 (1956): 1, 31.

Three French-language journals, all published in Paris during the first half of the twentieth century, were indexed by RIPM Editor of French Periodicals, Doris Pyee (Bordeaux).

Edited by musicologist Marc Pincherle, and a continuation of the journal Revue Pleyel, Musique contains reports on new media—contemporary music recordings and radio broadcasts of concerts—and a great deal of correspondence on musical life from numerous locations. In fact, the journal was one of the first to publish correspondences from Japan.

Vol. 3 No. 1 (15 October 1929): 2.

RIPM also added one U.K., one Mexican, and two Russian journals, indexed respectively by Richard Kitson, Gabriel Caballero (New York), and Natalia Ostroumova (Moscow).

El Sonido 13 was founded by Mexican composer Julian Carrillo, a Nobel Prize laureate for his studies on acoustics and microtones. This journal was dedicated to promoting contemporary Mexican music, and reflected an outward rejection of dominant European musical trends.

Vol. 1 No. 3 (March 1924): 1.

 

For all RIPM publications, visit:
http://ripm.org/?page=AllTitles&SortBy=date

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: RIPM News | Comments Off on RIPM’s Recent and Forthcoming Publications: 
2015-2017 (Part I)
May 2

Celebrating the Birthday of Duke Ellington 
with a glimpse into a single journal issue 
in the forthcoming RIPM Jazz Periodicals

This week we celebrate the birthday of composer, pianist, and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, born 29 April 1899.  Our forthcoming RIPM Jazz Periodicals collection contains a wealth of material related to Ellington, his music, his collaborators, and his band members that is otherwise unavailable or out of print.  Ellington related content also includes news and reports from national and international tours, illustrations, photographs, articles, reviews of concerts, recordings, and festival performances, discographies, interviews, and advertisements.

At the same time we are also demonstrating the massive content of RIPM Jazz Periodicals, by focusing on a single journal issue from among the thousands in this collection: Jazz [First Series], Vol. 1 Nos. 5-6 (January 1943). The issue deals exclusively with Ellington and represents but a tiny fraction of references to him in RIPM Jazz Periodicals. In fact, with ninety-seven of the one hundred journals now uploaded to our database, Ellington’s name appears on an astounding 16,681 pages!

  
The front and back cover of the Ellington issue of Jazz
Jazz [First Series], Vol. 1 Nos. 5-6 (January 1943).

 

Here are the titles of the principal articles in the issue.

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***

 

Following is a selection of images from this issue…

Ibid., 7.

Ibid., 8. 

 

Ibid., 14. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 11,19.Ibid., 28. 

And finally, some snippets from the articles…

Ellington and the history of music…

Ibid., 9. 

Ibid., 18. 

A young Ellington “attached” to a piano stool…

Ibid., 11.  

Ellington and Strayhorn…

Ibid., 13.

The Duke and the Deb…

“A true master of jazz…”

 

RIPM search tip: Be on the lookout for more updates and posts on the RIPM Jazz Periodicals collection, coming soon!

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

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***

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: Curios and Chronicles, Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on Celebrating the Birthday of Duke Ellington 
with a glimpse into a single journal issue 
in the forthcoming RIPM Jazz Periodicals
April 25

Handel: Anecdotes and Illustrations

Proposed by Marten Noorduin

Here are a few amusing reflections from the contemporary musical press about George Frideric Handel.

The American Musical Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1 (1 October 1834): [1]/1.

A corpulent man, Handel’s love of food and drink was a common subject of anecdotes. Some journals published accounts portraying the composer’s victual indulgences as acts of gluttony and greed.

The Euterpeiad, or Musical Intelligencer, Vol. 1 No. 39, (23 December 1820): 156.

Interestingly, this particular anecdote from The Euterpeiad is quite similar to one published two years later in a book entitled Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs by English novelist Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins. In this version, the “friend of Handel” is painter and engraver Joseph Goupy. “Enraged” that Handel stowed away a table of delicacies for himself, Goupy soon after created a piece of art “in which Handel figures as a hog in the midst of dainties.”[1] Known as “The charming Brute,” this depiction of Handel sitting at the organ surrounded by items of personal decadence has several iterations. The London journal Concordia (1875-1876) produced a facsimile of one of the engravings.

Joseph Goupy, “The charming Brute,” ca. 1750.
Concordia, Vol. 2 No. 38 (15 January 1876): 37

Two other versions of Goupy’s scathing illustration of Handel contain many similarities: the wine cask organ bench, the lavish meats hanging from the organ, and the composer’s hoggish features.

Joseph Goupy, “The charming Brute,” ca. 1750.  Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge.

 

Joseph Goupy, “The charming Brute,” ca. 1750.  Bridgeman Art Library.

Anecdotes about Handel also memorialized the composer’s sharp wit, sharper tongue, and, at times, bouts of irritability. The tale below tells of what might have happened if Handel reviewed someone else’s composition.

The Musical Journal, Vol. 2 No. 36 (8 September 1840): 150.

The Musical Herald, Vol. 6 No. 3 (March 1885): 56.

Those questioning the composer’s own musical decisions were subjected to perhaps worse vitriol.

The Euterpeiad, or Musical Intelligencer, Vol. 1, No. 32 (4 November 1820): 128.

The Harmonicon, Vol. 1 No. 9 (September 1823): [1p] 116/117.

Finally, as the anecdote below details, Handel’s propensity for criticism was apparently not only limited to others, but also to himself.

The Musical World, Vol. 38 No. 27 (7 July 1860): 435.

 

RIPM search tip: Searching “Handel” as a keyword in RIPM’s new Combined Interface reveals that his name appears at least once in an astounding 42,191 records! The RIPMPlus Platform’s Combined Interface search feature offers users fully integrated and simultaneous access to both the Preservation Series and to RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text with a single unified search results page.

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[1] Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins, Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches and Memoirs (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1822), 195ff, as quoted in Ellen T. Harris, “Joseph Goupy and George Frideric Handel: From Professional Triumphs to Personal Estrangement,” Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 71 No. 3 (September 2008): 432.

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April 18

Composers on the Covers of Musica 
RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”

The French journal Musica (1902-1914) was published in Paris by the influential journalist and publisher Pierre Lafitte. Perhaps better known for his illustrated sports magazine La Vie au grand air (1898-1914; 1916-22), Lafitte’s affinity for illustrations is also evident in Musica, which regularly incorporated images of well-known composers and performers with accompanying articles. The journal’s editor, Xavier Leroux, was a composer and longtime teacher of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire.

Today, we present just a sampling of the many attractive illustrated covers of Musica.

 
Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn
Vol. 8 No. 84 (September 1909); Vol. 13 No. 143 (August 1914).

 
Richard Strauss and Gabriel Fauré
Vol. 9 No. 97 (October 1910); Vol. 4 No. 34 (July 1905).

 
Bedřich Smetana and Edvard Grieg
Vol. 12 No. 127 (April 1913); Vol. 6 No. 62 (November 1907).

 
Jules Massenet and Charles Gounod
Vol. 5 No 50 (November 1906); Vol. 5 No. 46 (July 1906).

 
Richard Wagner and a singer wearing the iconic helmet of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen
Vol. 2 No. 13 (October 1903); Vol. 3 No. 23 (August 1904).

 

RIPM search tip: Musica (Paris, 1902-1914) is available in full-text in RIPM’s Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals. Select the journal in Browse Mode to view its contents according to a specific year of publication, volume number, and issue number.  Select the journal in Advance Search Mode to search any keyword within its entire run of publication.

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

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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 Composers on the Covers of Musica 
RIPM’s “Illustrations of the Week”
April 11

Remembering Stravinsky
Forty-Seven Years After His Death

April 6th was the 47th anniversary of the death of the composer Igor Stravinsky, who first achieved international recognition for his three ballets commissioned by impresario Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913).

The illustration below appeared in the Harvard Musical Review less than one year after the first performance of The Rite of Spring.

Harvard Musical Review, Vol. 2 No. 7 (April 1914): 2.

The French journal Musica published these comments after the premiere of The Firebird.

The new work was, ultimately, the Firebird; which was the most important artistic event of this Ballet Russe season. It is an admirable spectacle … this tale danced in one act has  exceptional musical value. For that very reason, and especially for that reason, it deserves special mention.

A true dance music that remains nevertheless real music! … that is well worth being especially praised.

It reveals a young Russian composer of the greatest talent: Mr. Igor Stravinsky.

Musica, Vol. 9 No. 95 (1 August 1910): 119.

 

Nearly three years later, news of the raucous premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was reported widely in the musical press. Many reports remarked on the composer’s dissonant score, including the following comments, published in Musical America.

Musical America, Vol. 18 No. 12 (26 July 1913): 10.

 

 This photo of an intense young Stravinsky in his studio in Petrograd, appeared three years later.

Musical America, Vol. 23 No. 9 (1 January 1916): 17.

In the same year, 1916, the following two short reviews of Stravinsky’s Petrushka demonstrate the reception of this work in the United States.

Musical America, Vol. 23 No. 13 (29 January 1916): 4.

 

By 1918, Stravinsky had already composed a seminal work in what is referred to as his “Neoclassical Period,” utilizing a small chamber ensemble.  Entitled The Soldier’s Tale (1918), it was described in the following report as being unlike anything Stravinsky had previously composed.

Musical America, Vol. 29 No. 5 (30 November 1918): 27.

 

One of the artists with whom Stravinsky maintained a long term relationship was Pablo Picasso, who on several occasions, produced sketches of the composer.

Stravinsky, sketched by Pablo Picasso
Pro-Musica Quarterly, Vol.3 No. 1 (March 1924): 4.

Russian avant-garde painter Michel Larionov also sketched Stravinsky along with a few of his Ballets Russes colleagues, including the impresario Serge Diaghilev, French writer, playwright, artist and film maker Jean Cocteau, and French composer Erik Satie.

Modern Music, Vol. 3 No. 1 (November-December 1925): [2].

Nine years after Larionov’s sketch was published in Modern Music, the journal published yet another sketch of the composer by Picasso, in 1934.

Modern Music, Vol. 12 No. 1 (November-December 1934): [2].

 

RIPM search tip: For more on Stravinsky, use RIPM’s Combined Interface and search “Stravinsky” as a keyword.

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: Curios and Chronicles, Illustration(s) of the Week | Comments Off on Remembering Stravinsky
Forty-Seven Years After His Death