Monday, October 31, 2011

Nightmare On My Street

(I'm so glad I found this when I did.)
This Halloween night, I give you:
Der Erlkönig
performed by Anderson and Roe
set in a (haunted) Steinway factory.

HANDS DOWN the best "classical music"-video I've ever seen.
Ooh, I've got the shivers!



This comes from their soon-to-be-released album on the Steinway label - check it out.
(via collabpianoblog)

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Pioneer To The Falls

My (current) favorite MUSA publication: THE INGALLS WILDER FAMILY SONGBOOK.

Growing up in Minnesota, I claimed Laura Ingalls Wilder as one of us.  You know when she takes maple sugar and pours it in shapes on the snow and it freezes into candy?  That is a Minnesota Elementary School Staple. 
In any case, this book finds all of the references she makes to specific musical pieces throughout all the books - and it tracks them down - and it assembles them in one place.  127 songs! from children's songs to theater songs to parlor songs.

I was already predisposed to like MUSA - a musicological publication dedicated to publishing hard-to-find works from every cross-section of American music? - but add in this little interdisciplinary twist and now I'm practically ready to start an Official Fanclub.

It's $240 on Amazon, but GoogleBooks has your Ingalls Wilder fix.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Take It All Away


The Strauss-man used to live in this wedding cake.  I mean: house!  He used to live in this house.  ("Villa" if we're being pedantic.)

A wonderful flickr stream with pictures of the inside.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Don't Make Fun Of Daddy's Voice

Yesterday I discovered (well - "discovered") a poem
From the 14th century
In Middle English
Satirizing Guidonian notation.

It is my hero.


Let me pique your interest:

Un-comly in cloystre. i coure ful of care
I loke as a lurdeyn. and listne til my lare,
The song of the cesolfa. dos me syken sare,
And sitte stotiand on a song. a moneth and mare.
I ga gowlende a-bowte. al so dos a goke.

[Uncomely in cloister I cower full of care,
I look like a lout, and listen to my lesson;
The song of the C Sol Fa causes me to sigh sore,
And I sit stuttering o'er a song a month and more.
I go staring about like a gawky.]


NO WAIT this post isn't over yet!
If you would like to read the rest of the poem (plus a translation) about our new friend Walter (who has trouble singing on sight), you should click on this link - which will take you to a twenty-first century scan of a nineteenth century printing of the fourteenth century poem included in a publication called The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 27. taDA! All of the Musica Practica students are pleased by this transhistorical urge to complain about music theory.