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We have all attended concerts where a performer dazzled us with technique that seemed hardly humanly possible – a phenomenon that has been a part of musical performances throughout history. In a 1783 anecdotal memory by Johann Matthias Gesner, the ability of J. S. Bach’s playing was described to “effect what not many Orpheuses, nor […]

The post Top Ten Tips to Tackling and Transforming Piano Technique appeared first on OUPblog.

How does one capture the Classical style sound aesthetic when approaching performance of eighteenth-century repertoire on the modern piano? Although it is important to know of the period instruments and their associated physical sound qualities, knowing how period musicians approached their art emotionally and intellectually will provide even deeper insight into discovering how to recreate the sound aesthetic.

The post Affekt: the foundational pillar in eighteenth-century music appeared first on OUPblog.

Grappling with performing the music of early Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn on the modern piano can be a daunting experience. The modern piano is not the instrument for which their music was composed. Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn all preferred Viennese pianos (today called the fortepiano) and the traits from the inside out are distinctly different than those of the modern piano.

The post The fortepiano: capturing the sound aesthetic for modern playing appeared first on OUPblog.

In 1598, Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne premiered in Florence. it is widely considered to be the first opera, that genre of classical music in which a dramatic work is set to music. Over the last 400 years, it has evolved into numerous different art forms, from the ballad opera of the eighteenth century, to the ragtime music of the early 20th century, to the musical theatre of today.

The post The history of European opera appeared first on OUPblog.

How a two-hundred-year-old opera made the transition to an online motion comic for contemporary audiences.

The ringing sound of sleigh bells is all too familiar around this time of the year. It’s the official siren signaling in the winter season. While a well-known signature staple on sleighs, Santa suits and reindeer, jingle bells haven’t always been associated with Christmas. They do much more than just ring in holiday cheer.

1. Sleigh bells or jingles bells are a type of bell that produces a distinctive jingle sound. They are in the percussion family of instruments.

2. The bells are made from sheet metal bent into a spherical shape with a small ball bearing or short metal rod placed inside to create the jingle sound.

3. Small bells were known in ancient times. In Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt they were commonly suspended from the trappings of horses, mules, and camels.

4. Centuries ago, sleigh bells were fastened to horses to signal the approach of someone important or to warn pedestrians of an approaching vehicle. Sleighs were unable to stop quickly enough so they needed a warning sound.

5. William Barton opened the first US sleigh bell company in East Hampton, Connecticut in 1810. East Hampton eventually became known as “Belltown” because it produced so many bells.

6. Sleigh bells, or jingles, are rarely used to produce specific pitches. Mozart, however, prescribed this in the third of his Three German Dances K605.

7. The song Jingle Bells, also known as “One Horse Open Sleigh,” is one of the most popular and most recorded songs on Earth. It was written in 1857 by James Lord Pierpont and was originally meant for Thanksgiving.

8. Sleigh bells were one of the first instruments played in space. In 1965, Gemini 6 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra, smuggled bells and a harmonica onto their spacecraft and played Jingle Bells for mission control as a light-hearted holiday joke.

9. The affluent ornamentally wore bells as a symbol of wealth and status.

10. In old Pagan beliefs, jingle bells are used to ward off bad luck, diseases, and evil spirits. Today, some motorcyclists strap small bells to their handlebars to ward off road demons.

Headline image credit: Sleigh Bells. Photo by Richard Wheeler. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post 10 fun facts about sleigh bells appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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For the Love of Music: The remarkable  Story of Maria Anna Mozart by Elizabeth Rusch, paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Francher. Tricycle Press, 2011 (review copy provided by the publisher)

The CIP in this books shows the LC subject heading as "Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, Maria Anna Mozart, Reichsfrelin von, 1751-1829" aka Maria Anna Mozart, Wolfgang's sister. Rusch uses  the piano sonata form, which she describes before the story begins, to frame her story as Maria played them frequently.   Billed as Wonders of Nature! and Child Geniuses!, Maria and her younger brother, Wolfgang performed together across Europe.  The two spoke French and Italian and had rich imaginations.  A composer and prodigy in her own right, Maria noted down Wolfgang's compositions for him, before he could write.  When their father chose to focus on Wolfgang as a solo performer, Maria was left behind at home, a move that devastated her.  The siblings remained close though even after Maria's marriage and many of Wolfgang's compositions were dedicated to his sister.

Artists, Johnson and Francher use a collage of woven fabrics, rich brocades and embroidered satins, to bring the story to life. The textiles act as a canvas for the paintings and give them richness and depth. The paint is laid on thickly in places rendering a three dimensional feel to the figures.  The pianos are layered with  images of original hand written sheet music from the Mozart family collection.  I would love to see the original artwork for this book. 

A brief but complete bibliography  includes books, letters and documents and personal interviews.  An "encore" summary of Maria Anna Mozart's life fills out details of her story.  This book is beautifully executed in every way.
Bravi!

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Where do geniuses come from? What makes a genius? Are all geniuses interesting people? Who’s more amazing, Shakespeare, Darwin or Einstein?

There are many questions about genius, and in his newest book, Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs, Andrew Robinson answers all these and more.

About Sudden Genius

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A Q&A with Andrew Robinson

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Andrew Robinson was Literary Editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement from 1994-2006. His latest book is Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs. He has written many other books including biographies of Albert Einstein, the film director Satyajit Ray, the writer Rabindranath Tagore, and the archaeologist Michael Ventris. He is also the author of Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction, and Genius: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming Spring 2011). You can read his previous OUPblog posts here (2009) and here (2010).

By Andrew Robinson

In the early 21st century, talent appears to be on the increase, genius on the decrease. More scientists, writers, composers, and artists than ever before earn a living from their creative output. During the 20th century, performance standards and records continually improved in all fields—from music and singing to chess and sports. But where is the Darwin or the Einstein, the Mozart or the Beethoven, the Chekhov or the Shaw, the Cézanne or the Picasso or the Cartier-Bresson of today? In the cinema, the youngest of the arts, there is a growing feeling that the giants—directors such as Charles Chaplin, Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, and Orson Welles—have departed the scene, leaving behind the merely talented. Even in popular music, genius of the quality of Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, or Jimi Hendrix, seems to be a thing of the past. Of course, it may be that the geniuses of our time have yet to be recognized—a process that can take many decades after the death of a genius—but sadly this seems unlikely, at least to me.

In saying this, I know I am in danger of falling into a mindset mentioned by the great 19th-century South American explorer and polymath Alexander von Humboldt, ‘the Albert Einstein of his day’ (writes a recent biographer), in volume two of his five-volume survey Cosmos. ‘Weak minds complacently believe that in their own age humanity has reached the culminating point of intellectual progress,’ wrote Humboldt in the middle of the century, ‘forgetting that by the internal connection existing among all the natural phenomena, in proportion as we advance, the field to be traversed acquires additional extension, and that it is bounded by a horizon which incessantly recedes before the eyes of the inquirer.’ Humboldt was right. But his explorer’s image surely also implies that as knowledge continues to advance, an individual will have the time to investigate a smaller and smaller proportion of the horizon with each passing generation, because the field will continually expand. So, if ‘genius’ requires breadth of knowledge, a synoptic vision—as it seems to—then it would appear to become harder to achieve as knowledge advances.

The ever-increasing professionalization and specialisation of education and domains, especially in the sciences, is undeniable. The breadth of experience that feeds genius is harder to achieve today than in the 19th century, if not downright impossible. Had Darwin been required to do a PhD in the biology of barnacles, and then joined a university life sciences department, it is difficult to imagine his having the varied experiences and exposure to different disciplines that led to his discovery of natural selection. If the teenaged Van Gogh had gone straight to an art academy in Paris, instead of spending years working for an art dealer, trying to become a pastor, and self-tutoring himself in art while dwelling among poor Dutch peasants, would we have his late efflorescence of great painting?

A second reason for the diminution of genius appears to be the ever-increasing commercialisation of the arts, manifested in the cult of celebrity. True originality takes time—at least ten years, as I show in my book Sudden Genius?—to come to fruition; and the results may well take further time to find their audience and market. Few beginning artists, or scientists, will be fortunate enough to enjoy financial support, like Darwin and Van Gogh, over such an extended period. It is much less challenging, and more remunerative, to make a career by producing imitative, sensational, or repetitious work, like Andy Warhol, or any number of professional scientists who, as Einstein remarked, ‘take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes when the drilling is easy.’

Thirdly, if less obviously, our expectations of modern genius have become more sophisticated and discriminating since the time of the 19th-century Romantic movement