Art Song

En el año 1889 se comercializaron en EEUU los primeros cilindros de cera que contenían grabaciones musicales. Estas grabaciones podían escucharse con auriculares de tubo mediante el fonógrafo de Edison en salones fonográficos y otros espacios urbanos ubicados en las zonas de ocio de numerosas ciudades del país. Sin embargo, fue a partir de 1896 cuando estos reproductores musicales comenzaron a tener un uso doméstico. Aprovechando la presencia de artistas españoles en el continente americano, la National Phonograph Company y la Columbia Phonograph Company realizaron numerosas grabaciones que contienen música extraída de la zarzuela, el género chico,  la canción de salón y el folclore regional.
Con el título De cera y Goma Laca. La producción de música española en la industria fonográfica estadounidense (1896-1914), Kiko Mora, profesor de semiótica audiovisual de la Universidad de Alicante, elabora un estudio preliminar, con entronque cuantitativo e historiográfico, de la producción musical española de carácter comercial en la primera mitad de su etapa acústica en los Estados Unidos de América.
¿Cuál fue el volumen total de producción musical y cuáles fueron los años más relevantes? ¿En qué ciudades se grabaron las piezas musicales y cuáles fueron sus contextos de producción? ¿Quiénes fueron los artistas y los compositores españoles más prolíficos? ¿Qué géneros y piezas musicales fueron los predominantes? Este libro ofrece respuestas a estas preguntas y abre un nuevo itinerario para otros estudios relacionados con la presencia de la música española y su interacción con otras músicas en los inicios de la industria discográfica más más influyente del siglo XX.

This dissertation explores the rich Sephardic Art Song repertoire. It comprises a geographical and historical overview of the Sephardim; an introduction of the Ladino (Judeo-Espagnol) language; a musical overview of traditional Sephardic songs; and the development of the genre from its emergence to the present, including a list of all the 20th- and 21st-century composers that have contributed to the Sephardic Art Song genre and a catalog of their works; a discussion on performance practice, including a diction guide for Ladino; and three recital performances of a selection of works from this repertoire. The recordings of these live performances are available for view.

The Sephardim are a diasporic population of Jewish people, whose ancestry can be traced back to the Iberian Peninsula, specifically to the Jews that were expelled from Spain in 1492 as a result of the Spanish Inquisition. As they migrated all over the world, the Sephardim carried with them their culture, traditions, JudeoEspagnol language, and oral literature. Traditional Sephardic songs constitute a large portion of this literature and have been preserved to this day through oral transmission from generation to generation. The 20th century witnessed an emergence of a Sephardic song repertoire in the form of classical art song, as Western classical composers, such as Alberto Hemsi, showed interest in collecting and transcribing these folksongs, and in arranging them in the Western classical tradition for voice and various instruments, in various degrees of complexity. As of today, there are over forty-five 20th- and 21st-century Western classical composers that have made significant contributions to the Sephardic Art Song genre with their arrangements of over a hundred and ninety Sephardic folksongs, as well as their original compositions.

The composers discussed and the selection of 20th- and 21st-century works performed in this dissertation are the following: Yehezkel Braun, Seven Sephardic Romances; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Three Sephardic Songs; José Antonio de Donostia, Canciones Sefardíes; Frederic Hand, Sephardic Songs; Alberto Hemsi, Coplas Sefardies; William Kenlon, Two Sephardic Songs; Manuel García Morante, 40 Canciones Sefardies; Joaquín Nin-Culmell, Six Chansons Populaires Séphardiques; Lorenzo Palomo, Cinco Canciones Sefardíes; Sid Robinovitch, Rodas Recordada; Joaquín Rodrigo, Cuatro Canciones Sefardíes; Wolf Simoni, Cuatro Cánticas Sefardíes; Manuel Valls, Canciones Sefarditas; Andrew Zohn, 8 Sephardic Songs.

Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt-7n6z9lQ8

The doctrine you desire,
absolute, perfect,
dogma that alone provides wisdom,
does not exist.

Nor should you long
for a perfect doctrine....

Rather, you should long
for the perfection
of yourself.

Truth reveals itself
in enigma;
let us approach it
with wonder and awe
as diviners of its mystery.

(text adapted in part from Hermann Hesse's "Glass Bead Game" and Gene Roddenberry)

History of the Latin American Art Song in the context of Musical Nationalism.
Taking as a thread the concept of national identity, this book elucidates the sound transformations that have taken place in the world of the Latin American art song since its appearance in the late nineteenth century to the present day. 

In songs, spaces of representation and cathartic tools thought, language and music have been at the service of some interests, fulfilling specific functions in the construction of the nation. In them, we observe that the construction of identity is a continuous, constant and changing process in which different stories are superimposed. Seen this way, songs are historical texts where social interactions are reflected, and the past, the present and the future are constantly negotiated. 

The book focuses on the art songs of Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia.  It also addresses the subject of the performance practice of the Latin American song and ends with a proposal for its interpretation.  BUY HERE  https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498581622/The-Latin-American-Art-Song-Sounds-of-the-Imagined-Nations

Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition, elucidates how language and music function together from the perspectives of composers, singers and actors, providing an understanding of the complex functions of the voice pedagogically, musicologically and dramatically. Composing for Voice examines the voice across a wide range of musical genres (including pop, jazz, folk, classical, opera and the musical) and explores the fusion of language and music that is unique to song. This second edition is enlarged to attract a wider readership amongst all music and theatre professionals and educators, whilst also engaging an international audience with the introduction of new co-author Maria Huesca.

New to the second edition:

A review of the history of singing
An overview of the development of melisma
A chapter designed to help performers understand each other, as singers and actors often receive disparate educations
Case studies and qualitative research around song, lyric and meaning
A discussion of the synthetic voice
An introduction to the concept of embodied composition
Interviews with composers and singers
Summaries of various vocal styles, including bel canto, the lyric voice, the belt voice, the rap voice, the dramatic voice, the virtuoso voice, the folk voice, the crooner, the live voice and the actor’s voice
A website with many of the links and performances of music discussed, as well as related workshops and seminars: www.composingforvoice.com
Composing for Voice: Exploring Voice, Language and Music, Second Edition,articulates possibilities for the practical exploration of language, music and voice by composers, singers and actors.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Words

Chapter 2. Composers and Singers

Chapter 3. Singing and Text

Chapter 4. Voice/Music/Text I

Chapter 5. Voice/Music/Text II

Chapter 6. The Singer and Actor; and Beyond

Chapter 7. Vocal Examples

Chapter 8. Interviews with Singers

Chapter 9. Conclusions and a Way Forward

Chapter 10. Educational Activities

The first edition of Margaret Bonds's (1913-72) settings of six feminist sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950): "Women Have Loved Before as I Love Now," "Hyacinth," "Even in the Moment," "Feast," "I Know My Mind and I Have Made My Choice," and "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed."

I n the eighteenth century, the "human sciences" were created within the philosophy of enlightenment, guided by significant thinkers such as Hume, Smith, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, among others. Human sciences appropriate the model of physics to study subjects from an impartial and aseptic point of view. In this context, sociology, anthropology, philology, and musicology were born. Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez has called this pretension the hubris of the zero point. 1 For the Greeks, the hubris was considered the worst of sins because it supposed the illusion of being able to go beyond the limits of the mortal condition in order to become like the gods. Hubris is therefore synonymous with arrogance. 2 From this pretended zero point of observation, the sciences of man built a discourse on history and human nature in which the peoples colonized by Europe appeared at the lowest level of development, while the new science, the market economy, and modern political institutions were presented as the ultimate goal (telos) of the social, cognitive, and moral evolution of humanity. 3 In this context, the human sciences serve to describe the individuals outside the zero point. These individuals seek to legitimize and reaffirm the preeminent place in the world of the illustrated thinkers. The "hubris of the zero point" also supposes a separation between the identified superior intellect and the inferior body. The scientists and enlightened philosophers were convinced that they could acquire an objective point of view. To achieve complete objectivity, the observer should detach himself from any prescientific and metaphysic observation. In doing so, the enlighted philosophers established a dialectic between the barbarism of the American, Asian, and African societies that represented tradition and the civilized European society that represented modernity. From that moment on, the history of Europe became the world's history, and all other cultural voices of humanity were seen as "traditional" or "primitive," and were regarded as outside world history.

Before abandoning his career as a critic in 1887, Hugo Wolf was active as one of the most voluble proponents of New German Music in Vienna’s notoriously partisan concert press. Eduard Mörike’s poem Abschied, set by Wolf in 1888, reflects on this culture of polemic through the absurdist tale of a critic who falls victim to comic violence. Examining Wolf’s own critical career and his appeals to the authority of music theory in his personal correspondence, this paper invokes Weitzmann’s radical 1853 treatise on the augmented triad not only as a model for Abschied’s musical satire of aesthetic conservatism, but also as a source of insight into the role played by major third relations in Wolf’s broader harmonic practice.

The afterlife of Weitzmann’s ideas concerning the augmented triad in neo-Riemannian theory is further considered through application of contrasting visual models of the hexatonic system to modulations in Wolf’s songs. In particular, the extent to which neo-Riemannianism captures Weitzmann’s conceptualization of the augmented triad as a mediator between major-third-related keys is called into question. Arguing towards a synthesis of historicist and presentist approaches to historical theories, a concluding analysis of Wolf’s modulatory procedure in Das Ständchen outlines points of tension and potential hybridity between Weitzmann’s treatise and modern harmonic analysis.

O acordeão é o meu instrumento favorito. Não resisti à tentação de fazer uma versão com este magnífico instrumento que é também uma marca de Portugal. Espero que gostem!

Amar pelos dois
Letra e Música: Luísa Sobral
Intérprete: Salvador Sobral

Canção vencedora do Festival da Canção em Portugal e com lugar já garantido na final da Eurovisão 2017 (Eurovision 2017).

Franz Schubert’s Lieder have attracted musicologists and theorists alike with their captivating harmonies, daring modulations, and deep text-music relations, among many other qualities. Despite this interest, the sheer quantity of Schubert’s Lieder does not easily afford an in-depth theoretical analysis of each piece. Two songs that have not yet received such analysis are “Fahrt zum Hades” (Mayrhofer) and “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” (Schiller). It is the aim of the present paper to analyze these two songs by synthesizing this scholarly research with in-depth theoretical examinations in the hopes that the resultant analyses will lead to better understanding of the songs as well as laying a foundation for possible future study.

Although widely neglected in scholarship and performance, Richard Strauss’s song cycle Krämerspiegel is worthy of study primarily because of the unusual role of the piano accompaniment. The piano part in this cycle is unique in many ways: it possesses unusually long solo passages; it determines the compositional structure of both individual songs and the cycle as a whole; it articulates virtually every important theme within the cycle; and it assumes several personas throughout the cycle, the most powerful of which is the persona of Strauss himself. Strauss’s use of extended passages for solo piano clearly reflects the influence of Robert Schumann. Indeed, the solo passages for piano in Songs VIII and XII of Krämerspiegel pay direct homage to Dichterliebe’s postludes in the eighth and twelfth songs of that cycle; the fact that the final postlude of Krämerspiegel is in D-flat – the same key as the final postlude to Dichterliebe – is certainly no coincidence. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates that the piano takes on a far more prominent role in Krämerspiegel than in any of Schumann’s song cycles; in fact, the piano now is more important than the voice. For this reason, Krämerspiegel assumes an important place in the evolution of the lied accompaniment. This paper focuses in particular on the extended piano prelude to Song VIII and its varied return as the postlude to Song XII. This highly expressive music is clearly meant to evoke the “sublime”; as such it contrasts strikingly with the rest of the cycle, which is essentially a satirical attack on music publishers of Strauss’s time. It will be demonstrated that the Krämerspiegel theme embodies not only the struggle of the artist to overcome adversity, but also the timeless purity of art and music. At the end of his life, Strauss reprised this theme in his opera Capriccio, again reiterating these timeless aesthetic principles.

An Anthology of Latin American and Iberian art songs by Women composers including 23 songs in Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese by five composers from Argentina, Brazil, Catalunya, Cuba, and Colombia. The book includes a bilingual introductory study presenting the composers and poets, poetry translations, IPA, and sheet music. Several songs included in the book are recorded and available for free on Spotify. The book is available on mundoarts.com

The life of Julián Aguirre (b. October 12, 1868, Buenos Aires; d. August 13, 1924, Buenos Aires) coincided almost perfectly with the gradual rise of a project, sponsored by upper class intellectuals and politicians, to strengthen cultural institutions and consolidate Argentina’s cultural identity in the face of sweeping economic, demographic, and political change. Best known for his piano and orchestral works, Aguirre’s innovation of a “uniquely-Argentine” musical idiom was also recognized in the genre of song. In this thesis, I explore how certain frameworks used in translation studies can help describe what I view as the principal work of Aguirre as composer: the innovation of strategies to translate “source texts” (i.e. musical genres such the art song, musical structures found in folk music, emotional themes found in literature and poetry, visual images from the countryside) into “target texts” (i.e. Argentine art songs for voice and piano) that could be understood by concert-going audiences, in other words, to mediate culture in service of a communicative act, which increasingly served the nation. Translation theories of action and adaption combined with the power of nationalized emotional themes help to explain how cultural agents (i.e. commissioner, composer, performer, listener, scholar, publisher) make choices that demonstrate their beliefs about the acquisition of power, both expressive and social, through music. Accordingly, my analyses focus on the qualities of Aguirre’s songs that were most easily decoded by local listeners as well as the textual, musical, and emotive characteristics that imbued them with an elusive but recognizable “spirit of originality”.

In recent decades, psychologists have turned their attention to physiological correlates of emotional responses to music. The article describes and attempts to account for the author's response of "chills" to a song by Henry Purcell. Although the text of the song is reproduced, unfortunately the publisher of the musical score demanded an unaffordable fee to copy it into the article.

This thesis describes the vocal practice in Rio de Janeiro in the early nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how it was influenced by the presence of the Portuguese court. To this end a substantial number of primary sources have been consulted, both musical and historical. The most important musical sources are those of the actual repertoire composed there at that time, as well as a considerable body of books on musical theory and methods written in both Brazil and Portugal. Among the historical sources consulted are letters, government expense ledgers, reports by those in charge of the Royal Chapel, and periodicals. From an analysis of these documents, it has been possible to carry out a wideranging biographical study of the singers active in Rio de Janeiro during the regency and reign of King João VI, whenever possible including a description of their interpretative style and their voices. The descriptions of individual voices are based on the solos expressly written for certain singers and composed by Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia and by Marcos Portugal. The data confirms that the presence of the Portuguese court in Rio did indeed lead to considerable change in vocal practice there and, by means of an analysis of most of the vocal lines by Fr. José Maurício, it can be shown how this actually occurred. We may conclude that up to the early 1840s the most influential model of vocal excellence in Rio de Janeiro was the eighteenth-century Italian school, represented above all by a number of castrati at the Royal Chapel. This research, which links questions relating to both musicology and interpretation, provides an example of how an analysis of the activities of performers contributes to a better understanding of musical output as a whole. Key words: Singing, Opera, Song, Musicology, D. João VI.

Even though post-structuralist interpretations of the relationship between poetry and music in art song introduce refreshingly paradoxical, unforeseen, and challenging perspectives on the well known art song repertoire, they hold on to the fixation on the score characteristic of traditional music analysis. I do not underestimate the intellectually interesting, even stunning, quality of the complex relations between poetry and music in the analyses of writes like Lawrence Kramer and Richard Kurth. My objection merely concerns the problem that these ambiguous constructions of meaning tell us little about the listener’s perception of the art song as sounding presence, as performance. It is still necessary to point out that song consists not only of poetry and music, but also of a third category, linked to the voice.

El presente artículo gira en torno a la musicalización de las rimas de G. A. Bécquer en el género de la canción lírica, fenómeno desarrollado desde el último tercio del siglo XIX hasta nuestros días. Supone una primera aproximación a dicho fenómeno, ya que presenta el objetivo de estudiar la puesta en música de estas rimas a través de una revisión bibliográfica que permite esbozar algunas de las cuestiones que rodearon y motivaron la presencia de la poesía de Bécquer en el citado género. Para ello se analizan un total de diez fuentes secundarias y se detallan los más de sesenta compositores que en ellas aparecen como autores de musicalizaciones de una o varias rimas, desde 1871, año de publicación de la primera edición de las rimas, y hasta la actualidad. El trabajo realizado demuestra la necesidad de estudiar estas canciones como un solo corpus, habiendo sido localizados tan sólo artículos o capítulos de libros que traten el tema. Palabras clave: Canción, lied, rimas, poesía, Bécquer

GUSTAVO ADOLFO BÉCQUER'S (SEVILLA, 1836-MADRID, 1870) POEMS IN THE ART SONG: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
This work studies the musical setting of G. A. Bécquer's poems in the art song, phenomenon developed since the last third of the 19th century until nowadays. The article consists on a first approximation to this phenomenon as it has the purpose of studying the musical setting of these poems through a bibliographical review which shows some of the issues that surround and motivate the presence of the Bécquer's poetry in the cited genre. In order to that, ten secondary sources are analysed and more than sixty composers who set in music Bécquer's poems since 1871, when the first edition of this poems was published, until nowadays, are compiled in this text.

I initiated work in this area in 1999, during my doctoral dissertation research which studied the musical subgenres (zamba, milonga, cielo, etc) most chosen for setting poems (of previous generations and contemporary poets) to popular music between 1960 and 1985 as a mode of resistance in times of heightened socio-political tensions.

My book, 'Poesía y canto popular: Su convergencia en el siglo XX. Uruguay, 1960-1985' published the findings of my primary research. It has received positive response in the media and academia. Prof. Rómulo Cosse, Director of the National Library in Uruguay, states in the introduction to the book: “The work of Maria Figueredo on the resemantization of the poetic text when it is articulated with a musical structure, to integrate a new reality of language, that is, the song, is the first systematic investigation in this field. There existed periodic journalistic articles and reports on writers and musicians, as well as references inserted into various works of literary criticism, but never had a global and comprehensive work of this nature been undertaken on this fundamental aspect of contemporary culture” (9) [my translation].

To locate or purchase a copy of the book, please contact me at: <mfiguere@yorku.ca>."

Although widely neglected in scholarship and performance, Richard Strauss’s song cycle Krämerspiegel is worthy of study primarily because of the unusual role of the piano accompaniment. The piano part in this cycle is unique in many ways: it possesses unusually long solo passages; it determines the compositional structure of both individual songs and the cycle as a whole; it articulates virtually every important theme within the cycle; and it assumes several personas throughout the cycle, the most powerful of which is the persona of Strauss himself. Strauss’s use of extended passages for solo piano clearly reflects the influence of Robert Schumann. Indeed, the solo passages for piano in Songs VIII and XII of Krämerspiegel pay direct homage to Dichterliebe’s postludes in the eighth and twelfth songs of that cycle; the fact that the final postlude of Krämerspiegel is in D-flat – the same key as the final postlude to Dichterliebe – is certainly no coincidence. Nevertheless, this study demonstrates that the piano takes on a far more prominent role in Krämerspiegel than in any of Schumann’s song cycles; in fact, the piano now is more important than the voice. For this reason, Krämerspiegel assumes an important place in the evolution of the lied accompaniment. This paper focuses in particular on the extended piano prelude to Song VIII and its varied return as the postlude to Song XII. This highly expressive music is clearly meant to evoke the “sublime”; as such it contrasts strikingly with the rest of the cycle, which is essentially a satirical attack on music publishers of Strauss’s time. It will be demonstrated that the Krämerspiegel theme embodies not only the struggle of the artist to overcome adversity, but also the timeless purity of art and music. At the end of his life, Strauss reprised this theme in his opera Capriccio, again reiterating these timeless aesthetic principles.

On the occasion of the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Barcelona Festival of Song, Patricia wrote this book which examines the genre of Latin American and Iberian art song, putting special attention to its dissemination and in the importance of Internet as a tool for its preservation and  international promotion. She reflects on the process of construction that have taken place within the Barcelona Festival of Song, a space that has served to legitimize the Repertoire, its performers and composers.

This article readdresses the issue of musico-textual relationships in trecento song, viewing them through the lens of ‘metapoesis’—that is, a poetic practice that implies the use of vocabulary in lyrics referring to the mechanics of the poetic structure. I first focus on some duecento and trecento lyrics that establish the links between the poetic topoi of separation and their positioning at the end of the poetic line, so as to perform the same kind of division structurally. The article then explores the further layers of meaning possible when such texts are set musically. In particular, music is able to articulate metapoetic ‘divisiones’ with sonic ‘cuttings’ defined as ‘divisiones soni’ in various treatises on music theory. Four case studies are adduced, which show that the musical metapoesis arguably provides a more powerful way of understanding the larger issues of musico-textual interaction in trecento song than has yet been acknowledged.

Amy Beach veröffentlichte im Jahr 1894 ihre Ballade Des-Dur op. 6, die auf dem 1887 entstandenen Lied »My luve is like a red, red rose« nach Worten des schottischen Dichters Robert Burns basiert.  Diese Untersuchung von formalen, motivisch-thematischen und harmonischen Merkmalen der beiden Kompositionen thematisiert den intertextuellen Zusammenhang des Werkpaars und die Art und Weise, wie das Lied und die Ballade miteinander in Beziehung treten. Trotz seiner starken Gebundenheit an die frühere Komposition ist das Klavierwerk kein bloßes ›reworking‹  des Liedes, sondern kann als eigenständige Neuschöpfung gelten.

Starting from the observation of the Latin American art song, the author questions the Eurocentric curriculum of the institutions that train Western classical singers across the world and invites classical singers and voice teachers to explore new repertoire. The article further proposes an embodied performance practice, to create performances that are informed by and embedded in the context of a work’s genesis as well as standing in constant dialogue with its environment.

KEYWORDS: Latin American Art Song, Spanish Art Song, Decolonial philosophy, Performance practice, Embodiment, Rethinking curriculum, Barcelona Festival of Song, 4E Cognition.

The Fr. José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830) is one of the most important Brazilian composers in the first half of the 19th century. This article presents the modinhas composed by him, indicating the location of the oldest scores and offering his modern edition – one of these songs, titled Estas lágrimas sentidas, had his manuscript recently identified by this author. The present text also offers some subsidies for the execution of these modinhas, facilitating the access and the interpretation of the repertoire by both Brazilians and foreign singers. This is intended to be an important contribution to the task of deconstructing, or overcoming, the somewhat condescending or disinterested stance of some interpreters and researchers when talking about modinha specifically. Keywords: Fr. José Maurício Nunes Garcia; modinha; Brazilian song; critical edition; historically-oriented performance.

The Nolan Stolz Rock Orchestra created a version of Franz Schubert’s art song "Erlkönig" (“Erlking”) for their 2017 album. This lecture-recital discusses which compositional elements from the original versions are retained and what stylistic elements are different, making it distinctly rock music. This version was intended to bridge the gap between fans of rock music and classical music listeners so that they may find greater appreciation of both styles of music. It may be used as a teaching tool for music appreciation and music history students, and this twenty-first-century take on Schubert may pique the interest of some students.

Moreover, this version brings out the characters by the way the vocals are presented. For instance, the Father was recorded at a slightly faster tape speed to give a thicker timbre to his voice. Also, this version is transposed down to give the Father a deeper register. The Son—sung in falsetto and recorded at a slightly slower tape speed—has a thinner, childlike timbre when played back at normal speed. The Erlking character is sung with a creepy voice. Musicologist David Moskowitz says about this approach: “The overall effect is dazzling and creates even more fully defined character delineations.” The studio recording will be played to demonstrate these characteristics, but the lecture-recital will conclude with
a live performance by the Nolan Stolz Rock Orchestra. Unlike the studio version in which the original German is mostly retained, their live version is sung entirely in English and utilizes two vocalists, the boy sung by a mezzo-soprano.