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#124 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Jun 7, 2005 1:58 pm
Subject: Fwd: UNKNOWN VOCAL WORK BY J. S. BACH DISCOVERED  		terinoeltowe
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I received this wonderful piece of news from Isabella de Sabata Gardiner's wife, just over an hour ago.

 

BACH-ARCHIV LEIPZIG

FORSCHUNGSINSTITUT Ă— BIBLIOTHEK Ă— MUSEUM Ă— VERANSTALTUNGEN

  Stiftung bĂĽrgerlichen Rechts

 

                                                                                                                                                               

 

June 7, 2007

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

UNKNOWN VOCAL WORK BY J. S. BACH DISCOVERED

 

A completely unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach has been discovered at the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany by a researcher from the Leipzig Bach Archive. The discovery was made by Michael Maul in the course of a systematic survey of all central German church, communal, and state archival collections, an ongoing research project begun in 2002 and supported by the Packard Humanities Institute and the William H. Scheide Fund.

The score in Bach’s own hand dates from October 1713 and represents a setting of a strophic aria with ritornello for soprano, strings, and basso continuo composed on the occasion of the 52nd birthday of duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, whom Bach then served as court organist. The twelve-stanza sacred poem with the text incipit „Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn“ (Everything with God and nothing without him), the duke’s motto, was written by the theologian Johann Anton Mylius.

There has been no previous record of, or reference to, this composition. Moreover, in the seventy years since the 1935 discovery of the single-movement cantata fragment “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen” (BWV 200) no unknown authentic vocal work by Bach has come to light.

 

“It is no major composition but an occasional work in the form of an exquisite and highly refined strophic aria, Bach’s only contribution to a musical genre popular in late 17th-century Germany,” said Professor Christoph Wolff of Harvard University, chair of the Board of the Bach Archive, initiator, and supervisor of the current research project. “I am extremly proud of Michael who is a most resourceful researcher,” he added. “In less than three years he uncovered an unparalleled number of new archival Bach documents, but this is the first time he presented a musical discovery. The overall research project is far from being over and I am quite sure that sooner or later Michael Maul will make news again.”

 

A facsimile and performing edition of the newly discovered piece will be published in the autumn of 2005 by Bärenreiter-Verlag of  Kassel, Germany. The first recording will be prepared by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, this year’s winner of the Bach Medal of the city of Leipzig, for release on his Soli Deo Gloria label.

 

For further information on the discovery, please contact the Bach-Archiv: +49-(0)341-137102

www.bach-leipzig.de .

For further information on Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s involvement and the planned recording please contact Simon Millward PR, 020-7490-1591/07990-507-310.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#125 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:25 am
Subject: Isidore Cohen, 82, Violinist in Premier Chamber Groups, Is Dead 		terinoeltowe
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Click here: Isidore Cohen, 82, Violinist in Premier Chamber Groups, Is Dead - New York Times

While registration is required at the New York Times website, it is easy and it is free.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#126 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:04 am
Subject: Guardian Unlimited | Online | Beethoven (1.4m) beats Bono (20,000) 		terinoeltowe
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Click here: Guardian Unlimited | Online | Beethoven (1.4m) beats Bono (20,000) in battle of the internet downloads

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#127 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Nov 4, 2005 2:33 pm
Subject: Bach and Mendel Symposium at Princeton University, November 19 - 20, 2005 		terinoeltowe
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Bach and Mendel


A Special Symposium in Celebration
of the Centenary of Professor Arthur
Mendel and the Sixtieth Anniversary
of The Bach Reader

Saturday, November 19, 2005

11:30 a.m.—1:00 p. m.

"Music is Something People Do":
Arthur Mendel and the Indispensability of Recorded Music

Woolworth Center for Musical Studies

Teri Noel Towe '70

1:30—2:50 p.m.

Arthur Mendel and the World of J. S. Bach

Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall

Michael Marissen
Daniel Underhill Professor of Music History,
Swarthmore College

Robert L. Marshall, *68
Louis, Frances and Jeffrey Sachar Professor of Music,
Emeritus,
Brandeis University

William H. Scheide '36 H94
Bach scholar

Christoph Wolff
Adams University Professor,
Harvard University

2:50—3:05 p.m.

Break

3:05—4:30 p.m.

The World of Arthur Mendel

Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall

Philip Gossett *70
Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor
of Music,
University of Chicago

Thomas B. Hall *71
Co-Founder, Musicnotes.com

Peter Jeffery *80
William H. Scheide Professor of Music History,
Princeton University

Kenneth Levy *55
William H. Scheide Professor of Music History, Emeritus,
Princeton University

Paula D. Matthews
Director, Mendel Music Library,
Princeton University

Victor Parsonnet P75, P78
Medical Director, The Pacemaker Center, and Director
of Surgical Research, Newark Beth Israel Medical Center;
Chairman of New Jersey Symphony Orchestra

Harold S. Powers *59
William H. Scheide Professor of Music History, Emeritus,
Princeton University

Katherine Rohrer *80
Vice Provost for Academic Programs,
Princeton University

Elaine Sisman *78
Anne Parsons Bender Professor of Music,
Columbia University

8:00 p.m.

Music of Bach in the Princeton University Chapel

Eric D. Plutz, Principal University Organist
Peter Velikonja *04, oboe
Jennifer L. Borghi '02, mezzo soprano
Alexis A. Kende '05, violin

Sunday, November 20, 2005

11:00 a.m.

Worship in the University Chapel
Selections from Cantata BWV No. 70
Princeton University Chapel Choir and Orchestra 

Program subject to change

For further information, please call 609-258-6421, and mention the Bach and Mendel Symposium.



Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730



Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#128 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:54 pm
Subject: Why Mozart Didn't get Tenure 		terinoeltowe
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With copious thanks to Stewart W!

In a message dated 12/12/2005 2:37:42 PM Eastern Standard Time, SWarkow@... writes:


Why Mozart Didn't Get  Tenure

Dear Dean:




This is in response  to your suggestion  that we appoint Mr. Wolfgang
Mozart to our music faculty. The  music  department appreciates your  
interest, but the  faculty is sensitive  about  its prerogatives in the
selection of new  colleagues.

While the list of  works and performances the candidate  has submitted
is very full, it reflects too much activity outside academia.  Mr.
Mozart does not have an earned doctorate and  has very little  formal
education and teaching experience. There is also  significant  evidence
of personal instability evidenced in his resume. Would he   really
settle down in a large state university like ours? Would he really be 
a team player?

I must voice a concern over the incidents with his  former  superior,
the Archbishop of Salzburg. They hardly confirm  his abilities to be a 
good team man and show a disturbing lack of  respect for authority.

Franz  Haydn's letter of recommendation is  noted, but Mr. Haydn is
writing from a very special situation. Esterhazy is  a well-funded
private institution  quite  dissimilar from us  and abler than we to
accommodate non-academics, like Mr. Haydn himself. Here  we are
concerned about everybody, not just the most  gifted. Furthermore, we
suspect cronyism on the part of Mr.  Haydn.

After Mr. Mozart's interview with the musicology faculty, they  found
him sadly lacking in  any real knowledge of music before Bach and 
Handel. If he were  to teach only  composition, this might not be  a
serious impediment. But would  he be an  effective teacher of  music
history?

The appl ied faculty were impressed  with his  pianism, although they
thought it was somewhat old-fashioned. That he   also performed on
violin and viola seemed to us to be stretching  versatility dangerously
thin. We suspect a large degree of dilletantism  on his part.

The composition faculty was skeptical about his vast output.  They 
correctly warn us from their own experience that to receive many 
commissions and performances is no guarantee of quality. The senior 
professor pointed out that  Mr.  Mozart promotes many of these 
performances himself. He has never won the
support of a major  foundation.

One of our faculty members was present a  year ago at  the premiere of,
I believe, a violin sonata. He discovered  afterwards  that Mr. Mozart
had not written out all the parts for the piano before he  played it.
This may be very well in that world, but it sets a  poor example for our
students. We expect deadlines to be met on time,  and this  includes all
necessary paperwork.

It must be admitted  that Mr. Mozart is an entertaining man at dinner.
He spoke enthusiastically  about his travels. It  was perhaps
significant, though,  that he  and the music faculty seem to have few 
acquaintances in  common.

One of our female faculty members was deeply offended by his  bluntness.
She even had to leave the room after one of his  endless  parade of
anecdotes. This propensity of his to excite the enmity of  some  is
hardly conducive to the establishment of the comity to which  we aspire
to  maintain on our faculty, let alone the image that we  wish to project to the community at large.

We are glad as a faculty to  have had the chance to  meet this visitor,
but we cannot recommend  his appointment. Even if he were appointed,
this is almost no hope of  his being granted tenure. The man
simply showed no interest in going to  school to collect his doctorate.
This is egotism at its  zenith.

Please give our regards to Mr. Mozart when you write him.   We wish him
our very best for a successful career. All are agreed, though,  that  he
cannot fulfill the needs of this department. We wish to  recommend the 
appointment of Antonio Salieri, a musician of the  highest ideals and
probity that accurately reflect the aims and values that  we espouse.
We would be eager  to welcome such a musician and person to  our
faculty.

Sincerely  yours,

The Chair and  Faculty of the Department of  Music

P.S. Some good news. Our senior  professor of composition tells  me
there is now a very good chance that  a movement of his concerto will
have its premiere within two years. You will  remember that his work was
commissioned by a foundation and won first prize  nine years ago.






Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#129 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Dec 19, 2005 1:17 pm
Subject: Beethoven's Revenge: Ratings Drop at Classical Music-less WETA 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Michael F. R.:

Click here: Beethoven's Revenge: Ratings Drop at Classical Music-less WETA




Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730













Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#130 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Dec 22, 2005 11:31 am
Subject: WKCR BachFest 2005 - 10 Day Broadcast! 		terinoeltowe
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WKCR-FM 89.9 CELEBRATES BACH WITH TEN-DAY FESTIVAL


This holiday season, WKCR-FM presents BachFest 2005: a round-the-clock ten-day celebration of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.  From 9:30 AM on 12/22/05 until 2:00 AM on 1/1/06, the radio station will broadcast Bach's choral, orchestral, chamber, and keyboard music in a wide variety of recordings.  The festival will feature interviews with leading Bach scholars and performers, as well as in-depth commentary by WKCR's announcers.

An annual tradition and a listener favorite for over twenty years, BachFest was named "Best Musical Thing about Christmas" by the New York Press in 2002.  This year, WKCR introduces a new format aimed to bring out an aspect of Bach that still fascinates performers and listeners alike. From the tiny keyboard miniatures to the mighty passions, every Bach composition serves as a window into a vast and varied creative process, the product of one man's ever-changing mind.  To explores how this creative process developed over nearly forty years, the new format consists of a chronology of one- to three-day segments, each exploring a different period in Bach's life.  The festival begins with Bach in his pre-Weimar period, a young man experimenting with cantatas and keyboard works.  Later, listeners can hear him in his 20s and 30s, settled as court organist and concert master at Weimar.  After following him from Weimar to Cöthen and then to Leipzig, the festival concludes with Bach in his Late Leipzig period, an aging man who struggled to hold a quill as he scribbled out the Goldberg Variations and Art of Fugue.

Throughout this new format, WKCR will still include segments familiar from years past: cantata request hours, a Glenn Gould festival-within-a-festival, and a "Jazz Meets Bach" segment hosted by resident jazz expert Phil Schaap.  We plan as well to feature interviews with pianist Angela Hewitt, violinist Rachel Podger, conductor Philippe Herreweghe and others.  It is our great pleasure to present BachFest 2005 to greater New York and beyond

WKCR-FM is the listener-supported, student-run radio station of Columbia University.  Broadcasting to greater New York at 89.9 FM and worldwide at www.wkcr.org, the station presents a spectrum of music and talk programming heard nowhere else on radio. 
The WKCR Classical Department supports this mission by offering an alternative to traditional classical radio.  We are committed to playing works in their entirety and to challenging the ear every day with new and varied programming, including contemporary art music and rare historic recordings. 

Contact: Jacob Stulberg and David Tam
Telephone: (212) 853-6634
E-Mail: classical@...


Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#131 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Sat Dec 24, 2005 4:18 pm
Subject: WKCR BACH FEST 2005 MASTER SCHEDULE 		terinoeltowe
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Click here: BACH FEST 2005 MASTER SCHEDULE

Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#132 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:14 pm
Subject: From Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | World's first castrati exhibition 		terinoeltowe
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Click here: Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | World's first castrati exhibition

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#133 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Jan 3, 2006 11:01 am
Subject: Twelfth Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Yo Tomita and to SSCM-L:

Click here: Twelfth Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music

Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730


Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#134 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jan 5, 2006 9:16 am
Subject: Bach in demand: listeners hail Radio 3 Festival a huge success 		terinoeltowe
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Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | Bach in demand: listeners hail Radio 3 festival a huge success

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1678173,00.html


Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730














Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#135 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jan 5, 2006 12:34 pm
Subject: Tannenberg Clavichord Symposium registration and accommodation info 		terinoeltowe
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Please see attachment for Tannenberg colloquium information; please forward to any interested persons.
 

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#136 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:12 pm
Subject: Fwd: [78-l] Birgit Nilsson dead 		terinoeltowe
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According to the Swedish newspaper Expressen opera singer Birgit Nilsson
died last week and was buried today.

http://www.expressen.se/

http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=503819

She made her first recording on 78rpm.

Per Ahlin

-------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, see http://www.78online.com

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#137 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:59 am
Subject: Fwd: Mozart manuscript cut in half by widow restored 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Michael F. R:
Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | Mozart manuscript cut in half by widow restored to unity
"Mozart manuscript cut in half by widow restored to unity
"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1684399,00.html

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#138 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:05 am
Subject: Birgit Nilsson - A Remembrance by Swedish Soprano/Mezzo Astrid Varnay 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Robert White:

In a message dated 1/13/2006 6:14:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, robertwhitetenor@... writes:

My old friend Donald Arthur who lives in Munich just sent me this tribute to Birgit Nilsson which he helped bring forth from Astrid Varnay.  If you Google Varnay or Nilsson, you'll see what made them so beloved in the world of opera.  Enjoy,   Bobby White

Birgit Nilsson – A Remembrance


           Even with our helmets on, we never locked horns.



There were simply too many bonds that linked us inseparably: born in the same country – Sweden – under the same sign  - Taurus - in the spring of the same year –1918. I got here first, on April 25th  as the daughter of visiting Hungarian singers in Stockholm and she showed up on May 17 th down the road a piece on her parents' farm in Västra Karup in SkĂĄne. She never stopped ribbing me about the fact that I arrived a couple of weeks before she did.



Once, after I had moved from Elektra to Klytämnestra, while she continued in the title role, I was on my way to a rehearsal, when behind me on the sidewalk I heard an abrasively cranky child whining incessantly "Mommy, mommy..." When I finally decided I could ignore this no more and turned around in exasperation to beg the parent to pay a little attention to the yammering kid, I realized that the "brat" was my friend Birgit. I did get her back, though. Years later on one of our many phone calls I feigned one of those very formal secretarial voices and inquired if I might speak to Madame Nilsson – when she took the bait and said: "This is she speaking," I switched to my own voice and said "It's your mother!" It became an identifying mark for our many conversations over the years.



           We were colleagues, not rivals. There was never any jealousy, although perhaps occasional, and I hope pardonably small surges of envy emerged on both sides. I coveted those effortless clarion high C's, and she confessed that she would have enjoyed having some of my dramatic skills, although hers could be fairly incendiary. Actually we didn't share that many roles. Apart from three or four pillars of both careers: BrĂĽnnhilde, Isolde, Fidelio and the aforementioned Elektra, our repertoires pretty much went their own ways. She never sang Ortrud, and I wouldn't have touched Turandot with a Yang-Tse barge pole. And we loved singing together: Those performances and the joy of our collaboration forged a friendship that will remain affixed in my heart forever.



           A talent like Birgit's comes along – if you're lucky – perhaps once in a lifetime. How fortunately we are that it happened in our lifetime. A friend and colleague like that is even rarer, and it was a blessing for me to have worked with her.



I'll miss her greatly.

 



Astrid Varnay





Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#139 From: Brad Lehman <bpl@...>
Date: Tue Jan 17, 2006 11:17 pm
Subject: new organ and harpsichord recordings released 		bplehman27
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This is to announce two new CD sets released January 4th 2006,
recorded in March 2005.  I am the performer and producer of
both of these sets.  They use the specific keyboard tuning that
I believe was Bach's own, which evidence I have explained at
<http://www.larips.com>http://www.larips.com
and in various publications during 2005 (Early Music, The
Diapason, Clavichord International, BBC Radio 3 broadcast,
et al).
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/articles.html


Press release about the two recordings:
<http://www.goshen.edu/news/pressarchive/01-13-06-organ-cd.html>http://www.goshe\
n.edu/news/pressarchive/01-13-06-organ-cd.html
Ordering information:
<http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/music.store/index.php>http://www.gcmusiccenter\
.org/php/music.store/index.php


The organ set "A Joy Forever: Opus 41 at Goshen College" demonstrates
the new two-manual pipe organ at Goshen College (Indiana), built by
Taylor & Boody Organbuilders (Virginia).  The music is by Bach,
Brahms, Walther, Fischer, Erbach, Zachow, and some others.  To my
knowledge this is the first *complete* recording of Fischer's
_Ariadne musica_ including its five ricercars: a book that inspired
Bach's composition of the Well-Tempered Clavier.  The details of this
set are at
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html>http://www-personal.umich\
.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html
3 CDs, $30.00 USD plus shipping.  Total time slightly over 3 hours.

The single disc "Playing From Bach's Fancy" has nearly an hour of
harpsichord music by JS Bach and WF Bach, and 20 minutes on the
organ.  Preludes, fugues, sinfonias, polonaises, duetti, chorale
preludes, excerpts from the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, and
several other tidbits.  The harpsichord is a Franco/Flemish style
double by Knight Vernon, and owned by Goshen College.  The album
details are at
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html>http://www-personal.umich\
.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping.  Total time 77 minutes.


The Taylor & Boody organ Opus 41 used in these recordings:
http://www.taylorandboody.com/opuses/opus_41.htm
http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/facility/special.features/organ.php
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/tb41.html


=====

The trumpet + organ album "In Thee is Gladness" from January 2005
(recorded 1997) is also still available:
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html>http://www-personal.umich\
.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html
My colleague on that, Dr Martin Hodel, is a member of the Minnesota
Orchestra, and teaches trumpet and music theory at St Olaf College.
We recorded this album on two equal-tempered organs in northern
Germany.  It includes a variety of compositions by Buxtehude,
Brahms, Bach, Viviani, Baldassare, Pachelbel, Cellier, Bernstein,
Starer, and Lehman.  1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping, ordered by
e-mail inquiry to hodel@... .


Enjoy the music,


Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html>http://www-personal.umich\
.edu/~bpl
17 January 2006

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)
#140 From: Peter Watchorn <pgwatchorn@...>
Date: Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:18 am
Subject: Re: new organ and harpsichord recordings released 		peterglovell
Send Email Send Email
 
Hi Dr. Brad,
 
WTC 1 is now complete, with all spacing, mixing and mastering done. Unrecognisable compared to what you have there - and I mean that in the best way. We discovered one specific thing that vastly improved the sound, tuning: everything. Down in the frequency range at around 50 hz, we discovered that the sound of the keys hitting the keybed was setting up an almost constant, nearly inaudible "field" - an air resonance that simply pervaded everything. We were able to isolate the frequency and turn it down 18 db. Presto! The thing now sounds like magic. Now the 4' sounds bang in tune! Isn't acoustics an odd business?
Soon I'll send you the real thing, and you can use the version you have as drink coasters.
 
After lots of listening, my belief that your discovery is real has set into cold, hard certainty (quite a different thing, actually). There are just so many subtleties of interplay between different parts of the tuning circle that, together, reveal so much about the music that the chances that this is either a fluke or somehow "wrong" are simply non-existent. F minor and B flat minor (among others) just sound too damned breathtakingly good for this to be accidental.
 
It'll be out in time for March 21st. Any ideas on getting the word out? Working on Book 2 - recording around May (I think). I'll use the big Harrass and pedal (it'll sound great in the church, and with the tuning).
 
 
Hope you're well - and thanks for info about your own CDs - I'll get all of them. BTW - if you're ever over this way, please let me know - it'd be great to meet up.
 
Best,
 
P

Brad Lehman <bpl@...> wrote:

This is to announce two new CD sets released January 4th 2006,
recorded in March 2005.  I am the performer and producer of
both of these sets.  They use the specific keyboard tuning that
I believe was Bach's own, which evidence I have explained at
<http://www.larips.com>http://www.larips.com
and in various publications during 2005 (Early Music, The
Diapason, Clavichord International, BBC Radio 3 broadcast,
et al).
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/articles.html


Press release about the two recordings:
<http://www.goshen.edu/news/pressarchive/01-13-06-organ-cd.html>http://www.goshen.edu/news/pressarchive/01-13-06-organ-cd.html
Ordering information:
<http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/music.store/index.php>http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/music.store/index.php


The organ set "A Joy Forever: Opus 41 at Goshen College" demonstrates
the new two-manual pipe organ at Goshen College (Indiana), built by
Taylor & Boody Organbuilders (Virginia).  The music is by Bach,
Brahms, Walther, Fischer, Erbach, Zachow, and some others.  To my
knowledge this is the first *complete* recording of Fischer's
_Ariadne musica_ including its five ricercars: a book that inspired
Bach's composition of the Well-Tempered Clavier.  The details of this
set are at
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html
3 CDs, $30.00 USD plus shipping.  Total time slightly over 3 hours.

The single disc "Playing From Bach's Fancy" has nearly an hour of
harpsichord music by JS Bach and WF Bach, and 20 minutes on the
organ.  Preludes, fugues, sinfonias, polonaises, duetti, chorale
preludes, excerpts from the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, and
several other tidbits.  The harpsichord is a Franco/Flemish style
double by Knight Vernon, and owned by Goshen College.  The album
details are at
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping.  Total time 77 minutes.


The Taylor & Boody organ Opus 41 used in these recordings:
http://www.taylorandboody.com/opuses/opus_41.htm
http://www.gcmusiccenter.org/php/facility/special.features/organ.php
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/tb41.html


=====

The trumpet + organ album "In Thee is Gladness" from January 2005
(recorded 1997) is also still available:
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html
My colleague on that, Dr Martin Hodel, is a member of the Minnesota
Orchestra, and teaches trumpet and music theory at St Olaf College.
We recorded this album on two equal-tempered organs in northern
Germany.  It includes a variety of compositions by Buxtehude,
Brahms, Bach, Viviani, Baldassare, Pachelbel, Cellier, Bernstein,
Starer, and Lehman.  1 CD, $15.00 USD plus shipping, ordered by
e-mail inquiry to hodel@... .


Enjoy the music,


Bradley Lehman
Dayton VA
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1001.html>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl
17 January 2006


Yahoo! Photos
Got holiday prints? See all the ways to get quality prints in your hands ASAP.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (2)
#141 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Feb 1, 2006 10:37 am
Subject: Max Van Egmond's 70th birthday 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
Peter Watchorn has reminded me that today is the 70th birthday of the remarkable singer Max Van Egmond.  He is celebrating his 70th and the joyful fact that his voice is still in tip-top shape with the release of three CDs devoted to major song cycles by Schubert and Schumann.  In all three of these recordings, his accompanists play period fortepianos.

Here, thanks to Peter's thoughtfulness, are the particulars for those of you who may be interested in acquiring these releases.

I apologize for duplicate mailings and to those who might think that this global announcement is "OT."

Happy and Healthy 70th, Max Van E!  May there be many more!

TNT

In a message dated 1/31/2006 1:50:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, pgwatchorn@... writes:

Since I know you occasionally note important musical birthdays in your emails: Max van Egmond turns 70 tomorrow (February 1st). To celebrate, Musica Omnia has released the following three CDs:
 
w/ Kenneth Slowik (fortepiano)
 
MO 0102 Schubert: Schwanengesang/Schumann: Dichterliebe
 
w/ Penelope Crawford (fortepiano)
MO 0107 Schubert: Die schoene Muellerin
MO 0108 Schubert: Winterreise
 
The first two currently available through www.cdbaby.com with MO 0108 due in February. All will also be available directly through www.musicaomnia.org
shortly.




Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#142 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Feb 3, 2006 2:31 pm
Subject: Classical Music Web Site Andante Shuts Down 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
In case you have not heard that the Andante.com classical music website is no more, here is the URL to the Playbill.com article:

http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/print/3825.html








Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#143 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Mar 6, 2006 10:41 am
Subject: March 6, 1706 		terinoeltowe
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Depending on your source (Some give March 3, others March 9 as the date of interment), today is the 350th anniversary of the death of Johann Pachelbel, most widely known as the composer of the "notorious" Canon in D, but one of the greatest keyboard composers of the late 17th century and one of the teachers of Johann Sebastian Bach's eldest brother, Johann Christoph.



Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730




Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#144 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:22 am
Subject: Fwd: [SSCM-L] EU ban covers lead in pipe organs 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
  

There is not much non-Europeans can do, but go to
<http://www.pipes4organs.org/index.html> to find a link to a press release
from the Institute of British Organ Builders that explains how pipe organs
will be affected by a ban on lead as a hazardous substance. The URL given here
is to a campaign within Britain to alter the EU ban. The site claims that
"from 1st July 2006 these [EU] Directives will outlaw pipe organs because they
also need lead as part of traditional lead/tin alloys necessary to produce the
sound-making organ pipes."



--
Margaret Murata, Professor of Music
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California 92697-2775
USA

tel: (949) 824-4916
fax: (949) 824-4914

_______________________________________________
List-Info: https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/sscm-l

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#145 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:47 am
Subject: Britain, UK news from The Times Requiem for church organs 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
With thanks to Michael F. R:


Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
"Requiem for church organs
By Ruth Gledhill
An EU directive aimed at controlling lead waste is putting the country's historic instruments in peril
THE stops could be pulled for ever on many church organs because of an EU directive designed to control hazardous substances.
 
The instruments at Salisbury Cathedral, St Paul’s in London, Worcester Cathedral, St Albans Abbey and Birmingham Town Hall are among the first that may be silenced. They are due to be refurbished or rebuilt and will fall foul of the directives, which are aimed at limiting the amount of lead in electrical items.
 
The regulations permit electrical equipment to have a maximum of 0.1 per cent of their weight as lead. Organ pipes have a lead content of 50 per cent or more and the Department of Trade and Industry has advised organ builders that, in the interests of directive harmony, they must “prepare to comply”. Though pipe organs are essentially mechanical devices, they use electric motors to power the blowers that move air through the pipes.
 
The great Harrison and Harrison organ at the South Bank, which is now in pieces in Durham as part of the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall, is under immediate threat. Under EU Directive 2002 95/EC RoHS and EU Directive 2002 96/EC WEEE, it will technically be illegal to reinstall it.
 
The Salisbury Cathedral organ, which is in pieces in Durham, where the console is being renovated, is also in danger of contravening the directive. Tim Hone, head of liturgy and music at the cathedral, said: “We were really looking forward to the return of our great Willis Harrison instrument. If this is delayed beyond July, we would could fall foul of the directive. We would have to use a piano in perpetuity.”
 
The directive, which seeks to minimise the amount of “hazardous waste” that finds its way into landfill after electrical products are scrapped, would also bring to an end the 1,000-year-old craft of organ building. In Britain there are about 70 companies employing about 800 people, and all their jobs are at risk.
 
Only straightforward repairs of old instruments, doing nothing to change or modify the organ, would be allowed.
 
Tony Baldry, the Tory MP for Banbury, is urging the Government to intervene to save the organ. He has tabled an early day motion giving warning that the ban will have “a serious impact on England’s cultural and liturgical life and will mean an end to English organ building”. He is calling on the Government to negotiate with the European Commission to find a way to protect traditional pipe organs.
 
Lead is used in organ pipes because of its malleability and the distinctive sound it produces. Organists are baffled that they have been caught up in EU red tape because when organs are rebuilt the lead is not thrown away. It is re-used in new or different pipes.
 
In a letter to organists nationwide, Katherine Venning, the president of the Institute of British Organ Building, said: “There is a very black cloud on the horizon. This is not a safety issue. Pipe makers live to a ripe old age, with no known damage to their health. The use of tin-lead alloy is essential. There is no known substitute that will give equivalent results. Pipe organs last indefinitely, and present no threat to the environment.”
 
A spokeswoman for the DTI said that the directive did apply to organs and that Britain could not deviate from a “harmonised approach”. She said: “The DTI has been working with the pipe organ industry for some time on this and is fully aware of the issue.”
 
She said that exemptions from directives could be granted by the EU.
"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2091756,00.html




Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#146 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:58 am
Subject: March 21, 1685 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
As Richard Westenburg recently reminded me:

In 2006, JSB is 321 on 3/21!


Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730













Reply | Messages in this Topic (4)
#147 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Mar 28, 2006 2:39 pm
Subject: Fwd: [SSCM-L] CFP: Performance Practice: Issues and Approaches 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 

Call for Papers and Performances

Performance Practice:  Issues and Approaches

 

 

The Department of Music of Rhodes College invites proposals for papers and performances for a conference on “Performance Practice:  Issues and Approaches,” to be held 4-6 March 2007.  The conference will feature scholarly papers and roundtables on issues related to performance practice as well as performances and lecture recitals illustrating approaches to historically informed performance.  Proposals on a wide range of topics are encouraged, including, but not limited to, issues relating to specific composers, geographic areas, and periods of music history from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, performance practice of repertoires outside the traditional canon of Western music, and the impact of technology on performance practice.  It is expected that papers selected for the conference will be published.

 

A highlight of the conference will be the keynote address by Christopher Hogwood, one of the leading figures in historically informed performance.  This address will constitute the Rhodes College 2007 Springfield Lecture in Music.  A performance of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul by the Rhodes Singers, Rhodes MasterSingers, soloists, and members of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra will also be featured as part of the conference.

 

Abstracts of papers appropriate for the conference should be sent by mail or (preferably) e-mail to:

 

Dr. Tim Watkins (watkinst@...)

Department of Music

Rhodes College

2000 North Parkway

Memphis, TN 38112

 

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and should indicate clearly the scope of research, methodology, and conclusions of the paper, as well as the significance of the conclusions.  Paper presentations should last no longer than twenty minutes.

 

Proposals for performances should be sent by mail or (preferably) e-mail to:

 

Dr. Carole Blankenship (blankenship@...)

Department of Music

Rhodes College

2000 North Parkway

Memphis, TN 38112

 

Proposals should include information on the performing forces (including a brief biographical sketch), special performance requirements, and the pieces to be performed.  Proposals should be no longer than 300 words.  No recordings at this time, please.

 

The deadline for receipt of abstracts and performance proposals is 1 September 2006.

 

 

Tim Watkins

Rhodes College

Phone: 901-843-3774

watkinst@...

 

_______________________________________________
List-Info: https://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/sscm-l

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#148 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Apr 17, 2006 11:05 am
Subject: Fwd: Phoenix Project to provide historic organs to Damaged Churches 		terinoeltowe
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Please distribute the following announcement:
 
ORGAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY INAUGURATES 'PHOENIX PROJECT' TO HELP RELOCATE ORGANS TO CHURCHES IN NEED
 
Natural disasters, accidents, and arson have taken a terrible toll on American houses of worship. To help affected churches and synagogues rebuild, the non-profit Organ Historical Society, in cooperation with the Organ Clearing House, announces the Phoenix Project, an initiative aimed at relocating suitable organs from buildings that have closed. Across the country, redundant organs of excellent quality are currently available to suit the needs of worship, and experts in organ building and restoration stand ready to provide advice and referrals without charge. For information about this free service, please contact Laurence Libin at mail@... or view the Organ Historical Society's website, www.organsociety.org.

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#149 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:44 am
Subject: Airline played instrumental role in orchestral woes 		terinoeltowe
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With profuse thanks to Steve M.:

Click here: Airline played instrumental role in orchestral woes

http://www.startribune.com/465/v-print/story/386258.html



Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730













Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#150 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:38 am
Subject: Fwd: "Harry Newstone Conductor of subtlety and power 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Michael F. R.:

Independent Online Edition > Obituaries
"Harry Newstone
Conductor of subtlety and power whose recordings range from Haydn to Havergal Brian
Published: 27 April 2006
 
Harry Newstone, conductor, musicologist and teacher: born Winnipeg, Manitoba 21 June 1921; married 1952 Renée Oliver (marriage dissolved), 1979 Peggy Jo Sahmaunt (one son, marriage dissolved); died Victoria, British Columbia 16 April 2006.
 
Harry Newstone was one of the unsung heroes of British music of the last half-century. He enjoyed the professional respect of some of the world's finest musicians. The cellist Pierre Fournier described him as "a great conductor, a great musician who will ever give inspiration to those who have the privilege of his presence"; another leading cellist, Janos Starker, wrote that "I consider him among the finest conductors of his generation". The pianist Lili Kraus found in him "that rare phenomenon of spirit, intellect and emotion functioning in full equilibrium throughout his performance; this is the outstanding criterion of the true artist".
 
And yet, though Newstone was active on both sides of the Atlantic, he was never accorded either the position or the public acclaim his musicianship deserved.
 
Harry Newstone was born in 1921 in Canada, the son of Russian immigrants who had taken Canadian citizenship; when Harry was three, his photographer father moved to London in search of the success that was eluding him in his adoptive land. Harry's musicality manifested itself at the age of 15, when he took up the harmonica and won a talent competition at the Troxy Cinema in east London. The cinema organist, Bobby Pagan, recognised an exceptional ability and offered to teach him the piano; he also persuaded Harry's parents to allow him to go on tour in a variety show - which later in life allowed him to boast that his first musical "job" had been to replace the harmonica-player Tommy Reilly.
 
Newstone soon teamed up with an older musician, the accordionist Alf Vorzanger, who taught him that instrument, too; they took their stage name - the St Louis Boys - from their signature tune, the "St Louis Blues". Before long, Newstone became a virtuoso on the harmonica, the ultimate seal of approval coming when Larry Adler, his idol, remarked that his talent was amazing.
 
Of course, a "real" job was required and, when Newstone proved a natural draughtsman, a career as an architect seemed the obvious choice. But the call of music proved stronger, and in 1942 - having toured with Ensa and been invalided out of the Army after two years - he began four years of study (harmony, counterpoint and composition) with the composer Herbert Howells, alongside another promising late starter, the symphonist-to-be Robert Simpson, who had rejected a future in medicine; their lifelong friendship was sealed with stints of duty as civil-defence volunteers in London under the Blitz.
 
A government award allowed Newstone to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the City of London, taking the Associate exam of the Guildhall in conducting in 1949 and a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music in 1950. In 1954 and 1956, supported by a scholarship from the Italian government, he went to the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome to sit at the feet of Fernando Previtali.
 
Instead of waiting, as Carl Nielsen put it, for fried pigeons to fly into his mouth, Newstone set about launching a career himself, founding the Haydn Orchestra in 1949 - the first concert took place in the Conway Hall on 19 May - and garnering instant acclaim, The Manchester Guardian comparing their playing with that of the Vienna Philharmonic under Bruno Walter. By 1951 Newstone and his musicians were respected enough an element of London's musical life to be asked to contribute a Haydn festival (based on the composer's visits to the capital) to the Festival of Britain.
 
Haydn, too, furnished their first recording, with two symphonies that were then rarities: No 49, nicknamed "La Passione", and No 73, "La Chasse". The next LP coupled Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, No 41, with his Serenata Notturna. The reviews were wildly enthusiastic. Malcolm Macdonald, writing in Gramophone in January 1953, described it as "a model in every respect of how to perform and record an 18th-century symphony". A BBC reviwer said of Newstone's account of the "Jupiter":
 
Harry Newstone had to compete with Bruno Walter in one of the world's major masterpieces, and he won hands down.
 
He continued to make recordings over the next decade or so: vocal works by Mozart and Haydn, Stravinsky and others. Denis Stevens pulled no punches in Gramophone when reviewing his recordings of the Bach "Brandenburg" Concertos with the Hamburg Chamber Orchestra:
 
These performances are far and away the most musical, the most expertly played, and the best recorded I have ever listened to.
 
Somehow, though, the big time continued to elude the softly spoken, mild-mannered Newstone. His début in the Royal Festival Hall - with the Philharmonia in January 1959 - drew more critical enthusiasm, the review in The Times being typical:  From first bar to last the performance was extraordinarily fresh, rhythmically alert, scrupulous in dynamics, considerate of crucial structural junctures, and sometimes, more important than all these things, positively inspired and inspiring.
 
An event which should have guaranteed his breakthrough occurred on 31 March 1960. In the Royal Festival Hall that evening Basil Cameron had conducted the first half of a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra - Beethoven's Egmont Overture and "Emperor" Piano Concerto with Wilhelm Backhaus - but was taken ill on the podium and by the interval was too ill to carry on. Summoned from his London flat, Newstone arrived in time to conduct the second half of the programme, Sibelius' Fourth Symphony, entirely unprepared, and with less than an hour's notice he delivered a performance that was praised for its subtlety and power.
 
Meanwhile he was also acquiring a reputation as a scholar, editing works by Bach and Haydn. The draughtsman's hand that had pointed to a career in architecture now came in useful again: Newstone's calligraphic script could produce a score that was ready for the printer as it stood.
 
His engagements in Britain and abroad multiplied. His first foreign appearance had been in Berlin in 1955, and Copenhagen called him in a year later. In 1959 he became the first Western conductor to work in Hungary since the Second World War, and in 1960 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation invited him to Vancouver to conduct a series of broadcasts and concerts in the festival there. He also appeared in Czechoslovakia, Israel, Mexico and Portugal.
 
An invitation from the Nashville Symphony Orchestra to guest-conduct in the 1962-63 season was crowned with the first honorary citizenship awarded by the newly designated Metropolitan Nashville "in recognition of his very substantial contribution to our standard of living". Then, in 1965, having served as a guest conductor for the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra in California, he was appointed its music director, presiding in 1965-66 over its first ever sell-out season. He presided there until 1978, presenting his Sacramento audiences with Bruckner, Mahler and Nielsen and other major composers unheard there, and in 1968 kept faith with his old friend Robert Simpson, a quarter-century after their Blitz experiences, with the US premiere of his Second Symphony.
 
Back home, he was busy broadcasting "original" readings of several Beethoven symphonies for BBC in the mid-1960s in the light of Robert Simpson's examination of the manuscript scores, courting controversy with decisions that are now commonplace, such as observing Beethoven's stated repeat of the Scherzo and Trio in the Fifth. He also took part in a project with BBC Wales to make a complete recording of the Haydn symphonies.
 
Another Simpson campaign in which Newstone was a willing participant was in the complete recording of the symphonies of the maverick composer Havergal Brian. Beginning in 1959 (when Brian was 73) with Symphonies Nos 11 and 12, Newstone was eventually to conduct the premieres of no fewer than five Brian works. Brian's extraordinary Indian summer (21 of his 32 symphonies were written after his 80th birthday) can in part be ascribed to Simpson's and Newstone's dedicated support.
 
In 1979, back in Britain after Sacramento, Newstone was named Director of Music at the University of Kent at Canterbury, organising concerts there, in the cathedral and elsewhere. On his retirement in 1986 he was made an Honorary Research Fellow.
 
Newstone's recorded legacy - from those early Haydn and Mozart symphonies via Busoni to his contemporaries Copland, Lutoslawski and Arnold - is intermittent but consistently impressive. It is only a partial reflection of his career - but then his career was only a partial reflection of his talent and ability.
 

Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#151 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue May 2, 2006 2:02 pm
Subject: New Bach organization - Bach Network UK 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
With apologies to those who have already received it, I am happy to forward to you an announcement that was sent to those of us who are members of The American Bach Society by the ABS Secretary-Treasurer, Matthew Dirst, together with the pdf file with complete information about the newly formed Bach Network UK:

ABS members,

Please see the announcement below of a new organization in the UK
devoted to our favorite composer.

-M Dirst
ABS secretary-treasurer


>Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 18:39:46 +0200
>From: Ruth Tatlow <rmt@...>
>Subject: Bach Network UK
>To: Matthew Dirst <mdirst@...>
>X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
>X-PMX-Version: 4.7.1.128075, Antispam-Engine: 2.3.0.1,
>  Antispam-Data: 2006.5.2.91111
>
>Dear Matthew
>
>I am writing to ask if it might be possible for you to forward
>electronically the enclosed invitation to members of the American
>Bach Society.  You may have heard that Bach Network UK was recently
>formed by Reinhard Strohm, John Butt and myself, and that Lawrence
>Dreyfus has recently joined our Trustees.  We have just launched our
>first web journal, /Understanding Bach,/ and we would like your
>members to be able to participate in the dialogue that we are
>generating.  The website is: www.bachnetwork.co.uk and
>/Understanding Bach  /can be found under Publications.  Membership
>is free and all details are secure (please read our Privacy Policy).
>As you know John Butt will be speaking at the ABS meeting later this
>month, and I will be attending too.  It would be very good if the
>membership invitation could have gone out to ABS members before then
>so that John and I can generate further interest during the Leipzig
>conference.
>Many thanks for your help.
>With best wishes
>
>Ruth Tatlow
>
>
>


--
____________________________

Matthew Dirst
Associate Professor of Music
Moores School of Music
120 School of Music Building
University of Houston
Houston, TX  77204-4017

Artistic Director, Ars Lyrica Houston
www.arslyricahouston.org

w. (713) 743-3150
fax (713) 743-3166
Email: mdirst@...

If the attachment does not reach you, you can visit the new organization's website at:

http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk

I also urge those of you who have not yet joined The American Bach Society to do so.  Complete information is available at the ABS website at:

http://www.americanbachsociety.org/membership.html


Teri Noel Towe

The Face Of Bach

"Those in charge are odd and ambivalent towards music, which means I have to live with almost non-stop vexation, envy, and persecution."
Johann Sebastian Bach, October 28, 1730














Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#152 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri May 26, 2006 11:29 am
Subject: Bach on the bus - An interesting Bach article from Germany 		terinoeltowe
Send Email Send Email
 
With thanks to Alison A:

2006-03-16
Bach on the bus
Viola player Volker Hagedorn recounts his most glorious moments with Bach on
tour
"Do not talk to the bus driver while he's driving," it says in German above
the windshield, although the bus is driving through Albania. Forty years
before, it was brand new and rolling along German roads. Now it's
transporting a choir and an orchestra from Tirana to Shkodër. Huge decaying
factories surface from the winter fog in beautiful valleys, shattered
greenhouses and one little round bunker after the next, cover the
countryside like a rash. Blood on the side of the road. A cow twitches in
the grass. It was slaughtered in the open for New Year's Eve. We saw no end
of animal parts dangling from telephone poles. And in my head like a
soundtrack to the film, I could hear music we were touring with: the Credo
of Bach's Mass in B Minor.

This fugue is particularly likely to stick in a violia player's mind. This
is not a viola player joke: it's just that one of the most beautiful pieces
that Bach wrote for viola player allows them to just sit back and listen.
The Credo comes in the middle of the mass. If you had been suffering from
toothache before the performance, your pain will be numbed; if you feared
death, you will fear it no longer, if you had no religion, you will no
longer need one. The horizontal of time, the ephemera, becomes a vertical, a
frozen moment in whose expanses an inexplicable feeling of comfort arises.
And then comes the Credo. The tenor sings first and then the cembalo and the
basses begin to feel their way along under the long notes.

Eight quarter notes per bar, up and down in a myriad little steps, an
unflagging little hill-walker, and on the other side, the five-toned glory.
It's earthy and emotional, this doggedly human effort of the basses against
the weightless vocal horizon. This unfurls smoothly, the way a fixed horizon
gradually transforms when seen from a moving bus. It's panoramic music which
offers endless space for new views of the world. And while the violins trace
golden contour lines, the violas listen for 45 bars, silent witnesses of
this balancing of worlds. The centre is reached, the instrument in the
middle has nothing more to do. Now the strings join in, inaudibly. Bach
understood that. His son Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote: "As the best expert and
judge of harmony, his instrument of choice was the viola..."

Maybe he saw the wide world before him as he travelled the brief stretch
between Eisenach and Leipzig, and rarely beyond. The world in which his
notes would travel. There is no music that has travelled as far and as well
as his; it was already suited for the tropics by the time Albert Schweitzer
set up his special moisture-resistant piano in the jungle. Bach is suited to
all climatic zones, as long as the players don't pass out. When you've been
travelling with his music for a while, in the southern hemisphere or through
the churches of Thuringia, you feel as though he's sitting in the bus beside
you, a quiet travelling companion, friendly, not the tour leader type, not
the diva who's always gets sick first, but someone who, to everyone's
surprise, has a can of beer in his bag that he's willing to share.

In Mexico, he saved us. We sat in the theatre in Guadalajara, a city of
three million, in front of an old stage backdrop, an enormous, ragged
screen. A bucolic scene was painted on it and it was breathing. Between the
cooling air from the street and the warm moist breath of the huge, silent
audience, the entire painted landscape heaved slowly back and forth. At some
point it seemed to me as if the audience too was oscillating in the
half-darkness, except for four half-naked Mexican beauty queens, adorned
with sashes, frozen with pride, sitting in the front row. A sight like that
can make you dizzy.

We started by playing cantatas by Bach's predecessors: "Caminos que conducen
a Bach". The reaction hardly suggested that the people of Guadalajara had
been waiting all their lives to hear protestant Baroque. They're so Catholic
that there was even a picture of the Madonna at the back of the side stage,
adorned with fresh flowers. But when Bach himself arrived, the connection
was there. "Christ lag in Todesbanden" is a furious fight against death.
Bach was 23 years old when he wrote it. Three of his siblings, both his
parents, and most recently his ingenious uncle Johann Christoph had all
died. The latter seems to be there with him still, helping compose the
prelude full of painful chromatics. Then the young composer sets out to
fight the one "den niemand zwingen kunnt", which nobody can coerce. His
choral variations encircle death in siege, bright with confidence and
blossoming fantasy. Bach has not yet disappeared in his music here, he
encounters death himself, on this side, like the Mexicans who sell skeleton
marionettes in the market and skulls of sugar: "Ein Spott aus dem Tod ist
worden", death has become a mockery.

The whole piece swings. It is full of joy. When we finish the seventh and
last verse, the people spring up in the semi-darkness, ecstatic, as though
we had just played some Mexican hit and not a three hundred year old
cantata. The four beauty queens want autographs. Even from us viola players.

No one make us mid-toners feel so needed as Bach. Many consider viola
players the wall flowers between the violins and the cellos, the stop-gaps
who get to play the odd filler notes or double the bass and can't do much
more anyway. That's because a few decades ago, we really were a little
under-employed, when polyphony went out of fashion, a process that had
already begun in Bach's lifetime and then continued through the Viennese
classical era – although Mozart gave the viola a few wonderful passages. But
actually the 18th century after Bach was not especially keen on the middle
voices and their diplomatic skills, the tones that mediate between extremes,
the heights and the depths, the far and the near.

In the ruptured 17th century that spawned Bach, the viola player was much
loved. Claudio Monteverdi took up the viola himself. It was not uncommon for
there to be three viola players for every violinist. Luxurious, dense,
warming multi-vocality, comforting in an era of wars and plagues and the new
realisation that the earth has no fixed position but in fact rotates around
the sun. Maybe the middle tones helped compensate for the loss of the
middle. Towards the end of the century, the instrumentation for the cantatas
was two violins and two violas (or viola da gamba) over the bass standard,
and Bach's "Christ lag in Todesbanden" was also performed in this way.

Bach soon departed from the dual-viola instrumentation but the one he held
on to, under the violins, seemed to gain in beauty. It had all the lovely
features that Bach's lines always have; even when you play it alone, you can
hear the rest of the work, assuming you know it. With the works of other
composers, Purcell being a possible exception, it's rare for one part to
evoke the entire context in which it is heard. So it's pure pleasure to
practice Bach. And when you rehearse together, there's no reason to envy the
others because they have something better. To the contrary: even the
violinists admit that the viola often has the most interesting role. Bach
played it himself, in the words of his son, "with the appropriate strength
and weakness," always working out the course of the harmonies.

And he often sets the key stone, the moment that all the tension is leading
up to and which makes the piece waterproof in the end, by taking the viola
from minor into major or brushing a little third from a major chord. It also
has its own personality in the B minor mass. After the great invocation
"Kyrie eleison," the orchestra plays for 25 bars alone. The viola
continually provides the basic rhythm with a little anacrusis that spans the
tightest intervals up to the tritone. This will largely escape the attention
of the listener, at best he might notice that the viola players look a
little more motivated that they do, ehem, at the beginning of Handel's
"Messiah". What he will hear, though, is the luxury that Bach bestows on us
in "Et in terra pax". Seven bars before the end, the viola starts up a
series of sixteenths, and the only thing this has in common with anything
that came before is the scale traversing. A Byzantine, sumptuous shimmering
ribbon effuses from the viola, an almost exoticly bright inlay, before the
familiar motive returns to end the piece.

When viola players play that the way they'd like to, they can be sure that
the conductor will soon quieten them down. But there's another passage in
this mass, where they truly play the central role. In it, the viola carries
the sins of the world for fifty bars, reminiscent of an ancient, sorely
afflicted, timeless and gentle lamb. Bach leads us in inescapably, because
the "Qui tollis peccata mundi" begins before it begins: the last notes of
the piece become the prelude, it becomes a syncope and then our heavy
procession begins. The choir sings softly of the sins of the world and begs
for mercy, the flutes wallow in redemption, but the viola has to do the
work, bearing the yoke of unremitting pairs of eighths.

These lead into the most dangerous of harmonies, and if you can't play them
sprucely you might as well pack your bags – you hear every note. And as you
play you sense how Bach worked to boost his and our confidence alike. You
must travel a path with the "Agnus Dei," the lamb of God. You doesn't
necessarily have to think of Jesus, this is about all the weight and pain of
the world and how we bear it. In the spoiled cities of Europe where the mass
is part of the repertoire, the existentialism in these few bars of suffering
is barely heard. But when we play this in Albania, it is needed. Everything
that somehow offers comfort is welcome and Bach's great mass has never been
played here before.

"Are you really playing the B minor mass?" asked a composer in Shkodër, a
little city in the north. "With everything? With Credo and Osanna and
Sanctus?" He knew the work only from the sheet music and the radio. And we
played it in a theatre which, in Germany, would have been closed by health
and safety long ago. From below the stage, a light glimmered through the
planks of an ancient revolving stage, on which were glued the remnants of
props from a variety show. The light flickered, but it didn't go out. Behind
the theatre was a hut with a diesel generator which produced very noisy
electricity. The strings were moist from the rainy weather and out of tune,
but it was alright. It's always alright when the audience is so excited.

It's not just the audience which profits when Bach tours these musically
under-nourished communities. The musicians themselves discover him anew,
experience him free of the freight of bourgeois ritual. Nothing against the
countless masses, oratorios, cantatas, Brandenburg concertos in well-heated
churches and halls, in richly illuminated shopping zones, nothing against
the musical hearth god of academic families from Paris to Tokyo, but at some
point, you want to to hear these compositions in the open as it were, not
embedded but exposed. When it does come to this, Bach is well ahead of us.
The calm fellow traveller was a linguistic genius, he had made contacts at
every level before we even learned to say "please" in the local language.

But around the corner in his homeland, he's not so popular. Presumably the
Thuringians are proud of Bach but maybe they're wary of the shadow he casts.
On the edge of the Thuringian Forest there's a town called Themar with just
over 3,000 inhabitants and a beautiful late Gothic church. When we'd changed
and were standing around in front of the church, a couple of kids cycled
past and, seeing our black suits, one called to the other: "Another one dead
in this shitty town". Bach didn't die that evening, although his work was
only heard by seven elderly women. This just makes you play fervently for
all eternity, comforting yourself with the thought that even in the poorest,
most forgotten gold rush towns in southern Australia, the hall fills when
Bach rolls in.

Or in the mining town of Forbach in Lothringen, another place that has not
exactly been spoiled by the times but which – nomen est omen - harbours an
enthusiastic passion for Bach. There, my viola fell in love with his motets
that barely need it at all. They were written for highly versatile singers
whose voices in, at least one documented case, Bach accompanied with
instruments – the orthodox performance ideal of one true version is after
all, a fiction of the art cult of the 19th century. As an instrumentalist,
one is intimately close to the singers here. The filigree phrases, which
bend to follow the words, force the bow to speak more sensitively the
syllables, words, phrases, than one normally does with Bach. The motets fail
if they sound muddy and oratorical, but they pierce your heart if they're
focussed and lean.

The singers and their stringed accompaniment were stacked up on a steep
landing in the packed church in Forbach. Behind me was a gaping hole with a
stone column for support. Yet another reason to play forward, into the
heated appetite of the audience. Because Bach's music always connects with
its environment and absorbs all impressions, I can still savour in the
motets the aromas of what the Forbachers served afterwards: steak and red
wine.

And the "Agnus Dei" carries on its back the memory of that day when it could
go no further in Albania. We were rehearsing the B minor mass in the
capital, Tirana, in a pyramid. This had been built as a memorial by the
communist dictator Enver Hoxha, and has now become a cultural centre with
candelabra and mirrors. But when the lamb started out on his arduous journey
with the eighths from the viola, the lights went out. We fared a little
further playing from memory, but then the lamb dissovled into scrawny tones
and disappeared into the darkness. If this was supposed to be the revenge of
the atheist Hoxha, then he must have reconsidered by the time of the
concert. The mass took place illuminated. Including the most lovely pause
ever created for the viola player...
*
Volker Hagedorn recommends the follwing CD: Magnificat in E flat major BWV
243a. Rheinische Kantorei/Das Kleine Konzert, under Hermann Max (emi). Works
better than a double espresso, apparently.
This text originally appeared in the March 2006 issue of DU magazine.
Translation: nb.



Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







Reply | Messages in this Topic (1)
#153 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:27 am
Subject: The destruction of Warner Classics 		terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Gary T. and apologies for any accidental duplicate postings:

>Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:15:36 -0600
>
>Another record crash
>
>
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>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>       Another record crash
>
>       By Norman Lebrecht / June 12, 2006
>
>
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>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    A large chunk of masonry fell off the music industry last week when
>Warner shut down its classical operation, throwing 40 artists onto the
>street.
>
>    The execution was conducted in the usual way, without the slightest
>consideration for cultural consequences. An empty suit in Hollywood rang a
>tight-run office in London and told them to stop everything and sack the
>team - all except those who will be needed for recycling the backlist as
>supermarket labels and download fodder. No argument was permitted, for such
>elevated decisions are always irrevocable.
>
>    The fact that Warner Classics has been profitable in each of the
>past five years and more progressive than its competitors cut no cake with
>a parent corporation that is yoked to floundering AOL and contemplating
>merger with EMI. Grappling with these big deals, chairman Edgar Bronfman
>Jr. had no patience for the prestos and adagios of an offshore accessory
>that contributes barely two percent of pop-music revenues.
>
>    The tragic fact of the matter is that giant media players are
>pulling out of minority art, a myopic strategy that gives them no chance of
>tapping the next quirk in public taste or contributing to cultural
>evolution. Warner bought its way into classics just ahead of the Three
>Tenors 1990 boom and scored an eight-million follow-up CD at the Los
>Angeles World Cup. It gobbled up one independent after another - Erato in
>France, Teldec in Germany, Finlandia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi - and went
>into overproduction along with all the others in the 1990s until the roof
>fell in and the outlet was slimmed down to a single stream of mainstream
>classics. That, too, ha now been deemed surplus to requirements.
>
>    Warner's exit leaves just three major labels in the classical racks
>- EMI, Sony-BMG and Deutsche Grammophon/Decca - and much of what they
>produce nowadays cannot be remotely classified as classical.
>
>    The brunt of the Warner switch-off is being borne by artists. Senior
>figures like Daniel Barenboim and William Christie took the news with a
>fatalistic shrug, having made enough records over the years to live off
>rolling royalties. But there was no softening the blow for soloists in
>their 20s and 30s who were just starting to make a name - the quicksilver
>Canadian violinist Leila Josefowitz, the formidable Russian pianist Nikolai
>Lugansky, the thoughtful British fiddler Daniel Hope.
>
>    The BBC Symphony Orchestra's new era with its Czech chief Jiri
>Belohlavek has been taken off the record with just one Dvorak disc in the
>can; the eclectic Sakari Oramo in Birmingham will not be given another
>chance to exhume obscure British composers such as the intriguing John
>Foulds. Karita Mattila, Susan Graham and Monica Groop are among the singing
>casualties. Anu Tali, an enterprising, stunningly attractive young Estonian
>with her own Nordic Symphony Orchestra, has been thrown on the scrapheap.
>Even by present-day corporate standards, the shutdown was as brutal as it
>gets.
>
>    The irony is that Warner Classics, under the thoughtful Matthew
>Cosgrove, was doing almost everything right. Avoiding vapid film tracks,
>tacky crossover projects and sex-bombs who could pout but not play,
>Cosgrove, 45, combined aesthetic sensibility with an eye for market
>opportunity. He had a higher count of living composers than any other
>label, including a million-selling CD of Henryk Gorecki's third symphony
>and the projected complete works of Gyorgy Ligeti (now discontinued).
>
>    When Tony Blair visited the Pope this month, the gift he presented
>him was a Warner set of Mozart concertos. When the BBC broadcast
>Barenboim's set of Wagner's Ring in a day over Easter, Cosgrove offered
>free downloads, taking a bigger stride into I-pod delivery than any of his
>plodding rivals. Whatever Bronfman's reasons for axing Warner Classics,
>failure was not one of them.
>
>    But then performance, financial or artistic, plays little part in
>the running of the music industry, where the big egos belong to the suits
>upstairs and the artists get by as best they can in a never-ending round of
>executive musical chairs. EMI has just announced a successor to its
>deceptively subtle President of Classics, Richard Lyttelton, who is being
>shoved into early retirement in his mid-50s despite sustaining high profits
>and prestige for almost two decades. Lyttleton, fourth son of a British
>Earl a former Sixties disco owner, got along famously with everyone from
>Simon Rattle to Angela Georghiu to Vanessa-Mae. His one social failure was
>Alain Levy, the humourless chairman of EMI Music and his direct boss, who
>wanted him out.
>
>    So Lyttelton has been expensively ousted in favour of Costa
>Pilavachi, a Greek-Canadian of equal conviviality who was best mates with
>Valery Gergiev, Andrea Bocelli and Cecilia Bartoli so long as he was
>President of Decca - that is, until a couple of months ago when he was
>removed in an ego spat by his New York boss, Chris Roberts. Roberts sent a
>Serb from Deutsche Grammophon to run Decca, leaving a highly-paid A&R gap
>at DG which, I understand, is going to be filled by none other than Matthew
>Cosgrove, newly released by Warner. So, when the music stops, all the
>executives have good seats (or payoffs) and it's only the artists that
>suffer.
>
>    Meanwhile, the actual production of classics by major labels has
>dwindled to about three-dozen a year and the only way most artists can get
>on record is by paying for it themselves or authorising free downloads.
>That, whatever the soft talk of corporate press releases, is the state of
>play in the music industry of 2006, an industry that is looking more and
>more like the kitchen cabinet of Admiral Doenitz, waiting for a junior
>Allied officer to come along and arrest the fantasists around the table. It
>would be a farce if it wasn't so sad, for the loss is wholly ours.
>
>    Classical music used to be the industry's core resource. The Beatles
>could never have developed their sophisticated sound world without the
>symphonic expertise on hand at Abbey Road and most subsequent groups are
>indebted, wittingly or not, to the stern disciplines and mathematical logic
>of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. 'People in the record business understood
>that classics was where we all came from - the basis of what we do,' a
>former head of Sony Europe told me recently. 'We were happy to carry on
>making records in that area, even losing a bit of money. But Wall Street
>didn't like that. If investors see sentiment, they make heads roll.' This
>month's Sony-BMG release sheet consists of movie puffs and crossover - not
>one classical CD. The abolition of Warner Classics is another small step
>towards cultural oblivion.
>
>
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>    To be notified of the next Lebrecht article, please email
>mikevincent at scena dot org
>
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>
>
>    Visit every week to read Norman Lebrecht's latest column. [Index]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>       (c) La Scena Musicale 2001-2006
>
>





Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.
1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
212-772-2216 (telefax)







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