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#170 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:18 am
Subject: From Bach Network UK - Understanding Bach, Volume 2!
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It always is a pleasure to help Ruth Tatlow spread the news about Bach Network UK.  If you have not joined, I urge you to do so, ASAP.

As always, I apologize to anyone on my Bach and Bach related Yahoo mailing lists for whom this announcement is a redundancy.

My best and my thanks always,

Teri

Teri Noel Towe

Of Counsel

Ganz & Hollinger, P. C.

1394 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10021-0404 USA
212-517-5500 (voice)
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#169 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:15 pm
Subject: Fwd: B-minor Mass Symposium in Belfast, Nov., 2007
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I apologize to any individual  for whom this e-mail is redundant.



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Dear Bach enthusiasts (esp. B-minor Mass),

I am delighted to announce the draft programme of the International Symposium: “Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass” which we are hosting this autumn. Although the event is primarily for scholars to discuss each other’s work in depth, everyone is welcome to listen to their debate and even join in the debate. In addition to the symposium, we are also having various workshops and lectures for students (of various age groups!) as well as the exhibition of research materials. The Bach week concludes with the performance of the work by Academy of Ancient Music with Choir of Claire College Cambridge conducted by Masaaki Suzuki in Clonard Monastery (http://www.clonard.com/)

We are currently working on the administrative details (fees, hotels, etc), which will be shortly published at the following website:  http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/tomita/bachbib/conferences/Belfast-Nov2007/

If you are interested in attending, please let me know that you are thinking of coming, so that I can send you further information by email.

Best wishes,

Yo

--

Dr Yo Tomita <y.tomita@qub.ac.uk>
School of Music & Sonic Arts
Queen's University Belfast
BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK
http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)28 9097 5206; Fax +44 (0)28 9097 5053

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

International Symposium: “Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass”
2-4 November 2007, The School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen’s University Belfast

Draft Programme as of 23 April 2007

Friday, 2 November 2007

Session 1 (16:00-18:00): Historical Background (1): seen from wider context (Chair: George B. Stauffer, Rutgers University, USA)

·         Tanya Kevorkian (Millersville University, USA): “Cultural Transfer, Cultural Competition, and Religious Diversity in Leipzig during the Baroque Era”

·         Jasmin Cameron (Aberdeen University): “Placing the Et incarnatus est and Crucifixus in Context: Bach and the Panorama of the Baroque Mass Tradition”

·         Michael Maul (Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Germany): “How relevant are the Counts Sporck and Questenberg for the Genesis and Early Reception of the B-Minor Mass?”

·         Response by Christoph Wolff (Harvard University, USA)

·         Discussion

Dinner & Concert

Session 2 (20:00-21:30): Historical Background (2): seen through Bach’s contemporaries in Dresden (Chair: George B. Stauffer)

·         Szymon Paczkowski (University of Warsaw, Poland): “On the Role and Meaning of the Polonaise in the Mass in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach”

·         Janice Stockigt (University of Melbourne, Australia): “Consideration of Bach’s Kyrie e Gloria BWV 232/1 within the Context of Dresden Catholic Mass Settings, 1728-1733”

·         Response by Ulrich Siegele (University of Tübingen, Germany)

·         Discussion

Saturday, 3 November 2007

Session 3 (09:30-11:10): Composition and Meaning (1): Aesthetics (Chair: Reinhard Strohm, Oxford University)

·         Melvin Unger (Baldwin-Wallace College, USA): “Chiastic Reflection in the B-Minor Mass: Lament’s Paradoxical Mirror”

·         George B. Stauffer (Rutgers University, USA): “The Symbolum Nicenum of the B-Minor Mass and Bach’s Choral Ideal”

·         Response by Paul Walker (University of Virginia, USA)

·         Discussion

Coffee break

Session 4 (11:30-13:00): Composition and Meaning (2): Proportion (Chair: Reinhard Strohm)

·         Ruth Tatlow (Stockholm University, Sweden): “Parallel Proportions, Final Revisions and the Status of the Manuscript P180”

·         Ulrich Siegele (University of Tübingen, Germany): “Some Observations on the Formal Design of Bach’s B-minor Mass”

·         Response by John Butt (University of Glasgow)

·         Discussion

Lunch break

Session 5 (14:00-15:40): Theology (Chair: Robin A. Leaver, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, USA)

·         Mary Dalton Greer (Cambridge, MA, USA): “Bach’s Calov Bible and his Quest for the Title of Royal Court Composer”

·         Robin A. Leaver (Westminster Choir College of Rider University, USA): “How ‘Catholic’ is Bach’s ‘Lutheran’ Mass?”

·         Response by Anne Leahy (DIT Conservatory of Drama and Music, Ireland)

·         Discussion

Tea break

Session 6 (15:40-17:40): Sources and Editions (Chair: Ulrich Leisinger, Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Austria)

·         Tatiana Shabalina (St. Petersburg State Conservatoire «Rimsky-Korsakov», Russia): “Manuscript Score No. 4500 in St. Petersburg: A New Source of the B-minor Mass”

·         Uwe Wolf (Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Germany): “Many Problems, Different Solutions? Editing Bach’s B-Minor Mass”

·         Hans-Joachim Schulze (Bach-Archiv Leipzig, Germany): “Tracing the Sources of the B-minor Mass before 1800”

·         Response by Daniel Boomhower (Kent State University, USA)

·         Discussion

Reception

Keynote Paper by Christoph Wolff (Harvard University, USA): “Past, Present, and Future—Perspectives on Bach’s B-Minor Mass” (introduced by Ian Woodfield, Queen’s University Belfast)

Conference Dinner

Sunday, 4 November 2007

Session 7 (09:30-11:30): Performance Issues (Chair: John Butt, University of Glasgow)

·         Jan-Piet Knijiff (Queens College & Hofstra University, USA): “Performing Bach’s B-minor Mass: Some Notes by Heinrich Schenker”

·         Uri Golomb (Tel Aviv, Israel): “Intensity, Complexity and Musical Rhetoric in Performances of the Mass in B minor”

·         Andrew Parrott (Oxford): “Vocal Ripienists and the Mass in B minor”

·         Response by Yo Tomita (Queen’s University Belfast)

·         Discussion

Coffee break

Public Q&A Session (12:00-13:00)

Lunch

Session 8 (14:00-15:20): Reception History (1): Awakening and Reception (Chair: Jan Smaczny, Queen’s University Belfast)

·         Ulrich Leisinger (Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg, Austria): “Haydn’s Copy of the B-Minor Mass and Mozart’s Mass in C Minor”

·         Anselm Hartinger (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland): “A ‘Fairly Correct Copy of the Mass?’ Mendelssohn’s Score of the B-minor Mass as a Document of the Romantics’ View on Matters of Performance Practice and Source Criticism”

·         Response by Robin A. Leaver (Westminster Choir College of Rider University, USA)

·         Discussion

Tea break

Session 9 (15:40-17:50): Reception History (2): Roundtable—B-minor Mass in continuum (Chair: Jan Smaczny)

·         Katharine Pardee: (Oxford University): “The B-Minor Mass in Nineteenth-Century England”

·         Antonin Hennion: “The B-Minor Mass in Nineteenth-Century France” (Ecole des Mines de Paris, France)

·         Jan Smaczny: (Queen’s University Belfast): “Bach and the B-minor Mass in the Fabric of Music in mid 19th-Century Prague”

·         Tatiana Shabalina (St. Petersburg State Conservatoire «Rimsky-Korsakov», Russia): “Reception History of the B-minor Mass in Russia”

·         Paul Luongo (Florida State University, USA): “Theodore Thomas’s 1902 Performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass: Working within the Grand American Festival”

·         Tadashi Isoyama (Kunitachi College of Music, Japan): “The B-minor Mass and Japanese People: a Problematical Issue of ‘Universality’”

·         Response by Barra Boydell (NUI Maynooth, Ireland)

·         Discussion

Dinner

Concert: The Mass in B-minor, Academy of Ancient Music with Choir of Claire College Cambridge conducted by Masaaki Suzuki (at Clonard Monastery)

Party

_,_._,___


#168 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Apr 10, 2007 7:59 am
Subject: Blog Diskussionsforum Bach Cantata Pilgrimage 2000
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With thanks to my good friend Mark W. in Wembley:

Click here: Blog Diskussionsforum Bach Cantata Pilgrimage 2000


http://s138620504.online.de/


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







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#167 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:48 am
Subject: The Music of Bach We Didn't Know
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"The Music of Bach We Didn't Know"
An article in today's New York Sun by Benjamin Ivry:

http://www.nysun.com/article/51038


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







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#166 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:11 am
Subject: Fwd: The Duchess Anna Amalia library, From The Economist print edition
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With thanks to Michael F. R. and apologies for any duplicate postings:
The Duchess Anna Amalia library

Paper promises
Jan 18th 2007 | WEIMAR
From The Economist print edition


A grand reopening is planned for a rococo jewel that nearly burned to the ground

IF YOU walk down the sleepy streets of Weimar, past the Duchess Anna Amalia library, where Goethe, Germany's great poet and leader of the Enlightenment, was director for 35 years, you will see clouds of dust and hear loud banging. A massive restoration scheme is under way, preparing the 18th-century rococo jewel for a grand official reopening later this year, the 200th anniversary of the death of the woman who first came to Weimar in 1756 as the 16-year-old wife of the city's Duke Ernst August Constantin.

Klassik Stiftung Weimar
Klassik Stiftung Weimar

Pour on water, pour on water

Replete with treasures, this former East German city was virtually a backwater until 2004 when a fire—the biggest library burning in Germany since the second world war—ravaged the magnificent rococo hall and the priceless book collection housed within it, and made headlines around the world.

The fire damaged or destroyed 112,000 books, many of them first editions of Baroque and Enlightenment classics as well as Anna Amalia's collection of 700 rare musical manuscripts. (The blaze was caused by the building's faulty wiring, much of which was 70 years old. The city's fire department estimated that temperatures at the heart of the blaze reached as high as 1,000°C.)

These volumes represent just a fraction of the library's 1m books. But it is estimated that repairing or replacing them will cost nearly €70m ($90.6m) over the next ten years. Already, 40,000 burned and water-soaked volumes have been returned from the Zentrum für Bucherhaltung (centre for book maintenance) in Leipzig where they were placed in plastic bags and stacked in a large freezer. The books were then freeze-dried, a process that evaporates the ice into gas to stop further water damage or mildew.

In an odd twist, thousands of 19th-century and early 20th-century classics actually benefited from the fire. The 300,000 litres (66,000 gallons) of water that the firemen poured on the blaze helped to flush out the acid that had been used in the original papermaking process and which had previously been destroying the books. But not all were so fortunate: thousands of book covers are so warped that they cannot even be opened. Conservationists working in a new branch of the library still face the task of removing ash deposits between pages, repairing parchment volumes and vellum spines that split in the fierce heat—a painstaking process that involves weeks of work on each book.

That leaves more than 50,000 books (many in multi-volume editions) needing to be replaced altogether. These range from exquisite editions of Baroque literature that belonged to a Silesian nobleman who was the son of a renowned poet, Friedrich von Logau, to a slender volume entitled “Necessary and Useful Rules for Hunting and the Care of Grazing Animals”, dating back to 1623. So far Katja Lorenz, who heads the library's replacement team, has acquired more than 8,000 volumes—half by purchase and the rest as gifts.

Three-quarters of Ms Lorenz's work is at antiquarian book auctions, mostly in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Although she often loses out to private collectors with deeper pockets, Ms Lorenz has also had her triumphs. One of her proudest finds is a volume of funeral orations for Duke August of Saxony and his wife, dating from 1588, complete with its original vellum binding and clasp, which she bought for a mere €845 on eBay last December. In 2005 she paid just €5,900 for a seven-volume Renaissance wonder, “L'Histoire de la Nature des Oiseaux” (“The Natural History of Birds”) by Pierre Belon du Mans, published in Paris in 1555. Interleaved with over 150 woodcut illustrations, the volume is one of the first of its kind to have been done from observation.

The Anna Amalia library is also swamped with unsolicited offers: “Sometimes I have the feeling that the whole of Germany wants to send their unread editions of Goethe and Schiller to Weimar,” says Michael Knoche, the library's scholarly director. But there are exciting moments too. Last year, the library took its pick from 140 first-edition Enlightenment classics donated by the family of the Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen. Looted by the Russian army in 1945, the books languished in a dusty library in Georgia before they were returned to the family in the mid-1990s.

Meanwhile, Fred Warren, the son of a former American GI, presented the Anna Amalia with Vinzenz Briemle's two rare illustrated volumes of travel writing after he discovered that the library's copies were destroyed in the fire. These follow journeys to Italy, Germany, Austria and the Holy Land and date from 1727. The books, which Mr Warren's father brought back to America as a German war souvenir in 1945, are among only ten surviving examples. More such gifts, please.



Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
 
 
 

#165 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Jan 24, 2007 9:56 am
Subject: Bach Festival in Philadelphia - March 16 - 25, 2007
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www.Bach-Fest.org





International > Bach Festival Week > Philadelphia

>From March 16-25, performers, scholars and composers from Europe, North- and Latin America will meet in Philadelphia for the annual Bach Festival Week. Please join them in America's revolutionary capital for ten days of delight and exchange!

With 30 events spanning from period instrument performances to dance, electronic remixes and visualizations, including world premieres and worships, the International > Bach Festival Week > Philadelphia is one of the largest in North America.

We look forward to your visit and would be grateful, if you could forward this invitation to your email list to enable others to enjoy this feast as well. Thank you!
www.Bach-Fest.org

 


#164 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Oct 2, 2006 6:46 am
Subject: Late 18th century manuscript of BWV 1080 on eBay!
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I stumbled across this eBay listing this morning, and I send it along in case it might be of interest:

STUNNING MANUSCRIPT FROM THE LATE 18TH CENTURY,THE COMPLETE ART OF FUGE,185 PAGES BOUND IN NEAR PERFECT CONDITION.THE MANUSCRIPT WAS PROBABLY USED FOR THE FIRST ZURICH EDITION OF THE ART OF FUGE FROM THE EARLY 1800.THIS MOST VALUEBLE MANUSCRIPT WILL BE ON SALE HERE FOR ONE TIME ONLY, BEFORE GOING TO A MAGOR AUCTION HOUSE. GOOD LUCK

Click here: eBay: BACH Johann Sebastian manuscript (item 320032475230 end time Oct-03-06 10:56:20 PDT)


http://cgi.ebay.com/BACH-Johann-Sebastian-manuscript_W0QQitemZ320032475230QQihZ011QQcategoryZ29223QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


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














#163 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Sep 26, 2006 10:46 am
Subject: Obituary of Alfred Mann from the Eastman School of Music website
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With thanks to Robin A. L. and Dan Z.:

IN MEMORY OF ALFRED MANN: 1917-2006

The Eastman School notes with sadness the death of musicologist and conductor Professor Emeritus Alfred Mann. Professor Mann died peacefully at his home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Thursday, September 21. He was 89 years old.

Alfred Mann was born in Hamburg, Germany, on April 28, 1917. He studied in Milan and in Berlin, and then taught at the Berlin Hochschule (1937) and at Milan’s Scuola Musicale (1938). From 1939-1942 he studied and taught at the Curtis Institute; he later received the MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University (1950, 1955). In 1947 he joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where he taught until 1980, when he came to Eastman; he was appointed Professor Emeritus of Musicology in 1987, but remained active at Eastman until he moved to Indiana.

Alfred Mann was also a noted choral conductor; his recordings of Handel’s six Chandos Anthems, made with the Rutgers Collegium Musicium for Vanguard Records in the 1960s, were acclaimed by critics, and he conducted widely in America and in Germany. In 1961, he became director of publications of the American Choral Foundation, editing American Choral Review from 1962-1999.

Mann was widely respected for his research and writing on the history of music theory, particularly the teaching of counterpoint. His translation of a seminal work of contrapuntal theory, J. J. Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), was published in 1943 as Steps to Parnassus, and in 1965 as The Study of Counterpoint. Mann’s other books include Theory and Practice: The Great Composers as Teachers and Students and Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice. Mann edited a critical edition of Handel’s Messiah, among many other choral works. In 1997 he was made an honorary member of the International Bach Society – only the third American to be so honored.

Tremendously respected as a scholar, Alfred Mann was beloved as a teacher by both colleagues and students. His fellow Eastman faculty members describe him as “having a huge impact on Eastman faculty and students”; “a great man: brilliant, funny, and caring”; and “the gentlest of men, the soul of integrity.” Current Interim Dean Jamal Rossi says, “I remember very fondly the joy and enthusiasm he displayed when discussing particular works in a MHS 590 seminar.”

Alfred Mann’s wife, Carolyn Owens Mann, died in 1995. He is survived by three sons: Adrian, John, and Tim.



The obituary neglects to mention that Alfred was the son of the famous German harpsichordist Edith Weiss Mann (1885 - 1951), who immigrated to the United States at the same time as Alfred, to escape Nazi persecution.







#162 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Sep 25, 2006 10:06 am
Subject: Alfred Mann (1916 - 2006)
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The eminent musicologist and pioneer early music instrumentalist and conductor, Alfred Mann, who also was one of the great Bach and Handel scholars of the 20th century, died in an assisted living facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Thursday, September 21. Alfred, who moved to Fort Wayne several years ago to be near his son, Adrian, who is the principal contrabassist and the manager of the Orchestra there, would have been 90 later this year.

A refugee from Nazi Germany, Alfred immigrated to the United States with his mother, the eminent harpsichordist, Edith Weiss Mann (1888 - 1951).  From the beginning, Alfred was a major figure in the early music revival in the United States, and he made major contributions as a scholar as well as as a performer and conductor.  He was on the faculty at Rutgers for many years, and later taught at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.  In 1953, he succeeded Arthur Mendel as Director of the Cantata Singers in New York City, and from 1970 - 1980 he was the Conductor of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, PA.

A virtuoso recorder player and a first-class double-bass player, Alfred participated in the first recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in which the recorders that Bach specified, rather than modern transverse flutes, were used.  His Vanguard recording of the first 6 Chandos Anthems by Handel is a cult item and a true classic among recordings.

Alfred was for many years the Editor of The American Choral Review, and his carefully edited and thoughtfully prepared performing edition of Handel's Messiah has been used for at least two commercial recordings. 

Alfred wrote numerous important scholarly articles and monographs, but he is perhaps best known for having made an English translation of Johann Joseph Fux's famous counterpoint treatise, The Study of Fugue, that has been the standard edition throughout the English speaking world for a half a century.



#161 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Sep 21, 2006 4:04 pm
Subject: Fwd: Klang - Gedanke - Instrument. 28.-30. September 2006
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Curt Sachs und die Musikwissenschaft heute

Symposion, 28.-30. September 2006, Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin

Bitte beachten Sie Einladung und detailliertes Programm!

Letzte Gelegenheit zur Besichtigung der Sonderausstellung "Curt Sachs: Berlin,
Paris, New York - Wege der Musikwissenschaft" mit individuell programmierbarer
40-minütiger Audioführung mit vielen Klangbeispielen, Interviews und
Erläuterungen. Die Ausstellung schließt am Sonntag, 1. Oktober 2006.

#160 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Sep 1, 2006 8:22 am
Subject: Fwd: Reserachers Fine Bach's Oldest Manuscripts
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With thanks to Bill E.:
 

Researchers find Bach’s oldest manuscripts

Handwritten copies of works by other composers date back to 1700

Image: Bach manuscript
Jens Meyer / AP
A restorer points to the signature of Johann Sebastian Bach on an original handwritten music script of the composer. The document, along with another script recently recovered in the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, dates around 1700 and is classified as the oldest handwritten music script of Bach.
Updated: 11:53 a.m. ET Aug 31, 2006
WEIMAR, Germany - The oldest known manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach — handwritten copies of works by two other composers — have been discovered in a library that was heavily damaged in a fire two years ago, researchers said Thursday.
The two manuscripts date from around 1700 and contain copies Bach made of organ music composed by Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, said Hellmut Seemann, president of the Foundation of Weimar Classics.
Researchers found the documents in the archives of the Duchess Anna Amalia library in Weimar, where a previously unknown aria by Bach was discovered last year.
The library, housed in a 16th century palace, was badly damaged by a fire in September 2004. While some 50,000 books were lost, the Bach manuscripts survived because they had been stored in the vault.
The foundation said the discovery provided vital clues about Bach’s early development. He was a 15-year-old schoolboy when he copied the two chorale fantasias — “Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein” by Buxtehude and “An Wasserfluessen Babylon” by Reinken.
It said Bach attached a note to the Reinken copy that confirmed he was studying at the time with the organist Georg Boehm in the north German town of Lueneburg.
The manuscripts were found together with two previously unknown fantasias by Johann Pachelbel, copied by Bach’s student Johann Martin Schubart.
“Technically highly demanding, these organ works document the extraordinary virtuoso skills of the young Bach as well as his efforts to master the most ambitious and complex pieces of the entire organ repertoire,” the foundation said.
It said the find also made clear that Bach went to Lueneburg in order to learn more about the influential North German organ school in Hamburg and Luebeck.
Schubart succeeded Bach as organist at the court of Weimar in 1717, and the newly discovered documents were passed to the library as part of Schubart’s estate, the foundation said.
Both the manuscripts and the aria found last year were unearthed by researchers from the Bach Archiv foundation in Leipzig, who have been combing German archives for information about the composer since 2002.
The manuscripts will be exhibited at the library from Sept. 1 and at the Bach Archiv in Leipzig from Sept. 21.
 

Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.

#159 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Sep 1, 2006 8:24 am
Subject: Fwd: Researchers Find Bach's Oldest Manuscripts
terinoeltowe
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With thanks to Bill E.:







 

Researchers find Bach’s oldest manuscripts

Handwritten copies of works by other composers date back to 1700

Image: Bach manuscript
Jens Meyer / AP
A restorer points to the signature of Johann Sebastian Bach on an original handwritten music script of the composer. The document, along with another script recently recovered in the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, dates around 1700 and is classified as the oldest handwritten music script of Bach.
Updated: 11:53 a.m. ET Aug 31, 2006
WEIMAR, Germany - The oldest known manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach — handwritten copies of works by two other composers — have been discovered in a library that was heavily damaged in a fire two years ago, researchers said Thursday.
The two manuscripts date from around 1700 and contain copies Bach made of organ music composed by Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Adam Reinken, said Hellmut Seemann, president of the Foundation of Weimar Classics.
Researchers found the documents in the archives of the Duchess Anna Amalia library in Weimar, where a previously unknown aria by Bach was discovered last year.
The library, housed in a 16th century palace, was badly damaged by a fire in September 2004. While some 50,000 books were lost, the Bach manuscripts survived because they had been stored in the vault.
The foundation said the discovery provided vital clues about Bach’s early development. He was a 15-year-old schoolboy when he copied the two chorale fantasias — “Nun freut euch, lieben Christen gmein” by Buxtehude and “An Wasserfluessen Babylon” by Reinken.
It said Bach attached a note to the Reinken copy that confirmed he was studying at the time with the organist Georg Boehm in the north German town of Lueneburg.
The manuscripts were found together with two previously unknown fantasias by Johann Pachelbel, copied by Bach’s student Johann Martin Schubart.
“Technically highly demanding, these organ works document the extraordinary virtuoso skills of the young Bach as well as his efforts to master the most ambitious and complex pieces of the entire organ repertoire,” the foundation said.
It said the find also made clear that Bach went to Lueneburg in order to learn more about the influential North German organ school in Hamburg and Luebeck.
Schubart succeeded Bach as organist at the court of Weimar in 1717, and the newly discovered documents were passed to the library as part of Schubart’s estate, the foundation said.
Both the manuscripts and the aria found last year were unearthed by researchers from the Bach Archiv foundation in Leipzig, who have been combing German archives for information about the composer since 2002.
The manuscripts will be exhibited at the library from Sept. 1 and at the Bach Archiv in Leipzig from Sept. 21.
 

Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.

#158 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:10 am
Subject: Fwd: Bach Network UK Symposium - December 10, 2006
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I forward this along for the benefit of those who may not be aware of the recent establishment of Bach Network UK and apologize to those for whom this notice is redundant.

TNT
Dear friends and members of BNUK,
please read the attached letter on the forthcoming second Bach Dialogue Meeting, 9-10 December 2006.
With all best wishes,
Reinhard Strohm

#157 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:55 am
Subject: Article on the Farinelli exhumation
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Click here: Scientists study secrets of the castrati - Science - MSNBC.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13827764/


The title of this article is misleading.  Not only is yesterday's exhumation of the remains of the castrato Farinelli discussed, but also there is a photograph of the forensic anthropologist at work on the remains.

My best and my thanks always,


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














#156 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:40 am
Subject: | The Guardian | Conductor Robert King on sex charges
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Click here: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Conductor Robet King on sex charges

The friend who forwarded this item to me wrote, "Oh, No!"

I wholeheartedly agree.


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














#155 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Thu Jul 6, 2006 7:16 am
Subject: Fwd: ((The CT's)) Exhumation of Farinelli article - pasted.
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I give up - can't upload the link. Here is the article, cut and
pasted:

Remains of Famed Castrato to Be Disinterred
By Carlo Vitali
MusicalAmerica.com
July 5, 2006

BOLOGNA – On July 12 at 8:30 a.m., a small host of sextons,
researchers and selected media will gather at La Certosa, the city's
main cemetery, for an unusual event: the disinterment of Carlo
Broschi, nicknamed Farinelli, the legendary castrato who spent the
last two decades of his relatively long life (1705-1782) in this old
university town. The Apulia-born singer found a second fatherland
here, officially gaining citizenship in 1732 and using it as a
comfortable haven for his retirement years.

Such writers as Charles Burney and Giacomo Casanova have left lively
accounts of his lavish, occasionally melancholy lifestyle in his
suburban villa, where he was visited frequently by friends, family
and admirers. Soon after his death, the greed of his heirs and the
radical social changes prompted by the French revolution and
Napoleon's regime scattered the bulk of his estate, notably his
impressive collection of artworks, instruments and musical papers.

Even his mortal remains were presumed lost in the destruction, back
in 1796, of the Capuchin monastery and church of Santa Croce, on the
hills south of downtown. Much later, on March 30, 1995, journalist
Claudio Santini wrote an article for the local paper "Il Resto del
Carlino," announcing the discovery of Farinelli's second grave,
sitting completely unnoticed in La Certosa (for images, click here.)

The Latin inscription on the classic-looking tombstone states that
his corpse was relocated there in 1810, care of his loving grand-
niece Carlotta Pisani Broschi who, surviving her grand-uncle until
1850, disposed by testament to rejoin him in the same grave. A
restoration of the dilapidated monument ensued in 2000, thanks to
the joint efforts of various organizations led by Centro Studi
Farinelli, the independent learned society founded in 1998 by a
group of Bologna-based scholars, and presently including members
from France, Germany, Spain, Australia and the USA.

The same Centro Studi, with financial support from the Florentine
publisher Alberto Bruschi, is now sponsoring a further step, that's
to say exploring the cavity at the foot of said tombstone to perform
bio-medical research on the remains, if any are left, of the famed
singer. The scientific management of the project is entrusted to the
Universities of Pisa and Bologna, more exactly to teams led by Prof.
Gino Fornaciari and Prof. Maria Giovanna Belcastro, respectively.
Fornaciari, professor of pathology and history of medicine at Pisa,
is also heading the group that has been granted permission to exhume
47 members of the Medici ruling family in Florence and is an
international authority in the field. Belcastro, a professor of
physical anthropology, is superintendent of the University
Laboratory of Bioarchaeology and Forensic Osteology at Bologna.

Asked what they are expecting to find, Belcastro
responded, "Anything, from an empty hole to the full skeleton of
Farinelli attired in the majestic white cloak of the knightly
Spanish order of Calatrava and sundry paraphernalia, such as sword
and jeweled star." As a specialist in a specialist in osteology,
Belcastro's main interest is, so to say, close to the bone. Even
after several centuries, bones can tell much about the lives of the
deceased. "We want to see what did they eat, what kind of diseases
they had. The skull, if decently preserved, can help us to
reconstruct what their faces looked like."

That may prove of crucial importance in assessing the authenticity
and/or actual likeness of the many Farinelli portraits. Belcastro
will also be looking for ways to explain the singer's vocal
type. "Removal of the testicles results in the absence of male-type
growth of the larynx, which may appear very small, with the vocal
cords as short as in a female soprano. Yet, despite that, the
resonating chambers provided by the pharynx and oral cavity, as well
as a fully adult chest capacity, were probably responsible for the
unique vocal prowess of some castrati." Besides natural talent and
hard training, one might add.

Following photography and measurements at the site, the grave's
contents will go through an array of lab investigations -- X-rays,
CAT scans, DNA sampling and the like – during the next year, first
in Bologna, then in Pisa. Access to the materials has been granted
to a number of foreign specialists, including Prof. David M. Howard,
an acoustic engineer based at the University of York often involved
in both forensic and music analysis. His most recent feat was the
electronic recreation of the sound of a castrato singing "Ombra mai
fu" by Handel, as will be shown in the Francesca Kemp documentary
film "The Castrati," which next runs on BBC4 July 9th. All that
combined competence is obviously fostering great expectations.
Provided, of course, that the bones of the self-styled "tall
Farinelli" are still there.


#154 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Jul 5, 2006 1:58 pm
Subject: Fwd: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Gifted Singer, Is Dead at 52
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In a message dated 7/5/2006 1:21:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, ROBINSONMF writes:

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Gifted Singer, Is Dead at 52 (Update1) July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, 52, died of cancer on July 3 at the height of her musical and expressive powers.

Her last professional activity had been touring with the Boston Symphony in March, singing music by her husband, Peter Lieberson, before and after which she canceled many bookings.

Hunt Lieberson occupied a special place on the music scene due to the protean nature of her musical interests -- baroque to contemporary -- extraordinary gifts and the committed, spiritual aura both her presence and plangent voice conveyed.

San Francisco-born, she grew up musically as a violist, working with the San Jose Symphony. Her profound musicality sustained her in her first phase as a vocalist, initially as a soprano, in the Boston and Berkeley early-music worlds with which she never lost contact. Conductors Nicholas McGegan and William Christie introduced her to European festival audiences in Handel and Rameau roles.

Contemporary challenges also drew her: music not only of her husband (a Bridge CD uniting their work set to emerge this week memorializes this partnership) but of John Adams, John Harbison and Kaija Saariaho.

Handel Heroine

Peter Sellars was an early champion of her Boston-based career, using her in imaginatively updated productions of Handel's ``Giulio Cesare'' and ``Theodora'' plus Mozart's ``Don Giovanni'' (seen at the Purchase Festival in 1987, her strung-out Elvira was the first glimpse most New Yorkers caught of her). Fortunately, these collaborations are preserved on DVD.

In Boston and at New York City Opera, she incarnated the arrogance, yearning and humor of the scheming royal in Stephen Wadsworth's memorable 1997 staging of Handel's ``Xerxes.''

Her career at the Metropolitan Opera proved typically quixotic: she first bowed as a sexy, tough Myrtle Wilson in Harbison's ``The Great Gatsby'' in 1999. With Susan Graham's Jordan Baker, she stole the show. That New Year's Eve, with James Levine accompanying, she limned the spiritual ``Deep River'' (a frequent concert encore) during ``Die Fledermaus.'' Later, she improbably shared the bill with the Three Tenors at a 2000 gala, singing Act IV of ``Carmen'' opposite Jose Carreras.

Her incandescent Didon in Francesca Zambello's vivid 2003 staging of Berlioz's ``Les Troyens'' will stay in the grateful memory of any attending the mere four performances she felt her resources allowed her.

``She had a special light,'' said Zambello, ``that infused everything she did on the stage. She inspired others to rise up to her level. Yet she was playful, too. I will always remember her hitting Ben Heppner on the head with pillows during the rehearsals and then going on to sing one of the most seductive love duets ever written.''

New Met chief Peter Gelb had proudly announced her for Gluck's ``Orfeo ed Euridice'' in May 2007, directed by Mark Morris with Levine conducting. Earlier she was to tackle another challenge: Mere Marie in Poulenc's ``Dialogues des Carmelites'' for Lyric Opera of Chicago. These shows may go on, though no one can replace Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in our musical life.


To contact the reporter on this story:
David Shengold at shengold@....
Last Updated: July 4, 2006 18:30 EDT




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)








#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
>
>
>
>       Current
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>    The Lebrecht Weekly
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>
>    Visit every week to read Norman Lebrecht's latest column. [Index]
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>       Another record crash
>
>       By Norman Lebrecht / June 12, 2006
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    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.
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>    To be notified of the next Lebrecht article, please email
>mikevincent at scena dot org
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>    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)








#152 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri May 26, 2006 11:29 am
Subject: Bach on the bus - An interesting Bach article from Germany
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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)








#151 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue May 2, 2006 2:02 pm
Subject: New Bach organization - Bach Network UK
terinoeltowe
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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















#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.
 

#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














#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.

#147 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Mar 28, 2006 2:39 pm
Subject: Fwd: [SSCM-L] CFP: Performance Practice: Issues and Approaches
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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

#146 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:58 am
Subject: March 21, 1685
terinoeltowe
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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














#145 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:47 am
Subject: Britain, UK news from The Times Requiem for church organs
terinoeltowe
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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)








#144 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:22 am
Subject: Fwd: [SSCM-L] EU ban covers lead in pipe organs
terinoeltowe
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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

#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





#142 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Fri Feb 3, 2006 2:31 pm
Subject: Classical Music Web Site Andante Shuts Down
terinoeltowe
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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








#141 From: TeriNoelTowe@...
Date: Wed Feb 1, 2006 10:37 am
Subject: Max Van Egmond's 70th birthday
terinoeltowe
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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)








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