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IPA Paired – Repurposing music for productivity

January 22, 2021 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

IPA Paired is a happy hour blog series by the IPA Source office staff – business manager Nora and tech manager Eric. While skillful at keeping IPA Source running well, Nora & Eric have no formal music background, unless you consider their time in high school band!

 

Today’s post was inspired by the New York Times article, “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Baroque Music.”

………………………………………

Tonight’s pairing is vodka in two different styles, to go along with our repurposing/reinventing theme. I’m enjoying Ketel One Cucumber Mint Botanical, and Eric is enjoying Stoli Salted Karamel.

Lascia la spina, performed in the video below by Cecilia Bartoli, transports the listener to a calmer state of mind. “Leave the thorn, gather the rose” reminds us to look at the positives and overlook the negatives, apt advice for life during Covid-19.

Lascia la spina, an Aria of Piacere (Pleasure) from the oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, is perfect for the soprano voice. The text was written by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj (Benedetto Pamphili) (1653–1730) and set by Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759).

Checking the IPA Source database, I also noticed Händel’s Lascia ch’io pianga, from the opera, Rinaldo. Listening to the performance, the melody is exactly the same.


 

Deutsche Welle writes about the recycling or repurposing of music by composers who lived during Händel’s time period. Beate Angelika Kraus, a lecturer in church music history at the Cologne University of Music and Dance notes:

“You have to imagine how much material was composed at the time. In order to meet the demands of the princes or churches, people had to be unbelievably productive,” said Kraus. “And why shouldn’t one have another look at a work that was decidedly successful? That was customary and accepted.”

Composers like Händel needed to work efficiently to meet the demands of the volume of oratorios he produced.

Recycling or repurposing is also occurring  in cover songs that we hear in contemporary music. The University of California, Riverside newspaper, The Highlander, says:

Cover songs are to music what recycling is to the environment

The article talks about singers who cover songs without adding their own spin, and opines that those singers are just capitalizing on someone else’s hard work.

The article also discusses a very well-known contemporary song, Respect:

Take for example Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” which was originally written and performed by Otis Redding. Franklin’s version of “Respect” has been hailed as a feminist anthem, while Redding’s is more aligned with the more traditional and oppressive gender roles at the time of its release. By singing the song from a woman’s perspective, Franklin changes its entire meaning and ultimately appeals to a different demographic. Her version of the song is still being played today and has completely overshadowed the original version, which would be considered misogynistic in our contemporary society.

As someone without a formal music background, the notion of recycling music during the Baroque period was intriguing and something I hadn’t considered. Clearly times have changed. While recycling of music is now viewed through a different lens than it was during Händel’s time, we continue to see how repurposing has kept our musical conversation lively.

Cheers!

– Nora

Filed Under: Composers, Featured, IPA Paired Tagged With: Georg Friedrich Händel, Händel, IPA Paired

Happy birthday, Ludwig van Beethoven

December 17, 2020 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

BeethovenGerman composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770, so it is likely he was born a few days prior to that date. As one of the most recognized composers in music history, his works are still some of the most frequently performed classical pieces to this day. Beethoven’s work spans the transition from the classical period into the romantic era.

“No composer left a mark on music quite like Ludwig van Beethoven. He took the popular forms of his time — symphony, string quartet, piano sonata, opera — and stretched them to their breaking points. He embodied the then-new ideal of the musician as passionate, politically engaged Romantic hero.”

— The New York Times

Beethoven was born in Bonn, but moved to Vienna in young adulthood to study with Haydn. He spent some 35 years in Vienna, and yet a visit to Vienna, noted Michael Cooper, bombards the traveler with “the city’s Mozart-industrial complex.” Mozart spent his last decade in Vienna, a much shorter period of time than Beethoven. Both men were key influencers of their time. Cooper’s travel back to Beethoven’s roots yields some interesting observations.

Beethoven was almost completely deaf by 1814, but continued to compose masterpiece after masterpiece. It seems that he put every ounce of his being through his work. When Beethoven died March 26, 1827, apparently he gave more. Visitors cut locks of his hair for keepsakes. There are still strands of his hair available for auction to this day.

Learn more about Ludwig van Beethoven

  • From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
  • From The New York Times: Beethoven’s 250th Birthday: Here’s Everything You Need To Know
  • From Britannica.com: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ludwig-van-Beethoven

From our collection

Fidelio

Fidelio18140523
Playbill of the first performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s opera Fidelio (third and final version) on 23 May 1814 at the Theater am Kärntnertor

  • Abscheulicher… Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern
  • Gott! welch’ Dunkel hier!… In des Lebens Frühlingstagen
  • Ha! Welch’ ein Augenblick!
  • Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben
  • O namenlose Freude!
  • O wär’ ich schon mit dir vereint

Listen to Fidelio, conducted January 29, 1978 by Leonard Bernstein.

Orchestra – Wiener Philharmoniker
Chorus – Wiener Staatsoper
Leonore – Gundula Janowitz
Florestan – René Kollo
Pizarro – Hans Sotin
Rocco – Manfred Jungwirth
Marzelline – Lucia Popp
Jaquino – Adolf Dallapozza
Fernando – Hans Helm
Erster Gefangene – Karl Terkal
Zweiter Gefangene – Alfred Sramek

 

Christus am Ölberge

  • Christus am Ölberge – complete
  • Meine Seele ist erschüttert
  • Preist der Erlösers Güte

Listen to Jodie Devos perform Preist des Erlösers Güte, written by Franz Xaver Huber and set by Ludwig van Beethoven

9th Symphony

  • An die Freude – Ode to Joy

Autograph score of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1822). https://t.co/3fPeFThdLZ pic.twitter.com/KEI2TuDkBZ

— Douglas Ipson (@DougIpson) December 17, 2020

Our entire collection of texts, both opera arias and art songs as set by Ludwig van Beethoven may be found here:

https://www.ipasource.com/composer/b/beethoven-ludwig-van-1770-1827.html

And finally, just for fun, a very modern take from the iPad Orchestra on Beethoven’s 5th:

Filed Under: Composers, Featured Tagged With: Beethoven, Ludwig van Beethoven

IPA Paired – Handel wrote music for Chanukah

December 11, 2020 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

IPA Paired is a happy hour blog series by the IPA Source office staff – business manager Nora and tech manager Eric. While skillful at keeping IPA Source running well, Nora & Eric have no formal music background, unless you consider their time in high school band.

Nora: Happy Chanukah, Eric! Did you know that Händel produced Chanukah music years after writing his famous Messiah?

Eric: Nearly everyone loves the wonderful music of Messiah, and it’s quite popular at this time of year.

Nora: Since it’s Chanukah, I thought a bottle of Schramsburg Mirabelle Brut Rosé would be a lovely celebratory pairing while listening to Händel’s oratorio, Judas Maccabeus (text by Thomas Morrell).

Eric: I just found an article from Colorado Public Radio about Händel’s Judas Maccabeus.

N: It’s interesting that See The Conquering Hero Comes almost didn’t make it into the oratorio. From the article:

The most popular tune from “Judas Maccabaeus” wasn’t originally included. Händel wrote “See the Conquering Hero Comes” for his next oratorio, “Joshua.” The chorus was such a hit, he decided to capitalize on its popularity. He inserted it into “Judas Maccabaeus” — a more successful oratorio — four years later.

“See the Conquering Hero Comes” inspired composers after Händel. The most famous example is Beethoven’s variations on the tune for cello and piano. The melody was also borrowed in modern times to create a Hannukah song called “Hava Narima,” or “Let’s Lift Up.”

E: Composers re-used or recycled music all the time back in Händel’s day, and still do.

N: I have more about recycled music in our next post.

Looking for more set by Georg Friedrich Händel? We have hundreds of texts set by Händel in our collection.

Whether you spell it Chanukah, Hanukkah, Hannukah or any of the 13 other different ways you will see it spelled, we hope you enjoy Händel’s Judas Maccabeus. Cheers and Happy Chanukah from all of us at IPA Source.

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: #ipapaired, Georg Friedrich Händel, Händel, Thomas Morrell

Introducing SongHelix

April 8, 2019 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

From IPA Source: 

SongHelix has recently come to our attention, and we believe that it might be of interest to some of our readers. The following post is by Seth Keeton, Director of SongHelix.


Seth Keeton
Seth Keeton

As director of the recently released SongHelix, I would like to share a bit about the tool’s creation and some of its behind-the-scenes features.

I know I’m not alone among recital lovers to say that the most rewarding part of giving a recital is the intimacy and direct, unimpeded communication with the audience. If this is our goal I would argue that for artists, a recital is an opportunity to say something; the only way to say something is if you craft a recital with loving detail. This is the impulse behind SongHelix. In order to say something, you have to know what repertoire there is to choose from. The idea for SongHelix was born in a post-recital chat with one of my mentors, Adriana Zabala, during my doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota. Together we wished, “wouldn’t it be great if there was one place where all art songs lived and just the right one could be discovered with a quick search?!?” A lot of planning, discussions with partners, internal grants from the University of Utah, and 4 years of work has culminated in the tool at songhelix.com.

Between my original discussion with Adriana and the creation of the tool, I planned several recitals for myself and my students, always wishing this tool existed. Discovering repertoire for an outdoors recital with animals in attendance on songs about animals in English took several weeks. Finding songs on Church and State for a student of mine double-majoring in political science and music was really challenging. Less challenging, but still time-consuming was discovering songs about British landscapes for performance in a museum with a traveling exhibition of British landscape paintings. The online forums on facebook typically have one or two posts a day asking for repertoire suggestions. It was clear to me that this tool needed to exist.

I was advised early on to decide what metadata (information about the data, in this case about the song) to include from the beginning–capturing as much information as possible from the outset, because going back to add a piece of info for each record would be horrible. So we tried to think of all the things one would want to know about a song from the beginning. This includes 40 or so fields, especially Keywords and what I call Features.

Keywords are the important words that appear in the poem in English translation. Though there is a legitimate argument to be made about what words are important enough to be considered Keywords, we have erred on the side of including more words than fewer. You never know what a person will want to find. Keywords are also relatively objective, since they’re just the words that appear in the translation. Features is broadly, “what the song is about.” This category is subjective. It contains our interpretation of the poem’s themes, poetic devices like particular metaphors (seasons turning as aging, for example), utility (encore piece, wedding, etc.), and anything else we feel is an interesting tag. Having this space for subjective analysis helps us move past the question of the quality of the translation we’re using. If we indicate that the song is about Flowers as a Feature, then whether is the keywords are Blossoms or Blooms isn’t such a big problem. All the Keywords and Features go into a big list with three levels of categories and subcategories. These are represented as the nested “folders” of terms on the browsing side of the site.

This list of Keywords and Features is what librarians call a “controlled vocabulary.” Semi-jokingly, I often refer to our list as an “uncontrolled vocabulary.” Our list of 8,000+ Keywords and Features developed organically. If we choose a Keyword or Feature, we add it to the list. Unlike the Library of Congress or other ontologies, we didn’t begin with preferred and secondary terms. Through little bits of code, we continue to improve the site and have developed a neat way around this problem. When a user tries a keyword that we don’t use in the top search box, there is a quick behind-the-scenes check of wordnet (an online thesaurus service) that suggests a keyword we /do/use. Similarly we are working on an internal synonym checker so that a search for Forests will also show results with Woods, Copses, Groves, etc.

Another example of behind-the-scenes planning is that of the multiple spellings of Russian composers’ names. In this case, we do have a preferred term (the spelling from Grove’s) and secondary terms all the other spellings we could find around the web. When a secondary spelling of a Russian composer’s name is searched, the preferred spelling is suggested in the box.

Please stop by and check it out at www.songhelix.com. I know it’s a disappointing feeling if you don’t see a song you’re expecting to, but(!) that’s your opportunity to help grow the dataset. It’s simple to contribute songs via a tab at the top that leads you to our online submission forms. My team and I are working every day to make SongHelix better and better, but our goal to be a /comprehensive/ hub for song discovery won’t be possible without a lot of help from our song-loving friends like you.

 

Bass-baritone, Seth Keeton’s performances have been described by The New York Times as “driven” and “emotionally pointed.” He has performed roles on the stages of The Minnesota Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Central City Opera, Arizona Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Austin Lyric Opera and Opera Omaha, Chautauqua Opera, Mill City Summer Opera, and Theater Bremen in Bremen, Germany.

As an oratorio singer, Keeton has appeared in concert as the bass soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, Bach’s Magnificat and St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Haydn’s Creation, and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. In 2006, he was a national finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and has received awards from the Sullivan Foundation and the Eleanor McCollum Competition. [more]

Filed Under: Featured

Perfect Tenor Recital Selections

November 6, 2018 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

Voice recitals are part of a voice student’s degree fulfillment requirements. Whether you are preparing for a Junior Recital, Senior Recital, or Graduate Recital, identifying and grouping texts to display your vocal skill is key. Texts may be selected and grouped by language, emotion, or level of difficulty. Texts may also be selected and grouped by composer or as a cycle of work from a single composer.

Although we often see a division in the Lyric Tenor Fach, there are technically only five Fächer for the tenor voice. (Want to learn more about the Fäch System and tenor voice? View our multi-part series on the Fäch System here: https://blog.ipasource.com2017/04/24/the-fach-system-the-tenor-voice/)

Grouped by Aria and Art Song, this post offers texts for a tenor voice performer to consider including in a recital program.

Arias

Deposuit potentes from Magnificat, BWV 243 by Johann Sebastian Bach

Listen to Francisco Araiza:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wel2444olaQ

…

Frohe Hirten, eilt, ach eilet from the Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248 by J.S. Bach

Listen to Fritz Wunderlich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L03yopokHlY

…

Fac me cruce custodiri from Stabat Mater  – Franz Joseph Haydn

Listen to Andrea Semerar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyTSJPTo4AQ

…

Where’Er You Walk from Semele – Georg Friedric Händel

Listen to Richard Lewis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7DXssuBNck

…

Total Eclipse from Samson – Georg Friedric Händel

Listen to Jon Vickers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4MZxe9beU

…

Jour et nuit je me mets en quatre from Les Contes d’Hoffmann  – Jacques Offenbach

Listen to Francois Testory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FckaKGzUR5Q

…

De’ miei bollenti spiriti…, from La traviata – Guiseppe Verde

Listen to Luciano Pavarotti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpluE_l-aHk

…

Salut! demeure chaste et pure, from Faust – Charles Gounod

Listen to Jonas Kaufmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8K-gUwc330

Art Songs

Selections from Winterreise  – Franz Schubert

  • Gute Nacht
  • Wasserflut
  • Die Post

Listen to Ian Bostridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAShNLQzyxI

…

From Airs chantés by Francis Poulenc

  • Air champêtre

Listen to Nicolai Gedda:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFDatjGMIc

…

Gebet  – Hugo Wolf

Listen to Werner Güra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyiffjMDCwc

…

Lachen und Weinen – Franz Schubert

Listen to Ian Partridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBfmB9XfL4w

…

Verborgenheit – Hugo Wolf

Listen to Rudolf Schock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTVI6XAe_YU

…

Zueignung – Richard Strauss

Listen to Jonas Kaufmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Ls0XtqZ-Q

…

Aimons-nous – Camille Saint-Saëns

Listen to Charles Rousselière: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZHqkELzNc

Filed Under: Featured, Voice Classification Tagged With: Amy Beach, Benjamin Britten, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod, Francis Poulenc, Franz Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Georg Friedrich Händel, Giulio Caccini, Giuseppe Verdi, Hugo Wolf, Jacques Offenbach, Johann Sebastian Bach, recital, Richard Strauss, Robert Burns, tenor, voice type

October composer birthdays

October 1, 2018 By Nora Miller Rubinoff Leave a Comment

We’re celebrating 13 composer birthdays during the month of October. Each composer has a link to our entire collection of texts for that individual.

Louis Vierne, born 10/8.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/v/vierne-louis-1870-1937.html

Giuseppe Fortunino Frencesco Verdi, born 10/9.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/v/verdi-giuseppe-1813-1901.html

Charles-Camille Saint-Saens, born 10/9.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/s/saint-saens-camille-1835-1921.html

Ralph Vaughan Williams, born 10/12.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/v/vaughan-williams-ralph-1872-1958.html

Alexander von Zemlinsky, born 10/14.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/z/zemlinsky-alexander-1871-1942.html

Baldassare Galuppi, born 10/18.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/g/galuppi-baldassare-1706-1785.html

Charles Edward Ives, born 10/20.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/i/ives-charles-edward-1874-1954.html

Franz Liszt, born 10/22.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/l/liszt-franz-1811-1886.html

Ferdinand Hiller, born 10/24.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/h/hiller-ferdinand-von-1811-1885.html

Johann Strauss II, born 10/25.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/s/strauss-johann-1825-1899.html

Georges Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet, born 10/25.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/b/bizet-georges-1838-1875.html

Alexander Tikhonovich Gretchaninov, born 10/25.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/g/gretchaninov-aleksandr-tikhonovich-1864-1956.html

Peter Warlock, born 10/30.
Our collection: https://www.ipasource.com/composer/w/warlock-peter-1894-1930.html

Filed Under: Featured

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