What are you reading now?

[Quijote]

Sorry, forgot to post the link I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFmOAzZVgM

[Quijote]

Has the opera ever been performed/recorded?

Performed yes: its world première was in Washington 1967. I quickly checked on Google and there is a recording of it on YouTube. I must confess - shamefacedly - that I haven't yet listened to it. When I finish reading the book I promise I will !

[Sorrano]

?Enrique, donde esta Vd.?

Has the opera ever been performed/recorded?

[Quijote]

?Enrique, donde esta Vd.?

[Quijote]

Esteban Buch, L'affaire Bomarzo. Opéra, perversion et dictature, Editions de l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2011)[*].
A curious account of an opera by Ginastera (with libretto by Manuel Mujica Lainez) that received full backing for its 1967 première mondiale in Washington from the argentine régime under General Ongania only to be censured for its première in Buenos Aires by the very same.
Enrique : Are you familiar with this story? Do you know the opera? Might you have any background information about the whole affair?
[*] As far as I know, this book exists only in Spanish and French.

[Quijote]

Chris has kindly provided a couple of ideas from the book he is currently reading. It is only fair that I do so, too. So, I give you here a quote from the opening pages of Adorno's essay Alienated Masterpiece : The Missa Solemnis.
Neutralization of culture - the words have the ring of a philosophical concept. They posit as a more or less general reflection that intellectual constructs have forfeited their intrinsic meanings because they have lost any possible relation to social praxis and have become [...] objects of pure observation, of mere contemplation. [...] No less than Beethoven's Missa Solemnis belongs to this category. To speak seriously of this work can mean nothing less than [...] to alienate it, to break through the aura of irrelevant worship which protectively surrounds it ...

[Quijote]

[...] "Wagner has, in his orchestral language, increased to the ultimate the reach of his 'endless melody' by ceaseless phrase-linkages from one instrument to another. Bruckner did not follow his master Wagner in this respect, but, for the most part, lets one theme die away completely before a new one arises; Reger, on the other hand, with his motifs organized from small elements is, in phrasing, to be considered a disciple of Brahms."

This is one more example of the sort of nonsense that gets written about Bruckner, and it is annoying that it continues to be repeated uncritically.

[Chris]

It would, though I don't have a scanner.

[Quijote]

Thank you, Mr Violin. You wrote :

Some very interesting examples are given, which I really can't reproduce without a way to easily post notation [...]

Yes, this is quite frustrating. Would it work if one were to scan the score page in question, save it as a PDF file, upload it to PhotoBucket (or whatever), then post it on the forum?

[Chris]

Give us a couple of ideas from this book, would you?

It covers the history and development of phrasing and articulation. In the beginning it focuses on explaining what these things are, how they are different from one another, and how they developed throughout the history of music. This includes a look at the notation, including an examination of the stroke, wedge, and dot, which was helpful. The second part of the book is a closer examination of phrasing and articulation in the works of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Some very interesting examples are given, which I really can't reproduce without a way to easily post notation, unfortunately. Bruckner gets a few mentions in it, though, such as:

"Wagner has, in his orchestral language, increased to the ultimate the reach of his 'endless melody' by ceaseless phrase-linkages from one instrument to another. Bruckner did not follow his master Wagner in this respect, but, for the most part, lets one theme die away completely before a new one arises; Reger, on the other hand, with his motifs organized from small elements is, in phrasing, to be considered a disciple of Brahms."

[Quijote]

Phrasing and Articulation: A Contribution to a Rhetoric of Music, by Hermann Keller (Translated by Leigh Gerdine)

Give us a couple of ideas from this book, would you?

[Chris]

Phrasing and Articulation: A Contribution to a Rhetoric of Music, by Hermann Keller (Translated by Leigh Gerdine)

[Quijote]

And another essay which I never read first time round (too many years ago) : Wagner's Relevance for Today (1963).

[Quijote]

(Re)reading Adorno : Essays on Music, University of California Press, 2002 (a new translation). In particular, one essay : Alienated Masterpiece: The Missa Solemnis (1959).

[Joy]

Sometime last week I listened to a work performed by a conductor-less orchestra, but cannot recall who or what. Attention was drawn to the fact that the orchestra operated without a conductor and that everything seemed to go well.

Also I seem to recall reading about a robot that conducted an orchestra and did quite well at that too.