Maribeth Clark | New College of Florida (original) (raw)
Papers by Maribeth Clark
The Musical Quarterly, Feb 28, 2006
In 1833, the same year that Daniel-François-Esprit Auber's Gustave, ou Le bal masqué prem... more In 1833, the same year that Daniel-François-Esprit Auber's Gustave, ou Le bal masqué premiered, Hans Christian Andersen began a grand tour that included a stay in Paris, the “city of cities.” 1 His visit coincided with events in celebration of the third anniversary of the ...
Notes, 2020
In Sound Objects, literary critics James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow (plus their twelve contribut... more In Sound Objects, literary critics James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow (plus their twelve contributors) provide multifaceted approaches to the study of sound in recognition of its undertheorized complexity. These authors share a philosophically informed engagement with their subject, positioning sound as a complex component of history, culture, and human experience broadly understood. The introduction and thirteen essays, organized into five parts, move from theorizing the sound object, to considering sound as commodity, to reexamining the acousmatic voice, to charting sound as abject (that unstable sonic space between subject and object), to exploring sound as foundational to film and embodied historical experience, and end with exploration of drawing as sounding. Like the field of sound studies, the essays collected here are disciplinarily difficult to define or contain. The contributing authors share a unifying openness to the strange power of vibration, putting into question the ontological stability of Pierre Schaeffer’s objet sonore and the related concept of “reduced listening.” These essays broaden the field by modeling novel ways of engaging sound grounded in philosophy and phenomenology; anthropology, history, and (auto)ethnography; and literary theory and film studies, to name the most prominent approaches. In so doing, the volume recognizes sound as a powerful ideological artifact of daily existence, intertwined with sight and action, past and present, emotion and embodiment. Essays in part 1, “Genealogies,” take Pierre Schaeffer’s Traite des objets musicaux: Essai interdisciplines (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966; English trans.: Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines, trans. Christine North and John Dack [Oakland: University of cally expedient. The final two chapters (dealing with the years 1974–94 and “the turn of the centuries”) treat eras when postmodernism, the “New Romanticism,” the symphony as a public statement, and the vocal symphony come to the fore. Bolesławska does well in crafting a historical narrative for what remain difficult times to thematize and periodize. While we continue to encounter value judgments in these pages, the author is increasingly content to be expository, offering a wealth of sociopolitical context and descriptions of what are in many cases little-researched works. Doubtless this information will be valuable to interested readers. Despite my misgivings, The Symphony and Symphonic Thinking in Polish Music since 1956 is an overall success. It adds substantially to our knowledge of the genre and will be an important text for future researchers. One should hope, however, that subsequent scholarship on the broader post-1950 symphonic repertory abandons close fealty to impractical formal strictures. The history of this music will be better understood when we let go of policing the label “symphony” and instead focus on accounting for and appreciating its actual application to a wide variety of works.
![Research paper thumbnail of Marian Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. xx+306 pp., illustrations, music, 24 cm. Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/106665220/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Cambridge Opera Journal, Jul 1, 2001
Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index. The title of Maria... more Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index. The title of Marian Smith's book rings Hegelian as it invokes 'the age of Giselle', a period spanning roughly from the revolution of 1830 to that of 1848, with brief forays back into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Letting Giselle stand for this era subtly undermines the music-historical paradigm that the title invokes, in which great composers and their works are elevated above cultural context. While Giselle is central to the canon and history of dance, it remains marginal to the history of music, which has until recently given short shrift to music closely allied with dance. 1 Although ballet-pantomimes were arguably at least as important to the Paris Opéra as grand operas, choreographic works remain largely unknown today. Smith's study of Giselle and the milieu that produced it unveils a work and a repertory that may surprise scholars of dance and music alike, for not only is the repertory unknown, but this choreographic tradition is quite distinct from twentieth-century balletic practices. The book will serve as a primer for anyone interested in research on ballet in Paris. In addition to the focus on Giselle, Smith refers to a host of forgotten works in this carefully documented study, employing evidence from a broad array of archival sources, including rehearsal and performance scores, libretti, production books, lists of costumes, sketches of costumes and sets, and accounts related to the reception of the works. Detailed footnotes provide a thorough interdisciplinary bibliography of the subject. Throughout the book, musical examples from a host of nearly forgotten balletpantomimes such as La somnambule (1827), La révolte au sérail (1833), and Le diable boiteux (1836) illustrate the variegated musical styles employed. The introduction describes the functions of dramatic music and dance music in this genre, in which mime and dance combined with a prose scenario and musical score to tell a story. Dramatic music enhanced the meaning of the pantomime through the use of well-known popular themes or recurring melodies, while dance music accompanied divertissements and established an appropriate (and frequently national) character for the dance. Subsequent chapters describe the many levels on which ballet-pantomimes and operas resemble one another; the general lightness of the subject matter (tragedies like Giselle and La Sylphide were rare); ballet-pantomimes' parodying of comic operas, and the mixture of ballet with opera in works like La Muette de Portici (1828), Le Dieu et la bayadère (1830), and La Tentation (1832), which included leading roles for mimes in the midst of singers. The book concludes with a chapter dedicated completely to Giselle as it was known during the 1840s, followed by an appendix containing its scenario in Gautier's original French and Smith's English translation. Perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the one on silent language, in which Smith explains how words related to balletic expression. We tend to think of ballet as a wordless art, but 1 See for instance, Susan McClary's discussion of how the emphasis on the scientific in music has precluded attention to music's effect on the human body, in 'Music, The Pythagoreans, and the Body', in Choreographing History, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 82-84. Speaking of nineteenth-century dance in particular, Knud Arne Jürgensen suggests that the period remains relatively unknown because of the broad base of choreographic as well as musical knowledge necessary to broaching the subject. See 'An Avenue Unexplored: The Divertissement and the Opéra-Ballet', in Verdi in Performance, ed.
This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879... more This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879) at the Academie Royale de Musique in relationship to dance in order to understand how past choreographic practices inflected audiences' understandings of the spectacle. It focuses primarily on the music and the practices of the Parisian composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, and leans heavily on journalistic accounts of dance from the Revue Musicale, Le Ménestrel, and La France musicale to place his works in the context of more general practices and perceptions of operatic and choreographic works at this theater. These journalistic accounts, in combination with archival sources such as violon répetiteur scores and the partie de ballet, reveal the aesthetic and commercial importance of dancers and danced episodes to the genre of grand opera in general. In demonstrating this importance, the study recovers aspects of the French operatic experience that have been comparatively neglected by musicological scholarship. The dissertation is comprised of four case studies, each focusing on a different issue of musical expression and understanding in the context of dancing. The first chapter examines the many ways audiences interpreted the bodies of Opéra dancers, concentrating particularly on the criticism of Théophile Gautier, the travesty role of the page, and bacchanales in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Le prophète (1849). The second chapter discusses the reception of the 1837 revival of La Muette de Portici (1828), an opera that starred a female mime alongside the more conventional singing roles, suggesting that its performance history reveals the increasing conceptual separation of ballet from opera. In the third chapter, the performance history of the fifth-act ball scene from Gustave, ou Le bal masqué (1833) serves as an example of the many types of permutations that divertissements underwent as part of the Opera's production process. The final chapter addresses issues of social dance, demonstrating how quadrille arrangements of operas shaped operatic listening habits.
19th-Century Music, 2003
This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera... more This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the performance history of D. F. E. Auber's opera La Muette de Portici from 1828 to 1879. Because a mime performed the role of Fenella and the chorus played an active role in the mise en scene, the opera placed unusual emphasis on the physical. Over this period, however, emphasis shifted from appreciation of acting to emphasis on singing. For example, during the tenor Adolphe Nourrit's tenure at the Opera critics admired his skill as an actor in the role of Masaniello. When replaced by Gilbert Duprez in 1837, critics praised the tenor's vocal power and lack of emphasis on the histrionic. During this same time, critics began to interpret the gestures of the mime playing Fenella as semantically empty, and her body as filling a space that a singer should occupy. The important role that the barcarolle plays in the opera allows in part for these transitions. Viewed as a chanson napolitaine, it accentuates the rocking of a boat and the physical body at work; however, interpreted as the song of a Venetian gondolier, the song emphasizes the enunciation of a singing voice at the expense of the body. Reviews of La Muette reflect this ambivalence toward performance styles that call attention to the body, particularly those that might be interpreted as belonging to the working classes.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2005
The Journal of Musicology, 2002
During the 1830s in Paris the quadrille, a five-movement figure dance, became musically omniprese... more During the 1830s in Paris the quadrille, a five-movement figure dance, became musically omnipresent to the distress of many critics, who saw the genre as detrimental to French music and musical taste. Discussions of the dance in journalism and literature associate bourgeois women and girls and working-class men with promotion of the genre. As a figure dance with walking steps, the quadrille was enjoyed by respectable women who experienced it as a safe frame for civilized social interaction, although their male counterparts found the dance boring and uninviting. In contrast, working-class men were known for their engaging and energetic performances as cancanneurs, improvisatory dancers exhibiting a lack of control associated with political instability and revolution. Quadrilles were perceived to have a negative influence on musical education for girls, who resembled the cancanneurs in their mechanical and animalistic qualities, and who preferred quadrilles over more ambitious pieces for piano. More serious was the perceived damage that arrangements of operas as quadrilles inflicted on the original, reducing great works to the banal through simplification. By serving as an example of all that stands in opposition to art in French music, the quadrille contributed to the formulation of the concept of music as art.
Journal of the Society for American Music, May 1, 2014
Digitized historical newspapers opened the world of professional women whistlers to me. What bega... more Digitized historical newspapers opened the world of professional women whistlers to me. What began as a curiosity became a preoccupation as simultaneous keyword searches of hundreds of newspapers revealed details and a broad context for the history of these forgotten musicians. These women inspired the publication of hundreds of items including reviews of their performances, articles on the propriety of their activities, portraits, advertisements, announcements of coming events, short stories, and poetry and rhymes immortalizing the whistling girl. Although any one piece of information might have little value on its own, the volume of material begins to form a historical narrative, one that emerges with a speed that would not have been possible in the analog age. The process of searching shaped my understanding of digitized historical newspapers as a genre of content and the Internet as a point of access and delivery. As someone new to using digitized historical newspapers, I first had to recognize the breadth of the resources and identify the databases that held documents of potential value. No single database, free or otherwise, provides comprehensive access, although some come closer than others. Moreover, a number of valuable historical newspapers are preserved in the relatively small collections of cultural heritage organizations whose online resources are isolated and difficult to search. To explore the richness of these resources, some larger sense of the potential for research is necessary. This review essay charts this landscape and suggests avenues to access. Commercial databases provide rich holdings of digitized historical newspapers; however, despite the important service they provide, their expense raises concerns about access to documents preserving cultural heritage.2 America’s Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, Newspapers.com, and Paperofrecord.ca preserve huge amounts of historical material, but only for those with appropriate institutional affiliations, proximity to a subscribing institution, or a willingness to pay for access as an individual. Although some databases hold materials in common, each offers something unique; thus, to choose one over another is to eliminate possibilities for discovery. And yet financial realities, and the scarcity of research institutions that provide
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, May 18, 2023
Nineteenth-century music review, Dec 1, 2014
Léo Delibes Coppélia Charline Giezendanner (Swanilda), Mathieu Ganio (Franz), Pierre Lacotte (Cop... more Léo Delibes Coppélia Charline Giezendanner (Swanilda), Mathieu Ganio (Franz), Pierre Lacotte (Coppélius), Marie-José Redont (the Mother) and Cyril Mitilian (the Mayor) Paris National Opera Ballet School of Dance Arthur Saint-Léon, choreographer (version by Albert Aveline) Pierre Lacotte and Claude Bessy, stage directors Paris National Opera Orchestra, David Coleman, cond Recorded live at the Opéra National de Paris, Palais Garnier (2001). Arthaus Musik 107231, 2011 (1 DVD: 67minutes).
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Aug 27, 2020
Music & Letters, May 1, 2017
Collaborating with faculty to develop a program in information literacy is often a challenge for ... more Collaborating with faculty to develop a program in information literacy is often a challenge for music librarians. At the same time, the explosion of digital resources and platforms available for research and teaching have resulted in both new needs and new opportunities for faculty-librarian collaborations. In this session, panelists from three different institutions will present case studies exploring ways of using ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to facilitate collaboration with music faculty. A central element of the Framework is the idea of threshold concepts, deeply ingrained ways of thinking or practicing within a particular discipline; a student’s progression from novice to expert is dependent upon integration of a discipline’s threshold concepts. The Framework and its presentation of threshold concepts can be particularly useful for developing discipline-specific teaching strategies and approaches. Each case study highlights possible ways librarians and faculty can work together to design course content that helps music students build information literacy, and in some cases, metaliteracy (or digital literacy) skills. Panelists will share experiences and insights. Attendees will leave with new ideas for ways to work with faculty at their own institutions to integrate aspects of the Framework into the music curriculum
19th-Century Music, 2003
This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the... more This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the performance history of D. F. E. Auber's opera La Muette de Portici from 1828 to 1879. Because a mime performed the role of Fenella and the chorus played an active role in the mise en scene, the opera placed unusual emphasis on the physical. Over this period, however, emphasis shifted from appreciation of acting to emphasis on singing. For example, during the tenor Adolphe Nourrit's tenure at the Opera critics admired his skill as an actor in the role of Masaniello. When replaced by Gilbert Duprez in 1837, critics praised the tenor's vocal power and lack of emphasis on the histrionic. During this same time, critics began to interpret the gestures of the mime playing Fenella as semantically empty, and her body as filling a space that a singer should occupy. The important role that the barcarolle plays in the opera allows in part for these transitions. Viewed as a chanson napol...
The Musical Quarterly, Feb 28, 2006
In 1833, the same year that Daniel-François-Esprit Auber's Gustave, ou Le bal masqué prem... more In 1833, the same year that Daniel-François-Esprit Auber's Gustave, ou Le bal masqué premiered, Hans Christian Andersen began a grand tour that included a stay in Paris, the “city of cities.” 1 His visit coincided with events in celebration of the third anniversary of the ...
Notes, 2020
In Sound Objects, literary critics James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow (plus their twelve contribut... more In Sound Objects, literary critics James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow (plus their twelve contributors) provide multifaceted approaches to the study of sound in recognition of its undertheorized complexity. These authors share a philosophically informed engagement with their subject, positioning sound as a complex component of history, culture, and human experience broadly understood. The introduction and thirteen essays, organized into five parts, move from theorizing the sound object, to considering sound as commodity, to reexamining the acousmatic voice, to charting sound as abject (that unstable sonic space between subject and object), to exploring sound as foundational to film and embodied historical experience, and end with exploration of drawing as sounding. Like the field of sound studies, the essays collected here are disciplinarily difficult to define or contain. The contributing authors share a unifying openness to the strange power of vibration, putting into question the ontological stability of Pierre Schaeffer’s objet sonore and the related concept of “reduced listening.” These essays broaden the field by modeling novel ways of engaging sound grounded in philosophy and phenomenology; anthropology, history, and (auto)ethnography; and literary theory and film studies, to name the most prominent approaches. In so doing, the volume recognizes sound as a powerful ideological artifact of daily existence, intertwined with sight and action, past and present, emotion and embodiment. Essays in part 1, “Genealogies,” take Pierre Schaeffer’s Traite des objets musicaux: Essai interdisciplines (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966; English trans.: Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay across Disciplines, trans. Christine North and John Dack [Oakland: University of cally expedient. The final two chapters (dealing with the years 1974–94 and “the turn of the centuries”) treat eras when postmodernism, the “New Romanticism,” the symphony as a public statement, and the vocal symphony come to the fore. Bolesławska does well in crafting a historical narrative for what remain difficult times to thematize and periodize. While we continue to encounter value judgments in these pages, the author is increasingly content to be expository, offering a wealth of sociopolitical context and descriptions of what are in many cases little-researched works. Doubtless this information will be valuable to interested readers. Despite my misgivings, The Symphony and Symphonic Thinking in Polish Music since 1956 is an overall success. It adds substantially to our knowledge of the genre and will be an important text for future researchers. One should hope, however, that subsequent scholarship on the broader post-1950 symphonic repertory abandons close fealty to impractical formal strictures. The history of this music will be better understood when we let go of policing the label “symphony” and instead focus on accounting for and appreciating its actual application to a wide variety of works.
Cambridge Opera Journal, Jul 1, 2001
Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index. The title of Maria... more Princeton studies in opera. Bibliographic references pp. [241]-300, and index. The title of Marian Smith's book rings Hegelian as it invokes 'the age of Giselle', a period spanning roughly from the revolution of 1830 to that of 1848, with brief forays back into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Letting Giselle stand for this era subtly undermines the music-historical paradigm that the title invokes, in which great composers and their works are elevated above cultural context. While Giselle is central to the canon and history of dance, it remains marginal to the history of music, which has until recently given short shrift to music closely allied with dance. 1 Although ballet-pantomimes were arguably at least as important to the Paris Opéra as grand operas, choreographic works remain largely unknown today. Smith's study of Giselle and the milieu that produced it unveils a work and a repertory that may surprise scholars of dance and music alike, for not only is the repertory unknown, but this choreographic tradition is quite distinct from twentieth-century balletic practices. The book will serve as a primer for anyone interested in research on ballet in Paris. In addition to the focus on Giselle, Smith refers to a host of forgotten works in this carefully documented study, employing evidence from a broad array of archival sources, including rehearsal and performance scores, libretti, production books, lists of costumes, sketches of costumes and sets, and accounts related to the reception of the works. Detailed footnotes provide a thorough interdisciplinary bibliography of the subject. Throughout the book, musical examples from a host of nearly forgotten balletpantomimes such as La somnambule (1827), La révolte au sérail (1833), and Le diable boiteux (1836) illustrate the variegated musical styles employed. The introduction describes the functions of dramatic music and dance music in this genre, in which mime and dance combined with a prose scenario and musical score to tell a story. Dramatic music enhanced the meaning of the pantomime through the use of well-known popular themes or recurring melodies, while dance music accompanied divertissements and established an appropriate (and frequently national) character for the dance. Subsequent chapters describe the many levels on which ballet-pantomimes and operas resemble one another; the general lightness of the subject matter (tragedies like Giselle and La Sylphide were rare); ballet-pantomimes' parodying of comic operas, and the mixture of ballet with opera in works like La Muette de Portici (1828), Le Dieu et la bayadère (1830), and La Tentation (1832), which included leading roles for mimes in the midst of singers. The book concludes with a chapter dedicated completely to Giselle as it was known during the 1840s, followed by an appendix containing its scenario in Gautier's original French and Smith's English translation. Perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the one on silent language, in which Smith explains how words related to balletic expression. We tend to think of ballet as a wordless art, but 1 See for instance, Susan McClary's discussion of how the emphasis on the scientific in music has precluded attention to music's effect on the human body, in 'Music, The Pythagoreans, and the Body', in Choreographing History, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 82-84. Speaking of nineteenth-century dance in particular, Knud Arne Jürgensen suggests that the period remains relatively unknown because of the broad base of choreographic as well as musical knowledge necessary to broaching the subject. See 'An Avenue Unexplored: The Divertissement and the Opéra-Ballet', in Verdi in Performance, ed.
This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879... more This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879) at the Academie Royale de Musique in relationship to dance in order to understand how past choreographic practices inflected audiences' understandings of the spectacle. It focuses primarily on the music and the practices of the Parisian composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, and leans heavily on journalistic accounts of dance from the Revue Musicale, Le Ménestrel, and La France musicale to place his works in the context of more general practices and perceptions of operatic and choreographic works at this theater. These journalistic accounts, in combination with archival sources such as violon répetiteur scores and the partie de ballet, reveal the aesthetic and commercial importance of dancers and danced episodes to the genre of grand opera in general. In demonstrating this importance, the study recovers aspects of the French operatic experience that have been comparatively neglected by musicological scholarship. The dissertation is comprised of four case studies, each focusing on a different issue of musical expression and understanding in the context of dancing. The first chapter examines the many ways audiences interpreted the bodies of Opéra dancers, concentrating particularly on the criticism of Théophile Gautier, the travesty role of the page, and bacchanales in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) and Le prophète (1849). The second chapter discusses the reception of the 1837 revival of La Muette de Portici (1828), an opera that starred a female mime alongside the more conventional singing roles, suggesting that its performance history reveals the increasing conceptual separation of ballet from opera. In the third chapter, the performance history of the fifth-act ball scene from Gustave, ou Le bal masqué (1833) serves as an example of the many types of permutations that divertissements underwent as part of the Opera's production process. The final chapter addresses issues of social dance, demonstrating how quadrille arrangements of operas shaped operatic listening habits.
19th-Century Music, 2003
This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera... more This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the performance history of D. F. E. Auber's opera La Muette de Portici from 1828 to 1879. Because a mime performed the role of Fenella and the chorus played an active role in the mise en scene, the opera placed unusual emphasis on the physical. Over this period, however, emphasis shifted from appreciation of acting to emphasis on singing. For example, during the tenor Adolphe Nourrit's tenure at the Opera critics admired his skill as an actor in the role of Masaniello. When replaced by Gilbert Duprez in 1837, critics praised the tenor's vocal power and lack of emphasis on the histrionic. During this same time, critics began to interpret the gestures of the mime playing Fenella as semantically empty, and her body as filling a space that a singer should occupy. The important role that the barcarolle plays in the opera allows in part for these transitions. Viewed as a chanson napolitaine, it accentuates the rocking of a boat and the physical body at work; however, interpreted as the song of a Venetian gondolier, the song emphasizes the enunciation of a singing voice at the expense of the body. Reviews of La Muette reflect this ambivalence toward performance styles that call attention to the body, particularly those that might be interpreted as belonging to the working classes.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2005
The Journal of Musicology, 2002
During the 1830s in Paris the quadrille, a five-movement figure dance, became musically omniprese... more During the 1830s in Paris the quadrille, a five-movement figure dance, became musically omnipresent to the distress of many critics, who saw the genre as detrimental to French music and musical taste. Discussions of the dance in journalism and literature associate bourgeois women and girls and working-class men with promotion of the genre. As a figure dance with walking steps, the quadrille was enjoyed by respectable women who experienced it as a safe frame for civilized social interaction, although their male counterparts found the dance boring and uninviting. In contrast, working-class men were known for their engaging and energetic performances as cancanneurs, improvisatory dancers exhibiting a lack of control associated with political instability and revolution. Quadrilles were perceived to have a negative influence on musical education for girls, who resembled the cancanneurs in their mechanical and animalistic qualities, and who preferred quadrilles over more ambitious pieces for piano. More serious was the perceived damage that arrangements of operas as quadrilles inflicted on the original, reducing great works to the banal through simplification. By serving as an example of all that stands in opposition to art in French music, the quadrille contributed to the formulation of the concept of music as art.
Journal of the Society for American Music, May 1, 2014
Digitized historical newspapers opened the world of professional women whistlers to me. What bega... more Digitized historical newspapers opened the world of professional women whistlers to me. What began as a curiosity became a preoccupation as simultaneous keyword searches of hundreds of newspapers revealed details and a broad context for the history of these forgotten musicians. These women inspired the publication of hundreds of items including reviews of their performances, articles on the propriety of their activities, portraits, advertisements, announcements of coming events, short stories, and poetry and rhymes immortalizing the whistling girl. Although any one piece of information might have little value on its own, the volume of material begins to form a historical narrative, one that emerges with a speed that would not have been possible in the analog age. The process of searching shaped my understanding of digitized historical newspapers as a genre of content and the Internet as a point of access and delivery. As someone new to using digitized historical newspapers, I first had to recognize the breadth of the resources and identify the databases that held documents of potential value. No single database, free or otherwise, provides comprehensive access, although some come closer than others. Moreover, a number of valuable historical newspapers are preserved in the relatively small collections of cultural heritage organizations whose online resources are isolated and difficult to search. To explore the richness of these resources, some larger sense of the potential for research is necessary. This review essay charts this landscape and suggests avenues to access. Commercial databases provide rich holdings of digitized historical newspapers; however, despite the important service they provide, their expense raises concerns about access to documents preserving cultural heritage.2 America’s Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, Newspapers.com, and Paperofrecord.ca preserve huge amounts of historical material, but only for those with appropriate institutional affiliations, proximity to a subscribing institution, or a willingness to pay for access as an individual. Although some databases hold materials in common, each offers something unique; thus, to choose one over another is to eliminate possibilities for discovery. And yet financial realities, and the scarcity of research institutions that provide
University Press of Mississippi eBooks, May 18, 2023
Nineteenth-century music review, Dec 1, 2014
Léo Delibes Coppélia Charline Giezendanner (Swanilda), Mathieu Ganio (Franz), Pierre Lacotte (Cop... more Léo Delibes Coppélia Charline Giezendanner (Swanilda), Mathieu Ganio (Franz), Pierre Lacotte (Coppélius), Marie-José Redont (the Mother) and Cyril Mitilian (the Mayor) Paris National Opera Ballet School of Dance Arthur Saint-Léon, choreographer (version by Albert Aveline) Pierre Lacotte and Claude Bessy, stage directors Paris National Opera Orchestra, David Coleman, cond Recorded live at the Opéra National de Paris, Palais Garnier (2001). Arthaus Musik 107231, 2011 (1 DVD: 67minutes).
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Aug 27, 2020
Music & Letters, May 1, 2017
Collaborating with faculty to develop a program in information literacy is often a challenge for ... more Collaborating with faculty to develop a program in information literacy is often a challenge for music librarians. At the same time, the explosion of digital resources and platforms available for research and teaching have resulted in both new needs and new opportunities for faculty-librarian collaborations. In this session, panelists from three different institutions will present case studies exploring ways of using ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to facilitate collaboration with music faculty. A central element of the Framework is the idea of threshold concepts, deeply ingrained ways of thinking or practicing within a particular discipline; a student’s progression from novice to expert is dependent upon integration of a discipline’s threshold concepts. The Framework and its presentation of threshold concepts can be particularly useful for developing discipline-specific teaching strategies and approaches. Each case study highlights possible ways librarians and faculty can work together to design course content that helps music students build information literacy, and in some cases, metaliteracy (or digital literacy) skills. Panelists will share experiences and insights. Attendees will leave with new ideas for ways to work with faculty at their own institutions to integrate aspects of the Framework into the music curriculum
19th-Century Music, 2003
This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the... more This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the performance history of D. F. E. Auber's opera La Muette de Portici from 1828 to 1879. Because a mime performed the role of Fenella and the chorus played an active role in the mise en scene, the opera placed unusual emphasis on the physical. Over this period, however, emphasis shifted from appreciation of acting to emphasis on singing. For example, during the tenor Adolphe Nourrit's tenure at the Opera critics admired his skill as an actor in the role of Masaniello. When replaced by Gilbert Duprez in 1837, critics praised the tenor's vocal power and lack of emphasis on the histrionic. During this same time, critics began to interpret the gestures of the mime playing Fenella as semantically empty, and her body as filling a space that a singer should occupy. The important role that the barcarolle plays in the opera allows in part for these transitions. Viewed as a chanson napol...
PhD Dissertations, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879... more This dissertation examines the reception of nineteenth-century French grand operas (ca. 1828-1879) at the Academie Royale de Musique in relationship to dance in order to understand how past choreographic practices inflected audiences' understandings of the spectacle. It focuses primarily on the music and the practices of the Parisian composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, and leans heavily on journalistic accounts of dance from the Revue Musicale, Le Ménestrel, and La France musicale to place his works in the context of more general practices and perceptions of operatic and choreographic works at this theater. These journalistic accounts, in combination with archival sources such as violon répetiteur scores and the partie de ballet, reveal the aesthetic and commercial importance of dancers and danced episodes to the genre of grand opera in general. In demonstrating this importance, the study recovers aspects of the French operatic experience that have been comparatively neglected by musicological scholarship.