Music

Many warm greetings and thanks to Sebastian Pryke who, in a reponse to one of my previous posts, revealed himself to be the great-great grandnephew of child prodigy James G. Speaight.

Sebastian and his brother Jonathan Pryke are apparently the great-great grandsons of James's brother Joseph Speaight (1868-1947) who was a British pianist, composer, and taught at Trinity College. According to Baker's biographical dictionary of musicians (7th edition), Joseph composed three symphonies, a piano concerto, and other works such as songs. The British Library catalog lists quite a number of songs and small works by Joseph Speaight.

Sebastian mentioned Joseph's unpublished orchestral work, "Vita Brevis," apparently written to commemorates the composer's younger brother. The newspaper article which was affixed to the manuscript is from the Boston Globe.

Here in the Music Division of The New York Public Library I could locate only one score, his string quartet entitled "Some Shakespeare Fairy Characters," published in 1916.

Coincidentally, the only recording of music by Joseph Speaight that I could locate was of the second movement of this quartet. Entitled "The Lonely Shepherd," it was recorded ca. 1927-1929 by the Spencer Dyke String Quartet as a filler side to their recording of Dvorak's Quintet in A major, Op. 81, for the privately financed and short-lived National Gramophonic Society.

Let's hope that an enterprising company like Naxos will someday record a CD filled with the music of Joseph Speaight.

If serendipity is a useful thing when browsing through the holdings of The New York Public Library, it's all the more true for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, whose extensive collection contain an enormous amount of ephemera (most of which does not appear in the catalog). Some years ago, in going through some of our extensive program files, a coworker found an intriguing flyer for the Town Hall (and possibly New York City) recital debut of Oliver J. Dragon, baritone.

The soloist was none other than Ollie, from the famed 1950s television show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. The rear of the flyer offers many informative comments, and a warm picture with "a friend" -- Licia Albanese, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera.

.

(You may be thinking this is some kind of joke, but bear with me -- I do have a point to make below.)

The reviews were singular. Writing in the New York Herald-Tribune of November 27, 1953, Jay S. Harrison wrote:

"Oliver J. Dragon, a distinguished baritone member of the Kuklapolitan Players, gave a recital last night in Town Hall. It was his debut. It was also mine. Never before had the present writer reviewed a singing dragon, and, if the fates oblige, he never will again."

From the same date in the New York Times, chief music critic and author Harold C. Schonberg wrote:

"He is a rather remarkable performer. The way he moves around the stage you'd think he was made out of cloth, or something. He is completely uninhibited. He even departed from the printed list, choosing what suited his fancy. Very unorthodox, very.

It is difficult to appraise his voice, a cross between a whiskey baritone and a basso chevalier. Part of this difficulty stems from the program he selected. Was Bach present? No. Hugo Wolf? No. And how can one assess a singer's musicality without any excerpts from the "Quellennachweissamlungantiphonariumromanusbuchstaben?"

The Music Division has an extensive run of programs from Town Hall, where I was able to find one for November 26, 1953:

The note on page one of the program is particularly interesting:

"Since it is undetermined, at the time of this printing, whether or not Mr. Dragon is going to be in the proper artistic frame of mind to cope with the program as listed, his managers have persuaded him to render his selections in any order he pleases. Consequently, we have numbered each individual song and Mr. Dragon will announce from the stage, by number, the actual order of appearance. Intermission will, in a like manner, be determined by the artist."

Page four of the program offers a unique view of the range of compositions, including composers such as the French Dragoneau through the Italian Dragoni to the "native songs" of Chicago:

A look through the finding aid of the Town Hall Archives (held in the Music Division, call number: JPB 88-26) did not reveal any documentation of this special recital.

So you may be wondering why highlight a children's tv character from the 1950s in a blog devoted to rarities from the Music Division?

Out of necessity (for example, whether by limitations of space, or preservation) most libraries need to make a distinction between materials that can and should be acquired, and those which should not be. For many years, the Music Division has been known for its excellent collections of classical music, but less so in the popular or non-classical areas. Observing current interests and trends in research, it's obvious that we should try to avoid such distinctions, and leave it to our patrons to make that determination for themselves. The value that accrues to objects and information is based on how it is used by the public and the meaning and significance they attach to it.

This recital of a then-leading television program character is certainly humorous, but it can also be seen as a gentle parody of other recitalists who eschew a strict program in favor of a selection and order that is determined on the spot. (Is that not suggestive of later trends in contemporary music, where the unplanned nature of a recital was akin to the creation of music? Think of John Cage.) From the point of view of Town Hall, it shows the democratizing influence of their management (which still continues a tradition of diverse programming).

Much can be learned from an examination of flyers and ephemera. And it's a pleasing thing when the materials are so entertaining.

A recent reference question asked what is the instrumentation of the stage band in act 1 of Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata. In case you've forgotten, the opera opens at the house of Violetta, who's giving a party to celebrate her recovery from illness. After Violetta and Alfredo sing the duet "Libiamo ne' lieti calici," the stage band (banda) begins to play, at which point the party guests exit to the next room to dance, leaving Violetta and Alfredo alone in order to fall in love.

It seemed like a simple question. I pulled the authoritative Works of Giuseppe Verdi edition and found the spot to examine the instrumentation. Surprise! The stage band was written on just two staves--like a piano score. No instruments were indicated at all. I looked at the back of the volume to see if it was included as a supplement. Not finding anything there, I went to the front matter.

I found editor Fabrizio Della Seta's explanation in the introduction, where he states: "Following the practice of his time, Verdi wrote a guida banda (a short score on two staves), leaving its realization to the leader of the banda in theaters staging the work. This instrumentation could vary from theater to theater." Additional reading explained that the editorial practice of the Works of Giuseppe Verdi edition is to transmit what came from Verdi's hand. Other hands, while possibly significant to performance practice, were not incorporated into the edition.

Welcome to the blog of the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It’s my intention for this blog to serve as a way to make the Music Division (and The Library in general) a more accessible and welcoming place by featuring some of the treasures and unusual items we have. I encourage feedback and dialogue on any of the topics I present.

So what better to open a blog that with the frontispiece from a famous book: Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis, published in Rome (by Corbelletti) in 1650.

The Special Collections Department of Glasgow University Library possesses a unique hand-colored copy of Musurgia Universalis, and they’ve provided a nice but brief description on their website. Although slightly tangential to his subject, Edward E. Lowinsky provided a more thorough discussion of this page in his article “Ockeghem’s Canon for Thirty-six Voices: An Essay in Musical Iconography” (in Essays in musicology : in honor of Dragan Plamenac on his 70th birthday, edited by Gustave Reese and Robert J. Snow, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1969 - ISBN 0822910985, 155-80), of which the following is taken.

There’s an enormous amount of imagery here–a Renaissance-influenced combination of religious and mythological symbols. Its energy reminds me of a sanitized version of some of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. At the foreground left, Pythagoras leans on an explanation of his theorem as well as Zarlino’s senario, while the lady holding the cornet on the right side is Music. Both figures have musical instruments at their feet (ancient and modern), while the men inside the opening in the center represent the earthly “musical instrumentalis” and are working on new musical creations. Above them in the distance of the beach are nine satyrs and eight sea-gods. Slightly off to the right, a shepherd speaks to a cliffside with a quote from Virgil “Pascite ut ante Boves” (”graze, cattle, as before…”) which, by means of a dotted line, bounces back as an echo “…oves” - no doubt signifying Kircher’s extensive interest in acoustics. Further to the right of that cliff, a long stone staircase leads to a landing on which is perched Pegasus, ready to take flight in service to the muses.
The central sphere contains signs of the zodiac and, in addition to the author, title and publication information, is emblazoned with a quote from Job “Quis concentum coeli dormire faciet?” (i.e. “Who shall still the harmony of the spheres?”), while Apollo sits on top carrying a kithara in his right hand and panpies in his left.

Like rush hour on a New York City subway, it’s a very amusing and hyperactive artwork. But what interests me most is the musical quotation on this frontispiece. It’s a 36-part canon by Romano Micheli (the Latin indicates that the solution to the canon can be found on page 587). The 36 parts are broken down into 4 groups of 9 voices (i.e. 3 x 3), an hommage to the significance of the three-fold divinity, as well as to the nine muses. More significantly, this canon pays hommage to a famous “lost” work, a 36-voice canon by a master of mensuration, Johannes (or Jean) Ockeghem. Though Lowinsky was convinced he had uncovered the piece (Deo gratia), most scholars agree that the work is lost, and some acknowledge that there is little evidence proving that Ockeghem ever composed such a work.
Nevertheless, when seen in context of the entire book, Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis stands as a historical testament, an exhaustive and fascinating effort by one of the last polymaths to encompass the universe of musical knowledge.

The Music Division holds two copies of Musurgia Universalis (call numbers Drexel 2670-2672), both part of the Drexel Collection (a founding collection of The New York Public Library), while a third copy is held by the Rare Books Division.