Clik here to view.
McCoy Tyner and “apart playing”
McCoy Tyner’s improvisation on Bessie’s blues, recorded with the John Coltrane Quartet in 1964, exemplifies the traditional Afrodiasporic performance practice of apart playing. A formulation of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
International journal of the study of music and musical performance
In 2019 Open Music Library launched International journal of the study of music and musical performance. The journal advances both a general and professional interest in music and its performance...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rhythm and experimental psychology
In the laboratories of 19th-century experimental psychologists, new concepts of precision-oriented, mechanically regulated musical time emerged as a positive ideal—one that led to the ubiquity of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Improv Everywhere!
The improvisation collective Improv Everywhere specializes in staging public-space interventions, which they refer to as pranks or missions. By enlisting pedestrians in discrete one-time events that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Returning to “La source”
Four historic performances of Arthur Saint-Léon’s ballet La source, spanning 150 years, illustrate how—through the sacrifice of a feminized nature—the work represented the biopolitics of sex and race,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Improvised vocal fugues
Sethus Calvisius (1556–1615), one of the very small number of specialists in the improvised vocal fugue, provided a discussion of the practice in his Melopoiia (1592), illustrated with 21 notated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lucia’s cadenza
In the final act of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor Lucia is forced to marry Arturo, murders him, and promptly goes insane. In the modern tradition, as exemplified by Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal
Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal was launched in 2022 by a consortium of music scholars from around the world. It is published online, open-access, in conjunction with Digital...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beethoven does the details
The increasing range of Beethoven’s performance indications paralleled the growing depth of expression in his music. While his predecessors had been content with four basic tempos—adagio, andante,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grieg and recording
Edvard Grieg was intensely interested in sound recording, which was in its infancy in his day. His works were first recorded on Edison rolls in 1899 by Alfred Grünfeld. This technique of recording...
View Article
