Winner of Grove Music’s 2021 spoof article contest
It’s April Fool’s Day, which means the time has come to reveal the winner of the 20th anniversary edition of Grove Music Online’s Spoof Article Contest.
Family secrets and the demise of Erard pianos and harps
Musicians from Haydn to Liszt were captivated by the rich tone and mechanical refinement of the pianos and harps invented by Sébastien Erard, whose firm dominated nineteenth-century musical life. Erard was the first piano builder in France to prioritise the grand piano model, a crucial step towards creating a modern pianistic sonority.
SHAPE today and tomorrow: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part two)
This second part of our Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy & Acquisitions at OUP, and Professor Julia Black CBE FCA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and President-elect of the British Academy, reflects on how SHAPE disciplines can help us to understand the impact of the events of the pandemic and look towards the future of SHAPE.
Digging into the vaults of the unknown: the “Transcending Dystopia” research diaries
Research for Transcending Dystopia over the course of almost a decade was truly a journey, piecing together disparate snippets that have been transmitted in different repositories to gain insight into the musical practices and lives of Jews in postwar Germany. Among the 26 archives and private collections I consulted, two experiences stand out—the first being somewhat unusual, the second being quite extraordinary.
Introducing SHAPE: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part one)
OUP is excited to support the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. SHAPE has been coined to enable us to clearly communicate the value that these disciplines bring to not only enriching the world in which we live, but also enhancing our understanding of it. In the first instalment this two-part Q&A, we spoke to Sophie Goldsworthy and Professor Julia Black to find out more about SHAPE and what it means to them.
Ten empowering books to read in celebration of Black History Month
In observance of Black History Month, we are celebrating our prize-winning authors and empowering scholarship spanning a variety of topics across African American history, the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, and more. Explore our reading list and update your bookshelf with the most recent titles from these eminent authors.
Tips for adapting the elementary music curriculum to online teaching
Teachers of the performing arts are adapting their classes to go online. The problems and challenges range from ensuring enough physical space for movement around each student’s computer to overcoming audio and video syncing delays during the live feed. But what about elementary music?
Grove Music’s 2021 spoof article contest is now open!
I think we can all agree that recent months of pandemic and political unrest have been difficult ones, and often entirely bereft of humor. I am therefore pleased to announce the revival of the Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest 2021.
Joseph Riepel and a very long hello
Joseph Riepel’s celebrated music theory treatise, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, unfolds in a lively and witty manner. Most of its chapters are framed in the guise of lessons, presented as dialogues between a teacher and student.
A Q&A with composer Becky McGlade
I was fortunate enough to rehearse daily with the Truro cathedral choristers from the age of 8 to 13 (in the days before girl choristers). This fostered in me a love for choral music and for singing, which has continued throughout my life.
Technology in the elementary music classroom after the pandemic
The pandemic will leave a lasting impression on music education for years to come. Though we do not have to use technology every day after the pandemic ends, there are ways to use technology that can level up and benefit music-making with elementary students.
Online music-making with nearly no lag time—really!
Susan Alexander found a way to fill the “big, depressing hole in your life where playing music with other people used to be” when she discovered JamKazam, one of several free music-making software programs that nearly eliminate the annoying lag time in sound transmission that occurs when musicians try to make music together on Zoom or Skype.
Nineteenth-century US hymnody’s fascination with classical music
How could it ever have seemed like a good idea to set one of the most familiar Christmas hymns in the English language to a tune intended by Mozart (a genius at close-binding music to drama) as a vehicle for a seductive outpouring of double-entendre?
10 little-known facts about Sissle and Blake’s Shuffle Along
Written, staged, and performed entirely by African Americans, Shuffle Along was the first show to make African-American dance an integral part of American musical theater, eventually becoming one of the top ten musical shows of the 1920s. Authors Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom provide a list of ten little-known facts about the show.
Five overlooked Beethoven gems
Beethoven wrote an enormous quantity of music: nine symphonies, some fifty sonatas, seven concertos, sixteen string quartets, more than a hundred songs…the list goes on and on. It is almost inevitable that certain of these works have been relatively neglected by performers and the listening public alike. Here are a few overlooked gems.
Playing the opposite of what Brahms wrote
The first movement of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G, op. 78, has led many violin-piano duos either to ignore Brahms’s tempo markings or actually play the opposite of what he wrote. Joel Lester considers the what might we learn from this oddity.