A musical instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci... maybe (updated)

YouTube link.

A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ - which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say.  The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans... 

 ‘‘This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,’’ Zubrzycki said as he debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow...

Sixty-one gleaming steel strings run across it, similar to the inside of a baby grand. Each is connected to the keyboard, complete with smaller black keys for sharp and flat notes. But unlike a piano, it has no hammered dulcimers. Instead, there are four spinning wheels wrapped in horse-tail hair, like violin bows. To turn them, Zubrzycki pumps a pedal below the keyboard connected to a crankshaft. As he tinkles the keys, they press the strings down onto the wheels, emitting rich, sonorous tones reminiscent of a cello, an organ and even an accordion.

More details at The Age, with a hat tip to reader Shirin for the link.

Addendum:   Some doubts have been raised as to the historical relevance of this instrument:

Basically, it appears that the instrument built by Slawomir Zubrzycki is not so much a realization of a design by Leonardo da Vinci as it is a reconstruction of the instrument described as a “Geigenwerk/GeigenInstrument, oder GeigenClavicymbel” in the second volume of Michael Praetorius’s Syntagma Musicum...

Now it’s certainly true that da Vinci made some sketches of a continuously-bowed keyboard instrument (which he dubbed the “viola organista”) , but the sketches are pretty rough, and most of them show an action that’s quite different from the one in Zubrzycki’s instrument (which uses the same rosin-coated wheels as Haiden’s geigenwerk). In short, Zubrzycki’s instrument seems to me to be a nice reconstruction of a 16th-century German instrument that just happens to share some of the characteristics of da Vinci’s imagined “viola organista” (which Haiden almost certainly knew nothing about).

More at the link, found by reader Pam!

One-man band

Slightly modified from the original, via Alabaster.

Everyone in Catalonia is invited...

... to purchase tickets to the Escapade Theatre Company's presentation of Mack The Knife (the musical):

"A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Greed, Corruption, and Murder: A Modern Story For Our Times."

"Escapade presents its completely updated version of the classic story of Mack the Knife, the violent gang leader who steals Polly Peachum away from her parents and sets in motion a compelling tale of love and crime in London’s underworld.

Set in London in 2014, William V is about to be crowned, the electric chair is back, prostitution is legal, riots are a common occurrence and the police force is openly known to be corrupt. Times are so hard that entrepreneur JJ Peachum makes a living out of selling begging licences and costumes to the poor, so that they can earn an “honest” living on the dangerous streets of London."

In the orchestra you may be able to spot a tall Norwegian-appearing young man playing the tenor saxophone.  That will be my cousin Karl, a resident of Barcelona for the past couple decades, a teacher, and a jazz enthusiast. 

"Schandflöte" ("flute of shame")

The "flute of shame" was a medieval torture/humiliation device resembling a flute or clarinet.  Although often described as a punishment for bad musicianship, a quick internet search suggests that it was deployed for a broader range of perceived offenses.

Most of the recent sources cite one another; the older sources are in German.

Posted today for the amusement of my cousin Karl, who is the saxophonist with the funk and soul band "Rootdown" in Barcelona.  If you're in the area and have the opportunity to hear them perform (perhaps at the Harlem Jazz Club), please go and tell them TYWKIWDBI sent you.

Topic via Sloth Unleashed.  Image (of a vintage German postcard) via an eBay listing.

So... is it The Beatles, or the Beatles ?

Apparently that is a matter of some contention, as exemplified by the Wikipedia editors' discussion of the topic, some excerpts of which are below, via Harper's:

They were “The” Beatles not “Beatles,” like “The” Kinks. “The” Who, not the “Who.”

It is standard practice when determining usage to allow those whose logo it is to make such determinations. If The Beatles capitalize the “T,” then a capital T it is.

I have a MA in Modern English Language and am a former proofreader and copy editor and current music editor for Amazon.com. In my professional work we never capitalize the “the” in band names, never ever.

Never mind articles or websites. Just take a look at Ringo’s bass drum. At least HE knew what their name was!

From the band’s album covers, it’s not obvious that they considered the word “The” an essential part of their name. Note that the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band shows the band name as “BEATLES.”

This whole nonissue is a bunch of hairsplitting. While a few folks fastidiously change “the” to “The” when the word “Beatles” follows, REGARDLESS OF THE CONTEXT OR HOW MANY TIMES THE NAME HAS ALREADY BEEN MENTIONED AND/OR CAPITALIZED, this is not done with any other band. This is time- and space-wasting, not to mention a bit hypocritical.

Did someone ask for an expert in British English? I have had nineteen years in publishing and editing, and I have to agree with my American colleague above. And if the copy editors who worked on books are wrong, and if the Amazon.com editor is wrong, and if I am wrong, then why even seek the opinions of professionals here? Among professionals, it does appear the lowercase usage outnumbers the capitalized one; it is only among amateurs that the professional usage is slammed! So let the pros be wrong. In which case Ringo Starr’s site, which uses lowercase, must also be wrong. George doesn’t seem to mention it. John Lennon’s people must be wrong on their official site. Brian Epstein’s site is wrong. Only Paul McCartney capitalizes.

FWIW, Wikipedia does not capitalize "the."

The top 40 songs of January 25, 1964

There's something very interesting about the "top 40" list above.  It's from a popular St. Paul/Minneapolis AM radio station in January of 1964, and it's loaded with what are now considered "golden oldies."  But this particular list brings back a flood of memories because of one entry.  Browse the list (click for bigger) before proceeding below the fold...

YMMV, but for me the salient entry is song #26 ("I Want To Hold Your Hand"  The Beatles - Capitol.  Debut.)  I remember standing in my high school's parking lot one afternoon that week, with my hair frozen*.  A classmate I was riding home with described a new song and my response was "Beetles?  Like insects?"

That's when it all started for me.  For many of my generation the memory of when we first heard The Beatles is as strong as when we heard of JFK's assassination.

I wonder how long it was before the Beatles fell off that top 40 chart.  Many years, I should think.

* (we had basketball practice as the last activity of the day, and after you showered and stepped outdoors your hair would at least frost up and sometimes totally freeze if you hadn't towelled it dry enough)

Prehistoric lyre bridge discovered

Youtube link. 

Archaeologists excavating the High Pasture Cave on the Isle of Skye have discovered a wooden fragment that they believe came from a lyre or similar stringed instrument. The fragment was burned and part of it broken off, but you can clearly see the carved string notches that identify it as a bridge. It was discovered in the rake-out deposits of the hearth outside the entrance to the cave. The deposits date to between 550 and 450 B.C., which would make the bridge a fragment of the oldest stringed instrument found in Europe...

Musical instruments from Iron Age Europe were not the luxury models of ancient Sumer nor did they have the advantage of a dry, hot environment to preserve the wood. Even Roman-era instruments are so hard to come by that we have to rely on literature, mosaics and frescoes to learn about them, or carvings on altars like the one unearthed in Musselburgh in 2010 which until now was the earliest representation of a musical instrument ever found in Scotland. Finding a piece of an instrument that is centuries older than any previous discoveries and is so clearly recognizable as a piece of an instrument (the bridge is probably the single most recognizable part of a lyre because of its shape and the string notches) is therefore enormously significant to our understanding of ancient music and poetry in Europe.

Text and image from The History Blog, where there is more information and additional relevant links.

Why MTV doesn't play music videos

YouTube link. 

Apparently a spoof interview, but probably truth-based.  Language (and a gesture) NSFW.

Pianos in the dumpster

“In winter time we burn them,” Mr. Demler, near left, said. “Ashes to ashes,” Mr. Demler added. “Dust to dust,” Mr. Williams, far left, said, unscrewing pins that held the strings.  Credit: Marcus Yam for The New York Times.

I've encountered two articles in recent months about the sad fate awaiting many current pianos.  First from the New York Times in July:

The value of used pianos, especially uprights, has plummeted in recent years. So instead of selling them to a neighbor, donating them to a church or just passing them along to a relative, owners are far more likely to discard them, technicians, movers and dealers say. Piano movers are making regular runs to the dump, becoming adept at dismantling instruments, selling parts to artists, even burning them for firewood...

With thousands of moving parts, pianos are expensive to repair, requiring long hours of labor by skilled technicians whose numbers are diminishing. Excellent digital pianos and portable keyboards can cost as little as several hundred dollars. Low-end imported pianos have improved remarkably in quality and can be had for under $3,000...

The average life span rarely exceeds 80 years, piano technicians say. That’s a lot of pianos now reaching the end of the line. Piano dealers also blame other changes in society for a lack of demand in the used-piano market: cuts in music education in schools, competition for practice time from other pursuits, a drop in spending on home furnishings with the fall of the housing market...

When owners ask where a cherished piano is going, he said, he tries to avoid the subject or tells them it will be put up for adoption. “The last thing they want to hear is that it’s going to a landfill,” he said. 

Similar sentiments are echoed across the pond in a BBC report:

A piano has thousands of moving parts, making restoration a very time-consuming, and specialist business. Just polishing a piano can take 70 hours. "It becomes a money pit," says Gist, and so often the best advice - and advice he doles out several times a day - is just to get rid of it...

"In the 1920s, they were made for the mass market. They were not made to last, they were made to sell," says Marcus Roberts of Roberts Pianos in Oxford. He says, much like a house, a piano needs to be built with good foundations if it is to last. "When you are making cheap pianos to sell, you are going to cut corners. Those pianos were never put together properly."..

But there is one market where the piano is booming - China.  Around 300,000 pianos were made in big factories in China last year, as well as a large share of the world's piano parts for repairs...

Because of the tension in the strings, it is dangerous to dismantle a piano if you don't know what you are doing - and a slow task if you do.  Loosening the strings, and separating the wood from the metal takes around 10 hours, says Hirschfelder. If a piano has really been neglected it might have attracted rats or mice, who like to eat the animal glue used to hold it together and nuzzle up to the felt, meaning that hantavirus - a deadly disease spread by rodents - is a danger.

The keys are made of ebony and ivory, which he has seen made into jewellery, artwork - even exclusive tiling around swimming pools.

More at the links.

-2 -2 = X

That's a "musical equation."  To decipher it, just scratch it on your desk with your fingertip.

(If you can't figure it out).  Via Reddit.

An "error" on a record album

For several weeks I've been saving my favorite music digitally in order to finally get rid of old vinyl.  This album is one I bought when I was in college in about 1970.  The Vox label was as I remember a budget label, and I probably pulled this out of a bin of $1 records.

It wasn't until this week that I realized the significant error on the cover (I wasn't a music major).  The same error occurs on the record label as well.  I wonder if something like this is collectible, or whether it should go to Goodwill.

Addendum:  Reader Stella explains in her comment that it's not exactly an error...

Janis Ian sings "At Seventeen"

YouTube link. 

I learned the truth at seventeen
That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth…

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say “come dance with me”
And murmured vague obscenities
It isn’t all it seems at seventeen…

We all play the game, and when we dare
We cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say: “Come on, dance with me”
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen.

Her most successful single was "At Seventeen," released in 1975, a bittersweet commentary on adolescent cruelty and teenage angst, as reflected upon from the maturity of adulthood. "At Seventeen" was a smash, receiving tremendous acclaim from critics and record buyers alike — it charted at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and hit #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It even won the 1975 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance - Female beating out the likes of Linda Ronstadt who was nominated for the classic Heart Like A Wheel album, Olivia Newton-John and Helen Reddy. Ian performed "At Seventeen" as a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975... Another measure of her success is anecdotal - on Valentine's Day 1977, Ian received 461 Valentine cards, having indicated in the lyrics to "At Seventeen" that she never received any as a teenager." 

Reposted from 2008 because I found the lyrics at Camille Reads.

"Um Yah Yah" - the history of the St. Olaf "rouser"

The fight song for St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minnesota) can be heard on several YouTube clips (including at the 2:00 mark here with 15 pianos), but its most curious aspect is in its refrain: "Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah! Um! Yah! Yah! Yah!.

There are two stories about the history of those words - a legendary one, and a true one. The legendary background was explained in a 2005 issue of St. Olaf Magazine (via MPR News):

The rouser [is] based upon the old St. Olaf Faculty Hymn, which legend has it was sung at the beginning of all faculty meetings... Hagbarth Hardangerson ’29, who knew many of the great men named in the Faculty Hymn (“They were my teachers”), claimed the faculty never sang anything at their meetings... “most of the faculty couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and they never tried singing again.”

When you read the refrain(s), which apparently neither the faculty nor anyone else could commit to memory, you will immediately understand why the original words were replaced by the easier-to-remember, albeit somewhat ridiculous, nonsense phrase “um yah yah.”

We teach at St. Olaf,
We don’t dance or chew snuff,
Our students are Halvor and Gudrun and Thor;
They study like furious,
Their minds are so curious;
We sure are a bunch of Norwegians galore.

Gulbrandson, Narveson, Huggenvik, Ellingson,
Amundson, Klaragard, Halvorson, Roe.
Fredrickson, Rasmussen, Tollefsrud, Peterson,
Skogerboe, Faillettaz, Jorgenson, Boe.

We teach at St. Olaf,
It’s built on a big bluff,
The wind blows so hard that it causes distress.
But colleagues are glorious
And students uproarious
There’s no place on earth that we’d rather profess.

Christensen, Sheveland, Gustafson, Maakestad,
Lokensgaard, Skurdalsvold, Wrigglesworth, Ross.
Rovelstad, Jacobson, Lutterman, Otterness,
Erickson, Gunderson, Iverson, Foss.

Thormodsgard, Bieberdorf, Overby, Gimmestad,
Kittelsby, Ytterboe, Hinderlie, Njus.
Ditmanson, Odegaard, Hilleboe, Anderson,
Anderson, Anderson, Anderson, Muus! 

That hymn supposedly morphed into the modern version:

We come from St. Olaf,
We sure are the real stuff.
Our team is the cream of the colleges great.
We fight fast and furious,
Our team is injurious.
Tonight Carleton College will sure meet its fate.

Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah!, Um! Yah! Yah!
Um! Yah! Yah! Yah!

That's the legend.  Here's the less humorous but more believable true story:

In 1987, Hagbarth Bue, member of the class of 1911, was interviewed on how the fight song originated (incidentally, the audiocassette is available in the St. Olaf College Archives). Mr. Bue said the 1911 class octet was practicing a Norwegian folk song, "Jeg Har Ute Pulten," which was to be sung at half time of a basketball game. The song was taught to two audiences separated by a basketball court. Because of a shortage of time, they simply substituted Um! Yah! Yah! for the words of the chorus.

The first published account of Um! Yah! Yah! appears in the 1913-14-15 triannual Viking under the song title "Jeg Har Ute Pulten" (embed at right).

A hat tip to Mr. Jeff Sauve, Associate College Archivist at St. Olaf, for providing this information and the image of the original publication; he notes that the basketball Goat Trophy celebrated its centennial this winter too.

"Stag farts" - a traditional sign of summer

In the United States, summer unofficially begins well before the solstice - typically after the Memorial Day holiday at the end of May (coinciding with the meteorological "summer"  months of June, July, and August).  That's a good-enough excuse to post about "Sumer Is Icumen In."  Wikipedia provides an extensive review of the piece, including the Middle English text -

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calue cu.
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ,
Murie sing cuccu!...

- and the Modern English equivalent -

Summer has arrived,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the stag farts,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo...

- and this clarification:

The translation of "bucke uerteþ" is uncertain. Some translate as "the buck-goat turns", but the current critical consensus is that the line is "the stag farts", a gesture of virility indicating the stag's potential for creating new life, echoing the rebirth of Nature from the barren period of winter.

A hat tip to Adrian for finding an mp3 of the round that you can listen to.

Eric Clapton - "Tears in Heaven"

YouTube link. 

This song is familiar to most people because it topped the charts for weeks in the early 90s.

What is not generally recognized is that the subject of the song is the death of Clapton's four-year old son, Conor, who accidentally fell from a 53rd-story window in New York.  That knowledge may allow you to listen to the piece with renewed appreciation...

Reposted from 2008 because I like the song.

Why Amazon wants your old CDs

Explained at Smart Money:

The online retailer announced Wednesday that has added CDs to the list of items it allows shoppers to trade, which includes books, video games, DVDs and electronics. Sellers get a free shipping label to mail in their items, and receive store credit based on quality of the discs. Just how much credit customers can expect to get remains unclear; at press time, Amazon’s trade-in page had not yet been updated to allow CD entries. (Amazon.com did not respond to requests for comment.) But retail experts say CDs could fetch as much as $2 to $3 apiece...

Amazon is hoping the service will eventually translate to more purchases — and more loyal customers. Studies have shown that when consumers redeem gift cards or credit, they tend to spend 40% more than the value of that credit...

To get the best deal, consumers can copy songs from the discs to their computer for free before selling... Consumers may find, however, that much of their music isn’t eligible. Most CD trade-in sites — as well as Amazon’s DVD trade-ins — require the seller to include the case with its artwork and UPC code. Scratched discs may also be rejected. So music fans who ditched jewel cases in favor of a “CD wallet” or didn’t keep their collection in pristine condition are likely stuck with it until their next yard sale.

I note it's a trade-in, not an outright purchase, so there's no advantage to cruising library book sales to buy quantities of CDs for a buck each.

Via The New Shelton wet/dry, where I also found this excellent post title:

It’s amazing how much more money I have when I’m drunk.

"I Will Always Love You"

YouTube link.

YouTube link. 

One of my favorite pieces of music, sung by the incomparable Dolly Parton. She wrote this way back in 1973 when she was breaking up with her long-time partner Porter Waggoner. She recut it again in 1982 for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (here is the YouTube video of the movie version.)

The song became even more famous in the 1990s when Whitney Houston covered it for her film debut in The Bodyguard. Her version was ranked #1 in VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Love Songs.

I have embedded two versions: the upper one features Dolly in a solo concert performance; the video is grainy, especially at fullscreen, but the power of her voice comes through well. The lower one is her duet with Vince Gill, which was rated by Country Music Television as #1 in their 100 Greatest Country Love Songs.

Both are worth listening to.

(Originally posted in 2008)

Ar Hyd y Nos

This is the dedication for the book "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past," by A. Roger Ekirch.  It's the first time I've seen a dedication created solely with a musical score.

I have negligible musical skills, but was able to hum this, and, in connection with the book's title, deduce it's source.  Answer below the fold...

The last four notes are the refrain "all through the night."  There are several pieces of music using this title; this one is Ar Hyd y No, a Welsh folksong first recorded in the 18th century.

1956

It's the era of Elvis Presley, but this young woman (perhaps your mother?) is not waxing ecstatic about him, but about another singer who, in 1957 was a "two-to-one favorite over Elvis Presley among boys and preferred almost three-to-one by girls." See if you can guess his identity before seeing the answer below the fold...

Pat Boone.  Photo via The Nifty Fifties and Bazaar tumblrs.

"Appoggiatura" explained

YouTube link. 

Excerpts from a story at The Wall Street Journal:

On Sunday night, the British singer-songwriter Adele is expected to sweep the Grammys. Three of her six nominations are for her rollicking hit "Rolling in the Deep." But it's her ballad "Someone Like You" that has risen to near-iconic status recently, due in large part to its uncanny power to elicit tears and chills from listeners. The song is so famously sob-inducing that "Saturday Night Live" recently ran a skit in which a group of co-workers play the tune so they can all have a good cry together...

Twenty years ago, the British psychologist John Sloboda conducted a simple experiment. He asked music lovers to identify passages of songs that reliably set off a physical reaction, such as tears or goose bumps. Participants identified 20 tear-triggering passages, and when Dr. Sloboda analyzed their properties, a trend emerged: 18 contained a musical device called an "appoggiatura."..

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good." Chills often descend on listeners at these moments of resolution. When several appoggiaturas occur next to each other in a melody, it generates a cycle of tension and release. This provokes an even stronger reaction, and that is when the tears start to flow.

"Someone Like You" is a textbook example. "The song begins with a soft, repetitive pattern," said Dr. Guhn, while Adele keeps the notes within a narrow frequency range. The lyrics are wistful but restrained: "I heard that you're settled down, that you found a girl and you're married now." This all sets up a sentimental and melancholy mood. When the chorus enters, Adele's voice jumps up an octave, and she belts out notes with increasing volume. The harmony shifts, and the lyrics become more dramatic: "Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead."

When the music suddenly breaks from its expected pattern, our sympathetic nervous system goes on high alert; our hearts race and we start to sweat. Depending on the context, we interpret this state of arousal as positive or negative, happy or sad. 

Further details at the Wall Street Journal, including audio files to illustrate the point.

Addendum:  Apparently the definition of appoggiatura is not as straightforward as the WSJ article indicates.  NPR has a further discussion of this topic (hat tip to Dan Noland for the link).