Rossini’s La Veuve andalouse, a facsimile edition Based on its autograph sources, lost until recently, Gioachino Rossini: «La Veuve andalouse» presents the first and only critical edition of Rossini’s song. In addition to including a performing transcription of the music and the lyrics in all the languages of the first printed versions, this volume provides many contextual sources, such as several unknown Rossini letters, illustrations, and many contemporaneous reviews as well as other primary sources. All in all, it brings to the present a riveting scena worthy of the most celebrated opera composer of the first half of the nineteenth century. See the publisher’s web Authors’ interview about La Veuve Anna Tonna’s performace of La Veuve TABLE OF CONTENTS — SUMARIO List of Illustrations | Lista de ilustraciones Acknowledgments | Agradecimientos I. The Story and Context of Rossini’s La Veuve andalouse | La historia y el contexto de «La Veuve andalouse» de Rossini · Some Preliminary Remarks | Algunas consideraciones preliminares · Frontera de Valldemosa, Rossini’s Spanish Friend and La Veuve’s Dedicatee | Frontera de Valldemosa, el amigo español de Rossini y dedicatario de «La Veuve» · The Musical Patronage of Isabel de Borbón and La Veuve | El patronazgo musical de Isabel de Borbón y «La Veuve» · Documents in Contemporaneous Sources | Documentos en fuentes coetáneas II. La Veuve andalouse · Facsimile | Facsímil · Music Edition | Edición musical · Notes to the Edition | Notas a la edición III. Performing La Veuve | La Interpretación de «La Veuve» · Some Thoughts on the Performance of La Veuve andalouse by Anna Tonna | Reflexiones sobre la interpretación de «La Veuve andalouse» por Anna Tonna · IPA Transcription by Anna Tonna | Transcripción IPA por Anna Tonna Literal Translation from the French Text to Facilitate the Comprehension of the Lyrics · Song Texts | Textos de la canción · Original versions in French, Spanish, Italian, English and German | Versiones originales en francés, español, italiano, inglés y alemán Appendixes | Apéndices i. Cast of Characters | Galería de personajes ii. Chronology | Cronología Bibliography and Discography | Bibliografía i discografía The authors: Antoni Pizà has taught at The City University of New York for over twenty-five years, where he also directs The Foundation for Iberian Music. Pizà has authored or co-edited twenty volumes, the latest being Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) and The Way of the Moderns: Six Perspectives on Modernism in Music (Brepols, 2022). María Luisa Martínez holds a degree in Music History and Sciences (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2005) and a PhD with International Mention in Musicology (Universidad de Jaén, 2016). Since 2015 she has been researcher at The Foundation for Iberian Music at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her latest publications include La biblioteca musical particular de la infanta Isabel de Borbón (Fondo Infanta). Critical edition and catalog (SEdEM, 2019). In addition to Gioachino Rossini: «La Veuve andalouse», as a research team with María Luisa Martínez, they have published a critical edition of Tomás Bretón: Quinteto en sol mayor para piano y cuerda (ICCMU, 2022).
K. Meira Goldberg at the Flamenco Bienal Our flamenco distinguised resident scholar K. Meira Goldberg presented “Tumulte noir y jaleo de Jerez. Ecos de Harlem jazz en la Sevilla flamenca” at the XXII Bienal de Flamenco (Sevilla, 2022). Photo by Michael Penland As the organizers explain, the Concurso del 22 was not an isolated event. Throughout the 1920’s, events, lectures, meetings, conferences and competitions were held worldwide. They aimed to represent the institutionalisation of vernacular music as an artistic field. The Tango in Argentina, Samba in Brazil, Blues in the United States, Son Cubano in Cuba, Rebetiko in Greece, Folk Music in India, Czardas / Klezmer Music in Central Europe, and Arab Folk Music in Egypt, North African countries and the Middle East, amongst many others, conducted similar interventions through which academic culture, high culture and culture of the elite highlighted folk music, its different vernacular variants and the uniqueness of new genres such as jazz and flamenco.Of course, it was not a random event. It was linked with phenomena such as the creation of the first recording industry (in this case, the emergence of the radio and cinema), and with the commencement of cultural decolonisation around the world. This also included the emancipation of new political subjects, national independence processes, the formation of democratic systems, and, as seen in Spain, a process of political regeneration which would culminate with the proclamation of the Republic in 1931. We intend to establish a frame of cultural comparisons, and to contrast the uniqueness, differences and repetition that is present across all these events to further understand the artistic interventions that were formed in the 1922 competition. Therefore, it is not a matter of continuing to repeat the inaccurate assessments of the ethnographic or musicological errors of Falla or Lorca in their approach to the event, nor of continuing to uncritically celebrate the formula for highlighting flamenco music and dance in competitions, festivals, biennials and deformed mirrors of el Concurso del 22, which remain hegemonic when it comes to highlighting the value of flamenco. It is clear how Borges makes the same paternalistic mistakes as Federico García Lorca when highlighting primitivism, spontaneity and the popularism of the tango and flamenco respectively, but also how his patronage served to honour the ways of making these types of music and dances, and became a spokesperson for cultural matters, when even his disquisitions were considered almost miscreant.
The Art of The Flute – Jorge Grundman Join Jorge Grundman, composer, Alisa Weilerstein, cello, Gili Schwarzman, flute, and Eduardo Frías, piano, in two NY events: September 27, 2022: Meet the Composer at The National Opera Center September 28, 2022: Carnegie Hall On September 28, the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York will host the second concert by composer Jorge Grundman held in this prestigious concert hall. On this occasion, three internationally renowned interpreters, flutist Gili Schwarzman, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Eduardo Frías, join their talents to interpret a selection of the work for flute, cello and piano by Jorge Grundman. The recital will include three world premieres and one local premiere. The concert program includes works of the recent release of the prestigious Sony Classical company, Jorge Grundman: “Flute Works”. New York audiences will have the opportunity to hear three world premieres, Lagerfeld in Winter. Sonata for flute and piano Op 77, Tan beautiful as you for trio Op. 91 y Facing Emotions for Trio Op. 90 dedicated to cellist Alisa Weilerstein. The trio De la Hermosura y Dignidad de Nuestras Almas (Of Beauty and Dignity of Our Souls), Op. 43 and the flute sonata Warhol in Springtime Op. 18 complete the concert. Jorge Grundman is a full professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and teaches in the Doctorate Program in Music and its Science and Technology. His father, Henri Grundman, a German by birth, emigrated to New York in 1938 and, as a New York citizen, obtained American nationality and met Ana Isla, whom he married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In this way, the city of New York becomes for Jorge Grundman not only the home that welcomed his parents, his older brother, and his nephew but also the place where some of the most important scenes of his life are created, that would be permanently reflected in his musical work and in countless compositions inspired by the city and its inhabitants. As a result of his numerous walks around New York City, Jorge Grundman composed the cycle of four sonatas for flute and piano “The Warhol’s Four Seasons of New York” to which the two sonatas that can be heard at Carnegie Hall belong. See complete program for Carnegie Hall. Program CH See Carnegie complete dossier. Dossier Carnegie Hall_EN
Pulitzer Prize Winner and 2011 Composers’ Commission Recipient Reviewed in The NY Times Pianist Adam Kent has just issued a new album entirely dedicated to Pulitzer Prize winner and CUNY colleague Tania León. “Teclas de Mi Piano” features eleven piano works that were composed across a span of almost fifty years. The album opens with the eight-minute long HOMENATGE, the Foundation for Iberian Music’s 2011 Composers’ Commission. This vigorous piece is dedicated to Catalan composer Xavier Monstsalvatge in a kind of a counter colonial wink. The piece was premiered in 2012 by Adam Kent at Carnegie Hall, then dashingly choreographed by Pedro Ruiz for DANCE THEATER OF HARLEM, and subsequently performed at the Burgos International Music Festival. It has since been performed uninterruptedly by many pianists and in inumerable venues. The New York Times states that Adam Kent (see full review) “brings a virtuoso’s zest to the dance rhythms and bluesy clusters that cavort in the composition’s opening minutes. But he also offers a patient, less showy sensibility during the ruminative airs of the final minutes.”
On the Blackness of Flamenco With great pride and celebration we can announce that K. Meira Goldberg’s Sonidos Negros: On The Blackness of Flamenco (Oxford U. P., 2018) is coming out in Spanish, translated by Kiko Mora and published by Editorial Libargo. Dr. Goldberg is a researcher at the Foundation for Iberian Music and has co-edited with Antoni Pizà’s three collections of essays.
The Invention of Race in Medieval Spain Our distinguished colleague Dr. K. Meira Goldberg has delivered a lecture entitled “Genética y historia: negritud y alteridad” (“Genetics and history: blackness and otherness”) as part of the University of Granada’s recent Flamenco MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). Dr. Goldberg’s lecture can be viewed here (in Spanish only). A text version is also available here. Dr. Goldberg, “La Meira,” is a flamenco dancer, choreographer, teacher and scholar. She has co-edited many scholarly volumes with Antoini Pizà, is the author of several seminal books on race and the transatlantic circulation of music and dance, especially as it pertains to the Iberian world. The Flamenco MOOC is presented “on the occasion of the Centenary of the Cante Jondo Contest held in Granada in 1922” and “intends to analyze the artistic and cultural phenomenon of flamenco in its entire field of action and production, from a transversal, critical and at the same time informative, accessible perspective. to anyone interested in approaching and learning about this transnational art with deep and multiple roots.”
Rediscovery and New Publication: Bretón’s Piano Quintet in G Major Antoni Pizà and María Luisa Martínez of the Foundation for Iberian Music have just published their edition of the Piano Quintet in G Major by Tomás Bretón (1850–1923). This ambitious chamber piece had been lost for almost a century. Its existence was actually known because the composer based his Symphony No. 3 in G Major on the original chamber piece. After its composition it was performed only once, almost a century ago, and then the original autograph manuscript resurfaced in our team’s researches. In 2018, it was performed with great success at Fundación Juan March in Madrid and now a beautiful critical edition has just been published by Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales . It is the hope of the editors that a new second life will start for this superb chamber work. Discover more about Tomás Bretón by exploring our other posts about the composer here.
Unpublished Rossini Letters Discovered Unpublished Rossini Letters Discovered: New Research at the Foundation for Iberian Music María Luisa Martínez and Antoni Pizà have uncovered some new autograph letters by Gioachino Rossini. It is a well-known fact that Rossini was an avid letter writer, and it does not come as a surprise that some new items in his prolific correspondence turn out here and there. The letters reveal a mature composer complaining about his health, but also a young mind conducting business as usual and keeping up with his social and professional circles. In one of these autograph letters, he announces exultantly to his friend Francisco Frontera de Valldemosa that he has been named member of the prestigious Institut de France. In another, he mentions Rosina Zapater, a young singer. In all cases, Rossini conveys with naturalness his open personality and his strong ties with Spanish musicians and especially the Spanish monarchs, declaring himself a “slave” to the Spanish queen. The letters will soon be published in Pizà and Marinez’s upcoming edition of La Veuve andalouse. .
The Body Questions: Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots K. Meira Goldberg and Antoni Pizà have recently published a collection of essays, The Body Questions: Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots. The volume’s editors focus on how dance, like smoke, like breath, materializes for an evanescent, fluid instant, then moves on. The work presented in this volume raises an important methodological question, which is how what the dancing body knows—and questions—fits and can be integrated into a broader academic (and non-academic) discourse. Before film at least, dance was always transmitted “orally” and is only recorded in the most rudimentary fashion, even in the elite contexts in which it is recorded at all. And yet a dancer’s knowledge archives a capacious repository of non-White and non-elite practices and histories. Shifting our focus toward bodies and bodies of knowledge that have heretofore been invisible, we trace a root system that nourishes the European canon, but whose unique nature and constituent elements are often blanketed by the politics of Whiteness. These questions are urgently pressing right now, not only in light of our present reckoning with the harsh realities of racial violence, but also in light of the de-historicizing, unmooring, and disembodying effects of living ever more intensely in the global mediasphere. This volume, in sum, is a polyphonic compilation of voices about the dynamics of dancing, performance, and the embodiment of performative actions. As Frantz Fanon concludes Black Skin, White Masks: “Oh my body, make of me always a man who questions!” This collection of essays poses a series of questions revolving around nonsense, cacophony, queerness, race, and the dancing body. How can flamenco, as a diasporic complex of performance and communities of practice frictionally and critically bound to the complexities of Spanish history, illuminate theories of race and identity in performance? How can we posit, and argue for, genealogical relationships within and between genres across the vast expanses of the African—and Roma—diaspora? Neither are the essays presented here limited to flamenco, nor, consequently, are the responses to these questions reduced to this topic. What all the contributions here do share is the wish to come together, across disciplines and subject areas, within the academy and without, in the whirling, raucous, and messy spaces where the body is free—to celebrate its questioning, as well as the depths of the wisdom and knowledge it holds and sometimes reveals. About the EditorsK. Meira Goldberg is a flamenco performer, choreographer, teacher, and scholar. She teaches at Fashion Institute of Technology, and is Scholar-in-Residence at the Foundation for Iberian Music at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has instigated and collaborated on multiple books, exhibits, and international conferences. Her book Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco (2019) won the Barnard Hewitt Award for outstanding research in theatre history from the American Society for Theatre Research. Antoni Pizà has taught Music History at Hofstra University, the City College, John Jay College of the City University of New York, and the Conservatory of Music and Dance in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. He is currently the Director of the Foundation for Iberian Music at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation of the Graduate Center, USA. He has authored and co-edited numerous books in English, Spanish and Catalan. Click the following link for The Body Questions‘ Table of Contents The Body Questions promo TOC 978-1-5275-7692-6-contents-contributors