In the 2005 film Corpse Bride, director Tim Burton and composer Danny Elfman collaborate using both musical and visual signifiers to create two very different realms that the main characters must traverse: the land of the living, and the land of the dead. The characterizations of these places appear in the reverse of what a viewer might expect.…[Read more]

North America has never had any trouble making Shakespeare its own. Since the first American performance of Shakespeare play in 1730, directors, actors, and musicians have been working to locate the works of the Bard in the United States and Canada. I will examine the music for two Shakespearean productions in the context of this Americanization…[Read more]

Review of Biagio Marini: Madrigali et Symfonie, ed. Aurelio Bianco and Sara Dieci. pp. 217. Épitome Musical. (Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, 2014).

Review of Aurelio Bianco, ‘Nach englischer und frantzösischer Art’: Vie et oeuvre de Carlo Farina (avec l’édition des cinq recueils de Dresde) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).

Discusses the idea of “translation” and applies it to the flexibility of performance in early music.

Review of a CD of string music by Paul Ben-Haim. Touches on issues of identity, diaspora, and reception.

Several points of intersection exist between vocal and instrumental music by Italian composers of the early seventeenth century. First, like books of vocal monody with an overt pedagogical purpose, volumes of instrumental music may have been designed to instruct the performer in the conventions of the modern style. Specifically, many books…[Read more]

Connections between Johann Jacob Froberger’s harpsichord laments and other genres of keyboard and lute music (the unmeasured prelude, the tombeau and some allemandes) are by now well known. However, the ‘Méditation faite sur ma mort future’ (Meditation made on my future death), stands out for its connection-overlooked until now-with the French…[Read more]