"Moonlight and Roses", and other things they played: Organ Recitals in New Zealand, 1870-1920

<p>The early history of pipe organs in New Zealand, and the music which was played on them, has long been of interest to organists and domestic organ builders alike. The primary focus of this exegesis is the performers themselves and the repertoire they chose to present to the public through the medium of the organ recital during a fifty-year period from 1870–1920. A case study approach is adopted, where two centres, one metropolitan and one provincial, have been selected from each of the two main island of New Zealand. Using primary source materials, including contemporary newspapers and concert programmes, details of a significant selection of organ recitals held in Wellington, Christchurch, Southland, and Hawke’s Bay can be tabulated. This allows for some discernment of trends in musical preferences. New Zealand was no exception to the world wide practice by organists of utilising in their performances works not originally written for their instrument. In a wider Australasian context, organ recitals were conduits for the dissemination of symphonic, operatic and chamber music, particularly on larger instruments. The balance between transcriptions and works for the organ in these recitals is one of the study’s areas of investigation. This also requires some discussion of the instruments themselves. Another is the extent to which music was considered a formative social influence, particularly since most nineteenth-century recitals were played in churches, rather than civic (secular) auditoria, and were considered to take on the character of the venue. The research also uncovers details about the origins and career paths of the performers. Some were private teachers, choral and/or instrumental conductors or accompanists. Still others had regular employment as schoolteachers or purveyors of instruments and sheet music, and a third group found primary employment outside the musical sphere either as civil servants or in private enterprise. Analysis of the wealth of surviving information (concerning organists and their performances) demonstrates that the organ recital was a ubiquitous and popular event in New Zealand prior to World War I. Alongside other musical activities these programmes play a role in the development of society’s musical life, both in its own right and as the accompanying instrument for various choral societies (before the development of fully-fledged orchestral groups). Society was changed with the advent of hostilities; after they ended, there were new norms and expectations. Outside the main text, the collations of raw data are provided on an accompanying CD, along with biographical details of those who made small contributions to the recital scene, or were present in New Zealand for only a limited time.</p>

"Moonlight and Roses", and other things they played: Organ Recitals in New Zealand, 1870-1920

<p>The early history of pipe organs in New Zealand, and the music which was played on them, has long been of interest to organists and domestic organ builders alike. The primary focus of this exegesis is the performers themselves and the repertoire they chose to present to the public through the medium of the organ recital during a fifty-year period from 1870–1920. A case study approach is adopted, where two centres, one metropolitan and one provincial, have been selected from each of the two main island of New Zealand. Using primary source materials, including contemporary newspapers and concert programmes, details of a significant selection of organ recitals held in Wellington, Christchurch, Southland, and Hawke’s Bay can be tabulated. This allows for some discernment of trends in musical preferences. New Zealand was no exception to the world wide practice by organists of utilising in their performances works not originally written for their instrument. In a wider Australasian context, organ recitals were conduits for the dissemination of symphonic, operatic and chamber music, particularly on larger instruments. The balance between transcriptions and works for the organ in these recitals is one of the study’s areas of investigation. This also requires some discussion of the instruments themselves. Another is the extent to which music was considered a formative social influence, particularly since most nineteenth-century recitals were played in churches, rather than civic (secular) auditoria, and were considered to take on the character of the venue. The research also uncovers details about the origins and career paths of the performers. Some were private teachers, choral and/or instrumental conductors or accompanists. Still others had regular employment as schoolteachers or purveyors of instruments and sheet music, and a third group found primary employment outside the musical sphere either as civil servants or in private enterprise. Analysis of the wealth of surviving information (concerning organists and their performances) demonstrates that the organ recital was a ubiquitous and popular event in New Zealand prior to World War I. Alongside other musical activities these programmes play a role in the development of society’s musical life, both in its own right and as the accompanying instrument for various choral societies (before the development of fully-fledged orchestral groups). Society was changed with the advent of hostilities; after they ended, there were new norms and expectations. Outside the main text, the collations of raw data are provided on an accompanying CD, along with biographical details of those who made small contributions to the recital scene, or were present in New Zealand for only a limited time.</p>

Of Pipes and Patches: Listening to augmented pipe organs

Pipe organs are complex timbral synthesisers in an early acousmatic setting, which have always accompanied the evolution of music and technology. The most recent development is digital augmentation: the organ sound is captured, transformed and then played back in real time. The present augmented organ project relies on three main aesthetic principles: microphony, fusion and instrumentality. Microphony means that sounds are captured inside the organ case, close to the pipes. Real-time audio effects are then applied to the internal sounds before they are played back over loudspeakers; the transformed sounds interact with the original sounds of the pipe organ. The fusion principle exploits the blending effect of the acoustic space surrounding the instrument; the room response transforms the sounds of many single-sound sources into a consistent and organ-typical soundscape at the listener’s position. The instrumentality principle restricts electroacoustic processing to organ sounds only, excluding non-organ sound sources or samples. This article proposes a taxonomy of musical effects. It discusses aesthetic questions concerning the perceptual fusion of acoustic and electronic sources. Both extended playing techniques and digital audio can create musical gestures that conjoin the heterogeneous sonic worlds of pipe organs and electronics. This results in a paradoxical listening experience of unity in the diversity: the music is at the same time electroacoustic and instrumental.

Musical everyday life of Volhynia in the middle of 16th ‒ early 17th cc.

The presented article is the first study of this kind, where the musical life of Volhynia of the mid 16th - early 17th century is specially considered. In the study, we almost exclusively focused on the secular segment of musical everyday life. On the basis of the analysis of historical acts, fiscal accounting documents and other sources, three thematic sections were formed. The first section is devoted to the study of musicians in Volhynia. In the fiscal accounting documents, initially the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Lesser Poland Province of the Polish Crown), various terms are used to refer to musicians and related professions: "dudari", "skomorokhy", "skrypali", "trubachi", "medwednyky" "muzyky", "hudky". From these and other documents we learn about the number of musicians in different small settlements. Among the nicknames that were given to musicians, the "dudnyk" and "skrypka" prevail, sometimes there is a "hudka". Separately, in the act documents other music specialties are mentioned: "Jews Cantors", "organist", "pyshchyk", "trubach", "bubnist". Also, in the documents of such kind, one could find some episodes from the everyday life of the musicians. Musical instruments are discussed in the second section of the article: "kobza", "turkish kobza", "lute", "quintar lute", "violin", "italian violin", "cithara", "duda", "smyk", "truba", "bubon". The last section deals with two separate phenomena of Volhynia musical culture - music in dance and Volochebnyy ceremonies. The lack of study of Volhynia musical culture in previous years encouraged the emergence of various myths, in particular, about the poverty of the musical culture of the Volhynia autochthonous population. According to the myth, the pipe organs of the Catholic temples were brought to these territories by the Polish colonists after the Union of Lublin. However, as it is shown in the article, the first mention of the Lutsk organist dates back to the time before the Union of Lublin and the name of organist indicates his Ruthenian origin. Thus, the obtained results allow us not only to fill the gaps in Ukrainian historical musicology of the mid 16th - early 17th century, but also to hope for the appearing of similar studies of other Ukrainian lands.

Sacred Space and “True Religion”: The Irish Reformation and the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, Galway

This paper looks at the impact of religious reform in Tudor Galway, focusing on how the use of sacred space in the collegiate church of St Nicholas, Galway, was reshaped during the Reformation. The Elizabethan Settlement of Religion was, by European standards, quite conservative, permitting the retention of choral foundations and pipe organs and, in Ireland, even the traditional Latin offices, sung from the chancel. Unofficially, even some images and ornaments survived. Alongside these conservative survivals, the corporate worship of the new prayer book was also enhanced by regular sermons in English, Irish, and Latin by graduate preaching ministers, which were a popular innovation initially attracting large groups of people. Later, however, financial difficulties and the lack of a preaching minister for regular sermons undermined this local compromise: Galway merchants mostly drifted back to Catholic worship, which had remained freely available outside the town.