Joyful April Fool’s Day! I’m pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Grove Audio On the net Spoof Report Contest is David W. Barber, for an entry on “L.O.L. Bach.”
This year’s judges were being:
- Deane Root, Editor in Main of Grove New music On the web, and Professor of Music emeritus, Director and Fletcher Hodges, Jr. Curator of the Middle for American Songs, College of Pittsburgh. Root has been immersed in Grove model given that he worked with Stanley Sadie on the first New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
- Walter A. Clark is Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Riverside, where by he is the founder/director of the Heart for Iberian and Latin American Tunes. He serves as Editor in Main of the Grove Audio On the web Latin American and Iberian New music Update, a multi-calendar year update and expansion to Grove’s information in that place.
- Scott Gleason is Acquisitions Editor for New music Reference at Oxford College Push, a placement that involves editing for Grove Tunes On the net.
Here’s this year’s winning entry by David W. Barber:
Bach, Ludwig Odense Lämmerhirt (b Titz, Germany 29 February 1656 d Feuchtwangen, Germany 29 February 1688)
Westphalian-German krummhornist and composer. Born in the Westphalian city of Titz in the upper Rhine location, L.O.L. Bach is a lesser-identified ancestor of the well known J.S. Bach, with whom he shares a double family relationship via the Lämmerhirts on Bach’s mother’s aspect. Students are divided on how this double connection arrived about. Some have made a decision it’s research best not pursued. L.O.L. Bach analyzed krummhorn and numerous other instruments with a regional Titz trainer, finally earning a place as 3rd-chair krummhornist in the city wind band. He might have experienced a far more promising job on the instrument, but was later expelled from the band for creating rude duck noises with the double reed through a ribbon-chopping by the town mayor, who experienced forbidden Bach to courtroom his daughter. They later on eloped (Bach and the daughter, that is) to the Bavarian city of Feuchtwangen and experienced nine kids in rapid succession – 3 sets of triplets. Turning his experiments to the clavichord sent Bach off on a tangent to start composing for the keyboard. A exceptional surviving operate from this period is Die Fugue der Kunst (The Flight of Art), a collection of 11 fugues and preludes (every single pair seems in that get, the fugue to start with, adopted by the prelude), every single of them in the crucial of C big. Bach’s keyboard capabilities remaining small, it was the only essential he felt at ease participating in in. His output as a composer would probably have been bigger experienced he not died instantly at the age of 32 immediately after choking on a krummhorn reed he had been moistening ahead of a functionality of his Sonata in C for Krummhorn and Clavichord.
Bibliography
A. Chtung, Der Teufel Krummhorn (Wankendorf, 1817)
Judge Clark famous that he “got the most significant chuckle out of L.O.L. Bach, with its ‘rude duck noises’ and Die Fuge der Kunst, with its distinctive emphasis on C important.”
Choose Root wrote that the writer “has rather cleverly incorporated authentic if seemingly fictive particulars: there truly is a Bavarian town named ‘Wet Cheeks’ (Feuchtwangen), for case in point, and J.S. Bach’s maternal spouse and children title was indeed ‘Lamb Herder’ (Lämmerhirt). The author’s title in the Bibliography is a great touch. Instrumental humor has extensive been a source of merriment for orchestral musicians, and this post serves that tradition perfectly.”
For his successful entry David will acquire $100 in OUP textbooks and a year’s subscription to Grove Tunes On line.
Our initial runner up was Robert Stein for his spoof entry, La Sorella della Principessa di Malta, ossia nuovi modi for each confondere i critici:
La Sorella della Principessa di Malta, ossia nuovi modi per confondere i critici [‘The Princess of Malta’s sister, or new ways to confuse the critics’]
Opera buffa by Luigi Strudello, libretto by Orazio Boggi Parma, September 1734 (3 act version), Venice S Moisè, 1735 (4 act variation), Modena 1737 (1 act variation), Modena 1738 (2 act edition), Bologna 1755 (5 act variation).The do the job, as we know from Strudello’s diaries, was supposed as a humorous pastiche of 18th century operatic plot gadgets as effectively as a mild satire on the ignorance of the songs critics of the working day.
Even so, whilst implausible extraordinary contrivances and characters’ duplicities were conceived as the foundation of the opera’s humour, the fraying romantic relationship concerning composer and librettist describes how confusion multiplied over and above the will need for comedian outcome in spite of, or simply because of, frequent re-workings. This may possibly describe both of those the misalignment of placing, audio, character, costume, sets and textual content and the subsequent duel among Strudello and Boggi.
Following his release from prison in 1753, Strudello revised the opera once much more, but the closing 5-act version – with a revised libretto by Ugo Farfalone – is continue to mainly resistant to synopsis. Bolognese audiences had been still left so perplexed that there was no up to date agreement if the opera’s closing scene depicted the heroine Susana’s betrothal, coronation or suicide.
While the opera – in any of its versions – remained unperformed considering that 1755, a revival in Utrecht in 1970 in a radically revised variation directed by Bart van der Aart sparked some interest in its overture.
Bibliography
Strudello, L. Diari e altre confessioni dal carcere (Rome, 1754)
Burger, H. and Frys, T. C. ‘Laugh? You’re killing me. Strudello, Boggi and the belligerent barons of the Buffa tradition’ in Essential Views on Italian Opera 1705 – 1765 (Baton Rouge, 1988)Norman Bloor
Choose Clark observed: “Another splendid spoof was La Sorella della Principessa di Malta. This one’s genius has to do with its precise resemblance to a actual post, right before it goes significantly off the scholarly rails. Susana’s ‘betrothal, coronation or suicide’ had me in stitches, even as Bart van der Aart’s revival ‘sparked some interest in its overture.’”
For his entry Robert will receive a year’s membership to Grove Music On the internet.
Make sure you be a part of me in congratulating David W. Barber and Robert Stein and thanking all these who submitted! We glimpse forward to upcoming year’s contest.
