Madonna and the Super Bowl Halftime Show

The above cartoon was circulating around Facebook on the morning of the Superbowl.

As you can see, the cartoonist is playing on one of Madonna’s several personae in advance of the Super Bowl, the championship of what the United States calls “football” and what the rest of the world calls “American football,” (because it clearly isn’t soccer!), a central event on the pop-cultural calendar.

Before we, the viewers, got to the halftime … Continue Reading

Healing at the Speed of Sound

Healing at the Speed of Sound

By Don Campbell and Alex Doman

Hudson Street Press, New York City, 2011.

288 pages, $25.95

This is the latest in a recent spate of books treating of the psychological, indeed the neurological and embryological, origins of our appreciation for and our human ability to create music.

Such books have been very popular ever since Don Campbell came out with The Mozart Effect in 1997. That book argued for the beneficial … Continue Reading

Simone Dinnerstein - JS Bach Goldberg Variations

The standard account of Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition of his famous ‘Goldberg Variations’ comes from a biography of Bach, by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, which first appeared in 1802. Forkel says that Bach wrote these works as an insomnia cure for a patron, Count Keyserlingk. Specifically, he wrote them for the performances of a former student of his, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, in the Count’s employment.

They seem to have worked! Goldberg would play them in the … Continue Reading

Five big 2011 music-news stories

We at www.justsheetmusic.com would like to bid a fond farewell to the year 2011, as we look with hope to the New Year.

Every year is a mixture of good and bad, of victory and despair, in music as in every other human endeavor. Here are five stories that especially caught our attention. Since they’re listed in no particular order, chronological or otherwise, this will be a “bullet point” list rather than an enumeration…. Continue Reading

Ken Russell in 2008

English movie director Ken Russell died on November 27th. We at justsheetmusic.com mourn his passing, and we gaze in retrospective admiration at his work.

Russell made a specialty out of directing movies about great composers. Elgar (1962) was his first in this line; a docudrama long before that term was invented, dramatizing the life of England’s own Edward Elgar. The BBC’s website says that this was “one of the most popular films of its kind ever … Continue Reading

The Birth of a Carol

One of the great standard Christmas carols, one of those most likely to be performed by the carolers who will come to your doorstep soon in observance of the season, is ‘O Holy Night.’ In the original French language version, this was known as ‘Cantique de Noël.’ Indeed, the title is a clue that we might fairly take this as the standard Christmas carol because that’s exactly what “Cantique de Noël” means!

In French, though, Cantique … Continue Reading

The Music For An Old And Lasting German Legend

According to a very old German legend, one which has come to be expressed in every theatrical form from grand opera to puppet plays to Broadway musicals, a medieval scholar named Faust or Faustus made a deal with Satan, offering the Evil One his soul for unending post-mortem punishment, in return for elusive knowledge and worldly pleasure. The specific lure or combination of lures that led to … Continue Reading

Tower of Babel

Imagine watching a pre-dawn scene. This is a building site. The master workman awakens his workers to continue their efforts on a tower. Only gradually, as you watch this ‘geistliche oper,’ this ‘sacred opera,’ do you realize which tower this is. For this is the tower of Babel – and in due course Nimrod himself will come on stage to boast that this tower shall reach Heaven and he shall speak face to face with God.

The opera is … Continue Reading

Jacques Offenbach

This is as much a story of the parodied as of the parodists. One cannot discuss one without the other. So fear not, Lady Gaga fans, we shall get to the object of your devotion in due time. But we will start, somewhat arbitrarily, a century and a half ago, in Paris. Jacques Offenbach was the great parodist to emerge from that time and place.

One fine example of his work in this field, his development of the form of an … Continue Reading

International Music Score Library Project

If you are a music composer and love to share your music composition with music lovers, then International Music Score Library Project or IMSLP is the perfect place for you.

It is a virtual music library where you can submit your own musical composition as well as enjoy listening to the compositions of other musicians. It is a website where one can easily share musical ideas with like-minded people. It is an excellent platform … Continue Reading