Of Interest to All Singers: How To Breathe (and Other 18th century Stuff)

Thursday 18th January, 5.15 pm, University of Glasgow

Here's an interesting event which may appeal to people concerned with historical performance and authenticity.  It's run by EAERN, the Eighteenth-Century Arts Education Research Network based at the University of Glasgow.

"In the fourth EAERN workshop we welcome Mhairi Lawson who will be presenting 'How to breathe and other stuff from the late 18th century'. Joining Mhairi will be two singers: David Lee and Sarah Short. The workshop will take place on Thursday, 18 January at 5:15pm in Rm 2, 14 University Gardens.

"Wine and refreshments will be available. Please do consider coming along.

"We also have posted a blog reflecting on the first year of the project and we encourage you to head to our website and read what we have been up to: https://eaern.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/2017-round-up/https://eaern.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/2017-round-up/ "

Libraries, Digital Collections, Real Musical Instruments, REALLY Happy Singers

In the past couple of weeks, we've come across several interesting news alerts, that might interest our readers.  Here are three of them!

The Horniman Library and Museum

The Horniman Library is, not surprisingly, linked with the Horniman Museum - which contains a collection of historical musical instruments.  They are in London.  The Horniman's Library is now available on Copac, and that means more places to find books if we don't have them in our own collections!
 
If you're a musician, you might like to know more about the musical instrument collection too, so let's share the 'blurb' that we received in our email:-

"The Horniman Library collection contains books from the 16th century through to the present day, and covers a wide spectrum of subject areas related to the remit of the Horniman Museum, with a focus on natural history, anthropology and musical instruments. The collection, which originated with Frederick Horniman’s own book collection, has been added to by subsequent directors, curators and librarians and now amounts to some 30,000 volumes. The development of the library collections has been closely linked to object acquisition and curatorial practice in the museum and there is thus a strong connection between the book and object collections.

"You can read more on the Copac blog here: http://blog.copac.jisc.ac.uk/2017/04/19/horniman-library-catalogue-loaded/.

 

"Or, to browse the Horniman Library’s records, select the Main Search tab at http://copac.jisc.ac.uk and choose ‘Horniman Library’ from the list of libraries." 

RNCM Archives shared the next news item with us:-

New project brings major folk song collection to UK 

There's an article in the online M-Magazine which tells you more about the news.  Here's a taster:-

"The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Digital Archive has launched a new project to incorporate a pivotal early 20th century collection of British songs into its folk music database.The digitised collection of James Madison Carpenter (pictured above), which has previously only been accessible by visiting the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, will become free to access online for the first time ..." Read the whole article here

The Neuroscience of Singing 

Okay, every so often, more research appears which proves what everyone here knows to be true - singing is good for you!  But this research is particularly authoritative, so we'd like to share it with anyone who sings or teaches or conducts singers!  It's by Cassandra Sheppard and was published on a website called Uplift Connect on Sunday 11th December 2016.  
Singing Together Brings Heartbeats Into Harmony
 

224 years ago, this is what German Children Sang!

 Please Meet Placidus Partsch!

 We're attacking our cataloguing piles today!  Karen assigned herself a big pile of collected editions and rolled her sleeves up. At the bottom of the heap was Liedersammlung fur Kinder und Kinderfreunde am Clavier: Fruhlingslieder and Winterlieder, dating from 1791.  The introduction explains that the collection was compiled for children to sing, or for older children and adults to sing to younger ones.  So - this is intended as nursery repertoire, 1791-style!

It's fascinating!  The very first song is one set by Mozart - not the only one - and you might recognise the names of Vanhal and Hoffmann.  (The others are no longer exactly mainstream.)  The compiler, a man with the enviable name of Placidus Partsch, set himself the task of assembling 30 songs for each season, but only the spring and winter volumes survive.

You can find them in our catalogue HERE, and they're shelved as part of the Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era series, vol.95, published by A-R Editions.

• AR Editions book details
• Whittaker Library catalogue entry

Singing the Collections at St Andrew's University Library, Examining the Past at Glasgow

A Blog Choir? Why not, indeed!

This is a truly brilliant idea from St Andrews University Library Special Collections. They got old music out of their rare books collection, formed a choir, and started singing. They even used old singing instructional manuals. It's inspired - we love it!  Read the blogpost on their excellent blog, Echoes from the Vault:-

52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 24: Singing the Collections

And Singing Manuals revealing Singing History

Hunterian Associate Brianna Robertson at the University of Glasgow has been engaging with the Glasgow special collections in a very different, but equally imaginative way, looking at the vocal legacy of castrated singers.

5th Swiss National Singing Competition - register by 30 April 2014

Concours Suisse Ernst Haefliger, Bern

18 - 24 August 2014

Applicants should register by 30 April 2014.  More details on the competition website:- 

 

• http://www.concours-haefliger.com/

Brigitte Fassbaender Masterclass 25-28 August at the Schubertiade

Whittaker received leaflets about the Brigitte Fassbaender Masterclass, which takes place in at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg between 25-28 August 2014.  

Offentlicher Meisterkurs fur Liedgesang mit Brigitte Fassbaender

The website is in both German and English.  Details of the masterclass are under the 'News' heading.

Hot Links For Performing Artists and Composers

Composition Competition at the Scottish Music Centre
Deadline 31 January 2014 for the next composition marathon.

Inspired by New York based collective, Bang On A Can's iconic Performance Marathons, this project challenges ten composers, selected through application, to compose a new work for professional premiere in less than 24 hours.

Scottish Gaelic English, English Gaelic Dictionary Online - click here.  A useful one for anyone on the Scottish music scene.

BBC News - Belting out a tune 'helps those struggling to breathe'     Millions of people worldwide suffer from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).   Research proves that singing helps them.

Singing Scots Songs - Pronunciation

'Whittaker' was asked for a book about pronouncing Scots songs, yesterday.  To be honest, the helpful, 'it's a blue one with gold lettering' didn't offer much to go on.

Whittaker found Scottish song books with glossaries at the back - useful to a point, but they only informed the singer what the words meant, and not how to pronounce them.

Enter the helpful Tweeps on Twitter!

By 'return of post', came two great suggestions, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's Lowland Scots  Pronunciation (not only have we got the book here in the Whittaker Library, but it's also available online via the Internet Archive), and ScotSpeak, by Christine Robinson

• Lowland Scots Pronunciation / Marjory Kennedy-Fraser - Whittaker Library Book
• Lowland Scots Pronunciation / Marjory Kennedy-Fraser - online via Internet Archive
• ScotSpeak / Christine Robinson - Whittaker Library Books

And as though that wasn't enough, a couple of new items arrived in the post at the Whittaker Library today - the new Faber books, The Language of Folk, Vols.1 and 2.  How's that for a fortuitous coincidence?

• The Language of Folk - Whittaker Library Scores
• The Language of Folk - Amazon link

Singing competition in Austria (9-16 April 2013)

'Whittaker' was sent details of the 19th International Singing Competition, 

'Ferruccio Tagliavini'

Deutschlandsberg

For opera singers aged up to 33, and voice students aged up to 24 years.

• Website: www.iso.or.at 
• For further information, please email iso.schubert@aon.at

The Voice Explained - another useful website

http://www.thevoiceexplained.com/

If you're at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - do take a look and let us know what you think of this website.  Is it helpful?

Short courses at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Planning for the summer holidays?

Come and enjoy a short course led by our expert team at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  More info here ...

Piano I (30 July – 3 August: 5 days)

Piano  II (6-10 August - 5 days)

£450/£850 for both

Fali Pavri, Aaron Shorr and a team of guest artists including our International Fellow in Piano Steven Osborne.

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Jazz Performer (30 July – 3 August :5 days) /£450

Tommy Smith, Alyn Cosker, Tom MacNiven, Paul Harrison, Chris Grieve, Mario Caribe and Kevin MacKenzie

 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Chamber Ensemble (6-10 August : 5days) /£450 per trio, £600 per quartet and £100 per performer thereafter.

Robert Irvine, Jacqueline Shave and Jane Atkins

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Classical Singing

(20-25 August : 6 days) /£495

Stephen Robertson with guest teachers Timothy Dean, Professor Christopher Underwood, Helen Lawson, Mark Hathaway and guest artists Judith Howarth (soprano) Clare Shearer (mezzo-soprano) Iain Paton (tenor) and Julian Tovey  (baritone)

Handel Singing Competition @ London Handel Festival

Our contacts on Twitter advise that the 11th Handel Singing Competition is announced:

Singers aged 23-34

Applications due 16 January 2012. 

Find out more here.  (Then get your skates on!)

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This will also be posted on Whittaker Live's Awards, Grants, Prizes page.

Competition in Estonia for young opera singers

The 7th Klaudia Taev International Competition for Young Opera Singers June 8-12, 2011 in Pärnu, Estonia

Deadline for applications: 8 April 2011.

Further details here.