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Musicology for Everyone
http://music.allpurposeguru.com
Musicology is the academic study of music, as opposed to composition and performance. Sound boring? I hope not. Program notes at concerts or with CDs, background information about music on radio stations, or books about music probably came from the work of a musicologist. If you like that, you'll also enjoy my posts, mostly about "classical" music, with a look at "popular" music broadly speaking
Recent Posts
My 10 favorite lesser-known Christmas pieces
I have been enjoying my Christmas records for the past couple of weeks. I have also seen plenty of online articles and blogposts with titles like, "The Ten Best Christmas Pieces of All Times," or more modestly, "My Ten Favorite Christmas Songs." A lo...
Popular song in America, part 4: the influence of German songs
German-speaking people began to emigrate to America in modest numbers as early as the late seventeenth century. Generally, they got on well with the Anglophone majority and willingly adopted American habits and viewpoints. Settlements in Pennsylvania...
Popular song in America, part 2: the influence of Italian opera
At first glance, the performance of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) in New York on November 29, 1825, seems to have little to do with popular music. It marks the first American production of any opera in Italian, or indeed a...
Popular song in America, part 1: from colonial times to ca. 1825
It never ceases to amaze me how many books on American popular song begin their coverage somewhere in the twentieth century, as if nothing of interest came before. Popular music is essentially a business that requires constantly updated products. It ...
"The Christmas Song"
In a web environment, someone can write an article or record a song and put it online immediately. Conventional publishers must work months in advance of publication. Whatever new magazine articles on Christmas, Christmas record albums, etc. appear t...
Did Sax invent the saxhorn?
(Saxhorns are the top row of instruments in this 1872 advertisement) In1845, French military music reached the bottom of a long decline. The war ministry, desiring to reorganize it completely, arranged for a contest among bands with various instrumen...

