Blog 5

Autograph

 

An Autograph is simply a document that is written or signed by a particular person of interest. In music, this would be the composer. This distinguishes a copy from an original signed document. There may exist multiple autographed manuscripts. I found it interesting that Beethoven ‘s string quartet includes two autographs, the latter reflecting his revised work. The period preceding 1600, many autographed manuscripts (as opposed to copies) cannot be identified with complete assurance.  This creates, in my mind, some skepticism and wondering that perhaps some originals were tampered with. Tampered enough, that possibly when I am rehearsing a piece of music from that period and I do not agree wholly with something written stylistically or for whatever reason, my claims may be justified when I outright resort to blaming the composer for (what was originally thought to be) my poor playing.

 

Holograph

 

Holograph distinguishes itself from Autograph, in that it is unaware exactly who the composer or person of interest is. I first learned about Holographs from ‘Antiques Roadshow.’ In fact, I enjoy the relation and importance of musical compositions’ and their value being directly related to whether it was an original or copy.

 

Sources

 

Sources are the notes and information that are used in the circulation of music. At times, musical compositions (when transcribed or copied) can misinterpret what the composer wrote or intended. I see this myself, when editors and publishers leave out certain words (ritard.) or interpretations, or even adding some marks or terms that they deem acceptable. This is where sources can sometimes alleviate any confusion. This is why I feel that it ultimately should be up to the performer (the ultimate interpreter) of certain cuts, adjustments, articulations etc.  But this should also involve the performer researching the sources contained in the piece. This is one of the many reasons I feel privileged to use ILL, in that I am able to research different versions of the same piece.

 

Editions, Historical

 

Historical editions include both scholarly and critical editions of music publications. I was familiar with the term Anthologies, as many theory and history books that we covered during Undergraduate studies included these. I am happy to learn what Facsimile series are, as I would occasionally see this word in the past, but never remembered to look up its meaning. I am surprised actually that this word needs to exist; I guess there are a plethora of editions that are reproduced without editorial comments, and its importance is vast. It is interesting that only newer works were published during the 18^th century, leaving old ones to their own survival based on popularity and demand. Editorial criteria did not exist in the early period. Each editor followed his own judgment, which assumed that the source’s knowledge, criteria, and understanding would surpass and exceed that of the editors’. During the mid-19^th century, a second phase developed of historical editions in which completeness became the rule instead of exception. Therefore, modern editing became established, more than not in collected editions of single composers and their complete works. Some incomplete works also remain the standard reference editions of today. Collected editions also appeared during this period, although they were limited. Aside from these, music publications grew at the request of amateur musicians. I was happy to read that after 1950, there were revisions made to older complete work sets. The article lists many major composers’ works that this was done to, I am curios if it was also done to lesser-known composers also.

 

Urtext

 

Urtext is basically an original text. I was surprised to read that Urtexts were developed during the study of biblical and medieval texts, where autographs and even holographs didn’t exist.  Stemattics comes into play to help validate the surviving versions.  This does become difficult though; certain changes made by the composer during and after that composition may not be considered his final work. It is hard to distinguish when marks and changes were made exactly during the composition, therefore any editorial interventions become suspect at the claims of any modern Urtext edition.

 

Facsimile

 

As discussed before, a Facsimile is the name given to a genre of book publishing based on photo-mechanical printing techniques that attempts to recreate the appearance of an original handwritten manuscript or printed edition. This was the only definition I had trouble paraphrasing into my own definition, minus the short definition I listed above, therefore I give full credit to Steven Immel from Oxford University Press for this explanation of Facsimile. It was the first half of the 19^th century which produced the ability to make photo reproductions uncanny to original documents. This was done by transferring the negative of a photo to the plate, which also is treated with photo-sensitive material. This makes sense, perhaps it is done similarly to counterfeit paper money, I am not sure. These abilities became prevalent during the heights of romanticism and post-romanticism (some of my favorite periods of music). I was surprised to read that Handel’s Messiah was one of the original facsimile editions. Interesting, that we are still have not completely perfected this process, and I am excited to see what is yet to come technologically!

 

Shelf life of Urtext

 

This makes one wonder, some Urtext editions are considered revised, but do they have expiration dates? Apparently yes, since new sources can appear and the urtext edition can be altered. When autographed famous works that were possibly in private possession then come available, this can screw everything up. Therefore, reviews must be done of the existing edition. Though I imagine that only small changes are to be made then, however small changes can impact the style, and interpretation of the piece dramatically in my opinion. I do enjoy at the end of the article, Annette mentioned that based on the information, we musicians are in a position to decide for ourselves. Ahh..freedom of expression!

 

Brahms’s Hungarian Dances: New Finds…

 

It’s relieving to read that the urtext catalogue is regularly checked and revised as needed. As a result, specifically Brahms’ Hungarian Dance had a new discography. But get this, the information had been out there in the public for 100 years, it was just looked past for that long. Now there were considerations for why this could’ve gone unnoticed, but it leads me to wonder if there are other major works where this is information already out there that may change our views of certain compositions etc.

 

Brahms’s Hungarian Dances: Struck’s edit. Notes

 

This article delves into the specifics of Brahms’ middle section of the Allegro. Interestingly enough, Brahms wrote a letter to I guess one of his critics Wilhelm Tappert explaining clearly how the measures should be played. I find this fascinating that they were able to find a letter that answers the question many performers has in mind. I wonder how many other letters, revised works etc. are out there somewhere having the answers to questions we may have about a certain section or passage of music.

 

The Art of Making a Book

 

How Cool! I never actually learned how a book is made. Though at times, I wish the video had someone explaining every move they made, although the piano music in the background adds a nice relaxing touch. And this way I personally can understand the process a little easier, although there are some instruments they use that I am not familiar with. I am also a little intrigued by the hand-made process, I thought that this day and age that it must be made completely by a machine. I also was not aware that decoration was made with hot tools on the leather outside of the book.

 

Upside Down, Left to Right

 

At a first glance, as they were pulling out drawers, I thought I may have been watching a film about the Dewey Decimal System. Thank god it is not! The Letterpress is a 500 year old process. I was never aware how much this process is that of an Art. Unfortunately, this process has jumped on the Lithography bandwagon, although looking up its definition, Lithography seems pretty interesting too. The quality is astounding of the Letterpress. I really enjoyed the different colors added too.

   Ryan Kuehhas

        Bibliography and Research in Music

             October 4^th 2015

              Blog # 4

Do Open-Access Articles Have a Greater Research Impact?-Kristin Antelman

This article questions the negative and positive impacts regarding more open access to articles. Regarding research articles, I have come to agreement that the more available an article is, the greater the impact is.  Antelman delves into the specifics of studies, data collections, results and discussions. Personally, I would like to absorb this information, and discuss how it relates and impacts my ideas to music: more particularly music performance, and research. Nowadays, there is the ability to find an abundance of information online (Youtube, Naxos, recordings) etc. Just decades ago, the professional musician had to travel further, do more research, and engage more overall in their specified field. This hard work and research alone would give the musician a stronger advantage, developing them into a better musician overall, even if they were not so to begin with. Now, information is so accessible and easy, that the beginner, intermediate, and advanced musician can get better at a much quicker rate. But I think this can be a positive thing; it encourages competition, weeding out the less-strong/capable. For instance, the article suggests that “Free online papers are likely to reach more readers, and therefore attract more citations.” This, metaphorically speaking, is a good thing for music in my opinion. In a day and age, where our school’s genres seem to be dying off by the day, we have resources offered to encourage listening that can demonstrate the strength, likeability, and importance of classical, jazz etc. If I relate the wealth of information that is available for research this day (due to technology) to my specific topic, I would argue that this is also a great thing. Being that my topic, whistling, does not have a lot of books relating, I have the option of reading journals/articles online that will probably end up being the plethora of sources I use for my bibliography, whereas this may not have been as readily available just 10-20 years ago.

Predatory Publishers are Corrupting Open Access-Jeffrey Beall

Beall argues that email became a great innovator, but that spam did not-often taking time and concentration to filter out what is not needed/important. He then relates this to open access publishing. I can see the analogy he is trying to make, however, with even more technological abilities/increases, spam has become less intrusive and easier to sift through. I do however agree with his analysis that open access has caused predatory counterfeits. This is something that I am concerned about. While creating my bibliography, I hope that I am able to tell the difference between a legitimate source, and one that may be an illegitimate copy. Perhaps I will take a look at his blog, Scholarly Open Access, although I am not totally confident that there will be any information regarding my topic. I did enjoy learning that publishers need to resist submitting quickly and easily. This is something we discussed in class, and I would like to learn more about it.

Battling Bad Science-Ben Goldacre

Goldacre went to school to be a doctor and now is an Epidemiologist. He explains that as a scientist, we need to question what we know, whether something is good or bad for you. I thought it was funny when he mentioned that studies show that coffee, licorice, etc. being said to both cause cancer, and prevent cancer.  “We need proper science, proper evidence.” I thought this might have been the most important quote in his discussion. He talks about how trials studies are not perfect. For instance, if you drink olive oil you will have less wrinkles. However, he states that most likely if you devote your daily task to drinking olive oil, you’re probably generally committed to eating healthy in most other areas. What we know is that our beliefs and expectations can be manipulated, therefore control against a placebo is important. I felt that this article was important when scrutinizing articles that have scientific tests, trials, and studies. This can be of importance when writing our bibliography, by making sure not to take these studies as complete fact. I think though, that it may not have as much importance for my topic in particular, since Whistling will probably not delve into trials and studies as much. I do feel that for something like my Doctor Dissertation that I will be researching for post graduate school, this TED video may have more meaning.

Scientific Articles Accepted-Kolata

It is interesting to read how the scientists were all duped solely because there was a hyphen added in a phony email that they received. I think, as written, a ‘white list’ of those open-access journals to meet certain standards might not be a bad idea to help fix this problem. I think it is a little ridiculous that the professional submitting a journal though has to pay the fee for publishing. Sometimes these fees can amount to thousands of dollars. This to me is where the real scam is.

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOAJ)

The organizations described in this article list principles of transparency and practice for scholarly publications. They do not share information about the applications themselves submitted.  I will definitely be keeping these principles handy for my bibliography. Some of the principles of transparency I think will help me locate whether a source or journal is legitimate right now are:

Peer Review Process

Editorial team/contact information

Copyright

Name of Journal

Retraction Watch

Some things that I enjoy about this website is it has a subscription to a blog. This separates itself from the rest of the websites we have been advised to use, as it gives more personal views and opinions of topics. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, and email. I like that it is more modern socially in terms of research and posts. I also noticed that they keep a database of recent posts, something that is important when trying to locate an article that you may have read recently, and can’t seem to find it again. Also, this website currently encompasses most of the other topics we have been studying in Bibliography: Plagiarism, Predatory Journals, Publishers etc. Overall, I am excited to have the ability to use a website that seems more fitting, and socially modern in terms of research, and communicating ideas and opinions.

blog #3

Ryan Kuehhas

                                                                                                                           September 20, 2015

                                                                                                   Bibliography & Research in Music

                                                                                                                                      Blog Post # 3

The Oxford Companion to Music by John Wagstaff

Periodicals are publications that appear on the internet and in paper form.  I was not aware how periodicals are purchased. Apparently newsagents can buy them once published, and some are even available with subscription. I was very interested in the mentioning of the ITA (International Trombone Association) in this article as I have been a subscriber for years. Wagstaff states “There are research centres throughout the World whose function includes the promotion and dissemination of information about the groups they represent.” I was not aware of these centres existing, and it is something I may find interest in looking into more. The fact that there are musical compositions listed is something I can possibly research for finding articles for my bibliography topic; some even go back into the 17^th century which certainly will help.  Overall, I did not learn a whole lot about this article, nor did I find much interesting. I will however search periodicals for my bibliography topic which I believe will have a plethora of sources.

It’s Complicated: Plagiarism in our Culture by Dr. Crystal Sands

Sands mentions that even hit Tv shows are not immune from plagiarism; I wish she would have mentioned some names so I could relate and learn a bit more in terms of media plagiarism. Dr. Sands states that “Plagiarism is taking the words or ideas of others without giving credit, but what constitutes “taking” varies from situation to situation, discipline to discipline, culture to culture.” For instance, if I just took that quote (albeit it is mostly a simple definition) and did not cite her name for saying that quote, I would be most likely committing plagiarism.  One must wonder, is there that much of a different between stating her name before the quote or simply leaving that part blank? This is where intellectual property rights come into play. While I feel that I am not concerned of directly plagiarizing when writing my bibliography, I am however concerned that I may credit the source enough or correctly. Overall, I still have mixed opinions about intellectual property rights as opposed to tangible property rights. For instance, it’s okay to take ideas that are not your own, as long as those ideas to which you are borrowing (taking) from are from around over 75 years ago. This does not seem like a consistent position, or defense for copyright. However, I still have to and will abide by the rules and laws. I just don’t think there is, or ever will be, a perfect solution. 

Assignment 2

It's Not Harry Potter by Rob Weir

Well first off I am happy that this article references Harry Potter, one of the most iconic and popular books written in our lifetime. I agree with Weir's idea that we must establish academic peers as our readers, instead of general readers (friends, family, etc.). We must adapt to the intended reader better; communication, appropriate styles, and purpose will be written differently in a text message as opposed to a letter of recommendation. I also find that reading a professional article in small doses helps me to retain the information easier, thereby leading to a better overall understanding of that article. I've learned that the abstract, introduction, footnotes,and title are some of the most important theoretical and analytical points to be observed more carefully. Footnotes in particular can provide the reader with a hunch as to whether the author's sources are credible or not. This, in my opinion, may be most important to the academic when deciding whether to use a certain book, journal etc. for his/her bibliography. I think that Weir's end note defending his recommendation of just skimming through journals, to be, unnecessary. Perhaps he should have some courage of his convictions! :)

How to Read a Scholarly Article - Western Libraries

Overall, I found this article to be most important in terms of what sections to read in what order. I enjoy reading the conclusion, and then coming to the conclusion that this article is no longer worthy of reading!

Reading Actively (and Efficiently) for History Courses by Leyba

I very much agree with the the approach of at least starting assigned readings far ahead of when they are due. Time management aids in this. For instance, if I have a number of recitals to attend in an upcoming week along with working my job, it might behoove me to start that assignment a week prior to when it's due. Recording notes on paper, and summarizing key sections (while reading) also helps. I prefer to highlight important words, quotes, and sections. Some questions that I find extremely important to ask oneself while reading are: Why did the author write this, and for whom was it written? and Does the author make a compelling argument? I believe it is a good thing to try and get inside of the author's head while reading one of his works.

On Writing Well by Walt

I believe that quality of writing is vital, especially academic writing. I am looking forward to my professors encouraging and demanding good writing. This is something that I've felt I could always improve on, and believe that I have, by setting high standards personally. Throughout this article, I found Walt's explanations of quality writing to be highly influential. He states that " Persuasive writing doesn't just convince the already-converted, a really well-crafted and well-supported argument will overcome a skeptic's initial resistance." I couldn't agree more.

This Sentence Has Five Words by Gary Provost

This article differs from the other four in that it is a work of art, poetry almost.  I think the artistic style can have more impact on the reader/listener.  I very much enjoyed the musical references at the end. And when writing in this class, I and others, seem to be insecure about writing too large of sentences that they almost become run-on! I now feel a lot better and secure about my length of writing sentences.

Assignment 1

The ABC of technique

Barzun “Prime difficulty: What is my subject?”

I learned that any article, description, or reading should have an intended impact on the reader.  I tend to agree with Barzun’s question “Is the account true, reliable, complete? Is it clear, orderly, easy to grasp and remember?” I believe that first and foremost, the account must be organized and defined clearly. Personally, I find that I have trouble understanding completely a piece of work if it is not presented carefully and lined up in a manner where, I know where to locate information if needed, in its specified reflected area. Having a concise idea of what the subject is, will certainly help with the organization of the article. I have read a number of books where ideas are often repeated unnecessarily, during different sections of the book, often leading me to disarray. I really like the idea of doing more research than will eventually be needed, thereby allowing the amending and cutting of ideas; sometimes even facts may not be considered as important for the subject itself, as well as for sub sections. At times, too much information can lead to a poorer reflection of the subject. After reading this article, I tend to believe that a more vague title (most likely smaller in length), will in the end, make things much more difficult to represent a completed subject overall. And I agree with the notion that, in order for the reader to be able to ask questions that pertain to the ideas/facts of the article, these questions should be both asked and answered by the researcher at first, during, and in the final stages of writing.

Knott “Writing an Annotated Bibliography”

I am most excited to be able to write an annotated bibliography. I believe this to be because I have the ability to evaluate each source and its significance to the research. I also have the freedom to find sources that pertain to the article and subject at hand at Ithaca College’s library, and most other college libraries. I very much enjoy forming (research) questions to the topic.  The challenge thrills me alone, and the fact that there can be a different answer to each question through the organization of timely research of ideas from history to present. This may be completely new to me, as I do not remember during high school and undergrad having access to this many resources. I specifically may be interested in researching government reports and policy statements, as I have been curious about politics during the past decade. I agree with Knott’s “Look for repetition of key terms or ideas. Note especially the key terms that occur in the thesis or research question that governs the text.” I believe that repetition, e.g. whether it is notated in music or that music is practiced on an instrument, is vital to forming key ideas and concepts of that music.  Without repetition, I find it hard to relate to the main theme representing the piece. And identifying how I intend to use the source and why, is analogous to my practicing or picking out a new piece of music, and asking myself the same two questions.  Knott asks “Why is it of value? What are its limitations?” These are also questions that I tend to ask myself and others when reading a new piece of music, more particularly a solo that I am choosing for a recital. I also imagine that the vocabulary words listed in this article when referring to texts and ideas could be of great use.

University of Toledo “Writing an annotated bibliography”

 I really enjoyed the elements of Annotation included in this guide. I never really thought that the qualifications of the authors would be included; this is an aspect of the annotation that I may very well delight in discussing. Sometimes, the authors’ personal lives may contradict what they write about or believe.  This would be a good example of questioning the qualifications of the author.  With that, may include certain biases that they have on the subject. For instance, Donald Trump, has made some not so nice remarks about Latinos and Mexicans recently during his run for President of the United States.  However, he has employed thousands of Latinos and Mexicans throughout the years in his company.  This seems to be a little contradictory, thereby eliciting further research into the subject. I am not sure how long my bibliography will be, as it can vary from 150 to 200 words, however I believe once I start, I will have a better idea how long it will be. I think I will be outlining and making notes I believe to be pertinent to have an organized approach at gathering information. 

Reading the two articles of the Foreword and Intro of the Elements of style I felt to be very repetitive and were more personable, however I did not relate much to them.

I am possibly interested in doing a topic in “Whistling” possibly also the history and relevance/use. And modern pieces written for Trombone.  This is because I have been whistling since I was a young child, and I am always looking for something new to play on Trombone.