Circular references is a descriptive term one learns in graduate courses called "Research Methods". They are, in essence, footnotes that refer to the text that you just read. "In campo aperto refers to the musical notion of the 12th century written with no staff lines as references footnote 12" and you go to footnote 12 and it says "In campo aperto is a term that denotes 12th century practice of musical composition without staff lines page 12, paragraph 3, thesis on 12th century notation". Before the Internet many of us spent months chasing circular references and in the end they only led back to themselves. It was frustration; study thereof.
The Internet equal to this is much faster to find. Here you go: go do a search for Colas Breugnon. You will find a reference to a novel by Roland in 1919 and an opera by Kabalevsky in the middle late 30s - in Stalinist Russia. All the links that are seemingly meaningful link to themselves....so you can't find out squat about Roland's Colas nor the Kabalevsky Opera taken from the book. If you are a graduate musicology student looking for dissertation topics - well I just got one for you and you can credit me in your memoirs.
Kabalevsky, the Russian composer, is an interesting sort. I met him a few years before he died and he wasn't anything like I would have suspected. He belonged to the Pushkin Club/Society in Moscow and when I got to be a member for a brief while, he was there for tea one afternoon when I crossed his path. He was pleasant enough until my friend and good translator did the "he's an American and is/was a conductor" thing which led to his assuming that dour mid-winter purely Russian expression of resignation to a conversation with someone who had and will have "no clue" and of whom he had no interest.
I was interested in Kabalevsky not so much for his music was was "O'K" but for his history as something of a head of the the Russian composer society and did a lot in music education. He was the music education guy bureaucrat trying to get kids to adopt adult aesthetics. He got the gravitas under Stalin; something that brought with it an entirely different set of baggage, none of which matched. Anyway, he looked like his photograph and I got his autograph (now lost) and that was that.
So now I'm into this. It is going to take a while to get my mitts on the Roland book and slug through the translation and then I need to find the Kabalevsky's opera by that name and slug through that. Perhaps then I can see the mystery connection. The music is VERY Russian and has a nationalist spirit..well judge for yourself.
I've got my theories now and they are all bound up in the Franco-Russian Alliance and the Czar's court, worker's emergence, Utopian ideals and that curious mix of the practical unhinged by the bureaucratic. Until I unravel this Gordian Knot, here is the overture...Act I is on the way. (PS - I picked a band transcription of the piece because after listening to 20 of them this morning - this was the neatest performance I could find)
The Internet equal to this is much faster to find. Here you go: go do a search for Colas Breugnon. You will find a reference to a novel by Roland in 1919 and an opera by Kabalevsky in the middle late 30s - in Stalinist Russia. All the links that are seemingly meaningful link to themselves....so you can't find out squat about Roland's Colas nor the Kabalevsky Opera taken from the book. If you are a graduate musicology student looking for dissertation topics - well I just got one for you and you can credit me in your memoirs. Roland, (slightly above and left) was a Frenchman and a prolific writer. You know what they say about prolific writers - that unfortunately they never throw anything away - and his appeal to Russians laboring under the yoke of Stalin is plainly evident. The Colas work is a book that isn't in many libraries and Kindle in its wisdom hasn't offered it up. Don't hold your breath.
Kabalevsky, the Russian composer, is an interesting sort. I met him a few years before he died and he wasn't anything like I would have suspected. He belonged to the Pushkin Club/Society in Moscow and when I got to be a member for a brief while, he was there for tea one afternoon when I crossed his path. He was pleasant enough until my friend and good translator did the "he's an American and is/was a conductor" thing which led to his assuming that dour mid-winter purely Russian expression of resignation to a conversation with someone who had and will have "no clue" and of whom he had no interest.
So now I'm into this. It is going to take a while to get my mitts on the Roland book and slug through the translation and then I need to find the Kabalevsky's opera by that name and slug through that. Perhaps then I can see the mystery connection. The music is VERY Russian and has a nationalist spirit..well judge for yourself.
I've got my theories now and they are all bound up in the Franco-Russian Alliance and the Czar's court, worker's emergence, Utopian ideals and that curious mix of the practical unhinged by the bureaucratic. Until I unravel this Gordian Knot, here is the overture...Act I is on the way. (PS - I picked a band transcription of the piece because after listening to 20 of them this morning - this was the neatest performance I could find)
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