Microtonal piano sounds: a 1930s audio recording and a unique score of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra in Rare Music

Percy Grainger’s interest in microtones—notes closer together than the semi- (or half-) tone that is standard in western “classical” music—is well known. In order to realise microtones, right through to imperceptibly “sliding” tones, Grainger was very “hands-on”. He designed and fabricated new instruments or modified existing ones that are part of the Grainger Museum’s collection here at the University. Grainger’s Butterfly piano (1952) illustrates the latter. He re-tuned and otherwise modified a very small, white “student piano”, manufactured by Wurlitzer in the late 1930s, so the notes were a sixth of a tone apart, not a half tone. Instead of a span of around 3½ octaves, his microtonally modified piano covered only a little more than one octave. After Grainger’s experiments, incidentally, the “butterfly” aspect of the piano—a patented winged lid, hinged down the middle—in itself a Wurlitzer innovation—was no longer in evidence.

Russian émigré composer, Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893–1979) was also drawn to microtones and is represented by one work in the Rare Music collection. 1) This composition, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra: symphonie en quarts de ton (Thus spoke Zarathustra: symphony in quarter tones), was inspired by a 4-paragraph sketch Nietzsche made in 1881 for his philosophical novel. 2)

In the version of Zarathoustra in Rare Music, the composer’s own arrangement for four pianos (1936), Wyschnegradsky employs an ingenious solution to creating microtones that doesn’t require anything of the composer more radical than engaging an obliging piano tuner. By tuning two of the pianos at concert pitch (originally diapason normal, A = 435 HZ) and the other two a quarter tone higher, microtonal sounds can be easily realised. Within the musical texture, each concert pitch-tuned piano is paired with a differently tuned piano, enabling the microtonality to be clearly audible both melodically and harmonically.

You can hear the full microtonal effect in this recording of the 3rd (slow) movement of the work. I am indebted to Peter Adamson (St Andrews, UK) for allowing me to make his digital transfer of 78 rpm Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre disc (OL 70; ca 1938) available here.

 

Rare Music, in the archive of Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre (a music press established by Australian, Louise Hanson-Dyer), holds the composer’s manuscript score and two sets of parts of this work plus six scores from the hire library, reproduced from a different manuscript (1938). 3) The two pages from the earlier manuscript score reproduced here correspond with the very start of the recording.

Wyschnegradsky took a circuitous route to arrive at this arrangement and these particular sounds. He relates that he began work on Zarathoustra in November 1918, sketching out the first bars of each of the four movements in quarter tones. With no means of ever making the large-scale microtonal work he had in mind audible, Wyschnegradsky spent much of the 1920s looking into how a piano (and other instruments) capable of playing microtonally could be designed and fabricated: an interesting intersection with Percy Grainger and the Butterfly piano. Wyschnegradsky met and worked with Czech composer, Alois Hába, who had similar pre-occupations. By 1929, Wyschnegradsky had his very own monumental quarter tone upright piano in Paris (see below) and he could return to composing Zarathoustra. 4)

Wyschnegradsky scored the work for what he later described as a “not very practical” ensemble of quarter-tone piano (6 hands); quarter-tone harmonium (4 hands); quarter-tone clarinet; a “traditional” string ensemble; and percussion, but he could see no prospect of securing a performance. It was not until 1936 that he re-wrote it for 4 pianos, recasting the 2nd and 4th movements, and Zarathoustra was premiered in this form at the Salle Chopin-Pleyel in Paris on 25 January 1937. The four pianists who played are the same as those on the recording: Monique Haas, Ina Marika, Edward Staempfli and Max Vredenburg, under the direction of the composer.

By making Zarathoustra available for hire through Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, and commercially as a sound recording, Louise Hanson-Dyer demonstrated her unflinching support of 20th century music, particularly in the years before World War II. 5) Rare Music is proud to house the archive of a woman who, like Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Percy Grainger, made an exceptional contribution to the music of her time.

Jen Hill, Curator, Rare Music

1) There are many variant transliterations of Wyschnegradsky; this version is the one the composer used in his correspondence with Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre. Grove music online favours Vyschnegradsky or Vischnegradsky. For more information and a wealth of images (including the one of Wyschnegradsky with his quarter tone piano in 1935, above), see the comprehensive Association Ivan Wyschnegradsky website.

2) Much of the information here is taken from an undated typescript “Notice” by the composer (in French), housed with the scores in the Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre archive.

3) The manuscript score (part of EOLA MU094) is heavily annotated; intriguingly the score includes a legible part for percussion struck through with red pencil.

4) Wyschnegradsky’s piano was made by August Förster, a piano manufacturer in the Czech Republic.

5) For more information on Hanson-Dyer and Wyschnegradsky see Jim Davidson, Lyrebird Rising (Carlton, 1994) p. 317. Correspondence in the archive indicates that the first formal meeting between the two was in May 1938; British composer and pianist Alan Bush had suggested to Wyschnegradsky in 1937 that he get in touch.

Beaming a parable to European Renaissance art classes

Of the many classes utilising the Print Collection during semester one, European Renaissance Art receive the gold star for the most visits and for some very engaging interactions with the collection.

With a fly on the wall vantage onto the classes, it is intriguing to view one of the prints selected for their seminar topic: The Print Revolution, which was Daniel Hopfer’s Interior of the Church with the Parable of the Mote and the Beam (c.1520). Students commenced their study of the print with some close visual examination and this produced some confused expressions as well as some muffled laughter. For central to the image is a figure with plank of wood protruding out of his eye.

This is a very literal rendering of the proverbial saying of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye’. This warning against judgment may not be in 21st century parlance but it is just one of the many insights offered by this etching.

Geographically this image is categorised as art of the Northern European Renaissance, rather than the more familiar Italian, and stylistically these works of art have different characteristics to Italian. Daniel Hopfer (1471 – 1536) as a trained armourer is perhaps best known for his contributions to adapt the metalworking process of etching on iron, to printmaking. The link to metalwork designing is most apparent in the intricate vault decoration in the print. Another innovation which can be seen developing through the image is perspective. The church, identified as St Catherine’s in Hopfer’s hometown of Augsburg, employs newly outlined mathematical principles in its execution of depth and scale.

Like many students of print culture, an essential method to appreciate prints such as Hopfer’s in context as they do, is to read them alongside Peter Parshall’s influential article: Imago contrafacta: Images and facts in the Northern Renaissance.

A life in 22 boxes

Jane Beattie, Assistant Archivist – University of Melbourne Archives
Sophie Garrett, Assistant Archivist – University of Melbourne Archives

Two pairs of ballet slippers used by Juan Cespedes are preserved in the John Harvey Foster collection, along with research material and personal effects such as Foster’s diaries and a notebook of recipes written by the pair.

Ballet slippers and notebook, John Harvey Foster Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1997.0085, units 1 and 8

These items highlight the enduring nature of not only records but of people. The hopes and dreams of the future, courtship, family feuds, deaths and births of dynastic families alongside struggling migrant pioneers are played out in thousands of pieces of correspondence. The business ventures and failures, take-overs and expansions of family run stores and colonial interest shown in leather bound volumes of business records.  Sketches by an Indigenous father attempting to support and keep his family together. Community, union and political groups laid bare through correspondence and minute books detailing complex relationships with the public and governments of the day. Visitors are constantly surprised by the vibrancy of records housed in stark, cold order.

The collection of John Harvey Foster, is housed in 22 plain brown boxes that give no clues to the emotional depth of their contents. Letters, photographs and ephemera reveal the relationship between Foster and his partner, Cuban dancer Juan Cespedes, whose ballet shoes are an unexpected treasure in a repository filled mostly with paper. Foster was a lecturer in History at the University of Melbourne from 1970 until illness forced early retirement in 1993; he died the following year. Scholars who share an interest in German Jews will be interested in the research notes and oral histories contained in these boxes while others will be intrigued by Foster himself, or the heady decade of the 1980s.

Foster’s literary scope covers the research publications of ‘Community of Fate: Memoirs of German Jews in Melbourne’ and ‘Victorian Picturesque: The Colonial Gardens of William Sangster’. The manuscript for Foster’s memoir ‘Take me to Paris, Johnny’ complete with editor’s comments also forms part of this collection and complements other UMA collections that provide insight into the publishing industry. Encompassing the racial and sexual prejudices of Australian and US culture in the mid to late decades of the twentieth century, ‘Take me to Paris, Johnny’ tells of the life and death of Cespedes, who he met in New York in 1981.

In almost every collection at UMA is a story that grounds us in the larger picture of what it means to be human. Then there are the smaller, quieter stories that can be found in the simple act of ensuring two pairs of used ballet slippers are kept in permanence.

Frozen voices from the past: Captain Horatio Austin’s Log of the HMS Resolute and the first traces of the lost Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin

Generously supported by donations to the University of Melbourne’s Annual Appeal, access to hidden treasures in the Rare Books Collection is being enhanced using digital technologies…

Situation of HMS Resolute, Baffins Bay, June 1858

Monstrous icebergs, eerily tolling ships’ bells, fogs so dense that sky and sea solidify into a single ghostly whiteness, and uninhabited boats snap-frozen in time.  Such are the haunting images described in accounts of the early exploration expeditions in the Arctic.

Imagine three Icebergs, as big as St Pauls tilting at each other, and we in our poor vessels!’ wrote ship’s master George McDougall in October 1850.[i]

One of these stories – that of the lost 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin to find the elusive Northwest Passage – has persisted in the public imagination for almost 170 years, casting its icy spectre over many books, poetry, songs, documentaries and feature films.   Infused with heightened elements – vast frigid oceans, a devoted wife who would not give up the search for her husband, and a solitary and remote landscape – the mystery gripped a Victorian reading public who avidly awaited newspaper articles and naval reports on the fate of the voyage.  The alien world of the Arctic provided a vivid background for successive instalments of the story, and depictions of the unfamiliar environment were brought to life using the new technologies of moving panoramas and magic lantern shows: Continue reading “Frozen voices from the past: Captain Horatio Austin’s Log of the HMS Resolute and the first traces of the lost Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin” →

Historic records are not relics – they are events unfolding

Stella Marr,

Archivist,  University of Melbourne Archives

As an archivist, it is an all too common experience to see people puzzle over your stated profession. In conversation it is usually attended with a perplexed pause; in print, it is variously and excitedly read as anarchist, or interpreted perhaps more reasonably as activist.

When my inevitable exasperation subsides, I have to admit that on some level an archivist engages in a certain oblique activism. A repository of records is a breathing decomposing organism, which the hapless archivist attempts to control both its intellectual and physical integrity, and serve through advocacy, so that these records can be retained, re-read and reinterpreted in the future.

Research archives, such as the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) are inaugurated by the right of access, unlike the archives of private companies or individuals. That is not to say there is anything innocent about collections, either in their creation, or in their carriage to a repository. Collecting is a deliberate act of inclusion – one that is guided by policy, influenced by politics and dependent on opportunity. Once in cold storage, papers remain in their original functional order, where they join the existing compressed body of past actions. It is here that the continuous activities and interests of individuals and organisations cease their frantic momentum.

Australian Red Cross National Office, 2015.0033

It is round about this time my previously puzzled interlocutor, having ascertained the nature of my days becomes pensive and looks at me with something akin to pity – for surely nothing happens in an archive. “No, no – my friend – everything happens in an archive, let me explain.”

For an archivist – who lives their days immersed in the past – is to exist in the very unfolding of events – ‘you find nothing in the Archive but stories caught half way through: the middle of things; discontinuities.’ (1)  Clothes worn to rags, skins of animals and pulp of trees, fibres joined to make paper, inscribed with instructions, memos, correspondence, maps, receipts, contracts, doodles, reports and notes. The material world transmuted and transmitting fragments of life – the cause of movement and actions in the world.

In walking the length of the repository – one passes records of the university, trade unions, insurance agencies, temperance & benevolent societies, records of settlers, merchants, scientists, butchers, chemists, funeral directors, theatre groups, career politicians, political activists, a few legitimate anarchists, architects and business in the supply of everything from photographs, lawn-mowers, biscuits, felt hats and copper. (2)

Over time as a research collection matures it develops not merely the quality or depth of its collection categories (such as ‘Trade Union’ holdings), but also the complex intersectional relationships between its collections. New acquisitions like the Australian Red Cross into UMA’s existing body of records creates an opening – very sobering view – of the nexus between Government policy, consumer demand, business interests, civil war, refugees and humanitarian organisations.

The records of the Australian Red Cross (which includes both the National Office as well as the Victorian Division) chart its activities over the last 100 years from a mere fledlging – into a mammoth organisation grappling with the extent of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the First World War. (3)

The complex factors that coalesced into in the First World War are many, but what is certain is that the territorial conflicts of competing Empires played a significant role. The 1880s was an era of amazing technical developments and equally astounding atrocities perpetrated by the demand for domestic goods, and the profits that could be made from their sale.   The inflatable pneumatic tyre radically changed the aptly named “the boneshaker” bicycle. The consumer demand for this comfort – coincided with the rapacious ambition of King Leopold II of Belgium to own a slice of “magnifique gâteau africain.” He created a private company which from 1885 to 1908 controlled the Congo – ruthlessly enslaving and killing millions of people in the production of rubber for the European market. (4)

Colin Fraser, Oliver Holmes Woodward and R. Pryor holding RG Casey’s steed’, local expedition assistants in foreground. Loloki River, 17 March 1914.
Photographer RG Casey, Oliver Holmes Woodward (1978.0079) collection, Unit 3, University of Melbourne Archives

A mere 4 km from Australian’s coast, the German New Guinea Company took control of eastern Papua New Guinea (including Bougainville) renaming it Kaiser-Wilhelmsland (1884-1914). Previously held under British colonial control, and with the outbreak of WW1, Britain tasked Australian forces to seize the German colony – resulting in our first military casualty of the war – a 28 year old Northcote electrician, ‘Billy’ Williams (1886 -1914). (5)

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) which divided German colonial territories between the allies charged Australia with the administration of Papua New Guinea – until it achieved independence in 1975. This period, and the records produced by creators of vastly differing interests, allow a view into the complex interdependence between government policy, business interests and humanitarian organisations (who often attend to the impact of philosophies and decisions of the former) – a site of fascinating research potential.

The Australian Red Cross collection, which occupies 374 linear meters, contains a diverse range of records including those of the Papua New Guinea Division of the Australian Red Cross, which operated from 1940-1972; records of the Field Force officers who served in embedded medical units with the Far East Land Forces (FARELF) in Papua New Guinea, Japan, Korea and Malaya, as well as records of the Bureau for Wounded, Missing and Prisoners of War in these theatres. Further records include disaster relief after the catastrophic eruption of Mt Lamington (1951); aid relief to civilians fleeing the Bougainville civil war, as well as development projects in its aftermath.

Mount Lamington, 7 February 1951, Photographer: Mr GA Taylor, Government Vulcanologist, Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources, Australian Red Cross – National Office collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2016.0057.00050

These records join existing collections pertaining to Papua New Guinea and Bougainville which include the diaries of Oliver Holes Woodward – mining engineer and prospector; records of the Bougainville Copper Limited as well as their managing directors; records of plantation owners; oral histories of Australian government patrol officers tasked with ensuring political stability; the records of Malcolm Fraser, Army Minister (1966-1971), Minister of Defense (1969-1971), Prime Minister (1975-1983) and founder of CARE Australia. Alongside these are the papers of legal professionals such as John Patrick Minogue who served the PNG Supreme court as a circuit Judge (1962-1969) and later as Chief Justice (1970-1974); as well as constitutional and economic advisors. Refer to the appended list of creators and series.

Bank of New South Wales, (Left to Right) Salmoa, Nagele, Johns, Aplour, Wood, Namba, Photograph No 3., James Harold Wesley Johns collection (1972.0054)

Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, owned and operated Panguna (1972-1989) which was once the largest open-cut copper mine – with the PNG government holding a 20% share. They made contracts with local communities – but entirely disregarded the matrilineal custodial system of land-care; this, coupled with the catastrophic environmental destruction caused by acid leaching into rivers which forced thousands to leave their land and homes, resulted in rebellion against the company which soon escalated into a civil war. (6)

Rio Tinto has since ceded their majority share – along with their responsibility for the environmental destruction – which is currently shared equally between the now Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the PNG government. The mooted reopening of the mine – this deep scar – coincides with Bougainville moving towards an independence referendum in 2019. Its developing economy is ironically underpinned by the very success of the resource business that has resulted in so much bloodshed and environmental devastation. (7)

Empires may have shrunk but the shadow of imperial legacies continues unabated for Bougainville, the Congo and other developing economies. Our era’s insatiable appetite for technological marvels, such as mobile phones and electronic devices, are entirely dependent on the primary resources of copper and rare minerals. Government rhetoric on Foreign Aid and ongoing boundary negotiations, such as the Timore-Leste maritime agreement with Australia, grossly obscure and sustain the inequity inherent in these relationships. (8)

Records are not relics of the past, but direct veins between current political events and their inception. The trauma inscribed in archival collections is timeless; ‘wounds heal over on the body, but in the report they always stay open, they neither close up or disappear.’ (9)

ENDNOTES (all web resources accessed May 2017)

  1. Steedman, Carolyn. Dust (Manchester: Manchester Uni. Press, 2001) p.45
  2. University of Melbourne Archives collection can be explored by its 14 collection categories or by the occupation or activity of creators. See: The Catalogue ‘Browse’ search option. http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/imu/imu.php?request=browse
  3. As the Commonwealth Department of Defence was located in Melbourne (1901-1958), it was logical that the Australian Red Cross National Office, which worked so closely with the Australian Imperial Force, was also located in Melbourne.
  4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/forever-in-chains-the-tragic-history-of-congo-6232383.html ; http://takingthelane.com/2011/10/25/the-rubber-terror-2/
  5. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/German_New_Guinea ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-07/world-war-i-relatives-remember-gallantry-battle-bita-paka/5721738 and http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/williams-william-george-billy-17327  (Papua New Guinea was colonised by both Britain and Germany – Australian government acting for the former. Australia’s administration was temporarily interrupted by the Japanese invasion (1942-1945))
  6.  https://bougainvillenews.com/category/bougainville-copper/ ; http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/bougainville-former-war-torn-territory-still-wary-of-mining/ and https://thewellingtonchocolatevoyage.wordpress.com/ 2014/12/02/the-people-the-culture-the-land/
  7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/papua-new-guinea-apologises-bougainville-civil-war ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-04/bougainville-mine-moves-to-reopen-govermment-backing/8495496
  8. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/is-your-cell-phone-fueling-civil-war-in-congo/241663/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-09/east-timor-tears-up-oil-and-gas-treaty-with-australia/8170476
  9. Saramago, José: All the Names (New York: Harcourt, 1999) Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. p.66

 

UMA offers a comprehensive reference service advising clients who are engaged in complex topics. http://archives.unimelb.edu.au/information/for_researchers Some of the collections held at the University of Melbourne Archive which relate to Papua New Guinea & Bougainville, referred to in this blog, include:

AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY – NATIONAL OFFICE

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – DIVISION RECORDS, 1940-1972 (2016.0060)

PAPUA NEW GUINEA DIVISION NATIVE CHOIR, Gramophone Record (2016.0077)

VOLUNTARY AID DETACHMENT (VAD) AND FIELD FORCE PERSONNEL RECORDS (2016.0050)

MISSING, WOUNDED AND PRISONER OF WAR ENQUIRY CARDS (2016.0049)

EXECUTIVE CORRESPONDENCE (2015.0033)

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT FILES (2016.0057)

HUMANITARIAN ORGANISATIONS – CARE

FRASER, JOHN MALCOLM (multiple accessions) Chairman (1987-2002) CARE Australia and President of CARE International (1990-1995). See: Masters Elizabeth, Wood Katie (2012) Malcolm Fraser: guide to archives of Australia’s Prime ministers Canberra, National Archives of Australia and University of Melbourne Archives.

POLITICS – GOVERNMENT

FRASER, JOHN MALCOLM (multiple accessions) Army Minister (1966-1968) Minister for Defense (1969-1971) Prime Minister (1975-1983). Ibid

PAPUA NEW GUINEA PATROL OFFICERS – ORAL HISTORY TAPES (1999.0062) Australian government patrol officers acting on authority from the Papuan New Guinea government

ECOMOMISTS

ISAAC, JOSEPH EZRA (2009.0004) Consultant for the Department of External Territories (Canberra) and the Department of Labour (Port Moresby) on PNG labour problems (1969-1973)

LAW

MINOGUE, JOHN PATRICK Sir (multiple accessions) Circuit judge (1962-1969) of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Papua New Guinea, later Chief Justice (1970-1974)

DERHAM, DAVID PLUMLEY Sir (multiple accessions) Involved in constitutional reform of Papua New Guinea

BUSINESS – BANKING

JOHNS, JAMES HAROLD WESLEY (1972.0054) Established and managed a branch of the Bank of New South Wales in Salamoa, Papua New Guinea (1929-1932)

BUSINESS – MINING

BOUGAINVILLE COPPER LIMITED (1992.0008)

JOHN T RALPH (1997.0022) CRA Ltd., Managing Director

VERNON, D.C (1988.0086) Director of CRA and Chairman of Bougainville Copper Ltd.,

WOODWARD, OLIVER HOLMES (1978.0079) Diaries and accounts of OH Woodward’s mining trips to PNG with Colin Fraser, 1930s

BUSINESS – PLANTATIONS

B. RITCHIE & SON PTY. LTD. (1985.0083) Records relating to various family members involvement in business ventures including Garua Plantation in Papua New Guinea (1947-1951)

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS

WOODWARD, OLIVER HOLMES (1978.0079) Personal diary of Marjorie Moffat Wadell’s (later Woodward) trip to PNG, 1918.

MEDICAL

OSER, OSCAR ADOLPH (1985.0155)

CAMPBELL, BRIGADIER EDWARD FRANCIS (1999.0060)

WHITE, DAVID (2015.0088)

 

 

 

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