Various Thoughts of Bruce Duffie . . . . .

English is not the easiest of languages… It can be understood through tough thorough thought though.

General observation... Regarding professional sports, we, in the Twenty-First Century are just like the Ancients.
We take delight when our city’s hired gladiators defeat any other city’s hired gladiators. [GO CUBS!]

Chinese type (5 plus 2) above; Japanese type (4 plus 1) below

abacus

Noting the two different systems shown, today, one might think of the rivalry between Mac and PC, and realize that such dualities have existed for centuries. Recently, there was the debate between VHS and Beta video tape systems, between 45 rpm and 33 rpm records in the late 1940s, and cylinders vs. lateral-cut 78 rpm discs at the turn of the Twentieth Century. There was no real problem with the introduction of electrical recordings in 1925, since reproducers in the home could accommodate both. The only real need for new equipment was at the production end, and the record companies invested in the new system. The same could not be said for the introduction of stereo in the mid-1950s. There, the home consumer had to be persuaded to purchase new equipment, and this was not even a decade after everyone had to abandon their 78 machines in favor of the LP players. A similar upheaval in the music industry was seen with the advent of cassettes and CDs.

A story I heard many years ago (and have repeated in the hopes it was mostly or completely true) involves the size and playing-time of the compact disc. It seems that one of the people who were calling the shots at the time of its creation was a Japanese man who knew that his countrymen simply adored the Beethoven Symphony #9. So, to accommodate that piece of music, the CD needed to hold about 74 minutes of sound. The story may or may not be true, but it makes a good legend, and I simply choose to believe it.

[August 31, 2019, and inserted here to keep the topics together] Thinking again of 78s, here's the famous image of our old friend Nipper, and a couple of tidbits about its origins . . . . .

His Master's Voice (HMV) is a famous trademark in the recording industry, and was the unofficial name of a major British record label.

The trademark image comes from a painting by English artist Francis Barraud titled His Master's Voice. It was acquired from the artist in 1899 by the newly formed Gramophone Company, and adopted as a trademark by the Gramophone Company's United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company. According to contemporary Gramophone Company publicity material, the dog, a terrier named Nipper, had originally belonged to Barraud's brother, Mark. When Mark Barraud died, Francis inherited Nipper, along with a cylinder phonograph and recordings of Mark's voice. Francis noted the peculiar interest that the dog took in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the horn, and conceived the idea of committing the scene to canvas. The incident took place at 92 Bold Street, Liverpool.

A different source relates a cautionary tale for artists about getting and keeping the copyright for art...

When Barraud painted Nipper curiously searching for his master's voice in the phonograph's horn, not only was the artist turned down for a copyright for the image, but he was also rejected by the Royal Academy, and various magazines. The Edison Bell company responded that "dogs don’t listen to phonographs."

Barraud eventually sold another painting, with a Berliner brass horn, to one of the company's managers, where it caught the eye of the Emile Berliner, the company's founder, who commissioned another copy AND bought the rights to it! The famous image went on to become the trakemark of the Victor Talking Machine Co. Victor was Berliner's partner, and the image ultimately survived Victor's merger with RCA in 1929. It was printed on record labels, letterheads, novelties, and catalogues for decades, but Barraud, the original artist, only received two payments of £50 each.

Here are a few more details about the dog, and the original painting (shown below, which depicted a cylinder machine, and not the flat-disc machine we all know)...

Nipper was born in 1884 in Bristol, England, and died in September 1895. He was a mixed-breed dog and probably part Jack Russell Terrier, although some sources suggest that he was a Smooth Fox Terrier, or "part Bull Terrier". He was named Nipper because he would "nip" the backs of visitors' legs.

Nipper originally lived with his owner, Mark Henry Barraud, in the Prince's Theatre where Barraud was a scenery designer. When Barraud died in 1887, his brothers Philip and Francis took care of the dog. Nipper himself died of natural causes in 1895 and was buried in Kingston upon Thames in Clarence Street, in a small park surrounded by magnolia trees. As time progressed the area was built upon, and a branch of Lloyds Bank now occupies the site. On the wall of the bank, just inside the entrance, a brass plaque commemorates the terrier that lies beneath the building. On 10 March 2010, a small road near to the dog's resting place in Kingston upon Thames was named Nipper Alley in commemoration of this resident.

In 1898, three years after Nipper's death, Francis Barraud, his last owner and brother of his first owner, painted a picture of Nipper listening intently to a wind-up Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph. Thinking the Edison-Bell Company located in New Jersey, USA, might find it useful, he presented it to James E. Hough, who promptly said, "Dogs don't listen to phonographs". On May 31, 1899, Barraud went to the Maiden Lane offices of The Gramophone Company with the intention of borrowing a brass horn to replace the original black horn on the painting. Manager William Barry Owen suggested that if the artist replaced the machine with a Berliner disc gramophone, that he would buy the painting. The image became the successful trademark of the Victor and HMV record labels, HMV music stores, and the Radio Corporation of America, after the acquisition of the Victor company in 1929. The trademark was registered by Berliner for use in the United States on July 10, 1900.

Francis Barraud said, "It is difficult to say how the idea came to me beyond the fact that it suddenly occurred to me that to have my dog listening to the phonograph, with an intelligent and rather puzzled expression, and call it 'His Master's Voice' would make an excellent subject. We had a phonograph and I often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from. It certainly was the happiest thought I ever had."

The slogan "His Master's Voice", along with the painting, was sold to The Gramophone Company for £100 (equivalent to £10,628 in 2018) – half for the copyright and half for the physical painting itself. The original oil painting hung in the EMI boardroom in Hayes, Middlesex, for many years.

The two cartoons below reflect our 'progress' as we firmly embrace the Twenty-First Century, and amplify my remarks vis-à-vis the typewriter . . . . .

[February 3, 2020, and inserted here to (again) keep the topics together] I just ran across an interesting article about the latest in sound reproduction. It is reproduced HERE.

[Another observation, from May 11, 2020] Future generations may wonder why something called a "compact" disc held more material than a "long playing" record!

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[June 29, 2018] Alert observers might notice that as of the end of March, 2018, many of the links to my interviews which appear in Wikipedia articles have a slightly different format. Specifically, my name has been removed from the line. For several years, it was <<<Interview with (name of guest) by Bruce Duffie, on (date of interview).>>> Because someone complained that I was spamming, and felt the only reason for these links was my own self-promotion, that person urged the removal of all of these links. A discussion was launched, and several Administrators weighed in with their opinions. Fortunately, enough of them saw the importance of the interviews themselves, and the complainant was admonished to cease the battering, and even urged to apologize (which did not happen). After about a week, the discussion was formally closed, and the upshot was that I removed my name from many of the links, and am not including it in future postings. However, a number of the old-style links remain, so there might be a bit of confusion since they are not uniform. For anyone who cares to read it, the entire discussion is reproduced HERE.

[Updated information about the above item] Since I had "corrected" many of the links (to remove my name), another editor(s) felt this was wrong, and undid some of those corrections... thus replacing my name in the link. One editor contacted me about the removals, and I showed him/her the discussion (linked above). Since I don't go back to old Wikipedia pages very often, I do not know whether the changes have been made to a few or many of them. It is unimportant... as long as the link itself is there, I am satisfied.

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[January 3, 2019] In reading some of the comments about my interviews, a couple people have noted that a few of my questions tend to pop up with regularity. While this is certainly true, I do hope that in each case the inquiries come naturally, and at an appropriate place in the conversation. I never worked with a specific list of questions, and always tried to discuss the specific strengths of each guest. However, since all were involved in so-called Classical Music, there were bound to be common points of interest and expertise. To look at it another way, when you eat at my restaurant, each meal on the menu will be unique, but many will have some ingredients in common. Since all are being prepared by myself as chef, there will be some resemblances and similarities. I hope this does not discourage anyone from sampling my cuisine.....

It is also interesting to see how various people respond and react to the same question(s). Continuing the metaphor, there will certainly be differing opinions from various people to the same item on my menu. Observing those reactions should not, necessarily, cause me to change the recipe. Perhaps having a few condiments on the table will allow for each person to season the dish to their own taste, but this can only happen when a certain stability is built into the process. Once again, my goal with the interviews is to allow each guest to express their own views, and I trust that a few similar questions will get a variety of responses.

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A few years ago, I met a fine baritone whom I had known on the stage for a long time. Warren Fremling has performed in local and regional productions over the years, and has had a significant impact each time. Lately, he has been an invaluable help to me by proofreading my interviews before they are opened to the public on my website. I am grateful to him for pointing out not only mistakes (of which, fortunately, there are few), but also for occasionally suggesting better ways of expressing the ideas. As I have mentioned, I never change the focus nor direction of the words my guests use, but by tightening and sometimes re-gathering thoughts, their objectives are made more clear to readers. In several cases, Warren has suggested slight changes which bring these thoughts into sharper focus, and for that I am eternally grateful.

In our exchanges, he also has provided me with further insights into the world of professional singing, and his most recent gift to me was a clear and succinct explanation of the various voice-types, and how they can be viewed by experts and novices alike. With his permission, it is reproduced here...

There are two things that decide this. The first is color. Richness in the middle voice is revealing. The second, and much more reliable, is the location of the bridge or passagio. A mezzo’s bridge is a-kin to a baritone’s. It’s on the D, a ninth above mid-C (a baritone’s being an octave lower, obviously). I’ve diagrammed voices according to their interest and comfort to the listener’s ear – not what the singer does, but what is natural to the instrument. A soprano or tenor sound like this: \/ - the bottom is light and the voice sounds more interesting and easier as the voice ascends. The mezzo and baritone sound like this: () – the voice is fattest in the middle. We have some of the low notes of the contralto/bass and some of the high notes of the soprano/tenor, but you can’t live there. The middle is where we’re most at home. The contralto/bass is the exact opposite of the soprano/tenor – the voice gets fatter and more beautiful with the descent.

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[February 4, 2019] As the the shortest month of the year rolls around once again, I am reminded of the one word which I simply gave up trying to pronounce correctly. I made an effort, but it simply was too awkward to do both correctly and smoothly at the same time. I could say Feb-ROO-rary, but it required slowing down the enunciation to the point where it was simply untenable. [You may insert any kind of joke here, regarding it not being a ten, or even a nine, but perhaps a two or three at best...] Imagine, if you will, a car on the highway, and for some unknown reason it just slowed to a crawl. It would certainly look strange, to say nothing about impeding traffic and being hazardous. This is not to say that an announcer mis-pronouncing a word on the radio could be hazardous in any way, but you get my drift... So if any tapes exist of my work where I say the name of the second month, you will hear a firm and confident FEB-you-air-ee. I know it is wrong, and I knew it at the time, and I make no excuses.

I am sure I made other mistakes, and, indeed, I was corrected on a few occasions. But by and large, I was complimented by members of the public on my accuracy and stylistic manners. It was especially nice to hear that I had pronounced the name of a person or location properly from someone who was from that particular locale. I want to say, however, that when someone called to make a correction, my first task was to ascertain if that person on the telephone was accurate! There were a few occasions when a caller would berate me and give a different version of the way to pronounce a name, and when I checked with a known authority, I found that my own rendition was correct, and the caller had been wrong. It reminds me of the sign which famously hung in the City News Bureau for many years, which screamed, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”

On that particular subject, I remember one evening when we aired a syndicated broadcast of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The announcer (who shall remain nameless) proclaimed the conductor to be Esa-Pekka Sa-LOH-nehn. Well, I had interviewed the Maestro, and, as usual, had asked him to do a station break, in which he said his name. His pronunciation was SAL-oh-nehn. At some point during the evening, I must have said his name myself, and pronounced it his way, and immediately received a phone call screaming at me for my stupidity. “If the announcer on the Los Angeles Symphony broadcast had said it one way, that MUST be the accurate way!” I tried, very calmly, to explain, but the caller simply slammed the phone down. The next evening, I brought in my interview tape and played the station break. I have no idea if that caller from the previous night heard it, but at least I settled the matter for anyone who was listening . . . . .

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[April 22, 2019] Consider, if you will, the following scenario... Bill opens a small restaurant that features Fine Dining. He is successful, and over the course of forty-five years, the eatery becomes well-known and highly-respected. After spending his adult life maintaining this establishment, he decides to retire. As it happens, the location he originally chose -- which was, at the time, perfectly good but not very popular -- had become very desirable. So Bill closed the restaruant and sold the location to Bonney, who brought in her own staff and opened a shoe store. It immediately attracted business, and became very competitive.

Now when one thinks of the history of the restaurant vis-à-vis the ongoing story of the shoe store, it should be obvious that aside from the physical location, there is no connection whatsoever. Right? Perhaps, the historical account of each one should have a mention of the other as being at the same address, but that's certainly all the crossover interest there would be.

With that in mind, I ask you to look HERE.

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[June 28, 2019] Following up on my remarks about diversity (above, with the date of December 26, 2017), much has transpired in the short time since then. While I do not — and did not — go into the political area when conversing with my musical guests, it has come to my attention that the Music World is, nonetheless, very much involved in such social matters. For example, the editorial in Opera Canada of Summer, 2019, discusses the “central debate about how to keep the art form relevant for an audience which no longer passively accepts the racist, misogynist and sexist tropes of yesteryear.” It goes on to discuss the “challenges faced by women singers portraying some of the standard repertoire’s iconic roles... many of which are mired in stereotypes we find unacceptable in the #MeToo era.”

My reason for bringing this up is to point out that in several of my interviews — which date from 1978-2006 — I specifically ask the question of my female singer guests. To wit: “How do we keep these Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century characters relevant to women (and men) today who have gone through world wars, and social upheavals, and other developments of our times?”

This is not to just pat myself on the back for being so forward-looking, but to show that my own curiosity was such that it became imperative to inquire about these ideas, and to ask how they resonated with audiences far removed from the original mores and strictures.

Of course, in the theater, the production team can (and often does) re-set the action to a later era, or even to the present day. That is, again, a discussion for another time and place, but it does move the ideas in ways that can provoke or amuse. There is also the need to remember that it was only in the early Twentieth Century that the classical musical public abandoned its craving for anything and everything which was new. Until then, while there were performances of older pieces, it was the newest and latest symphonies and operas which were anticipated with genuine eagerness. Once this trend was lost, the oft-repeated repertoire began to show signs of losing its immediate contact with concert-goers, and from there it is the famous ‘slippery slope’.

In any event, I just wanted to call attention to my own small attempts to make inquiry when possible, and to show that my own feeling is that opera can remain a viable and exciting living breathing art form.

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Music Joke... Question: What are the names of the Three Bears? Answer: Smokey Bear, Yogi Bear, Jacques Ibert

Second Music Joke... What if we discover that’s what it really is all about? [Reference: Hokey Pokey]

Third Music Joke... Question: What is the voice-range of the quarter-hour? Answer: People often say, "It'll be tenor fifteen minutes!"

Fourth Music Joke... A woman is on trial for beating her husband to death with his guitars.
The judge asks, “First offender?” She replies, “No, first a Gibson, then a Fender.”

Musical variation on an old joke... If Mezzo-Soprano Shirley Verrett married Tenor George Shirley, she’d be Shirley Shirley!

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[August 29, 2019] I stumbled upon this item just now, and thought it would be fun to post it here. For those who do not read music, or for anyone interested in seeing a nifty connection between this tune and the main thrust of my website, click HERE.

Lest you think it is only one or two goofballs at a single establishment who would make such an error, consider the fact that the government of the former DDR (East Germany) issued two postage stamps in 1956 to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of composer Robert Schumann. They were the same portrait of Schumann, used for two denominations, but the music in the background was by Franz Schubert! These are the top two stamps in the illustration below. Soon, the error was discovered, and a new version of the stamps (with music by Schumann) was issued, as seen in the bottom two in the illustration.

There have been other philatelic mistakes, but most have been caught before the stamps were available to the public for use as postage. This is not about printing errors, such as inverted images, or mistakes in colors or perferations. Rather, place names have been mis-attributed and people have been wrongly identified. But those shown below are the only foul-ups I know which involve music or musicians.

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When we talk, we formulate a thought, retrieve words from memory and move our mouths to produce sound. We do this quickly, producing, in English, around five syllables every second.

The process for listeners is equally complex and speedy. We hear sounds, which we separate into speech and non-speech information, combine the speech sounds into words, and determine the meanings of these words. Again, this happens nearly instantaneously, and errors rarely occur.

These processes are even more extraordinary when you think more closely about the properties of speech. Unlike writing, speech doesn’t have spaces between words. When people speak, there are typically very few pauses within a sentence.

Yet listeners have little trouble determining word boundaries in real time. This is because there are little cues – like pitch and rhythm – that indicate when one word stops and the next begins.

But problems in speech perception can arise when those kinds of cues are missing, especially when pitch and rhythm are used for non-linguistic purposes, like in music. This is one reason why misheard song lyrics – called “mondegreens” – are common. When singing or rapping, a lot of the speech cues we usually use are shifted to accommodate the song’s beat, which can end up jamming our default perception process.