Margaret Fisher

Presenting one of several chapters in a book of the same name, the author proves that the rhythmic organization of the film Ballet mécanique by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy, according to a graph of its construction published at the time of its premiere, included relative, rational, and recurring speeds. This is the first study to point to the use of periodicity throughout the film imagery and montage and to argue that tempo is the film's principal organizing element. The tempos or speeds were codified within a graphic published twice by Léger. The premise is tested against the print screened at the film's 1924 premiere. The author's wide sampling of tempos throughout the film reveals for the first time the extent to which the montage conforms to the published graph and confirms that relative rather than random tempos were applied to both footage and montage. The discovery of ratios embedded in the graphic enables recovery of a unique experiment that sought musical form within film - and in this case, within a film that on the surface appears to reflect random and chaotic procedures.

Pino Masnata (1901-1968), surgeon, Futurist poet and dramatist, co-authored the Futurist Radio Manifesto with F. T. Marinetti, the founder of Futurism.

In 1933 F. T. Marinetti and Pino Masnata described a new radio art in Manifesto futurista della radio, published in the Gazzetta del Popolo of Torino. In 1935 Masnata, worried that the manifesto’s abstruse references to wave motion and the behavior of sub-atomic particles might be overlooked, wrote a 51-page gloss that begins, “The Futurist Radio Manifesto needs some explanation because it contains a synthesis of numerous modern scientific and artistic tenets. Only someone who stays informed of the current trends in human ideas can understand the full significance of our Manifesto and dispense with the explanation.”
Masnata’s gloss “Radia, not Radio” (“Il Nome Radia”) is introduced and annotated within the context of politics and science in Italy in the 1920s and 30s. Appendices to the volume include translations of Masnata’s radio sintesi and Radio Corriere’s transcription of Marinetti’s 1933 eyewitness radio broadcast of Italo Balbo’s landing of the Atlantici in Rome, as well as a brief history of early Italian radio and tables listing hundreds of Futurist radio programs and broadcast-related documents by and about the Futurists—photographs, reviews, articles, photographs, cartoons, and advertisements.

Intended audience: This previously unpublished manuscript is a source book for media studies, art and literature of the first half of the twentieth century. This book is now being used as a textbook in fields of contemporary Italian literature, history of electronic media, radio art, and twentieth century art.

Update: first edition is sold out. Some publishers' returns are available  on Alibreis.com and there are used copies offered on the web. Try this site and support new music: <http://webstore.otherminds.org/products/radia-a-gloss-of-the-1933-futurist-radio-manifesto>

in Handbook of International Futurism, Ed. by Günter Berghaus

Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2018

XX+964 pp; hardcover RRR € 169,95 / US$ 195.99 / £154.50
ISBN: 978-3-11-027347-2; PDF: 978-3-11-027356-4; EPUB: 978-3-11-039099-5

Current Research: International Futurism
I. General Aspects of the History and Theory of Futurism

1. Historiography of Studies on Italian Futurism - Günter Berghaus, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol
2. The Politics of Futurism - Aleš Erjavec, Professor of Visual Culture, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Philosophy, Ljubljana
3. Women Futurists - Lucia Re, Professor of Italian and Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; Charlotte Douglas, Professor Emeritus, New York University


II. Reflections of Futurism in Different Artistic Media

4. Architecture - Michelangelo Sabatino, Professor, College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
5. Cinema - Wanda Strauven, Adjunct Professor, Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt
6. Cuisine - Cecilia Novero, Senior Lecturer, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Otago
7. Dance - Patrizia Veroli, Independent Scholar, Rome
8. Ceramics - Matteo Fochessati, Curator, Wolfson Collection, Genoa
9a. Fashion Design – Italy - Franca Zoccoli, Independent Scholar, Rome
9b. Fashion Design – Russia - Ekaterina Lazareva, Senior Research Fellow, State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow
10. Graphic Design, Typography and Artist's Books - Stephen J. Bury, Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian at the Frick Art Reference Library
11. Interior Design, Furniture, and Decorative Arts - Anna Maria Ruta, Professor emerita, Università degli Studi di Palermo
12. Music - Daniele Lombardi (†), formerly Musician, Author and Professor at "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan
13. Photography - Marta Braun, Director, Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management, Ryerson University, Toronto
14. Radio and Sound Art - Margaret Fisher, Independent Scholar and Performance Artist/Video Director, Emeryville/CA
15a. Theatre – Russia - Edward Braun (†), formerly Professor emeritus in Theatre, Film and Television, University of Bristol
15b. Theatre – Italy - Domenico Pietropaolo, Professor of Drama and Italian Literature, University of Toronto
16. Visual Poetry - Jed Rasula, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Georgia


III. Futurist Traditions in Different Countries

17. Argentina - Rosa Sarabia, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Toronto
18. Armenia - Krikor Beledian, Maître de Conférences (Langue et littérature arménienne), INALCO, Paris
19. Belgium - Bart van den Bossche, Associate Professor of Italian Literature, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
20. Brazil - João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Professor of Comparative Literature, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
21. Bulgaria - Giuseppe Dell'Agata, Professor Emeritus, University of Pisa
22. Chile - Greg Dawes, Distinguished Professor of Latin American Literature, North Carolina State University
23. China - Man Hu, Researcher, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
24. Czech Republic and Slovakia - Alena Pomajzlová, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno
25. Denmark - Torben Jelsbak, Associate Professor in Danish Literature, University of Copenhagen, Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics; Per Stounbjerg, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, University of Aarhus
26a. Egypt – Literature - Maria Elena Paniconi, Professor of Arab Language and Literature, University of Macerata
26b. Egypt – Fine Arts - Nadia Radwan, Professor of Art History, University of Bern
27. Estonia - Tiit Hennoste, Senior Researcher, Department of Estonian Literature and Language, University of Tartu
28. Finland - Hannu Riikonen, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Helsinki
29. France - Willard Bohn, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature, Illinois State University
30. Georgia - Bela Tsipuria, Professor of Comparative Literature, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
31. Germany - Irene Chytraeus-Auerbach, Research Associate, Internationales Zentrum für Kultur- und Technikforschung, University of Stuttgart
32. Great Britain - Jonathan Black, Research Fellow, Kingston University
33. Greece - Chris Michaelides (†), formerly Curator of Italian and Modern Greek Books, British Library, London
34. Hungary - András Kappanyos, Research Consultant, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, and Professor of Hungarian Literature, University of Miskolc
35. Iceland - Benedikt Hjartarson, Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
36. Ireland - Selena Daly, Lecturer of Modern European History, Royal Holloway, University of London
37a. Italy – Literature - Luca Somigli, Professor of Italian Studies, University of Toronto
37b. Italy – Fine Arts - Giorgio Di Genova, Formerly Professor of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts, Rome
38. Japan - Pierantonio Zanotti, Research Fellow in Japanese Studies, Ca' Foscari University, Venice
39. Korea - Kyoo Yun Cho, Assistant Professor, Department of Russian Language and Literature, Chung-Ang University, Seoul
40. Latvia - Aija Brasliņa, Head of Collections and Research Department (Eighteenth to First Half of the Twentieth Century), Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga
41. Lithuania - Ramute Rachlevičiūte, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History and Theory. Lithuanian Academy of Art, Vilnius
42. Mexico - Sergio Delgado, Acting Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory University
43. Netherlands - Ton van Kalmthout, Senior Researcher, Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
44. Peru - Carlos García, Freelance researcher and author, Hamburg
45. Poland - Przemysław Strożek, Assistant Professor, Special Collections, Institute of Art at Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
46. Portugal - Nuno Júdice, Professor of Portuguese Literature, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
47. Romania - Irina Cărăbaş, Assistant Professor at National University of Arts, Department of Art History and Theory, Bucharest
48a. Russia – Literature - Henryk Baran, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, University at Albany (SUNY)
48b. Russia – Fine Arts - Christina Lodder, Honorary Professor of Art History, University of Kent
49. Spain - Andrew A. Anderson, Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia
50. Sweden - Jesper Olsson, Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University
51. Ukraine - Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj, Professor emeritus of Ukrainian Culture, Language and Literature, University of Alberta
52. Uruguay – Pablo Rocca, Professor of Uruguayan and Latin American Literature, Universidad de la República, Montevideo
53. USA - Ara H. Merjian, Assistant Professor of Italian, New York University; Nicola Lucchi, Substitute Lecturer of Italian, Queens College, City University of New York
54. Venezuela - Giovanna Montenegro, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature & Romance Languages, Binghamton University
55. Yugoslavia and its Republics - Irina Subotić, Professor Emeritus, formerly curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art and National Museum in Belgrade, Professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade and at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad; Janez Vrečko, Professor of  Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia); Sanja Roić, Professor of Italian Literature, University of Zagreb (Croatia) Bojan Jović, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Literature and Art, Belgrade, and Jasmina Čubrilo, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Belgrade (Serbia)

A study of Ezra Pound's work with radio ten years before his war broadcasts. His first opera Le Testament, composed 1920-1923, was broadcast in October 1931 as an experimental Feature program produced by Archie Harding of the BBC's Research Unit. Harding introduced Pound to nascent radio theory.

Fisher examines Pound's reasons for composing and his theatrical models. She discusses the sound design of the 1931 production, as well as the context in which Pound wrote his radio operas—artistic trends in film and radio, various broadcasting organizations and facilities, and contemporary radio techniques. She also compares Pound's radio experiments to those of F. T. Marinetti, Walter Ruttman, and Bertolt Brecht.

Harding commissioned a second opera by Pound, to be composed specifically for radio. This was Pound's three-act opera Cavalcanti, the acts conceived for stage, radio and film, respectively. The work was completed in 1933 but never broadcast. Pound also began a third opera, settings of the poetry of Catullus and Sappho, but this work was never finished. Chapter Two of the book includes an overview of experimental radio art of the 1920s and 1930s.

The book, which contains the 1931 radio script and producer's notes, provides the necessary background and analysis to facilitate a recreation of the 1931 broadcast, a contemporary stage performance, or a film or video production.

N.B. Out of print. Many inexpensive copies are available on Amazon. Be sure to ask the bookseller if there are printed crossout lines on pages 206-221 (the typescript including crossouts, of the original radio script). If not, the copy is defective (over 1,000 books went out in this condition, unfortunately).

Abstract: This chapter assesses the condition of Italian radio in the 1920s and 30s,
examines the influence of broadcast programs and policies on Futurist radio output,
and asks to what degree Italian radio may have embraced, at least partially, Futurist
aesthetics. Many key elements of Futurist aesthetics matched the innate qualities of
the new radio technology; vice versa, radio contained many features that held the
promise of an ideal Futurist medium. The Futurist Radio Manifesto, signed by F. T.
Marinetti and Pino Masnata, temporarily redirected the Futurist embrace of
technology from machines to the physics and metaphysics of radio waves. The
‘wireless imagination’ gave birth to the artista in libertà (the artist freed from the
constraints of human perception). The goal was a synthesis of art and science that
strove for a new spectrum of sensibilities located in the immateriality of the world.
Historians have accorded the Futurists unqualified recognition for their influence over
Italian radio. This study challenges that point of view by examining the context and
problems associated with Futurist radio broadcasts in Italy. Politics and economics
affected radio institutions in ways that did not accord Futurism the chance to
contribute to the new medium in the manner Marinetti was keen to do. The
programmes paid an occasional tribute to Futurism but, for the most part,
marginalized it. And Radiorario, Italian radio’s official programme listing guide,
foiled any attempt by the Futurists to dominate a cultural discussion of technology.
Many have written for a free copy of this work to be uploaded to the site. Because of copyright restrictions, I am unable to do so. Be assured, any work written by or edited by Gunter Berghaus is a valuable resource and will repay your investment! Or have your library purchase the book.
For a slightly different treatment of the subject, see RADIA, a Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto. I may create an ebook soon. If you are interested, please send me a note mafishcoatgmaildotcom and I will keep you informed. Thank you for your interest in this fascinating field of media and art.

The Transparency of Great Bass, second of two volumes on the relationship of music and great bass to the poetry of Ezra Pound, explains Pound’s theory of rhythm and rhythmic influence by tracing Pound’s published references within a long-standing practical and theoretical tradition in music concerning the bass part and bass function.

The eminent Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer has called Pound’s theory of harmony a major contribution to the science of harmony in the twentieth century. Yet Pound’s theory, one part of his more expansive theory of great bass, has been all but silenced in the discussion of musical theory in the twentieth century.

The basic premise of great bass was awesome in its austerity, but not particularly revolutionary: rhythm is the fundamental element that determines artistic form in poetry and music. Pound went on, however, to make claims for a great bass beyond rhythm. He wrote about it as a trait that could identify genius in the person and in the work of art. A person endowed with great bass had a sense of “proportional frequency” which Pound in his Treatise on Harmony also referred to as “perfect” or “absolute” rhythm. With these and otherwise occult parameters, Pound’s great bass has to date resisted analysis. This essay examines the theory of great bass in the light of seminal works on harmony from Dante, Franco of Cologne, Thomas Campion and Jean-Phillipe Rameau to Henry Cowell to position it within an ongoing investigation of musical cognition and human perception. 

Examples of great bass in the music of Ezra Pound are found in, “Great Bass: Undertones of Continuous Influence.” The function of music and of great bass in the poetry of Ezra Pound is the subject of “The Echo of Villon in Ezra Pound’s Music and Poetry, Duration Rhyme and Great Bass in Ezra Pound’s Poetry.” These ebooks are designed to be read on newer and larger tablet devices and/or on a personal computer.

availability: no longer available

REVIEWS
"Margaret Fisher’s two volumes of 2013, The Echo of Villon and The Transparency of Ezra Pound’s Great Bass make a very important claim, namely that musical thought and musical composition are not ancillary to Pound’s poetry but offer a veritable methodology of studying Pound’s prosody structures. Readers who are familiar with even the rudiments of musical theory will be able to follow Fisher’s argument, which is written with a clarity especially valuable to a non-musician reader. The payoff is huge – if Fisher is right, we may be able to understand and study Pound’s very special melopoeia using music analysis and digital tools to develop new methodologies." Roxana Preda, Editor, Make It New, Vol. 1 No. 3 (November 2014)

"I read everything that Margaret Fisher writes with great interest and admiration. She and her partner Bob Hughes have, of course, produced beautifully annotated editions of all of Pound’s original music, as well as performances of it; so she is in a better position than anyone to take on the most difficult issues related to it." Stephen J. Adams, Make It New, Vol. 1 No. 3 (November 2014)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Fisher is author of "Ezra Pound's Radio Operas, The BBC Experiments (1931-1933)" [The MIT Press]; "The Recovery of Ezra Pound's Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii, Settings of Poems by Catullus and Sappho" [Second Evening Art]; "The Echo of Villon: Duration Rhyme in Ezra Pound's Music and Poetry"; and The Transparency of Ezra Pound's Great Bass" (e-books). With Robert Hughes she co-edited the Complete Music of Ezra Pound in five volumes. In 2008 she received the Rome Prize for work on early Italian Radio, Futurist Radio and her translation of Radia, Pino Masnata's posthumously published Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto, with Fisher’s Introduction and Notes (Second Evening Art, 2012). Her non-academic writing has appeared in Performance Research 11.1 (2006) and Conjunctions 65 (Fall 2015).

"Nominated for Book of the Year by the Ezra Pound Society, "The Echo of Villon," first of two volumes on the relationship of music and great bass to the poetry of Ezra Pound, brings together essays written for diverse publications. An Introduction and Brief History provide background to Ezra Pound as a composer. The principal essay, drawn from the 1923 facsimile edition of Le Testament score (Pound’s opera to words by François Villon) traces the role of music and of Villon in Pound’s oeuvre. Using computer-assisted analysis of Pound’s recorded readings of his poetry, the author demonstrates how Pound applied the relative temporal durations of elements in his poems—vowels, syllables, words, phrases and verse lines—and the precise proportions that result from those relations to arrive at the great bass of a new poetic based on time durations. Musical structures in the poetry came into view as if the poems had been X-rayed. Pound’s extensive compositional activities in the ‘teens, ‘20s and ‘30s began to make sense as a means of creating quantitative structure from time durations and relations to give metrical shape to poetry that included many languages. Pound was able to “cut a shape in time” using the relative durations of elapsed time.

REVEIW:
"Margaret Fisher’s two volumes of 2013, The Echo of Villon and The Transparency of Ezra Pound’s Great Bass make a very important claim, namely that musical thought and musical composition are not ancillary to Pound’s poetry but offer a veritable methodology of studying Pound’s prosody structures. Readers who are familiar with even the rudiments of musical theory will be able to follow Fisher’s argument, which is written with a clarity especially valuable to a non-musician reader. The payoff is huge – if Fisher is right, we may be able to understand and study Pound’s very special melopoeia using music analysis and digital tools to develop new methodologies." Roxana Preda, Editor, Make It New, Vol. 1 No. 3 (November 2014)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Fisher is author of "Ezra Pound's Radio Operas, The BBC Experiments (1931-1933)" [The MIT Press]; "The Recovery of Ezra Pound's Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii, Settings of Poems by Catullus and Sappho" [Second Evening Art]; "The Echo of Villon: Duration Rhyme in Ezra Pound's Music and Poetry"; and The Transparency of Ezra Pound's Great Bass" (e-books). With Robert Hughes she co-edited the Complete Music of Ezra Pound in five volumes. In 2008 she received the Rome Prize for work on early Italian Radio, Futurist Radio and her translation of Radia, Pino Masnata's posthumously published Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto, with Fisher’s Introduction and Notes (Second Evening Art, 2012). Her non-academic writing has appeared in Performance Research 11.1 (2006) and Conjunctions 65 (Fall 2015).

Facsimile edition of complete opera score edited by George Antheil with Ezra Pound's notes for the 1931 BBC radio broadcast. 110 color plates. Audio CD of complete opera, digitally re-mastered from out-of-print Fantasy LP of 1972, with some corrections to reflect current research. (The audio CD is not available separately). 100 books with cd in a first edition, available at a pre-publication price of $165.00 for orders sent by check or university library purchase order (retail $210). This will definitely be a collector's item. The volume includes an overview of Pound's music by Pound scholar Stephen J. Adams from the University of Western Ontario as well as essays on the relationship between Pound's music and his poetry by the Series Editors Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher.

A. David Moody, author of the recent three-volume "Ezra Pound: Poet" wrote this of the facsimile edition:
"Authoritative. . . . one great contribution. And the other is [Fisher's] illumination of Pound's revolution of 'the musical phrase' in both music and poetry. Coming at it from the verse side I am aware of all the conventional stress-based prosody that needs to have its ear opened to duration, and to hear the pattern or shape of durations in phrasal units. [Fisher has] opened up the way Pound's verse needs to be heard and performed. [The] exact timing of [Pound's] tempo, and technical analysis of his musical phrasing, puts the insight beyond question. Of course the natural stress of English words, tone-leading, assonance, etc., all contribute, but patterned duration is the basis, and [Fisher has] made that clear in a new and definitive way, and that gladdens my heart."

The complete libretto to the opera may be downloaded gratis from our website <https://www.secondeveningart.com>

Libraries and individuals wishing to purchase books at a discount after January 1, 2016 may contact the publisher directly at <http://www.secondeveningart.com>

Buy from Other Minds webstore and support new music at the same time: <https://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/books-etc/products/ezra-pound-le-testament-1923-facsimile-edition-with-audio-cd>

The Recovery of Ezra Pound's Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii (poems by Catullus and Sappho)
      Ezra Pound and Margaret Fisher, edition of 200, 180 pp, pb, 2005, ISBN 978-0-9728859-3-5 list $47.00

    Part I. Analysis of Pound's musical treatment of his favored poems of antiquity: Catullus carmen LXI ("Collis O Heliconii") and Sappho, fragment 1 ("Poikilothron' athanat' Aphrodita").

    Part II. The engraved performance edition for violin and voice includes excerpts from the 2 principal arias, 3 incidental numbers, a transcription of Pound's unfinished translation of carmen LXI and Pound's scenario for his dramatic setting of the Catullan poem.

Did you know? The Sappho aria has never been performed. It requires a mezzo soprano with expressive voice and minimum of vibrato. The lyrics are in Greek. Do you know a professional singer for this world premiere?

Did you know? The Catullus aria has been sung publicly only once, by David Varnum. It was recorded on the Other Minds audio CD Ego scriptor cantilenae: The music of Ezra Pound, now out of print! If you can find a used copy, Lucky you!

Libraries and individuals wishing to purchase books at a discount after January 1, 2016 may visit the publisher's website <http://www.secondeveningart.com and follow the links>"

Otherwise, you may purchase books at Other Minds webstore and support new music in the process: <http://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/books-etc/products/sea-collis-o>

Cavalcanti: a perspective on the music of Ezra Pound Ezra Pound and Robert Hughes, edition of 200, 442 pp, pb, 2003
        ISBN 978-0-9728859-0-4 list $111.00CAV

    Double volume: essays regarding Pound as a composer, and complete, engraved music score

    The three-act, one hour opera is a dramatization of the life of the Florentine poet Guido Cavalcanti (1250-1300), friend of Dante, through eleven of his canzone and ballate. Two additional numbers are settings of poems in Provençal by Sordello.

    Part I. A systematic analysis of Pound's music training, the application of his musico-poetic theories, methods of composition, and a music analysis of the opera; the genesis and sources of Pound's Great Bass theory.

    Part II. The definitive performance edition of Pound's "Cavalcanti," drawn from the uncatalogued and dispersed music manuscripts in the Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library (Yale University). This is the full music score with piano reduction and stage instructions. All music is composed by Ezra Pound. Additional narrator's script, dialogue, and stage instructions are by Pound; editorial notes by Robert Hughes.

Purchase this double volume from Other Minds webstore and support American new music while you are at it: <http://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/books-etc/products/sea-cavalcanti>

Score and Instrumental parts can be obtained by writing <secondeveningart@sbcglobal.net>

Le Testament: Paroles de Villon, 1926 and 1933 performance editions by Ezra Pound, Robert Hughes and Margaret Fisher, eds., edition of 200, 270 pp, pb, 2008  ISBN 978-0-9728859-4-2 list $85.00

    Double volume: essays, facsimile pages, 2 engraved opera scores

    Part I. The Paris, 1926 Salle Pleyel chamber concert of excerpts from the opera.

    Part II. Pound's 1933 final revisions for a complete opera.

Rental parts available by writing to <secondeveningart@sbcglobal.net>

Libraries and individuals wishing to purchase books at a discount after January 1, 2016 may visit the publisher's website www.secondeveningart.com and follow the links

Book/scores can be purchased through the Other Minds webstore. Support Other Minds and American new music with your purchase: <http://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/books-etc/products/le-testament-paroles-de-villons> (ignore the "Sold Out" listing and insist on your copy / we've just restocked their shelves)

Le Testament is Pound's first opera edited by George Antheil, to a poem of the same name by Francois Villon (1461). This recording was made at the Fantasy Studios in Berkeley following the world premiere of the complete opera at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley, California, conducted by Robert Hughes and performed by The San Francisco Opera's Western Opera Theatre. Philip Booth as Villon, John Duykers as Ythier, Dorothy Barnhouse as Heaulmiere, Sandra Bush as Villon's Mother and Lawrence Cooper as Bozo. 50 minutes.

Le Testament, the complete opera by Ezra Pound on audio CD, digitally-remastered from the historic 1972 Fantasy Records LP (now out of print) and set in a 6-panel digipak with drawings by Ariel for the 1971 world premiere by San Francisco Opera's Western Opera Theater.

Th audio CD is available for $21.00 through Other Minds webstore. Support Other Minds and American new music with your purchase: <http://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/more-cds/products/ezra-pound-le-testament>
   
REVIEWS:

    Richard Taruskin on Ezra Pound's first opera Le Testament: "...a modernist triumph..." (New York Times 27 July 2003)

    "[is] fresh and fascinating...No one...is claiming that Pound belongs in the pantheon of great composers, but this idiosyncratic body of work proves to be full of rare pleasures and well worth hearing" (Joshua Rosenblum, Opera News, August 2003)

    "Of all the poets who've dabbled in music, Ezra Pound was the most ambitious... the performances have a strange intensity, like a cross between Carmina Burana and Diamanda Galas....There's a passion in this music which is compelling" (Ivan Hewett, BBC Music Magazine, August 2003)

    "The music was not quite a musician's music, though it may well be the finest poet's music since Thomas Campion....It bore family resemblances unmistakable to the Socrate of Satie; and its sound has remained in my memory" (Virgil Thomson in Virgil Thomson)

    "Of especial interest is the extract from Pound’s incomplete third opera Collis O Heliconii; a setting of Catullus which has never been heard until this recording." (Charles Mundye, Poetry Nation, Nov-Dec 2003)

    "This is an outstanding release with high artistic, historical, and entertainment value..." (Robert Kirzinger, FanFare Magazine, Mar-Apr 2004)

A video by Fisher's performing company MAFISHCO to celebrate Lou Harrison's centennial, with link. This 1.5 min work is set to a jahla by Harrison composed in 1989 (from Pedal Sonata). <http://mafishco.com/HarrisonCentennial.htm> The video screened Feb 19 at Pacific Film Archive/Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, 4:30 PM) and at Mills College (Oakland, 7:00 PM) on April 15, 2017, at Artists' Rendezvous on October 24, 2017 as part of the Lou Harrison San Francisco Bay Area-wide tribute. The video is now published on Open Space Web Magazine (links below).

A 2nd MAFISHCO video set to a jahla, with link, this one 2.5 min, to celebrate the Lou Harrison centennial year. <http://mafishco.com/HarrisonCentennial.htm> This jahla was composed by Harrison in 1972. Screenings at Mills College April 15, 2017 and at the Artists Rendezvous October 24, 2017 as part of the Harrison centenery events. Now published on Open Space Web Magazine (link below).

A few images from studio installation and rehearsal for Color Theory. The robot heron is operated remotely through a wifi network using the app AVD-Rack. Color Theory is based on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's account of how he first conceived a theory of complementary colors. Robot's demo reel  <https://vimeo.com/950213337>

In conjunction with the summer exhibit, Jerry Carniglia: A Tribute, the Museo Italo Americano together with the Western Chapter of the Italian American Studies Association will host a film and panel discussion led by Anthony Pinata on Carniglia’s life and work to highlight the artist’s background, philosophy, and working methods.

The Museum is located in the Fort Mason Center for the Arts, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, CA.

Round Table Discussion of Bay Area housing cooperatives.

The topic of artist housing (and cooperative housing in general) is on our minds as the Bay Area arts community copes with the real estate shortage and with safety in alternative approaches to conventional spaces. We propose coming together to discuss housing needs and identify solutions in an exchange of ideas that will hopefully point to actions that can be taken and resources that can be mined. We have interrupted our series of artists' presentations to address this crisis.

This event has already taken place. Molly Bentley of SETI Institute, exec. producer of Big Picture Science radio show also joined the panel. The event included a gallery show of Pino Masnata's graphic poems in conversation with Charles Amirkhanian's graphic music scores. This announcement will be removed in a week.

August 4, 2016 at 6:30 PM
San Francisco Italian Cultural Institute
Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco
Admission: Free!  RSVP : 415-788-7142

Roberto Masnata of Stradella, Italy will speak about his father Pino Masnata (1901-1968), surgeon, avant-garde poet, radio artist, and the 1933 Futurist National Poet Champion. He enjoyed a unique position within the Futurist movement as trusted friend, amanuensis, and physician of F. T. Marinetti, the founder of Futurism. Masnata is best known as co-author with Marinetti of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto. The Manifesto proposes a new art of RADIA that will construct architectural space from silences, seduce listeners with the vibrations of a diamond, and stage combat zones in the ether where noise from one locale battles noise from another. Masnata’s collaboration with composer Carmine Guarino produced one of the first operas written specifically for radio, Il cuore di Wanda (Wanda’s Heart), broadcast in 1931.

There's more! Poet Andrew Joron will open the program with a demonstration of the theremin, an electronic music instrument invented by Léon Theremin in 1920. The performer creates sound by means of two radio frequency oscillators, without touching the instrument.

    After the talk: a round table discussion with Roberto Masnata; Andrew Joron; composer and sound poet Charles Amirkhanian, Artistic director of Other Minds; and Margaret Fisher, translator of Pino Masnata's RADIA, a Gloss of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto. A reception follows.

Part I: Pound in Venice, 1908, to prepare and publish his first volume of poems, A Lume Spento (With tapers quenched)
Part II: Pound's Italian Cantos 72 & 73: the uses of dramatic forms, the play on words, traditore/traduttore
Part III: Pound returns to Venice, the funeral service at San Giorgio Maggiore, with tapers lit, the tombstone at San Michele, programs in Italy celebrating Pound's poetry and music

... The performance history of Pound&#x27;s operas of course began with Pound and the professional musicians who ... Kitaj, RB Kitaj, Marilyn McCully, Brian Mulliner, Penny Niland, Maggi Payne, and the editors at Paideuma. ... Ezra Pound&#x27;s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals. ...

First published: BLAST, 2 (July 1915). Source: Ezra Pound&#39;s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, 2: 95. Parody: Ancient Music is modelled after Sumer Is Icumen in, a medieval “rota,” the equivalent of a modern round and the simplest form of a canon for voices. Article provides graphic image of source manuscript for Sumer Is Icumen In, graphic image of modern music notation for the poem, links to audio files, and a review of censorship of the poem in England.

Pino Masnata, co-author of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, wrote a second work, “Il Nome Radia,” to explain the first.1 Masnata’s gloss securely places the Radio Manifesto within the context of “new” physics—what Kenneth Ford calls “the physics of the very small” and “the physics of the very fast.”2 The intent, however, is nothing less than to conquer the infinite cosmos with the acoustic art of radio and the exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum by Futurism’s “new man.”

This chapter assesses the condition of Italian radio in the 1920s and 30s, examines the influence of broadcast programs and policies on Futurist radio output, and asks to what degree Italian radio may have embraced, at least partially, Futurist aesthetics. Many key elements of Futurist aesthetics matched the innate qualities of the new radio technology; vice versa, radio contained many features that held the promise of an ideal Futurist medium. The Futurist Radio Manifesto, signed by F. T. Marinetti and Pino Masnata, temporarily redirected the Futurist embrace of technology from machines to the physics and metaphysics of radio waves. The ‘wireless imagination’ gave birth to the artista in liberta (the artist freed from the constraints of human perception). The goal was a synthesis of art and science that strove for a new spectrum of sensibilities located in the immateriality of the world. Historians have accorded the Futurists unqualified recognition for their influence over Italian radio. This study challenges that point of view by examining the context and problems associated with Futurist radio broadcasts in Italy. Politics and economics affected radio institutions in ways that did not accord Futurism the chance to contribute to the new medium in the manner Marinetti was keen to do. The programmes paid an occasional tribute to Futurism but, for the most part, marginalized it. And Radiorario, Italian radio’s official programme listing guide, foiled any attempt by the Futurists to dominate a cultural discussion of technology.

The Recovery of Ezra Pound&amp;#39;s Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii (poems by Catullus and Sappho) Ezra Pound and Margaret Fisher, edition of 200, 180 pp, pb, 2005, ISBN 978-0-9728859-3-5 list $47.00 Part I. Analysis of Pound&amp;#39;s musical treatment of his favored poems of antiquity: Catullus carmen LXI (&amp;quot;Collis O Heliconii&amp;quot;) and Sappho, fragment 1 (&amp;quot;Poikilothron&amp;#39; athanat&amp;#39; Aphrodita&amp;quot;). Part II. The engraved performance edition for violin and voice includes excerpts from the 2 principal arias, 3 incidental numbers, a transcription of Pound&amp;#39;s unfinished translation of carmen LXI and Pound&amp;#39;s scenario for his dramatic setting of the Catullan poem. Did you know? The Sappho aria has never been performed. It requires a mezzo soprano with expressive voice and minimum of vibrato. The lyrics are in Greek. Do you know a professional singer for this world premiere? Did you know? The Catullus aria has been sung publicly only once, by David Varnum. It was recorded on the Other Minds audio CD Ego scriptor cantilenae: The music of Ezra Pound, now out of print! If you can find a used copy, Lucky you! Libraries and individuals wishing to purchase books at a discount after January 1, 2016 may visit the publisher&amp;#39;s website &amp;lt;http://www.secondeveningart.com and follow the links&amp;gt;&amp;quot; Otherwise, you may purchase books at Other Minds webstore and support new music in the process: &amp;lt;http://webstore.otherminds.org/collections/books-etc/products/sea-collis-o&amp;gt;

Pino Masnata, Il nome radia e altri scritti futuristi a cura di Margaret Fisher e Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro Bologna, Edizioni Pendragon, 271 p. Il volume propone per la prima volta in italiano un documento fondamentale per capire l’estetica del futurismo, il commento di Pino Masnata (1901-1968) al celebre Manifesto futurista della radio (La radia), pubblicato da Filippo Tommaso Marinetti e Masnata nel 1933, che costituisce ancora oggi un testo di riferimento nella storia del mezzo radi..

First published: BLAST, 2 (July 1915). Source: Ezra Pound&#39;s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, 2: 95. Parody: Ancient Music is modelled after Sumer Is Icumen in, a medieval “rota,” the equivalent of a modern round and the simplest form of a canon for voices. Article provides graphic image of source manuscript for Sumer Is Icumen In, graphic image of modern music notation for the poem, links to audio files, and a review of censorship of the poem in England.

The subject of human gesture is traditionally approached as a signification system, coded by isolated body movements (spontaneous and predictable) or varieties of sign language (learned and unpredictable). In 1976 I wanted to create a gestural dance technique with analogies to structures of language. My goal was a proto-language of the body that could be precise and modular, like verbal and written language, yet enjoy the flexibility of shifting contours and unfixed connotations, as are found in text sound poetry. The term cellular refers to the choreographer’s task of simultaneously tracking and influencing the phenomenon of movement at the level of neural stimuli passing from one cluster of body cells to another. The hyperbole of the term cellular as I have used it allows for the imagined potential of the autonomic nervous system to undergo a degree of voluntary control in the choreography of movement, to complement the potential refinement of skills developed through the somatic nervous system. More practically speaking, cellular movement is the individual dancer’s counterpart to the mutable ‘contact point’ of its predecessor, contact improvisation. Both approaches to movement have roots in phenomenology. Cellular movement, making use of multiple and overlapping scripts for either a choreographed or improvised event, tests the nature of the visible world for divisibility and, in doing so, models a link between phenomenology and deconstruction in art (Camp 2004: 92ff). The rhythmic drive from one gesture helps to define the shape, quality, direction, elevation, speed, etc. of the next. But that drive itself is willfully subjected to scripts favoring high levels of unpredictability. Isolated gestures may be connotative, but what they connote is divorced from an original signifying system and married to the expressionism of the cellular movement process itself. Cellular movement uses scripts that direct the light flux, the shared medium of dancer and viewer, to alter the viewer’s encounter with the human body through unpredictable figuration. Plying the gaze of the viewer as an integral component to the choreography, cellular movement places that gaze out of sync with the viewer’s familiar and comfortable rhythms of processing input, so that the gestural figurations, while precisely articulated and therefore seemingly recognizable, do not exhibit known relations. If unrecognizable, how do we perceive these figurations? My gesture laboratory hasn’t yet compiled the data to supply the answer. No one knows better than the dancer-turnedphotographer how and when to capture the defining moment and/or apex of a movement phrase – the landing of the dancer’s weight, the turn, the uplift, the pause in midair, the moment of maximum torsion, the extended or broken line or the entanglement of lines. The photograph then offers up a semiotic reading of that moment through symbol, allegory, narration or pictorial unity (or disunity), as seen by the photographer.

Publikationsansicht. 30898106. Recovery of Ezra Pound&#39;s third opera Collis O Heliconii : the transmission of history through song / (2003). Fisher, Margaret. Abstract. Thesis (Ph. D. in Performance Studies)--University of California, Berkeley, Spring 2003.. ...

The Recovery of Ezra Pound&#39;s Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii (poems by Catullus and Sappho) Ezra Pound and Margaret Fisher, edition of 200, 180 pp, pb, 2005, ISBN 978-0-9728859-3-5 list $47.00 Part I. Analysis of Pound&#39;s musical treatment of his favored poems of antiquity: Catullus carmen LXI (&quot;Collis O Heliconii&quot;) and Sappho, fragment 1 (&quot;Poikilothron&#39; athanat&#39; Aphrodita&quot;). Part II. The engraved performance edition for violin and voice includes excerpts from the 2 principal arias, 3 incidental numbers, a transcription of Pound&#39;s unfinished translation of carmen LXI and Pound&#39;s scenario for his dramatic setting of the Catullan poem. Did you know? The Sappho aria has never been performed. It requires a mezzo soprano with expressive voice and minimum of vibrato. The lyrics are in Greek. Do you know a professional singer for this world premiere? Did you know? The Catullus aria has been sung publicly only once, by David Varnum. It was recorded...

Pino Masnata, co-author with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti of the 1933 Futurist Radio Manifesto, wrote a forty-four page explanation of the manuscript in 1935, connecting many ideas expressed in the manifesto to the “new” physics of the twentieth century—Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity, breakthroughs in the understanding of cellular structure, and the development of quantum physics. Masnata’s gloss, archived with the Marinetti Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, dispenses with the cult of the machine to suggest the “metallization of the body” could result from advances in molecular biology. Masnata distinguishes the new acoustic art of radio from the other arts, positing it as an art of infinite space and time. This article consists of a background and introduction to Masnata’s manuscript, including occasional analysis or interpretation of the significance of the scientific references to the poetry of the Radio Manifesto. A listing of the section headings of the manuscript with a very brief synopsis of each follows at the end.

This paper continues the discussion begun in the Make It New 1:1 regarding Ezra Pound's setting of Guido Cavalcanti's canzone "Donna mi prega" to music, and his use of music as commentary on Cavalcanti's canzone. The setting is the centerpiece of Pound's second opera titled "Cavalcanti." After completing the opera, he attempted a second translation of "Donna Mi Prega" which is included in Canto XXXVI of "The Cantos."

Pound’s musical setting of Guido Cavalcanti’s philosophical canzone Donna mi prega (late thirteenth century) richly rewards the scholar interested in Pound’s application of personae, medievalism and rhythmic proportions to his poetry as well as the scholar interested in methods of translation and criticism. The canzone would become the centerpiece of Pound’s second opera Cavalcanti, composed between 1931 and 1933. Written for radio, the opera emphasizes the hearing (vs. the reading) of Cavalcanti’s poetic and philosophic oeuvre. The opera engages with medieval philosophy, at times humorously, as when Pound references Averroës in connection with the Donna mi prega aria. Of all the arias in the opera, Donna mi prega best demonstrates Pound’s conclusion that music composition may function as literary criticism. The paper includes an audio link and these examples: a graphic rendering of Cavalcanti’s sonic scaffolding (example 1); rhythmic transcriptions  or phrasal durations extrapolated from Pound’s reading of Cavalcanti’s poem (example 2); and the musical values Pound assigned his aria, “Donna mi prega” (example 3).

"A brief history of the operas"
copyright 2003 Margaret Fisher
This essay is now available as an e-book on amazon.com
Title "The Echo of Villon in Ezra Pound's Music and Poetry"
See the link below.
Best viewed on computer with kindle app, or on Kindle or IPad

With two acts of the second opera Cavalcanti completed in early August 1932 and forwarded for comment to Agnes Bedford, Pound reminded her of “the Latin song 25 minutes long, which you once considered pleasantly impractical. Got that to write now” (Letter. August 3, 1932. Quoted in EPRO 276 n54). The “25 minutes” probably refers to a musical setting of the entire Catullus 61 that begins Collis O Heliconii and not to the length of an opera. Pound set 14 of the 47 strophes of poem 61 to music. He also set the first five strophes and part of the sixth of Sappho’s Poem 1, which begins with “Poikilothron’ Athanat’ Aphrodite,” to be sung in classical Greek in an original non-Western musical idiom.1 The composer’s music scores for each aria end abruptly. No sketches for the remaining strophes have been found. This article discusses Pound’s treatment of the Sappho aria.

Ezra Pound’s last and most advanced work for solo violin is based upon the rhythms, the tonal leadings of the words when spoken and the sestina structure of Dante’s Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra [To the short day and its great arc of shadow], part of a group of poems called Rime Petrose because they are addressed to a lady assigned the epithet Petra [rock].

Two of Pound’s earlier violin works, Sestina: Altaforte and Sestina in Homage, use the sestina for a musical scaffolding (with Sestina in Homage, no text has been identified). Al poco giorno demonstrates an entirely different approach from the earlier two works. It was most likely composed in 1932 between the completion of the Sonate Ghuidonis, related to the Cavalcanti opera, and the start of a third opera, Collis O Heliconii.

Audio links and graphics are included in the online article.

First published: BLAST, 2 (July 1915). Source: Ezra Pound's Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, 2: 95.

Parody: Ancient Music is modelled after Sumer Is Icumen in, a medieval “rota,” the equivalent of a modern round and the simplest form of a canon for voices.

Article provides graphic image of source manuscript for Sumer Is Icumen In, graphic image of modern music notation for the poem, links to audio files, and a review of censorship of the poem in England.

This essay proposes a link between Ezra Pound's recovery of voices of the past and his recondite theory of great bass. It briefly introduces Pound's musical settings of texts of Villon, Cavalcanti, Sordello, and Catullus in two complete operas and one unfinished one; reviews Pound's use of music as a form of criticism; and investigates how Pound uses the voice to model his ideas about time, genius, and the continuity of poetic influence. I identify and analyze several examples of Pound's application of great bass in the music and show how that application differs from one opera to the next as Pound, like his contemporary Henry Cowell, theorized the relationship of rhythm to tone through overtone ratios. I argue that Pound adopted the tritone and tritonic ratios as "permanent" symbols for genius and for the potential of a reciprocity between genius that would move fluidly, bi-directionally, through time. Pound used opera to push the allegorical potential of oral performance into a metaphysical dimension: voice is not only free to move from one body to another, in doing so, it escapes mortality.

"

An overview of the music of Ezra Pound held by the Beinecke Library in their collections of American Literature YCAL 43, 53, 54 and others.

See Amazon's Search Inside the Book function on their website. Then do purchase this archival, philological publication with 3 essays and extensive editor's notes that provide context to Pound's compositional output in relation to his poetry. After Amazon, visit www.ezrapoundmusic.com and locate the discount order form for purchase. Enjoy!

An updated final section to this finding aid catalogues miscellaneous music exercises that appear throughout the Beinecke's collection of papers related to the music of Ezra Pound. It includes George Antheil's lesson on the tritone - subject of the upcoming music column for Make It New 2.1 (2015), available through www.ezrapoundsociety.org by subscription.

"The subject of human gesture is traditionally
approached as a signification system, coded by
isolated body movements (spontaneous and
predictable) or varieties of sign language
(learned and unpredictable). In 1976 I wanted to
create a gestural dance technique with
analogies to structures of language. My goal
was a proto-language of the body that could be
precise and modular, like verbal and written
language, yet enjoy the flexibility of shifting
contours and unfixed connotations, as are found
in text sound poetry. The term cellular refers to
the choreographer’s task of simultaneously
tracking and influencing the phenomenon of
movement at the level of neural stimuli passing
from one cluster of body cells to another. The
hyperbole of the term cellular as I have used it
allows for the imagined potential of the
autonomic nervous system to undergo a degree
of voluntary control in the choreography of
movement, to complement the potential
refinement of skills developed through the
somatic nervous system. More practically
speaking, cellular movement is the individual
dancer’s counterpart to the mutable ‘contact
point’ of its predecessor, contact improvisation.
Both approaches to movement have roots in
phenomenology. Cellular movement, making
use of multiple and overlapping scripts for
either a choreographed or improvised event,
tests the nature of the visible world for divisibility
and, in doing so, models a link between
phenomenology and deconstruction in art, "