my etude

Quotes from the Testimonials section of various issues of The Etude (people wrote in to praise the magazine or other Presser publications).  I'm using some of these in the thesis.  *Notice they were all written by women.*

At this point in time, after spending at least five years reading this magazine, the last year (or two) formulating this scholarship, and especially the last two months devoted to pulling this document together, these testimonials pretty much sum up my thoughts on the magazine.

"No words can express how much I like The Etude." 

Alvena E. Schroeder (April 1898)

“The Etude is my daily food.  I live and grow on it.” 

Mrs. Lilla Cottrell (October 1901)

"I am a subscriber to The Etude and as time passes I grow more deeply attached to this dear friend."

Mrs. J.A. Rouse (January 1906)

"The Etude is my chief joy.  It is a constant source of help and inspiration."

Lizzie M. Jennings (November 1905)

"The Etude is my constant and daily companion and has been worth its weight in gold in my home study."

Mrs. G.B. Fugitt (July 1908)

“I consider The Etude a most valuable friend, and would not know how to get along without it."

Mrs. J.E. Wickham (October 1902)

As strange as it sounds, this 100+ year old magazine has become a valuable friend for me as well.  It will be a little sad to leave these women behind when the thesis is completed.  I'm certain I'll use the magazine again in my dissertation.  But these women.... it was very nice to unearth them.  The preface to my thesis opens with this quote from Judith Tick: "Obscure women have often tempted me."

And as it seems, so does obscure magazines.

Page count: 140, with conclusions and appendices forthcoming.  Some semi-major cuts might still be a possibility.  But it'll be over 100 pages certainly.  With three weeks before the defense to polish.

I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty proud of it. 

Why Idol is broken

Excuse my brief tangential post.  A complete draft of the thesis finally looms on the horizon, and I'm really happy with the internal chapters at this point.  So let me take a moment to tell you all about the musical phenomenon I've had the [guilty] pleasure of watching since it's inception: American Idol.

I justified my Idol watching initially because it assisted with my ear training in my undergraduate years.  Idol was looking for pitch perfect singers.  And I had never paid attention to singers being on/off key until Idol came along.  It helped me a great deal to listen to what "worked" and "didn't work" for them.  I literally developed a few of the critical listening skills we teach the non-majors in MUHL1308 from watching every episode of Idol and coming up with my own critique of every performance.

In later years, coincidentally since I began my graduate studies, the buzz word has been "artistry."  Begun with performers like David Cook (and perhaps even earlier with Blake Lewis), Idol quickly became less of a technical singing competition and more about who could rearrange and reinvent well-known pop hits.  I could go on about this for quite a while, and in fact, at some point I hope to write up a conference presentation on the subject matter.  I have an abstract worked up discussing the evolution of Idol's artistry factor, but this season seems to have thrown things off a bit. 

On the night when the new Idol was "crowned," I'd like to share with you visually exactly why Idol has derailed.  What has caused Idol to "jump the shark" (as I'm hearing that phrase more and more.)  What has proven, to me at least, the sole reason why Idol is officially broken.
It's not judging necessarily.  It's not producers heavy handedness or poor themed weeks (and poor guest artists and mentors-- again, another rant best saved for another post).  It's not even bad contestants.  It's because of the voting public.  The tween girls have latched onto this show, and forever more we are stuck with them.  And their predictable favorites.  

Consider this the "year of the girls": a year in which amazing female talent left so early in the competition, their chances of Idol impacting their careers is now slim to none.  All because of voters' lack of interest.

And in the end, who won?
Not a female folksy bluesy dread-locked songbird from Ohio (the 21st century Janice Joplin, without the dependence on Southern Comfort we hope).
Lee Dewyze: A humble, short brown-haired, 20-something year old guy with a mundane job (paint salesman), from the center of America: Mount Prospect Illinois.  

Who won the season before?  Kris Allen: A humble, short brown-haired, 20-something year old guy with a mundane job (shoe salesman), from the center of America: Conway Arkansas.

And the season before that?  David Cook: A humble, short brown-haired, 20-something year old guy with a mundane job (bartender), from the center of America: Blue Springs Missouri.

All winners are sold as being genuinely "nice guys," average American kids.  They play guitar; they change up arrangements.  They aren't technical vocal virtuosos.  But they sing with passion.  They had Idol "moments" on the show.  They grew as the competition went on, and really they flew under the radar for many weeks before outlasting earlier fan favorites.  

We could argue shades of distinction.  Cook in a way originated this trend: he was arguably the most innovative with arrangements.  Dewyze the least of the three.  Cook was more rock; Allen more folk.  In the end, those who stood out from the crowd (Adam Lambert, Crystal Bowersox) lost.  They didn't appeal to the wider Idol voting public. 

How do we fix this?  I don't know that there's a way, outside of overdone contestant profiling (no sir, you don't go to Hollywood, you act too much like the last three winners).  Can we change the way votes are casted (one call/text per phone line)?  The method in which the top 12 are selected?  Do we say no one under 18 can vote (age discrimination, I am fully aware).  Is there anything really that can be done?  I say let's figure out a way to allow for something different to come forward and shine. Maybe I'm too idealistic.

But we must realize these images above-- that's what the overwhelming voting public wants.  Is that a good or a bad thing?  

*Disclaimer: though I propose this homogenization of the Idol winners, I must state for the record that I am a huge David Cook fan.  Drove 4 hours round trip to go to his concert by myself.  I don't want to discredit what he did for Idol, or for that matter what Kris or even Lee did.  [I'd argue that David Cook helped the show to keep going this long; his constant reinventions of songs reinvented the modus operandi for Idol contestants.] 

I think that this is the reason why Simon is moving on, why ratings are going down.  As much as we love seeing this guy break down when he enters his paint store realizing the surreal nature of those "home visits" and how dramatically his life has changed in 6 months, the show has lost its ability to find new different talent.  Sure, these three guys are exactly "what the show is all about," but they can't be the only thing that the show is about.

Note: As 19E tends to take down Idol videos as soon as they are uploaded, below is a list of performances that I linked in this post, so that you can do a youtube search if/when it becomes necessary:
David Cook: "Always Be My Baby"
Blake Lewis: "You Give Love a Bad Name"
Katelyn Epperly: "The Scientist"
Lilly Scott: "I Fall to Pieces"
Didi Benami: "Terrified"
Crystal Bowersox: "Me and Bobby McGee"
Lee Dewyze: "The Boxer"
Kris Allen: "Heartless"

plea for help

I have spent hundreds of hours in numerous libraries: in front of digital scanners, microfilm machines, and at tables with The Etude sprawled out in front of me.  I've worked to get digital copies of the magazine accumulated.  In the end, I almost have a complete set from 1883-1924 digitized to the best of my abilities, mostly in a jpeg or pdf format.
But through all my insistence with inter-library loan, my drive to go to as many surrounding libraries as possible (and even Philadelphia) to see these issues, I have come up missing in one area.  My goal was to have record of every graphic cover printed from 1900-1926 for purposes of my thesis-- to show which women were featured, how and why, etc.

I cannot find the following cover art.  I've requested multiple versions from many libraries, and these covers appear to be lost for the moment.  If anyone has digital copies, or just know what's on the cover, please help a girl out.  Four covers is all I lack.

January 1900
June 1902
July 1903
September 1903

Many thanks in advance.

ouch

Just found this hidden in August 1901 Etude (from Musical Items, pg 279).

Mrs. H. J. Sayler, of Philadelphia, submitted to an extraordinary surgical operation in order to reduce the width of the tips of the fingers of his left hand, which were too wide to make perfect intonation of the semitones in violin-playing.  A diamond-shaped piece was cut out of the finger near the tip of the flesh drawn together by stitches.  He expects to go to Germany for three years' course of study when the wounds are healed.


The Etude actually suggested a very painful operation for pianists so that they could play fast passages more accurately (see here for more details on the procedure).  That operation was, in fact, undergone by both Theodore Presser and one of his writers James Huneker, in the mid1880s while attending a music teachers' conference.  But this thing above might just be even more awfully painful.

covers

I frequently use cover songs in my teaching, usually at the first of the semester.  Students are accustomed to persons "covering" songs- reworking a tune to make it their own.  So I introduce typical covers where little changes and then the more absurd ones (ex: "Hot in Here" original and cover).  It helps them to understand specific musical elements that are different and those which remain the same in a context that they are very familiar.  Overall, they find that tempos sometimes are altered, instrumentation most often, rarely form, sometimes melody and genre.

Now the question of the evening: what to do with this one!



There are no words to describe the sheer amazingness of this.