New Periodicals

This semiannual column selectively lists newly issued periodicals; describes their objectives, formats, and contents; and provides information about special issues, title and format changes, mergers, and cessations. The following resources were frequently consulted when assembling this column: International Index to Music Periodicals (IIMP; http://music.chadwyck.com), Music Index (MI; http://www.ebscohost.com), RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, (RILM; http://www.rilm.org), OCLC Worldcat and Ulrich’s Periodical Directory (http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/). All Web sites were accessed on 25 May 2011 unless otherwise specified.

New Titles

Opera Musicologica. Edited by Olga Manulkina. Saint Petersburg State Conservatory. Quarterly. No. 2 [4] (2010). ISSN 2075-4078. Print format. Abstracts and reviews access (PDF format): http://www.conservatory.ru/node/1474. Subscription or inquiries, including cost information for international subscribers: Opera Musicologica, Teatralnaya Pl., 3, Saint Petersburg, 190000, Russia. E-mail: opera_musicologica@conservatory.ru. Online access available by subscription through the Russian Scientific Electronic Library: http://elibrary.ru/title_items.asp?id=29076.

Opera Musicologica is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal published since 2009 by the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory. It contains articles, reviews, and transcriptions of documents in Russian, with English and Russian abstracts. Four issues have so far been published, and these are numbered with a year and issue number as well as with a through-numbered issue number in brackets (i.e. the second issue of 2010 is 2010 No. 2[4]).

About half of each issue is dedicated to peer-reviewed articles. These range widely in approach and topic, and include analytical, historical, organological, and philosophical explorations of Russian and European works and composers. Eight of the eighteen articles so far to have appeared treat Russian composers and topics. These contributions vary in theme and approach, from canonical topics such as Anna Bulycheva’s exploration of the function of song in the operas of Glinka, Verstovsky, Tchaikovsky, and others (2009 No. 2[2], 28–59) to Evgenia Khazdan’s investigation of the collaboration between folklorist Beregovsky and poet Itzik Feffer in the 1901 Yidishe Folkslider mit Notn (2009 No. 2[2], 78–94). In the most recent issue, Valery Glivinsky situates the aesthetics of Stravinsky’s late works in the information technology of the 1950s and 60s and Vsevolod Kirpichnikov investigates Skriabin’s organization of musical material and his use of the so-called “Prometheus chord” (2010 No. 2 [4], 41–57 and 58–68). So far only one article has dealt with an overtly political Russian topic: Yekaterina Vlasova’s essay on the propagandistic art of early Bolshevik music organizations (2010 No. 1[3], 54–73) which includes the previously unpublished first version of the declaration issued in 1919 by the music department of the People’s Commissariat for Education (p. 56–8).

Several contributions stem from archival and musical sources housed in Saint Petersburg. Vyacheslav Kartsovni’s article in the first issue takes codicological examination of a Petersburg source for Guido’s Micrologus as the point of departure for an exploration of the treatise’s cultural roles (2009 No. 1[1], 6–31). In issue [2] Philip Gossett writes about a Donizetti autograph housed in the conservatory library where Gondi’s part in Maria di Rohan is notated for mezzo-soprano (2009 No. 2[2], 5–27). And in the most recent issue, Natalia Braginskaya discusses editions of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and Les Troyens that once belonged to Fyodor Stravinsky, also housed in the conservatory library (2010 No. 2 [4], 21–40).

Among European composers and topics discussed in Opera Musicologica, Bach is foremost, with three articles dedicated to analytical and organological issues in his music: Kira Yuzhak writes on duets from Clavierübung III (2009 No. 1[1], 83–100), Mikhail Saponov on the use of the corno da caccia in the Mass in B minor (2010 No 1[3], 5–17), and Mikhail Mishchenko contributes a “Melosophical essay” on the melodic and structural significance of the B–A–C–H motif (2010 No. 1[3], 18–35). There are also articles on Berio’s Sinfonia (Nastasia Khruscheva in issue [1]), Poulenc’s Sept Répons des Ténèbres...