Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 August 31

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August 31

No famous Portuguese composers?

Is there any historiographical reason or theory for why Portugal has not produced any composers of remarkable stature? Even outside of Italy, Germany France etc., most European countries have at least one big proponent who has had continent-wide or international influence (Enescu in Romania, Grieg in Norway, Sibelius in Finland, for instance) but I've always been surprised to find that the same is not true of Portugal (as far as I understand, that is). I'm vaguely aware of some Portuguese practitioners of Renaissance polyphony, and some troubadour-like composers (Galician-Portuguese lyric) as well, but no figures stand out from these tradition as especially notable. Aza24 (talk) 07:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, there's Category:Portuguese composers, although I agree no names on that list stand out particularly. --Viennese Waltz 07:51, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

See also Music of Portugal#Classical composers. Interestingly, if you widen your search to Portuguese-speaking composers, i.e. Category:Brazilian composers, there are many more. From that category and its subcats I have at least some familiarity with Sérgio Assad, Luiz Bonfá, João Gilberto, Radamés Gnattali, Camargo Guarnieri, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Francisco Mignone, Ernesto Nazareth, Jaime Ovalle, Octávio Pinto, Baden Powell (guitarist), and Heitor Villa-Lobos. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It might be at least partly due to socioeconomic reasons. Our article on the economic history of Portugal says,

Despite its vast colonial possessions, Portugal's economy declined relative to other advanced European economies from the 17th century and onward, which the study attributes to the domestic conditions of the Portuguese economy...By the late 19th century, the country's resources were exhausted by its overstretched empire, which was now facing unprecedented competition. Portugal had one of the highest illiteracy rates in Western Europe, a lack of industrialization, and underdeveloped transportation systems. The Industrial Revolution, which had spread out across several other European countries, creating more advanced and wealthier societies, was almost forgotten in Portugal.

It also says that as recently as 2007 Portugal was described as "a new sick man of Europe". In an economically backward country with high illiteracy there might have been a string of potential Mozarts and Verdis over the centuries who never had any chance of an advanced musical education. --Antiquary (talk) 10:24, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

what is typically meant by "composers of remarkable stature" is "composers of the classical canon". A better question might be "why are the composers of the classical canon mostly germanic males" 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:D8E1:906B:243E:E223 (talk) 11:12, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

"Germanic" like Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Mendelson,Verdi, Granados? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:54, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Stephan, you seem to be confused by the meaning of the word "mostly". I note that the word is not a synonym of "entirely" or "all" or "totally", which you seem to have confused it with. If you like, I can refer you to a dictionary so you can understand the meaning of that word, which may explain why your response is not as contradictory to 2A01.E34's answer as you maybe think that it is. --Jayron32 11:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

There's not a direct causal link between a country's economic wealth and engendering musical talent. Our own United Kingdom was the world superpower for much of the 19th century, but produced no top-tier composers until the end of that era, Sir Arthur Sullivan perhaps being the only exception, some might say. Alansplodge (talk) 12:08, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Certainly national wealth won't produce musical talent of itself, but national poverty may suppress whatever potential musical talent there is. If your parents are too poor to send you to school then you are unlikely to become a famous composer, however huge your innate gift may be. I don't present this as a complete answer to the question but as one factor. --Antiquary (talk) 12:43, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

There is no link between wealth and talent, but neither is there a causal link between talent and popularity, or more to the point of the discussion here, between talent and identification as a member of the "canon". The reason why the classical canon is so overrepresented by composers from Germany and underrepresented by composers from other musical traditions is that the Germans got to define the canon, and often did so in ways that favored their own nationalistic tendencies. this video from YouTuber Adam Neely is provocatively titled (clickbait works. Who knew), but well referenced and well sourced and explains exactly why the modern canon is not only Euro-centric, but even within Europe, heavily over-emphasizes the contributions of German-speaking composers. --Jayron32 13:10, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

European art history in general, and musical history in particular, has long had this tendency of having regional focus areas that act as centers of influence and innovation. It wasn't always the Germans. In the 14th century it was France, then in the 15th century it was the French-Flemish-Burgundian borderlands, then it was Italy, then for quite a while it was France and Italy in competition with each other, with Germany and other areas as artistic backwaters. Then, between the late 18th and 19th centuries, there was a relatively short time span when the German-speaking lands suddenly had a central role. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:25, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Classical music, by which is usually meant the common practice period (and holy SHIT don't get me started on the baggage attached to calling a specific, narrowly defined musical tradition "common practice") and the primary music theory associated with that music is the system of functional harmony of Hugo Riemann et. al. And he was basing the theory on the music of mostly German composers of the common practice period. So, he defines a system of analyzing music based on a narrow musical tradition, and for reasons it becomes the main system by which all western music is analyzed (heck, you can still find people using it in Jazz and Rock analysis, which it was never designed to fit), and wouldn't you know it, the kinds of composers who it says meet the platonic ideal of "good music" are the composers who's music Reimann was analyzing to develop his system. How'd that happen? Other music that was designated as "in the club" was music that also conformed to those standards, and it becomes a self-reinforcing system. --Jayron32 17:44, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

That logic is bordering conspiration theories. Reimann is said to be inheriting from Rameau but the next serious French philosoph in line is Auguste Comte, straight theorician of science. The result in music is people educated along rigid logician constraints who are conditioned escaping them only by the way of caricature, Satie, unless they are willing to merely rely on their historical heritage, Debussy. --Askedonty (talk) 18:27, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

It's not conspiratorial, it's historical. The western canon was established by people who were selecting from a narrow range of music, using quality criteria (i.e. definitions of "good") built within that musical tradition. Is Mozart or Bach or Brahms or Beethoven objectively better than music from Portugal? What does that even mean for art to be "objectively better". There is art that connects with the audience, I suppose, but only the individual audience member can make that assessment for themselves. How do we measure if it is "better"? Why are those composers more worthy of recognition and study, where others are not? Why does the music theory developed expressly to analyze a narrow range of musical traditions get to be the arbiter of quality? --Jayron32 23:11, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

John Cleese was once asked why England never produced any memorable cuisine. He said, "Well, we had an empire to run, you see." Maybe that's also the answer to the relative scarcity of famous English composers. Perhaps the great English composer is to classical music what bangers-and-mash is to classical cuisine. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:04, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Much as I enjoy a good lecture, and despite the fact that English is only my second Germanic language, I'm reasonably aware of the fact that "mostly" does not mean "all" - otherwise, being a logician (hence logical) and a computer scientist (hence lazy), I would, of course, have listed only one counterexample. However, the ease with which counterexamples come to mind strongly suggests that a claim of "mostly" is also overstated. There are, of course many more Italian, Russians and French (where one may need to discuss what "Germanic" is supposed to mean) composers of note, not to mention Czech, Hungarian, and Spanish. German-language composers are strongly overrepresented in the period also known as Wiener Klassik, which may have something to do with the fact that it centred on Vienna, the German-language capital of a major European power. However, the canon does not stop with Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. And, of course, a significant number of German composers are not "Germanic". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:34, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

• The point that you all are missing is that the rating system by which we define "great, memorable composers" was developed by Germans in the 16th-19th centuries and attuned to the kinds of music that were already being played at that time, in that place. Which is to say, when the "platonic ideal" of "good classical music" was established, what it was set as was that very thing that German composers of the baroque-classical-romantic periods were already doing. Which is not to say that the British, or French, or yes even Portuguese, didn't have a well-developed musical tradition. What they didn't have was a well-developed German musical tradition. Insofar as composers from other cultures conform to these standards of German music, maybe they get let into the Pantheon, but the entire system of establishing the Western Canon is built upon a specific type of music theory that was developed with the example of Classical, mostly German music by German musicologists for studying and analyzing German music. Then we look at composers who fit that ideal and adjudge them to be Great. It is not surprise that composers from outside of that tradition are lesser known, since the entire way we judge someone to be worth knowing is basically "do they play German music?" Why don't we know of many Portuguese composers from the era? Not because they weren't writing music worth listening to... (Heck "worth listening to" is itself a problematic phrase. What makes art worthy of consumption? Does it move you as the consumer? Do you connect with it emotionally? Do you enjoy it? Then it is worth is.) But back to the main point: People in Portugal were writing and composing and performing and consuming music all through the period in question. Why don't we know about them? Because the music they were making does not conform to the (entirely arbitrary) rules and standards of early modern German music. The relatively smaller number of Russians and Italians and Brits and French from the period we do know about were creating music that obeys those rules. Obeying rules does not make art worthwhile, necessarily. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine to love the Western canon music, it's not wrong either, but what is a problem is saying that it has a higher value than music from other traditions. We've spent a lot of history insisting so... --Jayron32 15:31, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Some people thought that Thomas Linley the younger might have become a major internationally-known British composer, if he hadn't died at age 22... AnonMoos (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Curious to see this is where my question led the thread. Well, Jayron32 sums up most of it, but its worth noting that modern musicology and music theory in the West are directly built off of theories from Germanic thinkers, leading to a very skewed history of Western music (Alfred Einstein, Guido Adler, Friedrich Chrysander, Johann Nikolaus Forkel etc.). For a while, many musicologists entirely rejected Pre-Baroque music, even figures who are today considered hugely influential. Dahlhaus, for instance, essentially described Josquin and Machaut as irrelevant and largely unremarkable composers. Only recently has the canon firmly extended past German, French, Italian and Russian composers, and is continuing to expand, though at a pace of debatable efficiency. Aza24 (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Looking for an American car tire company: B&S (23 August)

(edit conflict) I see the answer (Swinehart) was found last night, just seven hours before archiving. Well done, everyone! However, some gremlins appear to have crept into the links. The link to the advertisement for Bandes americaines B.&S. should be [1]. The correct 1903 reference is [2]. This [3] refers to Swinehart's patent for the "side-wire, truck and carriage tire." He gained a 50% interest in the Firestone company, which took ownership of the patent. However, the Swinehart Tire and Rubber Co. continued in existence till it filed for bankruptcy during the Depression, although on 10 February 1930 it was announced it would be reopened under new management.

[4] describes the mechanism for collecting the foreign royalties on the patents. The side wire patent was granted on 16 May 1899. This [5] mentions (page 365) that "These tires are made on royalty in France by Establissements J.B. Torrilhon." The final piece of the jigsaw falls into place on page 366, where it is stated that these tyres are 'known in France as "Bandes Amèricaines [sic] B.&S. Torrilhon" - the initials relating to the patentees, Byrider and Swinehart.' This [6] says the side wire tyre is equal to the Kelly tyre, mentioned in the answer. From page 100 we learn that Torrilhon had the rights not only in France, but also in Italy, Portugal and Spain. The final link discusses both the Kelly-Springfield Tire Co. and Swinehart. One anachronism remains to be cleared up, best by someone with a background in automotive engineering. The answer says says "bandes americaines" were already in use in 1887 although the patent was granted in 1899. One explanation which occurs to me is that bandes americaines may mean nothing more than "rubber tyres." 92.23.217.197 (talk) 11:41, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

On the history, there's a usable link at [7]. 92.23.217.197 (talk) 12:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

This notes a William Byrider as an officer of the Swinehart Clincher Tire & Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio. Could be related to our B&S. --Jayron32 18:14, 31 August 2022 (UTC)