57
votes
Accepted
What exactly is the US national anthem?
There is no "exactly".
First, one minor clarification: the bill itself actually passed Congress in 1930 (April 21st), but wasn't signed into law until March 1st of 1931. What you linked ...
- 122k
19
votes
Accepted
Why did Joseph Goebbels allow an all-Jewish Orchestra to exist and perform in Berlin from 1938 to 1941?
The short answer is that the orchestra served as a useful propaganda tool both at home and abroad, helped the Nazi regime achieve their initial goal of seperating Jews from German society and culture, ...
- 108k
15
votes
Did ancient/medieval armies have music/chants to march to?
As Historynet's article The Music of War notes,
Music has been an integral part of warfare and the soldier’s life
since the dawn of history.... The function of music in war has always
been ...
- 108k
14
votes
Accepted
Did the medieval Europe have an active "lowbrow" culture?
Lowbrow culture have always existed in human society, they're just not necessarily that well preserved in the historical record, or in modern popular consciousness. Jokes about sex, farts, penises, ...
- 97.6k
14
votes
Accepted
Did "music pendants" exist in the 1800s/early 1900s?
Yes, this is one of the incarnations of the 'music box' or 'musical box', and the Wikipedia article has some information about them:
The original snuff boxes were tiny containers which could fit into ...
- 1,553
10
votes
Accepted
Do we have any authentic Native American flute music from the 18th century or earlier?
Answer
Sound recordings prior to the mid 19th century are anachronistic, however sound recordings since then of authentic music reproductions may be available, due to the existence of transcriptions ...
- 6,130
9
votes
Accepted
Is there folk knowledge associating late breastfeeding with low intelligence and/or gullibility?
However one interprets "late-breast-fed fools", Sixto Rodriguez is unlikely to be referring to any folk knowledge, nor to any widely held belief. Poverty and / or class prejudice are more likely ...
- 108k
9
votes
Accepted
Has any music act ever topped the Beatles in sales?
SHORT ANSWER
Has any music act ever topped the Beatles in sales?
There is probably only one likely contender - Elvis Presley - but it is highly unlikely that we'll ever know for sure.
One problem is ...
- 108k
8
votes
Did the medieval Europe have an active "lowbrow" culture?
It's hard to find something that is truly lowbrow from the Middle Ages. That's because recording things in writing was expensive and done by the clergy or people financed by the elite, who would ...
- 676
8
votes
Would a common person in the 18th century have heard Mozart's music during his lifetime?
Mozart lived in Modern Europe (died 1791, soon after the French Revolution); not in medieval, obscure times. Mozart's music was sold (print music sheets), adapted, re-arranged, played by memory, ...
- 2,729
7
votes
Do we know what ancient Roman music sounded like?
Not really.
Although there are suggestions that the Romans borrowed the Greek notation system we don't have any complete pieces of music written in that from Rome to work with (that I know of anyway) ...
- 913
7
votes
Do we have any records of what pirates during the golden age of piracy would actually sing?
The Wikipedia article has plenty of links to real-life sea shanties.
If I remember right, the issue with Hollywood songs is that they’re sung too fast to be actual work-speed, but sea shanties in ...
- 464
6
votes
Did the medieval Europe have an active "lowbrow" culture?
My professional historian girlfriend says,
Canterbury Tales – c.1395
Decameron – completed by 1353, Florence (though I’m fuzzy on the stories, it doesn’t have the reputation that say, the Wife ...
MCW♦
- 34.1k
6
votes
How did ancient Greek musicians tune their instruments?
The tuning fork has only been around since 1711 so there is no way that the ancient Greeks used a tuning fork to tune their instruments.
The tuned musical instruments that we know of from ancient ...
- 323
6
votes
Accepted
Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ever called “Wolfi” or “Wolfie” by his wife?
The obvious place to look would be in the letters from Constanze to her husband. Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, none of these survive.
The letters of Mozart and his family were collected (and ...
- 77.2k
6
votes
Did Brahms really leave Germany because he was dissatisfied with the political realities of that time?
SHORT ANSWER
Brahms most likely based himself in Vienna because of better opportunities there. The political situation in 'Germany' (Hamburg) does not appear to have had any relevance.
DETAILS
...
- 108k
6
votes
What music did a Napoleonic era campaigning soldier hear?
I think that on entering Russia, in full parade, with banners, it was one music, and in the camp in the described situation, it was totally another one. In the second case they simply sang songs that ...
- 7,275
6
votes
Why did Joseph Goebbels allow an all-Jewish Orchestra to exist and perform in Berlin from 1938 to 1941?
Before the decision to kill all the Jews they could reach, the Nazi regime was interested in extracting as much as possible from Jewish-owned assets. It maintained a thin façade of legality, so simply ...
- 32k
6
votes
Did Lisa Chester (Xiola Blue) miss her father's funeral?
Most likely not. Or if she did, it wasn't because of "Three Days".
Several accounts of "Three Days" give the impression that the eponymous weekend was concurrent with Xiola Blue ...
- 97.6k
6
votes
What is the name of this song about taking Cherokee land?
Googled the lyrics, found it to be a traditional song:
https://lyrics.lol/artist/29747-traditional/lyrics/740784-poor-howard
Searching for the title "Poor Howard" found at least one version.
- 1,660
5
votes
Accepted
What did Cosima Wagner mean by coating music?
Short answer:
"Partitur-Überziehung" is a now quirky and archaic expression in German.
"Überziehen" and its variants refer to Cosima's habit of re-drawing or 'inking' Wagner's notations from pencil ...
- 80.8k
5
votes
Accepted
Where can I find pictures of clothing of poor or common male European musicians between 1500 and 1700
For genuinely poor musicians, you probably need to look at street musicians. As the The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music notes,
The relative wealth of musicians is hard to determine, ...
- 108k
5
votes
Accepted
What is the origin of the name Fallopian tubes?
The instrument referred to as 'tuba' in this context was simply the trumpet, rather than the modern instrument named tuba ('tuba' being the Latin word for 'trumpet').
In his book Obseruationes ...
- 77.2k
5
votes
Is there folk knowledge associating late breastfeeding with low intelligence and/or gullibility?
Yes.
Don’t Poison the Baby With Angry Breast Milk Several advice books suggested that mothers could harm their babies by thinking the wrong sorts of thoughts. The Sadlers, husband-and-wife doctors ...
- 80.8k
5
votes
Accepted
Would a common person in the 18th century have heard Mozart's music during his lifetime?
Tickets to the première of the Magic Flute in 1791 were available at the theater's normal prices, which were, when it opened four years earlier, as low as 7 Kreuzer for the gallery. A box seating ...
- 485
4
votes
How accurate is Nietzsche's account of the birth of tragedy?
If the question is indeed not about the part in question that's bracketed out, then well, focusing solely on
tragedy drama, as a practice, emerged from an originally solely-musical chorus. First ...
- 80.8k
4
votes
Who wrote the "Mi General Augusto Pinochet" Song?
There are earlier references to this song, however, the most complete version of this song I was able to find was this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD5nL0Toh7w
It not only includes much ...
4
votes
Is there folk knowledge associating late breastfeeding with low intelligence and/or gullibility?
I suspect it's just a poetic riff on the less well off in society.
I only did some cursory googling (searching for myths, misconceptions, etc.), but I failed to find the slightest trace of hints that ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible