Wednesday, January 18, 2023

SearchResearch Challenge (1/18/23): Musicians travels--how did they get from A to B?

 I'm a classical music fan... 

Bach and Chopin, both travellers. But how did they travel?
P/C Wikimedia sources.

... and I've read more than my share of books about the musicians that I admire.  But as you also might expect, I'm curious about some of the details of their lives--little things that make me wonder, How did they do that?  What was their lived experience actually like?  

Most recently, as I was traveling through central Europe, I was thinking about two famous trips made by musicians and trying to imagine what it was like to travel in those days.  Now, of course, you hop on a train and can be across Europe in a matter of hours.  But it hasn't always been thus.  

So I did a bit of SearchResearch on two very famous trips and learned some remarkable things.  Let me pose them to you as an SRS Challenge.  When I answer this, we'll talk about doing historical research like this--what works, and what doesn't.  

Our Challenges for this week are: 

1. Frederic Chopin traveled from Paris to Majorca (also spelled as Mallorca) in 1838 with the hope of improving his health. It was a disaster from beginning to end, but as I was looking at a map of the Mediterranean, I wondered about he got there--it's not exactly around the corner. How did he travel to Majorca?  Obviously he took a ship, but from where? And how?  How long did it take? Now I'd just take a ferry, but was there regularly scheduled service in 1838? How did he travel back when he returned in 1839?  

2. Johann Sebastian Bach also had a famous trip that left me wondering about the details. In 1705 he traveled in the winter from Arnstadt (where he was living and working) to Lübeck to hear Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ at his parish church.  That is also not exactly around the corner. It's nearly 400 km (248 miles)!  How did Bach get from Arnstadt to Lübeck and back?  How long did it take him to travel? 

So many questions!  

My goal in posing this Challenge is to get you to think about how to approach such questions.  Where do you turn first?  How do you dig into the content?  

I hope you'll find this one engaging and fun.  I honestly didn't know the answers, despite all of my reading on the topic. I know now, and it amazes me about what travel was like back then.  Perhaps it will amaze you as well. 

Search on! 


P.S.  I'm trying to get back on schedule by posting this Challenge today.  I'll give the second part of the answer to last week's Challenge later this week.  

27 comments:

  1. Quite interesting, Dr. Russell!

    Starting with Mallorca or Majorca. It's the first time I read the Spanish island name in that form. Therefore, searched [Mallorca or Majorca]

    The name Mallorca derives from the Latin phrase insula maior, which means larger island.

    Also, the why and other interesting facts:

    https://www.nofrills-excursions.com/blog/mallorca-or-majorca/

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    Replies
    1. Work still in progress. And, found with [ Chopin travel Mallorca]

      Google Cultural Institute: The Travel to Mallorca with George Sand

      https://artsandculture.google.com/story/6wWhs4PduchjHQ

      Photos & the how of the travel. Piano stayed in Mallorca. George ended Spiridion.
      Barcelona, monks and much more

      Delete
    2. With [ Chopin vapor Mallorca] in Spanish

      https://musicaenmexico.com.mx/chopin-en-mallorca/amp/

      Site says among the information:

      El vapor “El Mallorquin” salido de Barcelona el día 7 de noviembre de 1838 a las cinco de la tarde y llegado a Palma el 8 a las once y media de la mañana.

      Tras las huellas de Chopin en Mallorca:

      Piano Pleyel, photos of the Museum and more

      https://www.economiadigital.es/tendenciashoy/destinos/huellas-chopin-mallorca-cartuja-valldemossa.html?amp

      NatGeo: https://viajes.nationalgeographic.com.es/a/valldemossa-pueblo-que-se-invento-turismo-mallorca_16576/amp

      Site from Mallorca

      Lee y escucha la carta íntegra más dura que escribió George Sand contra Mallorca

      https://www.diariodemallorca.es/cultura/2018/11/20/lee-escucha-carta-integra-dura-3073715.amp.html

      Photos, another name for the steam boat

      https://fotosantiguasdemallorca.blogspot.com/2011/11/frederic-chopin-y-george-sand-su.html?m=1

      In the results, there's a PDF that tells the story of steam boat in Mallorca

      Delete
    3. Ramón - Nice find in Google Arts & Culture. It really has become such a broad subject resource. It was interesting how positive the spin was on Chopin's stay on the island compared to other accounts I read. I scrolled back up to check on the source.

      Delete
    4. Hi Remmij & everyone else!

      Related to Atmospheric rivers and rains in California

      3 weeks of them, animation

      https://twitter.com/StuOstro/status/1615192098398953473?s=20&t=wC0ulRdlSneldlHHHQyT4g

      From January 18th. The average from December 26 to January 17 in the entire state was 11.47 inches. That is according to another comment 32 trillion gallons of water

      https://twitter.com/NWSWPC/status/1615877380018507777?s=20&t=wC0ulRdlSneldlHHHQyT4g

      Delete
  2. Chopin - I began this search with the information provided in your wording of the questions. It seemed like you were providing the answer within the questions. The word ship makes me think there must be a record of him boarding a ship.
    Search [Frederic Chopin boarded a ship mallorca]. The search engine results page (SERP) listed primarily results for a Polish training ship 'Fryderyk Chopin'.
    Search ["Frederic Chopin" boarded a ship mallorca] with quotes to get most of the answers to your question in the first two results on the SERP.
    A Mallorca Enjoys The Frederic Chopin Festival, We Remember His Island Sojourn With George Sand
    Chopin in Majorca

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  3. Bach - Searched [Johann Sebastian Bach arnstadt to lübeck].
    SERP returned With Bach to the Baltic: a hike through German history
    My attention was caught by the second result TO LÜBECK IN THE STEPS OF J. S. BACH - JSTOR
    My library doesn't offer access to JSTOR. Numerous searches later trying to find different copy of the article. Noticing that it was originally published in the The Musical Times journal, I searched for that. That took me to Internet Archive database of the journal, but does not include 1986. I checked my library resources for EBSCO and Gale master files without success.
    EXCEPTION - searching EBSCO for [Bach arnstadt lübeck] returned Bach Walk Radio 3.
    Google Search [Bach Walk RADIO 3 Roseburg to Lubeck] gave me
    Something of his Art by Horatio Clare – travelogue from Arnstadt to Lübeck, Germany. Clare's work appears to be fictional in nature. I could be getting this wrong.
    I was also able to find the episodes of the radio program and am listening to the Roseburg to Lübeck episode as I write this. I quite like it.
    Bach Walks: Roseburg to Lübeck
    I ended up doing a search for [no access to jstor] and found I can register for a personal account and gain access to a limited amount of articles and thus gained access to the article by Kerala J. Snyder.

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    Replies
    1. krossbow: jstor; you can get a free account entitling you to read 100 articles per month.

      Delete

  4. Chopin... the piano remained
    https://mikeandmurakami.com/tag/george-sand/
    courtesy of the googley (nicely presented):
    https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-trip-to-the-island-of-mallorca-celda-de-frederic-chopin-y-george-sand/6wWhs4PduchjHQ?hl=en-US

    Bach - did he get a Nike deal? 4 weeks morphed into 4 months
    frequent walker miles? how was the word circulated about who was where?
    "Some historians speculate that Buxtehude may even have offered Bach his daughter’s hand in marriage, a deal that came along with his job as Lübeck organist (Handel had been offered this very same deal, but had refused)."
    https://bachtrack.com/feature-at-home-guide-bach-buxtehude-lubeck-arnstadt-august-2017

    Viol sounds -
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viol

    ReplyDelete
  5. what was Bach's CO2-Fußabdruck? all about time context
    not the fugue I was looking for - maybe it was lost on a walk
    made me wonder about photographic technology & Chopin's image…
    one of two?
    earlier…
    SERP

    ReplyDelete
  6. always fun to search for things I know nothing about…
    perhaps Johann could have borrowed the extraterrestrial's (the other alien? Johann) N57HJ fliegendes Eichhörnchen
    for his travels - how things might have been different
    fwiw - snippet "Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, op. 9, no. 2, was composed between 1830-1832, when Chopin was around 20 years old."

    different places
    hmmm, Davos
    changed ownership/registration 9/22… so long Flying Squirrel
    that might explain some things

    wiki
    12:39
    Bach catalogue
    Chopin list & portrait @ 25

    ReplyDelete
  7. may be partially mis-information
    foot SERP
    Pedestrianism
    another John… Ledyard
    Dakota Bob
    am delirious from walking, stumbling…
    is David Stevens seeing Pioneer without Davina Scott knowing? that would be extraterrestrial… or Macron-esque.

    ReplyDelete
  8. sorry about posting a link that required $$
    Ledyard

    ReplyDelete
  9. as you said;
    "So many questions!

    My goal in posing this Challenge is to get you to think about how to approach such questions. Where do you turn first? How do you dig into the content? "


    a photo of Chopin's heart on the move in 1945 - a restless organ.
    even in 2014 - seems to confirm tuberculosis/pericarditis
    photos of the heart!
    https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/home-is-where-the-heart-lies-the-amazing-story-of-chopins-heart-10636

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/arts/chopin-heart-tuberculosis.html

    NIH report 2021 - a detective story of sorts -
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8571129/

    ReplyDelete
  10. off topic, but shows google/alphabet on the move... (one example)
    returning to the earth and their "roots" as search undergoes
    upheaval/evolution -
    https://mineral.ai/

    https://twitter.com/astroteller

    https://dnyuz.com/2023/01/20/google-calls-in-help-from-larry-page-and-sergey-brin-for-a-i-fight/

    ReplyDelete
  11. microsoft moves
    https://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-openai-bring-ai-models-to-developers-worldwide/476633/#close

    ReplyDelete
  12. related to your recent HAI work - I think...
    https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=human+centered+artificial+intelligence+stanford&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

    sample:
    https://uni.ubicomp.net/as/iHCAI2020.pdf

    (while listening to this classical music:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30QzJKCUekQ)

    Richard Wagner -
    His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.
    He created a new, revolutionary genre, Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), which set to combine all aspects of the arts, and became better known as 'music drama'.

    ReplyDelete
  13. more on Wagner...
    English National Opera? who knew?
    https://www.eno.org/composers/richard-wagner/

    https://www.eno.org/discover-opera/operas/the-beginners-guide-to-wagner/?_ga=2.69620752.1256223765.1674240082-828440282.1674240070

    hip -
    https://www.instagram.com/englishnationalopera/

    ReplyDelete
  14. In 1838, Chopin traveled to Majorca by ship from Marseille, France. It is not specified how he booked the trip or how long it took. Regular scheduled service for ships did exist in 1838, but the specific details of Chopin's trip are not known. It is also not specified how Chopin returned to France in 1839.

    [Chopin trip paris majorca 1838] Chatgbt was useless. But This found it all https://artsandculture.google.com/story/6wWhs4PduchjHQ

    31 October they arrived in South of France {?Marseille}to embark on "Le Phenican" steamboat to Barcelona. From there they sailed from Barcelona on the El Mallorquin, a steamer primarily designed to transport a cargo of 200 black Mallorcan pigs every week to the markets of Barcelona. On arriving on the island, in Palma November 8, 1838 at 11:30am, there were no inns to be found (none on the island at all, if Sand’s colourful, though malicious travel memoir Winter in Mallorca (1842) They explored Majorca for a few weeks until 10 December when they discovered Winter weather.


    Travel around the island was...
    1838, however, George Sand recalls a very different experience, travelling in a cartana – a kind of springless post-chaise pulled by a horse or mule:

    He and George left for home 13 Feb 1839 on the steamboat Palma to Barcelona then continued oontinued on to Marseille sadly without his piano.

    I believe they could have travelled on the nouveau {?nouvelle} chemin de fer. But more likely by coach or some animal pullede cart. George must have had her kiddies along too stll.

    =========================================================
    How did Bach get from Arnstadt to Lübeck and back?

    https://www.tripfiction.com/in-the-footsteps-of-j-s-bach-travelogue-arnstadt-to-luebeck-germany/

    He walked there and back

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/dec/18/js-bach-baltic-walking-germany-history-lubeck-mountains#:~:text=In%20the%20winter%20of%201705,route%20than%20we%20can%20prove.

    ...Bach set out to travel over 250 miles on foot from Arnstadt, in Thuringia, the heart of Germany, to Lübeck...

    ... he did the trip quickly. There was a well-established north-south path: he is unlikely to have strayed far from it. We did not know if he was more likely to have crossed the Harz mountains or gone around the massif until we stood on top of them, at the pass. It was clear that the mountains are really only big wild ridges, easy walking for a young man. The main tracks over them would have been spotted with inns and busy with passing trade. Bach would have saved himself days and blisters by climbing the Harz, as we did, rather than circling them...

    ...The walk must have made a man of him...

    TO LÜBECK IN THE STEPS OF J. S. BACH - JSTORhttps://www.jstor.org › stable
    by KJ Snyder · 1989 · [did not access it]

    ReplyDelete
  15. First comment: I just heard the bad news about Google redundancies. For you, this is an opportunity to blossom even more and become more recognised as the search expert you are. (And the plus is you are now freer to compare and contrast Google to competitors - in a way that was probably harder before).

    Second: Answers to the 1st challenge - and I hope these challenges will continue.

    I started by putting "Historical Journey Chopin Paris Majorca" and quickly found http://music-toronto.com/on-the-trail-of-chopin-in-mallorca/ which stated he sailed from Barcelona on El Mallorquin, a steamer primarily designed to transport a cargo of 200 black Mallorcan pigs every week to the markets of Barcelona (indicating that this was a regular ferry - I didn't check if there were others but quite possible if all this one did was transport pigs, although also likely the ships were not passenger ferries as we have now). He arrived 11.30am on Nov 8, 1838. Further down was https://artsandculture.google.com/story/6wWhs4PduchjHQ which gave other details e.g. He travelled to Barcelona on Le Phenicen from the South of France. On February 13th or 14th, 1839, he left on the steamboat for Barcelona (with his lover, Amandine Aurore Lucille Dupin - aka George Sand), again with 200 pigs to continue on to Marseille.(14th according to music-toronto.com and 13th according to artsandculture.google.com). Changing the search to ""El Mallorquin" chopin paris majorca" gave https://www.chopin.pl/majorca.en.html which states "The composer left on October 27th, later accompanied by Spanish minister Juan Mendizábal, who was headed for Madrid, meeting in Perpignan near the French-Spanish border, on October 31st. After arriving in Perpignan, the two artists left by ship for Barcelona the next day on the "Le Phénicien" from Port-Vendres. They spent five days in Barcelona at the hotel "Cuatro naciones", filling their time visiting the city, including the Santa Maria del Mar Cathedral, as well as the ruins of the House of the Inquisition. On November 7th they left on the "El Mallorquin", for Palma de Mallorca, arriving on November 8th at 11:30." This site then says "On February 14, 1839, after a two-day stay in Palma, the two artists left on a trip back to France. They took the "El Mallorquin" to Barcelona, from there, on February 22, on the French steamer "Le Phénicien" to Marseille. Their stay in this city lasted from February 24 until May 23 (except for the period from May 3-18, during which they took an excursion with the children to Genoa)." so almost the same return journey. Another link - https://chopin.nifc.pl/en/chopin/kalendarium/124_the-years-of-maturity-and-plenitude-18351840/79 says they left Majorca on the 13th Feb 1839 arriving back on the 14th Feb 1839.

    They were definitely in Barcelona on the 15th Feb based on a letter George Sand wrote to the Comtesse Marliani from Barcelona on that date (https://archive.org/stream/lettresdechopine00chop/lettresdechopine00chop_djvu.txt)


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mr. Weiss - are you suggesting that DMR was a part of the 12,000? where did you get that info & can you provide collaborating links... until, and if, Dan confirms or denies.
      xooglers - see https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-moore-468145b8?trk=public_post_embed_feed-actor-name
      (don't see anything on twitter) thanks
      fwiw:
      Google has also announced support for the employees laid off while they look for new opportunities. They will be paid during the full notification period, which is a minimum of 60 days, while a severance package has also been offered “starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting”."
      btw - nice research on the Chopin & Bach journeys - good details & supposition.

      Delete
    2. seems to confirm — after 17½ years
      sad news indeed - so much for the myth of being a different company…
      no matter how resilient, this is still a tough pill to swallow - best to you Dan.
      see posts from 1/21
      Henk van Ess - twitter
      Henk: "How could this happen? Maybe because a lot of the management chain at Google is new, Dan's manager at Google was there for only 6 weeks, her boss for just 3 years. They probably don't know what crown jewels they are throwing away. Still mad as hell"
      & - He found out when I went to work at 4AM to finish up an important analysis. "My badge didn't work. After 17.5 years at Google, it was kind of a tough way to discover that I'd become a Xoogler.".

      Delete
    3. :( that is so sad. And not correct way of doing things!

      I'm with you Dr. Russell! They will regret that decision and I am sure soon you will have a better job. And as the the old say says, Karma is going for them. Bad management in a company that I thought was different

      That is not a way to treat any person and much less someone as Dr. Russell who has worked so many years

      Delete
  16. Continuation on Chopin's journey....

    I think the definitive answer on when they left - with Chopin suffering from TB by then, and nursed by Sand, comes in a fascinating description of the journey and conditions in
    https://ebin.pub/fryderyk-chopin-a-life-and-times-illustrated-0374159068-9780374159061.html - which I suspect is reliable as a biography proving Google correct on the departure date.

    "On February 12 the party set out on a nightmare descent through the mud and rubble that was now the only way down the mountainside to Palma. Because no one from the village would rent them a carriage for fear of infection, Chopin had to make the hazardous journey in an open two-wheeled cart, known locally as a birlocho, drawn by a donkey, a debilitating experience that caused him to hemorrhage violently. The following day, the bedraggled party boarded the steamer El Mallorquin at anchor in Palma and made the twelve-hour sea crossing back to Barcelona. As they went on board, they met with an unpleasant surprise. No one had told them that the vessel regularly transported a cargo of a hundred or more hogs to the mainland, and because the animals required fresh air they were given the run of the open deck. Hogs were Majorca’s chief export, and on its return journey to Barcelona El Mallorquin gave hogs priority over passengers. The ship’s captain, Gabriel Medina, obliged Sand and Chopin to stay in their cabins below deck, where the atmosphere was stifling. The foul stench became unbearable and Chopin could not sleep...."

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  17. Challenge 2 - searched "Bach Arnstadt Lübeck journey" and found https://bachtrack.com/feature-at-home-guide-bach-buxtehude-lubeck-arnstadt-august-2017 which stated that Bach walked - confirmed by other sites e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41640323 and https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/dec/18/js-bach-baltic-walking-germany-history-lubeck-mountains and https://www.pianonoise.com/Composer.Buxtehude.htm (which gives a great description on the trip and his interrogation on getting back 3 months after promised). Bach stayed for much longer than the month's leave he had been given - for around 4 months. The route was probably the Old Salt Route (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Salt_Route)

    There's a lecture all about the trip at https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/walking-fame-bachs-visit-buxtehude and a map with times the walk would take at https://www.pellegrina.net/EN/baroque/program_baroque.php. This says he took 77hours to do the walk which is just about feasible if he walked at 4mph (6.5kph) to walk the 235m (378km). That's 59 hours walking i.e. 2.5 days so he had around 18 hours to eat / sleep. Of course maybe he managed to hitch a few lifts too to speed up the journey but history appears not to say this.

    The Jstor site (https://www.jstor.org/stable/964663) gives more information (Musical Times Vol. 127, No. 1726 (Dec., 1986), pp. 672-677) suggesting the journey was 2 weeks in each direction and that he arrived back on Feb 7th 1706 based on church records. The article suggests he left Arnstadt on 18 October 1805 arriving in Lubeck on 31st October and leaving again on the 24th January.

    This article gives more on a route and suggests it being longer. It says he probably passed through Gotha, Miihlhausen, Duderstadt, Sesen, Brunswick or Hanover, Liineburg and Molln on his way to Lubeck, a distance of approximately 280 miles (so longer than other site suggestions). Bach told his sons about his trip. The 2 weeks calculation assumes 20 miles per day - but that's a 21st century estimate for peoples walking ability. If it was more in those days (e.g. 28 miles per day) then the journey would have only 10 days and a concentrated effort (as some marathon runners do) could have got it down to 5 days (especially if he got lifts for some journeys) i.e. closer to that 77 hours!

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  18. I too, read the jstor article but only just now (no charge) and so can concur with Mr Weiss and his observations. JSB could have encountered snow that would slow him down.

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