King Lot, Lancelot, Camelot – that’s a lot of “lots.”
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we put the “art” in “Arthur” with musical treatments of the Arthurian legends by two peripatetic American Romantics,
We’ll hear “Excalibur,” a symphonic poem after Arthur’s enchanted sword, by Louis Coerne (pronounced “Kern”). Coerne was born in Newark, NJ, in 1870. As was the custom at the time, he studied abroad, in France and Germany, then closer to home with John Knowles Paine. In Munich, he pursued organ and composition studies with Josef Rheinberger.
After that, it was back and forth to Germany, between church and conducting appointments in the United States, and then the assumption of a series of academic posts throughout the American Northeast and Midwest. Despite all the worn shoe leather, in his 52 years he managed to produce 500 works.
The remainder of the hour will be devoted to the Straussian tone poem “Le Roi Arthur,” a work in three movements, by George Templeton Strong, son of the famous Civil War diarist, born in 1856. Strong Jr. studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, where Joachim Raff was among his teachers. For a time, he played viola in the Gewandhaus Orchestra. He rubbed shoulders with Liszt and Wagner, then was lured back to the United States by the offer of a teaching position (by former European transplant Edward MacDowell) at the New England Conservatory.
However, in part because the work didn’t agree with him, and in part because of health issues, Strong soon took off for Switzerland, where he settled on the banks of Lake Geneva. There, he dedicated the remainder of his life to painting watercolors and composing. Even after musical fashion had changed, he continued to play an active role in Geneva’s musical life.
I hope you’ll join me for “Kinetic Yankees in King Arthur’s Court.” Break a lance for Arthur, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
BONUS! Wholly by coincidence, this year’s opera at Bard Summerscape is Ernest Chausson’s rarely-staged “Le Roi Arthus.” I can’t speak for the production, not having seen it, but Bard generally does a fine job with anything they put their musical minds to. You can make it a full Arthurian evening by enjoying the livestream tonight at 6:30 pm. The running time of the opera is 3 ½ hours, so it should end just in time for the start of “The Lost Chord.”
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