This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.
We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!
I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pedants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.
Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.
Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
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