“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England.” So wrote Sir Thomas Malory in his account of the Arthurian legends, “Le Morte d’Arthur.”
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” the focus will be on treatments of the Arthurian legends by a couple of 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 taken up by 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” – treatments of the Arthurian legends by peripatetic American composers – this Sunday night at 10 EDT on WWFM – The Classical Network; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast, at wwfm.org.
