Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Picaresque Novels on Film Summer’s Last Adventure

When I think back on the summers of my youth, I remember my elation at three months of illusory freedom – sucking the marrow out of life for the first half of the season or so; then getting drawn into family visits and vacations and losing track of friends; and finally, with the new school year looming, that last desperate frenzy to LIVE SUMMER!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with the season winding down, it’s one last grasp for adventure. Revel in some freewheeling lack of judgment, with an hour of films based on picaresque novels.

Novels, you say? As in literature?

And picaresque? Ain’t that one of them 20-dollar words???

I suppose, in its way, it is also a foretaste of the classroom. But trust me, there will be enough impulsive behavior by rapscallions and scapegraces to keep things interesting.

In case you weren’t an English major, picaresque novels are frequently characterized by rogues and anti-heroes as protagonists, episodic, wayward structure, and not infrequently lowly humor.

We’ll hear music from “The Reivers,” after William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a coming-of-age story about a boy swept into automobile theft and illicit horseracing in the American south. Mark Rydell directed the 1969 film, which starred Steve McQueen as the rakish Boon Hogganbeck and featured narration by Burgess Meredith. John Williams wrote the breezy Americana score.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is frequently characterized as an American picaresque. It’s certainly one of the funniest of “serious” books. A middling film adaptation was made in 1960, directed by Michael Curtiz, with Tony Randall given top billing, shifting the focus of the story to the con artistry of the King and the Duke. It features an evocative score by Jerome Moross.

If Hervey Allen’s “Anthony Adverse” had any humor to begin with, it was definitely lost in translation. (Too bad the novel was written in English.) However, the 1936 screen adaptation certainly does sprawl. One could say it’s picaresque in the worst way. It just doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, feature a top-notch cast (Frederic March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, etc.) and an Academy Award-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

While the modern picaresque novel had its roots in the Renaissance, the genre really seemed to hit its stride in the 18th century, with comic novelists like Henry Fielding. Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” perhaps the quintessential picaresque, was made into a film in 1963. It went on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Osborne) and Best Original Score (John Addison). Addison’s music suits Richardson’s quirky virtuosity like an off-kilter powdered wig.

Get ready to wear some holes into your new school clothes. We’re up to no good, with an hour of picaresque adventures, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 25, 2023
Gloria Coates American Composer Dies at 89

American composer Gloria Coates has died. Coates displayed an unconventional, though highly-developed sense of texture, grasping the power of microtones and clusters from an early age. But these were often tied to comprehensible forms: canons, palindromes, simple structures. A prolific artist, she composed 16 symphonies, 11 string quartets, orchestral works, song cycles, and a chamber opera.

Hers was a unique voice. I often programmed her String Quartet No. 8 – with its three movements “On Wings of Sound,” “In Falling Timbers Buried,” and “Prayer” – during my broadcast memorials of 9/11. In the context, her sinking glissandi were especially effective, both visceral and chilling.

Coates was also an abstract expressionist painter. Some of her artwork has graced the covers of her albums. For much of her life, she made her living solely from her compositions. Allegedly, she was the most prolific female symphonist.

Born in Wisconsin in 1933, Coates largely made her home in Munich since 1969. At the time of her death, she was 89 years-old.

String Quartet No. 8 (2001/02)

Symphony No. 1 “Music on Open Strings” (1972)

“Holographic Universe” for violin and orchestra (1975)

“Cette blanche agonie” (1988), after Stephane Mallarmé

In English:

The virgin, vivid and beautiful today
Will it tear for us with a blow of its drunken wing
This hard, forgotten lake that haunts beneath the frost
The transparent glacier of flights that have not fled!
A swan of other times remembers that it is he
Magnificent but without hope of freeing himself
For not having sung the region where to live
When of the sterile winter glistened the tediousness.
His whole neck will shake off this white agony
By space inflicted on the bird which denies it
But not the horror of the soil in which his plumage is caught.
Phantom that to this place his pure brightness assigns,
It immobilizes itself in the cold dream of scorn
That clothes during the useless exile of the Swan.

Symphony No. 8 “Indian Sounds” (1990/91)

Symphony No. 15 “Homage to Mozart” (2004/05)

A conversation with Bruce Duffie

http://www.bruceduffie.com/coates4.html

August 25, 2023
Lion King Flutist Philadelphia Encounter

Yesterday, I was in Philadelphia to meet composer Robert Moran for lunch, and we wound up at Indian Restaurant (yes, that’s the name) at 1634 South Street. We were the only ones eating in, until the arrival of a third diner, who couldn’t help but overhear our fascinating conversation, as we sat in the window of the otherwise empty establishment. This is how we came to meet Darlene Drew, a musician, it turns out, in town with a touring production of “The Lion King.” That’s Darlene in the pit, during the show, playing no fewer than 13 ethnic flutes! She’s been doing this for 20 years, and has received a fair amount of press for it, as here, in Salt Lake City…

and here, at the Kennedy Center:

https://wjla.com/news/local/iconic-disney-the-lion-king-returns-kennedy-center-flutist-darlene-drew-plays-13-flutes-throughout-show-music-musician-performance?fbclid=IwAR0bMKMqThDI6ICxG6sfEFnmQk2aP5JytChOFNSyXJISZuuh5D0EIxS8L2M

You can learn more about her at her website.

https://www.darlenedrew.com/

“The Lion King” continues in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music through September 10.

PHOTOS: Fast friends in Philadelphia

August 24, 2023
Kile Smith Composer Curator Photographer

He’s a Smith whose forge is seldom dark.

With so many talents, his hammer rings like Siegfried’s on Mime’s anvil.

In addition to being a fine composer, Kile Smith (pictured, left) was, for many years, curator of the Fleisher Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Scores housed in the collection continue to form the basis for his monthly podcast, “Fleisher Discoveries,” which is more or less a continuation of “Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection,” a show he produced back during his days at WRTI.

He’s also a fairly prolific writer, with intelligent articles on arts and culture appearing in publications like the Broad Street Review. His liner notes include those for the Naxos release of music by 19th century Philadelphia composer William Henry Fry (which, if you haven’t “discovered” it yet, I urge you to do so).

But it is through radio that I primarily know Kile, as a frequent presence on WRTI, and once, as a guest on my weekly program “The Lost Chord.” In addition, I’ve broadcast his music many times over the years during my regular live air shifts. I’m particularly fond of the recording of his “Vespers,” with The Crossing and Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, a flat-out masterpiece. I’ve programmed it several times at both WWFM and WPRB.

It was actually through Kile that I got my foot in the door at WRTI. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do my own classical programming there, and most of my air time was spent on jazz overnights. I would have loved to have been able to select more of my own music during the classical shifts. Certainly, Kile’s recordings would have been included in the rotation.

Wouldn’t you know, it turns out his eye is as fine as his ear. If you haven’t already been doing so, check out Kile’s wildlife photography. He shares a lot of it on his Facebook page. And in case I forgot to mention, he has a wry, understated sense of humor, which comes through in most of his posts.

His blog entries and podcasts can be accessed at his website, kilesmith.com. There’s also a schedule of performances and premieres, a list of Grammy nominations, music publications, and compositions, and more wildlife photos.

Happy birthday, Kile. Long may your hammer ring true!

From “Vespers”

The latest installment of “Fleisher Discoveries,” featuring the music of Leo Sowerby

Fleisher Discoveries: Leo Sowerby and the Sense of the Joy

PHOTO: Kile Smith with yours truly at a Princeton Festival concert last year at Trinity Church. Yes, that’s Kenneth Hutchins on the right.

August 24, 2023
Constant Lambert: A Versatile English Composer

As composer, conductor, critic, scintillating conversationalist, and connoisseur of European culture, Constant Lambert proved himself to be one of the most versatile figures in English music.

Born on this date in 1905, Lambert emerged from an introverted childhood, marred by illness, and blossomed into a preternaturally-gifted musician. At 13, he was writing orchestral works. At 20, he composed a ballet, “Romeo and Juliet,” for Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

He gained further notoriety as a reciter of Edith Sitwell’s patter verses for William Walton’s “Façade” (which was dedicated to him). His piano concerto with voice and orchestra, “The Rio Grande,” unashamedly incorporated jazz elements, at a time when such a thing could still provoke scandal. He also directed the first recording of Peter Warlock’s “The Curlew.”

His book, “Music, Ho!,” written at the age of 28, offers incisive and witty commentary on the “decline” of modern music. In it, he favors jazz and popular idioms, praises the music Liszt and Sibelius, savages Stravinsky and Les Six, lauds the Marx Brothers, and pokes holes in what he perceives as an artificial “symphonic folk” tradition.

In 1931, he was appointed music director of the Vic-Wells Ballet, soon to become the Sadler’s Wells. While he achieved great acclaim in this capacity, his responsibilities cut into his activities as a composer. Instead, he became largely occupied with the arranging of others’ music. An exception, his gloomy and sardonic choral work, “Summer’s Last Will and Testament,” was coolly received, following as it did so closely on the death of George V. Lambert took the failure to heart, and began to have serious doubts about his talent.

Moreover, the outbreak of war, alcoholism, and undiagnosed diabetes all took their toll on his vitality and creativity. A long-held fear of doctors, stemming from his childhood experiences, only hastened his decline. Lambert died on August 21, 1951, two days shy of his 46th birthday.

At Sadler’s Wells, he was integral to the planning of each new production, in many cases providing arrangements of lesser-known works by worthy composers. He also became something of an artistic mentor to dancers Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann. In the case of Fonteyn, their relationship developed beyond teacher-pupil. In defiance of his personal demons and deteriorating health, Lambert’s conducting – like his celebrated conversation – remained buoyant and inspired.

Happy birthday, Constant Lambert. You burned your candle, like your cigarettes, at both ends.

Lambert and Edith Sitwell in the first recording of Walton’s “Façade” from 1929

“The Rio Grande” (text by Sacheverell Sitwell)

Conducting selections from his ballet “Horoscope”

“Concerto for Piano and Nine Instruments”

His arrangements of Meyerbeer into the ballet “Les Patineurs”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e15W-6FwEb4

Footage of Lambert conducting Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture”

“Music Ho!,” thanks to Project Gutenberg

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lambert-music/lambert-music-00-h.html

August 23, 2023

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