Don’t let the happy faces fool you. Roy and I return tonight to celebrate three years of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, with a discussion of “Spock’s Brain.” One the looniest episodes of the original “Star Trek” television series, once seen it’s not easily forgotten. The Laurel and Hardy of sci-fi reunite for another gold-plated bull session. Make the trek to the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., at a special day and time, this Thursday evening at 7:00 EDT!
Category: Daily Dispatch
-
Rediscovering Dett’s “Ordering of Moses”
There have been innumerable musical treatments of Moses and the Exodus story, reaching back to at least the Renaissance. On this first day of Passover, it’s time to give “The Ordering of Moses” its due.
R. Nathaniel Dett was born in what is now Niagara Falls, Ontario, the grandson of a refugee who fled slavery on the Underground Railroad. He became an important figure in American music of his time, but it’s not until comparatively recently that we’ve had many opportunities to hear much beyond “Juba,” the last movement of one of his piano suites, “In the Bottoms,” championed by Percy Grainger and others.
Though he is remembered primarily, if at all, for his exquisite keyboard works, Dett also composed a handful of pieces for more ambitious forces, none of them more so than “The Ordering of Moses.” Scored for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, the work was presented as his graduation thesis at the Eastman School of Music in 1932. It received its first public performance by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, at the Cincinnati May Festival, on a concert broadcast over NBC radio, in 1937. Three quarters of the way through, the work was interrupted, allegedly because of a scheduling conflict.
In 1956, the piece was revived and recorded, also at the Cincinnati May Festival, with Leontyne Price and William Warfield.
More recently, in 2014, James Conlon conducted it in Cincinnati. A follow-up performance at Carnegie Hall was documented by Bridge Records, Inc., a superb account that finally brought the music some of the notice it deserves. Astonished critics asked the obvious question: how is it possible that such a powerful work could have languished for so long?
Did NBC indeed run into a scheduling conflict during that first concert broadcast, or did those in charge cave to listener complaints? After all, this was one of the first works of classical music by a Black composer ever to have been given that kind of exposure, broadcast as it was over a national radio network.
Whatever the truth, now is the time not to deny the past but also to look to the future. In this third decade of the 21st century, can “The Ordering of Moses” finally be appreciated on its own merits?
This performance, from 1968, was captured in Mobile, AL, conducted by William Levi Dawson.
Dawson was born in Anniston, AL. He himself proved to be a remarkable composer. With the current, belated wave of music by composers of color on our concert programs, Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony,” after decades of neglect, is popping up everywhere. You won’t hear any complaints from me. This symphony is the real deal.
The work was given its premiere by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1934. Dawson revisited the piece after a visit to West Africa in 1952. It is in this form that Stokowski recorded it. I own three recordings of it so far (Neeme Järvi’s being my preference), but I never dreamed I would ever have the opportunity hear it live!
Likely due to lack of demand for his orchestral music, Dawson carved out a career as a choral music composer. In particular, he became a prominent arranger of spirituals.
A shame that he didn’t meet with more success in the concert hall. With a little encouragement, perhaps there would have been a Symphony No. 2.
William Levi Dawson’s superlative “Negro Folk Symphony”
One of the world’s foremost authorities on Dett happens to live and work in our area. Clipper Erickson, on the faculty of Temple University and Westminster Conservatory, was the first to record Dett’s complete piano works, for Navona Records. Clipper walks the walk, and has done so for decades, often including Dett’s music in his rich and varied recitals.
Clipper Erickson, piano, plays the “Barcarolle” from the suite “In the Bottoms.”
“In the Bottoms” concludes with Dett’s most famous music, “Juba.”
Here’s “The Ordering of Moses,” in more up-to-date sound, in the performance released on Bridge Records. The movements are posted separately, so you’ll have to let them play through, skipping any ads along the way.
Passover is a time to celebrate freedom. It reminds us of hope and elation at the prospect of a brighter future. It is for the benefit of all to learn from the wrongs of the past and endeavor to do better.
-
Ernst Toch’s Bitter Herbs: A Passover Gem
On a bad day, Ernst Toch’s music can be a bit like trying to chew through a dry brisket. But he wrote in a wide variety of styles, employing a broad range of musical expression, so if you search long enough, chances are that you’ll find the Toch for you.
Clearly he was “on” for the “Cantata of the Bitter Herbs,” a deeply personal piece, written in an accessible, even engaging idiom. While the primary inspiration is the Haggadah, the core of which is a telling of the Exodus story, read during the Seder on the first night of Passover, Toch strove for a more universal significance, no doubt influenced by the millions suffering from injustice and oppression under fascism in Europe.
The genesis of the work was in a chance meeting in 1937 between the composer and Rabbi Jacob Sonderling of Fairfax Temple, a Reform congregation in Los Angeles, who did much to enrich Jewish music by providing commissions for European exiles like Arnold Schoenberg, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Erich Zeisl. Sonderling contributed to the text of Toch’s cantata, which was first performed as part of a service at Fairfax Temple in 1941. The official concert premiere took place at Los Angeles City College.
Interesting that Dana Andrews was the speaker. In this recording, from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, the narration is spoken by Theodore Bikel. It’s a multi-movement work, so be sure to let it play through (skipping ads as necessary).
You can learn more about the piece here:
https://www.milkenarchive.org/music/volumes/view/odes-and-epics/work/cantata-of-the-bitter-herbs/
A three-minute documentary about the recording:
A great deal more about Toch:
His Pulitzer Prize winning Symphony No. 3, which I always thought could use a little more horseradish:
But Toch could have fun, too. He composed a “Pinocchio” overture, a fantasy on “Peter Pan,” and this – perhaps his most frequently encountered work – a “Geographical Fugue,” which prefigures minimalism.
Passover begins at sunset. Chag Sameach!
PHOTO: At the Los Angeles City College premiere of “Cantata of the Bitter Herbs,” with the composer and Dana Andrews, center left
-
Samuel Barber’s Life and Musical Legacy
One of the pleasures of reading Howard Pollack’s latest biography, “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” is being reminded of just how many interesting musicians Barber encountered. As a lover of film music, I’ve long been aware of Alex North’s birthplace of Chester, PA, not far south of Philadelphia, but I never really thought about the fact that he and Barber were exact contemporaries and indeed classmates at West Chester High School.
Later, Barber knew Nino Rota from the Curtis Institute (but disliked his music) and Bernard Herrmann, who invited him to guest conduct the CBS Orchestra for his radio series “Invitation to Music.”
Fascinatingly, Barber sang one of his breakout masterpieces, “Dover Beach,” for Ralph Vaughan Williams, during the latter’s visit to Bryn Mawr to deliver a series of lectures in 1932. The text, by Victorian poet Matthew Arnold – a honeymoon poem written shortly after his marriage to Frances Lucy Wightman – is pervaded by melancholy: in an uncertain world, love is the only source of comfort and peace.
“He seemed delighted,” Barber recollected of Vaughan Williams’ reaction. “He congratulated me and said, ‘I tried several times to set ‘Dover Beach,’ but you really GOT it!’”
Traveling on a scholarship to Vienna in 1934, he met George Antheil, Trenton’s “Bad Boy of Music,” whose “Ballet Mécanique” had caused a riot in Paris in 1926. The two talked music and shared scores. Barber liked what he saw and heard, and Antheil, ten years older, was “surprisingly enthusiastic” about the young man’s work. Barber found Antheil likeable and sincere and wrote to his family that the two had “parted, the best of friends.”
Barber would earn further admiration internationally, with works performed in Europe and the Soviet Union. The idea of Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting Barber is as tantalizing as Gustav Mahler’s interest in performing Charles Ives.
As someone born in small-town Pennsylvania, and later having lived in Philadelphia for over three decades, I was also very interested to learn about some of the early works Barber composed for his hometown of West Chester and for Longwood Gardens. Barber knew the Du Ponts and performed on the organ there. Of course, he studied at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, on Rittenhouse Square, and had many works performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The book follows the pattern of Pollack’s Copland biography, interleaving biographical detail with chapters in which the music is treated in greater depth. I hasten to add that the writing is not overloaded with technical jargon, so that it always remains fully accessible – and interesting – to the general reader. Of course, it helps if music is your passion. At the same time, there are abundant notes in the book’s appendices for anyone who would like to dig deeper.
Most happily, the book accomplishes what any undertaking of this sort should do, and that’s inspire the reader to revisit Barber’s music. I don’t own a smartphone, so I’m not one of those people who is always riveted to an electronic device in public. I generally have some reading material or my thoughts to keep me company. However, last week I found myself in a situation where I was stuck someplace with nothing to do, and kept myself entertained by trying to remember the musical details of as many of Samuel Barber’s pieces as possible. It’s astonishing, the amount of information we’re able to call up from our brains!
The composer adored Brahms at a time when such an enthusiasm might have seemed regressive to more limited souls. His close relationships with Gian Carlo Menotti, his teachers, his advocates, and his patrons, ensured he often had one foot in Europe.
He was seldom as overtly “American-sounding” as Copland or Bernstein or Roy Harris or William Schuman. His music is imbued with more Old-World elegance, perhaps, than was common among his peers. If anything, it makes it seem all the sturdier, and all the more enduring.
Howard Pollack’s “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” published by University of Illinois Press, is out today, available online or through your local bookstore. For more information, follow the link.
“To Longwood Gardens”
“Fresh from West Chester”: II. Let’s Sit It Out, I’d Rather Watch
“Dover Beach,” with Barber and the Curtis String Quartet
The Brahmsian “School for Scandal Overture”
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (124) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (188) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (101) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (139) Opera (202) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (106) Radio (87) Ralph Vaughan Williams (85) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (103) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)