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).
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
In a post earlier today about Howard Pollack’s new Samuel Barber biography, I mentioned a meeting between Barber and Trenton’s own George Antheil. The meeting took place in Vienna in 1934. Barber was surprised by Antheil’s congeniality and touched by his genuine interest in his music. In fact, in a letter to his parents, Barber specified that he felt they had parted the best of friends. Unfortunately, the two were not to have very much contact in the future.
Interesting, then, that I should stumble across this audio for a concert with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra from 1950. The first half of the program is devoted to Barber’s “School for Scandal Overture” and Antheil’s Symphony No. 5! (Clearly, Antheil was on a Prokofiev kick at the time of its writing.)
The second half features Gershwin’s Concerto in F, with an assortment of encores, performed by Gershwin friend and acolyte, Oscar Levant. Last and least is a suite from Jerome Kern’s “Showboat.” Artur Rodzinski, notorious for packing heat on the podium, is the conductor.
A gem of a find and a remarkable coincidence that Barber and Antheil would wind up shoulder-to-shoulder on the same concert!
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.
I am very sorry to report that tonight’s scheduled anniversary celebration of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner – which today marks three years of perfecting the balance between nostalgia and banter in relation to science fiction and fantasy in classic television and film – has had to be postponed, as Roy is under the weather.
However, we’re optimistic that he’ll have talked Dr. McCoy through the process of surgically reconnecting his cerebrum before the Easter weekend. We hope you’ll be able to join us for our discussion of the “Star Trek” original series episode “Spock’s Brain,” to be livestreamed on Facebook, YouTube, etc., THIS THURSDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EDT.
In the meantime, we apologize for the inconvenience. You can console yourself by ordering an official t-shirt at the “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner” Facebook page, several of which are modeled here by Roy’s cat, the always slinky and stylish Squeaker.
Things had already been heating up for Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco for some time. His music was banned from radio and performances of his works were cancelled, well before the passage of Italian racial laws in 1938. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a Jew living in Mussolini’s Italy. He finally emigrated in 1939, when Arturo Toscanini, who loathed fascism, sponsored the composer’s passage to the United States.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music was embraced by Jascha Heifetz and Andrés Segovia, among others. His Violin Concerto No. 2, “The Prophets,” was given its first performance at Carnegie Hall, with Heifetz the soloist and Toscanini on the podium, in 1933. Its three movements are named for the Biblical figures Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah.
I always make it a point to listen to this piece every year around Passover (which this year begins on Wednesday at sunset), but Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a composer whose music is unfailingly enjoyable in all seasons.
Furthermore, anyone who loves film music owes an incalculable debt to him. He wrote music for some 200 movies (including “And Then There Were None,” with Barry Fitzgerald, and “The Loves of Carmen,” with Rita Hayworth), and as a teacher, his students included André Previn, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams.
So thank you, and happy birthday, Mario C-T!
Violin Concerto No. 2 “The Prophets”
Segovia masterclass on the Guitar Concerto No. 1
Radio interview with Segovia and the composer
Toscanini conducts an adventurous program, including Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Overture to a Fairy Tale” (which, if I’m not mistaken, is the same as his “Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture”)
