How to celebrate three years of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner? It’s a no-brainer.
We’ll discuss the third season opener of “Star Trek,” the original series: Captain Kirk and crew scramble to recover their unflappable first officer’s noodle in “Spock’s Brain” (1968).
Widely reviled as one of the worst “Star Trek” episodes ever made, the subject is guaranteed to spark a lively conversation, with plenty of digressions and not a few laughs.
Get ready for another year of mindless chatter, as Roy and I put our heads together for “Spock’s Brain.” Your gray matter is required in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., at a special time, THIS MONDAY EVENING AT 7:00 EDT!
Though steeped in the comparatively conservative milieu of the English musical renaissance at the turn of last century, John Foulds possessed a physical, intellectual, spiritual, and creative wanderlust.
Foulds moved to India in 1935. There, he collected native folk tunes. He became director of European music for All-India Radio in Delhi, created an orchestra from scratch, and labored tirelessly to fulfill his vision of a synthesis between Eastern and Western music. He also composed works for traditional Indian instruments. His efforts on behalf of the radio were so successful that he was asked to open a satellite branch in Calcutta. Unfortunately, he contracted cholera and died within a week of his arrival, at the age of 58.
Because of the remote location and the fact that a number of the pieces of his maturity have been lost, or the manuscripts extensively compromised, Foulds’ slight reputation has rested for the most part on his “light music” (especially “Keltic Lament”). But Foulds was definitely ahead of his time, as the gradual rediscovery of his works has revealed, with the composer’s fascination with quarter-tones and, occasionally, a tendency toward an almost proto-minimalism.
So diverse were Foulds’ output and enthusiasms that it is difficult, if not impossible, to encapsulate the scope of his achievements within a single hour. Nevertheless, this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we will endeavor to do our best, by sharing his light concert overture “April – England,” “Three Mantras” from the abandoned Sanskrit opera, “Avatara,” and selections from “A World Requiem.”
It’s a Foulds paradise! Join me for “April Foulds,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
PHOTO: Foulds (right), sitting in on an Indian jam session
I’ve been reading Howard Pollack’s absorbing biography, “Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy,” in advance of its release on Tuesday by University of Illinois Press.
Barber is one of our great American composers. You’ll probably recognize his “Adagio for Strings,” at the very least, from its use in so many movies (“Platoon,” “The Elephant Man,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “Amélie”) and on occasions of national mourning (such as the deaths of presidents and the terrorist attacks of 9-11).
I must say, Pollack is doing a fabulous job of shedding light on the composer’s multifaceted character. Barber’s manner could be reserved – some would say aloof – and his patrician demeanor and assumed mid-Atlantic accent, rooted in an upper-middle-class upbringing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and his close identification with his New England forebears, may now seem like affectations from a bygone world.
But he also had a sense of humor, offering the occasional sardonic, or even barbed observation. Once in while, he even teetered over into the downright zany. From the passage below, you’ll see he was a very capable practical joker. I thought it only appropriate to share it with you for this April Fool’s Day.
Barber had moreover what his cousin Katharine Homer Fryer called, in reference to the Beatty side of the family, a “Beatty sense of humor,” meaning, explained Barbara Heyman, “a love of the ridiculous.” As an example, one might cite Barber’s remark to [Nathan] Broder, apropos for his fondness for soups, “I would like to be buried with a sprinkling of croutons over my coffin.” Barber showed a proclivity for childish stunts and mischievous pranks, whether in his student years interrupting a tedious concert by noisily spilling coins on a dare from [Gian Carlo] Menotti, or in later years pretending to topple down a flight of stairs spewing manuscript pages to the amusement of his sister and her children. Planning a visit home while at the American Academy in Rome in the mid-1930s, he hatched a particularly elaborate ruse, telling his parents that he was sending them a portrait of himself and arranging for Menotti, then in New York, to bring a life-size frame to West Chester. “So I brought this empty frame to West Chester,” recalled Menotti, “and I said [to Barber’s parents], ‘Now you all get out of the room because I want to unveil it.’ So then Sam sneaked into the house and he sat inside the frame and then I unveiled the thing and there was Sam who said ‘Hello.’ Poor Mrs. Barber almost fainted!”
“Samuel Barber: His Life & Legacy” is scheduled for release on April 4. I haven’t finished it yet, but if you think it’s the kind of thing that might interest you, it’s a great read. I’ll have a more complete report by the end of the book. In the meantime, you’ll find more about it here:
April fools! No, not the holiday (such that it is); I’m talking about the performers.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have musical selections from big screen comedies. For whatever reason, it’s seldom that we get a chance to sample from comedy scores. The emphasis is usually on drama or action. The more I think about it, it seems very few scores for comedies tend to achieve classic status – proportionately speaking, of course.
Henry Mancini never seemed to have a problem with that, thanks in no small part to his long association with director Blake Edwards. We’ll hear music from my three favorite installments in “The Pink Panther” series – the original (1963), “A Shot in the Dark” (1964), and “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” (1976). That’s right, the one in which Chief Inspector Dreyfus goes stark raving mad and determines to destroy the world with a doomsday ray, as the franchise hilariously jumps the shark.
Imagine how difficult it must be to write music for comedy, without it coming across as sounding like cartoon music. Which isn’t always necessarily a bad thing. “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985) marked the feature debut of director Tim Burton. It was Burton’s first teaming with composer Danny Elfman, who would become a regular collaborator. Elfman is obviously a big fan of Nino Rota.
If you ever wanted to see Alastair Sim in drag, then I’ve got the film for you. Sim, you’ll recall, played Ebenezer Scrooge in the classic 1951 film version of “A Christmas Carol.” A few years later, he appeared in “The Belles of St. Trinian’s” (1954) in two roles – as the headmistress of a girl’s school and her criminal brother. None other than Malcolm Arnold provided the music hall-style score.
“It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” (1963) is a relic from the “more is more” school of comedy, with Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Jimmy Durante, and a tired Spencer Tracy. Ernest Gold’s approach to the music is defined by a manic waltz.
Before John Williams became a household name, with music for blockbusters like “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” he was known as Johnny Williams, when writing for television shows like “Lost and Space” and “Gilligan’s Island,” and for a string of mostly forgettable movie comedies.
“A Guide for the Married Man” (1967) starred Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. Interestingly, the film was directed by Gene Kelly, and a number of cast members from “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” have cameos. (It seems you couldn’t make a film of this kind without Terry-Thomas.) Looking back on the score is fascinating, in that there are already hints of the Williams we know in the thick of very period-specific music.
Elmer Bernstein, who wrote music for such classics as “The Ten Commandments,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” received a second wind in the late ‘70s, when he was offered the chance to score “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by John Landis. This led to opportunities to work on “The Blues Brothers” and “Ghostbusters,” among others. We’ll conclude with some of Bernstein’s music for the Reitman service comedy, “Stripes,” which teamed Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. The key to Bernstein’s big success as a comedy composer during the era is that, musically, he mostly played it straight.
We’ll be unscrewing the tops on all the salt shakers and swapping out the hard-boiled eggs, as we spring into April with a smile on our face, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!
Sergei Rachmaninoff may have been born on April 1, but he was nobody’s fool. Frequently derided by critics, he knew just what the public wanted – good tunes and heart-on-the-sleeve emotion! His Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 3, the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” the Symphony No. 2, the “Vocalise,” and more solo piano works than I care to list, including the Prelude in C-sharp minor – so ubiquitous the composer himself came to hate it – have never been out of the active repertoire.
Rachmaninoff has been my focus on “The Lost Chord” several times over the years – I devoted a show to his friendship with Nikolai Medtner and another to his achievements as a recitalist – but the program most easily referenced is the one that aired this past Sunday on WWFM – The Classical Network.
For Rachmaninoff’s 150th birthday, enjoy an hour of vintage recordings of his music, including one of the composer playing his own “Symphonic Dances,” on the piano of Eugene Ormandy, in 1940. Also, Ormandy introduces – and conducts – the Philadelphia Orchestra in a memorial performance of “Isle of the Dead,” given only days after Rachmaninoff’s death in 1943. The hour concludes with a literal party piece, as Rachmaninoff tosses off the folk song “Bublichki,” or “Bagels,” in 1942.
The recordings are taken from a 3-CD boxed set on the Marston Records label. Get a piece of the Rach! Enjoy the webcast by following the link and clicking on “listen.”
