Nichelle Nichols died on July 30th at the age of 89. As Star Trek’s communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols became one of the first African American women to be featured in a non-menial role on television.
Nichols played Uhura on the original “Star Trek” series (1966-68), voiced her on Filmation’s Saturday morning animated show (1973-74), and reprised the role in six “Star Trek” movies (1979-91). In “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” she was promoted to lieutenant commander, and in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” she was simply commander. She was also a crack translator, who could sing and play the Vulcan lyre.
In real life, Nichols was a singer and dancer who worked with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, a longtime supporter of NASA, and the first African American woman to have her handprints immortalized in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
We’ll pay tribute to Nichols tomorrow night on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Viewers are invited to join us in sharing their memories and observations. Hailing frequencies will be open, both in the comments section and on-camera, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT.
I wrote this on August 10th last year, but I hope you’ll indulge me, as I don’t think it can be improved upon!
P.T. Barnum is in the center ring today, with two works by American composers born on this date.
William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia in 1813. Credited with being the first U.S.-born composer to write music on a large scale, he composed orchestral works and the first opera by an American to be performed publicly in his lifetime (“Leonora,” in 1845). He was an outspoken advocate of American music at a time when German imports ruled the roost. It would be decades before music by our native composers would gain a toehold in the concert halls, which makes Fry an even more remarkable figure.
Fry studied music with a former bandleader in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, who went on to become the head of Philadelphia’s Musical Fund Society. Fry himself would become the society’s secretary.
He was also a journalist, a writer on music, and the first music critic to write for a major American newspaper. He was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and acted as music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.
He composed seven symphonies, all of them of a descriptive nature. One of his most audacious works was commissioned by Barnum. The “Niagara Symphony” (1854) was conceived for enormous forces, augmented by a mind-blowing eleven timpani. Someone should consider putting this on the same program with Berlioz’s Requiem. Though it is possible all that percussion really would turn out to be too much of a good thing!
Barnum once tried to buy Niagara Falls, but New York State wasn’t selling. So he constructed a replica, in miniature, “with real water,” for his American Museum (ironically, destroyed by fire in 1865), then located at the corner of Broadway, Park Row, and Ann Street, in Lower Manhattan. Among the other featured attractions was the notorious “Feejee Mermaid.”
80 years after Fry’s birth, Douglas Moore was born into an established Long Island family. (The family had lived there since the island’s settling in the 17th century.) He attended, among other institutions, Yale University, where he earned two degrees; then he was off to Paris to study with Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Bloch, and Nadia Boulanger.
Moore went on to serve as president of the National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters and director of music at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In 1926, he joined the faculty of Columbia University, where he remained until his retirement in 1962. With Otto Luening and Oliver Daniel, he cofounded the CRI (Composers Recordings, Inc.) label.
Moore was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951 for his opera “Giants in the Earth.” But he is probably best-known for the opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe,” which became such a memorable vehicle for Beverly Sills.
Moore’s Barnum connection is by way of a concert suite, composed in 1924. “The Pageant of P.T. Barnum” was inspired by the Greatest Showman’s life and outlandish attractions. The work falls into five movements:
“Boyhood at Bethel”
“Joice Heth – 161 Year Old Negress” [sic]
“General and Mrs. Tom Thumb”
“Jenny Lind”
“Circus Parade”
Barnum’s circus may have folded in 2017 (after 146 years in existence), but there’s still a sucker born every minute.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Barnum & Tom Thumb, William Henry Fry, and Douglas Moore
Hahn was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on this date in 1874. He was the youngest of twelve children of a German-Jewish businessman, a convert to Catholicism, who arrived in Venezuela in 1845 at the age of 22 and married a Venezuelan woman of Basque origin. Political instability drove the family to resettle in Paris, where young Reynaldo was given a cosmopolitan education.
He studied composition at the Paris Conservatory (which he entered at the age of 11) with Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet, among others. He also took private lessons with Camille Saint-Saëns.
Hahn met Marcel Proust at the age of 19, and the two essentially combusted. Their affair lasted for two years and is thought to have been Proust’s only real relationship. The romance may have fizzled, but the friendship was lifelong. Hahn’s influence permeates Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” (now frequently translated as “In Search of Lost Time”), often cited as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It’s certainly one of the longest.
Hahn composed operas, tone poems, concertos, chamber music, a successful operetta (“Ciboulette”), and a musical comedy (“Mozart”). But far and away he is best remembered for his art songs – or mélodies – of which he composed over 100.
He certainly enjoyed the good life, nattily attired, living in a lavishly appointed flat, and always with fine cigarettes at hand. He also gained a considerable reputation as a most charming performer. His delightfully informal presentations at musical evenings of the Belle Epoque would involve him leaning far back at the piano, cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth, and casting languid glances at the audience through long lashes. Sample his artistry below.
Happy birthday, Reynaldo Hahn!
Hahn conducts one of his most frequently heard works, “Le bal de Béatrice d’Este” for winds, percussion, two harps, and piano
Yeah, I know. Reading about Olivia Newton-John here is probably about the last thing you would expect. But her passing hits really close. Not because I was such a fan of her music, necessarily, but because her songs were everywhere during my happiest years, and “Grease” was such a cultural touchstone. The summer of ’78 was all about “Grease.” In my memory, it seems like every song from the musical became a hit, and the film’s soundtrack was all that was played at the public pool. Her death is like a stake through my childhood.
I can’t believe she was 73. I thought she had beat the cancer. R.I.P.
Cécile Chaminade, who shares her given name with the patron saint of music, was born on this date in 1857. Though assessed and recommended for study at the Paris Conservatory at the age of 10, her father forbade it, because he thought it beneath her class. He did, however, allow her to study privately. It was in this fashion that she continued with her piano lessons (her mother taught her when she was young), took up the violin, and studied composition with Benjamin Godard.
Georges Bizet, who heard her perform some of her own works before she was teenager, was among those who were impressed by her talents. Later, her pieces were championed by Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Paris Conservatory.
In her early 20s, Chaminade began playing in a salon setting. This would be the prototype for her future appearances, at which she presented programs consisting solely of her own music.
She married a much older man, a music publisher, on the condition that they maintain separate residences. Due to her husband’s advanced age, it was rumored to have been a “marriage of convenience.” After he died, only six years later, Chaminade never remarried.
Her concerts in England were received with enthusiasm. If anything, she proved even more popular during a tour of the United States.
In 1901, she made gramophone recordings of seven of her compositions. She also made some piano rolls before and after World War I. She died in Monte Carlo in 1944.
For decades, then, she fell into obscurity, with the exceptions perhaps of her Concertino for Flute and Orchestra and whatever sheet music happened to turn up in Grandma’s piano bench.
Her reputation was revived largely through recordings, a trickle at first, but now appearing with more frequency.
Ambroise Thomas once commented, “This is not a composer who is a woman, but a woman who composes.” Chaminade said, “There is no sex in art. Genius is an independent quality. The woman of the future, with her broader outlook, her greater opportunities, will go far, I believe, in creative work of every description.”
In 1913, Chaminade was elected a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, a first for a female composer. Here’s some rare footage from the ceremony.
Happy birthday, Cécile Chaminade!
Concertino for Flute and Orchestra
Concertstück for Piano and Orchestra
Chanson, “Te souviens-tu?” (text by Benjamin Godard)
Piano works (linked individually in the information below the video)
