Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Twelfth Night: Traditions, Music, and Befana the Witch

    Twelfth Night: Traditions, Music, and Befana the Witch

    Once they have sufficiently recovered from New Year’s, a lot of people take down their Christmas lights and dismantle their trees. (On the other hand, too many seem to leave them up until spring.) After all, Christmas is past, right? Wrong!

    January 5, the eve of Epiphany, is Twelfth Night – the Twelfth Day of Christmas – or is it? Well, it depends on when you start the count. Is Christmas Day the First Day, or should we begin counting the day after? The day after would make January 6, Epiphany (the Christian feast commemorating the visit of the three Magi to the Baby Jesus), the Twelfth Day, which would seem to make sense.

    But is Epiphany the Twelfth Day, or should Twelfth Night, a night of reveling to mark the last day of Christmas, really to be observed on the eve of Epiphany, just as Christmas Night, in England anyway, is actually Christmas Eve? The Christian world is divided – and that is only taking into account the West!

    Then there’s “Old Twelfth Night” (January 17), but that’s for another post.

    In any case, according to tradition, it’s perfectly fine to still have the tree and lights up, but it is bad luck to keep Christmas decorations on display beyond Epiphany. Apparently it was the Victorians who first said so, as a signal that it’s time for everyone to get back to work. The Tudors, on the other hand, kept partying right on through February 1, the eve of Candlemas (the presentation of the Christ Child at the Temple in Jerusalem).

    As for Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night,” which would seem to have nothing at all to do with Christmas, it is a charming corollary of a season of merriment, masked balls, and misrule. The first performance took place on Candlemas, 1602.

    We may not be able to come to a consensus on the Twelfth Day, but we can say with certainty that the night of January 5 marks the arrival of Befana, the Christmas witch. Befana is the wizened crone who bestows gifts and happiness upon the good children of Italy. If the children are bad, they get a lump of coal. (If the family is poor, they get a stick.) It’s traditional to leave a glass of wine and a tasty morsel for Befana. In return, she will sweep the floors with her broom, symbolically sweeping away the problems of the old year.

    Think about that when you worry that your tree is losing too many needles.

    Johan Wagenaar, “Twelfth Night Overture”

    Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, “Twelfth Night Overture”

    Glenn Gould, “Twelfth Night: Incidental Music”

    Samuel Barber, “Twelfth Night”

    Henry Purcell, “If music be the food of love”

    Sir Thomas Morley, “O mistress mine”

    Erich Wolfgang Korngold, “O mistress mine”

    Roger Quilter, “O mistress mine”

    Amy Beach, “O mistress mine”

    Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, “The rain, it raineth everyday”

    PHOTO: Make way for the Holly Man!

  • Kevin Puts at 50 Pulitzer Winner & Composer’s Career

    Kevin Puts at 50 Pulitzer Winner & Composer’s Career

    Kevin Puts is 50 today. Puts was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2012 for his opera “Silent Night,” about the real-life, unsanctioned 1914 Christmas truce between Scottish, French, and German troops on the Western Front. It’s a poignant story, in whatever form. (It was also dramatized in the 2005 film “Joyeux Noël.”) The opera beautifully captures the transcendent moments of humanity, like shafts of sunlight piercing clouds, during one of the costliest and most violent conflicts in the bloody history of warfare. The work was given its world premiere by Minnesota Opera in 2011. I was lucky enough to catch Opera Philadelphia’s production in 2013.

    Puts’ latest opera, “The Hours,” co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, was projected to be unveiled at the Met in 2022. It looks like it’s been pushed back to next season. In the meantime, two concert performances will be given by the Philadelphia Orchestra, on March 18 & 20, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. The cast for the Met debut was to have included Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, and Joyce Di Donato as Virginia Woolf. For the Philadelphia performances, Fleming and O’Hara will be joined by Jennifer Johnson Cano.

    I’ve never heard anything by this composer that hasn’t been direct, beautiful, and worthwhile. He’s a contemporary artist who has had the good fortune to be rewarded for his courage to remain true to himself, avoiding the pitfall of gussying up what he wishes to express with a lot of extraneous modernist effects, in order to maintain his street cred, as some composers of a clearly romantic bent had done in the previous generation. Nor is he a post-modernist hipster, a keyboard noodler, an overweening pop artist, or a soft-headed, wannabe film composer.

    Puts’ language is romantic, but it is not the lingua franca of the 19th century. In embracing tonality and melody, he honors the most fundamental purpose of music, which is not simply to express, but to communicate, and he does so intelligently, in a manner that is capable of reaching a wide audience without cheapening his art.

    Furthermore, at 50, he still has a long career ahead of him.

    Many happy returns, Kevin Puts.

    “Inspiring Beethoven” (with disturbing slideshow)

    The Flute Concerto, which flirts with Mozart in its second movement

    The Symphony No. 2, a response to the events of 9/11

    “Dona nobis pacem” from “Silent Night”

  • Victor Borge Birthday Laughs & Classic Comedy

    Victor Borge Birthday Laughs & Classic Comedy

    For some, it may be difficult to leave the holidays behind and face the prospect of a long, bleak winter. That would not be me.

    But if it describes you, here are some classic Victor Borge sketches to brighten your day. The “Unmelancholy Dane” was born on this date in 1909.

    Borge always proved to be quick on his feet, comfortable in his own skin, and unusually personable. Born into a family of Jewish musicians in Copenhagen (his birth name was Børge Rosenbaum), he was already before the public, giving recitals at the age of 8. He received a scholarship to the Royal Danish Academy of Music, and later studied with pupils of both Liszt (Frederic Lamond) and Busoni (Egon Petri).

    After a few years of presenting straight classical concerts, he began to develop his act. His mix of music and comedy proved to be popular in Scandinavia, but some of his gibes didn’t exactly sit well with Hitler. When German forces occupied Denmark, Borge hopped a U.S. Army transport out of Finland – though he would return, not long after, disguised as a sailor, to visit his dying mother.

    He arrived in the United States in 1940, with 20 dollars in his pocket and no understanding of English. But he was a fast learner, and he taught himself the language by going to American movies.

    By 1941, he was already appearing with Rudy Valee and Bing Crosby, and adapting his jokes for U.S. audiences. In 1942, he was named “best new radio performer of the year.” By 1946, he had his own radio show and developed many of his signature routines.

    He became a naturalized American citizen in 1948. His Broadway show, “Comedy in Music,” entered the Guinness Book for its unprecedented run, from 1953 to 1956. In the 1960s, he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

    Borge continued to expand his popularity through appearances on television programs ranging from “What’s My Line?” to “The Muppet Show.” He continued to entertain to a ripe old age. He died in 2000, a few days shy of his 92nd birthday.

    As he was fond of observing, “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”

    Happy birthday, Victor Borge.

    A Mozart opera

    With Lauritz Melchior

    From an appearance on “The Dean Martin Show”

    Playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

    His first appearance on film, playing eight pianos, in 1937

  • New Year Classical Music Deja Vu

    New Year Classical Music Deja Vu

    Everyone begins the new year with hopes for positive change. At the risk of seeming contrarian, this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we acknowledge that the more things change, the more they stay the same – as composers of the past 100 years look back to the 18th century.

    We’ll hear somewhat contemporary works indebted to earlier times, including Lord Berners’ “Fugue for Orchestra,” Norman Dello Joio’s “Salute to Scarlatti,” Ilja Hurník’s “Sonata da camera,” John Corigliano’s “Chaconne” from “The Red Violin,” and Percy Grainger’s “Blithe Bells,” after Johann Sebastian Bach.

    Raise a toast, with new wine in old bottles, on “Déjà Vu All Over Again,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Twilight Zone Superman Livestream

    Twilight Zone Superman Livestream

    Last night’s “Twilight Zone” discussion ran a little longer than expected, as Roy and I waxed nostalgic over “Walking Distance” (1959) – with plenty of personal reminiscences about our childhoods and small town life – and defied our anxiety about the future and fortune-telling napkin holders, with “Nick of Time” (1960). You can watch the whole blessed thing, with abundant champagne-fueled digressions, here.

    We’ll be back later this week, at our regular slot, to duke it out over “Superman II” (1980). Etch your comments into the Fortress of Solitude, as we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EST!

    https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

    Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner

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