Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Stravinsky’s Savage Wit Composer Feuds and Fireworks

    Stravinsky’s Savage Wit Composer Feuds and Fireworks

    I’m not sure Stravinsky ever had anything nice to say about anyone. I suppose when you’re lauded as the most important composer of the 20th century, you’ll do anything you can to hang on to the title. Also, a pithy putdown always makes for good copy.

    It’s interesting then to come across so many images of Stravinsky with other composers. What was there that they could possibly talk about? Other than Stravinsky, I mean?

    Perhaps it’s true that familiarity really does breed contempt. In the world of Igor Stravinsky, if you don’t have anything nice to say, say it!

    “Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa-Lobos?”

    On Rachmaninoff: “He was a six-and-a-half-foot scowl.”

    On Boulez’s “Pli Selon Pli”: “Pretty monotonous and monotonously pretty.”

    On Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “It’s a mistake to conclude each act with people going to sleep.”

    On Messiaen’s “Turangalîla Symphony”: “Little more can be required to write such things than a plentiful supply of ink.”

    On Handel’s “Theodora”: “It’s beautiful and boring. Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”

    On Eugene Ormandy: “The perfect conductor of Strauss waltzes.”

    In fairness, he sometimes got as good as he gave:

    Ernest Newman on Stravinsky: “His music used to be original. Now it’s aboriginal.”

    Britten on Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress”: “I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.”

    Prokofiev on Stravinsky: “Bach on the wrong notes.”

    At least two of Stravinsky’s works were first performed on this date:

    In 1908, “Feu d’artifice” (“Fireworks”) was composed to celebrate the marriage of Nadezhda Rimsky-Korsakov, the daughter of his famed teacher, to rival composer-classmate Maximilian Steinberg, which must have been a bitter pill.

    In 1957, “Agon” was given its first performance on a concert to celebrate Stravinsky’s 75th birthday. The first staged performance was held at the New York City Ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, later in the year, on December 1, 1957.

    Happy birthday, Igor Stravinsky!

    PHOTO GALLERY: Puppet master Ego Stravinsky and his marionette theater (each labeled individually)

  • Francis Johnson America’s First Master of Music

    Francis Johnson America’s First Master of Music

    A blue and gold marker erected before his home, at 65 South 4th Street in Philadelphia, describes him as “America’s first native-born master of music.” He was a prolific composer, “trumpeter of 1st Troop, City Cavalry, and Bandmaster, 128th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.” He was also the leader of America’s most popular band for more than twenty years. Over a century before Dorothy Maynor and Little Richard, Francis Johnson, born on this date in 1792, was presenting racially-integrated concerts.

    Johnson was the first African-American to have his works published as sheet music. He led the first American ensemble, an all-black brass band, in performance abroad. In 1837, he sailed to England to take part in the celebrations surrounding the coronation of Queen Victoria. In gratitude, the Queen presented him with a silver bugle. While there, he was exposed to the promenade concert – a style of informal, outdoor garden entertainment – which he brought back with him to the United States. He returned to Philadelphia in 1838, the year Pennsylvania Hall was burned to ground by an angry mob for hosting a convention of abolitionists.

    Indeed, it’s remarkable, in a climate of mounting racial tension and violence, with the Civil War still decades in the future, just how beautifully Johnson’s career flourished. In 1824, he was invited to perform for General Lafayette during Lafayette’s return to the United States. He also taught wealthy European-American students at a studio much-remarked upon for its extensive music library. Over the years, he also amassed an impressive array of instruments. His works were published in compilations alongside those of Beethoven, Brahms, Bellini, Donizetti, Weber, and Czerny.

    At the same time, he performed in Philadelphia’s black churches. His style of playing included rhythmic variations that deviated considerably from his written scores. In the 20th century, this might have been described as “jazzing,” but Johnson’s improvisions would have been worlds away from what we now recognize as jazz.

    He was also known to have delighted his audiences with certain extended techniques and programmatic elements. His “Bird Waltz” featured a chirrupy flute obbligato, his “New Railroad Gallop” emulated a train, and his “Philadelphia Fireman’s Quadrille” was punctuated by cries of “Fire! Fire!”

    Unfortunately, a lot of this music was not fully written-out, with prompts often indicated in his scores. When they were published, it was commonly in arrangements and as piano transcriptions made by other hands. Scholars have reconstructed his performance style to the best of their ability from surviving evidence, including newspaper accounts and other documents describing the effects heard on Johnson’s concerts. The music itself is fairly simple, often a framework to be adorned by improvisation and development.

    Johnson died in 1844 at the age of 51. At his funeral, Queen Victoria’s bugle lay atop his casket.

    Happy birthday, Francis Johnson.

    General Lafayette’s Grand March

    Philadelphia Firemen’s Cotillion

    Princeton Gallopade

    Dirge (played at Johnson’s funeral)

  • Ellington’s Grieg A Jazz “Grotesque”?

    Ellington’s Grieg A Jazz “Grotesque”?

    Another tribute to Edvard Grieg on his birthday: Duke Ellington’s take on “Peer Gynt.” When the album came out in 1960, the Grieg Foundation was not flattered. The president of the organization found the arrangements to be ugly and uninspired and felt that Ellington and Billy Strayhorn had made Solveig “bray like a sow.” Critics in America, at best, expressed confusion. While conceding that the undertaking was a serious one, the results were deemed “grotesque” and even “contemptible.” The classical people weren’t happy. The jazz people weren’t happy. In the process, some reached past the Duke to take a slap at Grieg for his “lightweight” originals. Ouch! Tough crowd!

    More about it here:

    https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460447.0005.205/–duke-ellington-billy-strayhorn-and-the-adventures-of-peer?rgn=main;view=fulltext

    Fiedler conducting the original suites:

  • Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending at 100

    Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending at 100

    In December, I noted the date on which Vaughan Williams’ “Lark” first ascended 100 years before. That was in the version for violin and piano. Today marks the centennial of the first time it was heard in its definitive form for violin and orchestra.

    Though written in 1914, it wasn’t played publicly until December 15, 1920 – as stated, on violin and piano – in the unassuming venue of Shirehampton Public Hall in Bristol. Marie Hall was the esteemed violinist. The pianist was Geoffrey Mendham.

    Hall – who made the first recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto, with the composer conducting – was also the soloist at the premiere of the orchestral version, which received greater notice, when it was unveiled at the Queen’s Hall, London, 100 YEARS AGO TODAY. The British Symphony Orchestra was conducted on that occasion by Adrian Boult.

    The score, which bears an inscription from a poem of George Meredith, is the quintessence of the composer’s elegiac pastoralism. Thanks in part to frequent radio airplay, the music’s popularity increases annually, with “The Lark Ascending” consistently ranked among top listener favorites. At the same time, it has been embraced by more and more violinists.

    Vaughan Williams described his leisurely, contemplative, frankly gorgeous violin rhapsody as “a romance.” It now soars as some of his best-known music.

    Hark, hark, the Lark.

    He rises and begins to round,
    He drops the silver chain of sound,
    Of many links without a break,
    In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.
    For singing till his heaven fills,
    ‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
    And ever winging up and up,
    Our valley is his golden cup
    And he the wine which overflows
    to lift us with him as he goes.
    Till lost on his aerial rings
    In light, and then the fancy sings.

    Marie Hall plays the Elgar Violin Concerto, heavily-abridged, in 1916:

  • Flag Day Sousa vs Dvořák’s Lost Anthem

    Flag Day Sousa vs Dvořák’s Lost Anthem

    For Flag Day, two works inspired by Old Glory – one, one of the most famous pieces of American music ever, and the other, virtually forgotten:

    On Christmas Day, 1896, John Philip Sousa received the bolt of inspiration that would become “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He knocked off his quintessential march in a New York hotel room in a matter of hours. Sousa’s magnum opus was first performed in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897.

    Though the piece was enthusiastically received, it wasn’t until the Spanish-American War in 1898 that sales went through the roof. This was precipitated in part by the composer having organized a spectacle involving hundreds of performers, complete with flag-bearing soldiers and a ravishing beauty decked out in red, white and blue. With a dash of canny showmanship, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” surfed a wave of wartime patriotism to world-wide and lasting renown.

    The same year, the respected Czech composer Antonin Dvořák put the finishing touches on his cantata “The American Flag.” The work had been planned to celebrate the composer’s arrival in the U.S., in 1892, to take up the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. But the text, by Joseph Rodman Drake, arrived too late, and the cantata didn’t receive its first performance until 1894. Though he submitted the vocal score for publication in 1895, Dvořák did not consider the work complete until three years later.

    Scored for tenor, baritone, chorus and orchestra, the cantata falls into eight sections:

    I. The Colors of the Flag
    II. First Hymn to the Eagle
    III. Second Hymn to the Eagle
    IV. Orchestral Interlude: March
    V. First Address to the Flag (The Foot-Soldier)
    VI. Second Address to the Flag (The Cavalryman)
    VII. Third Address to the Flag (The Sailor)
    VIII. Apotheosis (Prophetic)

    Part of the reason the work remains such an obscurity is likely the fact that it doesn’t sound particularly American. This is not the Dvořák of the “New World Symphony” or the “American” String Quartet.

    It was Henry T. “Harry” Burleigh, the composer’s African-American assistant at the conservatory, who introduced Dvořák to the Negro spiritual. Travels to the Midwest would get him thinking about Native American folk music. Dvořák was thrilled to learn of these untapped musical resources. He set about exhorting his American colleagues, who had been churning out largely forgettable scores on European models, to embrace these overlooked treasures and, in doing so, forge a distinctive national sound.

    Mindful of their invaluable contributions, Dvořák lobbied to waive tuition to the conservatory for talented African American and Indigenous composers who could not afford the fee. His perceptivity, his enthusiastic support for, and his elevation of sounds that really were in the American ear all along earn Dvořák his place as the honorary Grandfather of American Art Music.

    Here is his neglected cantata, “The American Flag”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGl8E7C-VeA

    John Philip Sousa conducts “The Stars and Stripes Forever”:

    BONUS! The “Stars and Stripes Ballet,” after Sousa, by Philadelphia-born arranger Hershy Kay:

    Happy Flag Day!

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