Classic Ross Amico

Harold Arlen Plagiarism? Mahler Too?

by

Ross Amico

April 10, 2024

in Daily Dispatch

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Poor Harold Arlen. The coals haven’t yet cooled beneath accusations of plagiarism, in regard to his immortal, Academy Award winning classic “Over the Rainbow,” and now there’s an illustration in this video tying “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” to Mahler’s 7th! Purely tongue-in-cheek, I suspect. Both songs, of course, are exceedingly well-known, first of all, for their inclusion in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), which was recognized with music awards for both original song (“Over the Rainbow,” with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg) and score (Herbert Stothart riding their coattails to victory in the year of “Gone with the Wind”).

Last month, there was a Kansas-style dust-up over whether or not Arlen may have lifted his indelible melody from an obscure Norwegian pianist-composer he may have heard as a boy. I must say, the similarity to Signe Lund’s Concert Etude, Op. 38, is uncanny. (Listen to it at the link below.)

But, as has been pointed out on many occasions, there are only 12 notes in the scale, and we all hear an awful lot of music in our lifetimes, so coincidences and inadvertent similarities do occur. Why, I myself once unwittingly composed “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” in my Philadelphia apartment. Too bad Debussy got there first.

Of course, popular songs get up to this sort of thing all the time. Rachmaninoff has been especially hard hit.

While we’re on the subject of Mahler, Sammy Fain’s World War II classic “I’ll Be Seeing You” sounds an awful lot like the overarching melody in the last movement of Mahler’s 3rd – a similarity pointed out by musicologist Deryck Cooke in 1970. Coincidence or theft? It’s there for anyone with ears to draw their own conclusions.

Looking forward to hearing Mahler 7 at the Philadelphia Orchestra this week, with my old chum Robert Moran.

Philly’s principal timpanist, Don Liuzzi, with tongue in cheek: “Ding! Dong! The Wicked Witch?”

The case against Arlen

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-wizard-of-oz-over-the-rainbow-plagiarized-1235843128/

Signe Lund’s Concert Etude, Op. 38, rediscovered… somewhere over the rainbow?

“I’ll Be Seeing You”

Borrowed from Mahler’s Symphony No. 3?
Florence Price Marian Anderson and History

by

Ross Amico

April 9, 2024

in Daily Dispatch

4 responses

It was quite a birthday present for Florence Price when one of her arrangements was heard by what was likely the largest audience she would ever enjoy in her lifetime.

On Easter Sunday, on this date in 1939, Marian Anderson, barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, because of her race, sang instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, to a diverse crowd of 75,000 people on the mall and a national radio audience estimated in the millions.

The program concluded with Price’s arrangement of the spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” By coincidence, it also happened to be Price’s birthday.

Price, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, had become the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, when her Symphony in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Needless to say, in an era when White American males struggled to find acceptance on Eurocentric classical music programs, Price, as a Black American woman, faced even greater challenges.

The playing field has shifted in recent years, and interest in Price’s music has been on the rise. It’s hard to believe, for a composer of her accomplishments, that dozens of her manuscripts were rescued from her dilapidated summer home, on the outskirts of St. Anne, Illinois, only as recently as 2009.

Price died in 1953.

It’s an exciting time to be alive. Who knows what other musical riches are out there, undervalued in their time, awaiting rediscovery?

Anderson sings “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”

Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor

Lincoln Memorial Concert
Solar Eclipse Playlist: Music Inspired by Sun Moon Stars

by

Ross Amico

April 8, 2024

in Daily Dispatch

5 responses

The last solar eclipse I viewed was on August 21, 2017 – just before a live air shift, as a matter of fact, so I thought why not share the playlist?

Oh hell, I’ll share the related Facebook post for that day, as well, with the playlist to follow. I hope it inspires you. Remember not to gaze directly at the sun without your special glasses, and enjoy the flooded earthquake Devil Comet eclipse!

If anything, once we’ve all damaged our retinas trying to view today’s solar eclipse, we’ll have developed a heightened appreciation for our remaining, unimpaired sense of hearing. Bask in the warm afterglow of today’s syzygy by joining me on [REDACTED] for a playlist curated from a wide repertoire of works inspired by the sun, the moon, and the heavens.

Highlights will include “Hymn to the Sun” from Pietro Mascagni’s opera “Iris,” ballet music from Jacques Offenbach’s operetta “Voyage to the Moon,” Kenneth Fuchs’ horn concerto “Canticle to the Sun,” reflective of St. Francis of Assisi’s appreciation of Brother Sun and Sister Moon, and George Frideric Handel’s “Total Eclipse” from the oratorio “Samson.” There will also be musical responses to the mythological figures of Apollo (the sun god), Helios (the personification of the sun), and Phaeton (Helios’ son, ill-equipped to handle his father’s blazing chariot).

Make us the bright spot of your day, as we celebrate the eclipse, from 4 to 7 pm EDT, on [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].org.

CLASSICAL MUSIC WITH ROSS AMICO, 8/21/2017

4:00 PM

ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA: SUNRISE
COMPOSER: Richard Strauss
ENSEMBLES: Boston Symphony Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Seiji Ozawa

4:03 PM

SUNRISE SERENADE
COMPOSER: Aulis Sallinen
ENSEMBLES: Finnish Chamber Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Okko Kamu

4:11 PM

HELIOS OVERTURE
COMPOSER: Carl Nielsen
ENSEMBLES: Philadelphia Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Eugene Ormandy

4:22 PM

SAMSON (Act I, SCENE 2): TOTAL ECLIPSE
COMPOSER: George Frideric Handel
ENSEMBLES: The English Concert
SOLOIST: Mark Padmore, tenor

4:29 PM

HOROSCOPE
COMPOSER: Constant Lambert
ENSEMBLES: BBC Concert Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Barry Wordsworth

5:02 PM

PHAÉTON
COMPOSER: Camille Saint-Saëns
ENSEMBLES: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Lorin Maazel

5:11 PM

SYMPHONY NO. 2 in D MAJOR “THE FALL OF PHAETON”
COMPOSER: Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf
ENSEMBLES: Prague Chamber Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Bohumil Gregor

5:32 PM

LE COQ D’OR: HYMN TO THE SUN (rec. 1947)
COMPOSER: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
ENSEMBLES: Orchestra
SOLOIST: Lily Pons, soprano

5:38 PM

CANTICLE TO THE SUN
COMPOSER: Kenneth Fuchs
ENSEMBLES: London Symphony Orchestra
SOLOIST: Timothy Jones, horn

6:02 PM

IRIS: HYMN TO THE SUN
COMPOSER: Pietro Mascagni
ENSEMBLES: Bavarian Radio Chorus; Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Giuseppe Patané

6:12 PM

VOYAGE TO THE MOON: BALLET OF THE SNOWFLAKES
COMPOSER: Jacques Offenbach
ENSEMBLES: Philharmonia Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Antonio de Almeida

6:25 PM

APOLLO
COMPOSER: Igor Stravinsky
ENSEMBLES: Columbia Symphony Orchestra
CONDUCTOR: Igor Stravinsky

6:55 PM

ESTRELLITA (LITTLE STAR)
COMPOSER: Manuel Ponce
SOLOIST: Aaron Rosand, violin; John Covelli, piano
ALBUM: Heifetz Transcriptions
April Enchantments: Music for Spring Showers

by

Ross Amico

April 6, 2024

in Daily Dispatch

4 responses

With so much rain falling over the past week (at least in Princeton, NJ, and Eugene, OR), it’s useful to remember that April showers bring May flowers. Not that rain doesn’t bring its own consolations, at least when you’re Classic Ross Amico.

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll start your day with no less than three works that bear some relation to Elizabeth von Arnim’s lightest and most ebullient novel, “Enchanted April” – including a substantial suite from the score to a 1991 film version, by Richard Rodney Bennett. If you’re wondering what that otherworldly timbre is, it’s an electronic instrument called the ondes Martenot.

In addition, there will be a couple of April fools: John Foulds (we’ll hear his buoyant “April – England,” alone worth the price of admission) and Billy Mayerl (his energetic piano miniature “April’s Fool”).

T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month. American composer Rick Sowash wouldn’t necessarily disagree, as we’ll note in his tuneful, though undeniably bittersweet Clarinet Trio No. 2, subtitled “Enchantement d’avril.” (That’s right, “Enchanted April.”)

The clouds will part for Trevor Duncan’s light music classic, “Enchanted April,” the very thing to chase away the blues.

While surely into each life some rain must fall, we’ll be holding out a bright umbrella and a cup of cheer, when you tune in for a playlist of April enchantments on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

IMAGE: “Enchanted April” by Robert LaDuke, an artist who’s new to me, but I love his retro vibe!

https://www.meyergalleries.com/artist/robert-laduke
Mily Balakirev Russian Musical Kingmaker

by

Ross Amico

April 6, 2024

in Daily Dispatch

9 responses

Mily Balakirev was Russia’s musical kingmaker.

Balakirev, of course, was the founder of the “Mighty Handful,” or “The Russian Five,” that collective of Russian nationalist composers that also included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Cesar Cui.

He had very strong ideas about what Russian music should be, and he was not at all bashful about telling other composers what to do. He essentially micromanaged the early careers of his acolytes, which included not only “The Five,” but on several occasions Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky.

In his later years, though Balakirev’s influence was on the wane, he made two final, important contributions. He was responsible for introducing the prodigy Alexander Glazunov to Rimsky-Korsakov, and he was blessed with one last, very talented disciple, Sergei Lyapunov.

I hope you’ll join me later today, as we listen to music by this last of the Russian nationalists, who was as much influenced by the keyboard prowess of Liszt as he was the patriotic zeal of his mentor. Among our featured works will be his “Solemn Overture on Russian Themes” and “Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes.” He also wrote the music that became “The Lost Chord” signature tune. This will be included, without my voice, for a change, with selections from his “Transcendental Etudes.”

That’s “One Past Five,” music by Sergei Lyapunov, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EASTERN)

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EASTERN)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EASTERN)

Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

WHEN BEARDS WERE IN: Top left, Mily Balakirev; bottom left (clockwise), Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; right, Sergei Lyapunov