• Ives Halloween Music Under 4 Minutes

    Ives Halloween Music Under 4 Minutes

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    For Charles Ives’ birthday, here are two Halloween-specific pieces. You can listen to them both in just over three minutes.

    First, my favorite recording of “Hallowe’en” (1907), in its original version for string quartet and piano, since it actually includes the bass drum. Ives later orchestrated the work, but it just ain’t the same. The composer wrote, “It’s a take-off of a Halloween party and bonfire – the elfishness of the little boys throwing wood on the fire, etc., etc… it is a joke even Herbert Hoover could get.”

    And then this wisp of a song, “Slugging a Vampire” (1902). Like somebody slipped acid in your Smartees.

    Happy Halloween, from Charles Ives!


  • Star Trek Halloween Spock’s Catspaw

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    Even Mr. Spock could be catty in this one.

    Last night, we celebrated Roy’s 50th episode with a discussion of the classic “Star Trek” Halloween episode “Catspaw,” and some Johnnie Walker Red.

    On Friday, we’ll be joined by special guest (and Roy’s wife) Shari Bethman-Bjellquist, as we make a meal of “Soylent Green” (1972); and then on Sunday, Roy and I will be back in the saddle for one of my personal Halloween favorites, “The Devil Rides Out” (1968), starring the great Christopher Lee.

    Get ready for some serious hooves-on-hooves action. Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner live-streams on Facebook every Friday and Sunday at 7 pm EDT!


  • Halloween Music Crossword Puzzle

    Halloween Music Crossword Puzzle

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    “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

    So remarks Bram Stoker’s Dracula (in reference to howling wolves). Sink your teeth into this week’s Classic Ross Amico crossword, shrouded in musical presentiments of Halloween. Go bats over 50 clues about the supernatural in music.

    To fill out the puzzle, follow the link and select “solve online” at the bottom of the page. You’ll then be able to type directly into the squares. Once you feel you’ve exhausted the puzzle, you’ll find the solutions by clicking on “Answer Key PDF.”

    Test your knowledge – and your fortitude – against bump-in-the-night classics here:

    https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2020.10/1811/18113156.205.html


  • Star Trek Catspaw 50th Episode Celebration

    Star Trek Catspaw 50th Episode Celebration

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    Trekker treat!

    Roy Bjellquist and I will celebrate the 50th episode of “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner” – and round out an all-television weekend (which began on Friday with an exhaustive discussion of the cult series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”) – with a conversation about the classic “Star Trek” Halloween episode, “Catspaw.”

    In this seventh installment of “Star Trek” Season Two, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a mysterious planet wreathed in fog, to encounter witches, a haunted castle, a black cat, a warlock, a “transmuter,” and a couple of very unsettling puppets. Robert Bloch, author of “Psycho,” adapted the teleplay from his 1957 story “Broomstick Ride.” He also happens to give Spock some pretty good one-liners.

    Set phasers for 50! I hope you’ll be able to join us in raising a glass of Romulan ale to the 50th episode of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, live-streamed on Facebook, this Sunday evening at 7:00 EDT.

    https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner/


    “Bones… Is that you?”


  • Edgar Allan Poe Music Special This Sunday

    Edgar Allan Poe Music Special This Sunday

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    High time to get the frock coat out of moth balls. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll celebrate Edgar Allan Poe, with an hour of music inspired by his mad and melancholy verse

    We’ll hear a “melo-declamation” for narrator and orchestra on “The Raven” by Arcady Dubensky (1890-1966), a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. The piece was given its world premiere at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1932, captured in an experimental recording by RCA Victor, on 35mm optical film. It was issued on a special 78 rpm, 2-record set, with the poem, together with monochrome engravings of Stokowski and Poe etched into the shellac. Benjamin de Loache is the speaker.

    Then we’ll have a symphonic poem inspired by Poe’s “Ulalume” by English composer Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958). Holbrooke evidently adored Poe, as he wrote a number of pieces inspired by his writings, including “The Raven,” “The Bells” (which predated the work by Rachmaninoff), and “The Masque of the Red Death.” “Ulalume” was first performed in 1905. The composer thought it one of his finest pieces. Again, the source poem is a gloomy meditation on the loss of a loved one.

    Then, from the Princeton-based Affetto label, we’ll hear selections from a song cycle, “Lenoriana,” by Benjamin C.S. Boyle (b. 1979). Boyle is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, as are the performers, baritone Elem Eley and pianist J.J. Penna. Of the seven songs, we’ll sample Boyle’s settings of “Annabel Lee,” “The Conqueror Worm,” and “To Helen.”

    Finally, we’ll have an orchestral etude on “The Haunted Palace,” which Poe incorporated into his story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The French composer Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) knew the work from a translation by Stéphane Mallarmé. It tells of a king of olden times full of presentiments of impending doom to his palace and himself. The house and the royal family are destroyed, and remnants of the court may still be glimpsed as phantoms flickering in the windows and doors.

    “The Haunted Palace” may be the first piece of music by a French composer to be inspired by Poe. It was completed in 1904, and first performed the following year.

    Get ready to brood over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. That’s “Edgar Allan Poems,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.


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