Classic Ross Amico

  • Elegies for the Old West: Western Film Scores

    Elegies for the Old West: Western Film Scores

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    Ross Amico
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    With summer winding down and the shadows lengthening, it’s a good time to think about moseying off into the sunset. This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an elegy for the Old West.

    By the 1960s, the cinematic western was becoming a victim of its own success. The western had been a popular genre since the silent era, with dozens, of variable quality, released every year. Seemingly the genre hit its peak in the 1950s. One might say, the western suffered the fate of the actual American West, with its mythic resonance choked into clichés by too many settlers.

    Also, current events began to color filmmakers’ perceptions of the West, the turbulence surrounding the Vietnam War, the assassinations of both Kennedys and King, and increased suspicion of government making for violent, bloodier and more nihilistic visions of Manifest Destiny. The shift gave rise to the revisionist western, which embraced new realities of dirt, corruption, and moral ambiguity in the West. At the same time, there was a rise in more wistful, elegiac westerns, which seem to bid farewell to beloved western icons like Joel McCrea, Kirk Douglas and John Wayne.

    Common characteristics include the obsolescence of the gunfighter; the free-ranging cowboy fenced off by barbed wire; the encroachment of corporations in the form of railroad and mining interests; horses replaced by automobiles; the six-shooter superseded by the Gatling gun – the land of limitless possibility and moral certitude, subdivided and spoiled by industrialization. Once-heroic figures ride slowly into the sunset, or are killed, their qualities unrecognized, perhaps even willfully rejected, by those who come after.

    We’ll hear selections from four elegiac westerns, including “Cheyenne Autumn” (1964), with music by Alex North; “The Shootist” (1976), with music by Elmer Bernstein; “The Wild Bunch” (1969), with music by Jerry Fielding; and “Monte Walsh” (1970), with music by John Barry.

    Autumn comes to the Old West, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    PHOTO: John Wayne and Ron Howard take aim in “The Shootist”

  • Pettersson, Tomlinson: Light & Dark Music

    Pettersson, Tomlinson: Light & Dark Music

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    Ross Amico
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    Into every life, a little existentialism must fall. It is for this reason that God invented British Light Music.

    Today is the birthday of Allan Pettersson, a composer who never had a happy day in his life.

    Pettersson grew up in Södermalm, today a gentrified, bohemian neighborhood, but then viewed as the slum of Stockholm. And there, he more or less remained. His father was a raging alcoholic blacksmith, but his mother was pious and attentive to her children.

    Somehow, he managed to attend the conservatory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, where he studied violin and viola. He also took private lessons in composition on the side. Then he traveled to Paris for roughly 15 months for further studies with Rene Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, and Darius Milhaud.

    In the early 1950s, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. By the time he completed his Fifth Symphony, in 1962, his mobility had become so compromised that he was forced to dictate many of his subsequent compositions. It took him four years to write his Sixth Symphony. After completing his Ninth, he was hospitalized for nine months. He began his Tenth on his sickbed, in an apartment he seldom left. For the final decade of his life he was assigned to state living quarters, but at no point did his productivity wane. He died in 1980 at the age of 68, leaving in his wake seventeen symphonies.

    I’ve now managed to collect most of them, thanks to Princeton Record Exchange. Don’t ask me why. I guess I’m saving them to temper the happiest day of my life, should it ever occur.

    Pettersson’s symphonies are never less than ambitious, each one a saga of despair crafted by Sweden’s reigning bard of bleakness. The longest of these spans some 70 minutes. To maintain interest, the composer carefully calibrates his soundscapes, arriving at unique solutions to the question of form. The emotional range runs the entire Scandinavian gamut, from grimness to anger to violence. Don’t go into a Pettersson symphony expecting the “Pastoral Suite.”

    At the other end of the spectrum, we have Ernest Tomlinson, whose birthday is also today. Judging purely on the basis of his music, Tomlinson never had a sad day in his life. Sure, he was color-blind, but I think Pettersson would agree, color-blindness beats the hell out of rheumatoid arthritis.

    Tomlinson was a master of light music and bright arrangements. His output consists of overtures, suites, rhapsodies, and miniatures. I’d be surprised if any of them are even in a minor key.

    In 1984, Tomlinson learned that the BBC was planning to dispose of its light music archive. In response, he founded The Library of Light Orchestral Music, preserving in a barn on his property some 50,000 pieces, many of which otherwise would have been lost.

    Tomlinson died in 2015, at the age of 90.

    Which is healthier, I wonder – to lay bare the horrors of the void, in all its cruel indifference, over agonizing, epic spans, or to defy them by creating three- and four-minute miniatures of distilled happiness and purified beauty?

    A question of prophet vs. profit? You decide.

    The juxtaposition of Pettersson and Tomlinson totally puts me in mind of “Strindberg and Helium,” a series of videos from back in the days of the Wild West of the internet, when everyone still had desktop computers, with Pettersson as Strindberg (naturally) and Tomlinson as Helium.

    Each episode is around a minute long, so it’s easy to meet your daily fortification of despair.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1tKMjYxYSJI9jLA6Jf3Mw

    Pettersson, Symphony No. 7

    Tomlinson, “The Fairy Coach”

  • Beyond String Quartets: Marlboro’s Chamber Music Hour

    Beyond String Quartets: Marlboro’s Chamber Music Hour

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    Ross Amico
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    String quartets, we bite our thumbs at thee!

    On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we smash the hegemony of chamber music’s most prevalent foursome to bring you an hour of contumely quartets.

    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart spent five months in Mannheim in 1777, hoping to chase down a steady position there. He didn’t get the job, but he did receive a fistful of commissions from gentleman-flutist Willem van Britten Dejong. The 21 year-old composer was broke, in love, and, as usual, being badgered by his old man to make something of himself already. These external pressures may explain, in part, Mozart’s alleged aversion to the flute. He certainly responded to the new commissions as if they were more of a burden than a godsend. Still, he had too much integrity not to lend the works his usual polish.

    We’ll hear the Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K. 285, performed at the 1989 Marlboro Music Festival, by flutist Marina Piccinini, violinist Scott St. John, violist Christof Huebner, and cellist Peter Wiley.

    Bernard Garfield was longtime principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He served with the orchestra for 43 years, from 1957 to 2000. Concurrently, he taught at Temple University and, for over three decades, at the Curtis Institute of Music. He also founded the New York Woodwind Quintet.

    It’s hardly surprising that a career bassoonist would write music for his own instrument. Garfield composed three bassoon quartets. We’ll hear the first of these, from 1950. It was performed at Marlboro in 2010 by bassoonist Natalya Rose Vrbsky, violinist David McCarroll, violist Dmitri Murrath, and cellist Judith Serkin.

    Finally, Carl Maria von Weber earned his place in the history books as one of the progenitors of German Romantic opera. With its lurid Wolf’s Glen sequence, “Der Freischutz” reverberated in its nightmarish extravagance, making it one of the most influential operas of the 19th century.

    Twelve years before “Freischutz,” in 1809, Weber, then 22, wrote a comparatively benign Piano Quartet in B flat major. His model was clearly Mozart, but already his head had grown too hot for his tricorn, as he also indulges in flights of post-Beethovenian temperament.

    We’ll hear Weber’s quartet, as played at Marlboro in 1989, by pianist Igor Ardašey, violinist Takumi Kubota, violist Ulrich Eichenauer, and cellist Siegfried Palm.

    Strike a blow against the tyranny of the string quartet! It’s an hour of revolting chamber music on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

  • Late Summer Sounds: Women Composers & More

    Late Summer Sounds: Women Composers & More

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    Ross Amico
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    As we continue to savor this precious late-summer’s day, here’s what I’ve got planned musically – as if, in my hubris, there is anything I can do to enhance an already-perfect afternoon.

    I’ll continue to highlight the contributions of women composers, during this month in which we celebrate the bicentennial of Clara Schumann. To this end, we’ll hear a suite from “La liberazione di Ruggiero” by Francesca Caccini, on her birthday. This was the first opera composed by a woman and probably the first by an Italian to be performed abroad.

    It’s also the anniversary of the births of the great English eccentric and polymath Lord Berners and the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. Benjamin wrote his most popular piece, “Jamaican Rumba,” for the duo-piano team of Joan and Valerie Trimble. It makes sense, then, to also program Joan’s irresistible “Suite for Strings.”

    As if all that weren’t enough, I’ll risk gilding the lily with the inclusion of a charming faux-Baroque dance suite, the conveniently titled “The Nobility of Women,” by Philadelphia composer Kile Smith.

    At 6:00, it’s another “Music from Marlboro.” This week, we’ll enjoy three quirky quartets by Mozart, Weber, and Bernard Garfield, as always in performances from the archive of the legendary Marlboro Music Festival.

    Tap your toes and take your quartets in the threes. There’s nothing unusual in that, is there? Help yourself to some more tea, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    PHOTO: A classic Berners tea party (note the horse)

  • Hildegard von Bingen Renaissance Woman

    Hildegard von Bingen Renaissance Woman

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    Ross Amico
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    3 responses

    She was a true renaissance woman – before there was even a Renaissance!

    Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th century abbess, mystic, visionary, philosopher, scientist, medical theorist, artist, writer, poet, composer, and saint, was a pioneer who excelled in so many fields, it’s a wonder she wasn’t burned at the stake. Where ever did she come from, and why did she have no successors?*

    We’ll celebrate this extraordinary figure this afternoon on The Classical Network, as I continue to highlight the work of female composers, a month-long exploration precipitated by the Clara Schumann bicentennial. Tune in to experience music by Hildegard, interleaved with tributes by contemporary composers Aaron Jay Kernis and Christopher Theofanidis. The rest of the afternoon’s playlist will consist entirely of works by women.

    First, I hope you’ll join me for today’s Noontime Concert. Mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams and pianist Laurent Philippe will perform songs by Robert Schumann, Federico Garcia Lorca, Benjamin Britten, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harry T. Burleigh, and Hall Johnson.

    The concert was recorded this past May in Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, 129 West 67th Street, in New York City. Merkin’s Tuesday Matinees series presents a new generation of critically acclaimed performers in a concert hall admired for its near-perfect acoustics. To learn more about this season’s offerings, visit kaufmanmusiccenter.org.

    Then belly up to the bar for Hildegard’s Feast Day. The table is set for great music, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    *Interestingly, in reading up on Hildegard, I happened to come across a history of Kassia, a Byzantine abbess and composer who flourished three centuries earlier!

    https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2016/03/kassia.html

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