Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Back to School

Back to School with Classical Music on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.

We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!

I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pedants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.

Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.

Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you join me for “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/

September 6, 2025
Back to School Movie Music Scores on KWAX

It’s back to school time!

Time to take notes, as we get all pedantic about music from movies with academic settings, including selections from “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (Richard Addinsell), “Dead Poets Society” (Maurice Jarre), “Back to School” (Danny Elfman), “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (Michael Kamen), and “Tom Brown’s School Days” (again, Richard Addinsell).

Minds will be sharpened and buttons will be pushed, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 5, 2025
Back to School with Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’re headed back to school.

We’ll have frothy music on scholastic themes. None frothier than a head of beer, conjured perhaps by Emil Waldteufel’s “Estudiantina,” or “Band of Students.” Listeners of a certain age may associate this music with a popular jingle for Rheingold Beer. Clearly its inclusion suggests a double-significance – not that I condone riotous student behavior (unless, of course, I’m invited)!

I’ll also share one of my favorite lesser-heard works of Ralph Vaughan Williams: the “Charterhouse Suite,” a collection of light dances for strings, named for the public school the composer attended, beginning at the age of 15. Pendants will add that the work was actually arranged from an earlier “Suite of Six Short Pieces” for piano.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 55 is often referred to as the “Schoolmaster.” Passages are said to be strikingly similar to those in a lost Haydn divertimento, identified as “The Schoolmaster in Love.” In particular, it’s been suggested that the dotted rhythm of the second movement of the symphony calls to mind a schoolmaster’s wagging finger – disrupted at intervals by musical sighs as he swoons with love.

Along the way, we’ll also enjoy music by Richard Addinsell, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Sigmund Romberg.

Put on your school clothes, boys and girls, and learn your lessons well. You’ll get a gold star when you join me for “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/

September 7, 2024
Back to School Movie Music on WWFM

It’s back to school time! Enjoy it while you can.

Take notes, as we get all pedantic about music from movies with academic settings, including selections from “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (Richard Addinsell), “Dead Poets Society” (Maurice Jarre), “Back to School” (Danny Elfman), “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (Michael Kamen), and “Tom Brown’s School Days” (again, Richard Addinsell).

Minds will be sharpened and buttons will be pushed, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 28, 2021
Why I Dislike Dead Poets Society (Like Ebert!)

Roger Ebert and I must be the only two people on the planet who didn’t like “Dead Poets Society” (1989). I mean I LIKED it, but in a sheepish sort of way. The film looks fabulous – all the lingering shots of geese and mists hovering over a perpetual autumn landscape of a fantasy campus, replete with stone buildings and leaded glass and classrooms with honest-to-goodness wooden desks, play to my innermost private-school yearnings.

But for all its cinematographic rewards, there’s something very cheap about it. The filmmakers can’t figure out how to represent visually the film’s alleged celebration of poetry as a transformative force, so instead they come up with vapid short-hand “solutions” like having the students steal away in the night for surreptitious meetings in a grotto, where they read by flashlight. None of them display any comprehension of WHAT they read, but they do indulge in other transgressions, like the smoking of cigarettes and… conga dancing? Really? This is not sucking the marrow out of life; this is just sucking. Walt Whitman, whom the screenplay repeatedly invokes, would never stop vomiting.

The film is totally paint-by-numbers. And I really resent the transparent button-pushing, as this “enlightened” band of rebel angels sticks it to the stuffed shirts. I don’t mind having my buttons pushed, but at least work at it a little bit! Otherwise I’ll just watch “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1939) or “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (1995), which at least earn their tears. Even “Animal House” has the decency to be what it is.

At any rate, I am resigned to the inevitable hail of brickbats as I engage in my annual screed against “Dead Poets Society” this week, on “Picture Perfect.” There aren’t very many films that set me off – my outspokenness about “The Lord of the Rings,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” and any number of superhero movies have all generated mail – and perhaps I should just shut up and play the music, but you know how it is. Some days you don’t have enough caffeine, or it’s 100 degrees outside, and you just get grumpy.

Plenty of people are grumpy, I’m sure, as they head back to school. I hope you’ll join me for music from movies with academic settings, including selections by Maurice Jarre (“Dead Poets Society”), Danny Elfman (“Back to School”), Richard Addinsell (“Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and “Tom Brown’s School Days”), and Michael Kamen (“Mr. Holland’s Opus”).

I’ll be in my grotto, ranting by flashlight, this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Misery loves company: Roger Ebert eviscerates “Dead Poets Society.”

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-poets-society-1989

August 31, 2018

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