Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Edgar Allan Poe

Halloween Playlist Poe and Pumpkin Doughnuts

The day began with a pumpkin doughnut, and now I am pondering weak and weary over what to add to my Halloween playlist. Universal monster classics vie with lurid Hammer horror, devil operas, and macabre comedies.

Readings from Poe have punctuated the season. I lay down last night with Fortunato being led into the catacombs to test a pipe of Amontillado and recalled how much fun I had reading this story for the first time as a kid.

I do miss being able to share some of my Halloween favorites with you as part of a live air shift. My impulse is to lend to the savor of the day by mixing the familiar and the unusual. Frederic Curzon’s “Dance of an Ostracised Imp” or Thomas S. Allen’s “Dance of the Lunatics” always put me in a proper trick-or-treat mood. So much “Halloween” music for all occasions and from all eras, and so little of it ever played. Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Well, at least I can still record.

How about you? Any good reading, listening, or viewing planned for the day? Any excuse to array yourself in widow’s weeds or motley?

Whatever your pleasure, I wish you a Happy Halloween!

PHOTO: The author, Poe-faced

October 31, 2023
Fright Night Dodgeball & Poe A Halloween Crossover

Last night on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, the unlikely convergence of Hippie Roy, Fran and Peter La Fleur from “Dodgeball,” and Edgar Allan Poe resulted in a spirited conversation about “Fright Night” (1985).

Okay, so it’s not exactly Steve Allen.

Thanks to Mike and Marybeth from SciFi Distilled for joining us for this fourth-annual Halloween crossover celebration. It’s been archived here.

This month turned out to be a crazy one, full of cancellations and postponements, so that none of the October shows wound up airing during our usual Friday night time slot, but instead got pushed back to Sundays. I guess we needed the added protection of the Sabbath.

One of the weekends had to be cancelled altogether, so we’ll be playing catch-up next week with a 50th anniversary discussion of “The Exorcist” (1973). That will be on Friday evening, November 3, at 7:00 EDT. With the protection of All Saints, will we finally shake the Exorcist Curse?

I realize I’ve been pretty lax about follow-up posts this month, so here are links to this year’s other Halloween-oriented episodes:

“Burnt Offerings” (10/1)

“An American Werewolf in London” (10/15)

M&M’s “SciFi Distilled,” ordinarily seen on Wednesdays, will present a special episode this Tuesday, Halloween night, at 7:00 EDT.

https://www.facebook.com/distilled

Of course, Roy and I hope to see you in the comments section for “The Exorcist.” Have your Ouija boards on hand, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

October 30, 2023
Poe’s Dark Verse in Haunting Halloween Music

With Halloween only days away, it’s time to get the frock coat out of moth balls. This week 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 was on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, as were 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.

Prepare to brood over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. That’s “Edgar Allan Poems,” 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 the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

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

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

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 28, 2023
October Nightstand Reads Spooky Season Books

Okay! It’s time! Belly up to bar for a glass of hot cider. And let’s hear it. What’s on your nightstand for the month of October?

Me, it’s somewhat of a cliché, I know, but I’ll be reacquainting myself with the tales and poems of Edgar Allan Poe – hardly a curious volume of forgotten lore – as I’ll be in Richmond at a point, and I’ll want to visit The Poe Museum. (Seemingly, every town has one.) My copy is still a cherished one, put out by Philadelphia’s Running Press back in the 1980s. You may remember the cover. All the cool high school kids had one.

This I will supplement with “Poe Pictures,” a lavishly illustrated hardback from Tomahawk Press that pays tribute to Poe’s film legacy. Bruce G. Hallenbeck is the author, with a foreword provided by none other than Roger Corman (who was responsible for American International Pictures’ Edgar Allan Poe cycle starring Vincent Price). I figured this would be a good book to flip through over my afternoon coffee.

I’ve also been able to secure a copy of “A Night in the Lonesome October” by sci-fi/fantasy writer Roger Zelazny. This is one I have not read, but it appears Jack the Ripper meets Dr. Frankenstein, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Rasputin, among others. And it’s narrated by Jack’s dog? There are 31 chapters to coincide with the 31 days of the month. This was recommended to me for the past two years by Bill Montgomery, who follows this page, so when I was able to locate an affordable copy, I figured I’d give it a shot. Mass market science fiction paperbacks of this era used to be much easier to find in used bookstores. Where did they all go? I came across a copy in a secondhand book shop in upstate New York, mylar-bagged, for $50! This is NOT the copy I purchased. Thank you, eBay.

I’m thinking this is also a good time for me to finally read Rosemary Brown’s non-fiction(?) account “Unfinished Symphonies.” I know I’ve written about Brown here a couple of times before. Brown was the English spiritualist who claimed that the great composers were still very much active and dictating posthumous works to her. If you missed my most recent post on the subject, from October 2022, with links to some fascinating related info, you’ll find it here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=963729637879433&set=a.883855802533484

For variety’s sake, I may also extract a story or two from a collection of Richard Matheson’s short stories a friend gifted me for my birthday. Many of Matheson’s tales have been adapted for film and television. I’m sure you’ve encountered his work, even if you don’t recognize his name. He was responsible for some of the most memorable “Twilight Zone” episodes (including the one with the gremlin that taunts an airborne William Shatner), as well as the stories for what became “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “The Legend of Hell House,” and “Trilogy of Terror,” among many, many others.

I read his novel “I am Legend,” back in the 1990s – well before the Will Smith movie, but with two traumatizing adaptations starring Vincent Price (“The Last Man on Earth”) and Charlton Heston (“The Omega Man”) marring my childhood. Some of you may recall that my father took me to see “The Omega Man” at the drive-in when I was 5! Anyway, for me, the book was a pretty good ride for most of the way, until it crossed over from horror, with admittedly sci-fi underpinnings (plague-induced vampires), to a purely sci-fi ending, if memory serves, that didn’t quite satisfy. I’ll give a few of the shorter tales a whirl. Hopefully they’ll have enough meat on their bones so that I don’t feel like I’m floating away after all the heady atmosphere and rich vocabulary of Poe!

It’s amazing to me that I used to have to pound the pavement in every town I ever visited in the hopes of discovering a used bookstore with even a single copy of anything by any of these cult horror writers I craved (Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft) from having encountered a few stories in cheap anthologies, usually offered on remainder tables of the big chains, and now many of them are available as Penguin paperbacks. Of course, the paper is nowhere of the quality of most of the books I purchased 40 years ago. But at least they’re available.

How about you? Any grimoires you’ll be poring over by flickering taper? If so, sound off below. It’s our month to howl!

October 1, 2023
Happy Birthday Poe Masque of Red Death & Music

Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe’s classic story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” has particular resonance in this time of COVID, with the seemingly blithe indifference of a decadent ruler to the sufferings of his people. Instead, Prince Prospero invites those loyal to him to party on the brink of disaster, with inevitably horrifying consequences. The hour of reckoning arrives as the ebony clock strikes twelve.

The story, first published in 1842, has inspired a number of pieces of music over the years, but this one is new to me. Christopher Rouse was composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic when he wrote “Prospero’s Rooms” in 2011. Rouse was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Trombone Concerto in 1993. He died in 2015 at the age of 70.

Rouse talks about the story and his music:

My favorite setting of the piece is still the “Conte fantastique” (“Fantastic Tale”) by Debussy associate André Caplet:

Raise a glass of amontillado to Edgar Allan Poe.

January 19, 2021

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS