This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the cat’s out of the bag. It’s an hour of felicitous feline music!
On the 150th anniversary of the birth of American composer John Alden Carpenter, we’ll hear the ballet “Krazy Kat,” inspired by George Herriman’s cult comic strip. Carpenter characterized it as a “jazz pantomime”, but if there’s any jazz in it, it’s “white man” jazz of the 1920s (i.e. less jazz than “Rhapsody in Blue”). Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen this performed – twice! If memory serves, Sergei Prokofiev, in the U.S. for the debut of his opera “The Love for Three Oranges” and to perform his Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was present at the work’s premiere. I can’t find anything on the internet to back it up right now, so it looks like I’ll be sleuthing around my library.
Carpenter’s music will headline a meow mix of melodies by Leroy Anderson, Ernst von Dohnányi, Richard Rodney Bennett, Gioachino Rossini, Nino Rota, Samuel Barber, and Zez Confrey.
It will be programming you can sink your claws into, on “Sweetness and Light.” The music, like your host, will be the cat’s pajamas, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
Tag: John Alden Carpenter
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Feline Affection and Frivolity on “Sweetness and Light”
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Skyscrapers Ballet Labor Day Transcription
For Labor Day, here’s an effective transcription of John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet, “Skyscrapers” (1926). On Saturday, I included the orchestral version on a playlist of labor-related works for my radio show, “Sweetness and Light.” This arrangement, by Yukiko Nishimura, was performed at Temple University by pianists Sara Davis Buechner & Charles Abramovic and percussionists Alyssa Resh & Andrew Malonis.
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Labor Day Music Marathon on Sweetness and Light
How laborious it was to put together this morning’s “Sweetness and Light!” Which I suppose is only appropriate, since today’s theme is music for Labor Day.
It’s not uncommon when producing a show that the running time can come up a little long. I try to avoid it, but when it happens, it’s usually remedied with a few snips. But this week I was a full 90 seconds over, which meant trimming my commentary to the bone. It can take a while to whittle it all down.
In the end, I was still 30 seconds over. The rock was high and Classic Ross Amico was so small!
So I had to swap out Aaron Copland’s rarely-heard “John Henry” (at 4 minutes) for something decidedly more “Common” (at about 3:30). If you’re at all familiar with the composer and his output, I think you can deduce what that is.
Another casualty was my fine encapsulation of the essence of John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers.” There’s an awful lot of color in that score to convey a few sentences!
“The scenario involves workers in overalls, who struggle to bring order to a confusion of girders and flashing red lights; all around them the hustle and bustle of the city. Eventually the whistle blows. There’s a diverting side-trip to a Coney Island-type amusement park, with its crowds and attractions and popular dance rhythms. Again the whistle blows, and the laborers return to work.”
The music is still there, but I wind up basically saying “here it is.”
Life is full of frustration, folks, but it still beats digging ditches.
I hope you’ll join me for a program that will also include works by George Frideric Handel, Nikolai Medtner, Michael Torke, and Eric Coates, with Princeton’s own Paul Robeson singing Earl Robinson’s labor classic “Joe Hill.” How that’s sweet OR light, I have no idea, but I’m playing it.
As always, I earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. Just in time for breakfast, I’ll be bringing home the bacon, 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:
IMAGE: One of ten dynamic panels from Thomas Hart Benton’s mural, “America Today” (1930-31). You can click through thumbnails of all of them here:
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Labor Day Music on Sweetness and Light
How laborious it was to put together this morning’s “Sweetness and Light!” Which I suppose is only appropriate, since today’s theme is music for Labor Day.
It’s not uncommon when producing a show that the running time can come up a little long. I try to avoid it, but when it happens, it’s usually remedied with a few snips. But this week I was a full 90 seconds over, which meant trimming my commentary to the bone. It can take a while to whittle it all down.
In the end, I was still 30 seconds over. The rock was high and Classic Amico was so small!
So I had to swap out Aaron Copland’s rarely-heard “John Henry” (at 4 minutes) for something decidedly more “Common” (at about 3:30). If you’re at all familiar with the composer and his output, I think you can deduce what that is.
Another casualty was my fine encapsulation of the essence of John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers.” There’s an awful lot of color in that score to convey a few sentences!
“The scenario involves workers in overalls, who struggle to bring order to a confusion of girders and flashing red lights; all around them the hustle and bustle of the city. Eventually the whistle blows. There’s a diverting side-trip to a Coney Island-type amusement park, with its crowds and attractions and popular dance rhythms. Again the whistle blows, and the laborers return to work.”
The music is still there, but I wind up basically saying “here it is.”
Life is full of frustration, folks, but it still beats digging ditches.
I hope you’ll join me for a program that will also include works by George Frideric Handel, Nikolai Medtner, Michael Torke, and Eric Coates, with Princeton’s own Paul Robeson singing Earl Robinson’s labor classic “Joe Hill.” How that’s sweet OR light, I have no idea, but I’m playing it.
As always, I earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. Just in time for breakfast, I’ll be bringing home the bacon, 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:
IMAGE: One of ten dynamic panels from Thomas Hart Benton’s mural, “America Today” (1930-31). You can click through thumbnails of all of them here:
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Labor Day Lost Chord Medtner Rosenthal Carpenter
This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s a working weekend, as we salute the laborer for Labor Day.
Nikolai Medtner, classmate and friend of Sergei Rachmaninoff, wrote an awful lot of music for the piano. Alas, comparatively little of it is heard with any frequency. Pianists are said to adore his music, but for those in charge of concert venues the composer remains a tough sell. Medtner’s curiously titled triptych, “Three Hymns in Praise of Toil,” from 1926-27, consists of three movements: “Hymn Before Work,” “At the Anvil,” and “Hymn After Work.”
Manuel Rosenthal’s original compositions have been eclipsed by his arrangements for the runaway success, “Gaité Parisienne.” Rosenthal wrote music for the stage, orchestral pieces, pieces for voice and chorus, and instrumental works, but none of them have attained anywhere near the recognition of his Offenbach ballet, on which his name, if it appears at all, does so in rather small print. He did enjoy a successful career as one of France’s most prominent conductors. Interestingly, he was also the third and last pupil of Maurice Ravel.
We’ll hear Rosenthal’s “Les petits métiers” (“The Little Trades”), from 1933, ten deft orchestral sketches, including “The Farrier,” “The Herbalist,” “The Puppeteer,” “The Night-Watchman,” “The Postman Déodat,” “The Barber,” “The Cornet-seller,” “The Grinder,” “The Nanny,” and “The Little Telegraph-Boy.” If you don’t know what a farrier is, it’s a specialist in equine foot care!
According to the composer, “In this score, I have put my memories of the urchin I once was in the streets of Paris. They were full of songs of the trades-people, glazier, knife-grinder and so on. But I did not forget the wet-nurses who fed the new-born children of richer families, the soldiers or the little telegraph-boys, urchins of 12 or 13 years-old, who carried telegrams by bicycle. In short, all those little trades that favored exchange between people and contributed to a very French and very cheerful atmosphere.”
Speaking of horse feet, we’ll also enjoy a brief part-song by Gustav Holst, called “The Song of the Blacksmith,” a folk song arrangement from 1917. Holst later included the melody in his Second Suite in F for military band, with a lively part for anvil!
Finally, American composer John Alden Carpenter’s ballet “Skyscrapers,” from 1924, is set against the backdrop of a big city, with workmen in overalls exerting themselves amidst the haste and confusion of urban life. A whistle blows. There’s a side trip to an amusement park, with suggestions of carousels and raucous dance bands. These are interrupted, briefly, by a flashback to the idea of work, the workmen swinging their hammers and preparing to rivet. Then a reversion to play, with sailors, flappers and midway types performing a succession of colorful dances. The whistle blows again, and the laborers are summoned back to the job at hand.
Pull up a girder and get out your Stanley thermoses. I’ll be doing the heavy lifting as we punch the clock for Labor Day with “Labor Intensive” 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!
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