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: Krazy Kat
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Feline Affection and Frivolity on “Sweetness and Light”
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Krazy Kat Schumann and Devilish Tunes
Any other fans of vintage cartoons out there?
Here, from 1935, Krazy Kat is seduced by the Devil into claiming ownership of Robert Schumann’s “Träumerei.”
The stage is set from the beginning, as we witness various anthropomorphized Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths, desperate for a hit, ruthlessly plagiarizing from one another. Krazy, however, has higher standards. Clearly he’s a fan of the classics, as a bust of Schumann is seen perched on a cabinet in the background. His superior attitude makes him a perfect mark for Mephisto. Frustration builds, as he paces a hole in the floor, racking his brain for inspiration.
“Good artists borrow, great ones steal” is a maxim often attributed to Igor Stravinsky (who would have stolen it from Picasso). Who needs inspiration, when the Devil gets the best tunes? The Deceiver tempts Krazy to pilfer from his idol. To this end, he corrupts “Träumerei” into “The Hot Cha Melody.”
Schumann’s spirit becomes so indignant that it returns like Mozart’s Commendatore, only to discover a veritable Pottersville, garish and decadent, in which the Devil’s appropriation has become the number one hit of the day. Schumanngeist determines to exact his revenge on Krazy.
This Krazy Kat is not anything like the George Herriman creation I remember. However, there are some fun caricatures of popular singers of the time.
If the cartoon theme music sounds familiar, it too was cribbed – from the aria “M’appari” from Friedrich von Flotow’s opera “Martha!”
Watch here:
You’ll find a more detailed analysis on this blog page:
Happy birthday, Robert Schumann!
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John Alden Carpenter American Composer
Like Charles Ives, the Chicago-based composer John Alden Carpenter was fairly sensible about earning a living, as opposed to starving in a garret.
Carpenter studied music at Harvard with John Knowles Paine, then set out for London to meet Sir Edward Elgar. He finally caught up with Elgar in Rome, then returned home to finish up his formal education with Bernhard Ziehn in Chicago.
Understanding the improbability of sustaining himself as a composer, Carpenter became vice president of the family business, a shipping supply company, where he did quite well. He composed during his time off, and especially after his retirement.
His music is amiable, often jazzy and just a touch modernistic, though not to an extent that would have frightened the horses. His strongest piece appears to have been his construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers,” which was given its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1926.
His 1914 “Adventures in a Perambulator,” evocative of a day in the life of an infant in charming, impressionistic terms, was preserved by Howard Hanson, as part of his landmark Mercury Living Presence series of recordings of mostly lesser-known American music.
In my opinion, Carpenter’s language is a mite too tame to tackle George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat,” but he did just that, composing a ballet after the popular comic strip, featuring Krazy, Ignaz Mouse and Offissa Pup. Ignaz even gets to hurl a brick or two.
Sergei Prokofiev, in Chicago for the 1921 premiere of “The Love for Three Oranges,” was present for the first performance and expressed guarded admiration. In private, I seem to remember, he thought the orchestration lacking.
Here’s music from the ballet “Krazy Kat.” I may be one of the few people alive to have actually heard this work in concert twice, performed by two totally different groups. I keep wishing it were more of a piece with the strip that inspired it.
Happy birthday, John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951).
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