Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Philadelphia

Maelzel’s Metronome The Turk & Philly Mystery

Perhaps in your haste to escape Philadelphia by way of South 5th Street, en route to the Ben Franklin Bridge, you may have glimpsed the Johann Nepomuk Maelzel commemorative marker at the corner of 5th and St. James, just below Walnut Street.

Maelzel died in the extraordinary act of actually trying to get back to Philadelphia. On the 21st of July, 1838, he was found dead in the berth of a brig returning from the Caribbean. Whether he died of yellow fever or alcohol poisoning is a matter of ambiguity. Maelzel was consigned to a watery grave somewhere off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.

In his lifetime, Maelzel was a renowned inventor of mechanical wonders. He created machines that could play works of Haydn and Mozart. No doubt his most ambitious achievement in this regard was the panharmonicon, a kind of mechanical orchestra, for which Beethoven composed “Wellington’s Victory.”

Beethoven and Maelzel would quarrel over the division of spoils, and Beethoven would re-orchestrate the work for human performers of a conventional symphony orchestra. Maelzel, seemingly always in debt, would exhibit his creations in his own museum in Vienna, and on tours throughout the United States and the West Indies.

He achieved notoriety for his work with automatons, most notably a mysterious humanoid engine called “The Turk.” The Turk was marketed as a thinking machine that could outmaneuver opponents in a game of chess. And the Turk almost always delivered on his promise. The device captivated figures from Edgar Allan Poe (a skeptic) to S. Weir Mitchell (haunted by it as a child).

Some felt Maelzel had set foot into some pretty murky ethical territory, with arguments prefiguring some in our own day regarding artificial intelligence. This was the era, after all, of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Sensible folk speculated it was all humbug and that there was a man hidden somewhere in the vicinity of The Turk. Others thought Maelzel was dabbling in matters best left to God. Maelzel was mum on the subject, and The Turk was destroyed by fire in 1854.

Though no doubt there was a whiff of charlatanism about Maelzel, who schooled no less a figure than P.T. Barnum in the effective use of the press, he had a remarkable talent for finessing and perfecting the ideas of others.

His most enduring legacy is the metronome, which he patented in 1815. Beethoven wrote glowingly of the device and declared that henceforth he would stop using traditional tempo indications in his scores in favor of metronome markings. We all know how well that served him. Seemingly as with anything influenced by Maelzel, Beethoven’s choices of metronome markings continue to be a source of controversy.

July 21, 2021
Francis Johnson America’s First Master of Music

A blue and gold marker erected before his home, at 65 South 4th Street in Philadelphia, describes him as “America’s first native-born master of music.” He was a prolific composer, “trumpeter of 1st Troop, City Cavalry, and Bandmaster, 128th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.” He was also the leader of America’s most popular band for more than twenty years. Over a century before Dorothy Maynor and Little Richard, Francis Johnson, born on this date in 1792, was presenting racially-integrated concerts.

Johnson was the first African-American to have his works published as sheet music. He led the first American ensemble, an all-black brass band, in performance abroad. In 1837, he sailed to England to take part in the celebrations surrounding the coronation of Queen Victoria. In gratitude, the Queen presented him with a silver bugle. While there, he was exposed to the promenade concert – a style of informal, outdoor garden entertainment – which he brought back with him to the United States. He returned to Philadelphia in 1838, the year Pennsylvania Hall was burned to ground by an angry mob for hosting a convention of abolitionists.

Indeed, it’s remarkable, in a climate of mounting racial tension and violence, with the Civil War still decades in the future, just how beautifully Johnson’s career flourished. In 1824, he was invited to perform for General Lafayette during Lafayette’s return to the United States. He also taught wealthy European-American students at a studio much-remarked upon for its extensive music library. Over the years, he also amassed an impressive array of instruments. His works were published in compilations alongside those of Beethoven, Brahms, Bellini, Donizetti, Weber, and Czerny.

At the same time, he performed in Philadelphia’s black churches. His style of playing included rhythmic variations that deviated considerably from his written scores. In the 20th century, this might have been described as “jazzing,” but Johnson’s improvisions would have been worlds away from what we now recognize as jazz.

He was also known to have delighted his audiences with certain extended techniques and programmatic elements. His “Bird Waltz” featured a chirrupy flute obbligato, his “New Railroad Gallop” emulated a train, and his “Philadelphia Fireman’s Quadrille” was punctuated by cries of “Fire! Fire!”

Unfortunately, a lot of this music was not fully written-out, with prompts often indicated in his scores. When they were published, it was commonly in arrangements and as piano transcriptions made by other hands. Scholars have reconstructed his performance style to the best of their ability from surviving evidence, including newspaper accounts and other documents describing the effects heard on Johnson’s concerts. The music itself is fairly simple, often a framework to be adorned by improvisation and development.

Johnson died in 1844 at the age of 51. At his funeral, Queen Victoria’s bugle lay atop his casket.

Happy birthday, Francis Johnson.

General Lafayette’s Grand March

Philadelphia Firemen’s Cotillion

Princeton Gallopade

Dirge (played at Johnson’s funeral)

June 16, 2021
Harold Boatrite Philadelphia Composer Dies

Following the sad news this morning of the death of James Primosch, I have only just learned of the passing of another Philadelphia composer. Harold Boatrite died on Monday at the age of 89.

Boatrite studied with Stanley Hollingsworth (himself a pupil of Darius Milhaud and Gian Carlo Menotti). On a scholarship, he attended Tanglewood for further lessons with Lukas Foss and Aaron Copland. In 1961, he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to serve as composer-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival.

Six years later, Boatrite received an honorary doctorate from Combs College of Music. He taught theory and composition at Haverford College until 1980. From 1974 to 1977, he also served on the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Boatrite’s output spanned chamber and solo instrumental music to large-scale choral and orchestral works. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and Europe, most notably at the Prague Autumn International Music Festival. A ballet, “Childermas,” was nationally broadcast on CBS television in 1969.

Boatrite served for many years as a new music consultant to the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. His chamber works were recorded for the Capstone label, and his orchestral scores are housed in the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

For the second time today, R.I.P.

“Serenade for Oboe and Strings”

“Ave Maria”

Piano Concerto

“Adagio for Strings”

April 28, 2021
James Primosch Philadelphia Composer Dies

The composer James Primosch has died.

A Philadelphia presence for many years, Primosch earned his master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a student of George Crumb and Richard Wernick.

He went on to obtain his doctorate from Columbia, where he studied with Mario Davidovsky. He also served as a teaching assistant at the Columbia Electronic Music Center.

He returned to Philadelphia to join the faculty of U of P in 1988. There he became director of the Presser Electronic Music Studio.

Earlier, he studied at Cleveland State University. Primosch was born in Cleveland in 1956.

Acclaimed for his word-setting and poetic nuance, he composed quite a bit of music for voice. His Catholic faith informed his sacred works. He was also a jazz enthusiast. His compositional language could be angular or unabashedly lyrical. His music has been much performed, much recorded, and much honored.

Among the organizations and ensembles to have programmed his pieces are the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic New Music Ensemble, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Locally, his music has been performed by The Crossing, Dolce Suono, Mendelssohn Club, Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and Westminster Choir College.

In 1994, he served as artist-in-residence at the Marlboro Music Festival.

Primosch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2020.

R.I.P.

Meditation on “Motherless Child,” from the Piano Quintet

From his “Mass for the Day of St. Didymus,” performed by The Crossing

Here it is complete

Oboe Quartet

“Our Revels Now Are Ended” from “Songs and Dances from ‘The Tempest’”

“One with the Darkness, One with the Light”

April 28, 2021
Germaine Tailleferre in Philadelphia

I find it fascinating that Germaine Tailleferre waited out World War II in Philadelphia. And yet I can never seem to find out very much about what she did while in exile.

Tailleferre was the only female member of Les Six, that loose collective of composers that rose to prominence in Paris in the late ‘teens and 1920s, under the guidance of Jean Cocteau. Her famous colleagues included Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, and Georges Auric. Louis Durey, a hard-line communist who went on to set poems by Ho-Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, is the one nobody remembers. (I wonder why.)

Tailleferre was strong-willed from the beginning. Her birth name was Taillefesse, but she changed it to spite her father, since the old man opposed her musical studies. However, she took piano lessons with her mother and was admitted into the Paris Conservatory. It was there that she met the rest of The Six and that the prizes began to pile up. She also earned the friendship and received the support of Maurice Ravel.

In 1925, she married Ralph Barton, the American caricaturist, and moved to New York. Two years later, the couple returned to France, then divorced. Her career thrived in the 1920s and ‘30s. With the outbreak of World War II, however, she beat it back to the United States, leaving most of her scores at her home in Grasse, and, as I said, passed the war years in Philadelphia.

After the war, she again returned to France, where she resumed her career. As she got older, her pieces tended to be shorter, as she suffered from arthritis. She also wrote a lot for children and young pianists. She composed virtually right up until the time of her death in 1983, when she was 91 years-old. She wrote so much, in fact, that a lot of the music of her later years has never been published, and fresh discoveries from her output are being recorded all the time.

Happy birthday, Germaine Tailleferre! If anyone has any information about her activities in Philadelphia, I would be very curious to know.

The Concertino for Harp and Orchestra (1927):

The lovely and wistful “Arabesque” for clarinet and piano (1972):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0E8tUzQezA See Less

The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1924). The piece was given its U.S. premiere – in the presence of the composer – by Alfred Cortot and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted Leopold Stokowski.

April 19, 2021

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