If you need to get away from the candles and clove of Windham Hill, there’s always Godfrey Winham.
When Winham takes on a Christmas classic, it’s like a great, big, satisfying ice ball in the face of George Winston. He’s as bracing as a ride in a one-horse open sleigh.
Winham is probably best-known for his role right here in Princeton as an electronic music pioneer. As might be expected, this didn’t lead to a lot of toe-tappers. One day, after listening to some of Windham’s music, his son asked him if he could write something a bit simpler. This was the impetus for a 26-minute set of keyboard meditations on a familiar Christmas tune, titled “Variations on a Theme by James Pierpont” – otherwise known as “The Jingle Bells Variations.”
This is music a grown-up Schroeder would be proud to own. You can listen to it here, starting about 26 minutes into the program
If you are at all interested in Princeton and the history of computer music, and you haven’t checked out this podcast yet, you owe it to yourself to do so:
This is my favorite version of “Jingle Bells” – presented by the Robert DeCormier Singers as it was originally published in 1857.
BONUS! Leopold Mozart’s “A Musical Sleigh Ride,” complete with neighing horses, excitable hounds, and whip cracks. As a radio host, I made it a point to share this fun recording with the Eduard Melkus Ensemble every year on my last shift before Christmas. At home, it drove the dogs crazy.
With extreme winter weather expected to disrupt travel and last-minute Christmas shopping across much of the country, there’s plenty of music about winter recreation to fuel your imagination as you cozy-in around the hearth.
I only just learned late last night that James Litton died on November 1.
Litton was well-known in Princeton and abroad for his long association with the American Boychoir, of which he served as music director from 1985 to 2001. Under his leadership, the choir performed more than 2,000 concerts in 12 countries and 49 states. He also broadened the choir’s palette by allowing singers with changing voices to remain.
Litton prepared the ensemble for performances with a number of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops, the Chicago Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the National Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic. In addition, he made many recordings with the group, and oversaw its participation in television commercials, television shows, and movies.
After stepping down in Princeton, he became choirmaster at Washington National Cathedral. He was regarded as one of the country’s finest choral music directors, and his influence was wide, but close to home, he will always be associated in people’s memories with the American Boychoir.
At the time of his death, Litton was 87 years-old.
Did you know, the composer of “Old Nassau” was a pupil of Franz Liszt? That Princeton was the birthplace of one of the great stride pianists? That a colleague of Igor Stravinsky rests in St. Paul’s Parish Cemetery?
Put on some sensible shoes, and grab your coffee to go. Just in time for Halloween, I lead a “dead composers” tour of Princeton cemeteries in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, available online and in area vending machines today.
Thanks for sharing, @[100063792690234:2048:U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo]! In case you missed it, here’s a link to my article in this week’s edition.
Because of Einstein’s longtime association with Princeton, International Pi Day (3.14, get it?) is usually a pretty big deal here, or at least it was until the pandemic. Understandably, things have been a little subdued since then. The Einstein look-alike contest, the Pi Day tours, the pie-throwing, the Pi memorization and recitation, all were conducted online on Saturday. Today, some of the fooderies are offering deals on pie. That’s mostly what I care about anyway.
In case you’re not an Archimedes fan, Pi, represented by the Greek letter “p” (“π”), is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, commonly approximated as 3.14159 – though you could take it a good deal further, since the number is wholly irrational and refuses to fall into a repeating pattern. This is clearly known by Mr. Spock when he uses it to confound an evil computer.
Einstein lived in Princeton for the last 21 ½ years of his life, during his residency at the Institute for Advanced Study, which, in its early days, was located temporarily on Princeton University campus. Einstein’s house still stands at 112 Mercer Street. In accordance with his wishes, the house was not turned into a museum after his death in 1955. A lot of his furniture and a number of his belongings are on display at the Historical Society of Princeton’s Updike Farmstead, located at 354 Quaker Road.
Though Einstein’s house continues to be owned by IAS, it remains a private residence, as is made abundantly clear from signage posted about the property. The house was registered as a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1976, but there is no marker to advertise the fact. Its significance, however, remains an open secret, and rare is the time I drive past that there’s not someone standing out front, taking a selfie.
According to Google Maps, I can walk there in about 40 minutes. I bet I could do it quicker. Maybe I will – and see if I can get someone to take a picture of me, standing next to the “Private Residence” sign on the front gate, eating pie.
Einstein was a great music lover. “Life without playing music was inconceivable for me,” he’s been quoted as saying. “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most joy in life out of music.”
In 2018, Einstein’s violin sold at auction at Bonhams New York for $516,500 – five times the auction house’s estimate. The instrument was made in 1933 by Oscar H. Steger, a member of the Harrisburg (PA) Symphony Orchestra. Einstein gave the violin to Lawrence Wilson Hibbs, the son of Princeton janitor Sylas Hibbs. It remained in the Hibbs family until the time of its auctioning.
There’s a recording that has been circulated around the internet of Einstein playing a Mozart sonata, but don’t believe it. It’s a hoax, like too many other things on social media, shared without question, everyone so wanting to believe it’s Einstein playing the violin.
Is there an authentic recording somewhere? Maybe. But if it’s discovered, don’t count on Einstein playing as well as Carl Flesch or Arthur Grumiaux.
By cosmic coincidence, Einstein was born on this date in 1879. He once observed, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” Is Pi, then, as a numerical sequence without limit, stupid? I guess it’s all relative.
When Walter Matthau played Einstein in the film “I.Q.,” a goofy romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins, shot in Princeton in 1994, a neighbor’s house, at 108 Mercer Street, was substituted for Einstein’s actual residence.
