This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have our final say on the long, gluttonous holiday weekend with Knudåge Riisager’s ballet “Slaraffenland” (usually translated as “Fool’s Paradise”).
Inspired by Bruegel’s painting “The Land of Cockaigne,” the scenario imagines a Promised Land “where roasted pigeons fly around in the air with knives and forks in their backs, and the streets are paved with marzipan and chocolate.” The plot concerns a silly boy who wanders into the country of King Sauce and becomes ill from overindulgence. Along the way, he encounters Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, Captain Fear, Fountains of Liqueur, Cigarettes, and the Candy Princess.
Riisager was born in 1897 to Danish parents living in Estonia. He studied music at Copenhagen University and then in Paris with Albert Roussel. Though he was a prolific composer, with some 400 works to his name, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and songs, he is probably best known, if at all, for his ballets.
Rouse yourself for one last dose of musical tryptophan. Join me for “Fool’s Paradise” – Knudåge Riisager’s “Slaraffenland,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/
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IMAGE: A very Bruegel Thanksgiving
Tag: Thanksgiving
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One Last Dose of Musical Tryptophan on “The Lost Chord”
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On “Sweetness and Light”: The Thanks That Keeps on Giving
Okay, we survived Thanksgiving. Although, of course, in the 21st century, the celebration has been compounded in a way that would have horrified any 17th century Pilgrim. With the neologistic appendices of Fakesgiving and Friendsgiving, will the “giving” never end?
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the bounty endures. I’ll be piling the turkey sandwiches high with cranberry sauce for breakfast, as we savor musical delights reflective of the long, long Thanksgiving weekend.
Some of the works will be evocative of what’s in the ‘fridge. All will be American in origin. Some will be specifically connected to New England.
The playlist, etched in mashed potatoes, will include music by John Williams, Edward MacDowell, Craig Russell, Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, and pianist/rodeo champion David Guion.
I’ll be wringing out the last of the cornucopia with an hour of Thanksgiving leftovers, on “Sweetness and Light.” Join me in shoveling in the pumpkin pie and whipped cream, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
https://kwax.uoregon.edu/ -
Thanksgiving 2025: Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down
No time for a thought piece today. Suffice it to say, we may be living through troubling times, but there’s still much to be thankful for. Look around you, be appreciative, and enjoy it while you can.
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Turkey Day Thomson
It’s breakfast in bed for Virgil Thomson on his birthday.
Thomson was not only a composer, he was a writer on music, who wielded power of a kind unimaginable, in this day of eroded standards, as a critic at the New York Herald-Tribune.
Perhaps his brand of “faux-naïf” Americana is not for everyone. Still, it earned him a wide and enduring audience. His music for Robert Flaherty’s “Louisiana Story” (1948) remains the only film score ever to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
For Thomson’s birthday, here’s some music to get you in the mood for Thanksgiving.
His “Symphony on a Hymn Tune” was composed during his Paris years. Thomson, like Aaron Copland and so many others, studied in France with Nadia Boulanger. The symphony was inspired by the composer’s memories of his Kansas City boyhood. The “Sunday best” of the church hymns occasionally gets tangled up in a few modernistic burrs – the exchanges between the violin, cello, trombone, and piccolo at the end of the first movement, for instance – but in 1928, it was a landmark in terms of helping to establish a distinctly American idiom.More austere, perhaps, is Thomson’s symphonic poem “Pilgrims and Pioneers” – but just stick around for the fiddle tunes.
Finally, a seasonal work: the Concertino for Harp, Strings and Percussion, “Autumn” – according to Thomson, actually more of a “portrait of an artist ageing.”
Happy birthday, Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) – and Happy Thanksgiving!
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PBS documentary on Thomson from 1986, for his 90th birthday – opening with “Symphony on a Hymn Tune”Thomson, sharp as a tack and full of personality, in this transcript of an interview from 1985 with radio host Bruce Duffie
https://www.bruceduffie.com/vt.html
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PHOTO: Virgil Thomson, enjoying all his pleasures at once -
Thanksgiving Music Feast American Composers KWAX
While it seems to be the fashion these days to slap up the Christmas lights with Halloween barely in rear-view mirror, I’m old school. There’s no Christmas in this house until Advent or, this year, until the Thanksgiving leftovers run out.
Therefore, don’t be surprise if, this week on “Sweetness and Light,” my head is decidedly NOT full of sugar plums tucked in their beds (or however it goes). I am not there yet. Rather, I’ll be piling the turkey sandwiches high with cranberry sauce for breakfast as we savor musical delights suggestive of Thanksgiving weekend.
Some of the works will be evocative of foods associated with the holiday. All will be American in origin. Some will be specifically connected to New England.
The playlist, etched in mashed potatoes, will include music by John Williams, Edward MacDowell, Craig Russell, Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould, and pianist/rodeo champion David Guion.
I’ll be wringing out the last of the cornucopia with an hour of Thanksgiving leftovers, on “Sweetness and Light.” Join me in shoveling in the pumpkin pie and whipped cream, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
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