Music for the Blog of It

Richard Markley

2012-01-19T10:15:00.001-08:00

Grant Johannesen

2012-01-19T10:14:00.001-08:00

Norbert Brainin

2012-01-19T10:12:00.001-08:00

George Rochberg

2012-01-19T10:11:00.001-08:00

Percy Strother

2012-01-19T10:10:00.001-08:00

Billy Bauer

2012-01-19T10:07:00.001-08:00

Keter Betts

2012-01-19T10:05:00.001-08:00

("Little") Milton Campbell

2012-01-19T10:04:00.001-08:00

Carlo Little

2012-01-19T10:03:00.001-08:00

Al Casey

2012-01-19T10:01:00.001-08:00

William A. Vacchiano

2012-01-19T10:00:00.001-08:00

Francy Boland

2012-01-19T09:58:00.001-08:00

Classical Music Finds Ways to Reach (Way) Out

2011-05-05T09:29:00.001-07:00

Last fall, during his consultancy to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma visited the Illinois Youth Center, a correctional institution in Warrenville. He accompanied the female inmates as they rehearsed a musical show based on their life experiences, as part of the C.S.O.’s program to reach communities far from Symphony Center.

In December, the superstar soprano Renée Fleming, in her role as the Lyric Opera’s creative consultant, outlined plans to draw new audiences to the Lyric’s home on Wacker Drive. They include the classic American musical “Show Boat” in the operatic season and concerts by non-opera artists like Sting.

That sort of thinking should appeal to Anthony Freud, who was named the Lyric’s new general director on April 21. His previous tenure at the Houston Grand Opera included creation of the world’s first mariachi opera, one of several programs establishing him as an envelope-bursting innovator in this country and in his native Britain.

That these three audience-builders should appear on the Chicago scene within the last 16 months is no accident. Even before the recession, the 21st century posed challenges to classical-music institutions. Not even the venerable giants have been immune. In April, the 111-year-old Philadelphia Orchestra voted to seek bankruptcy protection. The C.S.O. and the Lyric are healthy enough, but they can hardly ignore the warning signs around them.

Ms. Fleming and Mr. Ma — the first creative consultants employed by either institution — are spearheading the response. In addition to influential ideas, they bring a charisma that carries beyond concert halls and into popular culture.

Add the world-renowned Riccardo Muti, who recently took over as the C.S.O.’s music director, and you have the sort of star-power lineup that, say, the Cubs have been seeking for years. Even more than sports teams, classical music needs that kind of celebrity these days.

No niche of the performing arts has felt the sting of the digital revolution more than music. The record industry has been damaged by easily copied MP3 files. IPods allow listeners to hear music all day, everywhere: no need to step into a concert hall or arena. As improved technology brings higher-quality downloads and high-definition video streaming, even the most persnickety orchestra and opera fans can find reasons to avoid live events: why contend with traffic, parking, audience sniffles or a plain old off-night on stage?

A 2008 study by the National Endowment for the Arts surveyed adults attending arts performances at least once during the previous year. Since 2002, the classical music audience has declined by almost 20 percent and the opera audience by 30 percent.

Susan Mathieson Mayer, director of communications for the Lyric, put the blame for the drop in attendance on cutbacks in arts education in public schools. “We survey opera subscribers continuously, and almost invariably they had some kind of exposure when they were kids: music lessons, parents taking them to concerts, et cetera,” she said. “Times are very different from 20 years ago. We’re dealing with maybe two generations who did not have the same kind of exposure that their parents did.”

Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association, identified another factor. “The competition for leisure time is so much more challenging than it was 20 to 30 years ago,” she said. In fact, given the lure of computer-driven entertainment, she finds it “fascinating that this passion and excitement still exist for the live concert experience.”

But that passion belongs to an increasingly older audience. The N.E.A. survey found that in 2008, nearly 40 percent of the symphony audience, and about 35 percent of operagoers, were older than 55. By comparison, the audience for Latin music, among the most popular idioms surveyed, counts only about 20 percent of its audience in that demographic.

Both Ms. Rutter and Ms. Mayer say their challenge lies in enticing younger audiences to show up a few times and then to turn that interest into habit, so that by the time they reach their 30s and 40s and have more disposable income, they might become regular attendees and even subscribers.

Ms. Rutter describes the strategy as “Trick them into loving you for the rest of time.” The C.S.O.’s student ticket policy is a case in point. For $10, registered students can reserve a ticket online weeks before a concert; when they show up, they get the best available seats. “They could be in a lower balcony seat that normally runs $120,” Ms. Rutter said, noting that last year the program attracted some 14,000 students.

The Lyric’s NEXT program sends an e-blast to college students announcing unsold tickets. “This past year we had probably close to 10,000 college students attending, at a cost of $20 a ticket” for seats that can sell for up to $200, Ms. Mayer said.

Some seemingly novel concepts are firmly rooted in centuries of tradition. Ms. Fleming hit on the idea of bringing Broadway to the Lyric last summer when she was in Vienna, visiting an exhibition about Gustav Mahler, the 19th-century composer and opera director. “Mahler was quoted as saying how excited he was to be presenting works by Mozart 100 years after they were written,” Ms. Fleming said. “I thought that would be a good place to start in the U.S. too,” with homegrown works from the previous century.

At Houston Grand Opera, Mr. Freud left his stamp with “The Refuge,” a 2007 production for which he commissioned a poet and a composer to interview hundreds of non-native Houstonians to learn their “journey stories” — how they ended up in the city — and turn them into a full-fledged production.

“On one level, you can regard opera as a 400-year-old European art form,” he said in Chicago the day after his hiring. ”But if you distill opera, it’s simply telling stories through words and music, and that transcends history and ethnicity.”

The Lyric has already dipped a toe in these waters, notably with the 2010-11 season’s finale, “Hercules.” The famed director Peter Sellars drew on weeks of workshops with American military veterans to transfer the story from ancient Greece to the modern United States, and to explore the difficulties that returning soldiers have in leaving the traumas of war on the battlefield.

Do such productions build audiences? At a reception following the opera’s dress rehearsal, which was attended by more than 75 of the military veterans who had worked with Mr. Sellars, several allowed that this was their first opera experience and that they did not really follow much of the action onstage. While it is unlikely that many of them will return, the production did attract major news media exposure.

Similarly, the inmates from Warrenville probably will not rush off to sign up for the new season at the Chicago Symphony when they are released. But the idea behind that program, and others in the orchestra’s ambitious Citizen Musician initiative, is to expand the audience indirectly, by building community ties. “By going beyond the seats in Orchestra Hall, they’re doing the right thing,” Mr. Ma said.

And such experiences leave their mark on the consulting musicians as well. “What a musician does is collect all these experiences and then report back in sound,” Mr. Ma said. “I know after this, the Dvorak Concerto sounds different when I play it. There’s more love there — more humanity.”

- we do not hear two instruments being played at the same time as being twice as loud as one.

2011-05-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

"If we have two instruments (such as glockenspiels), we only get double the effect if the up-down-up-down pressure ripples (sound waves, which have the effect of alternating increased and decreased pressure) from them are perfectly in step with each other. If so, they can act together to give a [perfectly synchronized] UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN pressure ripple.

"But, when we hit both instruments, you can bet your life that we don't hit them exactly at the same time, so the pressure ripples from the two instruments won't be in step when they reach the microphone. This means that sometimes the 'pressure up' part of one ripple will be trying to raise the air pressure as the 'pressure down' part of the other is trying to lower it. if the wave patterns were perfectly out of step, the up-down-up-down of one of them would be canceled out by the down-up-down-up of the other - and we wouldn't hear a note at all.

"This is weird but true - it's how some farmers protect their hearing when they are driving noisy tractors all day. They buy 'active ear defenders' which look like headphones. Inside each of the earpieces is a microphone and a speaker connected to some electronics. The microphone listens to the sound which is about to reach your eardrum and makes the speaker produce the same pressure wave - but out of step with the original one. The idea is that when the two pressure waves meet, one of them tries to raise the pressure at the same time as the other tries to lower it - so nothing much happens and the eardrum is left in peace. In practice the sound waves are too complicated for this to work exactly, but it does reduce most of the noise.

"Going back to our glockenspiels, the canceling out is nowhere near perfect because it would be too difficult to organize - the sound waves are coming from different places in the room and also bouncing off the walls, and it's incredibly unlikely that you would hit the instruments at precisely the right times to get the ripple patterns exactly out of step just at the point where they meet the microphone. What actually happens is that we do get more sound pressure from two instruments than we would from one - but there is some interference from the low-pressure bits of one wave pattern with the high-pressure bits of the other, so there is some canceling out.

"If more instruments are involved, the amount of canceling out gets more serious. The pressure of the air next to the microphone can only be higher than normal (pushing the microphone inward) or lower than normal (pulling it outward): it can't be both at once. If we play forty glockenspiels, each of our forty glockenspiels has an 'up pressure' or 'down pressure' vote at any point in time -but a lot of these votes cancel each other out. If a forty-first glockenspielist joins our little party, then his note will be mostly canceled - though a little bit will get through to contribute to the overall loudness.

"This effect is not the only one involved in our appreciation of loudness. If it was, 100 instruments would sound ten times as loud as one. But we perceive 100 instruments as being only four times as loud as one. This extra diminution in perceived loudness is the result of the way we humans are designed - so let's have a look at that.

"Why don't our brains add up sounds normally? The surprising answer is that our brains and ears add up sounds in an unusual way in order to help us stay alive. From the times of the earliest cavemen to the present day, we have used our ears to help us avoid danger. This is one of the main reasons we have ears in the first place (although they are also useful for supporting your sunglasses). To

be effective, your ears have to be able to hear very quiet noises (like the sound of someone creeping up on you), but also they must not get damaged by loud noises (such as thunder). It wouldn't be any good if you had excellent hearing for quiet noises but your ears stopped working after the first loud noise you heard.

"Our ears are organized in such a way that quiet noises can be heard clearly but any increase in the volume of the noise has progressively less and less impact. This effect is also true of our other four senses: smell, taste, sight and touch. Six smelly socks aren't six times as smelly as one on its own (even though each of the socks is releasing the same amount of smell) and ten salted peanuts in your

mouth aren't five times as salty as two of them (even though you now have five times as much salt on your tongue). If you light 100 candles one at a time in a dark room you get the same effect as you got with the [glockenspiels] - the first one makes the biggest difference and the eighty-seventh makes hardly any difference. If you are daft enough to stick a pin in your fingertip then it will hurt, but if you stick a second one in (next to the first one) the pain will not be doubled."

Author: John Powell

Title: How Music Works

Publisher: Little, Brown

Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell

Pages: 85-87

defining the difference between musical notes and ordinary noises

2011-05-02T10:00:00.001-07:00

"Every day you will hear millions of sounds and only a few of them will be musical notes. Usually, musical notes are created deliberately from a musical instrument, but they can be produced in non-musical situations - when you 'ping' a wineglass or ring a doorbell, for example. Whenever and however they are produced, musical notes sound different from all other noises.

"What's the difference between a musical note and any other sort of noise? Everyone you know will have some sort of answer to this question, but most of them will be based on the idea that musical notes sound ... er ... musical and other noises are ... er ... not musical. ...

"If you throw a stone into a flat, calm pond you will disturb the surface of the water and create ripples which travel away from the initial splash. Similarly, if you click your fingers in a quiet room, you will disturb the air and ripples of disturbance will move away from your hand. In the case of the stone in the pond, the ripples involve a change in the height of the water and our eyes can clearly see what's going on: the height of the water goes up-down-up-down-up-down as the ripples travel away from the splash.

"When you click your fingers (or make any other sound, including a musical note), the sound ripples traveling toward your ears involve changes in the pressure of the air. We can't see these ripples but our ears can hear them. When the ripples reach our ears, the air pressure goes up-down-up-down-up-down and this makes our eardrums go in-out-in-out-in-out at the same rate - because our eardrums are like tiny, flexible trampolines which are easily

pushed in and out by changes in the air pressure. Your brain then analyzes the in-out movement of your eardrums and decides what's going on - is it time to run away or time to order dessert? ...

"If we could see the pressure ripples of these non-musical sounds, we would notice that they were very complicated. ... The noise ripple shape [of, for example, a door closing] which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes. The noise ripple shape which eventually arrives at the eardrum is extremely complicated because it is made up of a chaotic group of individual ripples which have no relationship to each other. This is true of all noises which are not musical notes.

"Musical notes are different from non-musical noises because every musical note is made up of a ripple pattern which repeats itself over and over again. ... To be a musical note, it doesn't really matter how complicated the individual ripples are, as long as the pattern repeats itself. Our eardrums flex in and out as the pressure ripples push against them. However, our eardrums can't respond properly if the ripple pattern repeats itself too quickly or too slowly - we can only hear patterns which repeat themselves more often than twenty times a second but less often than 2o,ooo times a second.

"Musical notes don't need to be made by musical instruments, in fact, anything which vibrates or disturbs the air in a regular way between twenty and 20,000 times a second will produce a note. High-speed motorbike engines or dentists' drills produce notes. In the song 'The Facts of Life,' the band Talking Heads uses what sounds like a compressed air-powered drill to produce one of the notes of the background accompaniment. This combination of music and engineering fits well with the lyrics, which compare love to a machine.

"Musical instruments are simply devices which have been designed to produce notes in a controlled way. A musician uses finger movement or lung power to start something vibrating at chosen frequencies - and notes are produced."

Author: John Powell

Title: How Music Works

Publisher: Little, Brown

Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell

Pages: 20-24

do, re, mi

2011-05-02T09:42:00.001-07:00

"Actually it was ut, re, mi, etc., that the Italian monk Guido of Arezzo invented. He got the names of the notes - ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la - from the initial syllables of the half lines that make up the first stanza of an eighth-century Latin hymn to John the Baptist written by Paul the Deacon. In this work, each nonitalicized syllable below fell on a higher successive tone of the hexachord, the first six notes of the major scale (c, d, e, f, g, a):

Ut queant laxis resonare fibris

Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,

Solvepolluti labii reatum ...

(So that your servants can, with unrestrained voice, sing the wonders of your deeds, remove the guilt of our tainted lips!)

"The initial letters of "Sancte Iohannes," the next words in the text, which directly address St. John, later gave us the name of the note si, which was eventually changed to ti, just as ut was later changed to do and sol to so in many countries for reasons of euphony. The singing of vocal exercises to these syllables is termed solfeggio or solfege, names deriving from sol and fa, just as solmization itself is derived from sol and mi.

"The background to this development was the difficulty of teaching monks and cathedral singers the Gregorian chant, which was named for Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), though it probably coalesced about two hundred years after his time. This official music of the Roman Catholic liturgy was a monodic plainchant, meaning that the same notes were sung by all the voices. Although the Arabs had developed a system of musical notation in about 700, and the French manuscript called Musica enchiriadis ("Handbook of Music") used Latin letters for notation in c. 870, the most common system in Europe by the early tenth century was notation by means of neumes (from the Greek for 'breaths').

"Looking like accent marks placed higher or lower over words to be sung, neumes indicated in a slapdash way whether the pitch was rising or falling. This crude way of reminding singers of the direction their voices should go was better than nothing, but the specific pitches had to be laboriously memorized for each individual piece of music - and the church had a vast repertoire of hymns and liturgical songs.

"Enter the Benedictine monk Guido of Arezzo (c. 991 - 1050) a composer, choirmaster, and theorist of liturgical music who is sometimes called 'the Father of Modern Music.' Building on insights gleaned from a French musical treatise, he and a fellow monk named Michael began to experiment with the teaching of music at the northern Italian monastery of Pomposa on the Adriatic coast.

"Their success was such that Guido became something of a celebrity in the locale, and the envy of the other monks caused him to depart for the city of Arezzo, southeast of Florence, in about 1025. Bishop Theodald of Arezzo gave him a job training singers of the cathedral school and asked him to write a book on musical theory. The resultant Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae (Manual of the Art of Music) in twenty chapters included discussions of early polyphony and was used as a standard European text for several hundred years.

"Guido's major innovation, however, was a protomodern system of musical notation. In his day, two lines were sometimes used to indicate the range of pitch within a composition - a red line to indicate the note now known as F and a yellow or green line to indicate C, and the aforementioned neumes were placed at varying distances from them to roughly indicate pitch. Guido added a black line between F and C and another black one above C to create the first four-line musical staff (the current five-line staff first appeared in 1200). He thus made use of his lines - as well as the spaces between them - to place letters indicating the specific notes. He continued to mark the C and F lines - the C would appear above the F for a song with a high melody, and the reverse would be the case for a lower melody. His symbols for these notes have now become our treble and bass clefs. Following on Guido's notation, square notes appeared in the thirteenth century, the ancestors of our oval ones.

"Now that musical intervals could be clearly indicated with Guido's notation and four-line staff, music could be learned much more rapidly - and composed and preserved much more efficiently - than in the past."

Author: Peter D'Epiro
Title: The Book of Firsts
Publisher: Anchor Books
Date: Copyright 2010 by Peter D'Epiro
Pages: 231-232

Frank Sinatra

2011-05-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

"When he let himself go, as he did in the three up-tempo numbers he recorded in a remarkable July session orchestrated by George Siravo and the great Sy Oliver ('It All Depends on You,' 'Bye Bye Baby,' and 'Don't Cry Joe'), the results were thrilling. Lacquer-disc safety copies of the Sunday-evening session (Sinatra always preferred recording at night - 'The voice is better at night,' he was fond of saying), transcribed and analyzed by the Sinatra musicologist Charles L. Granata, have preserved Frank's obsessive pursuit of artistic perfection in exquisite detail:

"The recording date is July 10, 1949. As the evening session gets underway at Columbia's cavernous 30th Street Studio, Sinatra, arranger Sy Oliver, and conductor Hugo Winterhalter are auditioning a second instrumental run-through of George Siravo's arrangement of 'It All Depends on You.' Tonight's date will be jazz-flavored, the orchestra really a big 'band' - no strings. Amid the chatter and bustle on the studio floor, the vocalist, listening intently to a passage by the brass section, feels that something is amiss ...

" 'I'd like to hear the introduction, with the muted brass,' he instructs the conductor. The musicians comply, and the brief section is played for his approval. After hearing the passage, Sinatra carefully instructs both the musicians and the engineers: 'I'd like to get that as tight as we can. Trombones: you may have to turn around and face the microphone or something. I'd like to hear the six of you, as a unit,' he says. The engineer brings down a microphone with two sides, to help capture the precise tonal quality that Sinatra desires. The section played through again, the singer continues. 'Just once more, Hugo, and would you use less volume in the reeds, with the clarinet lead~ And would you play it lightly, trumpets and trombones, if you don't mind? I mean softly," he emphasizes.

"The trombone problem rectified, Sinatra, now in the booth, turns his attention to the rhythm section. He inquires of drummer Terry Snyder: 'You got enough pad on the bass drum? It booms a little bit.' Then, without the slightest hesitation, he turns to the studio prop men. 'Would you put in a small piece of carpet, enough to cover the entire bottom of the drum?' Satisfied, he addresses the pianist. 'Say, Johnny Guarneri, would you play something, a figure or something, and have the rhythm fall in? We'd like to get a small balance on it.' Guarneri begins an impromptu riff on the melody, as bassist Herman 'Trigger' Alpert, drummer Snyder, and guitarist Al Caiola join in. After a few moments, Sinatra's directions continue. 'Bass and guitar: Trig, can you move in about a foot or so, or you can pull the mike out if you wish. And the guitar-also move in a little closer. just a sbade-uh, uh, uh-that's enough.'
"This was no mere voice: this was a great artist in full command his powers and the means required to convey his art."

Author: James Kaplan

Title: Frank

Publisher: Doubleday

Date: Copyright 2010 by James Kaplan

Pages: 389-390

Opening your ears to classical music

2011-05-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

People wishing to expand their musical horizons beyond pop may find the decision to explore classical music daunting.

That's to be expected considering classical music dates back more than 1,000 years if one regards Medieval music as the starting point. The timeline continues to include Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th-century music. I'm sure there's 21st-century music to incorporate, but I'll plead ignorant.

So with all those different eras, composers and types of compositions to consider, how does one start building a classical music library without going crazy or broke or both?

Perhaps this mildly subjective guide will help. To try to be as comprehensive as possible without penning a tome, the following list will include at least one composition from each era and one work that demonstrates a specific type of composition, such as a symphony. Because of space limitations, not every type will be represented. So all you sextet fans out there are out of luck.

For convenience's sake, I'll start at the beginning.

MEDIEVAL MUSIC: For the classical music debutante, this era from roughly 500 to 1400 might prove challenging unless you have a weakness for Gregorian chants. OK, that's not fair, plenty of variety exists here with instrumental music galore. The instruments even have great names like psaltery, rebec and chittarone. Sounds like a law firm. The Anthology of Medieval Music provides a superb primer.

RENAISSANCE MUSIC: This era, from roughly 1400 to 1600, also might not wow listeners accustomed to catchy tunes and big beats. Not that the period was devoid of melody and rhythm as the motets and chansons of Josquin des Prez and the madrigals of Don Carlo Gesualdo demonstrate. Look for collections of their music.

If polyphony is your thing, this is your era. Simply put, polyphonic music consists of two or more independent tones sounding simultaneously. It can test the ears of listeners accustomed to hearing a single tune.

One of the era's polyphonic masters is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and one of his masterpieces is the Mass for Pope Marcellus. Sure to please those who want to hear the voices of angels in music.

BAROQUE MUSIC: Now we're talking accessible, not that the era, stretching from 1600 to 1750, failed to produce complex music, as Bach's fugues demonstrate. A fugue provides another example of polyphony.

One of the towering geniuses in the classical biz, Bach didn't invent any forms of music. He just perfected every type of composition he touched. Case in point, the cantata, a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment. Of the 250-plus cantatas Bach composed, the most famous is arguably no. 80, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."Vocal writing to thank God for.

For brilliant examples of instrumental writing, you can't go wrong with Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos. For organ aficionados, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor pulls out all the stops. So to speak.

George Frideric Handelrates as another Baroque biggie. Since virtually everyone is familiar with the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Messiah," why not own the entire work? It's long, but it's rewarding, loaded with wondrous vocal writing.

To avoid execution from the Antonio Vivaldi fan club, I will include the outrageously popular "Four Seasons," four concertos ideal for violin connoisseurs.

CLASSICAL MUSIC: The period, dating from around 1750 to 1820, produced its share of masters, but two stand out: Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The former is known as the father of the symphony and the string quartet. Though he didn't invent these composition types, Haydn added intellectual weight to both of them.

In the quartet category, I recommend Haydn's Opus 33 and Opus 76 (six quartets in each opus). A typical string quartet consists of two violins, a viola and a cello. Think of the work as a musical conversation among four people.

As for symphonies, Haydn's "London Symphonies" (nos. 93 to 104) are considered among his finest. From this group, I suggest no. 104.

Mozart, the ultimate child prodigy, wrote masterpieces in nearly every genre, and he wrote constantly. It's frightening to contemplate how much more music he would have written had he not died at 35.

While this scribe would like to recommend all the works from Mozart's mature years, let's settle on opera, specifically "Don Giovanni," arguably the greatest opera ever written. The work has it all: drama, humor, love, seduction and, of course, death. Mozart could not only write wonderful melodies, he had a strong theatrical sense and he put it to good use in his operas.

ROMANTIC MUSIC: If the Baroque era is known as a period of textural intricacy and the Classical era the period of structural clarity, the Romantic era, running from about 1820 to 1900, showcased no-holds-barred originality. A strong sense of individuality - apparent in the rise of the virtuoso - and nationalism also blossomed here.

The dominant figures of the period's early years are Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. Since the former is acknowledged as one of the greatest symphonists in the galaxy, I recommend buying all nine. If you're on a budget, however, get no. 9. If the "Ode to Joy" last movement doesn't tingle your spine, you have the emotional makeup of a pebble.

Like Mozart, Schubert died way too young - 31 - yet he still wrote some 600 songs, or lieder, and is considered one of the finest contributors to this genre. His song cycle, "The Winter's Journey," is among the finest ever written with music, piano and lyrics forging a perfect union. If lieder knock your lederhosen off, the other great Romantic song composers include Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf.

The Romantic era produced a slew of great pianists and piano composers, chief among them Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt. The former wrote almost exclusively for the piano - think of him as the poet of the keyboard - and his works form a musical bible for pianists. From a lengthy playlist of masterpieces, I'll select the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. You might recognize the funeral march from the second movement.

Liszt has received the title of the world's greatest piano virtuoso. Listen to the Transcendental Etudes and you'll understand why. These 12 compositions won't be confused with Chopsticks anytime soon.

Liszt learned the showmanship trade from Nicolo Paganini, arguably the greatest violin virtuoso on the firmament. While his violin concertos contain plenty of flash, I'll recommend his 24 Caprices, ideal as an introduction to different violin techniques. Double-stop trills, anyone?

One composer who was diametrically opposed to such theatrics was Johannes Brahms, another one of those towering geniuses whose compositions frequently take a walk on the intellectual side. That said, the first movement of his Second Symphony contains a melody based on his lullaby tune. I'm fond of the Symphony No. 4, however. The last movement rocks, with Brahms demonstrating his mastery of compositional forms from the past. In this case it's the passacaglia where the bass line gets a workout.

The Romantic era produced so many great works that omissions are sure to rile up fans of the omitted. To quote Steve Martin, excuuuse me. Here's my abridged list:

- Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 ("New World") - the "New World" is the United States where this Czech master composed the work on a visit. The second movement includes the moving Negro spiritual "Goin' Home" played first by an English horn, which is neither English nor a horn. It's a wind instrument likely to have originated from Silesia. Go figure.

- Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 - this dynamic gem emerged after the composer came out of a pathological depression thanks to Dr. Nikolai Dahl's hypnotic therapy. "You will compose a masterpiece." Piece of cake. Sergei could tickle the ivories, too, and his music combines elegant melodies with bravura playing.

- Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor - Another lyrical joy with violin gymnastics. Note Mendelssohn's characteristic use of the woodwinds.

- Ballet: Take your pick from the Peter Tchaikovsky triple play of classics: "Swan Lake," "Sleeping Beauty" or "Nutcracker." I'd go with the latter from Mr. Melody.

UIncidental music: Mendelssohn's "Midsummer's Night Dream" is the standard bearer here. Fairy-like magic captured in music. Anyone who has been to a wedding where traditional music is played might recognize the work's famous wedding march. The daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria had the march played at her wedding. The queen was a Felix fan. Nice endorsement.

- Opera: In classical music, opera devotees are a special bunch. You might call them fanatics. Kind of like members of Red Sox Nation. So expect some scribe-pillaging here for leaving out famous composers and famous operas.

We're going to include just four: Georges Bizet's "Carmen," Giacomo Puccini's "La Boheme," Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida" and Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." The first has tunes, the second elicits tears, the third goes for grandeur - think a spectacle with singing - and the fourth features groundbreaking harmonies. What's not to like?

TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC - And now for something completely different. Though not all romantic music disappeared at the turn of the century, the times, they were a-changin', and the leading practitioner of change was Arnold Schoenberg, who along with pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, championed the 12-tone technique where the music's tonal center goes on vacation. Do-re-mi becomes don't-re-mi.

We'll recommend Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Berg's opera "Wozzeck" and Webern's String Quartet (Opus 28).

An easier aural time should be had listening to the music of Igor Stravinsky. His ballet music is particularly powerful. Case in point, "The Rite of Spring." Fistfights broke out during the premiere of this work in Paris in 1913, and it's easy to see why. It's a tad harmonically and rhythmically radical for the time. But compared to most "modern" music, it's accessible. I won't disguise my general dislike for atonality, but this work kicks derriere.

For listeners who prefer a semblance of melody in their music, all is not lost. Here's an abridged list of composers and works worth considering:

- Gustav Mahler - Like your symphonies composed on a large scale? Here's your man. In case you're wondering how large the scale is, his Eighth Symphony is called "The Symphony of a Thousand," referring to the size of the orchestra needed to play it. It's not much of an exaggeration. For a more intimate work, consider the Fourth Symphony.

- Richard Strauss - Not to be confused with the Strauss of waltz king fame (that's Johann) or his son who wrote "Die Fledermaus" (that's Johann Jr.), this Strauss wrote music with a strong Romantic bent. Most of his famous tone poems were composed in the 19th century, such as "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (fans of the film "20O1: A Space Odyssey" will recognize its famous opening). For 20th-century masterpieces we suggest the opera "Der Rosenkavalier" and the Four Last Songs. Charming stuff.

- Serge Prokofiev - He wrote music that was incredibly beautiful. He also wrote music that was incredibly stringent. I have soft spots in my heart for "Peter and the Wolf," "Lieutenant Kije Suite" and the Classical Symphony. For bolder music, there's the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Symphony no. 5.

While classical music has been by dominated by Europeans, Americans have made their indelible marks. We'll list three. Let the outrage commence.

- Aaron Copland - the dean of American classical composers, he wrote in variety of styles. His most popular works are his hum-inducing, toe-tapping ballets, specifically "Appalachian Spring," "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo."

- Charles Ives - The greatest composer ever who was also an insurance agent. Startlingly original and light years ahead of its time, Ives' music is often not ear-friendly - care for some polytonality? - but it packs a punch. The Symphony No. 3 is one of his standouts loaded with nostalgia for America's past and intricate harmonies.

- George Gershwin - Other composers have mixed jazz with classical music, but no one did it better than this Brooklyn-born dynamo. Gershwin was equally adept as a composer of popular music. One can only imagine how many more great works he would have composed had he not died at 39. Must-buys include "An American in Paris," "Porgy and Bess" and "Rhapsody in Blue."

Now there are basically two ways to listen to classical music. You can just let the music wash over you and enjoy it for the simple pleasure it provides. While there's nothing wrong with this approach, it's kind of like reading Shakespeare just as words in sentences and ignoring the meaning behind them.

Basically, the more you know about classical music the more you can appreciate it. You don't have to take a music appreciation course - though that wouldn't hurt. An easier - and cheaper solution - is buying a book that serves as a guide. One of the better ones out there is the appropriately titled "What to Listen for in Music" by none other than Aaron Copland itself. It's less than 200 pages long and written for general public consumption. Imagine the joy and rapture to be derived from being able to distinguish the sound of an English horn, which, as we well know, is neither English nor a horn. OK, maybe not so much rapture.

Country music has interesting history with Grammys

2011-02-15T08:40:00.001-08:00

Rock music usually dominates the annual Grammy Awards ceremony these days, but do you know that there wasn't a Grammy given for a rock music recording until the fourth year of presentations?

And do you know that sole rock award presented in 1962 went to a South Carolina native?

Who was that rocker? None other than Spring Gully (near Georgetown) native Ernest Evans.

You probably know him better as Chubby Checker. He won the first Best Rock & Roll Recording Grammy for his 1961-released single Let's Twist Again .

You can find out any Grammy Award winners you want by going to the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences' official site, grammy.com, scrolling down to "Past Winners Search" and searching the database by recording, artist or year presented.

Various sources, including the academy's official site and author Henry Schipper in his book Broken Record: The Inside Story of the Grammy Awards , contend that the Grammy Awards (named after the early music player Gramophone) came about when some recording executives became worried about the explosive success of rock 'n' roll in the late 1950s and wanted to bring attention to what they considered "quality" music.

The early Grammy voters were conservative music fans, so consequently the first Grammys presented May 4, 1959, in the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel went to middle-of-the-road 1958-released recordings in 28 categories.

The top Record of the Year honor for best single recording in 1958 went to a song to which few Americans even knew the words: Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (also known as Volare ) recorded by Domenico Modugno, who also won the Song of the Year Grammy (which goes to the songwriter) since he also wrote his hit ballad.

Band leader and composer Henry Mancini won the Album of The Year Grammy for The Music From Peter Gunn .

Mancini later would win a Grammy Award in 1962 for Record of the Year for Moon River (about an actual Georgia tributary near Savannah) which he co-wrote with Georgia native Johnny Mercer.

Also at that first Grammy ceremony honoring recordings released in 1958, Ella Fitzgerald won Best Vocal Performance-Female for her album Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Irving Berlin Song Book and Perry Como won the Best Vocal Performance-Male award for his single Catch A Falling Star .

The first Grammy presented in 1958 for Best Country & Western Performance was neither country nor western but rather a folk music recording called Tom Dooley , which was about the scheduled hanging of a man. It was recorded by The Kingston Trio (then consisting of David Guard, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane).

Best Country & Western Performance Grammys subsequently went to Johnny Horton for his 1959 single The Battle of New Orleans , Marty Robbins for his 1960 single El Paso , Jimmy Dean for his 1961 single Big Bad John , Burl Ives for his 1962 single Funny Way of Laughin' and Bobby Bare for his 1963 single Detroit City.

The National Academy of Recording of Arts & Sciences finally gave more attention to country music recordings and artists by expanding the sole Best Country & Western Performance category to include four other categories.

That resulted in Roger Miller -- at the 1965 ceremony honoring 1964-released recordings -- sweeping four of the five country Grammy categories with his self-composed comedy song Dang Me with its repeated line "They ought to take a rope and hang me."

Miller would take home Grammys that night for Best Country & Western Single, Best Country & Western Album (Dang Me/Chug-A-Lug ), Best Country & Western Vocal Performance-Male and Best Country & Western Song.

The only one of the five country music awards he did not take home was for Best Country & Western Performance-Female, which was won by Grand Ole Opry star Dottie West for her ballad Here Comes My Baby (Back Again) , which she also wrote.

Over the years, I've been privileged to interview that very first female country Grammy Award winner and The Kingston Trio, who won the very first "country & western" Grammy; Miller, who became the first country artist to win multiple Grammys in the same year; and also Chubby Checker, the first to win a rock music Grammy.

I've seen many actual Grammy Awards up close behind glass cases in various museums, but the only Grammy Award I've ever held was the Best Country Vocal Performance-Female one that Lynn Anderson won for her 1971 single Rose Garden .

That Grammy was in her Nashville, Tenn., house and, interestingly, the horn speaker part had somehow become separated, and she was planning to have the trophy repaired or replaced.

Speaking of female Grammy Award winners, guess which one has won more Grammys than any other female artist? Barbra Streisand? Ella Fitzgerald? Beyoncé? Celine Dion? Judy Garland?

You're not even close if you named any of those.

The winningest female is none other than bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, who has taken home an amazing 26 Grammy Awards!

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has earned the most (60) with classical music conductor George Solti being the single person with the most Grammys (31) followed by producer, writer and musician Quincy Jones (27).

The band to win the most Grammys is U2 with 22.

And if all of that isn't surprising, guess where the Grammy trophies are made? They reportedly are assembled by hand by Billings Artworks in Ridgway, Colo.

Now that's certainly an interesting trivia item for the next party, civic club gathering, concert or church social you attend.

Classical label Decca relaunches, eyes future stars

2011-02-15T08:39:00.001-08:00

The classical music label Decca on Monday celebrated its relaunch as Decca Classics, promising to seek out new stars and ensure that the genre remains relevant to younger listeners.

Part of the Universal Music Group, Decca Classics is already home to a roster of renowned performers including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Cecilia Bartoli, Renee Fleming, Juan Diego Florez, Jonas Kaufmann and Mitsuko Uchida.

It also boasts a catalog including singers Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland and conductor Georg Solti.

"We've always done classical music, but for the first time in 30 years we've brought all sides of Decca under one roof," said managing director Paul Moseley, who will head up Decca Classics' search for fresh talent.

"It's kind of a reaffirmation of our commitment to classical music, a bit like renewing your wedding vows," he told Reuters ahead of a lunch in London formally marking the relaunch.

Recent Decca signings include U.S. cellist Alisa Weilerstein and Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, as well as Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.

Kurzak performed at the Decca event, as did German violinist Julia Fischer, Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja and Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov.

Moseley said that unlike the world of rock or pop, rampant piracy was not the biggest problem facing the classical music business. Digital purchases account for less than 20 percent of the sector's sales, with the generally older audience preferring to own physical CDs.

Decca Classics' biggest challenge, he added, was to identify artists who would appeal to all ages.

"We're working with a largely fixed repertoire," he said. "Only by building stars can you make the repertoire fresh again and connect with younger audiences.

"Amid declining retail opportunities, it is Decca's duty to grow charismatic artists who we'll be talking about in five or 10 years' time."

He said that classical's share of the recorded music business was stable or increasing slightly, but that, given the long-term slump in record sales worldwide, "we are facing a certain amount of decline overall."

Under the relaunch, Decca Classics will officially become part of Universal Music UK for the first time.

Milton Babbitt

2011-02-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Milton Babbitt, who has died aged 94, was one of the most impenetrable, inaccessible and influential of American composers and theorists; an article he wrote in 1958 headlined "Who cares if you listen" set the tone, reinforcing the view that contemporary music was for an elite cognoscenti.
Orchestras rejected his output, critics sneered at its complexity and academics rejected his doctoral thesis. Myths surrounding his wartime background in secret intelligence work did him no favours, with the cultural commentator Alex Ross describing him as an "emblematic Cold War composer" producing music "so Byzantine in construction that one practically needed a security clearance to understand it".
Yet Babbitt the serialist composer had his champions, Stephen Sondheim among them, while in the 1960s and 1970s his 12-tone theories, cerebral though they may have been, took root on university campuses, if not in concert halls, across the United States. His supporters, and there were many, argued that his complex music simply required greater involvement and commitment from the listener than had hitherto been the case.
In 1951 RCA invited him to be the first composer to work on their Mark II synthesizer at Columbia-Princeton University, exploring new sound worlds in works such as Composition for Synthesizer (1961), Vision and Prayer, for soprano and synthesizer (1961) and Ensembles for Synthesizer (1964). He revelled in distorting musical sounds, seeing how far he could push the boundaries. The resultant tapes would then be used in the concert hall, either alone or with live instrumentalists or singers.
Much of his output was for small-scale forces (partly out of necessity, as few orchestras could stomach his works either musically or financially). However, James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra did give the premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra in January 2005. Despite the severity of his music, Babbitt had a mischievous sense of humour, as titles such as Sheer Pluck (1984, for solo guitar) would suggest.
While he opened up many fascinating ideas, critics said that Babbitt – who described himself as a maximalist to differentiate from the minimalists – found himself in a musical cul-de-sac. As John Adams wrote: "Atonality, rather than being the promised land, proved to be nothing of the kind. After a heady first planting, the terrain [its] composers discovered was unable to reproduce its initial harvest."
Milton Byron Babbitt was born in Philadelphia on May 10 1916, the son of a wealthy actuary who demonstrated to his son the deep pleasure of mathematics. He grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, in the Deep South ("You can't get much deeper, he once noted") where he knew the future author Eudora Welty.
At the age of four he was given a violin but, wanting a better social life, turned to clarinet and, later, saxophone as well as writing his own pop songs. He recalled being shown Schönberg's Three Piano Pieces (Op 11) at the age of ten and being fascinated with this "absolutely different world".
He read Maths at the University of Pennsylvania, but abandoned that to study Music at New York University with Marion Bauer, seizing any opportunity to experience the music of Schoenberg, and meeting the composer on a couple of occasions. He also studied privately with Roger Sessions, a central figure for supporters of the anti-populism ideal in American music, and later followed Sessions to Princeton.
During the early years of the Second World War he was involved in secret military intelligence in Washington before returning to Princeton to teach mathematics. There his PhD, entitled The Function of the Said Structure in the 12-Tone System, was rejected in 1946; it was finally awarded in 1992 with the university uneasily explaining that his work had been "too far ahead of its time".
The headline on his infamous 1958 paper (published in High Fidelity magazine) haunted him for the rest of his life. It was, he insisted, not of his choosing. Nevertheless, it bore a true resemblance to its contents and Adams suspects that it was always Babbitt's "puckish intention" to offend the larger classical music community.
Enthusiasts of Serialism in Europe championed his cause and British critics turned out to see what all the noise was about. Yet even Stanley Sadie, who advocated the creation of a national electronic studio, considered Ensembles for Synthesizer, performed at the Festival Hall in 1969, to be a "busy, garrulous piece [which] seemed unshapely, unclearly organised and its ending duly unpredictable".
Recently the musicologist Harold Rosenbaum arranged for the publication and performance of a Mass that Babbitt had written many years ago. When the parts arrived he found the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, but no Credo. Fearing it lost he telephoned the composer in embarrassment, only to be told: "My boy, I don't believe in Credos. I didn't write one." Among many US honours, Babbitt received a Pulitzer citation in 1982.
Despite his prowess in electronic music, Babbitt shied away from later technology. "I don't have email; I'm not online in any respect. I am totally offline," he told an interviewer in 2001.
His wife Sylvia, whom he married before the war, predeceased him in 2005. He is survived by a daughter.

Noted in Passing From Life in Legacy

2010-08-30T07:12:00.001-07:00

Phelps (Catfish) Collins (66) rhythm and blues guitarist, a veteran of James Brown’s J. B.’s, Parliament-Funkadelic, and his younger brother William (“Bootsy”) Collins’ Rubber Band. Catfish Collins died of cancer in Cincinnati, Ohio on August 6, 2010.

Travis Harrelson (80) considered one of the world’s best ukulele players. Harrelson performed, taught, and was a collector of ukuleles. He died of cancer two weeks short of his 81st birthday, in Seal Beach, California on August 1, 2010.

Bobby Hebb (72) singer whose 1966 pop music classic “Sunny” reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart. The song was recorded by many other singers, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Dusty Springfield, Wilson Pickett, José Feliciano, and Cher. Hebb died of lung cancer in Nashville, Tennessee on August 3, 2010.

Richie Hayward (64) Iowa-born drummer and founding member of the Little Feat band in 1969. Hayward also was a session drummer and performed live with artists including Eric Clapton, the Doobie Brothers, Bob Dylan, Peter Frampton, and Arlo Guthrie, among others. He was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009 but died of pneumonia caused by untreated adult respiratory fibrosis, in Canada on August 12, 2010.

Abbey Lincoln (80) singer whose voice and songs made her a unique figure in jazz. Lincoln’s career included outspoken civil rights advocacy in the ‘60s, and for a time she acted in films with Sidney Poitier. Long recognized as one of jazz’s most striking singers, she gained stature as a songwriter only over the last 20 years. She died eight days after her 80th birthday, in New York City on August 14, 2010.

Jack Parnell (87) British jazz drummer, behind-the-scenes bandleader on Jim Henson’s The Muppet Show (1976-81); the onscreen bandleader was pop-eyed Muppet conductor, Nigel. As musical director at British broadcaster ATV from the late ‘50s, Parnell oversaw the music for the long-running variety show Sunday Night at the London Palladium, produced specials featuring Tom Jones and Barbra Streisand, and was musical director of The Benny Hill Show. He died of cancer in Southwold, eastern England, on August 8, 2010.

Michael Been (60) singer, songwriter, guitarist, and founding member of the northern California modern rock band The Call, which broke out with the 1983 MTV hit “The Walls Came Down." Been died of a heart attack at the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium, where he had been serving as a sound engineer for his son Robert’s band, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, on August 19, 2010.

Charles Haddon (22) lead singer of British pop band Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. Haddon jumped to his death from a telecommunications mast behind the main stage after playing at the Pukkelpop music festival in Hasselt, Belgium on August 20, 2010. Belgian police were treating the death as a suicide.

Robert Wilson (53) bassist for the funk and rhythm-and-blues group the Gap Band who had a string of hits including “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” The group also included Wilson’s two brothers, Charlie and Ronnie. Robert Wilson died of an apparent heart attack in Palmdale, California on August 15, 2010.

George David Weiss (89) songwriter who had a hand in some of the biggest hits of mid-20th century pop music, recorded by some of the biggest stars. Among Weiss’s most famous numbers were “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” recorded by Elvis Presley; “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” recorded by the Tokens; and “What a Wonderful World,” recorded by Louis Armstrong. Weiss died in Oldwick, New Jersey on August 23, 2010.

"The Washington Memorial March,"

2010-08-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

It was on this day in 1929 that a new march by John Philip Sousa was played for the first -- and last -- time until almost 60 years later. The "Foshay Tower Washington Memorial March" was commissioned by Wilbur Foshay, a high-flying Minneapolis businessman of the Roaring 20's who fell victim to the stock market crash and criminal charges of mail fraud.

Wilbur Foshay

One of his extravagant projects was the Foshay Tower he built in downtown Minneapolis. An office building shaped like the Washingon Monument, it was for many years the tallest structure in the city. It still stands, with Foshay's name carved in huge letters on all sides of the obelisk, now renovated as a historic site. For many years the Tower's elegant lobby displayed Wilbur Foshay's portrait, along with the score of Sousa's march, which the March King himself conducted in Minneapolis on August 30, 1929. Just two months after the Tower doors swung open, Wilbur Foshay's empire of public utilities, factories and banks crumbled to dust. A year and a half later he was convicted of fraud, and spent two years and eleven months in Leavenworth prison.

Not surprisingly, John Philip Sousa never got paid for his commission. He considered giving it a new name: "The Washington Memorial March," but then decided to withdraw the piece completely, and the music was not published or performed again officially until 1988.

Composers Datebook for August 30, 2010‏

Duly Noted in Music April 2010

2010-08-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Alan Rich (85) longtime classical music critic for a variety of newspapers and magazines such as Los Angeles Weekly, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Variety, the New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune, and magazines including Newsweek, New West, and California. Rich also was the first music critic of New York magazine, which he helped to found. He died in his sleep in West Los Angeles, California on April 23, 2010.From Life in Legacy.Com

William Walker (78) baritone who appeared dozens of times on TV’s Tonight Show and in more than 350 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Walker died in Fort Worth, Texas on April 10, 2010.From Life in Legacy.Com

Gene Lees (82) Canadian-born jazz historian and critic known for his essays and biographies of such jazz greats as Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, and Johnny Mercer. Lees had struggled for many years with heart disease. He died in Ojai, California on April 22, 2010. From Life in Legacy.Com

John Bunch (88) jazz pianist whose style led to prominent sideman posts with Benny Goodman and Tony Bennett and an accomplished solo career. Bunch died of melanoma in New York City on March 30, 2010. From Life in Legacy.Com

Herb Ellis (88) jazz guitarist whose bluesy playing won him critical acclaim as an outstanding soloist and worldwide recognition as a member of pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio. Ellis died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in Los Angeles, California on March 28, 2010. From Life in Legacy.Com

Mike Zwerin (79) New York-born trombonist who got his break jamming with Miles Davis and later became the Paris-based jazz critic for the International Herald Tribune. Zwerin died in Paris, France on April 2, 2010.From Life in Legacy.Com

George Gershin

2010-08-01T17:27:00.001-07:00

From Mozart

2010-08-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Standing above all other giftedness legends, of course, [is] that of the mystifying boy genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, alleged to be an instant master performer at age three and a brilliant composer at age five.

His breath-taking musical gifts were said to have sprouted from nowhere, and his own father promoted him as the 'miracle which God let be born in Salzburg. The reality about Mozart turns out to be far more interesting and far less mysterious. His early achievements - while very impressive, to be sure -actually make good sense considering his extraordinary upbringing. And hislater undeniable genius turns out to be a wonderful advertisement for the power of process. Mozart was bathed in music from well before his birth, and his childhood was quite unlike any other.

His father, Leopold Mozart, was an intensely ambitious Austrian musician, composer, and teacher who had gained wide acclaim with the publication of the instruction book A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing. For a while, Leopold had dreamed of being a great composer himself. But on becoming a father, he began to shift his ambitions away from his own unsatisfying career and onto his children - perhaps, in part, because his career had already hit a ceiling: he was vice-kapellmeister (assistant music director); the top spot would be unavailable for the foreseeable future.

"Uniquely situated, and desperate to make some sort of lasting mark on music, Leopold began his family musical enterprise even before Wolfgang's birth, focusing first on his daughter Nannerl. Leopold's elaborate teaching method derived in part from the Italian instructor Giuseppe Tartini and included highly nuanced techniques. Then came Wolfgang. Four and a half years younger than his sister, the tiny boy got everything Nannerl got - only much earlier and even more intensively. Literally from his infancy, he was the classic younger sibling soaking up his big sister's singular passion. As soon as he was able, he sat beside her at the harpsichord and mimicked notes that she played. Wolfgang's first pings and plucks were just that. But with a fast-developing ear, deep curiosity and a tidal wave of family know-how, he was able to click into an accelerated process of development.

"As Wolfgang became fascinated with playing music, his father became fascinated with his toddler son's fascination - and was soon instructing him

with an intensity that far eclipsed his efforts with Nannerl. Not only did Leopold openly give preferred attention to Wolfgang over his daughter; he also made a career-altering decision to more or less shrug off his official duties in order to build an even more promising career for his son. This was not a quixotic adventure. Leopold's calculated decision made reasonable financial sense, ... Wolfgang's youth made him a potentially lucrative attraction. ...From the age of three, then, Wolfgang had an entire family driving him to excel with a powerful blend of instruction, encouragement, and constant practice. He was expected to be the pride and financial engine of the family,and he did not disappoint. In his performances from London to Mannheim between the ages of six and eight, he drew good receipts and high praise from noble patrons. ...

"Still, like his sister, the young Mozart was never a truly great adult-level instrumentalist. He was highly advanced for his age, but not compared with

skillful adult performers. The tiny Mozart dazzled royalty and was at the time unusual for his early abilities. But today many young children exposed to

Suzuki and other rigorous musical programs play as well as the young Mozart did - and some play even better. Inside the world of these intensive, child-centered programs, such achievements are now straightforwardly regarded by parents and teachers for what they are: the combined consequence of early exposure, exceptional instruction, constant practice, family nurturance, and a child's intense will to learn. Like a brilliant souffle, all of these ingredients must be present in just the right quantity and mixed with just the right timing and flair. Almost anything can go wrong. The process is far from predictable and never in anyone's complete control."

David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us
Doubleday
uoted from delanceyplace.Com

Art by Igor Stavinsky

2010-08-01T17:23:00.001-07:00

Rag Time

2010-08-01T17:21:00.001-07:00

"Ragtime might have been percolating throughout the black ghettos since the mid-1890s, but the style's first million-seller was achieved by Irving Berlin, with his 1911 hit 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' It took a white man to really sell black music, as previously subterranean styles hit the mainstream as exploitable crazes. That was the deal: the new method of exchange.

"Ragtime's crossover success excited unfavorable comment, not the least because of its appeal to youth. The Musical American thought that ragtime was like an addictive drug. In 1913, the Musical Courier stated that America was 'falling prey to the collective soul of the Negro through the influence of what is popularly known as 'rag time' music.' This was nothing less than 'a national disaster,' as ragtime was 'symbolic of the primitive morality and perceptible moral limitations of the Negro type. With the latter sexual restraint is almost unknown, and the wildest latitude of moral uncertainty is conceded.'

"Ragtime might have been percolating throughout the black ghettos since the mid-1890s, but the style's first million-seller was achieved by Irving Berlin, with his 1911 hit 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' It took a white man to really sell black music, as previously subterranean styles hit the mainstream as exploitable crazes. That was the deal: the new method of exchange.

"The link between music, race, and sexuality was confirmed in the moralists' eyes by the 'animal dances' that flooded the inner cities after the success of 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' Beginning with the success of the turkey trot, a very fast and animated dance that evolved out of the nineteenth-century communal cakewalk, a whole bestiary erupted onto the nation's dance floors to the accompaniment of ragtime: dances like the bunny hug, the grizzly bear,the monkey glide, the possum trot, the kangaroo dip. As Irving Berlin noted in his 1911 hit, 'Everybody's doing it now.'

"In the animal dances, participants made up their moves as they went along. Instead of decorously holding each other at arm's length in the formality of the waltz and the polka, dancers whirled around the floor with their arms and legs intertwined. In the turkey trot, the lower half of the woman's body, from waist to knee, was enfolded in the legs of her male partner. The grizzly bear involved a total-body hug that went way beyond previous standards of propriety. This gliding and shimmying was an activity associated with burlesque performers and Negroes, not proper young whites. America's young didn't care. ...

"The craze went uptown. Life magazine reported in February 1912 that animal dances were flourishing 'above, below, and between. The dancing set in our town must be half a million strong.' ... Headlines like 'Movement Begins to Bar 'Turkey Trot' and 'Grizzly Bear' from Fifth Avenue' tapped into a wider panic about plummeting moral standards.

"This was summarized by a hysterical article in the August 1913 issue of Current Opinion, which seethed, 'It has struck Sex O'Clock in America: a wave of sex hysteria and sex discussion seems to have invaded this country.' Animal dances were associated with the increase in blatant prostitution and the prevalence of the white slave trade: the kidnapping and drugging of young girls for sexual purposes. ...

"The reformers and the authorities did their best to police the craze. Unable completely to close down the halls or to extirpate this dancing mania, they began to target the urban zones from which all this vice had originated. Just at the time when black American music was finding a greater national and international audience, red-light districts in San Francisco and St. Louis were segregated and then totally shut down.

"But it was too late as, in defiance of the reformers and the legislators, thousands of American youths continued to throng the dance halls every night of the week."

Author: Jon Savage, Teenage, Viking ,Pages: 124-126