Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
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Music History Monday Replay: “The Empress” – Bessie Smith
April 15th, 2024
I am writing this post from my hotel room in what is presently (but sadly, not for long) warm and sunny Vienna. As I mentioned last week, I will be here for eight days acting as “color commentator” for a musical tour of the city sponsored by Wondrium (a.k.a. The Teaching Company/The Great Courses). I also indicated, one, that I would keep you up-to-date on the trip with near-daily posts, and two, that Music History…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Ludwig van Beethoven, Diabelli Variations for piano
April 9th, 2024
The Project In early 1819, the Vienna-based music publisher Anton Diabelli (1781-1858) had what was a great idea for a charity project. He sent a brief waltz of his own composition to 50 composers living in Austria and invited each of them to compose a single variation on the waltz. Diabelli’s plan was to publish…
Music History Monday: The Guy Who Wrote the “Waltz”
April 8th, 2024
We mark the death on April 8, 1858 – 166 years ago today – of the Austrian composer, editor, and music publisher Anton Diabelli in Vienna, at the age of 76. Born on September 5, 1781, his enduring fame is based on a waltz of his composition that became the basis for Beethoven’s epic Diabelli…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Bob Dylan: the Television Commercials
April 2nd, 2024
For the second week in a row, I’m offering up a different sort of Dr. Bob Prescribes (DBP) post. Yesterday’s Music History Monday marked the private ceremony, held on April 1, 2017, during which Bob Dylan received his Novel Prize for Literature. Typically, if I were to follow my usual modus operandi in today’s DBP,…