Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) was an American jazz pianist and composer, someone who led his eponymous jazz band (or “orchestra,” as he preferred to call it), for what was a record-making 51 years: from 1923 until his death in 1974. He was born and raised in Washington D.C. He moved permanently to New York City in 1923, and it was there that he became famous: as the leader of the house band at Harlem’s Cotton Club from 1927 to 1931. A brilliant composer of songs – many of which are today standards of the Great American Songbook – Ellington began composing extended works (what he generally referred to as “suites”) in the mid-1930s. By the time of his death in 1974, he had written and collaborated on over one thousand musical works, by far the single largest body of written work in the jazz repertoire. When we left off in yesterday’s Music History Monday, Ellington had just become a household musical name thanks to his band’s weekly national broadcasts from the Cotton Club in New York City. Ellington remained at the very top of the American musical heap through the 1930s and mid-1940s. And then. And then came the late-1940s and […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Author Archive for David Weuste
In choosing a topic for last week’s (May 8) Music History Monday post, I had a difficult choice: to either mark the birthday of the short-lived American composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) or the birthday of the even shorter-lived American blues songwriter, singer, and guitarist Robert Johnson (1911-1938). I chose to run with Gottschalk. Today, then, we are offering up a belated birthday greeting to Robert Johnson, who is among the most influential American musicians to have ever lived. Was that last bit an overstatement, “among the most influential American musicians to have ever lived”? No; it is not. But we would note that Johnson’s musical influence was primarily felt by rock ‘n’ roll musicians, living and working a full generation after his death in 1938. As we will soon discuss, we know next to nothing about Johnson himself: his life (and his death). He was an itinerant musician who performed on a small musical circuit up-and-down the Mississippi Delta, playing on street corners, saloons, Saturday night dances, and what were called juke joints. (“Juke joints” were pop-up establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, operated primarily by Black Americans in the deep south). Johnson’s recording career spanned […]
Continue ReadingCompositional Bipolarity Alec Wilder, in his classic study, American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1972), writes: “Vernon Duke was only one half of his musical self; the other half was Vladimir Dukelsky, a composer of concert works. Unfortunately for all of us, the concert, so-called ‘serious’ side of the man’s talent never, so far as I know, attempted to employ his popular side in a ‘third stream’ fashion [meaning a free mix of popular music and concert music content]. For although he was born in another culture, his absorption of American popular music writing was phenomenal. One never was aware in his songs of his not being rooted in this culture, as I was, for example, when I listened to the theater songs of Kurt Weill.” Duke/Dukelsky addressed his musical “duality” this way: “I always feel the duality in myself. My light music [meaning popular music] is decidedly extrovert, my serious music is introvert. There’s my Carnegie Hall self and my Lindy’s self [‘Lindy’s Restaurant’ was a famed Jewish deli in New York City’s Theater District on Broadway between 49th and 50th streets, named for its owner, Leo “Lindy” Lindermann], my Russian heritage and my American […]
Continue ReadingCarl Nielsen (1865-1931) composed six symphonies which are, outside of Denmark, his best-known works. His first symphony was completed 1892, when he was 27 years of age. As we would expect from a first symphony by a young composer, Nielsen’s influences are clearly in evidence: the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) and the German-born, Viennese composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), both of whom were still alive and kicking when Nielsen completed the symphony. (We’d observe that Nielsen chose his principal influences wisely.) In his Symphony No. 2, Op. 16 (of 1902) and Symphony No. 3, Op. 27 (the “Sinfonia Expansiva”, of 1911), Nielsen’s compositional voice is very much more his own. His Symphony No. 4 (composed in 1916, during World War One) and Symphony No. 5 (composed in 1920, not long after the conclusion of the war) stand apart from the other four. They are both exceedingly dramatic, at moments even brutal works, each representing a “battle between the forces of order and chaos.” No doubt due to their viscerally powerful expressive impact, Nielsen’s 4th and 5th Symphonies are his best-known and most popular works outside of Denmark. Finally, Nielsen’s Symphony No. 6, subtitled Sinfonia Semplice (“Simple Symphony”, of 1925), reverts to […]
Continue ReadingA Nice Hike In early September of 1940, Gustav Mahler’s widow Alma (1879-1964) – now married to the Jewish author Franz Werfel (1890-1945) – walked from France to Spain in order to escape the Nazi occupation of Europe. (Time out. We read constantly about those intrepid individuals who, in order to escape the Nazis, “walked across the Pyrenees from occupied France to neutral Spain.” The image so conjured is one of daring and desperate people braving an alpine climb and descent – after all, the Pyrenees rise to a height of 11,168 feet – all the while avoiding border patrols, searchlights, and barking dogs. In fact, the crossing from the French town of Cerbère to the Spanish town of Portbou involves walking a roughly two-mile-long path up and over a hill along the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a stroll, for heaven’s sake, one that hardly constitutes a hike!) Alma had been told to bring only what she could carry, but she showed up in Marseilles (the point of departure for escapees) with twelve trunks worth of luggage. The man who arranged her escape from France was the American journalist and first order hero Varian Fry (1907-1967). (For our information: working for […]
Continue ReadingWeimar On July 14, 1708, the newly appointed court organist Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and his wife Maria Barbara Bach (1684-1720) arrived in the Thuringian (central German) city of Weimar from Bach’s previous post in the Thuringian city of Mühlhausen. The young couple moved into an apartment in a house owned by another employee of the court, Adam Immanuel Weldig, who was master of the pages and a falsettist (a non-surgical male soprano) in the chorus of the court chapel. (Coincidentally, this same Adam Weldig was an alum of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, where Bach would be the master of music for the last 27 years of his life, from 1723 to 1750). Whatever else its amenities, Weldig’s house had location in spades. It was located at number 5 Markt, on Weimar’s Markplatz (market square), which had been the city’s most important public space since around 1300. From there, it was just a five-minute walk to the Ducal palace (the Wilhelmsburg), where both Bach and Weldig worked. It was at the Weldig house that Bach’s first child, Catharina Dorothea, was born on December 29, 1708, and where his second child – Wilhelm Friedemann – was born on November […]
Continue ReadingYesterday’s Music History Monday post on the death of George Gershwin was, to my mind, painfully dark. Having examined and processed the dreadful events leading up to Gershwin’s tragic death at the age of 38, we turn here in today’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post not just to the land of the living but to a musical world filled with dance and with joy. We deserve no less. Disclosure In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you that in the very early weeks of my Patreon presence in 2018, I wrote about this album. However, that post was tossed off quickly, and at a measly 890 words, it was roughly one-third the length of what today is a typical Dr. Bob Prescribes post. So today we do the phenomenal Vocal Sampling and their fourth (of five) albums, Cambio de Tiempo, released in April of 2002, proper justice.… See it, only on Patreon! Robert Greenberg Courses On Sale Now
Continue ReadingLet’s say it upfront: Salvatore (“Sal”) Joseph Mosca (1927–2007) is the greatest jazz musician you’ve likely never heard perform. Readers of my posts have heard of Maestro Mosca, as I’ve mentioned him repeatedly as being among my favorite, best-of-the-best jazz pianists ever. But I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of you have never actually heard him play. That will all change during the course of this post. I would tell you that Sal Mosca has inspired me to do something I never, ever, have otherwise done, and that is to write reviews of his albums on Amazon. I have written and posted only two reviews on Amazon, both of them dealing with Mosca albums. One of those review is spectacularly positive; the other equally negative. The positive one deals with one of the prescribed recordings” Too Marvelous for Words. The negative one deals with an album that should never have been released. Writing under the nom-de-plume of “RMonteverdi”, here are those two reviews: One Of The Very Best At His Very Best “Sal Mosca was without any doubt one of the greatest improvising musicians who ever lived, and this fantastic five-cd set shows him at the very […]
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