I joined NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” guest-hosted by Tamara Keith for a discussion on “Presidential Campaign Music.” I was the music-historian-in-residence for NPR’s “Weekend All Things Considered” and then “Weekend Edition Sunday with Liane Hansen” from 1997 until 2008, so I know the drill. In order to sound as if I was sitting in the studio with the host and the other guests, I drove into San Francisco during the early morning commute (ugh) to KQED, our local NPR affiliate. There I was given coffee (yes . . . yes . . .), and plunked into a studio by a wonderful engineer named Howard Gelman (we go back over 20 years), outfitted with headphones and put in front of a microphone. HEAR THE RESULT on The Diane Rehm Show archive.
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Author Archive for Robert Greenberg – Page 74
Gratitude. It’s cliché but true – at least for me – that we/I should consider spending a bit more time contemplating those things that I am thankful for, those things that make life worth living. Heaven knows, we spend enough time hearing about, reading about, and thinking about those things that suck the lifeblood out of us. We can all fill in the blanks there, though I’d offer up a couple spirit-sappers that generally drive me to distraction: the extraordinary intolerance and lack of civility with which we as a species tend to treat each other and morons with guns (the latter often being a function of the former). It’s a good thing – given my personal proclivity to dwell on the darker side of human nature – that I’m a musician. Nothing restores my fragile faith in humanity and arouses my gratitude more effectively than listening to music beautifully performed. I am frequently asked an impossible question: “who’s your favorite composer?” Who could answer such a question? Certainly I can’t. I’ve said it before, and here I am, saying it again; I am a musical slut: I am in love with whomever I’m presently with. How can I possibly […]
Continue ReadingFor your viewing and listening pleasure I offer up the premiere performance of Invasive Species for piano quintet, performed by the incomparable Roger Woodward and the Alexander String Quartet in Berkeley, CA in March of 2014. (For a studio recording of the piece, score and parts, please visit Sheet Music Plus) Here’s the program note for Invasive Species: Three-Part Intention March of the Yellow Crazy Ants One-Part Incursion Pretty Pretty Poison Two-Part Ignition E. globulus (10-20-1991) The title Invasive Species refers to non-native species of plants and animals that, once introduced to a new environment, have an adverse affect on the habitats and bioregions they invade and colonize. Specifically this piece is about three “invasive species” portrayed in alternating movements: yellow crazy ants (“March of the Yellow Crazy Ants”), water hyacinths (“Pretty Pretty Poison), and gum eucalyptus (“E. globulus”). Generally, the piece is about confrontations between like and unlike elements, as most obviously depicted by the confrontation between the piano and the string quartet. The yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) most likely originated in West Africa. Accidentally introduced to northern Australia, it has devastated the local ecology. The ant is called “crazy” because of its unpredictable movements and its long […]
Continue ReadingMy music is now being digitally published by Sheet Music Plus. By September 1, 18 pieces will be “live” with scores and parts available for digital download. In addition, a recording of each piece can be heard free-of-charge on the website. For those pieces that have also been recorded in video, links are provided to those videos. Works currently “live” (and on sale!): Suite Revelation for cello and piano (2014) 180 Shift for piano trio (2013) Invasive Species for piano quintet (2012) Lemurs are Afraid of Fossas for cello and piano (2011) South Bay Angle for violin and piano (2011) So Let Us Live – Really Live! For baritone and piano (2009) Tempus Fugit for piano (2008) Anything you Can Do . . . for violin and vibraphone (2006) String Quartet No. 4: Snappy Rejoinder (2005) Funny Like a Monkey for piano quartet (2001) Rarefied Air for B-flat clarinet, violin and piano (1999) Behavioral Science for trombone solo (1998) Pluck for guitar solo (1996) String Quartet No. 3: Among Friends (1995) Iron Balconies and Lilies for soprano, piano and chamber ensemble (1992) String Quartet No. 2: Child’s Play (1988) Quasi un Madrigale for soprano and piano (1985) Prayer for the […]
Continue ReadingThanks in very large part to the incredible feedback and suggestions I received from you wonderful people, I have gone a long way towards formulating the nature and content of the on-line courses I will self publish and begin to release during the first quarter of 2016. I will be making webcasts, and not webinars. Webinars take place in real time, and while they can be recorded for subsequent viewing, downloading, etc., they are fraught with peril. As in any live broadcast, glitches, technical difficulties, misspeaks and such are not “correctible”. The technology is, likewise, problematic: none of the software that powers webinars seems to be even remotely idiot-proof. As a self-avowed techno-idiot, that constituted “STEE-RIKE THREE!” for webinars. So webcasts it will be. Each individual webcast “lecture” will run about 30-minutes in length. Each 30-minute lecture will be broken down into three roughly 10-minute “modules” that can be listened to individually or straight on through. The first two courses I will create will consist of 12 30-minute lectures. The first will be entitled “Schubert: Chamber Music for Strings” and the second “The Late String Quartets and Quintets of Mozart.” (Yes, I am aware of the fact that these titles […]
Continue ReadingI was all ready to post a longish blog this evening, describing my webcast plans and thanking all those whose comments and advice helped me to formulate those plans when, just moments ago, I received this link from Gethin Jones. It is a Beethoven tee-shirt, with – presumably – the first four measures of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony writ large across the bosom. Except. Except, instead of spelling out Beethoven’s iconic “fate motive” – G-G-G-Eb; F-F-F-D – the genius who designed the shirt instead spelled out “Three Blind Mice” (G-F-Eb). I am not usually a laugh out-loud sort of guy but this has really tickled my funny bone. It could very well be the biggest musical mistake since Pol Pot’s “Christmas Album”. Available in nine(!) different colors and six different sizes, I’m thinking that this is the “must have” of the year; the pet rock, the Chia Porcupine, the “Dog is My Co-Pilot” bumpersticker of 2015. If anyone wants to know, I wear between a large and an X-large.
Continue ReadingMany thanks to everyone who proposed a title for my upcoming Great Courses survey that features musical works inspired by historical events. With the greatest of difficulty, I have managed to reduce the number of potential titles to eleven; fewer than the number of Republicans currently seeking the presidential nomination, but still a big number. But that, my friends, is a function of the quality of the titles you came up with. Our next job, then, is to vote (and I meant that by saying “our next job”, as I am going to submit my vote along with yours). With a little luck (and perhaps some pushing and shoving), the good folks at The Great Courses will accept our vote as binding and the course will so be named!
Continue ReadingThank you all for the wonderful submissions made at my request last week to name my next The Great Courses survey. I will select my 5-10 favorites and present them to you later this week for your vote. I will deliver the results to The Great Courses with the hope that they will indeed let the majority rule. A New Direction? As a self-employed musician-writer, who spends his working days at home, alone at the computer, I can forget how very intelligent and creative the collective can be. You have reminded me of that creative intelligence with your many suggestions and comments regarding my upcoming course. So: using you as a resource and as a sounding board, I’d like to tell you about my plans for the future and in doing so again solicit your suggestions and advice. (If anyone wants to respond privately, or at greater length than Facebook provides, feel free to contact me on this site.) Background For many years, I taught something I called “Living Room Classes” here in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were just that: classes taught in the evening to interested adults in various living rooms across the Bay Area. It was […]
Continue ReadingIt has been a long time since I last blogged. I have an excuse (sort of) which I’d share, and in doing so request your help. I have been writing a new, 24-lecture course for The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, and have only today – this morning, in fact – finished the first draft. I began work in December, so the draft (which runs about 140,000 words, about the length of a 450 page book) took seven months to write. I’ll need another three months to rewrite, by which time the course will run about 120,000 words. It has been, by far, the toughest survey I’ve ever written. The working title is “Big History and Great Music.” The premise is as follows. Each lecture features a different piece of music. Each piece of music was written as a direct response to a historical event. The bulk of each lecture, then, will explore that event and the manner in which the music under study reflects that event. For example. Lecture 17 focuses on a piano sonata by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (pictured below as a young dude with his wife Zdenka), a piece entitled Piano Sonata I. X. 1905 (meaning […]
Continue ReadingI’ve done a good bit of travel by air over the course of the last 35 years, long enough to observe (and experience) an incredible degradation in air travel. To my mind, airports themselves have always been bad. I long ago decided that once I entered an airport – any airport – it was best to assume I had entered a maximum-security “rehabilitation facility”. With this in mind I could accept that the airport, as a manifestation of fate, controlled my destiny. My time no longer belonged to me; nor did my body, and if the “airport” chose to delay (or cancel) a flight, or hold me at passport control, or pull me out of a security line and subject me to a cavity search, my best recourse was – and remains – to keep my mouth shut and do my best to go with the flow. In sum: I don’t particularly like airports. (Especially now that the prices in duty-free are, like, twice what you’d pay in Costco. What’s that all about?) Once boarded and underway, the actual flights were, for me, infinitely less onerous. There was food to eat, empty seats to stretch out on, unlimited bags to […]
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