With all my recent “talk” about composers and such, I thought it would be appropriate to “walk the walk” and post some more of my music, if only to verify that I am not completely full of cow chips when I presume to assert what composers “are” and “aren’t”. So I am taking the opportunity to repost a premiere performance of a work for ‘cello and piano entitled “Lemurs are Afraid of Fossas” that took place in San Francisco on April 24, 2012. I originally posted the performance in early May of 2012 when I had about 4 (maybe 5) people following this blog. Thus, I feel okay about doing a repost given my rather larger current readership. It was a dream premiere, featuring musicians – ‘cellist Monica Scott and pianist Hadley McCarroll – who were talented enough to play everything I wrote and smart enough to figure out what I was trying to say. Enjoy. (Try to hang on ‘til end. I was very happy with the third movement.) Movements 1 and 2: Movement 3: For your reading pleasure, here is a program note: I. Predating Game II. Things That Go Bump in the Night III. The Shadow Knows […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Author Archive for Robert Greenberg – Page 83
I was pleased as punch by the discussion generated by my last post regarding digital technology, digital-shortcuts, the piano and composers. A number of correspondents argued that digital notational programs like Finale and Sibelius are simply “the next thing”, and that the limits placed on one’s creativity by actually composing on one of these programs is little different from the limits imposed by composing at a piano. I would pick up the ball right there, because these assertions are incorrect for a number of reasons. Reason one. Keyboard instruments began consistently employing a full chromatic keyboard (using the same layout as the modern piano) by the late fifteenth century. This was in response to growing pitch resources of the evolving tonal system, a system based on the primacy of the triad and the concept of harmonic consonance and dissonance. The invention of the harpsichord in the late fourteenth century was due in no small part to the growing demand for a portable yet more resonant keyboard instrument capable of clearly articulating and “broadcasting” the new harmonic vocabulary. The point: the emergence and development of keyboard instruments was not merely a technological event but an ORGANIC EVENT, one tied inextricably to […]
Continue ReadingI am fond of saying (overly fond, frankly) that “technology is our friend, except when it isn’t.” We all know that this is true although it is tiresome to repeat. Nevertheless I have repeated this truism as a reminder that our techno-toys often actually hinder progress and creativity. Technology. We were led to believe that computers would reduce the amount of paper we waste. Hah. We were told that cell phones, email and texting would bring us “closer together”. Please; the absurd ease with which we can now communicate has in fact lowered the standard and meaning of our interaction. Meanwhile, an entire generation spends its waking hours “cyber multi-tasking”, which is a euphemism for “not doing any one thing particularly well.” Dang, I do sound old. I bring all of this up because modern technology has impacted mightily on how composers actually compose. For what it’s worth, here’s how I do it. My compositional methodology is decidedly old school: my basic tools are pencils and paper. Specifically, Music Writer pencils made by Pacific Music Papers and Passantino No. 85 spiral music notebooks. (When I started seriously writing music around the age of 14, I discovered music manuscript notebooks made […]
Continue ReadingAh, the idealized romance of the virtuoso pianist! A solitary figure sitting at a piano communing with her innermost thoughts and feelings through the medium of a repertoire second to none; wresting from the instrument its deepest secrets and sonorities while becoming one with the piano and the music. Yes! Yes! Yes, yes! (“I’ll have what she’s having.”) Her fingers no longer push the keys in some tawdry act of mere physical contact but rather, it is her very soul that animates and gives life to the piano! Thus carried aloft on a transformational musical wind that elevates her spirit, the pianist is rendered susceptible to divine revelation. Yes, well, whatever. A dose of reality, please. Pianists are people. People lead real lives. Real life can often be a challenge. Challenges require professionalism and grit, not idealized romantic cow flop. Case in point. Magdalina Melkonyan – who during her recording sessions appeared totally relaxed at the piano and played like an angel – had quite a week. Magdalina has two boys: Alex, who is 4 years old, and Andre who is 16 months old. On Tuesday evening May 28, Andre came down with a fever of 103.5 degrees. A trip […]
Continue ReadingToday we had the opportunity to meet and hear the third of our three pianists, Eun Joo Chung. She recorded the excerpts for two great and most virtuosic works: Johannes Brahms’ “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel” and Aaron Copland’s “Piano Variations”. She was absolutely stunning. Some logistical info. The studio in which we are recording is a fairly large room, in which the piano is placed dead center in the middle. At any given moment, there are five or six people in the studio. First (and obviously), there is the pianist. Then there are three camera-people, operating, as one might expect, three cameras, which are arrayed around the piano. I am seated at a table to the side, from which I can talk to the pianist and monitor events. Finally, there is my Academic Content Supervisor Cat Lyon, who when called upon leaves the adjacent control room and joins us in the studio in order to turn pages for the pianists I would call your attention to the three camera people. My friends, it is a defining skill that good camera people (and I would tell you that The GREAT Courses employs GREAT camera people) are unflappable: […]
Continue ReadingAs anticipated in my previous post, I have travelled to Chantilly, Virginia – HQ of The Great Courses/The Teaching Company – to oversee the recording of the musical examples for my latest course, “The 23 Greatest Solo Piano Works.” The three professional concert pianists tasked with recording the excerpts are Magdalina Melkonyan, Woo Bin Park, and Eun Joo Chung. We began recording today and will continue for a total of five days. Each day – thanks to the cleverness of my producer, Jaimee Aigret – is divided into two parts: 8:30 AM to 1 PM, and 1 PM to 5:30 PM. Each “part” is assigned to a different pianist. Thus, we will record two pianists per day. They are recording on a Steinway “B”. (Sadly, the elevators here at The Great Courses could not accommodate a Steinway “D”, meaning a full concert grand. Having said that, our “B” is a molto fine instrument, which was last played – so we are told – by Harry Connick Jr. in a concert in Baltimore roughly three weeks ago.) This is what we are asking our pianists to do. Walk into a chilly (those with thinner blood might say FREEZING) studio and warm […]
Continue ReadingTuesday, May 28th I return to The Great Courses/Teaching Company studios in Virginia to complete work on my latest course: “The 23 Greatest Solo Piano Works.” We recorded the actual lectures back in January and early February, a process well-documented on this site (scroll down for the blogs I wrote during the recording process and for various studio pix). This next week will be dedicated to recording the actual musical examples that will be heard (and seen) during the course. In the past, such musical examples were excerpted from recordings. This time around, we’re doing something entirely different. We have hired three wonderful, young concert pianists who will together custom-record our musical examples. Among the many advantages of doing things this way is that I will have some say over the interpretive content of the performances. We will also be video recording the pianists, so those who purchase the video version of the course will have the added advantage of seeing as well as hearing the excerpts performed. (And who doesn’t like to watch a great pianist in action? To my mind there’s nothing in the musical world quite as awesome as watching a great pianist perform: her hand speed […]
Continue ReadingLet the party begin! We are about to embark on the greatest one-two birthday punch in the history of opera. Tomorrow – May 22 – marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Wilhelm Richard Wagner. 151 days later – on October 10 – we will celebrate the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, aka “Joe Green, the Italian opera Machine”. Of course, the musical festivities have been going on for many months already; we can hardly turn over an operatic rock anywhere on the planet and not find a Wagner or Verdi festival or a Ring Cycle underneath. The opera season notwithstanding, the popular media is poised to jump on the Wagner-Verdi bandwagon, and we should thus gird our loins in anticipation of the onslaught of information and misinformation, facts and opinions-parading-as-facts, articles and books, radio shows, recordings and documentaries, all timed to coincide with the birthdays. Among those documentaries is an hour-long radio show created by the venerable WQXR in New York entitled “Clash of the Titans: An Exploration of Verdi & Wagner.” Created by Jeff Spurgeon and Aaron Cohen, the show seeks to compare and contrast the lives and music of Wagner and Verdi. It is […]
Continue ReadingA progress report on my daughter Lillian Patricia (LilyPat), who began piano lessons 9 weeks ago, on March 5. (The post that started it all) Readers of this blog will recall that at 6½ years of age, I was concerned that she might be a bit young to happily deal with the discipline required of a piano student. (I’m a believer in letting kids be kids for as long as possible. Discipline and responsibility become our shared lot in life soon enough, and once they do, they remain our constant companions for the duration.) Nevertheless, LilyPat’s insistence that she was ready for lessons won the day, and we started her up with a wonderful local teacher and childhood friend of Lily’s mother named Tamara Saunders. Well, color me an over-concerned gasbag. My fears were completely unfounded. Lily is having a grand old time with her lessons, and thus far, it is all we can do to get her away from the piano so that she might eat her breakfast and dinner and do her homework. (Yes, homework: in kindergarten. Don’t let me get started on that.) Because I think it is irresistibly sweet (though as a father, what else could […]
Continue ReadingA birthday greeting and appreciation to my father – Alvin R. Greenberg – who turned 88 today. More than anyone else, it is my dad who is responsible for my career in music, a fact that at one time might have given him some cause for regret but which, at this point, provides more pleasure than pain. My father’s mother – my grandmother – was an excellent pianist who graduated from the New York Institute of Musical Art (later the Juilliard School) with a degree in piano in 1916. She went on to teach three generations of piano students in the borough of Queens, where my father grew up. Of all the hundreds (thousands?) of students she trained, perhaps her greatest hopes were for her son (my father) who – so she hoped – would someday take his place among the pantheon of great pianists. To that end he was subjected to just the sort of Tiger Mommy practice-at-all-costs discipline that makes the more sensitive among us cringe: hours of enforced technical exercises and practice; recitals in high-end New York venues; never mind being a kid and going outside to play (“Play? You want to play? Play Chopin – that’s […]
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