Music History Monday: Puccini’s Turandot: An Opera That Almost Wasn’t
April
25th,
2022
We mark the premiere performance on April 25, 1926 – 96 years ago today – of Giacomo Puccini’s twelfth and final opera, Turandot. The premiere took place at Milan’s storied La Scala opera house and was conducted by Puccini’s friend (and occasional nemesis!) Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). At the time of the premiere, Puccini himself had…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Robert M. Greenberg — Collected Yiddish Songs
April
19th,
2022
As begun in yesterday’s Music History Monday post, we will continue to trace what I think of as my compositional apprenticeship up to my 30th birthday, and then on to some music! California and Graduate School I arrived in Berkeley, California on September 9, 1978, to attend graduate school in music composition at the University…
Music History Monday: Charity Begins at Home
April
18th,
2022
Home from the hospital circa April 25, 1954, “The Heir” (my father’s handwriting) On April 18th, 1954 – 68 freaking years ago today – the American composer, pianist, music historian, and bloviator-par-excellence Robert Michael Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. The Teaching Company-slash-The Great Courses and My Favorite Things Since 1993, I have recorded…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Johann Sebastian Bach, St Matthew Passion
April
12th,
2022
A Bit O’ Review A page from Bach’s manuscript of the St Matthew Passion; as indicated in the quote above, he wrote texts taken directly from Scripture in red, in order to differentiate them from the words of his librettist, Christian Friedrich Henrici (also-known-as “Picander” To recap something of yesterday’s Music History Monday post, Sebastian…
Music History Monday: St. Matthew Passion
April
11th,
2022
The St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) in 1723, the year Sebastian Bach was appointed Cantor; the St. Thomas School, where Bach taught, is on the left We mark the first performance on April 11, 1727 – on what was Good Friday 295 years ago today – of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the St.…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Carmen
April
5th,
2022
This is the second of three posts celebrating the Spanish director Carlos Saura’s spectacular “Flamenco Trilogy”, his set of three movies in which the stories are told primarily through flamenco music and dance. My Dr. Bob Prescribes post for March 8 of this year addressed the first of these movies, Bodas de Sangre (“Blood Wedding”)…
Music History Monday: McKinley Morganfield, a.k.a. Muddy Waters
April
4th,
2022
McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters, 1913-1983) We mark the birth on April 4, 1913 – 109 years ago today – of the American blues singer, songwriter, and guitar and harmonica player McKinley Morganfield. He was born in either Rolling Fork or Jug’s Corner, Mississippi. Known professionally as “Muddy Waters” (as opposed to, say “Crystal Springs”, or…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2
March
29th,
2022
Rachmaninoff in America Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) in 1921 Like so many Russians of his time and of his class (what was then called in Russia the “lower nobility”; what we would call today the upper middle class), Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and his family lost everything but their lives in the Russian Revolution of…
Music History Monday: Sergei Rachmaninoff in California
March
28th,
2022
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) We mark the death on March 28, 1943 – 79 years ago today – of the composer, pianist, and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. He was born on April 1, 1873, and thus died just four days before his 70th birthday. This post, as well as…
Dr. Bob Prescribes The String Quartets of Beethoven
March
22nd,
2022
Yesterday’s Music History Monday post addressed two anniversaries: the 337th anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach on March 21, 1685, and the 196th anniversary of the premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130, on March 21, 1826. That quartet, like so very much of Beethoven’s late music, demonstrates…