Music History Monday: How to Identify a Gentleman
January
13th,
2020
Cute, but would you date an accordionist We would recognize a number of date-worthy events before moving on to the admittedly painful principal topic of today’s Music History Monday. Johann Christoph Graupner Johann Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) We recognize the birth on January 13, 1683 – 337 years ago today – of the German harpsichordist and…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 5
January
7th,
2020
Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) in 1903 Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) composed a total of ten numbered piano sonatas in the 21 years between 1892 and 1913. He composed, as well, an “unnumbered” piano sonata in E-flat minor in 1889, when he was 18 years old. These eleven piano sonatas form a virtual musical diary, and as such…
Music History Monday: The Odd Person Out
January
6th,
2020
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872-1915), looking every inch the dandy that he was On January 6, 1872 – 148 years ago today – the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was born in Moscow. He died in Moscow just 43 years later, on April 27, 1915. Scriabin was not just “the odd person out” of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Russian composers;…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Beethoven Lieder
December
31st,
2019
Beethoven Songs Beethoven’s songs? Yes indeed, Beethoven composed over 90 songs for voice and piano and arranged an additional 179 Irish, Scottish, Welsh and other folksongs for voice, piano, violin and cello. Beethoven’s songs are among his least known and least appreciated works, and this must and will stop, at least here on the cyber-pages…
Music History Monday: Richard Rodgers and the American Crucible
December
30th,
2019
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) We mark the death on December 30, 1979 – 40 years ago today – of the American composer Richard Rodgers at the age of 77. A life-long New Yorker, Rodgers was one of the most prolific American composers of all time, having written the music for – among other works – 43…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Holiday Music
December
24th,
2019
I offer up a hot, steaming mug (or if you prefer, an ice-cold martini) of gratitude to Jack Conte, who created the Patreon platform in 2013, and to my wonderful patrons for having given me the wherewithal to write, opine, and on occasion bloviate on topics musical. I will in today’s Dr. Bob Prescribes acknowledge…
Music History Monday: Is There Something Strange in the Air?
December
23rd,
2019
As readers of this blog and/or listeners to this podcast are aware, some Mondays present us with a plethora, a Mother’s Day buffet of musical topics from which to choose, while others are as dry as a perfect martini. During such days of topical feast or famine, coming up with a topic is equally challenging:…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: The Life and Times of Beethoven – The First Angry Man
December
17th,
2019
Written and recorded by yours truly, Robert GreenbergAudible Originals, 2019 In February of this year, I was asked to be among the first “influencers” (yes, that’s how I was referred to: I, who am incapable of “influencing” my daughter to turn out the lights when she’s left a room or my son to flush the…
Music History Monday: The Man
December
16th,
2019
Beethoven (1770-1827), portrait in oils (detail) by Joseph Carl Stieler, 1820 We mark the birth on December 16, 1770 – 249 years ago today – of Ludwig, or Louis, or Luigi (he went by all three names) van Beethoven, in the Rhineland city of Bonn. Although there is no documentary evidence confirming that Beethoven was…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Nicolas Slonimsky
December
10th,
2019
Nicolas Slonimsky (1893-1995) My Music History Monday post of November 25 last discussed, among other things, the role of the critic. Over the course of that post I asserted that “painful to the critical community though it may be, the fact remains that the surest way for a critic to be remembered is to get…