Music History Monday: A Life for the Tsar
December
9th,
2019
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857) in 1840 On December 9, 1836 (or November 27, 1836 in the old style, Russian Julian calendar), Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar received its premiere at the Imperial Bolshoi Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than just an opera and a premiere, the opening night of A Life…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Olivier Messiaen’s ‘Turangalîla’ Symphony
December
3rd,
2019
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in 1946 Yesterday’s Music History Monday post noted and celebrated the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony in Boston, on December 2, 1949, by the Boston Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Composed between 1946 and 1948, the Turangalîla Symphony caps the first part of Messiaen’s compositional career. There’s nothing else like it…
Music History Monday: Turangalîla
December
2nd,
2019
December 2 is – was - a great date for world premieres, as well as for one unfortunate and extremely notable exit. Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 received its first performance on December 3, 1883 – 136 years ago today – in Vienna, when it was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Virgil Thomson: Symphony on a Hymn Tune
November
26th,
2019
Virgil Thomson Yesterday’s Music History Monday post recognized the 123rd anniversary of the birth of the American composer and critic Virgil Thomson (1896-1989). That Music History Monday post focused on the particular pitfalls when a practitioner (in Thomson’s case, a composer) deigns also to become a critic. Today, we turn to Thomason’s music. As a…
Music History Monday: A Critical Voice
November
25th,
2019
Virgil Thomson in 1947 We recognize the birth on November 25, 1896 – 123 years ago today – of the American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson in Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Thomson was one of the most important American musicians and music critics of the twentieth century. But before we move on to him,…
Music History Monday: The Grand Journey
November
18th,
2019
Leopold Mozart and his children Wolfgang and Marianne in Paris 1763/4; watercolor by Louis Carmontelle. Ludwig had a lithograph made from this painting which he widely distributed as an advertisement On November 18, 1763, 256 years ago today, the Mozart family – father Leopold, mother Anna Maria, daughter Marianne (12 years old) and son Wolfgang…
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor from Warsaw
November
12th,
2019
At its highest and ideal level, the purpose of art is to crystallize, summarize, epitomize and portray human experience in a manner universal and transcendent of its time and place of creation. Some art is aesthetically beautiful and as such transports us to a “better” place, beyond this vale of tears that is our everyday…
Music History Monday: Barbara Strozzi: Now You Know!
November
11th,
2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKldSD565QM Barbara Strozzi, Amor domiglione (“Sleepyhead Cupid”, 1651); Molly Netter, soprano; Avi Stein, harpsichord; and Ezra Seltzer, cello We mark the death on November 11, 1677 – 342 years ago today – of the composer and singer Barbara Strozzi at the age of 58. Madame Strozzi saw eight volumes of her music published in her…
Dr. Bob Prescribes Gabriel Fauré: Piano Quartet No. 1
November
5th,
2019
Fauré (1845-1924) in 1864, as a student at the École de Musique Classique et Religieuse Every one of us is, to some extent, the product and the victim of our education. The product, obviously, because we are all shaped by what we were taught, and (presumably) we use some of what we were taught to…
Music History Monday: All Too Soon: The Death of Mendelssohn
November
4th,
2019
Feast or famine. November 4 is one of those days that is a veritable musical-historical feast, during which so many important musical events took place that we can only wish we could spread them about, so worthy of note are each of them. Among these events are four that I would certainly have written about…