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 tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes, will focus on the last year of Rachmaninoff’s life, during which he lived in Beverly Hills, California. Rachmaninoff – all 6’6” of him! – was one of the great pianists of his (or any) time; an outstanding composer; and a more than able conductor (he was, for example, the conductor of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow from 1904-1906). Lucrative though performing as a pianist and conductor were, what Rachmaninoff really wanted to be was a composer (the composition bug is, as I will attest, something of a disease). As is the case with so many “working” composers – meaning composers who make the bulk of their income doing something other than composing – Rachmaninoff composed primarily during the summer months. Between 1890 and 1917 – from the ages of 17 to 44 – Rachmaninoff spent those summer months composing at his home in Ivanovka, a […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Music History Mondays – Page 13
We mark the birth on March 21, 1685, of Johann Sebastian Bach in the Thuringian town of Eisenach, in what today is central Germany. He died 65 years later, on July 28, 1750, in the Saxon city of Leipzig. I can hear the howling now, “Dr. B, hello, Bach was born on March 31, 1685, not March 21; March 31: it says so on Wikipedia!” Chill out and unknot those jockeys; let’s talk. Wikipedia and various other sources do indeed indicate, not incorrectly, that Bach was born on March 31. But according to the irrefutable and unassailable Bach scholar Christoff Wolff writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Sebastian Bach was born on March 21. And in fact Bach celebrated his birthday on March 21. So what gives? A Brief Contemplation of Dates (by which we do not refer to one’s social life but the calendar) Old style and new style; in style and out-of-style. It is a question of almost Talmudic complexity. We’re talking about calendars and the confusion wrought by changing calendars. In 46 BCE (two years before his conversion into a human pincushion), Julius Caesar proposed replacing what was the 10-month Roman […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the birth of March 14, 1681 – 341 years ago today – of the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann, in the city Magdeburg, in what today is central Germany. A contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) (both of whom Telemann numbered as good friends; Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel was both the godson and namesake of Georg Philipp Telemann), Telemann was considered in his lifetime the greatest composer living and working in Germany, with our friend Sebastian Bach well down that list. Telemann died in Hamburg on June 25, 1767, at the age of 86. Georg Philipp was the youngest of three surviving children (two boys and a girl) of Maria and Heinrich Telemann. Young Telemann came from a long line of Protestant clergymen. His mother Maria’s father was a deacon, and his father Heinrich Telemann was a Lutheran pastor (as was Heinrich’s father before him). Sadly, Heinrich Telemann died his late 30’s in 1685 when Georg Philipp was just 4 years old, and the task of raising and providing for the family fell squarely on Maria Telemann’s shoulders. Single mothers are usually, by necessity, a tough bunch, and in this Maria Telemann […]
Continue ReadingBefore we go forth to encounter the “unexpected”, a quick birthday greeting to the wonderful Maurice Ravel, who was born in the southern French municipality of Ciboure on March 7, 1875: 147 years ago today. I would direct you to my Music History Monday post of December 28, 2020, a post that celebrated Ravel’s life on the anniversary of his death on December 28, 1937, at the age of 62. Happy birthdayMaestro. “Unexpected Warblers” About my choice of topic for today. Three weeks ago, on February 14 (St. Valentine’s Day), I ran a post featuring some of the most horrific love songs ever recorded. Then, last Thursday, on February 24 (a date that now joins December 7, 1941, for its infamy due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), I ran a post entitled “Phyllis Diller, Concert Pianist: Who Knew?”, a post that celebrated the unexpected keyboard talents of Ms. Phyllis Diller (1917-2012). Today’s Music History Monday combines aspects of both of those posts, as it explores what happens when movie actors not known for being singers actually sing on film. As you might expect, the results are mixed: some of these good people will, in fact, actually surprise us (in a […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the birth on February 28, 1876 – 146 years ago today – of the American composer and pianist John Alden Carpenter, in Chicago, Illinois. He died there in the Windy City at the age of 75, on April 26, 1951. John Alden Carpenter is certainly not a musical household name here in 2022. But 75 years ago, Carpenter was among the best known and most respected living composers, musicians (he was an outstanding pianist), and musical philanthropists in the United States. His orchestral music was regularly conducted by the likes of Walter Damrosch (who conducted the New York Symphony Orchestra), Frederick Stock (the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Leopold Stokowski, Serge Koussevitzky (the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Fritz Reiner (the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Artur Rodzinski (the New York Philharmonic), Pierre Monteux (the San Francisco Symphony), Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter (the New York Philharmonic), and Eugene Ormandy (the Philadelphia Orchestra). The list of great singers, musicians, and chamber groups that championed Carpenter’s music is equally impressive. Carpenter was the only American composer ever to be commissioned by Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929) and his Ballets Russes. The product of that commission was Carpenter’s third and final ballet, Skyscrapers: A Ballet of Modern American Life […]
Continue ReadingOn February 21, 2012 – ten years ago today – five members of the Russian feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot staged an unauthorized performance on the soleas [so-LAY-us] of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. (For our information, a “soleas” is the sanctuary platform in a Russian Orthodox Church.) The security personnel at the church were not pleased by this impromptu performance and quickly – within a minute – put an end to it. However, following the dictum that “anything worth doing is worth recording,” Pussy Riot recorded their “performance” for posterity; that recording is linked below: Why, oh why would these masked young women so desecrate a Russian Orthodox Cathedral? They had – to their minds – good reason. Vladimir Putin was up for re-election, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (who was born Vladimir Mikhailovich in 1946), had thrown the church’s support behind Putin’s re-election. Later that evening of February 21, 2012 – ten years ago today – Pussy Riot released a music video entitled “Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” Thanks to the internet, that video circulated internationally, overnight. That video is linked below. From […]
Continue ReadingOn February 14, 1992 – an even 30 years ago today – the Paramount Pictures movie Wayne’s World was released in the United States. It was both a critical and commercial success. It became the tenth highest grossing film of 1992, raking in $183,097,323 at the box office. (For our information, number one that year was Disney’s Aladdin, which brought in a most respectable $504,050,219 at the box office; that’s over half-a-billion 1992 dollars!) To this day, Wayne’s World remains the highest-grossing film based on a sketch from Saturday Night Live. (The list of such other SNL-inspired flicks includes The Blues Brothers [with John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, 1980; to be discussed in next week’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post], Coneheads [with Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin, 1993], It’s Pat [with Julia Sweeny, 1994], Stuart Saves his Family [with Al Franken, 1995]; and A Night at the Roxbury [with Will Ferrell, 1998].) With my own fond memories of the film, I played Wayne’s World last year for my then 12- and 14-year-old kids. Sadly, it did not go well, as the movie has not aged well. Then again, neither has Mike Myers nor yours truly. Wayne’s World featured appearances by the […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the death on February 7, 1652 – 370 years ago today – of the Italian composer and Sistine Chapel singer Gregorio Allegri, in Rome. He had been born in that great and ancient city 70 years before, in 1582. Allegri is remembered today for a work he composed in the 1630s, during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, entitled Miserere mei, Deus (which means “Have mercy on me, O God”). The Miserere is a setting of Psalm 50 (Psalm 51 in Protestant Bibles). Allegri composed his Miserere specifically (and exclusively!) for use in the Sistine Chapel (the Pope’s private chapel), to be performed during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week, which occur on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before Easter Sunday. Allegri’s setting calls for two separate choirs, one employing five voices and the other, four voices. The choirs alternate with one another until the last part of the piece, during which they join to conclude the Miserere in nine-part polyphony. As the Miserere was performed over the years, embellishments were spontaneously added by the singers, embellishments that eventually became part of any performance but were never written down. (For our historical information: Allegri’s Miserere is often identified […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the birth on January 31, 1797 – 225 years ago today – of Franz Peter Schubert, in Vienna. He died in that city 31 years, 9 months, and 19 days later, on November 19, 1828. Franz Schubert is no stranger to Music History Monday. However, we could not let his birthday pass without a post; no way, no how. Our angle today will be to focus on those friends without whom Schubert the man and the composer could not have survived. Schubert: Image and Reality The short, pudgy Schubert was called by his friends “Schwammerl,” which means “little mushroom.” The fully-grown Schubert was 1.57 meters tall (about 5’1”) and as his portraits attest, he never lost his cherubic appearance. The following description of the adult Schubert was written by his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner: “Schubert’s outward appearance was anything but striking. He was short of stature, with a full, round face, and was rather stout. His forehead was very beautifully domed. Because of his short sight, he always wore spectacles which he did not take off, even during sleep. Dress was a thing in which he took no interest whatsoever; consequently, he disliked going out into smart society. He […]
Continue ReadingLet’s get this out of the way up front, because the pretext for today’s post on Lennie Tristano was yesterday’s Music History Monday which, for the large part, was about sightless musicians. Writes Tristano biographer Eunmi Shim (Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music; The University of Michigan Press, 2007): “Born with weak sight, Tristano’s vision grew worse and by the time he was nine or ten years old he became completely blind. According to Bob Blackburn [writing in the Toronto Telegram, July 22, 1964], it was ‘the result of glaucoma probably stemming from his mother being stricken in pregnancy by the post-World War I flu epidemic.’ Judy Tristano, Lennie Tristano’s first wife, recalled that Tristano’s parents tried unsuccessfully to cure his blindness: ‘they had tried everything to cure his glaucoma. Legitimate doctors, quacks, going to church and everybody praying en masse, praying for his sight. But of course, nothing worked. They couldn’t cure glaucoma or treat it.’” As an adult, when the subject of his eyesight came up, Tristano’s standard response was, “I’m blind as a motherf***er.” Brief Biography Leonard Joseph Tristano was born in Chicago on March 19, 1919, and died in New York City on November 18, 1978. […]
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