We mark the death on January 24, 1473 – 549 years ago today – of the German organist, lutenist, and composer Conrad Paumann, in Munich at the age of 63. Lest I be accused of dredging up an utterly unknown musician in order to come up with a topic on an otherwise topic-shy day, let us establish the following. Born circa 1410, by the year 1447, when the 37-year-old Paumann was appointed the official organist for the city of Nuremburg, he was considered the greatest organist in all of the German speaking lands, a position Johann Sebastian Bach would occupy some 275 years later. In that year of 1447, the poet Hans Rosenplüt (1400-1460) praised Paumann as being “master of all masters” as both an instrumentalist and as a composer. According to the unimpeachable musicologist and Bach scholar Christoff Wolff: “Despite his very limited surviving output, Paumann must be considered the leading figure in 15th-century German instrumental music, known internationally not only as a virtuoso but also as a composer.” Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – hundreds of years after his death – Paumann was still remembered as the greatest organist of his time. Writing in his Lectiones antiquae, published between 1601 and […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Music History Mondays – Page 14
We mark the death on January 17, 2016 – six years ago today – of the American trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, and tuba player and teacher, Mic Gillette, of a heart attack in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Concord. Born on May 7, 1951, in Oakland, Gillette was 64 years old at the time of his death. You might not have heard of Mic Gillette, but I can assure you have heard Mr. Gillette’s playing, time and time again. He was a founding member (in 1968) of what I consider to be the single greatest funk-rock/soul/horn band ever, Oakland’s own Tower of Power. Gillette also performed and recorded extensively with two other Bay Area horn bands, Cold Blood and Sons of Champlin. As one of the most highly respected session players anywhere, Gillette has appeared on hundreds of albums, including recordings by some of the biggest names in the business, including Santana, the Rolling Stones, Sheryl Crow, Rod Stewart, Elton John, the Doobie Brothers, Quincy Jones, Jefferson Starship, Huey Lewis and the News, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. Mic Gillette was a local legend, a legend burnished by his dedication to teaching and to his family. This post is […]
Continue ReadingThe vocal ensemble that is Lambert, Hendricks & Ross grew from a long and storied tradition of vocal ensembles, going back over 500 years. As a public service, I would offer up a quick survey of that tradition, starting with an important distinction. Distinctions! Let us draw a necessary and important distinction between a “choir” and a “vocal ensemble” (with the understanding that not everyone is going to employ this distinction with the rigor that I, for one, would like to see and hear!). Like an (instrumental) orchestra, a choir is a vocal group in which some (or all) of the parts are “doubled”, meaning that some (if not all) parts will have more than one player/singer per part. Like an (instrumental) chamber ensemble, a vocal ensemble is one in which there is only one player/singer per part. This distinction between choirs and vocal ensembles began to come into focus in the late fifteenth century, in secular music written for both skilled amateur and professional singers. Generally but accurately speaking, music composed specifically for a vocal ensemble can have more individual parts and more complex parts than a chorus, where numbers can easily gum up and blur the music being […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the premiere on January 10, 1713 – 309 years ago today – of George Frederick Handel’s opera Teseo at the King’s/Queen’s Theater (also-known-as the “Italian Opera Theater”) on Haymarket, in London. It was the still 27-year-old Handel’s third opera composed for the London stage and it was a great success. However, its success was marred by a potentially catastrophic backstage incident after its second performance. We quote the London journal the Opera Register, which ran the following article on January 15, 1713, five days after Teseo opened. Here is the article as it originally appeared; I’ll translate the passage into contemporary English after we’ve read the original. (The punctuation, capitalization, and spelling below are all as in the original.) “Mr O. Swiny ye Manager of ye Theatre was now setting out a New Opera, Heroick. all ye Habits new & richer than ye former with 4 New Scenes, & other Decorations & Machines. Ye Tragick Opera was called Theseus. Ye Musick composed by Mr. Handel. Ye Opera being thus prepared Mr Swiny then did give out Tickets at half a Guinea each, for two Nights ye Boxes lay’d open to ye Pit. Ye House was very full these […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the birth on January 3, 1926 – 96 years ago today – of the English record producer, arranger, conductor, composer, audio engineer, and musician Sir George Martin, the putative “Fifth Beatle.” Martin produced 13 albums and 22 singles for the Beatles between 1962 and 1970. All told, it’s a body of work that adds up to less than 10 hours of music. But here’s a case where numbers do not tell the story, because thanks to George Martin, those 9 hours-plus of recorded music revolutionized the world of popular music. Today’s post will observe just how George Martin became the Beatles’ record producer. Tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will explore the impact Martin had on the Beatles’ recordings and what is, in my humble opinion, his masterwork: the Love album of 2006. But first: a dinner conversation that I believe you will find most interesting. What Makes a Song “Last”? My neighbor across the street is a big, smart, outspoken man named John McGleenan. I love John. He came to the United States from Dublin, Ireland, in 1992 at the age of 24, here to make his fame and fortune. He has done both. He founded […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the completion on December 27, 1941 – an even 80 years ago today – of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, the so-called “Leningrad Symphony.” He had begun the symphony at home in Leningrad but completed it in Kuybishev, a city today known by its original name as Samara. Located on the Volga River just west of the Ural Mountains, Kuybishev-slash-Samara was one of a number of “safe havens” set up by the Soviet government to protect its intelligentsia from the invading Nazi hordes. Background: With Friends Like These . . . On August 23, 1939, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government signed a pact of nonaggression and friendship with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. In a secret protocol, among other things, it was agreed that the Soviet Union and Germany would, between them slice ‘n’ dice and then gobble up Poland; and that the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would stay within the Soviet sphere of influence. In return, Stalin pledged to stay out of any war between Germany and any of the Western democracies. And so the Stalinist demon sold its soul to the Hitlerian devil. The pact stunned the world. Russia and Germany – the two great continental […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the death on December 20, 1982 – 39 years ago today – of the Polish-born American pianist Arthur Rubinstein, at the age of 95. Practicing the Piano Question: does anyone really like to practice the piano? Answer: believe it or not, yes. However, we’d observe that those good people who really like to practice are – frankly – in the minority. The vast minority. Now, obviously, there is a galactic difference between the practice schedules of kids and adult hobbyists taking piano lessons and serious students of music and professional musicians. We would expect the latter – serious students and professionals – to be practice room junkies, addicted to practice and inseparable from their instruments. But this is not always the case. Which brings us to the pianist Arthur (or Artur) Rubinstein (1887-1982). Rubinstein in America, 1906 Rubinstein made his first concert tour of the United States in 1906, when he was 19 years old. It did not go particularly well. Rubinstein played his first solo recital in New York City. Henry Krehbiel (1854-1923), the famed music critic for The New York Tribune, was there and his review was scathing. How scathing I do not know, as the […]
Continue ReadingAs those who read via blog and/or listen via podcast to Music History Monday know, as often as not I’ll mention two, three, or even more date related items before getting to the “main attraction” of a particular post. However, every now and then, one of those preliminary items will take on a life of its own and demand – rather curtly I would add – to be the main attraction itself. That’s precisely what has happened today. The original title for today’s Music History Monday was An American in Paris. Here is that post’s lead: “We mark the premiere on December 13, 1928 – 93 years ago today – of George Gershwin’s orchestral work An American in Paris. The premiere took place in Carnegie Hall, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic.” We will briefly deal with the creation and premiere of George Gershwin’s An American in Paris before moving on to the canine-related item that has stolen today’s show. Be assured, however, that we will return to An American in Paris and what was to be the meat-and-potatoes of today’s post on Thursday, December 23. A Brooklynite in Paris In the spring of 1926, George and Ira […]
Continue ReadingWe mark the disastrous concert held on December 6, 1969 – 52 years ago today – at the Altamont Speedway here in Alameda Country in the San Francisco Bay Area. Over 300,000 people attended, four of whom died that day, one of them at the hands of the so-called “security personnel.” The word “Altamont” has become synonymous with “rock concert disasters.” However, before we get to the tragic events of December 6, 1969, we would recognize an event that occurred on this day in 1975, 46 years ago today, in this edition of “This Day in Music Stupid.” On Saturday, December 6, 1975, the Reverend Charles Boykin – associate pastor and youth director of the Lakewood Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida – gave a talk to the young people of his church on “evil effects of rock music on youth.” Not content to just talk-the-talk, the good reverend had his charges gather up their rock ‘n’ records, including those by Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Doors, and Neil Diamond, and burned them. Boykin claimed to have been inspired by a nameless professor at Hyles-Anderson College (an unaccredited private independent Baptist college in unincorporated Crown Point, in Lake County, Indiana), […]
Continue ReadingBefore getting to the question that drives today’s post, we would recognize five date-worthy events: a tragedy; two notable cancellations, and two notable opera performances. First, the tragedy. On November 29, 2001 – 20 years ago today – George Harrison died in Los Angeles of lung cancer at the age of 58. Born in Liverpool on February 25, 1943, Harrison was the youngest of the Beatles: just 16 years old when he joined up in 1959. Though not known for his song writing early on, Harrison’s contributions to the band’s repertoire came to rival those of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Harrison contributed four songs to the Beatles second to last album, released in November of 1968 and nicknamed “The White Album” for its plain white cover. Among those four songs is the exquisite While My Guitar Gently Weeps (the recording of which features Eric Clapton on lead guitar). Harrison’s two contributions to the Beatles’ final album – Abby Road, released in 1969 – are both rock classics: Here Comes the Sun and Something. (John Lennon declared that Something was the best song on the album, and it is the second most covered Beatles song, after Paul McCartney’s Yesterday. The […]
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