There are “firsts” and then there are firsts. The first person to eat sliced bread? No big deal. But the first person to eat an artichoke (which is, let’s be honest, a giant freaking thorn)? That took guts; that’s a first. The first person to moonwalk? (That would be the bandleader Cab Calloway, who invented the move in the mid 1930s and called it “the Buzz.”) Admirable, but really not a particularly big deal. The first person to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong; July 20, 1969)? One of the most epic firsts in the history of humankind. Let’s discuss another of the most epic firsts in all of human history: the first person to compose a complete opera. That event occurred in the city of Florence in 1600, and that person was the singer, actor, organist and composer Jacopo Peri, who was born in Rome on August 20, 1561, 457 years ago today. Happy birthday, Maestro! Admittedly, there were numerous other composers of theatrical music active in Florence at the time, and the names Giulio Caccini and Emilio de’ Cavalieri have also been bandied about as possible “originators” of opera. But Peri must receive the credit because of his […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Music History Mondays – Page 32
A little inside information about me. Since I was a kid, I have loved architecture and home design magazines: house porn, to be honest. The one constant in my reading has been Architectural Digest, to which I’ve been addicted since I was a teenager. Other mags have floated in and out of my consciousness over the years, including one called “Metropolitan Home”, to which I subscribed for many years (but no more; there’ just so much time for mags, I’m afraid). “Is this going somewhere” you ask? Yes: bear with me… “Metropolitan Home” had a regular feature (perhaps it still does) in which a designer would be asked to identify “the 10 things you cannot live without;” basically “your favorite things”. These good people would vie with each other to come up with the coolest, hippest, most sophisticated things-they-could-not-live-without: the caviar and lobster frittata at the Revo Café in Dubai; “my platinum Faberge cuticle scissors”; vicuna cashmere scarves: “my Swarovski crystal-studded Lixil Satis Smart Toilet” (this can be yours as well for just 130k);“my solar-powered Black & Decker Nose Hair Trimmer”, and so forth. (As best as I can recall, not one of those questioned ever came up with any of […]
Continue ReadingOn this day 58 years ago – August 6, 1960 – the 18 year-old singer and dancer Chubby Checker performed The Twist on American TV for the first time on the rock ‘n’ roll variety show American Bandstand. For reasons we will discuss, American Bandstand was, both artistically and socially, one of the most important programs ever broadcast on television. It aired for an incredible 37 seasons, from October 7, 1952 (when Harry Truman was President of the United States) until October 7, 1989 (three years before the election of Bill Clinton). (In case you were wondering, the longest-running television show of any kind, anywhere, is NBC’s Meet the Press, which made its debut on November 6, 1947; it has run continuously for 70 years and 9 months!) In its 37-year run, some 3000 episodes of American Bandstand were produced. From 1952 until 1964, the showwasfilmed in Philadelphia at the studios of WFIL, the local ABC affiliate. (That would have been channel 6; having grown up in South Jersey watching Philadelphia TV, it was one of the three network channels we received, along with WCAU – channel 10, which was then the CBS affiliate – and KYW, channel 3, which was […]
Continue ReadingToday we mark the birth – 267 years ago, on July 30, 1751 – of the “other” surviving Mozart child. Four-and-a-half years older than her brother Wolfgang, her full name was Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart; she was known as “Marianne” and went by the nickname of “Nannerl.” Nannerl was something of a musical prodigy herself, and by an early age she had become a formidable harpsichordist and pianist, to the degree that in the earliest of the Mozart family musical tours, she often received top billing over her brother. But her life as a performer came to a screeching halt when she turned 18 in 1769. Having reached a “marriageable age”, she was no longer permitted by her father to publically “exhibit” her talents. Yes, Nannerl could have gone renegade like her brother and defied her father, but such a thing would have been inconceivable to her. From her first breath to her last, Maria Anna/Marianne/Nannerl – whatever we choose to call her – was her father’s daughter, and she could no more have gone against his wishes than I can pole vault 19 feet (or 4 feet, for that matter). She did not marry the man she loved […]
Continue ReadingAs events in music history go, July 9 is definitely on the lighter side. (Although, for me – personally – it is an important day, and I would use this opportunity to wish the happiest of birthdays to my beautiful daughter Rachel Amy, who was born in Berkeley, California 32 years ago today!) But back to musical business. We will indeed recognize the birth on July 9, 1879 – 139 years ago today – of the Italian composer, musicologist, and violinist Ottorino Respighi in Bologna, the city of lunch meat and red sauce fame. Respighi’s fame as a composer rests on four works: his three orchestral tone poems Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals; and the eighth of his nine operas, a work entitled La fiamma (meaning “The Flame”), which received its premiere on January 23, 1934 in Rome. Fancy that: an Italian composer writing opera! In fact, there’s nothing more natural in the world. Opera was invented in Italy for the same reason that surfing was invented in Hawaii: Hawaii is surrounded by warm ocean water and perfect waves and Italians are surround by the musical warmth and beauty of the Italian language: that seemingly perfect […]
Continue Reading240 years ago today – on July 2, 1778 – the Swiss-born philosopher, novelist, educator, music theorist and critic, and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau died at age 66 in the township of Ermenonville, roughly 25 miles north-east of Paris. Rousseau was one of the greatest and most significant thinkers ever born to our species. According to Will and Ariel Durant, writing in their book Rousseau and Revolution, Rousseau: “transformed education, elevated the morals of France[!], inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy, and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century in which writers were more influential than they had ever been before.” Rousseau also helped to redefine the role and substance of opera at a time when opera – like movies and television today – was not just a form of entertainment but both a reflection and a driver of the political and social values of its time. A little background Opera was invented in Florence Italy around 1600 as a […]
Continue ReadingOn June 25, 1910 – 108 years ago today – Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird received its premiere at the Paris Opera House, in a ballet performance produced by Serge Diaghilev, staged by the Ballets Russes, and conducted by Gabriel Pierné. With choreography by Michel Fokine and the Firebird herself danced by the great Tamara Karsavina, The Firebird was a smash, a sensation, a runaway hit from the first. The not-quite 28-year-old Stravinsky was hailed as the successor to the Moguchaya Kuchka, the Russian Five, the group of nineteenth-century composers who put Russian nationalist music on the international musical map: Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Modest Musorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Writing in the Nouvelle Revue française, the critic Henri Ghéon called The Firebird: “the most exquisite marvel of equilibrium that we have ever imagined between sounds, movements, and forms: [a] danced symphony.” There’s no need to quote additional reviews, because one after the other, they echo the one just quoted. Thanks to The Firebird’s triumph, the young Stravinsky instantly became the star composer of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, in which capacity he would turn out the magnificent Petrushka in 1911 and the seminal The Rite of Spring in 1913. The Firebird is […]
Continue ReadingToday we celebrate the birthday of the piano builder and composer Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, who was born in Ruppertsthal, Austria on June 18, 1757: 261 years ago today. It’s entirely understandable if you’ve never heard of Pleyel or his music, because his music – despite being extremely attractive and technically sound – has fallen into almost total obscurity. But if one had to pick a single, “most popular composer” in the years between 1800 and 1820, it would be Pleyel: more popular than Haydn, than Mozart, and yes, most certainly more popular that that curmudgeon Beethoven. A review published in 1791 in the Morning Herald of London states that Pleyel: “is becoming even more popular than his master [Haydn], as his works are characterized less by the intricacies of science.” (The reviewer is saying that because Pleyel’s music was easier to play and less complicated – less “scientific” – than Haydn’s, Pleyel was attracting a wider popular base than Haydn.) In Brussels, the contemporary and most influential music critic, musicologist, composer, and teacher François-Joseph Fétis outright marveled at Pleyel’s popularity, writing: “What composer ever created more of a craze than Pleyel? Who enjoyed a more universal reputation or a more absolute […]
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