Mahler’s first four symphonies, composed between 1888 and 1901, are “program symphonies”: multi-movement works that tell an extra-musical, literary story. In order to help his audience follow those “stories”, Mahler (1860-1911) prepared written “programs” for each of his first four symphonies. For example, in reference to the titles he gave the movements of his Symphony No. 3 (“Pan Awakes, Summer Marches In”; “What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me”; “What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me”; “What Man Tells Me”; “What the Angels Tell Me”; “What Love Tells Me”) Mahler wrote the conductor Josef Krug-Waldsee: “These titles can certainly be instructive. . . [They represent] an attempt to give non-musicians some point of reference or signpost to suggest the ideas, or rather the mood, of the individual movements and their relationship to each other and to the whole. They also give a hint of how I conceived the increasingly articulate expression, which proceeds from the muffled, static and merely rudimentary existence (of the forces of nature) [in the first movement], to the tender image of the human heart, which reaches towards God [in the final movement].” Nevertheless, in that same letter to Krug-Waldsee, written during the summer of […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
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Yesterday’s Music History Monday began with the story of the tenor Michele Molese’s call out of the critic Harold Schonberg from the stage of the New York City Opera in 1974 after Schonberg had made a snarky critical remark about Molese’s singing of a high “C”. It’s appropriate then, or so I think, to begin today’s post with another Schonberg appraisal, this one of Sergei Rachmaninoff the pianist. No snark here; Schonberg – who was the senior music critic of The New York Times for 20 years – had the opportunity to hear Rachmaninoff in concert when he (Schonberg) was a young man. Writing many years later, Schonberg was still in awe. “There was nobody like him. Rachmaninoff would come on stage stiff and severe, never smiling, with his hair cropped as close as a convict’s. With terrible dignity he would seat himself and wait for the audience to quiet. He played with a minimum of physical exertion, brooding over the keys. From his fingers came an indescribable tone: warm, projecting into every corner of the hall, capable of infinite modulation. When Rachmaninoff played, everything was perfectly planned, perfectly proportioned. Melodies were outlined with radiant authority; inner voices were brought […]
Continue ReadingQuestion: is it true that only by working directly with a composer can an ensemble deliver a “definitive” performance? Answer: no. Composer supervision guarantees nothing. Beethoven, for one, oversaw the premieres of every one of his nine symphonies (though the deaf Beethoven’s “oversight” of his Ninth Symphony in 1824 was much more a hindrance than a help). His supervision notwithstanding, we can be assured that he never heard a single one of his symphonies played with the sort of precision and expressive sympathy we routinely hear today. Generally but accurately speaking, modern professional orchestral players – like modern athletes – are simply better than their early nineteenth century counterparts, and they have the advantage of having played Beethoven’s symphonies since they were children. Consequently, we would hazard to say that in his lifetime, Beethoven never heard anything close to a “definitive performance” of any one of his symphonies However, when it comes to chamber music, particularly string quartets, the presence of a composer will consistently make a difference – often a huge difference – in a performance. A chamber group has many fewer working parts than an orchestra, allowing specific issues to be addressed directly and more easily. And a […]
Continue ReadingYesterday’s Music History Monday post, entitled “Musical Riots and Assorted Mayhem”, included a report of what happened when Steve Reich’s Four Organs for four electric organs and maracas (composed in 1970) was performed at Carnegie Hall on January 19, 1973. As we noted yesterday, the boos and catcalls began from almost the beginning of the performance. Of the performance, the New York Times critic Harold Schonberg observed: “The audience reacted as though red-hot needles were being inserted under their fingernails. There were yells for the music to stop, mixed with applause to hasten the end of the piece.” According to Michael Tilson Thomas, who was one of the organ players in the performance (as was Steve Reich): “One woman walked down the aisle and repeatedly banged her head on the front of the stage, wailing ‘Stop, stop, I confess!’” Tilson-Thomas is an undependable witness; the woman, in fact, merely banged her shoe on the front of the stage. Still. I’ll be the first to admit that Reich’s early work (like Four Organs) is best enjoyed and understood while the listener is, perhaps, under the influence of some consciousness raising/dulling substance. However, his later works – like Eight Lines and New […]
Continue ReadingTwo weeks ago, my Dr. Bob Prescribes post featured the guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, despite the fact that it would have been entirely appropriate – given the Music History Monday post the day before on Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – to feature a post on that opera. Given yesterday’s Music History Monday post on Franz Schubert’s song Gretchen am Spinnrade, today’s Dr. Bob Prescribes might appropriately feature a recording of Schubert’s songs or, perhaps, some relatively obscure work by Schubert. However, like two weeks ago, I have chosen to take a different path in today’s Dr. Bob Prescribes because I personally require (at present) a rather different sort of music, given the state of things “out there”. Color me escapist, but there you have it. And since I long ago realized that there is nothing particularly special about what I think, I naturally assume that we all presently require regular doses of joyful escapism to get us through these times. For some people it comes from the out-of-doors; for some it is food and drink; for many it is non-prescription pharmaceuticals (I judge not!); for myself, it is music (and yes, food and drink). Early in the pandemic it was the […]
Continue ReadingWe are compelled, for a moment, to discuss the food of the British Isles. We ask: why should such a sophisticated and culturally diverse nation – one just a few miles away from France – be so gastronomically bereft by comparison? How many of us would honestly prefer an English kidney pudding to a French cassoulet, a cock-a-leekie stew to a fine bouillabaisse, boiled beef to a medium rare Chateaubriand? The names alone of much British fare are enough to spoil an appetite: there’s likky pie: there’s syllabub; and then there’s everybody’s favorite dessert, spotted dick. Be still our colons. Why bring this up? Because like English food, it is oh-too-easy to make fun of English music. Afterall, England produced not a single important composer between Henry Purcell – who died in 1695 – and Edward Elgar, who was born in 1857. What’s that all about? Let us observe upfront that it had nothing to do with England’s air, water, or food. In fact, England was not always bereft of great composers. The late 1500s and early 1600s – the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – saw a brilliant group of composers working in and around […]
Continue ReadingThis post is a sort of hybrid of what we might call a combination of “Music History Tuesday” (if such a thing actually existed) and Dr. Bob Prescribes. Here we go! We mark the completion – on September 29, 1789 – 231 years ago today – of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581. It remains one of Mozart’s (admittedly many) chamber music masterworks, and among the handful of greatest early works for the clarinet, all of which – not coincidentally – were composed by Mozart himself. We often take for granted that the instruments of the Western orchestra have existed in their present form for many hundreds of years, and that they all came into existence at more or less the same time. In fact, like any ongoing technology, instrumental design is in a constant state of “tweak.” Granted, some instruments – like the violin, viola, and violoncello (aka the “cello”) – achieved a certain evolutionary equilibrium (I’m loath to say “perfection”) by the early eighteenth century. (For our reference, Antonio Stradivari lived from 1644-1737.) But the vast majority of orchestral instruments did not achieve their present form and design until the mid- to late-nineteenth century; in some […]
Continue ReadingYesterday’s Music History Monday post marked the 283rd birthday of the composer, organist, and violinist Michael Haydn, a musician of outstanding talent whose reputation has, sadly and unfairly, been obscured by that of his older brother, Joseph Haydn. Michael Haydn was five years younger than Joseph, having been born in the Austrian village of Rohrau on September 14, 1737. He died in Salzburg on August 10, 1806, predeceasing his older brother by some three years. At the age of eight, Michael followed his brother to Vienna to become – as had Joseph – a student and choirboy at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Of the two, Michael was considered the superior student and singer. Like Joseph, Michael harbored the ambition to be a composer, an ambition he was able to freely indulge when he took up the position – in 1743, at the age 26 – of concertmaster in Salzburg, a job he held for the remaining 43 years of his life. Among the people responsible for actually hiring Michael Haydn (which occurred the previous year, in 1762) was Salzburg’s new court Kapellmeister, one Leopold Mozart, who in 1762 was preparing to take his preternaturally talented children – Wolfgang, 6 and Nannerl, […]
Continue ReadingSitting around the dinner table recently, my son Daniel (11 years old) asked the rest of us what single superpower each of us would choose if we could only choose one. He went first, and predictably, he chose the power to choose an unlimited number of superpowers. His sister Lily (13 years old) immediately disqualified him based on his own stated criteria. Once they stopped arguing, I made my choice, which was easy. I no longer want to be able to fly (where would I fly to in these days of COVID? and where would I put my carry-on?), and the thought of being able to make myself invisible strikes way to close to the reality of my career as a composer. My choice: I want to be able to speak (and read, if written) every language – past and present – ever spoken, including hump-back whale, crow, and porpoise (color me “Dr. Bob-Doolittle”). How incredible would it be to be linguistically at home anywhere, with anyone! How fantastic it would be to be able to read everything in its “original!” Nothing cuts to the essence of a culture like its language. A tribe’s, a people’s, a nation’s music is […]
Continue ReadingMy Dear Patrons, My two-year anniversary on Patreon is here and changes are afoot. I will tell you all about them. Permit me, though, a little background first. My original intention here on Patreon was to blog and vlog once, perhaps twice a week, and in doing so build a body of patron-only posts and a patron base. Despite the fact that the Patreon model is based on delivering tiered content and benefits based on the level of patron contribution, I chose to democratize my site by making all posted materials available to all patrons, whether they were contributing at the $2 level or the $100 level. Thanks to our friendly, neighborhood pandemic, the manner in which I make a living – lecturing, teaching, and performing – has, for the foreseeable future, gone the way of dial-up. Given the nature of my work, applying for unemployment is not an option. Thus – as those of you who have been with me for a while are aware – I am now posting four to six times a week, depending. Patreon has become my primary occupation, in which I’m presently investing roughly 30 hours a week. It is necessary, then, that I […]
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