Today we recognize and celebrate the birth, 207 years ago today, of someone who can rightfully be called “a musician’s musician”: the violinist, composer and teacher Ferdinand David. We will get to the specifics of Maestro David’s life and career in a moment. With your indulgence, a brief bit of editorializing. Marlon Brando (1924-2004). Yes, Marlon Brando: actor, director, activist, and father of at least 16 children (at least 16 children). A movie with Marlon Brando wasn’t a movie in which Marlon Brando played a role so much as a movie in which Marlon Brando played Marlon Brando playing a role. Accordingly, I would suggest that in The Godfather, Marlon Brando portrayed Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone; in Apocalypse Now, Marlon Brando portrayed Marlon Brando playing Colonel Walter Kurtz. Brando was so brilliant, his persona so pronounced, his affectations so uniquely individual, that his personal brand always seemed to overshadow the characters he played. So it is with certain musicians as well. The pianist Yuja Wang, for example. She is brilliant, but so are lots of other elite pianists. Ah, but those other pianists don’t come out on stage like Ms. Wang wearing micro-micro-miniskirts and 6-inch stiletto heels. Then there’s […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Archive for Music History Monday – Page 35
Eleven years ago today – on June 12, 2006 – the Hungarian-born composer György Sándor Ligeti died in Vienna. He was one of the greatest composers and teachers of the twentieth century; a man and composer who is not just a favorite of mine but something of a hero to me (and I am generally not one who suffers heroes). Ligeti (the first syllable gets the accent) was born into a Jewish Hungarian family on May 28, 1923 in Romanian Transylvania, in the village of Diciosânmărtin. When he was six the family moved to the northern Romanian city of Cluj, the second most populous city in Romania after the capitol of Bucharest. In 1940, northern Romania was annexed by Hungary and thus Cluj became part of Hungary. In 1941, at the age of 18, Ligeti entered the Cluj Conservatory. And that’s where he was when the Second World War caught up to him. Background. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire was one of the big losers of World War I. The Empire was broken up in 1918, and that half of the Empire that was the Kingdom of Hungary was further broken up in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon. This “new” Hungarian […]
Continue ReadingMay 29 was an incredibly rich day in music history. So much to write about, so little space! Check it out. On May 29, 1801 – 216 years ago today – Joseph Haydn’s final masterwork, The Season, received its public premiere at the Redoutensaal: the still-extant great ballroom in the Imperial Palace (Hofburg) in central Vienna. (FYI: Wikipedia gives the date of this premiere as being May 19. Incorrecto!) For our further information, among the audience was Haydn’s one-time “student”, Ludwig van Beethoven. 157 years ago today – on May 29, 1860 – the composer Isaac Albéniz was born in Camprodón, Spain. Albéniz was a brilliant pianist and as evidenced by his suite for piano Iberia (written between 1905-1909), a composer of genius. May 29, 1910 saw the death of Mily Balakirev in St. Petersburg; May 29, 1922 saw the birth of the composer Iannis Xenakis in Braila, Roumania. Finally – because I cannot not mention it before going on – May 29 marks the 320 anniversary of the assassination of the 44 year-old Italian castrato Giovanni Grossi (known popularly as “Siface”). One of the most famous singers of the entire Baroque era, Siface met his end on May 29, […]
Continue ReadingMay 22 is a day so rich in music history that choosing a particular event to write about might seem to be a challenge. For example, May 22, 1790 saw the first performance of Mozart’s String Quartets in D, K. 575 and B-flat, K. 589 (the first two of the three so-called “Prussian Quartets”) at his flat in Vienna. May 22, 1874 saw the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s in-all-ways extraordinary Requiem, conducted by Verdi himself at the Church of San Marco in Milan. Four years ago today – on May 22, 2013 – the marvelous French composer Henri Dutilleux died in Paris at the age of 97. (All sentient creatures should at very least know and covet Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto, entitled Tout un monde lointain… [A whole distant world…], completed in 1970 for Mstislav Rostropovich.) But frankly, these events pale in comparison with the BIG event of May 22, and that was the birth in Leipzig on May 22, 1813 – 204 years ago today – of Richard Wagner. Wagner died at the age of 69 on February 13, 1883: 134 years ago. And yet he and his work continue to inspire a level of debate, adulation and rancor that […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 1501 – 516 years ago – the first polyphonic (multi-part) music printed using moveable type was released to the public by the Venice-based publisher Ottaviano dei Petrucci. (The publication features a dedication dated May 15, 1501, so we assume that this corresponds with its release date.) The publication was an anthology of works entitled Harmonice musices odhecaton A, meaning “One Hundred Pieces of Harmonic Music, Volume A”. (Volumes “B” and “C” would follow in 1502 and 1503, respectively). The anthology consists of 96 (not “100”, as the title claims) French songs and instrumental pieces by some of the most famous composers of the day, as well as some anonymous works as well. Those famous composers represented in the anthology – which include Josquin de Prez, Johannes Ockingham, Jacob Obrecht, Antoine Brumel and Alexander Agricole – were all originally from northern France and southern Belgium: the so-called “Franco-Flemish” composers from “oltre montani” (“the other side of the Alps”) who were so popular in Italy at the time. The publication of Harmonice musices odhecaton A was an event of earth-shaking importance, one that changed – forever – the speed of dissemination and the rate of stylistic change in […]
Continue ReadingToday we celebrate the 188th birthday of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. During his all-too-brief, 40-year lifetime, Gottschalk was considered to be the greatest pianist and composer ever born in the Western hemisphere, the “Chopin of the New World.” An American patriot, he foreswore his allegiance to his native South and embraced the Northern cause during the Civil War because of his unreserved hatred of slavery. During the Civil War he travelled and concertized tirelessly across the North and Midwest of the United States, inspiring his audiences with patriotic compositions and arrangements and giving away much of his earnings to veterans’ organizations. He was born in 1829 in what was then the most cultured and diverse city in the United States: New Orleans. Gottschalk’s heritage was diverse as well. His father was a Jewish businessman from London and his mother was Creole: a Louisiana native of French decent. He was a musical prodigy whose early compositions synthesized the incredibly different sorts of music he heard around him in New Orleans: African music, Caribbean music, Creole music, as well as the classics of the Euro-tradition. Gottschalk composed “Ragtime” fifty years before the term was invented. In some of his pieces he used the […]
Continue ReadingOn Monday, May 1, 1786 – 231 years ago today – a miracle occurred in the great city of Vienna: Wolfgang Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro received its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna. 100 years later, Johannes Brahms wrote this about The Marriage of Figaro: “Every number in Figaro is for me a marvel; I simply cannot fathom how anyone could create anything so perfect. Such a thing has never been done, not even by Beethoven.” 231 years after the premiere, Brahms’ awe of Figaro mirrors our own. For many of us – myself included – it is, simply, the greatest opera ever composed. On May 7th, 1783 – three years before the premiere – Mozart wrote to his father: “The Italian opera buffa [here in Vienna] is very popular. I have looked through more than a hundred libretti but I have found hardly a single one that satisfies me. That is to say, there are so many changes that would have to be made that any poet, even if he were to undertake to make them, would find it easier to write an entirely new text. Our poet here now is a certain da Ponte. He has […]
Continue ReadingBoth the dates April 24 and 25 are bereft of significant musical events. As a result, this week’s “Music History Monday” is, in fact, “Music History Wednesday”, as we turn to April 26 for the event that powers todays post. The event: on April 26, 1891 – 126 years ago this coming Wednesday – the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) arrived in New York City, there to begin his one-and-only stay in the United States. The trip was intended as business, not pleasure: Tchaikovsky had ventured forth to America to conduct concerts of his own works. I would suggest that the two most important musical skills a composer should have – aside from competence at composing – are being able to play the piano and being able to conduct. Being able to at least “get around” a piano keyboard allows a composer to actually hear her music as she writes; being a good pianist allows a composer to actually play her music to others. Being able to conduct allows a composer to perform her works written for larger ensembles. Tchaikovsky was a competent pianist, but no more. He was a better conductor, or at least he turned himself into […]
Continue ReadingI have a particular affection for the date April 18. (Yes: I know this post is about a musical event that took place on April 17; bear with me.) Back, momentarily, to April 18th and a few of the events that mark this auspicious date. On April 18th 796, King Æthelred of Northumbria (son of Æthelwald and Æthelthryth, no less!) was assassinated in the northern English town of Corbridge. The assassins were lead by two of his ealdormen (old English for “elder men”, meaning high-ranking royal officials) Ealdred and Wada. Bad dudes, both. On a more recent note, it was on the evening of April 18, 1775 that the silver smith Paul Revere rode through the Massachusetts countryside crying, “the British are coming!”. It was on April 18, 1923 that Yankee Stadium – “the house that Babe Ruth built” – opened in the Bronx. On April 18, 1942 Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle of the United States Army Air Force led the first American air strike on Japan. On April 18, 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt. On that very same day, 9014 kilometers (5601 miles) away, in Brooklyn N.Y., I was born, which explains my particular affection […]
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