106 years ago today – on November 20, 1911 – Gustav Mahler’s magnificent Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”) received its premiere in Munich under the baton of Mahler’s conductorial protégé, Bruno Walter. The house was packed for the premiere; among the audience were the composers Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Conspicuous by his absence was Gustav Mahler himself, who had died in Vienna at the age of 51, six months before: on May 18, 1911. Das Lied von der Erde is a symphonic song cycle, consisting of six songs for alto and tenor voice and orchestra. Mahler fully conceived of Das Lied as a “symphony” and had originally intended to call the piece his Symphony No. 9. But having contemplated that Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, and Dvorak had all died either during or soon after the composition of their ninth symphonies, he decided not to tempt fate any more than necessary. Das Lied von der Erde is about loss, grief, memory, disintegration, and, ultimately, transfiguration. It is the most autobiographical work Mahler ever wrote, a work composed in response to three catastrophic events that occurred, back-to-back, in 1907. Background Mahler was appointed music director of the […]
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Archive for San Francisco Performances – Page 30
149 years ago today, the opera composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini died in Paris at the age of 76. One of the most famous and respected artists of his time, he remains no less so today. It is my humble opinion that anyone who does not like Rossini’s music is a crank and a humbug, someone averse to melodic brilliance, sparkle, and wit. A momentary divergence. In his book Outliers (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), the English-born journalist Malcolm Gladwell formulated his “10,000 hour rule”, which claims that all that’s required to become a world-class practitioner in any field is 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”. With all due respect, we can only conclude that Mr. Gladwell has deliberately practiced making absurd statements for well over 10,000 hours, so utterly daft is his “rule.” Listen: when I was twenty, I was (as I remain) 5’7” in height and weighed 165 pounds (I can only wish that that were still the case!). I was strong, fast, and had good hand-eye coordination. I also had a vertical jump of about six inches, so no amount of time and practice was going to make me a high-jump champion or a ballet dancer; no how, no […]
Continue ReadingExactly 300 years ago today – on November 6, 1717 – the great Johann Sebastian Bach was tossed into jail and spent nearly a month cooling his heels courtesy of his boss, Prince Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. You see, in 1717, a working-class artisan like Bach did not mouth off to the boss. And that was the crime for which an unrepentant Bach served his time. Some perspective There are some precious people who so well represent the best of our species that merely mentioning their names makes us nod and smile: Da Vinci and Michelangelo; Shakespeare and Dickens; Newton and Einstein; Lincoln and Churchill; Ruth and Mays; Gandhi, King, and Mandela. If we were to ask the composers Mozart, Beethoven, Clara and Robert Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schoenberg, Stravinsky – and even that nasty French snothead Claude Debussy – whose was the most precious name in the history of musical composition, they all would have said – without a moment’s hesitation – Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s a sad irony that Bach never felt this love in his lifetime. On the contrary, in his own lifetime – which ran from 1685 to 1750 – his music was considered by most of […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in 1944 – 73 years ago – Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring was first performed by the Martha Graham Dance Company in Washington, DC. From that moment, it has been embraced as being “as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie!” Now there’s a familiar cliché: “as American as baseball, hot dogs and apple pie.” Except that not a single one of those presumably “American” things is American in origin, any more than the vast majority of “Americans” is actually American in origin. We are told that “baseball and the other modern bat, ball and running games – such as cricket and rounders – were developed from folk games in early Britain and Continental Europe (such as France and Germany). Early forms of baseball had a number of names, including ‘base ball’, ‘goal ball’, ‘round ball’, ‘fetch-catch’, ‘stool ball’, and, simply, ‘base.’” As for hot dogs, the German city of Frankfurt is credited as being the birthplace of a sausage called a “frankfurter”. In Germany, the sausage was colloquially referred to as a “dachshund” or “little dog” because of its resemblance to a dachshund. It was around 1870 that an enterprising German immigrant named Charles Feltman began […]
Continue ReadingOctober 23 is one of those dates on which virtually nothing of interest has (yet) happened in the world of music. On such days, I typically turn to the day before or the after for my “Music History Monday” topic; and indeed, both October 22nd and 24th are rich in events about which I could write. I would quickly mention two of those events with the understanding that I’m going to dedicate the bulk of this post to the dastardly demise of a long-forgotten composer. But first Music of the Twentieth Century Mozart In Vienna October 22 marked the 206th anniversary of the birth of the Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author, Franciscan tertiary and showman/shaman/charlatan supreme Ferencz (Franz) Liszt. As that as that liszt (sorry) of accomplishments indicates, Liszt lived about 46 (give-or-take) different lives in his not-quite 75 years. His principal life was that of a pianist; he was the greatest pianist of his time and very possibly the greatest who has yet to live. As a composer he must be credited – along with Frédéric Chopin – with creating the defining software for the brand new hardware that was the metal harped piano which […]
Continue ReadingThere are certain first performances that we celebrate as being among the seminal events in music history. For example (and we would do well to memorize these dates!), the first performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s groundbreaking opera Orfeo occurred at Florence’s Pitti Palace on Friday, February 24, 1607. Handel’s Messiah was first performed on Tuesday, April 13, 1742 at Great Music Hall in Fishamble Street in Dublin; the performance began at 12 noon. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony received its premiere at Vienna’s Kärntnertor Theater on Friday, May 7, 1824, in a concert that began at 7 PM. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was first performed at Paris’ Théâtre des Champs Elysée on May 29, 1913; the performance began at 8:30 PM. To this über-impressive list of premieres we must now add that of Arnold Schoenberg’s dazzling, controversial, and in all ways extraordinary Pierrot Lunaire, which received it’s premiere 105 years ago today, on Wednesday, October 16, 1912, at Berlin’s Choralion-saal after having received a mind-blowing forty rehearsals! Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) believed himself to be a compositional traditionalist, and in many ways he was. He believed that the role of the composer was to express himself and the role of music was therefore to […]
Continue ReadingToday we mark and celebrate the birth in Tokyo – 87 years ago yesterday on October 8, 1930 – of one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century: Tōru Takemitsu. Some historical background called for, as no East Asian country adopted Western music more rapidly and at an earlier date than did Japan. After more than 200 years of isolation, Japan opened its doors to the outside world with the advent of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. What the “restoration” saw restored was the full Imperial power of the Emperor Meiji following the demise of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the feudal military government that ruled Japan between 1600 and 1868. Having fallen far behind the West during their isolation, the leaders of the restoration – from Emperor Meiji on down – insisted that Japan embark on a crash program of industrial and economic modernization. According to historian Ian Toll: “Japan’s two generation rise from feudal and pre-industrial origins to the status of a major economic and military power was more than remarkable – it was (and remains) unprecedented in the entire course of human history.” Japanese education and performing arts were “modernized” as well. According to New Grove Dictionary of […]
Continue ReadingOctober 2 was a most interesting day in music history. Rather than choose just one person or event for discussion, we’re going to spread the love today and observe three people and one event for whom/which October 2 was a signal date. Max Bruch and One Hit Wonders On October 2, 1920, 97 years ago today, the 82 year-old composer Max Bruch died in Berlin. A highly respected composer in nineteenth century Germany, the list of Bruch’s compositions is a moderately long one, and includes, among other works, four operas, three symphonies, three suites for orchestra, five concerti, four string quartets, two string quintets, twenty large works for chorus, and nearly 100 songs. Alas. Of Bruch’s fame in his lifetime almost none remains. And of all those many works, the only one that is still performed with any regularity is his Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26, which was completed and premiered in 1866. (The Bruch fans among us – what that they are – might insist on adding to the list of still-performed works Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra and the Kol Nidre, Op. 47. But that’s reaching, and in this case I am […]
Continue ReadingToday we celebrate the birth of the pianist Glenn Herbert Gold. (That is the name on his birth certificate. The family began using the name “Gould” informally, when Glenn was seven years old, but he never formally changed his name to “Gould.”) He was born 85 years ago today – on September 25, 1932 – in Toronto, Ontario in Canada. Gould’s life and career are easy enough to outline. Born into a well-to-do family, his over-the-top musical precocity was recognized and nurtured by his mother, who was a piano teacher. He entered the Royal Conservatory of Music (today the Toronto Conservatory) at the age of 10; he graduated at 13. He made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 when he was 13; he played his first major solo recital at 15; and performed his first radio recital on CBC at 18. In 1955, at the age of 23, Gould made his recording debut with CBS, when he recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York City between June 10 and June 16. The album was released in January, 1956 and it was a sensation: it became Columbia’s best-selling Classical […]
Continue ReadingMusic of the Twentieth Century Mozart In Vienna Joining the crazy list of days dedicated to various objects, medical conditions, and foodstuffs (National Slinky Day; National Jock Itch Day; National Hostess Cupcake Day) are a number of days dedicated to music. For example, the International Music Day (IMD), which is celebrated on October 1, was created in 1975 by the violinist and cultural ambassador Yehudi Menuhin. According to its mission statement, the IMD was created to promote musical art among all segments of society and to apply “the UNESCO ideals of peace and friendship between peoples, of the evolution of their cultures, of the exchange of experience and of the mutual appreciation of their aesthetic values.” Very nice. Then there is a celebration called the Fête de la Musique, which is also variously known as Music Day, Make Music Day, World Music Day, and in the United States as National Music Day. This “day” – created in 1981 – was the brainchild of the French Minister of Culture Jack Lang. Celebrated on the Summer solstice, June 21, the avowed mission of National Music Day is to “appreciate the many benefits that music making brings to life.” This day is presently celebrated […]
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