Music History Monday – Details, episodes & analysis

We mark the London premiere on August 26, 1952 – 72 years ago today – of the film “An American in Paris.” With music by George Gershwin (1898-1937), directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant, the flick won six Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. While the film actually opened in New York City on October 4, 1951, this London premiere offers us all the excuse we need to examine both the film and the music that inspired it, George Gershwin’s programmatic orchestral work, An American in Paris. Here’s how we’re going to proceed.  Today’s Music History Monday post will deal specifically with Gershwin’s An American in Paris, a roughly 21-minute workfor orchestra composed in 1928. Tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will feature the 1951 film of the same name, focusing on (and excerpting) four of its musical numbers. Statement George Gershwin is among the handful of greatest composers ever born in the United States. His death at the age of 38 (of a brain tumor) should be considered an artistic tragedy on par with the premature deaths of Schubert (at 31), Mozart (at 35), and Chopin (at 39).  He was born Jacob […]

The post Music History Monday: An American in Paris first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the death on August 19, 1929 – 95 years ago today – of the Russian impresario, patron, art critic, and founder of the Ballets Russes Serge (or “Sergei”) Pavlovich Diaghilev, in Venice.  Born in the village of Selishchi roughly 75 miles southeast of St. Petersburg on March 31, 1872, he was 57 years old when he died. Movers and Shakers Serge Diaghilev was one of the great movers-and-shakers of all time.  In a letter to his stepmother written in 1895, the 23-year-old Diaghilev described himself with astonishing honesty and no small bit of prescience, given the way his life went on the develop: “I am firstly a great charlatan, though con brio [meaning vivacious and spirited!]; secondly, a great charmer; thirdly I have any amount of cheek [meaning chutzpah; moxie; nerve!]; fourthly, I am a man with a great quantity of logic, but with very few principles; fifthly, I think I have no real gifts.  All the same, I think I have found my true vocation – being a patron of the arts.  I have all that is necessary except the money – but that will come.”   Serge Diaghilev’s audacious and spectacular career was intertwined completely with […]

The post Music History Monday: Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the death on June 17, 2014 – an even 10 years ago today – of the Grammy Award winning American record producer and Director of Columbia Masterworks Recordings John Taylor McClure.  McClure was born in Rahway, New Jersey on June 28, 1929, and died in Belmont Vermont at the age of 84, 11 days short of his 85th birthday. Record Producers The title of this post says it all: “Unsung Heroes.” It is my experience that unless someone has personally been involved in creating a recording, it’s pretty much impossible to appreciate the amount of work a producer puts into the process and the degree to which the producers’ own musical taste, musical proclivities, and musicality influence the final product.  The front of a record jacket or CD case might bear the image of a composer or performer, and the producer’s name might appear in the tiniest of print on the lower left-hand corner of the back of the jacket, but in fact – in terms of their singular impact on a recording – the producer should, by all rights, be pictured on the front of the album side-by-side with whomever else the producer deems worthy of joining […]

The post Music History Monday: Unsung Heroes first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the death on July 25, 1984 – 38 years ago today – of the American Rhythm and Blues singer Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton.  Born on December 11, 1926, she died in Los Angeles of both heart and liver disease brought on by alcohol abuse.  According to Gillian Gaar, writing in She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll (Seal Press, 1992), during the brief period of her final illness, Thornton went from 450 pounds (Big Momma!) to 95 pounds, a weight loss of some 355 pounds. Thornton scored her one-and-only hit when, on August 13, 1952, she recorded a brand-new, 12-bar blues song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller entitled Hound Dog.   Released by Peacock Records in February 1953, Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog sold over 500,000 copies and spent fourteen weeks on the Rhythm and Blues charts, seven of those fourteen weeks at number one.  Thornton’s recording is linked below: (By the way: please ignore the photo of Josephine Baker at the top of the link; Big Momma’s left leg was bigger than all of Madame Baker.) Thornton’s recording of Hound Dog was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013 […]

The post Music History Monday: Under the Covers first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

Before getting into the date specific event/discovery that drives today’s post, permit me, please, to tell the story of the greatest manuscript discovery of all time.  The ancient city of Jerusalem sits at nearly 2,700 feet above sea level.  Less than 15 miles south of Jerusalem sits the Dead Sea, which at 1,300 feet below sea level is the lowest point on earth.   In November of 1946, three Bedouin shepherds – Muhammed edh-Dhib, his cousin Jum’a Muhammed, and his friend Khalil Musa – were looking for a stray goat (or sheep; the story shifts) around the cliffs at the northern end of the Dead Sea.  According to the story they told, Muhammed edh-Dhib threw a rock into a cave on the side of a cliff, thinking the stray animal was inside and that the rock would chase it out.  Instead of a hearing a frightened bleat, he heard pottery breaking.  Lowering himself into the cave, he found three ancient scrolls wrapped in linen.  Having climbed out of the cave and shown them to his companions, the guys went back into the cave and found four more scrolls, seven in all.  They put them in a bag and, on returning […]

The post Music History Monday: A Debussy Discovery! first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the death on July 11, 1937 – 85 years ago today – of the American composer and pianist George Gershwin, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  Born in Brooklyn New York on September 26, 1898, Gershwin was only 38 years old at the time of his death. This is going to be an unavoidably depressing post.  Dealing with anyone’s death is difficult.  Dealing with the death of a young person (and damn, from where I stand, 38 is still a kid) is both difficult and tragic.  When we add to that Gershwin’s dazzling talent and unlimited promise we are forced, as well, to ask “what if . . .?” George Gershwin (1898-1937) George Gershwin had it all.  Tall, athletic, good-looking (in his own lantern-jawed sort of way), he was blessed with preternatural talent.  As someone who had grown up poor on the streets of New York City, he was devoid of snobbery or pretense and could get along with just about anyone.  He suffered no childhood trauma; he adored and was adored by his family and friends and was filled with vitality and an infectious joie de vivre. We are told that given his gifts and effusive […]

The post Music History Monday: The Death of George Gershwin first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the completion on July 4, 1941 – 81 years ago today – of Igor Stravinsky’s reharmonization and orchestration of The Star-Spangled Banner.   Stravinsky in America In September of 1939, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and his long-time mistress Vera de Bosset (1889-1982) arrived in the United States from their home in Paris.  The couple were married in Bedford, Massachusetts six months later, on March 9, 1940. Stravinsky had come to the United States to spend the 1939-1940 academic year at Harvard University, where he was to occupy the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry and deliver six lectures on music that were that year’s Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.   By the time the academic year ended in June of 1940, the Stravinskys, Igor and Vera, had no home to return to.  Nazi Germany had occupied Paris on June 14, and France surrendered to Germany 8 days later, on June 22, 1940.   The couple settled in Los Angeles in 1941 and bought a house at 1260 North Wetherly Drive, just above the Sunset Strip, in Hollywood. Stravinsky and Vera would live there for the next 29 years, until his final illness forced a move to New York City.  (For […]

The post Music History Monday: As American as tarte aux pommes! Celebrating the Fourth with some Real American Music! or Tampering with National Property first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

Humiliation Before getting to the anniversary we are honoring in today’s Music History Monday post, it is necessary for us to contemplate the painful issue of humiliation. “Humiliation” is a consequence of unjustified shaming, as a result of which one’s social status, public image, and self-esteem are decreased, often quite significantly. Humiliation hurts; humiliation sucks. We are not, for now, going to discuss the seemingly countless ways we can (and have! and will!) be humiliated.  Let us instead – for now – observe the difference between spontaneous humiliation and ritual humiliation. “Spontaneous” humiliations would be those unexpected moments of shaming, bullying, rejection, or deep embarrassment that come out of nowhere and have the emotional and physical impact of a punch to the gut.   “Ritual” humiliations are different, in that we know exactly what’s coming but are powerless to stop them.  Ostracism and its attendant processes – excommunication, shunning, and blackballing, whereby someone is purposely excluded from a community – is a form of ritual humiliation.  “Hazing rituals” are another: those activities that purposely humiliate, degrade, and even risk physical harm to someone wanting to join a group or maintain status within a group.   Then, there is – for […]

The post Music History Monday: The Fabulous Hill Sisters! first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the birth on June 20, 1843 – 179 years ago today – of the Russia bass opera singer Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky, in the city of Minsk, which is today the capital of Belarus but was then part of the Russian Empire.  Considered one of the greatest singers of his time, Fyodor Ignatyevich has largely been forgotten because, one, he never recorded and, two, he’s been eclipsed by the fame of his son, the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). He was born of Polish descent in the “Government (province) of Minsk”, in what had been part of Poland until 1793, when the Russian Empire sliced off and annexed a large chunk of Poland in what is euphemistically called the “second partition of Poland.”  (Today, the “province of Minsk” is part of the “nation” of Belarus, which is advised to mind its P’s and Q’s, as Tsar Putin no more considers Belarus to be separate country than he does Ukraine.  Not that you need me to point this out, but I’ll do it anyway: the “annexation” of Crimea in 2014 and the present attempts to destroy Ukraine and annex the Donbas demonstrate that Russian actions towards its neighbors have not changed […]

The post Music History Monday: Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky first appeared on Robert Greenberg.

We mark the death (the most suspicious death) on June 13, 1886 – 136 years ago today – of the ultimate Richard Wagner fanboy King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The Running Man Richard Wagner was among the least-athletic looking people to ever grace a composing studio or a conductor’s podium.  Depending upon the source, he was between 5’ 3” and 5’ 5” in heights.  His legs were too short for his torso, and his oversized square head was perched on an otherwise frail body.  In his lifetime, an unknown wag referred to him as “that shovel-faced dwarf”, an unkind if not inaccurate description of the man. But despite his physical shortcomings, Wagner – believe it or not – could run like the wind for remarkable distances. These miracles of sustained athleticism were inspired by Wagner’s creditors and/or the law, from which Wagner was forced to flee on a regular basis.   For example, in April of 1836, following the failure of his opera Das Liebesverbot (“The Ban on Love”; for your information, my spell check just tried to change “liebesverbot” to “lobster pot”).Again: in April of 1836, following the failure of his opera Das Liebesverbot in the central German city […]

The post Music History Monday: The Ultimate Fanboy: The Mad King, Ludwig II first appeared on Robert Greenberg.