Podcast | Robert Greenberg | Speaker, Composer, Author, Professor, Historian
254 episodes - English - Latest episode: 18 days ago - ★★★★★ - 70 ratingsSpeaker, Composer, Author, Professor, Historian
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Music History Monday: The Guy Who Wrote the “Waltz”
April 08, 2024 22:25 - 19 minutes - 45.5 MBWe mark the death on April 8, 1858 – 166 years ago today – of the Austrian composer, editor, and music publisher Anton Diabelli in Vienna, at the age of 76. Born on September 5, 1781, his enduring fame is based on a waltz of his composition that became the basis for Beethoven’s epic Diabelli Variations for piano. Quick Work We are, fairly or unfairly, going to make rather quick work of Herr Diabelli. That’s because, with all due respect, what I really want to write about is Beethoven’s Dia...
Music History Monday: Bob Dylan: Nobel Laureate
April 01, 2024 11:51 - 26 minutes - 61.4 MBOn April 1, 2017 – 7 years ago today – Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman, 1941) was awarded his Nobel Prize in Literature in a private ceremony held at an undisclosed location in Stockholm, Sweden. At the ceremony, Dylan received his gold Nobel Prize medal and his Nobel diploma. The cash prize of eight million Swedish kronor (837,000 euros, or $891,000) was not handed over to Dylan at the time, as he was required to give a lecture before receiving the cash. That lecture was recorded an...
Music History Monday: The Towering Inferno
March 25, 2024 16:38 - 21 minutes - 49.4 MBWe mark the birth on March 25, 1867 – 157 years ago today – of the cellist and conductor Arturo Toscanini, in the city of Parma, in what was then the Kingdom of Italy. He died, at the age of 89, on January 16, 1957, at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, in New York City. (Properly embalmed and, we trust, adequately chilled, his no-doubt well-dressed corpse was shipped off to Milan, Italy, where he was entombed in the Cimitero Monumentale. His epitaph features his own words, wo...
Music History Monday: Fake It ‘til You Make It
March 18, 2024 11:24 - 24 minutes - 55.4 MBWe mark the birth of the Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov on March 18, 1844: 180 years ago today. Born in the Russian town of Tikhvin – roughly 120 miles east of St. Petersburg – Rimsky-Korsakov died at the age of 64, on June 21, 1908, on his estate near the Russian town of Luga, about 85 miles south of St. Petersburg Fake It ‘til You Make It Like most kids growing up, I had various assumptions about grownups (i.e. “adults”). As someone who has now – presumably – been a...
Music History Monday: An Opera Profane and Controversial: Verdi’s Rigoletto
March 11, 2024 13:04 - 20 minutes - 46.4 MBWe mark the first performance on March 11, 1851 – 173 years ago today – of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto at Venice’s storied Teatro la Fenice: The Phoenix Theater. We set the scene. The year was 1849. Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813-1901) was – at the age of 36 – the most famous and popular composer of opera living and working in Italy. Living in his hometown of Busseto, in the Parma region of northern Italy, Verdi spent the last days of 1849 and the first weeks of 1850 cons...
Music History Monday: Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Some Myths Debunked
March 04, 2024 14:26 - 21 minutes - 49.9 MBWe mark the first performance of the ballet Swan Lake on March 4, 1877: 147 years ago today. Premiered at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, with music by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), choreography by the Czech-born dance master Julius Reisinger (1828-1892), and its music performed by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, the first performance of Swan Lake landed with an epic THUD, meaning not good. Pretty much every aspect of the ballet was critically blasted. The vast majority of the crit...
Music History Monday: Too Late to Matter for Georges Bizet, though Better Late Than Never for the Rest of Us
February 26, 2024 13:00 - 21 minutes - 48.5 MBWe mark the premiere on February 26, 1935 – 89 years ago today – of Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C. The premiere took place in Basel, Switzerland, in a performance conducted by Felix Weingartner (1863-1942). Bizet (1838-1875) never heard the symphony performed; he had died in the Paris suburbs in 1875 at the age of 36, a full 60 years before Weingartner’s premiere of his symphony. Bizet’s Symphony in C, considered today to be a masterwork, was only “discovered” in the archives of the Paris...
Music History Monday: Frankie and Johnny, and Helen and Lee
February 19, 2024 13:00 - 18 minutes - 43.1 MBI am aware that Valentine’s Day is already 5 days past, but darned if the romantic warm ‘n’ fuzzies aren’t still lingering with me like a rash from poison oak. As such, I will be excused for offering up what I will admit is a belated, but nevertheless Valentine’s Day-related post. Gratitude We should all be grateful that the following Valentine’s Day-related post is not on the lines of those blogs I wrote in 2010 and 2011, blogs written for various websites in my attempt to drum up sales for...
Music History Monday: Unauthorized Use
February 12, 2024 14:01 - 24 minutes - 57.2 MBFebruary 12 is one of those remarkable days in music history, remarkable for all the notable events that took place on this day. So: before getting to our featured topic, let us acknowledge some of those events and share some links to previous Music History Monday and Dr. Bob Prescribes posts that dealt with those events. On this day in 1812, Beethoven’s student (and friend), the Austrian composer, pianist, and teacher Carl Czerny (1791-1857) performed as the soloist in the premiere of Beeth...
Dr. Bob Prescribes Barbara Cook
February 06, 2024 17:26Songs and Singers As I discussed in Dr. Bob Prescribes on January 16 of this year, I intend to make 2024 a “year of the song” here in Dr. Bob Prescribes, specifically, the year of the “popular song.” As I mentioned in January, I’m doing this out of emotional and spiritual self-preservation, as I expect 2024 to be a dumpster fire to rival the COVID and election year 2020. Few things musical thrill me and uplift me as immediately as a great song, and IU assume many – if not most of you – feel ...
Music History Monday: Getting Back to Work!
February 05, 2024 14:52 - 19 minutes - 45.1 MBOn February 5, 1887 – 137 years ago today – Giuseppe Verdi’s 25th and second-to-last opera, Otello, received its premiere at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The premiere was the single greatest triumph in Verdi’s sensational career. But it was a premiere – and an opera – that was a long time coming. Background He was born on October 10, 1813, in the sticks: in the tiny village of Le Roncole, in the northern Italian province of Parma. Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, received its premiere at ...
Music History Monday: Idomeneo
January 29, 2024 22:13 - 22 minutes - 51 MBWe mark the premiere on January 29, 1781 – 243 years ago today – of Wolfgang Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, Re di Creta (“Idomeneo, King of Crete”). With a libretto by Giambattista Varesco (1735-1805), which was adapted from a French story by Antoine Danchet (1671-1748), itself based on a play written in 1705 by the French tragedian Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1674 -1762; that’s a lot of writing credits!), Idomeneo received its premiere at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany. Idomeneo was ...
Music History Monday: Johannes Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 1
January 22, 2024 13:00 - 19 minutes - 44.3 MBWe mark the premiere on January 22, 1859 – 165 years ago today – of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, in the German city of Hanover. No other work by Brahms caused him such effort; never before or after did he so agonize over a piece, working and reworking it over and over again. Background On October 1, 1853, the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms showed up at the door of Robert and Clara Schumann’s house in Düsseldorf, in the Rhineland. At the time, Brahms was pretty much a complete unknown...
Music History Monday: American Pie
January 15, 2024 13:32 - 26 minutes - 60.6 MBOn January 15, 1972 – 52 years ago today – Don McLean’s folk-rock song American Pie began what would eventually be a four-week stay at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song made the singer, songwriter, and guitarist Don McLean (born 1945) very famous and very rich, and it is considered by many to be one of the greatest songs ever written. No One is Perfect Not a one of us is perfect, and that goes double/triple/quadruple for me. I eat ice cream right out of the carton before pu...
Music History Monday: Pianist, Conductor, Composer, and a Cuckold for the Ages
January 08, 2024 13:00 - 29 minutes - 68.7 MBWe mark the birth on January 8, 1830 – 196 years ago today – of the German pianist, conductor, composer, and cuckold, Hans Guido von Bülow. Born in the Saxon capital of Dresden, he died in a hotel in Cairo, Egypt, on February 12, 1894, at the age of 64. Poor Hans von Bülow. He was one of the top pianists and conductors of his time. His career was closely associated with some of the greatest composers of all time, including Richard Wagner, Johannes Brahms, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Famous f...
Music History Monday: Shostakovich Symphony No. 13
December 18, 2023 13:00 - 22 minutes - 52.4 MBOn December 18, 1962 – 61 years ago today – Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 received its premiere in Moscow. The symphony stirred up a proverbial hornet’s nest of controversy, and we’re not talking here about your everyday hornet, but rather, those gnarly ‘n’ gnasty Asian Giant Hornets! It was a symphonic premiere that almost didn’t take place, though, in the end, the show did go on. Nevertheless, the authorities (the Soviet authorities, notable for their heavy blue serge suits, vodk...
Music History Monday: The “Amusa”
December 11, 2023 13:00 - 15 minutes - 36.4 MBOn December 11, 1721 – 302 years ago today – Johann Sebastian Bach’s employer, the 27-year-old Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen (1694-1728), married the 19-year-old Friederica Henrietta of Anhalt-Bernburg (1702-1723). She was the fourth daughter (and youngest child) of Charles Frederick, Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg (1668-1721) and his first wife, Sophie Albertine of Solms-Sonnenwalde (1672-1708). We can only hope that the kids enjoyed their wedding, because, sadly, their marriage was not fated...
Music History Monday: Unplayable
December 04, 2023 13:00 - 13 minutes - 31.9 MBWe mark the premiere on December 4, 1881 – 142 years ago today – of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s one-and-only violin concerto, his Violin Concerto in D major. It received its premiere in Vienna, where it was performed by the violinist Adolf Brodsky and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Hans Richter. The concerto is, in my humble opinion, Tchaikovsky’s single greatest work and one of a handful of greatest concerti ever composed. Yet its premiere in Vienna elicited one of the mo...
Music History Monday: Richard Strauss, Stanley Kubrick, Friedrich Nietzsche, and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
November 27, 2023 17:30 - 21 minutes - 49.6 MBOn November 27, 1896 – 127 years ago today – Richard Strauss conducted the premiere performance of his sprawling orchestral tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the German city of Frankfurt. Requests A momentary and applicable (if gratuitous) diversion. Over the course of the first half of my musical life I played a lot of gigs, both in bands and as a solo piano player. The bands ranged from fairly high end to not fairly high end. The best band I ever played with was led by the alto saxop...
Music History Monday: The Great-Grandmother of All Concert Tours: Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road: The Final Tour”
November 20, 2023 13:00 - 18 minutes - 41.4 MBWe mark the conclusion on November 20, 2022 – one year ago today – of the North American leg of Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road: The Final Tour.” The concert took place at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles; it was the third of three “farewell” concerts held at Dodgers Stadium. The three concerts (on November 17, 19, and 20) saw a total attendance of 142,970 people and grossed $23,462,993. Since the first rock ‘n’ roll concert , which was held in Cleveland on March 21, 1952 (that would...
Music History Monday: Gioachino Rossini and the Comedic Mind
November 13, 2023 14:33 - 19 minutes - 45.7 MBWe mark the death on November 13, 1868 – 155 years ago today – of the opera composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini, in Paris, at the age of 76. He was one of the most famous and beloved artists of his time, and he remains no less so today. It is my humble opinion that anyone who does not like Rossini’s operas – and, believe it or not, I have met any number of such people in the “rarified” confines of academia – well, such a person is a crank and a humbug, someone averse to melodic brilliance, th...
Music History Monday: The March King
November 06, 2023 13:51 - 19 minutes - 44.7 MBWe mark the birth on November 6, 1854 – 169 years ago today – of the American composer, conductor, and violinist John Philip Sousa. Born in Washington, D.C., Sousa died in Reading, Pennsylvania on March 6, 1932, at the age of 77. Timing, Location, Life Experience, and Talent We are told that talent – be it athletic, musical, artistic, culinary, whatever – will only take us so far; that without commitment, hard work, and perseverance “talent” is, in the end, nothing but potential. But succe...
Music History Monday: Franz Schubert: An Unfinished Symphony; An Unfinished Life
October 30, 2023 14:52 - 24 minutes - 57.4 MBWe mark October 30, 1822 – 201 years ago today – as being the day on which Franz Schubert began what is now known as his Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the “Unfinished Symphony.” Lost just months after Schubert completed the two movements that make up the “Unfinished,” the symphony was heard for the first time in 1865, 43 years after its composition and 37 years after Schubert’s death. A Fable Agreed Upon One of the many clever statements (or in this case, a question) credited to Napoleon Bon...
Music History Monday: Al Jolson and the Painful Legacy of Blackface
October 23, 2023 13:21 - 21 minutes - 49.5 MBWe mark the death on October 23, 1950 – 73 years ago today – of the Lithuanian-American singer and actor Al Jolson. Born “Asa Yoelson” on May 26, 1886, in the village of Srednik, in what was then the Russian Empire and what is today Lithuania, he died of a massive heart attack in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco at the age of 64. He was playing cards with friends when he collapsed; his last words were “Oh … oh, I’m going.” Singing ran deep in the Yoelson clan; his father M...
Music History Monday: Mathilde Made Him Do It!
October 16, 2023 12:48 - 29 minutes - 68.8 MBA few, necessary words before moving on to today’s post. Our hearts bleed for the events currently playing out in Israel and Gaza. Frankly, there are no words. Today is also the 14th anniversary of my wife Diane’s death; she died at the age of 35 on October 16, 2009. Again, there are no words. Our grief notwithstanding, we soldier on – as we must – doing what we can to make our individual “worlds” a better place. For me, here on Patreon, that means publishing my blogs and podcasts, and thus ...
Music History Monday: The Parrot
October 09, 2023 12:33 - 17 minutes - 41.1 MBWe mark the birth on October 9, 1835 – 188 years ago today – of Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, in Paris. He died in that magnificent city on Beethoven’s 151st birthday – on December 16, 1921 – at the age of 86. The Nose Physically, the adult Camille Saint-Saëns was – literally – an odd bird. The music critic Pierre Lalo has left us with this description: “He was short and strangely resembled a parrot: the same sharply curved profile; a beak-like, hooked nose; [with] lively, restless, piercin...
Music History Monday: 710 Ashbury Street, San Francisco, California
October 02, 2023 12:00 - 17 minutes - 41.1 MBBefore we get to the central topic of today’s post – that being a particular address in San Francisco – we would wish a most happy birthday to someone we only know by his nickname. Please: no looking ahead and peeking! Today we wish a happy 71st birthday to the English singer, songwriter, bassist, and actor Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, CBE (“Commander of the Order of the British Empire”). He was born at Sir G. B. Hunter Memorial Hospital in Wallsend, Northumberland, England. He grew up ...
Music History Monday: In a Class by Himself
September 25, 2023 12:00 - 27 minutes - 62 MBWe mark the birth on September 25, 1932 – 91 years ago today – of the pianist Glenn Herbert Gold, in Toronto, Canada. (Yes, the surname on “Glenn Gould’s” birth certificate is “Gold.” When the young guy was seven years old his family began informally using the surname “Gould,” though Glenn himself never formally changed his name from “Gold” to “Gould.”) He died there in Toronto on October 4, 1982, at the age of fifty. Superlatives Cut Two Ways! I would observe that ordinarily, when we ref...
Music History Monday: Jimi Hendrix and the 27 Club
September 18, 2023 12:00 - 24 minutes - 56.2 MBWe mark the death on September 18, 1970 – 53 years ago today – of the American guitarist, singer, and songwriter James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix, at St. Mary Abbots Hospital in London. He was born in Seattle, Washington on November 27, 1942, making him 27 years old at the time of his death, something we will discuss later in this post. Creating and Mastering a New Idiom “Top ten” lists are entirely subjective and thus often irrelevant. But they can be informative when they agree and as such, i...
Music History Monday: They Did Not Go Gently…
September 11, 2023 12:00 - 20 minutes - 46.3 MB9-11; a somber day for us all. A day for reflection, contemplation and perhaps, still, after 22 years, a day to grieve. Far more often than not, Music History Monday is about celebrating the life and accomplishments of a musician or identifying and exploring some great (or small) event in music history. If I chose to, today’s post could celebrate the lives and music of two wonderful composers. On September 11, 1733 – 290 years ago today – the French composer and harpsichordist François...
Music History Monday: On the Spectrum
September 04, 2023 12:00 - 25 minutes - 59.7 MBWe mark the birth on September 4, 1824 – 199 years ago today – of the composer and organist Josef Anton Bruckner, in the Austrian village of Ansfelden, which today is a suburb of the city of Linz. He died in the Austrian capital of Vienna on October 11, 1896, at the age of 72. It was Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) who famously said that Bruckner was: “Half simpleton, half God.” Strangeness I would be so bold as to suggest that there is such a thing as a “strangeness spectrum,” a scale of persona...
Music History Monday: Lohengrin
August 28, 2023 12:00 - 21 minutes - 48.7 MBWe mark the premiere performance on August 28, 1850 – 173 years ago today – of Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, in the central German city of Weimar. The premiere was conducted by none-other-than Wagner’s friend and supporter (and future father-in-law!) Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Liszt had chosen the premiere date of August 28 in honor of Weimar’s most famous citizen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was born on August 28, 1749, 101 years to the day before Lohengrin’s premiere. The “opera”...
Music History Monday: Where is the “Sin” in “Synthesizer?: Robert Moog and “Synthetic” Sound
August 21, 2023 12:00 - 24 minutes - 56.2 MBWe mark the death on August 21, 2005 – 18 years ago today – of the American engineer and electronic music pioneer Robert Moog. Born in New York City on May 23, 1934, he died of a brain tumor in Asheville, North Carolina, at the age of 71. First things first: let us pronounce this fine man’s surname properly. It is not pronounced as “moo-g.” “Moo-g” is a sound made by a cow after she painfully stubs her hoof. Despite its double-o, the name is pronounced “mogue,” as in “vogue.” Moog didn’t...
Music History Monday: Worst. Timing. Ever
August 14, 2023 12:00 - 23 minutes - 52.9 MBOn August 14, 1962 – 61 years ago today – the manager of the Beatles Brian Epstein made a phone call to the drummer Ringo Starr, inviting him to join the band. As I suspect we are all aware, Starr said “yes.” Two days later, on August 16, Epstein had the unenviable task of firing the band’s present drummer, Randolph Peter “Pete” Best (born Randolph Peter Scanland, 1941), who had been the Beatles’ drummer for almost exactly two years, since August 1960. Best’s firing, effective on August ...
Music History Monday: All Hail The King!
August 07, 2023 11:00 - 30 minutes - 69 MBWe mark an online auction that concluded on August 7, 2008 – 15 years ago today – at which Elvis Presley’s white, sweat-stained, high-collared, plunging V-necked jumpsuit, decorated with a dazzling, hand-embroidered blue and gold peacock – sold for $300,000. (Because I know you want to know, the jumpsuit is cinched at the waist by a wide belt decorated in gold medallions in a design meant to resemble the eye of a peacock feather, all of it an ongoing reflection of Elvis’ fascination with pe...
Music History Monday: Nepo Babies
July 31, 2023 12:00 - 22 minutes - 52.2 MBBefore we get to the actual date-related topic for today, I beg your indulgence, as I need to tell you a story. It’s a story that most of you know, at least in part. Again, indulge me. The Godfather III – the third film in the storied Godfather franchise, released in 1990 – was one of the most anticipated films of all time. And no wonder: the first of the Godfather movies – The Godfather, or “G1”, released in 1972 – was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and received three, including Best...
Music History Monday: Ernest Bloch
July 24, 2023 12:00 - 25 minutes - 59.5 MBWe mark the birth on July 24, 1880 – 143 years ago today – of the Swiss-born American composer and educator Ernest Bloch, who was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He died in Portland, Oregon, on July 15, 1959, at the age of 78. Establishing a Genealogy People trace their family trees for all sorts of reasons: to establish family connections, to collect family medical information, to meet other people engaged in such research, and so forth. But at the root (pun intended) of these (and other) re...
Music History Monday: Elaine Stritch: An Appreciation
July 17, 2023 11:00 - 22 minutes - 52.4 MBWe mark the death on July 17, 2014 – 9 years ago today – of the Broadway and television actress Elaine Stritch, in Birmingham, Michigan, at the age of 89. I personally have a soft spot in my heart for Ms. Stritch the size of Manitoba. She was your quintessential brassy, tart-tongued (a euphemism for foul mouthed), cigarette smoking, alcohol-soaked blonde who took nothing from no one and could sell a song like nobody’s business. (Please note that I didn’t say “sing a song” but rather, “sell...
Music History Monday: When You Dance with the Devil
July 10, 2023 11:00 - 26 minutes - 60.2 MBWe mark the birth on July 10, 1895 – 128 years ago today – of the German composer and educator Carl Heinrich Maria Orff. Born in Munich, he died in that city on March 29, 1982, at the age of 86. The Good News Orff lived a long and productive life. He was a composer of considerable talent whose works draw on influences as diverse as ancient Greek tragedy and medieval chant, Baroque theater, and Bavarian peasant life. His so-called “scenic cantata”, Carmina Burana (of 1936), remains an audi...
Music History Monday: Leoš Janáček: Composer, Patriot, and Patriot Composer!
July 03, 2023 21:49 - 17 minutes - 39.2 MBWe mark the birth on July 3, 1854 – 169 years ago today – of the Moravian (meaning Czech) composer, music theorist, folklorist, and teacher Leoš Janáček. Born in the village of Hukvaldy in what today is the Czech Republic, he died on August 12, 1928 in the city of Ostrava, today the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It’s All in the Name! Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) was an American writer and lecturer known for his self-help guides to self-improvement, salesmanship,...
Music History Monday: You’ve Got to be Kidding
June 26, 2023 12:00 - 19 minutes - 45.5 MB‘Fessing Up Okay: you’re going to have to bear with me for one of my idiotic tangents, one that nevertheless explains precisely how I feel about Mozart and his music at a gut level. What follows is a deep confession, something I’ve never shared before. Be forewarned though, that once you’ve read and/or heard this confession (depending upon whether you’re reading Music History Monday as a blog or listening to it as a podcast), it cannot be unread or unheard. Here goes. Since childhood, I ha...
Music History Monday: Our Kind of Musician
June 19, 2023 12:39 - 20 minutes - 46.4 MBWe mark the birth on June 19, 1810 – 213 years ago today – of the German virtuoso violinist and composer, Ferdinand David. Born in the exact same house in Hamburg that saw Felix Mendelssohn’s birth 16½ months before, David died while on vacation in Switzerland on July 18, 1873, at the age of 63. We will get to the specifics of Maestro David’s life and career and why, to my mind, he is “our kind of musician” in a moment. But first, with your indulgence, a brief bit of editorializing. When ...
Music History Monday: Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea
June 12, 2023 11:00 - 17 minutes - 40.2 MBWe mark the birth on June 12, 1941 – 82 years ago today – of the pianist and composer Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He died of cancer after a brief illness on February 9, 2021, at his home just outside of Tampa Bay, Florida, at the age of 79. Chick Corea’s spectacularly varied, 50-plus year career as a professional musician offers an object lesson in both the necessity and futility of labels. “Spectacularly varied” is the operative phrase in the sentence above....
Music History Monday: Never Eat Anything That Can Bite You Back!
June 05, 2023 12:57 - 18 minutes - 41.8 MBOn June 5, 1977 – 46 years ago today – the shock-rock superstar Alice Cooper’s pet boa constrictor and concert co-star, a creature rather cleverly named “Julius Squeezer,” suffered what turned out to be a fatal bite from a live rat it was eating for breakfast. No doubt: Julius probably should have ordered the scrambled eggs and toast, and in doing so would have heeded the advice offered by the title of this post: “never eat anything that can bite you back.” This is a heartbreaking tale, a tr...
Music History Monday: Isaac Albéniz
May 29, 2023 12:33 - 20 minutes - 46.8 MBOn May 29, 1860 – 163 years ago today – the composer and pianist Isaac Albéniz was born in Camprodón, Spain. Albéniz was a brilliant pianist and, as evidenced by his 12-movement suite for piano entitled Iberia (written between 1905-1909), a composer of genius. However, before we can get to Maestro Albéniz, I would beg your indulgence while we celebrate this remarkable day in music history! Also born on this date was the Austrian-American composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who came into thi...
Music History Monday: Giuseppe Verdi and the Requiem for Alessandro Manzoni
May 22, 2023 12:00 - 20 minutes - 46.9 MBWe mark the first performance on May 22, 1874 – 149 years ago today – of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, written in memory of the Italian novelist, poet, and patriot Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1872).” Background In June of 1870, the 57-year-old Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) agreed to compose an opera for the brand-new Cairo Opera Theater. The Khedive Ismail Pasha of Egypt personally handled the negotiations, as the opera was to celebrate nothing less than the opening of the Suez Canal. No expense was...
Music History Monday: All the Music That’s Fit to Print
May 15, 2023 11:00 - 19 minutes - 44.6 MBOn May 15, 1501 – 522 years ago today – the first polyphonic (that is, 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” followed in 1502 ...
Music History Monday: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, or What Happens in Oakland Does Not Stay in Oakland
May 08, 2023 11:00 - 26 minutes - 61 MBWe mark the birth on May 8, 1829 – 194 years ago today – of the American composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, in New Orleans. He died, all-too-young, on December 18, 1869 at the age of forty, in exile in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Events that occurred in September of 1865 in San Francisco, California and across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland led directly to Gottschalk’s “exile” to South America. Those frankly tawdry events, most unfairly, have been recounted way too often and as a re...
Music History Monday: The Enduring Miracle
May 01, 2023 11:00 - 19 minutes - 43.9 MBOn May 1, 1786 – on what was also a Monday, 237 years ago today – a miracle was heard for the first time: Wolfgang Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro received its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna. Some 100 years later, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) 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.” Herr Brahms, when you’re r...
Music History Monday: A Voice Like Buttah!
April 24, 2023 12:47 - 25 minutes - 58.1 MBWe mark the birth on April 24, 1942 – 81 years ago today – of the American singer, songwriter, actress, and filmmaker Barbara Joan “Barbra” Streisand, in Brooklyn, New York. But first, before we get to the magnificent Babs, a brief but spirited edition of “This Day In Music History . . .” okay, “stupid” is too strong a word, so let’s just call it, “This Day In Music History . . . Dumb.” On April 24, 2007 – 16 years ago today – the American musician, actress, singer, and songwriter Sheryl ...