Podcast | Robert Greenberg | Speaker, Composer, Author, Professor, Historian
257 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 70 ratingsSpeaker, Composer, Author, Professor, Historian
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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 ...
Music History Monday: I Left My Nerve in San Francisco
April 17, 2023 11:01 - 17 minutes - 39.4 MBWe mark the final San Francisco performance – on the evening of Tuesday, April 17, 1906, 117 years ago today – of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1874-1921). That performance at the no longer extant Grand Opera House at No. 2 Mission Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) was not intended to have been Caruso’s last local appearance, but circumstances beyond his control assured that it was! Enrico Caruso (1874-1921) Caruso was born into a poor family in Naples, Italy, on February 24th, ...
Music History Monday: A Mama’s Boy, and Proud of It!
April 10, 2023 13:04 - 25 minutes - 57.5 MBWe mark the premiere on April 10, 1868 – 155 years ago today – of Johannes Brahms’ magnificent A German Requiem, for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Johannes Brahms, Again? I know I’ve been going heavy on Brahms (1833-1897) as of late. I would apologize if he wasn’t so fascinating a person and if his music wasn’t so darned good, but he was a fascinating person and his music is superb, so our continued attention is well deserved. It’s not as if we didn’t have other topical options for ...
Music History Monday: The Death of Johannes Brahms
April 03, 2023 15:08 - 19 minutes - 44.6 MBWe mark the death on April 3, 1897 – 126 years ago today – of the German composer and pianist Johannes Brahms at the age of 63. One of the great ones and along with Sebastian Bach and Louis van Beethoven one of the three bees – the killer bees – Brahms was born in the Hanseatic port city of Hamburg on May 7, 1833. We will get to Maestro Brahms in just a moment but first – with appropriate fanfare – I offer up this edition of “This Day in Music History Stupid.” Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust; ...
Music History Monday: Papa’s Last Appearance
March 27, 2023 11:00 - 12 minutes - 11.5 MBA quick comment in reference to the title of today’s post, “Papa’s Last Appearance.” Not that you really need me to tell you, but by “Papa” we are not referring to Papa John Schnatter, who founded “Papa John’s Pizza” in 1984. Neither are we referring to the stand-up comedian Tom Papa, the sportscaster Greg Papa, the American rock band Papa Roach, nor the American Paul Karason (1950-2013), also-known-as “Papa Smurf,” whose skin turned to a purplish-blue color as a result of ingesting a home-...
Music History Monday: The First Night: Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville
February 20, 2023 11:00 - 22 minutes - 20.6 MBWe mark the premiere performance, on February 20, 1816 – 207 years ago today – of Gioachino Rossini’s comic opera masterwork, The Barber of Seville, at Rome’s famed Teatro Argentina. The Natural Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born on February 29 (bummer of a birthday!), 1792 in the Italian city of Pesaro, on the Adriatic Sea. He died of colorectal cancer on November 13, 1868, in his villa in Passy, which today is located in Paris’ chic, 16th arrondisement. He was the only child of Giuseppe Ro...
Music History Monday: A Man for All Symptoms: The Death of Wagner
February 13, 2023 15:50 - 20 minutes - 46.8 MBWe mark the death, on February 13, 1883 – 140 years ago today – of the German composer Richard Wagner, in Venice, at the age of 69. He had been born in the Saxon city of Leipzig on May 22, 1813. Wagner’s Health Writing in Hektoen International – A Journal of Medical Humanities, George Dunea, MD, states that: “[Richard] Wagner was an extraordinarily highly strung individual.” Do you think, Dr. Dunea? In fact, he was a pathologically overwrought individual, a certifiable narcissist who requ...
Music History Monday: Johannes Ockeghem and the Oltremontani
February 06, 2023 15:41 - 19 minutes - 18 MBWe mark the death on February 6, 1497 – 526 years ago today – of the composer and singer Johannes Ockeghem, in Tours, France, at the age of 87 (or so). He was born circa 1410 in the French-speaking city of Saint-Ghislain in what today is Belgium, about 5 miles from the border with France. The title of this post – “Johannes Ockeghem and the Oltremontani” – employs a Italian word that may not be familiar to everybody: “Oltremontani.” It’s a word that means, literally, “those from the other ...
Music History Monday: Francis Poulenc: “a bit of monk and a bit of hooligan”
January 30, 2023 20:35 - 21 minutes - 49.2 MBWe mark the death on January 30, 1963 – exactly sixty years ago today – of the French composer and pianist Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc, in Paris. A Parisian from head to toe, he was born in the tres chic 8th arrondisement in that magnificent city on January 7, 1899. He died of a heart attack not far from where he’d been born, in his flat opposite the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris’ 6th arrondisement. Before we can get down with the magnifique Monsieur Poulenc, we have an important event in r...
Music History Monday: Paul Robeson: Truly Larger Than Life
January 23, 2023 12:00 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBWe mark the death on January 23, 1976 – 47 years ago today – of the American bass-baritone singer, stage and screen actor, civil rights activist, professional football player, and graduate of Columbia University Law School Paul Robeson at the age of 77, in Philadelphia. Born in Princeton, New Jersey on April 9, 1898, the son of an escaped slave turned Presbyterian minister, Robeson had more intellectual, artistic, and athletic gifts and lived more lives than any 10 (20? 50? 100?) so-called ...
Music History Monday: The Blockhead – Anton Felix Schindler – and Beethoven’s Conversation Books
January 16, 2023 12:00 - 20 minutes - 46 MBWe mark the death on January 16, 1864 – 159 years ago today – of Anton Felix Schindler, in Frankfurt, at the age of 68. Born on June 13, 1795, in the town of Medlov in today’s Czech Republic, Schindler was, for a time, Beethoven’s “factotum”: his secretary and general assistant. He was also a scoundrel and a profiteer, who after Beethoven’s death lied about his relationship with Beethoven, stole irreplaceable objects and documents from Beethoven’s estate, and falsified and destroyed many o...
Music History Monday: An Impresario for the Ages: Rudolf Bing
January 09, 2023 14:32 - 21 minutes - 48.9 MBWe mark the birth on January 9, 1902 – 121 years ago today – of the opera impresario Rudolf Bing, in Vienna Austria. The general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1950 to 1972, Bing died in Yonkers, New York in September 1997 at the age of 95. His was a long life by any standard, but particularly by the standards of an opera impresario, whose professional livesare marked by a degree of life-threatening stress and anxiety that, perhaps, only has its equal in combat and divo...
Music History Monday: Getting Personal: Édith Piaf
December 19, 2022 12:00 - 16 minutes - 38.5 MBWe mark the birth on December 19, 1915 – 107 years ago today – of the French singer and actress Édith Piaf in the Belleville district of Paris. Born Édith Giovanna Gassion, she came to be considered France’s national chanteuse, one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century, a French combination of Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and Billie Holiday. She died in Plascassier, near the French Riviera city of Nice, on October 10, 1963, all-too young at the age of 47. Way Too Per...
Music History Monday: The Garden State Hall of Fame
December 12, 2022 13:42 - 17 minutes - 39.4 MBDecember 12 is a crazy day in American jazz and popular music history, a day that saw the births of five – count ‘em, five – significant musicians, three of whom have something very special in common. Let us first recognize the birthdays of the two jazz/pop musicians who do not share this special commonality. We start with a big, happy birthday to the jazz singer Joe Williams, who was born on December 12, 1918, 104 years ago today. Born Joseph Goreed, he came into this world in Cordele, Geo...
Music History Monday: Myths of Mayhem and Murder!
December 05, 2022 11:00 - 26 minutes - 61.2 MBHere We Go Again . . . It has come to pass. I have been writing these Music History Monday posts for long enough that Monday dates and events have begun to repeat. And as a result, December 5, which was a Monday in 2016, once again falls on a Monday today. Ordinarily there are enough events on any given Monday to keep me from having to deal with the same topic. But December 5 is a special date for one particularly terrible musical event, an event that demands to be revisited. Dates That Will...
Music History Monday: Aaron Copland in New York
November 28, 2022 14:55 - 25 minutes - 58.9 MBWe mark the New York premiere on November 28, 1925 – 97 years ago today – of Aaron Copland’s Music for the Theater, at a League of Composer’s concert conducted by Serge Koussevitzky at New York’s Town Hall. The actual world premiere of the piece took place eight days before, when Koussevitzky conducted Music for the Theater in Boston. But Copland was a native New Yorker and Music from the Theater is about the New York theatrical and musical world. So – and for this you’ll have to excuse me, ...
Music History Monday: Henry Purcell and British Music Restored!
November 21, 2022 21:54 - 23 minutes - 55 MBWe mark the death on November 21, 1695 – 327 years ago today – of the English composer and organist Henry Purcell, in London. He lies buried today in a place of singular honor, adjacent to the organ on which he performed in Westminster Abbey in London. He had been born there in London on (or about) September 10, 1659, making him only 36 years old when he died. But like both Mozart and Schubert after him, Purcell’s terribly premature death did not preclude him from writing a tremendous amount...
Music History Monday: The Other Prodigious Mendelssohn: Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel
November 14, 2022 14:01 - 19 minutes - 45.2 MBWe mark the birth on November 14, 1805 – 217 years ago today – of the German composer, pianist, wife, mother, and hausfrau Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg. She died on May 14, 1847, all-too-young at the age of 41, at her home in the Prussian capital of Berlin. Fanny Cäcille Mendelssohn was the first child (of an eventual four) of Lea and Abraham Mendelssohn. Lea Mendelssohn took one look at her infant daughter’s hands and famously exclaimed: “Look! She has Bach f...
Music History Monday: Listening to the Thundah from Down Undah
November 07, 2022 15:43 - 16 minutes - 37.9 MBWe mark the birth on November 7, 1926 – 96 years ago today – of the dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, in Sydney, Australia. She died on October 10, 2010, in Montreux, Switzerland at the age of 83. I want you all to know upfront that Joan Sutherland was the first singer on whom I had a major crush, both because of her stupendous voice (hey: she wasn’t called “La Stupenda!” for nothing) and for reasons to be described below. In this post I will be using the occasion o...
Music History Monday: The Grandmother of All Drop Parties
October 31, 2022 13:14 - 14 minutes - 33.2 MBBefore moving forward, the title of this post – “The Grandmother of All Drop Parties!” – demands an explanation-slash-definition. A “grandmother” is the mother of a parent, though in this usage, thank you, it is meant to indicate the ultimate example of what follows, as in “the grandmother of all drop parties.” I know you knew that. On to the important definition. A “drop party” or “release party” or “launch party” is a festive event sponsored by someone or some corporate entity to celebr...
Music History Monday: Carl Ruggles
October 24, 2022 13:06 - 20 minutes - 46.9 MBBefore moving on to Carl Ruggles, the featured composer of today’s post, we would offer the warmest of happy birthdays to one of the most brilliant composers of the twentieth century, who also happened to be one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met, George Crumb. He was born in Charleston, West Virginia on October 24, 1929 – 93 years ago today – and died at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 2022, at the age of 92. I offered up an appreciation of ...
Music History Monday: Name the Composer/Pianist
October 17, 2022 14:42 - 19 minutes - 45 MBName the Composer/Pianist: he was a student of Wolfgang Mozart, Antonio Salieri, Muzio Clementi, and Joseph Haydn; friend to Franz Schubert and a friend (and rival!) of Ludwig van Beethoven; and teacher of – among many others – Carl Czerny, Ferdinand Hiller, Sigismond Thalberg, and Felix Mendelssohn; in his lifetime considered one of the greats and in ours almost entirely forgotten? With a title like that, the subject of this post better be good. And good he was! We mark the death on October...
Music History Monday: Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky, AKA “Vernon Duke”
October 10, 2022 11:55 - 15 minutes - 35.8 MBWe mark the birth on October 10, 1903 – 119 years ago today – of the Russian-American composer of concert music Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky. As a composer of popular music, and as a major contributor to the Great American Songbook, he is known as Vernon Duke. The Great American Songbook The Great American Songbook refers to neither a book nor a specific list of songs. Rather, the phrase encompasses the repertoire of American popular song, written between about 1915 and 1955 that are t...
Music History Monday: Carl Nielsen
October 03, 2022 11:15 - 18 minutes - 43.5 MBWe mark the death on October 3, 1931 – 91 years ago today – of the Danish composer and violinist Carl Nielsen in Copenhagen, at the age of 66. Nielsen had what we colloquially call “a bad ticker.” He suffered his first heart attack in 1925, when he was sixty years old. A nasty series of heart attacks put him in Copenhagen’s National Hospital (the Rigshospitalet) on October 1, 1931. He died there at 12:10 am on October 3. Surrounded by his family, his last words were: “You are standing he...
Music History Monday: Béla Bartók’s American Exile
September 26, 2022 23:14 - 20 minutes - 47.3 MBWe mark the death on September 26, 1945 – 77 years ago today – of the pianist, composer, and Hungarian patriot Béla Bartók. Born in what was then the Hungarian town of Nagyszentmiklós(now Sînnicolau Mare in Romania) on March 25, 1881, Bartók died – during what he called his “comfortable exile” – in New York City. Before moving on to Bartók’s “American Exile”, let’s establish –as we can from our vantage point in 2022 – his creds as a great and influential twentieth century composer! In 1961, ...
Music History Monday: Day Gigs
September 19, 2022 13:18 - 18 minutes - 41.5 MB“Don’t give up your day gig.” Along with “don’t eat yellow snow” and “fake it ‘til you make it”, “don’t give up your day gig” remains one of the oldest, hoariest, clichéd pieces of advice anyone can give or receive. But unless you were lucky/wise enough to heed the other greatest piece of advice any musician can receive, that being “marry rich”, “don’t give up your day gig” is still among the very best pieces of advice a musician can receive. Very few of us get our dream job right out of sch...
Music History Monday: Robert and Clara, Sittin’ in a Tree…
September 12, 2022 13:49 - 19 minutes - 45.6 MBWe mark the marriage on September 12, 1840 – 182 years ago today – of the pianist and composer Clara Wieck (1819-1896) to the composer and pianist Robert Schumann (1810-1856). The couple were married the day before Clara’s 21st birthday (September 13, 1840), for reasons that will be explained in detail in tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post. Not for the Timid I ask: what are the most difficult things any person can attempt? To summit K2 and return alive? To win Olympic gold? To overcome a...
Music History Monday: Fire
September 05, 2022 16:10 - 18 minutes - 42.2 MBWe mark the premiere on September 5, 1913 – 109 years ago today – of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Prokofiev (1891-1953) composed the piece while still a student at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory; it was completed in April of 1913. (For our information, Prokofiev still had another year to go at the Conservatory; he didn’t graduate until May of 1914.) The concerto received its premiere – 109 years ago today – at the Vauxhall at Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk being a sprawling Imperial p...
Music History Monday: Bird
August 29, 2022 13:02 - 17 minutes - 41 MBWe mark the birth on August 29, 1920 – 102 years ago today – of the alto saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker. The trumpet player (and one-time member of Charlie Parker’s quintet) Miles Davis (1926-1991) famously said: “You can tell the history of jazz in four words: Louis Armstrong. Charlie Parker.” Miles Davis never minced words, and he does not mince them here. Along with Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker was (and remains) the most innovative, influential, and technically brilliant jazz ...
Music History Monday: Debussy
August 22, 2022 20:48 - 24 minutes - 57.4 MBWe celebrate the birth on August 22, 1862 – 160 years ago today – of the French composer and pianist Claude Debussy. Born in the Paris suburb of St. Germain-en-Laye, he died in Paris on March 25, 1918, at the age of 55. Let’s tell it like it is: Monsieur Debussy was one of the great ones. For all of its sensual beauty – and Debussy did indeed compose some of the most gorgeous music ever written – his music is among the most original, revolutionary, and influential ever composed. At a tim...
Music History Monday: Woodstock: A Triumph of Locational Branding!
August 15, 2022 13:01 - 20 minutes - 47 MBWe mark the opening of the so-called “Woodstock Festival” on August 15, 1969 – 53 years ago today – “so-called” for the following reasons. “Woodstock.” Even without considering the original festival that bears its name, “Woodstock”, as a placename has a homey, countryside-like quality to it. And a beautiful, quaint town it is, with a population – in 1970 – of 5714 people (it’s just about the same today). Eighty-eight miles north of New York City, within the borders of the Catskill Mountains ...
Music History Monday: Abbey Road, and This and That
August 08, 2022 12:48 - 17 minutes - 40 MBAugust 8 is a great day, a signal day, an epic day for both good and bad reasons in the history of popular, rock, and jazz music. We’d observe a few of today’s date-related events before moving on to our featured story. First, with heads respectfully bowed, we would note some of those who have passed away on this date. On August 8, 1940 – 82 years ago today – the jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist Johnny Dodds died of a heart attack in Chicago, all-too-young at the age of 48. I have kn...
Music History Monday: The Wayward Bach, His Wayward Daughter, and the Bachs of Oklahoma
August 01, 2022 11:00 - 20 minutes - 46.5 MBWe mark the death on August 1, 1784 – 238 years ago today – of the German composer and organist Wilhelm Friedemann Bach in Berlin at the age of 73. Born in the central German city of Weimar on November 22, 1710, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who from here on we will refer to as Friedemann Bach, was the second child and first son of Johann Sebastian Bach (who from this point forward we will refer to as Sebastian Bach). Friedemann Bach was a gifted musician, the equal (in my opinion) to his more f...
Music History Monday: Under the Covers
July 25, 2022 14:07 - 21 minutes - 50.2 MBWe 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. Thornt...
Music History Monday: A Debussy Discovery!
July 18, 2022 11:00 - 14 minutes - 33.5 MBBefore 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 lo...
Music History Monday: The Death of George Gershwin
July 11, 2022 15:38 - 20 minutes - 47.9 MBWe 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 ...
Music History Monday: As American as tarte aux pommes! Celebrating the Fourth with some Real American Music! or Tampering with National Property
July 04, 2022 15:42 - 17 minutes - 39.1 MBWe 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...
Music History Monday: The Fabulous Hill Sisters!
June 27, 2022 12:49 - 14 minutes - 33.4 MBHumiliation 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 u...
Music History Monday: Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky
June 20, 2022 12:00 - 18 minutes - 42.6 MBWe 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 “Governmen...
Music History Monday: The Ultimate Fanboy: The Mad King, Ludwig II
June 13, 2022 13:24 - 22 minutes - 52.9 MBWe 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 w...
Music History Monday: Siegfried Wagner
June 06, 2022 14:43 - 20 minutes - 47.3 MBWe mark the birth of Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried Wagner on June 6, 1869 – 163 years ago today – in Lucerne, Switzerland. Like the sons of so many great men groomed to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, he could never hope to measure up to or escape from his father’s shadow. Cliché We contemplate, for a moment, this thing called a “cliché.” Strictly defined, a cliché is: “an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning ...
Music History Monday: Benjamin Britten War Requiem
May 30, 2022 12:00 - 18 minutes - 43.7 MBWe mark the premiere performance on May 30, 1962 – 60 years ago today – of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Completed in early 1962, the War Requiem was commissioned to mark the consecration of the “new” Coventry Cathedral, which was built to replace the original fourteenth century cathedral that had been destroyed on the evening and night of November 14 and 15, 1940. Today’s post will deal entirely with the events that led up to the composition of Britten’s War Requiem: the destruction of C...
Music History Monday: Beethoven and the Human Voice
May 23, 2022 12:00 - 14 minutes - 33 MBWe mark the premiere on May 23, 1814 – 208 years ago today – of Ludwig van Beethoven’s one-and-only opera, Fidelio, at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna. While Beethoven (1770-1827) had composed two preliminary versions of the opera, which had been performed in 1805 and 1806, it is this third and substantially different version that we will hear in the opera house today. It’s an odd but, in this case, an applicable idiom, “red herring.” Literally, a “red herring” is, believe it or not, a re...
Music History Monday: The Phoenix Rises!
May 16, 2022 12:00 - 21 minutes - 48.5 MBWe mark the opening on May 16, 1792 – 230 years ago today – of Venice’s principal opera house, the Teatro la Fenice, meaning the “The Phoenix Theater.” Excepting, perhaps, the magnificent phallus that is the Washington Monument, dedicated as it is to “The Father of Our Country,” rarely – if ever – will a building be better named than La Fenice, which has risen from the ashes three times. Background The first public opera house – the Teatro San Cassiano – opened in Venice in 1637. Public ope...
Music History Monday: Little Richard: The King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll
May 09, 2022 12:00 - 24 minutes - 55.4 MBWe mark the death on May 9, 2020 – just two years ago today – of the American musician, singer, and songwriter Richard Wayne Penniman, known universally by his stage name of “Little Richard.” Born on December 5, 1932, in Macon, Georgia, he died at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee two years ago today from bone cancer. He was 87 years old. As a founding inductee to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, the following statement was read aloud: “He claims to be ‘the architect of rock and roll’...
Music History Monday: Giacomo Meyerbeer and French PopOp
May 02, 2022 12:00 - 20 minutes - 47.7 MBWe mark the death on May 2, 1864 – 158 years ago today – of the German-born opera composer Jacob Liebmann Beer, also-known-as Giacomo Meyerbeer. Born in Berlin on September 5, 1791, he died in Paris during the rehearsals for the premiere of his opera L’Africaine – “The African” – which turned out to be, no surprise then, his final opera. Let us get to know Herr/Signore/Monsieur Meyerbeer a bit even as we explore the tremendous popularity of his operas, the reasons behind that popularity, ...
Music History Monday: Puccini’s Turandot: An Opera That Almost Wasn’t
April 25, 2022 22:59 - 17 minutes - 39.6 MBWe mark the premiere performance on April 25, 1926 – 96 years ago today – of Giacomo Puccini’s twelfth and final opera, Turandot. The premiere took place at Milan’s storied La Scala opera house and was conducted by Puccini’s friend (and occasional nemesis!) Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). At the time of the premiere, Puccini himself had been dead for 17 months. And therein lies our tale. Because given the delays in creating the libretto for Turandot, Puccini’s failing health, his leaving t...
Dr. Bob Prescribes: Robert M. Greenberg — Collected Yiddish Songs
April 19, 2022 19:23As begun in yesterday’s Music History Monday post, we will continue to trace what I think of as my compositional apprenticeship up to my 30th birthday, and then on to some music! California and Graduate School I arrived in Berkeley, California on September 9, 1978, to attend graduate school in music composition at the University of California, Berkeley. I moved in with a friend and Princeton classmate, a fellow composer named Eric Moe, who had started graduate school immediately after we gra...