classical music

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My First Love: Classical Music


I do not know what piece of classical music I heard first was but I do know that I was young, maybe 5 or 6. I was introduced to classical music by my father. He spawned my love affair with it which has lasted to this day. In fact, were you to inquire of me my favorite music form, it is classical. And the reason for my affection is simple, it always moves me.

I suspect one of the first pieces I heard what Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite; that perennial classic of the Christmas season. But what I did not realize, at least in my youngest years, was the fact that classical music was playing all around me and I was simply unaware. On television, for example, I liked to watch “The Lone Ranger,” the theme song for which comes directly from Rossini’s William Tell Overture which premiered in 1829. And the cartoons were littered with such music. The Warner Brothers cartoons Looney Tunes, and in particular “Bugs Bunny,” loved to use the music of Grieg and Mozart. A Bugs Bunny scene you may be familiar with, Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit,” is from Mozart’s Ride of the Valkyrie” which was first presented in 1856. But when you consider the meager budgets 1950s television had to deal with, creating new music for their shows was simply not possible. The music for the television show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” is the Funeral March of a Marionette by Charles Gounod written in 1872. And in the 1960s the comic Allan King did a song called “Hello mother, hello father, here I am in Camp Grenada.” That music is The Dance of the Hours by Ponchielli who first performed it in 1876.

I remember as a young boy delighting to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, Bizet’s Carmen, and many others.  The music spoke to me.

What we refer to as Classical Music was around for over 300 years before it was displaced by jazz, blues, swing and then rock and roll. Not that these latter forms of music are somehow not worthy, they are, but to me, at least, they lack the fullness of classical. And that is not a bad thing. Lord knows I love the blues, rock and roll, and folk music. But there is something I find special about classical music.

This afternoon I was listening to a program on the life of Rachmaninov. He was the last of the great classicists having lived from 1873 to 1943. Ironically George Gershwin may have been able to claim that title, having been born in 1898, but he died in 1937, a full six years before Rachmaninov. Gershwin dearly wanted to be of the classical genre and his dearest dream was to write an opera.  Like any artist, Gershwin had to be able to sell his music and it was suggested he look to American folk music to find what he needed.  He wrote the opera, it is called Porgy and Bess.  What you hear is the blues but the style is definitely operatic in nature.  One of Rachmaninov’s most famous pieces, Rhapsody on a theme on Paganini, was first performed in 1937, the year Gershwin died. This was one of his last pieces, his first, Prelude in C Sharp Minor, was performed when Rachmaninov was but 18 years old. I asked myself, “What 18-year-old writes such music?” The complexity of the piece is astounding and sounds more like a mid-career piece than a first of a career.

It is said of Mozart that he had mastered the violin at the tender age of five and was engaged as the court musician in Salzburg at age 17. He died at age 35! The vastness of what he did write leaves us wondering what might have been if he had lived as long as Beethoven, 57 years. And Beethoven, stone deaf when he wrote his 9th Symphony, names the final movement of the piece Ode to Joy.  He had little joy in his life at that point, to be sure, and yet that is what he writes about.

Each piece of music written by these masters has a story behind it and tells that story musically. Beethoven said the music is the pictures in the composer’s mind and each of his compositions, for him, conjured up those visions. In some cases we know the story the composer is telling. Tchaikovsky’s Peter and the Wolf is from an old Russian folktale. Mozart’s Valkyries is from German fables. And in one case, a composer named Grofe’, wrote a piece called the Grand Canyon Suite, just knowing the title and subtitles, we see the beauty of the canyon and the power of a storm, the sauntering of the donkey.

Classical music of this sort is no long written, and maybe that is all right. I sometimes wish its creation had lasted longer but I am left asking myself, is what we have not enough? Considering how much I listen to classical music and how little I know of what it is saying, I must say yes, it is quite enough.

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America’s Disinterest in Classical Music


I just read a posting on Facebook that told of a man, Joshua Bell, a concert violinist, was placed in a Washington DC Metro station with a $3500 violin at rush hour as a test of how the general public would react.  After 45 minutes the Bell had been able to collect only $30 from 20 people.

The Washington Post who organized this asked the questions, “Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?”  Now this article is making the rounds and an indignant public is responding as if some sort of commentary on Americans in general has been made.  This is foolishness to the utmost.

Classical music is an acquired taste just as any sort of music is.  I do not believe it appeals to the majority of Americans.  I don’t think this is any sort of commentary on the average American other than American’s are mostly drawn to other sorts of music.  In the Washington Post test it is likely that the music drew only those people who both like and appreciate it.  If you hear something you do not find beautiful, regardless of what anyone else says, you are not going to take time to listen.  That is just human nature, and nothing more.

I think you will find a greater portion of Europeans who appreciate classic must than Americans but because it is a part of their culture as much as anything.  American music includes jazz, blues, country, blue grass, and rock and roll.  It is part of our identity.  You cannot go to Poland and expect to find blue music being played every weekend somewhere as you can in the U.S.  It is a very simple cultural thing.

Countries like Poland, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia have classical composers who are a part of their history.  As such, in any country where a famous classic artist was born, homage is given to them, airports, parks, and monuments have their name.  They are a regular part of the national dialogue.  With that comes a natural interest in the music they wrote, and with that what the music of their contemporaries was and sounded like.

I love classical music most likely because I heard it when I was young.  My father used to listen to it and that is probably where I came to enjoy it.  Since, I have immersed myself in my own sort of classical music appreciation.

What I think most Americans do not realize is how much classical music they are actually hearing in public, on television, and in the movies.  I would guess that a good 50% of the better movies have at least one piece of classical music in it.  Movie-makers usually understand it and use it as an important instrument in telling their story.

When I was a kid, most of the cartoons I watched were full of classical music.  Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and others almost exclusively used it.  In one Bugs Bunny short, the makers used Mozart’s “Valkyries” in something of a form that it was meant to be presented.  In a twist they used Elmer Fudd as the tenor who sang “Kill the Wabbit” to Mozart’s music.

But even as someone who truly loves classical music, I am not certain I would have stopped to hear that violinist if he were playing something I did not find particularly appealing.  There is a lot of classical music that has the potential to appeal to a large portion of the American public, but there is also a portion that appeals only to classical music diehards, and that is just the sort of music this man may have been playing.  If you do not understand your audience, you cannot possibly appeal to them.  I wish more Americans liked classical music but I am not going to criticize them because they do not.

The follow is the link to the article I am referring to.  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=396563050432534&set=a.254264747995699.63706.253054451450062&type=1&theater

 

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Ten of the 20th Century’s Best Musicians


I am not an expert in music in any sense of the word.  I know what I like and I feel I have a fairly eclectic taste in music.  The following list, in no particular order, is of ten people I consider to be the creative geniuses of the 20th Century.

1. Sergei Rachmaninoff — (1873 – 1928) Rachmaninoff is considered to be a romantic classicist.  He is best known for his piano concertos, although he certain wrote many other forms of music.  A friend of mine, who was once part of the Cleveland Philharmonic, said Rachmaninoff’s pieces can be extremely difficult to perform not only because of the complexity, but because the pianist involved is required to make reaches designed for Rachmaninoff’s large hands.  If you have not, or do not know, if you have ever heard anything by him, I recommend you find his Piano concerto number 1 or his Piano rhapsody of a theme of Paganini.  His pieces are frequently used in movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5bP1CdfM-8

2.  George Gershwin — (1898 – 1937) George Gershwin, and his brother Ira, are responsible for some of the most appealing early 20th century American music.  Gershwin fancied himself a classical author although his music was much more suited for the Broadway play for which he wrote a number of scores.  In the early 1930s Gershwin fulfilled his lifetime dream of writing an opera when he wrote “Porgy and Bess.”  Rather than write in the classical form like Puccini and Mozart, Gershwin drew from early 20th century folk music of the south.  Porgy and Bess, an American opera to be sure, is filled with a Delta Blues style of music.  He also wrote a piano piece that is exception, A Rhapsody in Blue.  If you listen to either of these piece I believe you will see what I found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc

3.  Eric Satie — (1866 – 1925)  Eric Satie is a Frenchman who grew up in Normandy near the French coast.  His music, primarily piano pieces, take on a beautiful haunting quality to them.  His pieces are often used in movies when a pedantic or lonely mood needs to be set.  Two of his most famous pieces are Gymnopedies no. 1 and Gnossienne no. 1.  They are short but enormously beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU

4.   Aaron Copeland — (1900 – 1990) Aaron Copeland is known as the dean of American Music.  His music takes on a particularly American quality that has become to define a particular style of American Folk Music.  His piece Appalachian Spring and Fanfare to the Common Man are known around the world, and frequently played at 4th of July celebrations, and other such gatherings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NjssV8UuVA&feature=related

5.  John Philip Sousa — (1854 – 1932)  Sousa is known for his patriotic marches.  In the 1880s he lead the Marine Corps Band.  Afterward he found he had an aptitude for composition and set about to write such well-known pieces as The Washington Post March, Stars and Stripes Forever, and other Patriotic pieces.  He also invented an instrument called the Sousaphone, frequently mistaken as a tuba, an entirely different instrument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6R7bCSUhjI

6.  Scott Joplin — (1867 – 1917)  Scott Joplin helped create a new genre of music called “Ragtime.”  The music is a takeoff of southern jazz.  Joplin’s music was hugely popular in the first 20 years of the 20th Century and was the choice of music for the movie “The Sting.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQNo1feJCNg

7.  Jon Lennon — (1940 – 1980) Jon Lennon probably did more for rock and roll than any other single artist of the 20th Century.  While other remarkable artists of the day, Elvis and his contemporaries, drew largely from other composers, Lennon almost exclusively wrote all the music he performed, both for himself and the Beatles.  Lennon created a style and form that musicians have followed ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFs

8.  Dave Brubeck (1920 – )  Brubeck is one of the 20th century’s best known jazz composers.  Brubeck’s compositions proved so popular the one piece in particular, Take Five, was a hit on the pop charts.  Brubeck himself was an accomplished pianist which set him apart from other jazz artists who were known from their abilities on the trumpet, drums, and trombone.  One of his best compositions, in my opinion, is Blue Rondo a la Turk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE

9.  Hank Williams — (1923 – 1953) In his short life Hank Williams was known both for his composition and performance of country music.  The Williams’ style has been on of the most often copied over the decades by such greats at Waylon Jennings, Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette and other country greats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtGM6WBcsX0&feature=related

10.  Robert Johnson — (1911 – 1938)  Robert Johnson could easily be my favorite of all these composers.  Johnson is one of blues music favorite composers, who, if you are not a fan of the blues, you probably never heard of.  Johnson compiled a total of 29 pieces in his short life, but his style is oft copied.  To get a good sampling of Johnson’s music I highly recommend Eric Clapton’s recording, “Me and Mr. Johnson.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82yNxiF-T4A&feature=related

11.  Bob Dylan — (1941 –  )  I know, I said a list of ten but a friend of mine has correctly pointed out that Dylan richly deserves to be in this list and I cannot disagree, so here he is.  Dylan was the iconoclasts of musicians starting in the early 1960s.  He wrote not only for himself but for other artists.  His songs were embraced by a generation of anti-war people which Dylan states were not written as such, at least at first.  His folk songs are ver different from any other written at the time. Songs such as Blowing in the Wind, Times They Are A-Changing, Positively 4th Street, Just Like a Woman, and many many other songs speak to his enormous talent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk3mAX5xdxo