Vivian Perlis and Libby van Cleve of the Oral History of American Music (OHAM) Project at Yale have compiled a 20-minute program of musical excerpts from OHAM’s archives and interviews.  Particularly interesting is the podcast of Virgil Thomson, featured on Friday’s Exploring Music program.

Go to Apple’s iTunesU site or the School of Music Netcasts.

Another tidbit- a picture of Orson Wells and Virgil Thomson found by Producer Cydne Gillard:

Today we featured Rachmaninoff’s tone poem Isle of the Dead, inspired by this painting of Arnold Böcklin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_the_Dead_%28painting%29

Interestingly, Böcklin also painted a contrasting work, Isle of Life, in 1888:

I am a Russian composer, and the land of my birth has inevitably influenced my temperament and outlook. My music is the product of my temperament, and so it is Russian Music. I never consciously attempt to write Russian music; or any other kind of music, for that matter. I have been strongly influenced by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, but I have never consciously imitated anybody. I try to make my music speak simply and directly that which is in my heart at the time I am composing. If there is love there, or bitterness, or sadness, or religion, these moods become part of my music, and it becomes either beautiful or bitter or sad or religious. For music is as much a part of my living as breathing and eating. I compose music because I must give expression to my feeling, just as I talk because I must give utterance to my thoughts.”

The New Book of Modern Composers, David Ewen. Knopf. 1961

“Some people achieve a kind of immortality just by the totality with which they do or do not possess some quality or characteristic. Rachmaninov’s immortalizing totality was his scowl. He was a six-and–a-half-foot-tall scowl.”

Stravinsky

“Although certain of his works have enjoyed a phenomenal vogue with the public, Rachmaninov has no proper place in a book on contemporary music.”

Introduction to Twentieth Century Music, Joseph Machlis. W.W. Norton. 1961

And be sure to look through all three pages of some very interesting pictures posted to Rachmaninoff.org:    http://is.gd/4XmMz

Rachmaninoff's hand

Aloha,

Bill

Robert Botti:

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John Deak

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Glen Dicterow

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Arnie Lang & Chris Lamb

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Judy Nelson

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It was during the B Minor that I turned around to make it home
in time for an Indian feast prepared by one of our housemates, plus yummy rum drinks prepared by another, and this gave me a look at the waxing gibbous moon rising offshore. (And I just looked up waxing gibbous.) This portion of the walk was accompanied by Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, the Orchestral Suite No.3, thirst and hunger.

Usually I’m so busy actually working on the show and other projects that it’s tough to find the time to listen to a whole show all the way through (much less while walking on the beach at sunset). I was reminded of the joke about the two bass players chatting in the orchestra pit before the opera starts. One of them has just returned from taking a few days off. His buddy asks him how his vacation was. He says, “It was great. I actually went to see the opera one night.”

“Oh yeah? What did you see?”

“Carmen”

“Oh, I love Carmen. I always wondered what that one sounds like from out there”

“It’s great. I couldn’t believe it. You know that part where we’re playing ‘dum…dee dum dum dum…dee dum dum dum’? The soprano sings the most beautiful melody during that.”

(insert rim shot!)

I work with Bill M in New York, and then we send raw voice tracks to our crack team of editors toiling in Chicago. It’s nice to get the chance to hear a show put together, and I have to say that they do the most beautiful editing on the parts we send them that are a little bit ‘dum…dee dum dum dum…” It reminds me of how fortunate I am to be able to do this for a living.

We’re taking turns cooking dinner, and last night my wife and I made a Mexican feast, aka Taco Night. She made a delicious pork shoulder, which was shredded and used as filling, along with ground beef, black beans, guacamole, corn salsa, Chimichurri, rice and salsa from a jar.

Turns out exploring the music of the B Minor Mass doesn’t go so well with this kind of food preparation, so we didn’t get to hear the whole show last night. But tonight an evening beach walk beckons, even though it has turned grey, rainy and blustery. (The beach is actually closed by the weather, which is an odd concept for a kid from Hawai’i.) I’m thinking it might be just the right environment for the show tonight, which will focus on the crucifixus. Enjoy, and til next time…cheers.

Posted by Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music

Posted by: Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music

Dylan Thomas Caedmon collection @ Amazon.com

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
                  take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Posted by: Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music

LA Times- Michael Steinberg remembered

Posted by Jesse McQuarters, Exploring Music Producer

Continued at http://www.bartleby.com/237/11.html

Kudos for Tchaikovsky
It was back in “1812″
We were swimming in that lovely “Swan Lake”
When young “Peter” jumps up and says
I must go now! because I have a date

Now if my memory serves me correctly
His girlfriend’s name was Judy
And I tell you my fair-weathered friends
This girl was a “Sleeping Beauty”

She had beautiful long blonde hair
And eyes that you could stare at for hours
And oh! that pretty young face
Made you wanna dance the “Waltz of the Flowers”

But like everything that goes with age
So did her youthful physique
We never saw Judy again
But man she had a nice “Pathetique!”

Peter didn’t take that too lightly
It was a painful and emotional ride
In fact he got so deep in depression
He contemplated committing suicide

Kind of like “Romeo and Juliet”
Except “that one” ended a little more tragic
I guess when you draw the “Queen of Spades”
The most you can hope for is some magic

We never again heard from Peter
Except that he grew old and tired and weary
But there was a rumor that he became a writer
And wrote something called “The Sugar Plum Fairy”

A Toast to Chopin
Like a bottle of “Fine Champagne”
That was made by some delicate hand
So was the “beautiful music”
Made by my dearest “Chopin”

Those are the quoted words
Of the French novelist George Sand
She was the passionate lover of the pianist
And in her words “I still am!!!”

They can be seen in “Paris France”
In the midnight, moonlight haze
Taking their casual stroll
In a place called “Pere-Lachaise”

It’s the cemetery where Chopin’s buried
It’s the cemetery where the “greats” are stored
And it’s the place where they only come out
When they’re feeling cold or bored!

Chopin died of tuberculosis
In “1849″
He wrote polonaises, preludes and nocturnes
And played them ever so fine!

“Mendelssohn” “Schumann” and “Liszt”
Referred to him as the “Great Virtuoso!!”
To even attempt to duplicate his style
You would have to be from another “Universo!!!”

And so I “salute” thee incomparable “Chopin”
Yes I salute him through and through
And if I should ever get the chance to meet him
I would probably ask him to play a bar or two

The Ghost of Bach
Somewhere in a town in Germany
In a small club called the “Kaiserkeller”
There’s been rumors of some ancient “sounds”
Coming straight from the downstairs “Wine Cellar”

Some say it’s the “Ghost of Bach”
Because they always hear the sound of an “organ”
And it always seems to be playing those “church hymns”
Leaving them to tears of boredom!

Is it “Johann” trying to get a message
To someone from beyond the grave?
Which by the way for years was “unmarked”
In some field “where sheep once grazed”

One scholar tried to put it into perspective
With his idiotic college crap jive!
He said if that was the true “Ghost of Bach”
He would not be playing in the beer drinking dive!

Well so much for that aristocratic bohemian
Let’s look into this “spirit” from afar
The one who keeps returning and playing
And stirring up gossip in that little town bar

Now ironically and almost too eerie
Is the fact it always happens “July 28th”
And we all know that’s the day of Bach’s death
So why shouldn’t we all have faith

In the belief that his “spirit” is wandering
To get back here to rectify some thing
Or maybe he just wasn’t over((joyed))
With the ending of his “Air on the G String”

Mozart in the Midst
Has he come back for the “Requiem Mass?”
Or is he feeling just a little bit leery?
About the circumstances regarding his death
And the rumor that his killer was “Salieri”

Whatever it may be, it is eerie!
Someone of that magnitude would return to this earth
And try to put to rest the spirit
That has obviously troubled him since birth

Either way I hope he finds solitude
In his quest for closure from his past
And then maybe he can sit down and finish
“Thee unfinished” “Requiem Mass”

If Beethoven Were Here
He would “thank” the classical station
FM eighty nine point three!
For always playing thee undisputable classic
“Beethoven’s fifth sym - - fah - - nee!”

He’d thank “Cunningham” “Sweenie” and “Singer”
And “McGlaughlin” “Sohier” and “Baum”
For taking the time to explain
How his piano sonata’s came along!

And many, many, many, many others
That are heard all over the world!
Yes he would finally see that his music
Had finally become unfurled!

And last but not least he’d thank “Gillian”
For having the “greatest” name around!
And ironically enough he’d thank “God”
For “at least” letting him hear his “own” sound!

- Billy Nardozzi

Posted by: Jesse McQuarters, Producer, Exploring Music

Letter from Copland to Chavez (click image to view larger)

Page 2 of letter from Copland to Chavez (click image to view larger)

Hand-written letter from Copland to Chavez (click image to view larger)

Source: Library of Congress Aaron Copland collection

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Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans by Alan Riding

What is YOUR favorite music for these instruments?  Orchestral excerpts, concertos, solo works, chamber music- anything is game.  Let us know in the comments section!

Share your Exploring Music theme ideas in the comments below.

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