Smetana: Date Revisions and Slight change for Wk. 1

The Dates I would like to use for Smetana Wk. 1 should be as follows: Macbeth and the Witches, 1859, Brandenburgers in Bohemia, 1864, Bartered Bride, 1866, Rev. 1869, Dalibor, 1867, Libuse, 1872. I lazily asked Bonnie to put in dates for Smetana, and I think she found first performance and or revision dates. I will change it in the on-line syllabus, but the handouts tomorrow will need to be adjusted. Printing materials for use in class may prove problematical for a while, there have been significant protocol changes in the Graham School hand-out printing operations, to which I’ll need to adjust, so online materials could very well be more up to date than actual handouts. Macbeth and the Wiches as well as Brandenburgers in Bohemia will be included tomorrow. That stuff is too good to lose!

Michael Tilson Thomas - "Keeping Score" Web Site

Keeping Score is a program by Michael Tilson Thomas that combines live performances, a book, DVD series and web site, and PBS programs to focus in depth on a few pieces and why they are influential. This is an ideal resource for John’s “What to Listen for in Classical Music” and “Intro to Music Literacy” students, but this former music grad student enjoyed playing with it too.

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A Note on Smetana's Macbeth

The orchestral version of “Macbeth and the Witches’ is, according to Brian Large, made by somebody named Otakar Jeremias. David’s research is correct, unsurprisingly! The orchestration is brilliant in the extreme. Nevertheless, the novelty of the piece is not primarily due to the orchestration.

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A Splendid CD

Smetana: Macbeth and the Witches; Dvorak: Prelude to Spectre’s Bride, The Water Goblin, and The Hussites, Prague Symp.With Smetacek, Czech Phil with Chalarala, on Urania.

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A Dream Tristan I Never Dreamed Of, But Should Have

Every winter it seems like “something’s going around at work” but this is ridiculous! Six singers have made unscheduled Met debuts in the past two weeks, and one, the American tenor Robert Dean Smith, offered a Tristan that ought to go down as one of those “Were you there?” moments.

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Most Transformative Classical Compositions Ever?

Vote on the classical pieces that “changed the game” and select the musical program for the 2008 Chicago Humanities Festival.

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Do We Know Johann Sebastian Bach?

Updated on Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 12:57 by John Gibbons

Harold Fromm doesn’t think we see Bach as a man, a personality. “Bach is in the very chemistry of Western musical blood, like red cells, white cells, and platelets in our material plasma. But if Bach is The Father, why hasn’t he fired the popular imagination?”

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Backstage at the Opera

Heather Mac Donald is intrigued by the backstage insights that add so much to the Met’s movie theater broadcast program. For a longer look at some of the unsung (but not totally unsinging) backstage crews who make opera possible, Bonnie recommends a wonderful documentary about life as a Ring Cycle stage hand.

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A Tale of Dvorak in Two Cities

Updated on Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 11:21 by John Gibbons

Those taking John’s upcoming Dvorak Class may expect to learn about the composer’s place in the “nationalism in music” movement that swept through Europe in the 19th century. But one of the more interesting parts of Dvorak’s biography is his championing of an American nationalism in music during his time in the United States in the 1890s.

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Rooting for Prokofiev at the Oscars

Updated on Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:43 by John Gibbons

Suzie Templeton’s stop-motion, non-narrated retelling of Prokofiev’s 1936 work Peter and the Wolf is nominated in the Animated Short Film category. Watch the movie and learn more about Peter and the Wolf.

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