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?”
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.
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.
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.
Updated on Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 10:05 by
John Gibbons
Bob Simon of 60 Minutes wonders if Gustavo Dudamel is (to paraphrase him) the Barack Obama of conductors.
My suggestions for romantic choices from purely instrumental works without romantic programs (i.e. without cheating).
Updated on Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 01:15 by
John Gibbons
I recently promised to devote special attention on this site to Entartete Musik (music deemed “degenerate” in the Third Reich). My first subject is Viktor Ullmann, a composition student of Schoenberg, a conducting protege of Zemlinsky, and a leader of musical life in the Terezin concentration camp before being murdered in Auschwitz in September 1944. Our Ullmann Resource Guide is still taking shape, but I wanted to offer this unique preview from my YouTube travels.
While blogging about Renee Fleming’s performance of “Ich ging zu ihm,” I mentioned in passing that Korngold’s opera was considered Entartete Musik (“degenerate music”). What does this mean?
Entartete (“degenerate” or “decadent” in English) was Nazi epithet for art and music the regime considered objectionable for racial or ideological reasons. Korngold, as a Jewish composer, was automatically in this category, but race was not the only way to be designated decadent. Ties with Jewish friends and colleagues would do it, as Anton Webern (somewhat a Hitler supporter in the early years) would learn. Content (like the black characters in Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf) would do it. Being too modern or too jazzy (i.e. “African”) qualified as well. (See our recommended books.)
The Nazi campaign against many of its best musicians was part of a larger, more notorious campaign against modern art, which in 1937 climaxed in a multi-city exhibition of “degenerate” art selected from thousands of pieces stolen from museums. The following year, an exhibit on degenerate music opened in Düsseldorf. An image of the Entartete Musik exhibition catalog can seen here. (Warning: it’s pretty offensive.)
Decca released an Entartete Musik CD series beginning in the 1990s, with special emphasis on more rarely performed works.
Korngold was among the lucky ones — he made it to Hollywood and wrote several popular film scores. But some of the composers mentioned in this Decca press release (Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullman) died in the Holocaust. I will try to get together a list of the “degenerate” composers and performers along with their main works and fates. For now, I just have a great reading list on degenerate music.“From a purely musical point of view, the “Entartete Musik” series has, with unanimous international critical acclaim, brought back to life more than 30 forgotten key works from the first half of this century by composers such as Braunfels, Goldschmidt, Haas, Korngold, Krása, Krenek, Ullmann and Waxman. These recordings may help the listener imagine what the musical life in Europe was before its destruction by the Nazis, and what it might have been if these great branches had not been abruptly cut off.” (Decca press release)
John Gibbons
Several readers have alerted us to this performance of Renee Fleming singing the Korngold aria “Ich ging zu ihm” from Das Wunder Der Heliane. Learn a little more about this rarely-performed work.
Yes, all four guys are playing “Bolero” (in four parts) on a single cello.
