Podcast | Robert Greenberg | Speaker, Composer, Author, Professor, Historian

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), painted in 1896 by Ilya Repin We mark the birth of the Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov on March 18, 1844: 180 years ago today.  Born in the Russian town of Tikhvin – roughly 120 miles east of St. Petersburg – Rimsky-Korsakov died at the age of 64, on June 21, 1908, on his estate near the Russian town of Luga, about 85 miles south of St. Petersburg Fake It ‘til You Make It Like most kids growing up, I had various assumptions about grownups (i.e. “adults”).  As someone who has now – presumably – been an adult for very nearly a half of a century, I have learned that my assumptions – a few of which I’ve listed below – were all crazy wrong. Assumption one: at around 21, we cross the line into adulthood.   Wrong.  There are no such “lines”; we’re all changing, all the time. Assumption two: adults are emotionally mature. Wrong.  Physically, yes, I’m pushing seventy.  Emotionally? I’m roughly fifteen. On a good day. Assumption three: adults know what they’re doing. Really?  Adults only “know” what they’re doing (if they ever learn what their “doing” at all) after they’ve been doing it for decades.  Until then, they are apprentices, “learning on the job,” which are nice ways of saying “faking it”! Growing up, I had no concept of this.  I just assumed that once you got to a certain age, you actually knew what you were doing.   The Purnell School, Pottersville, New Jersey, main entrance Silly me.  I was disabused of that bit of foolishness as soon as I entered the job market when, at the age of 23, I was hired as the music teacher at a now defunct, all-girls’ private high school in Pottersville, New Jersey called the Purnell School.  Oh sure, I thought I had it all together at the time, but in retrospect I didn’t know Scheiße from Shinola (which was a brand of shoe polish that was popular during the first decades of the twentieth century).  In retrospect, my “apprenticeship” as a teacher – that period that saw me “fake it ‘til I made it” – lasted some 5 years. This doesn’t mean that I ever stopped learning on the job; hopefully, I’ll never stop getting better at what I do. It only means that it took me around 5 years to achieve what today I consider to be a passing competence at teaching. And so it was as well for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.… Continue reading, and listen without interruptions, only on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and Subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast The Robert Greenberg Store Mozart In Vienna Great Music of the 20th Century

We mark the first performance on March 11, 1851 – 173 years ago today – of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto at Venice’s storied Teatro la Fenice: The Phoenix Theater. Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in 1852, a year after the premiere of Rigoletto We set the scene.   The year was 1849.  Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813-1901) was – at the age of 36 – the most famous and popular composer of opera living and working in Italy.   Living in his hometown of Busseto, in the Parma region of northern Italy, Verdi spent the last days of 1849 and the first weeks of 1850 considering future opera projects.  He sat down and drew up a list of stories that captured his interest, a list filled with literary masterworks old and new.  At the top of the list were Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet, and The Tempest.  There was Kean, by Alexander Dumas pere and Victor Hugo’s Marion Delorme, Ruy Blas, and Le Roi s’amuse (“The King’s Jester”).  Among other works on the list were Lord George Gordon Byron’s Cain; Jean Baptiste Racine’s Phedre; Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s A Secret Grievance, a Secret Revenge; Vicomte Francois Rene de Chateaubriand’s Atala; and Count Vittorio Alfieri’s Filippo (which would eventually become the opera Don Carlo). Stifellio Francesco Maria Piave (1810-1876) Narrowing things down more than just a bit, Verdi wrote the librettist Francesco Maria Piave (1810-1876) at his home in Venice and asked him – per favore – to prepare a draft scenario for Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse,(“The King’s Jester”).  Piave consented to do so, and additionally suggested some other possible texts, including a play by the French dramatists Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois entitled Stifellio. Verdi and Piave went ahead with Stifellio, which was Verdi’s 16th (of 27) operas. It received its premiere on November 16, 1850, at the Teatro Grande in the city of Trieste, in the north-eastern corner of Italy.  To say that Stifellio has a controversial plot is a major understatement.  It’s a drama about a Protestant minister who leaves his home to preach, during which time his lonely wife takes a lover.  Having confessed her infidelity, the opera reaches its climax as the preacher forgives her adultery while delivering a sermon from his pulpit.  All in all, it was a most unusual subject for an opera composed and performed in Catholic Italy.   Just days before Stifellio’s opening, the local censors in Trieste exercised their “prerogative” and savaged the opera, cutting out whole sections of what they called “offensive text.”   Those poor, offended censors hardly knew where to start!  OMG, the protagonists were Protestant!  Actual verses from the Bible were sung onstage!  An adulterous woman was portrayed sympathetically, and then – then – she was forgiven by her husband!  Various pieces of religious paraphernalia were used as props! By the time the censors had finished with it, little of Stifellio was left untouched.  Verdi was apoplectic, and he accused the censors of having “castrated” his opera.  Somehow, Verdi, Piave, and the cast managed to stitch together what was left and went on with the show.  It was nothing short of a miracle that Stifellio wasn’t a complete flop.  It was only a partial flop, because its sympathetic audience – including the critics – were aware of its 11th hour demolition.   It’s important that we know something of Stifellio’s fate, because when censors threatened Verdi’s next project – Rigoletto – Verdi was prepared to go to war!…

“Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1843-1893), circa 1875, at the time he was composing Swan Lake We mark the first performance of the ballet Swan Lake on March 4, 1877: 147 years ago today.  Premiered at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, with music by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), choreography by the Czech-born dance master Julius Reisinger (1828-1892), and its music performed by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, the first performance of Swan Lake landed with an epic THUD, meaning not good.   Pretty much every aspect of the ballet was critically blasted.  The vast majority of the critics present found Tchaikovsky’s score to be far too “complex” for a ballet; one critic called it:  “too noisy, too ‘Wagnerian,” and too symphonic.”  A visiting correspondent by the name of Tyler Grant called the ballet: “utter hogwash, unimaginative and altogether unmemorable.” Now, admittedly, there were some problems with that premiere performance.   For example.  Anna Sobeshchanskaya (1842-1918 The famed Russian prima ballerina Anna Sobeshchanskaya (1842-1918) was originally cast in the role of Odette – the “white swan” – the star and heroine of the ballet.  She may also have been slated to dance the role of the villainous Black Swan, Odile; today it is common practice for the same ballerina to perform the parts of both Odette and Odile.  However, it is now believed that the ballet had originally called for two different dancers to dance the parts. Whatever the case, the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina – Anna Sobeshchanskaya – was to star in the original production of Swan Lake. And then, out of the blue, she was suddenly removed from the cast and replaced by an entirely inferior dancer named Pelageya Karpakova (who was also known as Polina Karpakova)! What happened? Apparently, a major figure in the Russian government (who has remained nameless over the years, a testament to his power!) had Sobeshchanskaya black-balled (or “black-swanned,” as it were) and bounced from the ballet. This government big-wig and Sobeshchanskaya had been having an affair (seedy but true; this is how ballet worked in France and Russia, where aristocrats took as their lovers ballerinas), and he had rewarded her prowess-in-the-sack and loyalty towards him with some very expensive jewelry.  Having received the jewelry, Madame Sobeshchanskaya turned around and married a fellow dancer and sold the bling for cash. A lot of cash, leaving her erstwhile fat-cat boyfriend unhappy. And so it was up to a lesser and likely under-rehearsed dancer to negotiate the virtuosic part of Odette at the premiere, a part that had been created for Anna Sobeshchanskaya.  As the replacement, Pelageya Karpakova’s performance did not go well. Then there were the issues surrounding the score Tchaikovsky composed for this, his first ballet. He was, frankly, an odd choice to be commissioned by the Imperial Theaters in 1875 to compose Swan Lake.  Okay, he was an accomplished composer with three symphonies under his belt, but in Russia, ballets were usually composed by specialists who wrote nothing but dance music.  Such dance music was generally characterized by glaringly obvious and easily followed “oom-pah-pah” type rhythmic accentuation tricked out with simple melodies set in even phrases.  Along came Tchaikovsky, who composed for ballet the way he composed for the symphony hall, writing music in which the groupings of beats are not always obvious and phrases that are not always...

George Bizet (1838-1875) in 1875 We mark the premiere on February 26, 1935 – 89 years ago today – of Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C.  The premiere took place in Basel, Switzerland, in a performance conducted by Felix Weingartner (1863-1942).  Bizet (1838-1875) never heard the symphony performed; he had died in the Paris suburbs in 1875 at the age of 36, a full 60 years before Weingartner’s premiere of his symphony.  Bizet’s Symphony in C, considered today to be a masterwork, was only “discovered” in the archives of the Paris Conservatoire in 1933, 78 years after its composition in 1855!  What If We contemplate a short list of those great (or potentially great) composers who died before their fortieth birthday. Henry Purcell (dead at 36), Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (26), Wolfgang Mozart (35), Vincenzo Bellini (33), Frédéric Chopin (39), Felix Mendelssohn (38), Lili Boulanger (24), Juan Arriaga (19), and George Gershwin (who died at the age of 38).  We should all deeply regret their early passing, not just because of the inherent tragedy of dying so young but because it is impossible not to think about what these composers might have accomplished had they at least lived Beethoven’s life span (56 years), or Sebastian Bach’s (65 years), or Richard Strauss’ (85 years), or Elliott Carter’s (103 years), or Leo Ornstein’s (106 years; though some say 109!). Leo Ornstein (1892/1895-2002) in 1981, looking darned good for his age; Ornstein’s exact date of birth is unknown, with various sources claiming 1892, 1893 or 1895 Admittedly, not everyone wonders about what those short-lived composers might have accomplished had they lived longer lives.   For example, apropos of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann (who himself didn’t live a particularly long life; 1810-1856) wrote: “It is pointless to guess at what more Schubert might have achieved. He did enough; and let them be honored who have striven and accomplished as he did.”   Rather more recently, the pianist András Schiff (born 1953) said that: “Schubert lived a very short life, but it was a very concentrated life. In 31 years, he [composed] more than other people would in 100 years, and it is needless to speculate what he could have written had he lived another 50 years. It’s irrelevant, just like with Mozart.”  Schubert (1797-1828) in 1825, three years before his death at the age of 31 At very least, I would accuse Messrs. Schumann and Schiff of being intellectual party-poopers, by denying themselves the joys of speculation.  But I also believe their assertions that speculation is “pointless,” “needless,” and “irrelevant” to be downright wrong. Why “wrong”?  Because speculating on “what if” allows us to formulate alternative outcomes, alternative outcomes that in the end help us to recognize and process more deeply what actually did happen.    (Of course, if the American theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Greene is correct, and we live in a “quilted multiverse,” then any possible event will occur an infinite number of times in an infinite number of parallel universes.  If this is true, there is no such thing as “speculation,” as anything we might “speculate upon” will already have occurred or will occur in some universe or another!) Back to our cozy, home universe. To my mind, far from being merely sport, speculating on possible outcomes allows us to sharpen our understanding of what actually did happen, and to appreciate as well the incredible web of interactive cause-and-effect that characterizes the progress of time. For example.

I am aware that Valentine’s Day is already 5 days past, but darned if the romantic warm ‘n’ fuzzies aren’t still lingering with me like a rash from poison oak. As such, I will be excused for offering up what I will admit is a belated, but nevertheless Valentine’s Day-related post. Gratitude We should all be grateful that the following Valentine’s Day-related post is not on the lines of those blogs I wrote in 2010 and 2011, blogs written for various websites in my attempt to drum up sales for my Great Courses/Teaching Company Courses. For example, I wrote a couple of Valentine’s Day-themed blogs in 2011, one for Huffpost and the other for J-Date, as in “Jewish-Dating.” For those posts – entitled “Romantic Music” – I was tasked with recommending appropriately “romantic” music for an intimate, tête-à-tête Valentine’s Day evening. This is how they began: “Fresh flowers, chilled champagne, and a candlelight dinner for two; the stereotypical trappings of a successful Valentine’s Day evening. But the sensual menu is still incomplete: smell, taste, touch, and sight are covered, but proper sound is still wanting. Yes indeed, music, the purported feast of the gods, the indispensable aural lubricant for romance, must be chosen and chosen well.” OMG; gag me with not just a spoon but an industrial-sized ladle. BTW, I will not waste your time with the music I recommended except to observe that it consisted of all the usual suspects, saccharine music for a Hallmark Holiday. One song that wasn’t on my list back then but would surely be on it today is one that reflects the cynicism with which I now hold the entire St. Valentine’s Day trip. That song is Frankie and Johnny. The Leighton Brothers, Frank (on the left, 1880-1927) and Bert (1877-1964) Frankie and Johnny There are so many different versions of the song Frankie and Johnny that to this day, no one is precisely sure who originally wrote it. (Writing in 1962, a musicologist named Bruce Redfern Buckley unearthed 291 different versions of Frankie and Johnny!) The version we are most familiar with today was created by the Leighton Brothers (Frank and Bert) along with the then well-known folk musician Ren Shields (1868-1913) in 1908. The lyric of the song tells the lurid tale of a prostitute named Frankie and her wayward boyfriend, Johnny. Here are the first nine of the song’s thirteen verses. “Frankie and Johnny were lovers, O Lordy, how they could love. They swore to be true to each other, Just as true as the stars above. He was her man but he done her wrong. Frankie and Johnny went walking, Johnny had a brand new suit. Frankie paid a hundred dollars, Just to make her man look cute. He was her man but he done her wrong. Johnny said, “I’ve got to leave you, But I won't be very long. Don’t you wait up for me, honey, Nor worry while I’m gone.” He was her man but he done her wrong. Frankie went down to the corner, Stopped in to buy her some beer. Says to the fat bartender, “Has my Johnny man been here?” He was her man but he done her wrong. “Well, I ain’t going to tell you no story, Ain’t going to tell you no lie. Johnny went by ‘bout an hour ago, With a girl named Nellie Bly. He is your man but he’s doing you wrong.” Frankie went home in a hurry, She didn’t go there for fun. She hurried home to get ahold Of Johnny's shootin’ gun. He was her man but he’s doing her wrong. Frankie took a cab at the corner, Says, driver step on this cab.

February 12 is one of those remarkable days in music history, remarkable for all the notable events that took place on this day. So: before getting to our featured topic, let us acknowledge some of those events and share some links to previous Music History Monday and Dr. Bob Prescribes posts that dealt with those events. Carl Czerny (1791-1857) On this day in 1812, Beethoven’s student (and friend), the Austrian composer, pianist, and teacher Carl Czerny (1791-1857) performed as the soloist in the premiere of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, the “Emperor.” Czerny was the subject of Music History Monday on July 15, 2019. We wish a heartfelt farewell to the German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, who died on this date in Cairo, Egypt in 1894, at the age of 64. Von Bülow was the subject of both Music History Monday and Dr. Bob Prescribes just last month, on January 8 and 9,respectively. Birthday greetings to the American composer Roy Harris (1898-1979), who was born on this date in 1898 in Chandler, Oklahoma. Harris and his Symphony No. 3 were featured in my Dr. Bob Prescribes post on April 9, 2019. On February 12, 1924 – exactly 100 years ago today – George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere at Aeolian Hall in New York City. Gershwin (1898-1937), accompanied by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, played the solo piano part. George Gershwin and his music have been featured regularly on my Patreon page, including Music History Monday on July 11, 2022; and in Dr. Bob Prescribes posts on October 20, 2020, and January 5, 2021. Finally, we mark the death on February 12, 1959, of the American composer George Antheil (1900-1959) at the age 58, in New York City. Antheil was the subject of Music History Monday on July 8, 2019. With no further ado, it is – finally – time to move on to today’s topic! Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) in 1792, by John Hoppner and commissioned in 1791 by the future British King George IV when he was the Prince of Wales On February 12, 1797 – 227 years ago today –– Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 76, No. 3, nicknamed “Emperor” reputedly received its premiere. The quartet’s nickname – “Emperor” – stems from the hymn tune Haydn employed in its second movement theme and variations, a hymn Haydn had composed just a few months before and which was adopted as the Austrian national anthem in 1797. This elegant and stately hymn, through a route most circuitous (a route that will be detailed in a bit), eventually became the national anthem of Nazi Germany (an anthem that began with the words Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, or “Germany, Germany above all else”). Had Joseph Haydn – who was a kind, considerate, gentle, optimistic, old-world man of peace and good-will – had even an inkling that a depraved, criminal regime was going to adopt his hymn as its anthem (and as a result forever link his hymn with that regime), he would likely first have vomited and then burned the manuscript of the hymn and every copy he could get his hands on. The Nazi’s adoption of Haydn’s hymn for its own, political ends,

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813-1901) in 1887 On February 5, 1887 – 137 years ago today – Giuseppe Verdi’s 25th and second-to-last opera, Otello, received its premiere at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.  The premiere was the single greatest triumph in Verdi’s sensational career.  But it was a premiere – and an opera – that was a long time coming. Background He was born on October 10, 1813, in the sticks: in the tiny village of Le Roncole, in the northern Italian province of Parma.   Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, received its premiere at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in November 1839, when Verdi was 26 years old.  Oberto was a modest success – it received 13 performances – and based on its success, the management at La Scala offered Verdi a contract to compose three more operas.  Verdi had begun his second opera – a comedy called A King for a Day – when catastrophe struck: he lost his wife and two young children to disease during a horrific, 20-month span between 1839 and 1840.  Rendered nearly insane by the deaths, Verdi nevertheless battled through his grief and managed to complete A King for a Day.  The opera received its premiere on September 5, 1840; it was booed off the stage and its run was cancelled on the spot after that one performance.  For Verdi, the experience was excruciatingly painful, and it’s one he never forgot.  Twenty years later, still mad as hell, Verdi wrote: “[The audience] abused the opera of a poor, sick young man, harassed by the pressure of the schedule and heartsick and torn by horrible misfortune!  Oh, if the audience then had – I do not say applauded, but had borne that opera in silence – I would not have had the words to thank them.  Today, I accept the public; I accept its whistles, on the condition that I am not asked to give back anything in exchange for its applause.” Verdi in 1839, as painted by Giuseppe Molentini From that night in September of 1840 to the end of his life, over sixty years later, Verdi’s personal relationship with the public was set in his own mind, and, as far as Verdi was concerned, it was not an affectionate relationship.  He later wrote that as a result of the fiasco: “At 26, I knew what ‘the public’ meant.  From then on, successes have never made the blood rush to my head, and fiascos have never discouraged me.  If I went on with this unfortunate career, it was because at 26 it was too late for me to do anything else.” Verdi was a tough, taciturn, straight-talking, no-nonsense man to begin with.  The loss of his family and the failure of A King for a Day made him doubly (triply? quadruply?) so.  Still, with the help and support of La Scala’s director, Bartolomeo Merelli, Verdi continued to battle through his grief over his family and rage over the fiasco that was A King for a Day to compose his third opera, entitled Nabucco.  Nabucco, which received its premiereon March 9, 1842 (also at La Scala) was a smash hit from which Verdi never looked back.   Verdi in 1842, at the age of 29 The Galley Slave No composer ever worked harder than did Giuseppe Verdi.  In the 14 years between 1839 and 1853, he composed nineteen operas.  Verdi called these his “galley slave years” because he worked like one: 16 to 18 hours a day, always under deadline, endlessly harried by librettists, producers, singers, critics, and conductors; always emotionally depressed and physically ill with some bug or another. According to Verdi, he hated the whole stinkin’ opera trip, and as early as 1845 – at the age of just 32 – he was a...

We mark the premiere on January 29, 1781 – 243 years ago today – of Wolfgang Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, Re di Creta (“Idomeneo, King of Crete”).  With a libretto by Giambattista Varesco (1735-1805), which was adapted from a French story by Antoine Danchet (1671-1748), itself based on a play written in 1705 by the French tragedian Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1674 -1762; that’s a lot of writing credits!), Idomeneo received its premiere at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany.  Idomeneo was a hit, and it constitutes not just Mozart’s first operatic masterwork but, by consensus, the single greatest Italian-language opera seria ever composed! Setting the Biographical Scene The complete Mozart family portrait painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce in 1780. Wolfgang is at the center; his sister Maria Anna (known as Nannerl) is on the left and his father Leopold on the right. The painting on the wall at center depicts Wolfgang’s mother, Anna Maria, who died in Paris in 1778. On January 15th, 1779, the 23-year-old Wolfgang Mozart returned home to Salzburg after having been away for 15 months.  His trip, which had taken him primarily to Mannheim and Paris, had been both a professional and personal disaster.  He had left Salzburg with his mother, filled with high hopes, high spirits, and dreams of finding a permanent job and romance.  He returned without his mother (who had died in Paris), without a job, without any money, and without the young woman he had met and fallen in love with during the trip (one Aloysia Weber), who had rejected his proposal of marriage and sent him packing. In returning – at his father Leopold’s insistence – to Salzburg and the dreaded employ of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo (to say nothing for the life of chastity required by both his father and the archbishop!), Mozart was painfully aware that he was wasting his time, his talent, and his testosterone.  And he was furious about it. By 1780, the now 24-year-old Mozart was both personally and professionally suffocating there in Salzburg.  He desperately wanted out and despaired that life was passing him by.   More than anything, Mozart wanted to compose opera (something that was difficult to do in Salzburg, given that the archbishop had closed all the theaters!).  Mozart was, at his core, a person of the theater and lived for everything the opera theater entailed.  He wrote: “I have only to hear an opera discussed, I have only to sit in a theater, hear the orchestra tuning their instruments – oh, I am quite beside myself at once.”  The Stars Align As the old line goes, “sometimes, it’s not just what you know but who you know that matters!” In 1780, that line applied very nicely to Mozart, for which we all must be grateful.  Because it was thanks to his own, hard-won personal contacts that he received the commission for Idomeneo, a commission that changed not only Mozart’s life but the very history of Western music, taken as widely as we please.… See what happened, only on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and Subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast The Robert Greenberg Store

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) in 1858 We mark the premiere on January 22, 1859 – 165 years ago today – of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, in the German city of Hanover. No other work by Brahms caused him such effort; never before or after did he so agonize over a piece, working and reworking it over and over again. Background On October 1, 1853, the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms showed up at the door of Robert and Clara Schumann’s house in Düsseldorf, in the Rhineland.  At the time, Brahms was pretty much a complete unknown outside of his hometown of Hamburg.  He was visiting the Schumann’s at the behest of the violinist and conductor Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) who, although only two years older than Brahms, was already world famous.   Physically, the young Brahms looked virtually nothing like the bearded, portly, cigar-smoking, bear-like dude of his later years; at twenty he was described as being: “a shy, awkward, nearsighted young man, blonde, delicate, almost wispy, boyish in appearance as well as in manner (the beard was still 22 years away) and with a voice whose high pitch was a constant embarrassment to him.” Clara (1819-1896) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856) circa 1850 This 20-year-old kid might not have looked like our familiar image of Brahms, but his extraordinary talents as a composer and pianist were already there, and in spades.  He performed some his early music for Robert and Clara and they were, very simply, gob smacked.  That evening Clara wrote in her journal: “Here is one who comes as if sent from God!  He played us sonatas and scherzos of his own, all of them rich in fantasy, depth of feeling and mastery of form.  Robert could see no reason to suggest any changes.  A great future lies before him, for when he comes to the point of writing for orchestra, then he will have found the true medium for his imagination.”  Robert’s diary entry that night was rather more abbreviated: “Visit from Brahms (a genius).” Brahms stayed with the Schumanns for a full month, and bonded with them like a wad of gum to the bottom of your high tops. … Continue reading only on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and Subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast The Robert Greenberg Store Mozart In Vienna Great Music of the 20th Century Understanding the Fundamentals of Music

We 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. Gioachino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868) in 1815 by Vicenzo Camuccini 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 Rossini (1758-1839) and Anna (née Guidarini) Rossini (1771-1827).  Giuseppe Rossini (1758-1839) Rossini’s father Giuseppe was a professional trumpet and horn player, and as such was Gioachino’s first music teacher.  (The adult Rossini liked to say that: “Sono figlio di corna,” “I am the son of a horn!”) Anna (née Guidarini) Rossini (1771-1827) “Son of a horn” he might have been, but when it came to his real musical education, it was as the son of an opera singer.  Rossini’s mother Anna was, at the time of his birth in 1792, a seamstress by trade.  But changes in Italian society allowed her to make a second career as a professional singer.  According to Rossini’s biographer Richard Osborne (Rossini; Oxford University Press): “Italian Society began to change in the late 1790s, not least in the arts, where a process of democratization set in.  Admission to academic institutions became easier for ordinary folk; new music was encouraged from a wider variety of sources; ticket prices fell; women found it easier to take paid employment on the stage.  The last development had enormous repercussions for the Rossini family, as it allowed Anna Rossini to earn useful money as a singer.” According to her son Gioachino, Anna Rossini was a “natural,” with a voice, to quote her son: “as sweet as her appearance.” She wasn’t able to read music, but like her son Gioachino, she had a phenomenal musical memory.  All together, she mastered and performed 15 roles, all of them from comic operas. Anna Rossini began her singing career in the 1797-1798 season at Ancona’s Teatro della Fenice, where she performed as the second soprano in operas by Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816), Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801), and Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784). She concluded her career in the fall of 1808 as the prima donna assoluta (“the absolute first lady”: the starring soprano) at the Teatro Communale in Bagnacavallo, a town about 50 miles northwest of Pesaro. By the time Gioachino was ten years old, he was going on tour with his mother, watching rehearsals from the house and following performances from backstage. It was a musical and operatic education like no other, and by the age of 13, he was hooked: he was a person of the theater.  As it turned out, Anna wasn’t the only musical “natural” in the Rossini clan. … Continue reading, and listen uninterrupted, on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and Subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast Related Courses

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) in 1871 We 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 required maximum stimulation at all times whether he was awake or asleep.  (Yes, even asleep.  As a young child he kept his many siblings awake at night by shouting and talking while he slept.) Wagner was not born a particularly healthy person, and as an adult, his personal habits and constant excitability exacted a considerable toll on his already compromised constitution.  Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1903 (Gould, George M.; The Ill-health of Richard Wagner, JAMA 1903; 51: 293 and 368; as articles go, this is an oldie but a goodie!), Dr. George Gould described Wagner as having the collective symptoms of: “[Thomas] DeQuincy [best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater]; [Thomas] Carlisle; [Charles] Darwin, [Thomas Henry] Huxley; [Robert] Browning, [Herbert] Spencer, and [James] Parkinson all together and all at once.” The illnesses shared by these illustrious individuals included migraine headaches, severe gastric issues, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. They were all workaholics who, according to Dr. Gould, drove themselves until they were:  “threatened either by disease or by despair.” From childhood on, Wagner suffered recurrent skin disease that has been variously diagnosed as eczema or erysipelas.  He suffered from what were likely migraine headaches his entire life, complaining about “the nerves of his brain.” As an adult he suffered from depression and severe anxiety, and thought obsessively about death.  (As early as 1852, as a young man of 39, he wrote: “I am daily thinking of my death.”) He was an insomniac and subject to rheumatic pains and constant gastric discomforts.  Physically, he was a mess.  But migraines and dyspepsia were not likely to kill Wagner, as opposed to his problems with his heart. Those problems began in December of 1873, when Wagner was 60, at a time when he was desperately trying to put together the funding for his Bayreuth Festival, his grand monument to himself and his art (more on the festival in just a moment).  The anguish and stress he put himself through and the anxiety and depression he experienced began to affect his heart.  (According to Wagner’s wife Cosima, writing in her diary: “by starting the festival, he signed his own death-warrant; he seldom had a good night and his attacks of cramp about the heart became more and more frequent.”) The Bayreuth Festival The Bayreuth Festival – held in the picturesque, medieval Bavarian city of Bayreuth in southern Germany – is an annual music festival/Wagner lovefest dedicated to performing the works of Richard Wagner his very self.… Continue reading, and listen without interruption, only on Patreon!

We 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.  Anonymous portrait believed to be that of Johannes Ockeghem (circa 1410-1497) 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 side of the mountains.”  The mountains in question are the alps, so in fact, generally, the word refers to people “from the other side of the alps”: from northern and northwestern Europe.  But when used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it meant something quite more specific than that: it referred to musicians from what today are northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg.  Johannes Ockeghem was just such an oltremontano, having been born in Belgium close to the northern border of France. Johannes Ockeghem (circa 1410-1497) “Born circa 1410, died 1497.”  Back in the fifteenth century, if someone became famous – and at the time of his death, Johannes Ockeghem was famous across Europe – their death date was (and remains) common knowledge.  But for people born in the fifteenth century (and earlier), birth dates and early accounts of their lives before they became famous, well, that’s a different matter entirely.  Generally, we know next to nothing about the birth dates and early lives of ordinary people born in the fifteenth century and before, and that includes Johannes Ockeghem.  In fact, we’re not even sure how he spelled his name.  We use “Ockeghem” today because that spelling came from a document – now lost – in which he supposedly signed his name using that spelling.  But other spellings of his name include Ogkegum, Okchem, Hocquegam, and Ockegham. Here’s some stuff we do know.   Johannes Ockeghem was considered by his contemporaries, as he is considered today, to be – along with Guillaume DuFay (circa 1397-1474), Antoine Busnois (circa 1430-1492), and Josquin Desprez (circa 1450-1521) – the greatest and most influential composer of the fifteenth century.   (For those of us who may not be familiar with the names of the oltremontani Ockeghem, DuFay, Busnois, and Desprez, I would be so bold as to suggest that they were equivalent, in their time, to the Vienna-based quartet of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.  In terms of these Renaissance composers’ talent and impact on the history of Western music, I am not exaggerating.) For reason’s already explained, we know nothing about Ockeghem’s early life.  Like most composers of his time, he almost certainly started his musical life as a church chorister, likely in the city of Mons, a few miles east of his hometown of Saint-Ghislain. The first documentary mention of Ockeghem’s activity as a musician date to June, 1443, when he is listed as being among the chanteurs – the singers – at the Church of Our Lady, in Antwerp. His initial fame was, indeed, as a singer: he was a basso and was reputed to have a rich, flexible, and unerringly accurate voice.   He was described by the people that knew him, including the famed humanist Erasmus, as being: “exceptionally engaging: honest, virtuous, kind, generous, charitable, and pious.”  Ockeghem’s friend, the cleric Francesco Florio (1428-1484) described him th...

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) in Paris, circa 1955 We 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 rock ‘n’ roll history to mark. The Beatles rooftop concert, January 30, 1969 On January 30, 1969 – 54 years ago today – the Beatles, joined by the keyboard player Billy Preston, performed their final live concert.  The venue was unusual: a hastily constructed stage on the rooftop of their five-story Apple Corps (their record company) headquarters, at 3 Savile Row: smack dab in the middle of the fashion district in London’s tony Mayfair neighborhood.  (I cannot resist the joke: how do you get a rock band onto a roof?  You tell them the beer is on the house.) Badaboom. A couple of weeks before the rooftop concert eventually took place, Paul McCartney had suggested that the Beatles should perform a concert: “in a place we’re not allowed to do it … like we should trespass, go in, set up and then get moved. Getting forcibly ejected, still trying to play your numbers, and the police lifting you.” The shock value of such a “concert” was sure to generate awesome publicity for the Beatles just released (on January 13, 1969) Yellow Submarine album.  Still, it wasn’t until January 26 – just four days before the concert – that the Beatles and their management decided to go ahead with their impromptu, rooftop recital.   No announcement of the event was made ahead of time.  Instead, the Beatles and Billy Preston took their places on the rooftop stage and started playing at around 12:30 pm, smack-dab in the middle of London’s lunchtime break, with lots of people out and about.  Word quickly spread that a sensational event was taking place on Savile Row, and it wasn’t the opening of a new haberdashery; after all, The Beatles had not played in public for 2½ years: not since their performance at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29th, 1966.    Crowds quickly began to assemble in the surrounding streets, and in the windows and on the roofs of surrounding buildings.  (So much for George Harrison’s fear that they would be performing “only for chimneys.”)  Soon enough, streets became impassable and the doors to businesses blocked.  Given that the blocked streets included Savile Row and Regent Street (the latter a major thoroughfare); and that the blocked businesses constituted some of the ritziest in the city, not everyone was overjoyed with the spontaneous concert.  … Continue reading, and listen without interruption, only on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and Subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast Related Robert Greenberg Courses How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition

Paul Leroy Robeson (1898-1976) in 1942 We 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 “normal” people.  And he had to fight for every one of those lives, growing up a black person in early twentieth century America. “Larger than Life” The English-language idiom “larger than life” describes people “who are better and stronger and smarter than the average Joe”: individuals imbued with characteristics and abilities far beyond those of “ordinary” human beings. Typically, the idiom is reserved for fictional characters, who are gifted with superhuman (or nearly so) qualities and abilities. The heroes, warriors, gods, and goddesses of myths and legends are, by definition, “larger than life.” Achilles, Hercules, Zeus, Odysseus, Thor, Brünnhilde (and many, many more) would all qualify.  Comic book characters and superheroes are likewise, by their nature, “larger than life.” Certain other fictional characters become larger than life thanks to their singular identity: thanks to their stature, their presence, and their flair. Love them or hate them, we remember them.  For example, Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins; Cruella de Vil and Scarlet O’Hara; Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes would all qualify. Employed judiciously, “larger than life” can also be used to describe an actual human being, providing that person’s life, abilities, personality, and accomplishments truly distinguish them from the rest of us.  When used to describe an actual person, the idiom gets its power from its use of figurative license, since, in fact, it’s impossible to actually quantify the “size” of a life. According to an entry in languagehumanities.org: “The use of exaggeration is what gives this phrase its particular power. Especially when it is used in reference to an actual person, there can hardly be a greater compliment than to call someone “larger than life.” That is why it is usually reserved for only the most noteworthy personalities, or else its impact would be somewhat lessened.” “Larger than life,” a physical giant among men: the larger than life Paul Robeson leading workers in singing The Star-Spangled Banner at the Moore Shipyard in Oakland, California, September of 1942 Paul Robeson (1898-1976) was truly “larger than life.” Robeson’s life as a singer, actor, athlete, intellectual, and activist; as a Black American aggressively and publicly battling racism and Jim Crow; as a socialist and, to many, a communist dupe and traitor to America defies easy telling.  As such, this post is going to focus on Robeson’s preternatural talent and artistry, and will trace his life though 1933, the year he made the film, The Emperor Jones. Through interviews and archival footage, tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will briefly observe his political awakening and subsequent activism, finally focusing on the controversial but still breathtaking The Emperor Jones, “breathtaking” thanks to Robeson’s for-the-ages performance.… Continue reading, and listen without interruption, only on Patreon! Become...

Anton Felix Schindler (1795-1864) We 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 of those documents (some of which he later sold off) in order to make himself look better in the eyes of history.  Boo-hoo for Schindler: the “making-himself-look-better-in-the-eyes-of-history” thing didn’t work, and today he is regarded as the patron saint of lying and thieving employees. Among the Beethovenian documents Anton Schindler took upon himself to “remove for safekeeping” were Beethoven’s so-called “Conversation Books.” Beethoven’s Conversation Books Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) in 1803 It took an agonizingly long time for Beethoven to go completely deaf. His hearing loss began in 1796, in his 26th year: a buzzing in his ears and a slow but progressive loss of high frequency hearing.  By the fall of 1802, Beethoven had cut himself off from much of his world out of fear his infirmity would be discovered.  Having been assaulted by doctors and the useless (and often painful) remedies they prescribed, Beethoven had come to realize that his condition was incurable and irreversible, and he considered suicide.  But he survived his crisis by convincing himself that like the great man of his age – Napoleon Bonaparte (1767-1821) – he (Beethoven) would struggle against his “enemies” (fate, despair, and physical disability) and emerge victorious through his music! Beethoven’s ear-trumpets, as displayed at the Beethoven Haus Museum in Bonn Beethoven was still playing the piano in public and attempting to conduct as late as 1812.  Between 1816 and 1818 he employed various ear-trumpets built for him by his erstwhile friend (and the presumed inventor of the metronome) Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (1772-1838).   Sadly, by 1818 Beethoven’s deafness had advanced to the point where the ear-trumpets had become useless. From 1818 to 1827 (the year of his death), Beethoven carried around blank books in which friends and acquaintances could write down their side of a conversation, conversations during which Beethoven would speak out loud.  Beethoven also used the books for “private” purposes: to jot down notes and ideas, drafts for letters and other documents, shopping lists, and even some brief compositional sketches.  … Continue reading (and listen without interruption), only on Patreon! Become a Patron!  Listen and subscribe to the Music History Monday Podcast