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

We mark the birth on November 22, 1913 – 108 years ago today - of the English composer, pianist, and conductor Edward Benjamin Britten in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on the eastern coast of England, roughly 105 miles northeast of London. He died in nearby Aldeburgh on December 4, 1976, at the age of 63. The danger of overstatement is great when tossing around superlatives, but with Britten it’s no danger at all. He was not just the most important English composer of the twentieth century; he was quite arguably the most important English-born composer since Henry Purcell, who was born in London in 1659, 246 years before Britten. Britain composed scads of music (that’s a musical term, “scads”): orchestral music, choral music, chamber music, vocal music, and film music as well. But pride of place must go to his dramatic works: his War Requiem (of 1962) and his fifteen operas. Those operas include Peter Grimes (1945), Billy Budd (1951), Turn of the Screw (1954), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), Prodigal Son (1968), and Death in Venice (1974). Britten’s operas constitute, by any measure, the most significant body of opera composed during the twentieth century. Britten was lucky enough to have experienced fame and fortune in his lifetime; as “Baron Britten, of Aldeburgh in the County of Suffolk,” he was the first composer ever to be granted a life peerage. Britten’s was a rich, intense, and not uncontroversial life. This post will focus on his first 28 years: from his birth until 1941, the period that saw his “making of a composer.” Tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will pick up in 1941 and will focus on Britten’s String Quartet No. 1 of 1941. See the full transcript, and join me, on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/posts/59011726 See my latest courses on sale now at https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/sale/

We will observe the first performances that occurred on this date and contemplate, as well, the nature and reality of a “first performance” in a moment. But first. I know; I know. We collectively wait, with breaths bated, for today’s “This Day in Musical Stupid.” Sadly, aside from this very post, I have not been able to dig up any particular date-related event that would so qualify. However, I did find a brief but compelling item that qualifies under the heading, “This Day in Musical ENVY”, the envy being my own. Here’s the item. On November 15, 1956 – 65 years ago today – the 21-year-old Elvis Presley (1935-1977) celebrated his new-found success by buying himself a brand-new Harley Davidson motorcycle. He spent the remainder of the day tooling around Memphis on his new bike with a “friend” nestled on the seat behind him: the then 18-year-old actress, Natalie Wood (1938-1981). Okay people: let’s put ourselves in Elvis Presley’s riding boots. Can we imagine being 21 years old, poised at the edge of phenomenal fame and fortune, buying a Harley and driving around town with Natalie Wood’s arms around you, her young, nubile body pressed up around your back? Think about it. “This Day in Envy” is right! I will now attempt to lower my temperature. First Performances We contemplate the nature of a “premiere”: of a “first performance.” (Having been witness to over 50 premieres of my own, to say nothing of those of my friends and colleagues, I feel this is a subject I can address with some degree of experience.) I have never jumped from an airplane. I have never surfaced too rapidly from a deep dive. I have never been pregnant and thus have never experienced morning sickness. I have never seen Steve Bannon naked. Nevertheless, I have experienced the nausea and “the bends”-like pain unique to experiencing a premiere of my own work. (I have for decades espoused the placement of a barf-bag under the seat of any composer or playwright about to experience the special “joys” of a premiere performance.) The older I get, the more I realize that I am no different, better, or worse than the vast majority of human beings going back as far as we please. With slight variations, I am convinced that we all feel the same (momentary) joy and (comparatively sustained) despair, grief, fleeting happiness, fear, giddiness, anxiety, paranoia, pride, embarrassment, anticipation and disappointment, love and dislike, self-love and self-loathing, etc., etc., blah and blah. If the human condition was a house, I would suggest it would be a broken down fixer-upper in need of lots of TLC. I’ve made these blanket statements about what I perceive to be our shared “condition” in order to support the following observation: I do not believe my physical and emotional reactions to a premiere are particularly different from anyone else’s. So here’s my personal take on creation, rehearsals, and premieres as they are experienced by composers and playwrights.… See the full transcript — and join me — on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/58709737/ See Robert Greenberg Courses On Sale at https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/sale/

We mark the death on November 8, 1833 – 188 years ago today – of the Austrian pianist, composer, and Benedictine monk, Maximilian Stadler. Born on August 4, 1748, in the Austrian city of Melk, Abbé Stadler died in his adopted home city of Vienna. Witnesses to History We contemplate “witnesses to history,” who I’m going to categorize as “chroniclers” and “bystanders”. “Chroniclers” would be those individuals who, advertently or inadvertently, were witness to historical events which they then reported, firsthand. See the full transcript — and subscribe — on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/58449878/ See Robert Greenberg's The Great Courses at https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/courses/

We mark the American operatic debut on November 1, 1954 – 67 years ago today – of “La Divina” – “the divine one” - meaning Maria Callas at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Callas performed her signature role of Norma in Vincenzo Bellini’s opera of the same name under the baton of Nicola Rescigno. I have never envied great athletes or dancers, except perhaps for the income potential of the former. My (general) lack of envy stems from the all-too-brief shelf life of such careers. With rare exception – Phil Niekro, George Blanda, George Foreman, and Tom Brady come to mind – most top athletes and dancers hit their prime in their twenties. By their thirties, wear and tear and the aging process have damaged their bodies and eroded their skills and will soon enough bring their careers to an end. (Magnificent though they still are, Steph Curry [33 years old, born 1988] and LeBron James [presently still 36 years old, born 1984] are considered to be among the “old men” of their sport, that being professional basketball. An old man at 33? Please.) What professional athletes, dancers, and musicians all have in common is that they will have begun doing what they do at a young age. The sorts of motor skills, neural connections, and musculature high-end athletes, dancers, and musicians require must be wired in and built up while the body develops. What this means is that from almost the beginning of their lives, their emotional well-being is inextricably linked to their self-identity as athletes, dancers, and musicians. And this is why I’ve never envied athletes or dancers. You see, barring a major injury or a chronic inflammatory disease like arthritis or tendonitis, musicians can continue playing their instruments at a professional level into their eighth, ninth, and even their tenth decades. But the bodies of athletes and dancers break down, and at a fairly young age they are forced by physical reality to abandon that one thing that has dominated and defined their lives to that time. For many athletes and dancers, “retirement” can mark a harrowing emotional crash and burn. Some athletes and dancers quit while they’re on top, while others drag out their careers for as long as they can, their deteriorating skills revealed for all to see, shadows of their former selves.… Continue reading, and join me, on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/58151955/

We mark the world premiere – on October 25, 1885, 136 years ago today – of Johannes Brahms’ fourth and final symphony. Performed by the superb Meiningen Court Orchestra, the performance was conducted by Brahms himself. It went well. We’ll get to Herr Doktor Professor Brahms in a bit. But first, some gratuitous, auto back slapping. I began writing these Music History Monday posts in September of 2016. That was when Melanie Smith, President of San Francisco Performances (for which I am the Music-Historian-in-Residence) asked me to write some sort of regular feature for SFP’s Facebook page. Here’s the first paragraph of my first post: a celebration of the birthday of Anton Diabelli (1771-1858, as in Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations) that appeared on September 5, 2016: “Welcome to what will become a weekly feature here on the San Francisco Performances Facebook page, ‘Music History Monday.’ (As titles go that’s about as thrilling as root canal, but it is an accurate description of the feature’s content so run with it we will.) Every Monday I will dredge up some timely, perhaps intriguing and even, if we are lucky, salacious chunk of musical information relevant to that date, or to San Francisco Performances’ concert schedule, or to . . . whatever. If on (rare) occasion these features appear a tad irreverent, well, that’s okay: we would do well to remember that cultural icons do not create and make music but rather, people do, and people can do and say the darndest things.” (For our information, I began writing these Music History Monday posts a full two years before I signed on with Patreon.) I will say with no small bit of pride (deadly sin though it presumably may be) that I have not missed a single Monday since, making this my 267th consecutive Music History Monday post. Darned straight impressive. (Although no questions, please, as to whether or not I “have a life.”) The five-year life of this post means a couple of things. First, in less than two years, I will begin my second cycle through Monday dates. Having already plucked the low-hanging topics my first go around, I’m going to have to work a bit harder to find date-appropriate topics to write about. Second – and on these same lines - it means that I’ve already covered a lot of topical ground. … See the full transcript — and join for tomorrow's Dr. Bob Prescribes — on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/57815901/

We mark the death on October 18, 1944 – 77 years ago today – of the composer and pianist Viktor Ullmann, in a gas chamber at the concentration and death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Nazi-occupied Poland. Last week’s Music History Monday focused on a soft-rock song entitled Je t'aime... Moi non plus by the French singer-songwriter, author, filmmaker, and actor Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991), and recorded in 1969 by Gainsbourg and the English singer, songwriter, and actress Jane Birkin (born 1946). Musically, the song is, pardon, beaucoup de merde. Nevertheless, it climbed to number one on charts across the globe. That’s because over the course of the song, Ms. Birkin’s heavy breathing leads to a simulated orgasm at the “climax” of the song. As we observed last week, “sex sells.” We also observed that those arbiters of morality – of which there is never a dearth – declared the song “obscene” and it was banned from radio play by hundreds (if not thousands) of radio stations. I pointed out then as I would again now: that at an “obscenity level” from one to ten, Je t'aime... rates – maybe - a 00.5, while the tragic fate of the Czechoslovakian composer Viktor Ullman (1898-1944) rates an eleven. As has been done in the past, today’s Music History Monday is in fact a two-parter, one that will be continued and concluded in tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post. Today’s post will offer up some historical background, background that addresses the “destruction” of the sovereign nation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, and Viktor Ullmann’s life until September 1942, at which time he was deported to the hybrid concentration camp and ghetto in the Czech town of Terezín, or what the Germans called “Theresienstadt.” See the full transcript - and join me - on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/57568002/

There was a time, in the not terribly distant past (in our days of relative musical innocence), when a little heavy breathing was all it took to get a recording banned from the airwaves. Today we celebrate just such an event. On October 11, 1969 – 52 years ago today – a song entitled Je t'aime... Moi non plus, which means “I love you . . . me neither” hit number 1 on the UK singles chart. Written by the French singer-songwriter, author, filmmaker, and actor Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) and performed on record by Gainsbourg and the English singer, songwriter, actress, and former model Jane Birkin (born 1946), the song was controversial. Because of what was considered its overtly sexual content, the song was banned by many radio stations across Europe and North America. For the first time in the history of the BBC show Top of the Pops, the show’s producers refused to broadcast Je t'aime... Moi non plus despite the fact that it was the BBC’s “Number 1” song. *Public Service Announcement* Aspects of this post and its language are going to be off-color and perhaps off-putting, particularly for those who find sexual references offensive. If you are prone to being so offended, I would humbly suggest you skip the remainder of this post and rejoin me next Monday for a post about the Austrian pianist, conductor, and composer Viktor Ullmann, who was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944 at the age of 46. Of course, on a scale of “offensive”, what happened to Ullmann far outweighs any heavy breathing we’re liable to hear on a 45-rpm record, but when figuring out what really constitutes “obscenity,” we as a public can be funny that way. See the transcription and subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/57280038

Before moving on to the main topic for today’s post, I would like to announce a new feature here on Music History Monday, something called “This Day in Musical Stupid.” I explain. As regular readers of this post know, I will, occasionally, dedicate a post to the shenanigans and sometimes plain old idiocy of musicians as they go about their daily lives and business. More often (far more often!) than not, such antics are perpetrated by pop, rock, rap, and hip-hop “artists”, but frankly, not always. In the past, if there is a topic of genuine import on a given Monday, I would ignore such events. In the past, I have only reported them when there was nothing else to write about. My thinking on this has changed. Why should I deny you the special pleasure that observing other people’s stupidity can give? Exactly. So whenever I can, I will initiate a Music History Monday post with just such a date appropriate event. Here’s today’s “This Day in Musical Stupid.” Keep reading - and join me - on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56982212

We mark the arrival on September 27, 1892 – 129 years ago today - of the Bohemian-born Czech composer Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) to the United States, here to take up the Directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He retained the directorship for 2½ years – until March of 1895 – at which time he and his family returned to Prague. Antonin Dvořák in 1891 By 1891 – at the age of fifty – Dvořák was that rarest of living composers: successful, appreciated by a worldwide public, and relatively wealthy. Regarded by many as the second-greatest living composer after Brahms, the nationalist Czech-accent with which Dvořák’s music spoke made it, in reality, much more “popular” than Brahms’ music. See the full transcript - and subscribe - on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56666164

We mark the death on September 20, 1957 – 64 years ago today – of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, in Järvenpää (yes, that’s a lot of umlauts), Finland. Born on December 8, 1865, in Hameenlinna, Finland, Sibelius was 91 years old when he died. Scandinavia is the Canada of Europe: a huge, climatically challenged area of extraordinary beauty that has produced an artistic community the breadth and depth of which is way out of proportion with its relatively small population. Of course, the cynic might suggest that in such northern climes, where it’s so dark and so cold and you have to stay indoors for so much of the year, there are just so many things you can do after you’ve eaten, slept, drank, and reproduced, and playing a round of golf in February is not one of them, thus encouraging – perhaps – the production of art. Certainly, Scandinavia is a vast environment of physical extremes that challenges both the body and the soul, an environment that encourages reflection and contemplation. … See the full transcript and more when you join me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56402142/

We mark the death, on September 13, 1977 – 44 years ago today – of the British conductor Leopold Anthony Stokowski, in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, United Kingdom, 67.6 miles (give or take) southwest of London. Born in London on April 18 (the maestro and I share that day and month of birth) 1882, Stokowski was 95 years old when he died. He was still recording for Columbia Records at the time of his death; his contract with Columbia would have kept him in the recording studio until he was 100 years old. I will confess that I am always a bit loath to write about and celebrate conductors. It’s not that I have anything against conductors, it’s just that so many of them spend so much of their time celebrating themselves that I feel, well, superfluous. On just those lines, when it came to naked self-promotion and downright mythologizing, no conductor – and we mean not a one, not even Leonard Bernstein (who in many ways modelled his career on Stokowski’s) – could match Leopold Stokowski. I’ll present a quick overview of his life and career, after which we’ll delve into those aspects of that life and career that made Stokowski such a famous and such a paradoxical figure. See the full post - and join me - on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56081868/

We mark the premiere on September 6, 1791 – 230 years ago today – of Wolfgang Mozart’s final opera La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency [or Mercy] of Titus), K. 621. Commissioned by the Prague-based opera producer and impresario Domenico Guardasoni (circa 1731-1806), the opera received its premiere at Prague’s Estates Theater, where Mozart’s Don Giovanni had been premiered as well in October 1787. (Put a visit to Prague’s Estates Theater on your bucket list; it’s the last surviving theater in which Mozart himself performed.) We will get into the particulars of La Clemenza di Tito in tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post. For the remainder of today’s Music History Monday, we’re going to explore the special relationship Mozart had with the audience in Prague, and why he might have lived a long and fruitful life had he chosen to leave Vienna and relocate to Prague. The city of Prague is the historic capital of the region of Bohemia and today the capitol of the Czech Republic. It’s beauty, history, and sheer magic (I know of no better word) are stunning. It is my experience that like Paris and Venice, Prague never fails to exceed expectations. Relatively untouched by World War Two (physically, at least), Prague did not have to be rebuilt after the war, as did so many other great cities of Europe.… See the transcript (and subscribe) on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/55846755

Every now and again, circumstances force us to plum the tawdry here in Music History Monday. Usually, those “circumstances” are a dearth of good topics to write about; today is such a day. (In fact, there is an excellent, August 30th-associated topic we could have focused on: the completion of Shostakovich’s extremely controversial Symphony No. 9 of 1945. But, alas, I wrote about Shostakovich’s death just three weeks ago, on August 9, and as this feature is called Music History Monday and not Music History Shostakovich, we’ll have to take a pass on the Shosty 9 for now.) My typical fallback on such otherwise event-challenged dates is to find some date related craziness in the world of popular music and then extrapolate outwards, discussing other like examples that are not date related. However, we needn’t do that for August 30, because enough crazy, pop-world merde happened on this date to easily fill a post. So here we go! (Actually, for just a moment, here we not go. You might rightly ask, why are we celebrating – and by doing so, perhaps even in some way encouraging - the antics of pop stars here on the august pages of Patreon? For an answer, you need look no further than the troubled mind of your insecure and envious Dr. Bob. While great wealth and fame have indeed eluded me [actually, you can keep the fame, though I will take the wealth], wealth and fame have not – for example – eluded Kanye West [born 1977; a.k.a. “Yeezy”, “Ye”, “Saint Pablo”, “The Louis Vuitton Don”, and “Yeezus”], who will be discussed in today’s post. But thank heavens, Mr. West – his tremendous talent notwithstanding - is a first order jerk incapable of going very long without doing something monumentally offensive. How wonderful, then, to be able to celebrate his foibles and thus assuage my fragile ego by acknowledging my moral and ethical superiority.) Now here we go.… continue reading, and join me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/55525248/

We mark the birth on August 23, 1854 – 167 years ago today – of the German-Polish composer, pianist, and teacher Moritz Moszkowski in the Prussian/Silesian city of Breslau, today the Polish city of Wrocław. He died in Paris on March 4, 1925, at the age of 70. Moszkowski was one of the most famous pianist composers of his time, someone who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894), Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), and Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) Paderewski paid his friend and fellow Pole Moszkowski the ultimate compliment when he said that:  “After Chopin [who was, and remains, the great Polish national hero] Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique.” In the end – painfully, tragically, inevitably (or so it so often seems) – talent, success, and fame were no match for time, aging, and illness, and died in obscurity and poverty, a broken man. Sadly and unjustly, he and his music languish in near-total obscurity today.… See the transcript, and join Dr. Bob, on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/55238626/

We mark the birth on August 16, 1929 – 92 years ago today – of the jazz pianist and composer William John “Bill” Evans, in Plainfield, New Jersey. He died, tragically and all-too-young on September 15, 1980 in New York City at the age of 51. Just a week before his death, Evans had completed a nine-day run (from August 31 to September 8, 1980) at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. That run was recorded and issued on an 8-cd set entitled The Last Waltz, which will be among the recommended recordings in tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post. Apropos of that appearance at the Keystone Korner, Jesse Hamlin, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle writes: “Evans played with such fervor during that nine-day stint that his enraptured audiences would've found it hard to believe that his body was wasting away and that he'd be dead a week later.” All early, unnecessary deaths are tragic. Bill Evans’ death holds a special poignancy in that it was not only self-inflicted, but he had, in the end, lost his will to live. In the end, he was only able to ignore his disintegrating body while he was playing the piano. But not even the piano could save him from himself, and when he died at the age of 51, he looked like a man of 70. Evans’ friend, the Canadian music journalist, lyricist, singer, and composer Gene Lees (1928-2010) – who for many years was the editor of Down Beat magazine, famously and succinctly called Evans’ death:   “the longest suicide in history.” That it was, and Evans knew it. During his final run at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco, he introduced a performance of Johnny Mandel’s Theme From M*A*S*H by observing that the song was also known as “Suicide Is Painless.” To which Evans then added, “debatable”. The image of the lonely, tortured genius is a clichéd one, but it fits the life of Bill Evans like a snug pair of Hush Puppies. Tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will focus on his personality and music: on the good stuff. Today’s Music History Monday will focus on his life and, at the end, his existential pain.… See the full transcript on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/54967085