Tag Archives: Birthdays

by | November 12, 2015 · 6:00 am

Neil Young and “Storytone”

 

In a 2014 interview, Neil Young discussed the making of his 35th studio album, Storytone.

“It was a great experience. I was in a room with all these musicians. We did it all at once. There’s no overdubs. ‘Be great or be gone’, that’s what my producer David Briggs always said. You only have one shot at a time and you can’t go fix it.”

“I knew where I wanted to go with the songs, and the orchestra had charts and an arranger and everything…It was done with up to a 90-piece orchestra. We did it live in the room like Sinatra.”

This accrding to “12 Things we learned from Howard Stern’s interview with Neil Young” by Andy Greene (Rolling stone 14 October 2014).

Today is Young’s 70th birthday! Below, one of the Storytone sessions.

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by | November 9, 2015 · 6:00 am

Bryn Terfel’s physical fitness

 

In a 2011 interview, Bryn Terfel noted that a strong constitution is essential for the role of Wotan in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which he was currently performing at the Metropolitan Opera.

“If you’re not one hundred percent, there’s absolutely no way you can get through a piece like Die Walküre…if Rheingold starts there will probably be three or four performances, and you have to be very careful how you conserve energy during the period you’re there.”

“Mozart, for instance, is sociable—you do go to restaurants and theaters and anything the city has to offer. But with Wagner you seem to lock the door and take the low road. You’re more cautious: ‘No, I can’t come out to dinner—not this time.’”

Quoted in “The wanderer” by Brian Kellow (Opera news LXXV/11 [May 2011] pp. 22–27).

Today is Terfel’s 50th birthday! Below, as Wotan at the Met.

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by | October 26, 2015 · 6:00 am

Scarlatti’s creative process

scarlatti

Four analyses of Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonata K.296 demonstrate the possibilities and problems with analyzing this unusual and fascinating technique of composition—devising sequences of keyboard events while at the instrument, a forerunner of present-day procedures.

This approach diminishes the value of all conventional approaches to Scarlatti’s keyboard works, both of his time and ours, putting them in a new light.

This according to “F.244: 4 Annäherungen an eine Sonate” by Peter Böttinger, an essay included in Musik-Konzepte 48-49: Morton Feldman (Musik-Konzepte 47 [1986] pp. 57–121).

Today is Scarlatti’s 330th birthday! Below, the sonata in question.

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by | October 24, 2015 · 6:00 am

Berio’s creative process

 

Luciano Berio’s sketches and drafts show how he worked with a clear and well-defined core of poetic values and constructive procedures while exploring a wide range of musical characteristics.

His concepts and techniques included redundancy, rereading, alliteration, saturation of the chromatic aggregate, rhythmic cells and their transformation, permutation of tone rows, and harmonic construction from pools of intervals. Many of his compositional devices originated in his serial practice of the 1950s or were designed in direct response to serial problems.

This according to “Berio at work: Compositional procedures in Circles, O King, Concerto for two pianos, Glossa, and Notturno” by Christoph Neidhöfer, an essay included in  Luciano Berio: Nuove prospettive/New perspectives (Firenze: Accademia Musicale Chigiana, 2012, pp. 195–233).

Today would have been Berio’s 90th birthday! Below, the Concerto per due pianoforti e orchestra, one of the works discussed in the article.

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by | October 19, 2015 · 6:00 am

The Elvis sandwich

Some pop stars are remembered for their music, some for their style; but Elvis Presley may be the only one who’s also remembered for a peanut butter sandwich—not just any peanut butter sandwich, but one that adds bananas and sometimes bacon to the mix and is typically pan-fried or finished on a griddle.

The Elvis actually predates Elvis Presley. Indeed, the sandwich has its roots in what the food blogger Tina the Mom describes as “Southern po’ folks cuisine”. It seems as if every celebrity chef now offers a recipe for it, and in a food world that can never leave well enough alone there’s been a push to reinvent the sandwich in myriad ways.

What’s behind the fascination with this dense mess of comfort food? It begins with the fact that Presley, despite his royal status, always retained a fondness for the simple things in life. Then again, the Elvis isn’t quite so simple, and its over-the-top aspect is perhaps key to the appreciation of both man and sandwich.

This according to “Celebrate Elvis Presley’s birthday with a sandwich fit for a king” by Charles Passy (Speakeasy 8 January 2014).

Below, the King recommends milk with that.

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by | October 14, 2015 · 6:00 am

La Monte Young’s cosmology

La Monte Young

For centuries composers have used numinous language to describe the transcendent potential of their art. In La Monte Young’s case, however, one cannot dismiss such lofty claims as hyperbole: A presupposition of ontological contiguity underscores his work, such that what appear to be indistinct musical metaphors play out in surprisingly literal ways within the mechanics of his music.

The highly conceptual works from the early 1960s, with their sometimes baffling transgressions of musical norms, resist traditional musical analysis to such a degree as to expand the composer’s activities well beyond the traditional scope of composition.

In his maturity, Young sees himself as a prophet whose highly specialized tuning systems and sustained sound environments recast music onto a spatial, rather than temporal plane, interface directly with the periodic structures of the universe, and traverse the boundary separating the physical from the metaphysical.

This according to Music of a more exalted sphere: Compositional practice, biography, and cosmology in the music of La Monte Young by Jeremy Neal Grimshaw, a dissertation accepted by the Eastman School of Music in 2005.

Today is La Monte Young’s 80th birthday! A complete performance of The well-tuned piano.

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by | October 12, 2015 · 6:00 am

Pavarotti sings for soccer

 

The group New Order’s World in motion, commissioned by the British Football Association to mark the 1990 World Cup soccer finals, “is probably the least likely official football theme song ever recorded: Denying its own status as a football song, introducing elements of subcultural love lyrics, and becoming a gay club hit, but also assuming the burden of combating football’s major peripheral problem, hooliganism, the song is ultimately unheimlich, even despite its closing chorus that speaks of ‘playing for England; playing this song.’”

This according to “Playing for England” by Paul Smith (South Atlantic quarterly 90/4 [fall 1991] pp. 737–752). Smith goes on to note that “both the BBC and the independent television companies forewent the pleasure of having ‘Love’s got the world in motion’ going across the airwaves every night, and the BBC used as their World Cup theme another piece of music that quickly became a number one hit: Luciano Pavarotti singing his version of the Nessun dorma aria from Turandot.”

Today would have been Pavarotti’s 80th birthday! Below, singing Nessun dorma in 1994.

BONUS: By way of contrast, New Order’s song:

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by | October 9, 2015 · 6:00 am

Camille Saint-Saëns, astronomer

saint-saens and flammarion

Many know Saint-Saëns as the composer of Le carnaval des animaux and other landmark Romantic works; fewer know that he was an avid amateur astronomer.

Saint-Saëns was friends with the eminent French astronomer Camille Flammarion and participated in the Société Astronomique de France. His stature as a great French composer brought attention to the Société and astronomical research, and he contributed several articles to the group’s journal, Revue d’astronomie populaire.

This according to “Inspired by the skies? Saint-Saëns, amateur astronomer” by Léo Houziaux, an essay included in Camille Saint-Saëns  and his world (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 12–17).

Today is Saint-Saëns’s 180th birthday! Above, the composer (right) with Flammarion; below, Saint-Saëns adresses the heavens (Laudate, coeli!).

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by | October 7, 2015 · 6:00 am

Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project

 

In an interview, Yo-Yo Ma discussed the genesis of the Silk Road Project.

“I’ve been traveling around the world for 25 years, performing, talking to people, studying their cultures and musical instruments, and I always come away with more questions in my head than can be answered.”

“One of these is the idea of culture as a transnational influence, and the Silk Road, though basically a trade route, also connected the cultures of the peole who used it.”

“The project started with several symposia of scholars, and it was eventually decided to form a nonprofit, knowledge-based organization that would combine new and traditional information about places where people have been making exciting, wonderful music….Our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and conferences, to see how we can connect with each other in music.”

Excerpted from “Continuity in diversity” by Edith Eisler (Strings XV/8:94 [May–June 2001] pp. 46–54).

Today is Yo-Yo Ma’s 60th birthday! Below, performing with the Silk Road Ensemble, an offshoot of the Project.

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by | October 1, 2015 · 6:00 am

Dukas and the uncanny

paul-dukas

In Paul Dukas’s L’apprenti sorcier, the figure of the magically animated broom becomes an agent of the uncanny, matching definitions subsequently outlined by Freud in his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche.

New attention to musical details, the composer’s unpublished notes, and the structure of Goethe’s poem Der Zauberlehrling suggests that Dukas’s work stands as a peculiar kind of fiction that points to the uncanny nature of narrative itself and the impossibility of mastery.

This according to “Silence, echo: A response to What the sorcerer said” by Carlo Caballero (19th-century music XXVIII/2 [fall 2004] pp. 160–182).

Today is Dukas’s 150th birthday! Below, the work in question.

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