Hosted by the New York Public Library, the project invites musicians and others to submit videos of their own interpretations of Cage’s work for addition to the online archive. Visitors to the site can view submitted videos as well as a portion of the library’s collection of Cage’s original notes and manuscripts.
Today is Cage’s 100th birthday! Below, his classic 1960 appearance on I’ve got a secret.
The American traditional song Go tell Aunt Rhody originated as a gavotte composed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau for his opera Le devin du village (1752).
An English version of the opera was produced in London in 1766; subsequently the melody attracted various English texts, including Sweet Melissa (ca. 1788), and inspired a set of variations by the London piano virtuoso Johann Baptist Cramer (Rousseau’s dream, 1812).
Around 1825 the tune—identified as Greenville or Rousseau—began appearing in U.S. hymnals. The Aunt Rhody version has appeared in numerous American traditional song anthologies, and is still often found in children’s song collections.
This according to “Go tell Aunt Rhody she’s Rousseau’s dream” by Murl Sickbert, an essay included in Vistas of American music: Essays and compositions in honor of William K. Kearns (Warren: Harmonie Park, 1999, pp. 125–150).
Today is Rousseau’s 300th birthday! Below, the classic Woody Guthrie recording of his immortal gavotte.
Stravinsky’s collaborations with the Ballets Russes were only a part of his life between 1910 and 1914; he was also involved with the Parisian avant-garde group known as Les Apaches (The Apaches), an interdisciplinary society that included Ravel, Falla, and the poet Léon-Paul Fargue.
Les Apaches’ support was vital for Stravinsky’s composition of Le sacre du printemps, and its aesthetic preoccupations helped to motivate his decision to set Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise.
This according to “Stravinsky and The Apaches” by Jann Pasler (The musical times CXXIII/1672 [June 1982] pp. 403-407).
Today is Stravinsky’s 130th birthday! Above, the composer at work in Paris in 1911; below, Evelyn Lear sings the Trois poésies with members of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Craft.
Both had an outstanding orchestra at their immediate disposal for decades. This meant that they wrote for individuals, not just for instruments, and enabled the striking timbral and contrapuntal risks that they felt safe taking.
Both helped to create the predominant musical style of their century, and were celebrated in their lifetime for having done so.
Despite the necessity of producing numerous occasional works, both took an experimental attitude to composing, striving for freshness of form, design, and content, and their styles changed and developed remarkably over their careers.
Both had a notoriously keen business sense.
Today is Haydn’s 270th birthday! Below, Baryton Trio Valkkoog performs the Adagio and Finale Fuga from Haydn’s “Birthday” trio, Hob.XI:97, composed for the birthday of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy.
Although there is no record of Washington studying with a dance teacher, and rumors suggest that he was self-taught, the first U.S. President was widely known as a superb dancer.
One anecdote has Washington performing a minuet before French officers who admitted that his dancing could not be improved by any Parisian instructor. Washington’s dancing of a minuet in 1779 with Henry Knox’s wife Lucy inspired the following tribute from ThePennsylvania packet:
“The ball was opened by his Excellency the General. When this man unbends from his station, and its weighty functions, he is even then like a philosopher, who mixes with the amusements of the world, that he may teach it what is right, or turn trifles into instruction.”
This according to George Washington: A biography in social dance by Kate Van Winkle Keller (Sandy Hook: Hendrickson Group, 1998).
Today is Washington’s 280th birthday! Below, a minuet of the type that he would have danced.
Today, on Arnold Schoenberg’s birthday, let’s eavesdrop on his 60th birthday party in Los Angeles, as recalled by his student Dika Newlin:
“About an hour after we arrived, the eating and drinking began. There was coffee with whipped cream (lots), six or seven kinds of sandwiches made with cheese, liverwurst, and such good things: whole platefuls of rich little pastries, coffee cake, chocolate raisin cake, peach cake and orange cake.
“This, keep in mind, was just a little light afternoon tea. The real feast of the day, the birthday dinner, hadn’t arrived yet, nor had the birthday drinks, of which more anon. After eating all these good things, we drifted back into the yard.
“At this point, the strictly musical portion of the evening was interrupted by the advent of some more pastries, a bottle of Black and White whiskey (one of several bottles which had been most appropriately brought to the old man in honor of the great day) and some glasses. I tried a little—a very little—of the whiskey, in spite of Uncle Arnold’s merciless twitting. Then…supper was called!
“I waded through a platter of sweetened sauerkraut, frankfurters, baked potatoes, salami, shrimp salad, rye bread, anchovies, all washed down with plenty of red wine. Then the circlet of birthday candles was brought in and the old man miraculously blew them all out with a single puff. After Nuria had played Happy birthday on her violin, and Ronnie had sung slightly off key, one more round of wine was served…and a large Apfelstrudel made its triumphant appearance.”
This according to Newlin’s Schoenberg remembered: Diaries and recollections, 1938–76 (New York: Pendragon, 1980). Many thanks to Tina Frühauf for bringing this to our attention!
In The saint of Bleecker Street, which earned Menotti the 1955 Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the microcosm of Little Italy suggests a new reflection on questions of difference and integration, with connections to metaphysical and religious ideas. As a metaphor for American society, the opera symbolizes all multicultural societies and reveals the polysemic character of Menotti’s works.
Today is Menotti’s 100th birthday! Above, the 2011 Dicapo Opera production of The saint of Bleecker Street; below, the opera’s finale from New York City Opera’s 1978 production.
In his day, the blind Aragonese composer and organist Pablo Bruna (known as El Ciego de Daroca) was renowned for his organ playing at the Colegiata de Santa María de los Corporales in Daroca (above), for his important disciples, and for his keyboard works. Today is his 400th birthday!
A previously unknown work by Bruna—A de la casa, a villancico for soprano and tenor with unfigured bass—was discovered in 1990 in the musical archive of Barbastro Cathedral. The text stems from the custom of giving food to the poor, which in Bruna’s work is given a Eucharistic interpretation. Only three other vocal works by Bruna have survived: two other villancicos and a Benedicamus Domino.
This according to “A de la casa: Duo de Pablo Bruna—Una obra inedita del Ciego de Daroca” by Pedro Calahorra Martínez (Nassarre: Revista aragonesa de musicología VII/1 [1991], pp. 9–20). Below, Saskia Roures performs Bruna’s Tiento de falsas de 2º tono.
Before his departure in 1918 Prokof’ev was fond of taking long walking tours of St. Petersburg with his friends. After he settled in France in the 1920s this hobby took on a new aspect—he bought an enormous car, a second-hand Ballot.
At first he drove around Paris and its environs with his friends, but soon he expanded his scope with trips to the countryside. Sometimes he would plan a route through a selected area and drive off with his wife Lina and some friends to visit historical places and sample the local cuisine. Breakdowns were frequent in those days, and cars were slow, so these trips typically lasted several days.
At the car’s 30th year Prokof’ev replaced the Ballot with a newer and more agile Chevrolet. “Ballot was an old aristocrat” he wrote, “and Chevrolet is a young democrat. It is a thousand times more comfortable to drive in the city and in the mountains, it is mobile and more powerful. But the friendly old Ballot was incomparable on the level road.”
Today is Prokof’ev’s 120th birthday! Above, left to right: Vladimir Sofronitsky, the composer, Vladimir Dukelsky, and Lina Prokof’ev with the Ballot. Below, Svâtoslav Rihter plays Prokof’ev’s Pastoral sonatina, op. 59, no. 3—a work perhaps inspired by such excursions.
The Charles Ives Society maintains an online resource that includes a biography by Jan Swafford; a list of tunes borrowed by Ives from other composers, with sound files; a catalogue of Ives’s published works ordered by medium, also with sound files; a descriptive catalogue by James Sinclair ordered by genre, with incipits, performance data, and other listings; and a programming guide that suggests relationships between Ives’s works and specific holidays, months, seasons, topics, and anniversaries.
Above, a rare performance of one of Ives’s pieces for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, played by the Paratore brothers. Today is the composer’s 136th birthday.
The library of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris is home to an extensive collection of writings on music from the Arab world, a region stretching from the Atlas Mountains to the Indian Ocean. This series … Continue reading →
The Filipino ethnomusicologist and composer Jose Maceda created unique works that blended his fieldwork on Filipino and other music with his expertise in European avant-garde traditions. His compositions combined innovative techniques such as spatialization, a focus on timbre, and musique … Continue reading →
The Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, and politician Youssou N’Dour was born just six months before Senegal achieved independence. His mother hailed from a long line of griots, or gawlo, who served as hereditary musicians and custodians of oral history in … Continue reading →
Ellis Marsalis first learned to play the clarinet and saxophone but the piano later became his main instrument. From 1951 to 1955, he completed a bachelor’s degree in music education at Dillard University in New Orleans while receiving informal jazz … Continue reading →
