"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, February 02, 2018
Fanfare For The Common Man
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-by Valley Girl I have watched the ad (above) that Randy Bryce ran during the SOTU address many times. And suddenly, something about it rang a strange bell with me. I wrote to Howie:
Some bit of music, just a tiny bit, in the ad Randy Bryce put up for the SOTU address reminded me of the Vangelis theme music for Chariots of Fire. Coincidence? Purposeful? I can't guess. Randy is a Chariot of Fire. I am reminded of his first ad, when he was welding iron and the fire sparks were flying.
This the music video for Chariots of Fire. Pay attention to the music, and visuals of the runners, running to win. Forget the sappy stuff.
Randy is running to win. And he will. The title for the movie comes from a verse in the hymn Jerusalem.
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
But, after I wrote to Howie, I thought of another piece of music, and wanted to see if the slight bit that I heard might bear some resemblance to that: Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. After all, this would suit Randy perfectly.
No, that wasn’t the little bit of music I was thinking of. But I couldn’t resist doing some research on the history of Coplin’s Fanfare for the Common Man. And, along the way I discovered an often forgotten political figure.
Fanfare for the Common Man is a musical work by the American composer Aaron Copland. The piece was written in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eugene Goossens. It was inspired in part by a famous speech made earlier in the same year; in that speech, the vice president of the United States of America, Henry A. Wallace, proclaimed the dawning of the "Century of the Common Man."
Next:
Copland, in his autobiography, wrote of the request: "Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me at the end of August about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I he had asked British composers for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert. It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with American composers." A total of 18 fanfares were written at Goossens' behest, but Copland's is the only one which remains in the standard repertoire. It was written in response to the US entry into World War II and was inspired in part by a famous 1942 speech where vice president Henry A. Wallace proclaimed the dawning of the Century of the Common Man. ...Goossens had suggested titles such as Fanfare for Soldiers, or sailors or airmen, and he wrote that "[i]t is my idea to make these fanfares stirring and significant contributions to the war effort..." Copland considered several titles including Fanfare for a Solemn Ceremony and Fanfare for Four Freedoms; to Goossens' surprise, however, Copland titled the piece "Fanfare for the Common Man." Goossens wrote "Its title is as original as its music, and I think it is so telling that it deserves a special occasion for its performance. If it is agreeable to you, we will premiere it 12 March 1943 at income tax time." Copland's reply was "I [am] all for honoring the common man at income tax time."
Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd Vice President of the United States (1941–1945), the 11th Secretary of Agriculture (1933–1940), and the 10th Secretary of Commerce (1945–1946). He founded the Progressive Party and served as its presidential nominee in the 1948 presidential election. He was a strong supporter of New Deal liberalism and sought conciliation with the Soviet Union. ...After Roosevelt dumped John Nance Garner from the ticket in 1940, he selected Wallace as his running mate in his bid for an unprecedented third term. The selection of the liberal Wallace upset many Democratic delegates, and Wallace was only nominated by the 1940 Democratic National Convention after Roosevelt threatened to decline the presidential nomination. The ticket of Roosevelt and Wallace defeated the Republican ticket in the 1940 election, and Wallace was sworn in as vice president in 1941. As Wallace remained unpopular with many Democratic leaders, the 1944 Democratic National Convention denied Wallace re-nomination and instead selected Harry S. Truman as Roosevelt's running mate in the 1944 presidential election. Roosevelt appointed Wallace to the position of Secretary of Commerce in March 1945 and Wallace continued to serve under President Truman after Roosevelt died in April 1945. Truman dismissed Wallace in September 1946 after Wallace made several controversial comments. Wallace became the editor of the New Republic and emerged as a prominent critic of Truman's foreign policies. In 1948, he undertook a third party bid for president, calling for universal government health insurance, an end to the incipient Cold War, and the abolition of segregation.
Why would Randy Bryce, an iron worker from Caldonia, Wisconsin, bring Vangelis, Copeland and, most of all, Henry A. Wallace to mind? That's easy enough. And we get reminded everyday. Today Randy responded to Ryan's latest plan to screw over "the common man." In an email to supporters, #IronStache said, "Speaker Ryan rebranded his plan to destroy Medicaid as a way of 'helping people,' today, showing he couldn't be more out of touch with how to actually help Americans struggling to get by. We aren't lazy individuals who need to be motivated to work. We are working harder than ever and getting less and less in return. What we need is for Paul Ryan to stop giving tax breaks to the Kochs and stop trying to repeal basic healthcare protections, and to start increasing wages and pass Medicare for All."
Kerry Bentivolio Kicked Out Of The GOP Cult-- And Forced To Sell All His Reindeer
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"This is what happens," groused Kerry Bentivolio, "when a regular guy gets an opportunity to come to Congress." He's feeling pretty aggrieved all around. Not many Republicans lost their seats this year. But Bentivolio did-- and he lost ugly to Michigan's foreclosure king, who unleashed a torrent of cash-- over $4,000,000, including $3,623,402 from his own bank account-- to smear him mercilessly from Canton, Livonia and Novi to Auburn Hills and Washington, DC. In the end Trott and his Establishment allies beat him 138,229 (56.1%) to 100,665 (40.8%). Bentivolio calls himself a "a regular guy," but that's a bit of a stretch. He's an unconventional guy with a typical Tea Party sense of victimhood and way to independent-minded to fit in with garden variety, button-downed Republicans. He never really fit in anywhere in DC and, as disgusting as everyone acknowledges Trott is, not many are going to cry in their beers over the premature end of Bentivolio's accidental ascension to Congress. Some Republican thugs are going in the opposite direction-- trying to wipe out the memory that he ever existed! Trott sent out word that he wouldn't be interested in any Bentivolio staffers and that he wouldn't look favorably on anyone else who hired any of them. Bentivolio had hired a martial arts trainer from Ann Arbor, Robert Dindoffer, as his senior advisor and then gave him the job of campaign manager, firing him 7 months later. Dindoffer is widely considered a real scumbag and he's one of the leading forces behind Michigan Republicans' efforts to steal electoral votes by changing the way the state apportions them between candidates. When Bentivolio fired him-- basically for submitting false expenses and stealing from the campaign-- Dindoffier sued over some weird contract with a typically Republican type scam to extract more money from the campaign than is normal. Republicans always do this to each other. Although he isn't willing to talk about it, Bentivolio has made it clear that Dindoffer wasn't just scamming the cash-strapped campaign for money but was also disloyal and looking out for himself, not his boss. This week a local judge ruled that Bentivolio has to pay Dindoffer $120,000.
Dindoffer’s attorney said on Wednesday both sides had reached a confidential settlement agreement this summer and Bentivolio had made some but not all payments as required by a Nov. 30 deadline, which prompted the Dec. 15 consent judgment by Oakland Circuit Judge James Alexander. “It was confidential until he (Bentivolio) stopped making payments,” said Dindoffer’s attorney Kevin J. Stoops. Bentivolio, 63, will leave office next month. He was defeated in the Republican primary and then ran unsuccessfully as a write-in candidate. The judgment is against Bentivolio, and two of his campaign committees, Kerry Bentivolio for US Congress and Bentivolio for Congress. The judgment, which represents 1.5 times the amount due and owed to Dindoffer, resolves the last pending claim and closes the case, Alexander said in his ruling. In an interview off the House floor last week, Bentivolio told the Detroit News that he was facing financial troubles in the face of the significant judgment. He criticized the conduct of his former campaign manager and questioned the bills and his loyalty. But he acknowledged agreeing to settle the case earlier this year to reduce possible additional losses and said he had not been able to make payments. “What can I do? I’m in the middle of a campaign. I’ve got all these people telling me to settle,” Bentivolio said last week, saying he was looking to reduce additional losses. Bentivolio, a former school teacher who drew attention for being a part-time reindeer farmer, said he sold his reindeer earlier this year to pay bills and fund his campaign along with borrowing from his retirement fund. He said he has been “beat up” by establishment Republicans and the media. “This is what happens when a regular guy gets an opportunity to come to Congress,” he said.
Happy Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much, and if you're traveling, travel safely!
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Marilyn Horne sings three of Aaron Copland's arrangements of Old American Songs -- "Simple Gifts," "Long Time Ago" (at 2:20), and "At the River" (at 6:00) -- with James Levine conducting the New York Philharmonic, at the 1991 Carnegie Hall Centennial Gala.
by Ken
The way "holiday weekends" have been inexorably broadening, I expect that many people will already have started their Thanksgiving holiday, back in, oh, October. Still, with the actual day now upon us, all of us here at DWT hereby wish a happy and safe holiday.
You no doubt have your own mode of celebration, but if you're still weighing your options, here -- in case you've missed it -- is this year's breathless "this Thanksgiving will be different from all others" story, as scooped by the Washington Post ("Some Americans rethink food-centered Thanksgiving").
We'll be here all weekend, doing, you know, what we do. I can tell you that Howie has something really special planned for Thanksgiving Day. (I don't want to spoil the surprise. Let me just say that it involves a really special guest.) Noah, meanwhile, who just this morning did his salute to pepper spray, the new fascists's best friend, in addition to wishing "a Happy Thanksgiving to all Progressives and those who are thinking of converting to the more open and just Progressive Lifestyle," notes that he'd --
like to see a picture of the Pepper Spray Cop attending the annual Presidential Turkey Pardon Ceremony and maybe one of the waiters (dressed as Puritans) going around to restaurant tables with the now iconic Pepper Spray cans instead of pepper mills. Of course, Newt won't be in attendance. There's a big weekend sale at his favorite emporium:
Finally, I've got a bit of music to offer in the click-through, starting of course with that crusty old New Englander Charles Ives's, um, idiosyncratic take on Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day, from his Holidays Symphony, and then returning to the Copland-arranged Old American Songs.
Sunday Classics on Monday: Our all-American revival concludes with Copland, Ives, Gottschalk, and Bernstein
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"I like to be in America":Above, the cast of the current bilingual Broadway revival of West Side Story performs "America." Below, we hear it from composer Leonard Bernstein's 1984 DG recording of the show -- with, heard first, Louise Edeike as Rosalia, then Tatiana Troyanos as Anita:
On now to the concluding installment of our "expanded encore presentation" of these "American Treasures," begun Saturday with Copland and Gershwin, and continued yesterday with Gershwin, Grofé, et al. -- Ken
* * *
AARON COPLAND (1900-1990)
"Hoe-Down,"
No. 4 of Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Maurice Abravanel, cond. Westminster, recorded December 1958 St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded October 1985
We already had our Copland sendoff Friday night. While Copland wrote a generous amount of interesting music, like a lot of music-lovers I find I listen mostly to the "Americana" works, which represent a small portion of his output. We already heard the Fanfare for the Common Man, and a bunch of the Copland-arranged Old American Songs. The great ballet Appalachian Spring, one of my very favorite pieces of music, I want to reserve for consideration on its own -- beyond the "Simple Gifts" finale, that is, which we've already heard. This is how we wind up at the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo." "Hoe-Down," the last of the four episodes, has been absorbed into the American musical vocabulary; is there anyone who didn't recognize it?
Here's the complete Rodeo suite, conducted first by -- who else? -- Leonard Bernstein. As we noted back when we heard Aaron Copland conduct Lenny's Candide Overture in Prague, the two had a close relationship, and there was no more effective champion of Copland's music than LB. Eventually, of course, the composer himself developed into one of his own most effective champions, and so we're going to hear his version too.
COPLAND: Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
i. Buckaroo Holiday ii. Corral Nocturne iii. Saturday Night Waltz iv. Hoe-Down
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded 1960
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 26, 1968
* * *
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
Symphony No. 2: i. Andante moderato
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded Apr. 29 and May 1, 1995
After hurling Ives's Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day at you on Thursday (even in David Zinman's remarkably sympathetic performance, it doesn't seem to me one of his more approachable works, but heck, what are you going to do on Thanksgiving Day?), I wanted to plunge you into the composer's sound at what seems to me its most "grabbingly" appealing. Unfortunately, I've never heard anybody but Leonard Bernstein really "get" this potentially haunting opening movement of his Second Symphony, which adds the usual Ives mélange on top of that bedrock of full-throated New England hymn-singing.
I don't doubt that that wonderfully musical Estonian-born conductor Neeme Järvi understands the music, but like so many conductors, he seems afraid to really dig in and make those broad singing lines really sing. Lenny B made it sound like the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, and I won't mind if you cheat and sneak down to his complete 1958 recording of the Ives Second, to my hearing one of the loveliest things he ever did, and listen to just the first movement.
Hey, I'm not the audio-file police. If you want to listen to more than the first movement, who's going to stop you? Especially since Ives meant the broad opening Andante moderato to proceed without interruption into the spirited second-movement Allegro. As it happens, the Allegro had an extra frisson for me, as I got to know the piece amid the granite of New Hampshire as a Dartmouth student. I expect you noticed in the first movement that Ives was very free about incorporating tunes from various walks of American (and sometimes non-American) life. The lovely second theme of the Allegro, played so caressingly by the pair of flutes [first heard at 1:58 of the Andrew Litton performance below], is the old Dartmouth song "Where oh where are the pea-green freshmen?"
SIDEBAR: THE DOPIEST COLLEGE SONGS IN ACADEME
At least in my time, Dartmouth was known, at least to its students, for having the dopiest songs in North American academe. The worst example, in those pre-coeducation days, was the first stanza of our "school song," "Men of Dartmouth," which drew to an, er, rousing close with the lines:
They have the still North in their hearts, The hlll winds in their veins, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire [yes, the music actually spat out the word "granite"] In their muscles and their brains, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire In their muscles and their brains.
Is it any wonder there was so much alumni resistance to going coed? What prideful alum would want to give all that up?
But we digress. Um, maybe this would be a good time to continue on to the Allegro of the Second Symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2: ii. Allegro
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Hyperion, recorded Jan. 6-9, 2005
One curiosity: The Litton recording has the movement marking, normally just "Allegro," as "Allegro molto (con spirito)." It's an odd irony that LItton's performance is one of the less spirited I know.
[Parenthetical note: Did you notice that that's two cases in a row of British record companies recording American music with American orchestras; Hyperion in fact recorded all four Ives symphonies with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony. (The Fourth Symphony, which was finally given its world premiere in 1965 by Leopold Stokowski with the orchestra he'd founded in 1962, the American Symphony, is quite a production -- I hope we'll have a chance to come back to it someday -- and if there's one thing Stoky knew, it was how to put on a show. Happily, Columbia made a recording at the time.) In addition, the Zinman-Baltimore Symphony Ives CD featuring the Holidays Symphony and Three Places in New England from which I extracted Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day was recorded by yet another British company. I guess this is good, unless it means that American companies aren't doing the job.]
It's a wonder that Ives himself got to hear the Second Symphony. Indeed, it's lucky that, despite a lifelong litany of health problerms, he survived to surprisingly near his 80th birthday, because the symphony, written in 1902-10, wasn't performed until 1951, when it was conducted by a brash young conductor then making a name for himself, that name being Leonard Bernstein! By then Ives's Third Symphony (1910) had already been performed, way back in 1946, after a mere 36-year wait, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
So what was Ives doing all that time when his music was busy being unheard? Selling insurance, or rather overseeing the selling of same, having cofounded his own firm, with considerable success. He was by general consent a visionary in the field. He trained seriously in music (he had worked first with his father, a band leader, then studied with Horatio Parker at Yale, producing his (fairly conventional) First Symphony as a senior thesis, but nobody was clamoring to hear his music, and he had to make a living, and he drifted into insurance and discovered he was good at it. Remarkably, he seems to have though of insurance in terms of how it could help the buyer; interestingly, he wound up making a very good living at it. (Hmm.)
Even as his career flourished (with the occasional bump), Ives continued composing well into the '20s, and then found himself unable to continue. We don't know why, but then, it can't be easy to maintain life as a composer when you never get to hear your music performed, and never get to experience other people experiencing it. At the same time, it can't be fun to find yourself unable to continue creating -- and we may guess at Ives's state of mind relative to composition by the fact that he declined to attend that much-belated 1946 premiere of his Third Symphony.
If you look up "labor of love" in the dictionary, or at any rate a dictionary with sound files, you'll hear Lenny B's 1958 recording of the Ives Second Symphony. Columbia Masterworks seems to have been dubious enough about its commercial prospects that it put the record in the "KS" rather than "MS" series, charging an extra buck, which was pretty chintzy for 40 minutes' worth of music. In compensation, they offered a little bonus record with a Lenny talk about Ives, but at some point -- before I bought my copy -- they seem to have stopped packing the bonus record, but not stopped charging the extra buck. Of course at standard discount prices of the era it was more like half a buck, but remember, the buck of those days was worth a lot closer to a dollar.
I don't think digital sound does justice to the tonal intensity of the orchestral playing as heard on the LP. The New York Philharmonic strings were never what you'd call a lustrous group, but on that day in October 1958 they played with a vibrancy that was something to behold. Anyway, here's the complete symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2
i. Andante moderato ii. Allegro iii. Adagio cantabile iv. Lento maestoso v. Allegro molto vivace
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Oct. 6, 1958
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LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
For a virtuoso finish, we jump back now to the 19th century, to the days of barnstorming composer-performers, and the home-grown pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk -- "America's first great musician" to pianist Eugene List, one of his more persistent champions in the later 20th century. By profession if not talent level Gottschalk was a sort of American Liszt, an outsize personality (for all his slender stature) whose brief but adventure-packed life was almost as much a work of art as his music.
Gottschalk was born in New Orleans when the city was still mostly Spanish and French, within living memory of the Louisiana Purchase, which had made this vast swath of central North America the property of the young United States. He functioned as a sort of American good-will ambassador in his tours of Europe and especially South America. For his performing use, he wrote a large quantity of solo piano music as well as music for multiple pianos and assorted other piano-plus combinations. Naturally he was a great connoisseur of dance rhythms from around the world, as he demonstrates in this infectious four-hand "Cuban dance."
GOTTSCHALK: La Gallina (The Hen), Danse cubaine
for piano four hands
Eugene List and Cary Lewis or Brady Millican, piano. Vox, recorded c 1972 [Note: The packaging for the Vox set from which all our Gottschalk musical selections come, while it generously includes both an essay by Mr. List on Gottschalk and program notes by Richard Freed, is skimpy on other information, such as who among Mr. List's supporting artists plays what, or the recording dates. Where I could, I've gleaned (or guessed) such info, drawing on other sources.]
Between 1860, when he first composed the Grande Tarantelle, and his death (at 40) in 1869, Gottschalk seems to have arranged the thing for just about every piano-plus instrumental combination imaginable, but when Eugene List went searching for the piano-and-orchestra version in the '50s, the best he could do was a two-piano version in the British Museum. He persuaded the composer Hershy Kay to produce this 1957 reconstruction.
GOTTSCHALK-KAY: Grande Tarantelle for Piano
and Orchestra
Eugene List, piano; one of two orchestras, either Igor Buketoff or Samuel Adler, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
Gottschalk wasn't all flash, though. Here is an orchestral piece that has won favorable attention even from some of his detractors, the two movement La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics), which the composer gave the rather highfalutin designation "Symphony No. 1." On its own terms, though, the piece is a beauty. Annotator Freed evokes Berlioz, and in the sinuous, long-breathed melodic lines of the Andante in particular, I hear what he means.
GOTTSCHALK: Symphony No. 1, La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics)
i. Andante ("Nuit dans les tropiques")
ii. Allegro moderato ("Une fête sous les tropiques") ("A Festival Under the Tropics")
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Igor Buketoff, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
* * *
LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)
"Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds."
-- Dr. Pangloss, in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (lyrics for "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by John LaTouche)
You've surely noticed how often Lenny's name has horned in on our contemplation of these "American Treasures." We can't stop without hearing some of his own music. I've gone on record admitting the Overture to Candide is a piece I can listen to over and over and over, even dozens of times. In my mind, of course, we've "done" Candide, and done it. Oh, I know we've barely scratched the surface, but what has this series been about but scratching surfaces?
So herewith, a little Candide suite: the Overture and the great philosopher Dr. Pangloss (in the person of the late Adolph Green, the distinguished lyricist) teaching his charges that this is "The Best of All Possible Worlds" from the studio recording of the complete Candide that Lenny made at the time of his happily televised (and therefore now-on-DVD)concert performance [and now another performance of the Overture conducted by Andrew Davis -- oh, and maybe just one more, conducted by David Zinman]; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook [and now another "Glitter and Be Gay," sung by Natalie Dessay].
BERNSTEIN et al.: Candide
Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG,recorded December 1989
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded live at Glyndebourne, Apr. 27, 1997
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Decca, recorded Feb. 3-4, 1996
"The Best of All Possible Worlds" (lyrics by John LaTouche)
Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), June Anderson (Cunegonde), Della Jones (Paquette), Jerry Hadley (Candide), Kurt Ollmann (Maximilian); from the DG recording (see above)
Sunday Classics: Just for fun -- American treasures
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Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was always a Leonard Bernstein specialty. This is Part 1 of a 1976 performance in which he plays and conducts the London Symphony; Part 2 is here. (The luscious "big tune" finally emerges at 3:03 of Part 2.) CORRECTION:That's not the London Symphony, it's the New York Philharmonic, though in London's Royal Albert Hall. The clarinet soloist is of course our own just-retired Stanley Drucker, already approaching 30 years' service with the Philharmonic back then, with another 33 years ahead of him (to the end of the 2008-09 season). Sorry, can't imagine what I was thinking!
by Ken
No grand propositions to prove this week. Just some deliciously wonderful music, in the Thanksgiving spirit.
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898-1937)
George and Ira Gershwin (center and right)
at the keyboard with Fred Astaire
When I first "finished" last night's preview piece, it seemed kind of meager music-wise. By the time I finished filling it out a bit, it had grown into something close to a full-fledged Gershwin post, the notable exception being the way it tiptoed discreetly around the music I expected to include in today's post, either the Rhapsody in Blue (1924) or An American in Paris (1928). We've already got the Rhapsody accounted for, so why don't we just throw in American in Paris? I'm especially fond of two recordings, made at opposite ends of Pennsylvania, the Command recording by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and Eugene Ormandy's Columbia recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I don't have the Steinberg version on CD, so here's the Ormandy.
GERSHWIN: An American in Paris
Philadephia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Jan. 5, 1967
By the time Gershwin composed An American in Paris, he was confident enough to do his own orchestration, and I think one and all will concede that it's a bang-up job. Both the 1924 jazz-band arrangement of Gershwin's two-piano original of the Rhapsody in Blue -- which was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for his band -- and the now-standard 1942 full orchestration were done by a longtime Whiteman associate, an expert arranger and a composer of some note in his own right: Ferde Grofé, whose Mississippi Suite was first performed in 1925, with the Grand Canyon Suite following in 1931. Which provides us a natural segue to --
FERDE GROFÉ (1892-1972)
In writing about Sibelius, I mentioned that my very first three stereo LPs, all featuring Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra included two with works by Sibelius plus the Grand Canyon Suite. I loved that Grand Canyon Suite then, both the work and the performance, and I still do. I don't have that Ormandy Grand Canyon on CD, but I do have his 1967 remake, which is almost as good. And we're going to here it complete, after a bit of "tease," or preview.
We're going to hear two of the five movements separately, starting with the atmospheric opening movement, "Sunrise," and then the movement that might function as a scherzo if this were a symphony, the third, the rhythmically irrepressible "On the Trail" (by donkey or mule, of course). Then we'll hear the whole suite; between "Sunrise" and "On the Trail" comes a beautiful slow movement, "The Painted Desert," and the general plan of the final movementsn is well suggested by their titles, "Sunset" and "Cloudburst."
GROFÉ: Grand Canyon Suite
i. Sunrise
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson, cond. Mercury, recorded May 1958
iii. On the Trail
John Corigliano, violin; New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded May 20, 1963
i. Sunrise ii. The Painted Desert iii. On the Trail iv. Sunset v. Cloudburst
Norman Carol, violin; William Smith, celesta and piano; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Dec. 12 and 20, 1967
AARON COPLAND (1900-1990)
"Hoe-Down,"
No. 4 of Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Maurice Abravanel, cond. Westminster, recorded December 1958
[note: volume level considerably lower than the above] St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, cond. EMI, recorded c 1985
We already had our Copland preview Friday night. While Copland wrote a generous amount of interesting music, like a lot of music-lovers I find I listen mostly to the "Americana" works, which represent a small portion of his output. We've already heard the Fanfare for the Common Man, and two of the Copland-arranged Old American Songs. The great ballet Appalachian Spring, one of my very favorite pieces of music, I want to reserve for consideration on its own -- beyond the "Simple Gifts" finale, that is, which we've already heard. This is how we wound up at the Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo." "Hoe-Down," the last of the four episodes, has been absorbed into the American musical vocabulary; is there anyone who didn't recognize it?
Here's the complete Rodeo suite, conducted first by -- who else? -- Leonard Bernstein. As we noted back when we heard Aaron Copland conduct Lenny's Candide Overture in Prague, the two had a close relationship, and there was no more effective champion of Copland's music than LB. Eventually, of course, the composer himself developed into one of his own most effective champions, and so we're going to hear his version too.
COPLAND: Four Dance Episodes from "Rodeo"
i. Buckaroo Holiday ii. Corral Nocturne iii. Saturday Night Waltz iv. Hoe-Down
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded 1960
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 26, 1968
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
Symphony No. 2: i. Andante moderato
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded Apr. 29 and May 1, 1995
After hurling Ives's Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day at you on Thursday (even in David Zinman's remarkably sympathetic performance, it doesn't seem to me one of his more approachable works, but heck, what are you going to do on Thanksgiving Day?), I wanted to plunge you into the composer's sound at what seems to me its most "grabbingly" appealing. Unfortunately, I've never heard anybody but Leonard Bernstein really "get" this potentially haunting opening movement of his Second Symphony, which adds the usual Ives mélange on top of that bedrock of full-throated New England hymn-singing.
I don't doubt that that wonderfully musical Estonian-born conductor Neeme Järvi understands the music, but like so many conductors, he seems afraid to really dig in and make those broad singing lines really sing. Lenny B made it sound like the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, and I won't mind if you cheat and sneak down to his complete 1958 recording of the Ives Second, to my hearing one of the loveliest things he ever did, and listen to just the first movement.
Hey, I'm not the audio-file police. If you want to listen to more than the first movement, who's going to stop you? Especially since Ives meant the broad opening Andante moderato to proceed without interruption into the spirited second-movement Allegro. As it happens, the Allegro had an extra frisson for me, as I got to know the piece amid the granite of New Hampshire as a Dartmouth student. I expect you noticed in the first movement that Ives was very free about incorporating tunes from various walks of American (and sometimes non-American) life. The lovely second theme of the Allegro, played so caressingly by the pair of flutes [first heard at 1:58 of the Andrew Litton performance below], is the old Dartmouth song "Where oh where are the pea-green freshmen?"
SIDEBAR: THE DOPIEST COLLEGE SONGS IN ACADEME
At least in my time, Dartmouth was known, at least to its students, for having the dopiest songs in North American academe. The worst example, in those pre-coeducation days, was the first stanza of our "school song," "Men of Dartmouth," which drew to an, er, rousing close with the lines:
They have the still North in their hearts, The hlll winds in their veins, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire [yes, the music actually spat out the word "granite"] In their muscles and their brains, And the GRANITE of New Hampshire In their muscles and their brains.
Is it any wonder there was so much alumni resistance to going coed? What prideful alum would want to give all that up?
But we digress. Um, maybe this would be a good time to continue on to the Allegro of the Second Symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2: ii. Allegro
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Hyperion, recorded Jan. 6-9, 2005
One curiosity: The Litton recording has the movement marking, normally just "Allegro," as "Allegro molto (con spirito)." It's an odd irony that LItton's performance is one of the less spirited I know.
[Parenthetical note: Did you notice that that's two cases in a row of British record companies recording American music with American orchestras; Hyperion in fact recorded all four Ives symphonies with Andrew Litton and the Dallas Symphony. (The Fourth Symphony, which was finally given its world premiere in 1965 by Leopold Stokowski with the orchestra he'd founded in 1962, the American Symphony, is quite a production -- I hope we'll have a chance to come back to it someday -- and if there's one thing Stoky knew, it was how to put on a show. Happily, Columbia made a recording at the time.) In addition, the Zinman-Baltimore Symphony Ives CD featuring the Holidays Symphony and Three Places in New England from which I extracted Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day was recorded by yet another British company. I guess this is good, unless it means that American companies aren't doing the job.]
It's a wonder that Ives himself got to hear the Second Symphony. Indeed, it's lucky that, despite a lifelong litany of health problerms, he survived to surprisingly near his 80th birthday, because the symphony, written in 1902-10, wasn't performed until 1951, when it was conducted by a brash young conductor then making a name for himself, that name being Leonard Bernstein! By then Ives's Third Symphony (1910) had already been performed, way back in 1946, after a mere 36-year wait, and won the Pulitzer Prize.
So what was Ives doing all that time when his music was busy being unheard? Selling insurance, or rather overseeing the selling of same, having cofounded his own firm, with considerable success. He was by general consent a visionary in the field. He trained seriously in music (he had worked first with his father, a band leader, then studied with Horatio Parker at Yale, producing his (fairly conventional) First Symphony as a senior thesis, but nobody was clamoring to hear his music, and he had to make a living, and he drifted into insurance and discovered he was good at it. Remarkably, he seems to have though of insurance in terms of how it could help the buyer; interestingly, he wound up making a very good living at it. (Hmm.)
Even as his career flourished (with the occasional bump), Ives continued composing well into the '20s, and then found himself unable to continue. We don't know why, but then, it can't be easy to maintain life as a composer when you never get to hear your music performed, and never get to experience other people experiencing it. At the same time, it can't be fun to find yourself unable to continue creating -- and we may guess at Ives's state of mind relative to composition by the fact that he declined to attend that much-belated 1946 premiere of his Third Symphony.
If you look up "labor of love" in the dictionary, or at any rate a dictionary with sound files, you'll hear Lenny B's 1958 recording of the Ives Second Symphony. Columbia Masterworks seems to have been dubious enough about its commercial prospects that it put the record in the "KS" rather than "MS" series, charging an extra buck, which was pretty chintzy for 40 minutes' worth of music. In compensation, they offered a little bonus record with a Lenny talk about Ives, but at some point -- before I bought my copy -- they seem to have stopped packing the bonus record, but not stopped charging the extra buck. Of course at standard discount prices of the era it was more like half a buck, but remember, the buck of those days was worth a lot closer to a dollar.
I don't think digital sound does justice to the tonal intensity of the orchestral playing as heard on the LP. The New York Philharmonic strings were never what you'd call a lustrous group, but on that day in October 1958 they played with a vibrancy that was something to behold. Anyway, here's the complete symphony.
IVES: Symphony No. 2
i. Andante moderato ii. Allegro iii. Adagio cantabile iv. Lento maestoso v. Allegro molto vivace
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/Sony, recorded Oct. 6, 1958
LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK (1829-1869)
For a virtuoso finish, we jump back now to the 19th century, to the days of barnstorming composer-performers, and the home-grown pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk -- "America's first great musician" to pianist Eugene List, one of his more persistent champions in the later 20th century. By profession if not talent level Gottschalk was a sort of American Liszt, an outsize personality (for all his slender stature) whose brief but adventure-packed life was almost as much a work of art as his music.
Gottschalk was born in New Orleans when the city was still mostly Spanish and French, within living memory of the Louisiana Purchase, which had made this vast swath of central North America the property of the young United States. He functioned as a sort of American good-will ambassador in his tours of Europe and especially South America. For his performing use, he wrote a large quantity of solo piano music as well as music for multiple pianos and assorted other piano-plus combinations. Naturally he was a great connoisseur of dance rhythms from around the world, as he demonstrates in this infectious four-hand "Cuban dance."
GOTTSCHALK: La Gallina (The Hen), Danse cubaine
for piano four hands
Eugene List and Cary Lewis or Brady Millican, piano. Vox, recorded c 1972 [Note: The packaging for the Vox set from which all our Gottschalk musical selections come, while it generously includes both an essay by Mr. List on Gottschalk and program notes by Richard Freed, is skimpy on other information, such as who among Mr. List's supporting artists plays what, or the recording dates. Where I could, I've gleaned (or guessed) such info, drawing on other sources.]
Between 1860, when he first composed the Grande Tarantelle, and his death (at 40) in 1869, Gottschalk seems to have arranged the thing for just about every piano-plus instrumental combination imaginable, but when Eugene List went searching for the piano-and-orchestra version in the '50s, the best he could do was a two-piano version in the British Museum. He persuaded the composer Hershy Kay to produce this 1957 reconstruction.
GOTTSCHALK-KAY: Grande Tarantelle for Piano
and Orchestra
Eugene List, piano; one of two orchestras, either Igor Buketoff or Samuel Adler, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
Gottschalk wasn't all flash, though. Here is an orchestral piece that has won favorable attention even from some of his detractors, the two movement La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics), which the composer gave the rather highfalutin designation "Symphony No. 1." On its own terms, though, the piece is a beauty. Annotator Freed evokes Berlioz, and in the sinuous, long-breathed melodic lines of the Andante in particular, I hear what he means.
GOTTSCHALK: Symphony No. 1, La Nuit des tropiques (Night in the Tropics)
i. Andante ("Nuit dans les tropiques")
ii. Allegro moderato ("Une fête sous les tropiques") ("A Festival Under the Tropics")
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Igor Buketoff, cond. Vox, recorded c 1972
APPENDIX: OOPS, AN AMERICAN TREASURE LOST, OR AT LEAST SOMEHOW MISPLACED
I can't believe I did a grabbag of American musical treasures, with Leonard Bernstein's name plastered all over the damned place, and even mentioning the Overture to LB's Candide, without including it -- me of all people, having gone on record as admitting it's a piece I can listen to dozens of times in succession.
LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)
"Once one dismisses the rest of all possible worlds, One finds that this is the best of all possible worlds."
-- Dr. Pangloss, in Leonard Bernstein's Candide (lyrics for "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by John LaTouche)
In my mind, of course, we've "done" Candide, and done it. Oh, I know we've barely scratched the surface, but what was this post about but scratching surfaces? And of course many of you have never read those posts.
So herewith, a little Candide suite: the Overture and the great philosopher Dr. Pangloss (in the person of the late Adolph Green, the distinguished lyricist) teaching his charges that this is "The Best of All Possible Worlds" from the studio recording of the complete Candide that Lenny made at the time of his happily televised (and therefore now-on-DVD)concert performance; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook.
BERNSTEIN et al.: Candide
Overture
London Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG,recorded December 1989
"The Best of All Possible Worlds" (lyrics by John LaTouche)
Adolph Green (Dr. Pangloss), June Anderson (Cunegonde), Della Jones (Paquette), Jerry Hadley (Candide), Kurt Ollmann (Maximilian); from the DG recording (see above)
Why would Randy Bryce, an iron worker from Caldonia, Wisconsin, bring Vangelis, Copeland and, most of all, Henry A. Wallace to mind? That's easy enough. And we get reminded everyday. Today Randy responded to Ryan's latest plan to screw over "the common man." In an email to supporters, #IronStache said, "Speaker Ryan rebranded his plan to destroy Medicaid as a way of 'helping people,' today, showing he couldn't be more out of touch with how to actually help Americans struggling to get by. We aren't lazy individuals who need to be motivated to work. We are working harder than ever and getting less and less in return. What we need is for Paul Ryan to stop giving tax breaks to the Kochs and stop trying to repeal basic healthcare protections, and to start increasing wages and pass Medicare for All."
concert performance [and now another performance of the Overture conducted by Andrew Davis -- oh, and maybe just one more, conducted by David Zinman]; and the Candide-Cunegonde duet "Oh Happy We!" and Cunegonde's great aria "Glitter and Be Gay" from the Original Broadway Cast recording, featuring the great Barbara Cook [and now another "Glitter and Be Gay," sung by Natalie Dessay].
recorded December 1989
Dec. 9, 1956
