. 1985 ~ The long-awaited album, We Are the World, was finally released. Eight rock stars donated previously unreleased material for the LP. Three million copies of the award-winning single of the same name had already been sold. The song, We Are the World, was number five, and moving up, on the Billboard magazine pop single’s chart this day.
. 1991 ~ Martha Graham passed away. She was an American modern dancer and choreographer.
. 2001 ~ Eva Heinitz, who fled Nazi Germany in the prime of her career as a cello performer and was one of the first professional viola da gamba players in modern times, died at the age of 94. Heinitz, a native of Berlin, soared to prominence as a brilliant, temperamental soloist with the greatest orchestras of Europe in her 20s. Initially instructed on the cello, Heinitz taught herself to play the smaller instrument and performed the Bach Passions under the direction of Wilhelm Furtwangler and Otto Klemperer, who called her the world’s best viola da gamba player. Heinitz, who once described herself as “51 percent” Jewish, fled Germany in 1933. She lived in Paris and London, moved to New York in 1939 and was hired by Fritz Reiner as a section cellist with the Pittsburgh Symphony. She came to Seattle in 1948 and was hired as faculty cellist at the University of Washington. During her 28-year tenure, she became one of the founders of the early-music revival, which brought a renewed interest in music and instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1991, her international colleagues gathered in Indiana and accorded her the title “Grande Dame du Violoncelle” – great lady of the cello.
. 2001 ~ Trinh Cong Son, Vietnam’s most beloved singer-songwriter who opposed the Vietnam War and sought postwar reconciliation, died after a long battle with diabetes at the age of 62. Dubbed the “Bob Dylan of Vietnam” by American folk singer Joan Baez for his anti-war songs, his music is still widely performed in Vietnam and in overseas Vietnamese communities. Son, who was persecuted by the South Vietnamese government in the late 1960s and early ’70s, wrote more than 600 songs. His pacifist songs about the futility of war were banned at the time, but bootleg copies circulated throughout South Vietnam and overseas. When the war ended, most of Son’s family fled overseas but he stayed. He was equally unpopular with the new Communist government for his songs about reconciliation and spent 10 years in forced labor “re-education camps.” But by the late ’80s, he regained popularity, and his songs are still performed by some of Vietnam’s biggest pop artists.
. 2001 ~ Theodore M. “Ted” McCarty, a key figure in the development of the electric guitar and former president of Gibson Guitar Co., died at the age of 91. In his 18 years as president at Gibson, McCarty transformed the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based maker of acoustic musical instruments into the purveyor of guitars to the stars. The solid-body electric guitar was considered something of a gimmick when McCarty left the Wurlitzer Co. to join Gibson in 1948. He had a degree in commercial engineering and had been an engineering designer for the military during World War II. Despite not being musically inclined, McCarty saw possibilities in the electric guitar. At Gibson, he helped bring to life the Les Paul series, named for the blues guitarist who endorsed it, the Explorer series, widely used by both rock and country guitarists, and the radical Flying V. McCarty later bought the Bigsby Co., which manufactures vibratos for guitars. He sold the company and retired in 1999.
. 2015 ~ Cynthia Lennon, the late John Lennon’s wife from 1962-1968, has died at age 75.
Joseph Lamb (1887 to 1960) was an extraordinarily gifted ragtime pianist and composer along with Scott Joplin and James Scott. He differed from them, though, because the art of improvisation completely baffled him. In response to this, Lamb viewed ragtime as an art form written on paper, instead of a spontaneous one. Though his style and approach were markedly different from his peers, he still left behind a rich legacy and remained one of the most influential ragtime composers.
Lehar
Franz Lehar, 1870 to 1948 was the son of a bandmaster serving principally in Hungary. He followed his father’s profession, before winning, in 1902, success in the theatre in Vienna, where he succeeded in the following years in reviving the operetta, providing music of greater distinction, with tenor arias written specifically for Richard Tauber.
The reputation of Franz Lehar as a composer of operetta is assured as he wrote nearly forty of them. Of these by the far the best known is Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), first staged in Vienna in 1905, the favourite operetta of Adolf Hitler.
Lennon
John Lennon, 1940 to 1980,was a pop star, composer, songwriter, and recording artist. He was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, NW England, UK. and was The Beatles rhythm guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist, and a partner in the Lennon–McCartney song-writing team. He married Japanese artist Yoko Ono in 1969. On the birth of his son, Sean (born in 1975), he retired from music to become a house-husband. Five years later he recorded (Just Like) Starting Over, but he was shot and killed by a deranged fan just before its release. His death affected millions of people, record sales soared, and he continues to be admired by new generations of fans.
Lerner and Lowe
Alan Jay Lerner,
Playwright, born August 31, 1918, New York, New York; died June 14, 1986
Frederick Loewe,
Composer, born June 10, 1904, Vienna, Austria; died February 14, 1988
Frederick Loewe, an unheralded Vienna-born composer, and Alan Jay Lerner, the lyricist-playwright son of the proprietors of an American chain of women’s clothing shops, with sketches and lyrics for two Harvard Hasty Pudding shows among his major credits, met by chance at New York’s Lambs Club in 1942. Had they not, Brigadoon would never have emerged from the mists of the Scottish Highlands to make the world feel “Almost Like Being in Love” . . . no one would have been there to “Paint Your Wagon” . . . My Fair Lady would still be a less than lyrical English girl from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion who couldn’t sing a note. . . we might never have thought to “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” like “Gigi” . . . and Camelot would most likely have stayed within the pages of Arthurian legend.
When the two, who were destined to enrich the American musical theater with some of its most poignant, rousing, and memorable lyrics, engaging books and powerful musical scores, had that chance meeting more than 50 years ago, neither was widely known. Loewe’s Great Lady had had a brief run on Broadway in 1938. Lerner had added radio scripts to his Hasty Pudding Club show credits. But later collaborations after one brief failure, What’s Up? (1943), and the moderately successful The Day Before Spring (1945), which ran five months on Broadway, made musical history.
Alan Jay Lerner was one of three sons of Joseph J. Lerner, who founded Lerner Stores, Inc. He was educated in England and at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, before entering Harvard. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music during vacations from Harvard. After graduating in 1940 with a B.S. degree, he wrote advertising copy and radio scripts for such programs as the “Philco Hall of Fame.”
Frederick “Fritz” Loewe was the son of Edmund Loewe, an eminent operetta tenor. When he was two, Frederick accompanied his father on a tour of the United States. The youngster played piano at four and, at nine, composed the tunes for a music hall sketch in which his father toured Europe. At 15, he wrote “Katrina,” a popular song that sold 3,000,000 copies in Europe. He had begun his own concert career as soloist with some of Europe’s leading symphony orchestras at the age of 13 after having studied with the noted European musician Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene d’Albert. In 1923, young Loewe was awarded the Hollander Medal in Berlin and studied composition and orchestration with Nickolaus von Reznicek.
The following year, the younger Loewe accompanied his father to America. Since neither a concert he gave at New York’s Town Hall, nor a subsequent week’s engagement at the Rivoli Theater led to further concert engagements, he tried teaching music and playing at Greenwich Village night clubs. When music failed to earn him a living, he worked as a busboy in a cafeteria and as a riding instructor at a New Hampshire resort. He took up flyweight boxing and failed, then went West, cowpunching, gold mining, and carrying mail on horseback over the Montana mountains before returning to New York where he found work as a piano player. In 1935, Loewe’s song “Love tiptoes Through My Heart” was accepted for the musical Petticoat Fever. His own musical, Salute to Spring, was presented in St. Louis in 1937. The next year, his Great Lady reached Broadway, but ran for only 20 performances.
The first Lerner-Loewe collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connor’s farce The Patsy for a Detroit stock company in 1942. They called it Life of the Party and it enjoyed a nine-week hit that encouraged them to continue with the musical comedy What’s Up? which opened on Broadway in 1943. Lerner wrote the book and lyrics with Arthur Pierson, and Loewe composed the music. It ran for 63 performances and was followed in 1945 by their The Day Before Spring.
It was when the curtain went up to the haunted strains of bagpipes on the night of March 13, 1947, and the mist-shrouded Scottish Highland village of Brigadoon first appeared, that the team of Lerner and Loewe also emerged as potentially legendary. The musical, which after its original 581 performances on Broadway, toured extensively and has been revived frequently, won the “best musical”award from the New York Drama Critics Circle the year it opened and was hailed as having “evoked magic on Broadway.”
Between Brigadoon and Paint Your Wagon, the next team effort by Lerner and Loewe, Lerner wrote Love Life, with music by Kurt Weill, which was selected as one of the best plays of the 1948-49 Broadway season, plus the story, screenplay and lyrics for the films Royal Wedding and Brigadoon and the story and screenplay for An American in Paris, for which he won an Oscar in 1951.
Paint Your Wagon rolled in in 1951, and then, five years later, on March 15, 1956, My Fair Lady opened and became one of the most spectacular successes–artistic and financial–in the history of the American theater. Playing a record 2,717 performances on Broadway alone, it went on to break all other existing world records. This musicalization of Shaw’s classic Pygmalion was named “outstanding musical of the year” by the New York Drama Critics Circle–and by millions of theater goers.
Lerner and Loewe’s next collaboration was on the film adaptation of the Colette novel Gigi, another success filled with songs destined to become standard.
There was more collaborating to come–the film version of the Antoine de Saint-Exupery fable The Little Prince in 1972, but the 1960 Broadway hit Camelot which brought Arthurian England to life for its most shining hour, rang the curtain down on the phenomenon of Lerner and Loewe. Loewe, who had suffered a heart attack in 1958, went into retirement.
In tribute to his long time former partner, Lerner wrote, “There will never be another Fritz. . . . Writing will never again be as much fun . A collaboration as intense as ours inescapably had to be complex. But I loved him more than I understood or misunderstood him, and I know he loved me more than he understood or misunderstood me.”
Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis (September 29, 1935 – October 28, 2022) was an American pianist, singer and songwriter. Nicknamed “The Killer”, he was described as “rock ‘n’ roll’s first great wild man”.
Liadov
Anatol Konstantinovich Liadov lived from 1855 until 1914. He was the son of a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and was trained at the Conservatory, where he was briefly a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and later a member of the teaching staff. He was associated with Balakirev and subsequently became a member of Belyayev’s circle, helping, in particular, in the establishment of the publishing-house that Belyayev established for Russian composers.
He was a thoroughly competent musician, conductor and composer, but did not apply himself consistently to work. His failure to supply music for the Dyagilev ballet in Paris in 1910 allowed Stravinsky his first chance with the Ballets russes. His compositions are characteristic of the period in Russian nationalism, when nationalism was joined with technical competence inculcated at the Conservatories.
The best known orchestral compositions by Liadov are the descriptive Russian fairy-tale pieces Kikimora, Baba-Yaga and Volshebnoye ozero (The Enchanted Lake). His last orchestral work was the symphonic poem Skorbnaya pesn. All are very much in the nationalist tradition exemplified by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Liadov wrote a number of shorter piano pieces, including Fugues and a set of Canons, testimony to his contrapuntal ability. Other pieces have characteristic titles, examples of pleasing and well crafted compositions for which there was a ready market.
Liadov wrote a setting of the final scene of Schiller’s Die Braut von Messina (The Bride from Messina) for his Conservatory graduation. Of some 26 songs, eighteen are Children’s Songs.
Liberace
(Walter) (Wladziu Valentino) Liberace, American pianist and showman. Lee, as he was known, was the master of Las Vegas. Hundreds of thousands flock to his museum there (operated by his brother, George) to see Liberace’s garish suits, trademark candelabra, and learn of the myths behind this hugely successful star of television, stage and concerts the world over.
Ligeti
György Ligeti, a composer, was born in 1923 in Transylvania. He studied and later taught at the Budapest Academy of Music. After leaving Hungary in 1956, he worked at the electronics studio in Cologne, then settled in Vienna, where he developed an experimental approach to composition. His first large orchestral work, Apparitions (1958–9), made his name widely known. In Aventures (1962) he uses his own invented language of speech sounds. He has also written a choral requiem, a cello concerto, and music for harpsichord, organ, and wind and string ensembles.
Lipatti
Dinu Lipatti was born in Bucharest and lived from 1917 until 1950. He was a pianist and composer who studied in Paris with Cortot and Boulanger, and after World War 2 established an international reputation as a gifted pianist, especially in the works of Chopin. His compositions include a Symphonie concertante for two pianos and strings, and a concertino for piano and orchestra. His career was cut short when he died of a rare form of cancer.
Liszt
Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, near Doborján, October 22, 1811 and died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886. He was a Hungarian composer and pianist who was a major influence during the romantic period. Liszt was an outstanding pianist at seven, composed at eight and made concert appearances at nine. In addition to being a piano virtuoso, he was also a critic, conductor, city music director, literary writer and transcriber of the works of other composers. He transcribed Beethoven’s Symphonies for the piano.
Franz Liszt began his career as the outstanding concert pianist of the century, who, along with the prodigious violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), created the cult of the modern instrumental virtuoso. To show off his phenomenal and unprecedented technique, Liszt composed a great deal of music designed specifically for this purpose, resulting in a vast amount of piano literature laden with dazzling scales, trills, arpeggios, leaps, and other technical marvels. In this vein, Liszt composed a series of virtuosic rhapsodies on Hungarian gypsy melodies, the best-known being the all too familiar Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. Liszt developed the rhapsody as a form of serious music. This kind of music is worlds apart from the generally more introspective, poetic music of pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin.
Liszt was wildly handsome and hugely talented. He was extremely popular in Paris during the 1830’s. It is said that women actually fainted at his piano recitals. He was the first to position the piano so that its lid reflected the sound and the audience could see his profile as he performed.
Liszt was the first to write a tone poem, which is an extended, single-movement work for orchestra, inspired by paintings, plays, poems or other literary or visual works, and attempting to convey the ideas expressed in those media through music. Such a work is Les Pruludes, based on a poem in which life is expressed as a series of struggles, passions, and mysteries, all serving as a mere prelude to . . .what? The Romantic genre of the symphonic poem, as well as its cousin the concert overture, became very attractive to many later composers, including Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss.
Lloyd Webber
British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of the most successful composers of this era with hugely successful commercial hits such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunset Boulevard, Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Evita. Cats, the longest-running production in Broadway history, closed after 7,397 performances on June 25, 2000.
Locatelli
Pietro Antonio Locatelli lived from 1695 until 1764. He was born in Bergamo, later moving to Rome, where he might have studied with Corelli, but more probably was a pupil of Valentini. He was an Italian composer of sonatas and concerti, but he was best known as a virtuoso violinist playing mostly in Amsterdam where he settled in 1721. He won a reputation as a virtuoso, performing in Italy, in Bavaria and in Berlin. In 1729 he settled in Amsterdam, where he taught and conducted an amateur orchestra and was able to pursue his wider cultural interests.
Locatelli wrote a number of concerti grossi, following the example of Corelli. The first set, published in Amsterdam in 1720, include twelve fugues. L’arte del violino (The Art of the Violin), published in 1733, contains twelve violin concertos and 24 Caprices, precursors of Paganini’s famous set for unaccompanied violin. A further set of six concertos was published two years later and a set of six, published in 1744, is scored for four violins, two violas and basso continuo. Locatelli combines the Roman style of Corelli with, in his solo concertos, the virtuosity of Vivaldi in Venice.
In his Concerti grossi, works for string orchestra with a smaller group of soloists, Locatelli at first follows the pattern of Corelli, with one or two violas added to Corelli’s solo group of two violins, cello and harpsichord. There is also a Concerto grosso that includes a group of solo wind instruments, in addition to solo violin concertos. Some of these works have programmatic titles. His L’arte del violino (The Art of the Violin) includes 24 Caprices for unaccompanied violin, challenging works that have been regarded by some as foreshadowing the Caprices of Paganini in the following century. Locatelli also published sets of trio sonatas and solo sonatas, including a set of the latter for flute and basso continuo.
Loewe
Frederick “Fritz” Loewe lived from 1904 until 1988. He was a composer, born in Vienna, Austria and at age 13 he was the youngest pianist to solo with the Berlin Symphony. At age 15 he composed Katrina (1919), which sold two million copies of sheet music in Europe. Although he had studied with great European masters of the piano, when he came to the U.S.A. in 1924 he failed as a piano virtuoso. He took up a series of odd jobs–prospecting for gold, professional boxing–but by the mid-1930s he had launched his career as a composer for the musical theater. Not until he teamed up with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner in 1942, however, did he find his true talent; their first big success was Brigadoon (1947) and this was followed by such classic stage and film musical scores as My Fair Lady (1956), Gigi (1958), and Camelot (1960). This last led to their falling-out and they did not collaborate again until in 1973 when they made a stage version of their film musical, Gigi. Their last collaboration was The Little Prince (1974), after which Loewe retired.
If ever I would leave you from Camelot won him a Grammy Award.
Lully
Jean Baptiste Lully lived from about 1632 until 1687 and was considered to be a baroque composer. He was an Italian-born French court composer who molded Italian opera music to suit the French text. He was the first to compose French overtures, which served as model for subsequent composers, especially J. S. Bach. He changed his name from the Italian Giovanni Battista Lulli when he became a French citizen.
Lully was conducting a Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV’s recovery from illness. He was banging loudly on the floor with a staff when he struck his foot with such force that it developed an abscess, from which the unfortunate Lully died shortly after.
Lunceford
James Melvin Lunceford was born. June 6, 1902, Fulton, Miss., U.S. and died on July 12, 1947, Seaside, Ore. He was an American jazz dance-band leader whose rhythmically appealing, well-disciplined orchestra performed arrangements by trumpeter Sy Oliver and others to popular acclaim from 1934 to 1945 and influenced both swing and post-World War II dance bands.
Lunceford, during his youth, acquired proficiency on all reed instruments, but he seldom played with his band because he preferred to conduct. He taught and organized a student orchestra in a Memphis, Tenn., high school before beginning his professional career as a bandleader in 1929. Practiced showmanship, precise ensembles, and a medium two-beat swing tempo rather than exciting soloists were the Lunceford band’s trademarks. The band’s most popular songs included Organ Grinder’s Swing (1936) and For Dancers Only (1937). The Lunceford band was considered to be on a par with bands led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman during the 1930s, and in 1940 the ensemble won a celebrated “battle of the bands” from a field of 28 groups, among them Basie’s, Goodman’s, and Glenn Miller‘s. Arranger Oliver left Lunceford in 1939, and by 1942 the band’s popularity had declined. Following Lunceford’s death while on tour, pianist Edwin Wilcox and saxophonist Joe Thomas led the band for several years.
Lutoslawski
Witold Lutoslawski lived from 1913 until 1994. He was born and studied in Warsaw, winning a distinguished international reputation particularly from the 1950s onwards, a leading composer among a group of creative artists of outstanding ability, remarkable in his handling of forms and textures of great originality.
The genius of Lutoslawski was early evident in his 1938 Symphonic Variations. The years after the war brought a return to more conventional national modes of composition, heard in his Little Suite and Concerto for Orchestra. Later works have allowed a more experimental approach on a broader palette, to be heard in his Funeral Music of 1958, his Second Symphony and the Prelude and Fugue for thirteen string instruments.
Characteristic works for voice and orchestra include Paroles tissées for tenor and chamber orchestra, and Three Poems by Henri Michaux for twenty voices and orchestra.
Michael Joe Jackson
A star was born on August 29, 1958 in Gary, Indiana. Singer, songwriter, dancer, actor Michael Joe Jackson started on the road to stardom while at Garnett Elementary School in Gary. Michael performed for his class by singing Climb Every Mountain. Within just a few years, he took his act to the stage joining his brothers as The Jackson Five. They were entertaining at Mr. Lucky’s, also in Gary, Indiana. Michael was only 8. By the time he was 11, Michael, the youngest of the five brothers, was the lead singer of the group.
And their hits were hitting the top of the charts: I Want You Back, ABC, The Love You Save, I’ll Be There. Then young Michael started recording solo hits like Ben, also #1.
And the hits just kept on coming … and the awards came with them: A Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal in 1979 for Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough, 5 Grammy Awards in 1983 — Best Male Pop Vocal and Album of the Year (Thriller), Best Male R & B vocal and Best R & B song (Billie Jean), and Best Recording for Children: E.T., the Extraterrestrial; 2 in 1984 — Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal (Beat It); another in 1985 with Lionel Richie for Song of the Year (We are the World); a Best Music Video/Short Form Grammy in 1989 for Leave Me Alone; and finally, The Legend Award Grammy — for the living legend in the music industry, Michael Jackson.
Whether Michael sings with his brothers, his sisters, alone or in duets with fellow performers, the results are hit, after hit, after hit … The Girl is Mine and Stay, Stay, Stay with Paul McCartney; I Just Can’t Stop Loving You with Siedah Garrett; Rock with You, Bad, Smooth Criminal … Ease on Down the Road with Diana Ross (from Broadway’s The Wiz in which Michael played the scarecrow). Michael, the actor, was also seen as a hologram, Captain Eo in Epcot Center’s multimedia show.
A celebrity for most of his life, he is both magic and tragic … the gloved one’s fame and infamy well-known throughout the world: he made $70 million from Thriller; he paid $50 million for the rights to the Beatles’ 251 songs; his Bad album was number one in 23 countries; he has an amusement park and zoo at his California estate; he married and divorced Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of the King of Rock.
He remarried, became a father … and the rest of the story is still being written …. To date, Michael Jackson remains the King of Pop.
Janácek
Leos Janácek lived from 1854 until 1928. It was relatively late in life that the Moravian composer Janácek won more than local recognition. He made his early career in the capital of his native province, Brno, coupling an interest in regional folk music with a study of speech intonations, echoed in his instrumental as well as vocal writing. His opera Jenufa was first staged in Brno in 1904, but it was the performance in Prague in 1915 that brought the work of the composer a much wider public. The seven operas that followed have formed a very idiosyncratic part of current operatic repertoire, culminating in From the House of the Dead, completed in 1928, the year of Janácek’s death, and based on the novel by Dostoyevsky.
The best known of Janácek’s music for orchestra is the Sinfonietta, derived from an original festival piece of 1926. To this may be added the rhapsody based on the work of Gogol, Taras Bulba, and the Lachian Dances, based on folk-dances.
Joachim
Joseph Joachim lived from 1831 until 1907. He was a Hungarian violinist, conductor and composer whose exceptional talent was recognized by Mendelssohn. He was also a close friend of Brahms. His music had much in common with the music of Schumann.
John
Elton Dwight John was born in 1947 and is a rock singer and pianist. He was born in Pinner, NW Greater London, England. He played the piano by ear from age four, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music at 11. From 1967, he and Bernie Taupin began writing songs such as “Rocket Man’ (1972), “Honky Cat’ (1972), and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (1973). Their publisher pressed John to perform them, for which he obscured his short, plump, myopic physique in a clownish garb that included huge glasses, sequined and fringed jump suits, and ermine boots. The top pop star of the 1970s, he later became chairman (1976 to 1990) and then honorary life president in 1990 of the Watford Football Club and a stock-market speculator. Despite health problems in 1993 brought about by his stressful lifestyle he continues to perform live across the world.
Johnson
James Price Johnson, Ragtime composer
Jolivet
André Jolivet lived from 1905 until 1974. Versatile in the arts, André Jolivet was a pupil of Le Flem and later of Varèse and was, with Olivier Messiaen, Daniel Lesur and Yves Baudrier, a member of the composers grouped together as Jeune France. As director of music for the Comédie française he wrote a quantity of incidental music and elsewhere based his work on principles that stemmed from his interest in the magical and incantatory element fundamental to human music.
Jolivet wrote a number of concertos, all demanding considerable virtuosity from the soloist. These include a concerto for the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument developed in France in the 1920s, and concertos for trumpet and piano, for flute, for piano, for harp, for bassoon and harp, for percussion, for cello and for violin.
In addition to his varied incidental music, whether for Molière, Claudel, Corneille or Plautus, Jolivet wrote music for the ballet and for marionette plays.
Jolivet made an early impression on Messiaen with the six piano pieces that constitute Mana. Chamber music includes music involving the flute, an instrument he particularly favoured for its primitive human associations.
Joplin
Scott Joplin (1868-1919) was the most influential and famous composer of the ragtime era, and one of the most daring pioneers in the history of American music. He was known as the Father of Ragtime. At first, the musical establishment absolutely refused to acknowledge ragtime as a worthy means of musical expression, dismissing it as catastrophic noise that had little musical meaning at all. Only within the last few decades has his work finally been truly appreciated and accepted as a truly great form of art, and as a unique and substantial contribution to music.
Ragtime, which first emerged in the 1890’s, is a style of piano playing with an up-and-down “ragged time” rhythm. Joplin made ragtime an international dance craze with “Maple Leaf Rag”. “The Maple Leaf Rag”, became the first song to sell over one million copies of sheet music.
The remarkable part of his success as a musician was the fact that he was African American. His success paved the way for all black musicians who would come after him, breaking a long-standing race barrier: acceptance as a performer.
Joplin’s music enjoyed renewed popularity with the use of “Solace” in the 1973 movie The Sting. Solace was not a typical rag, although it does have similar rhythmic elements.
Treemonisha was an opera composed by Joplin, although it was not produced until 1975, 58 years after his death.
Some other ragtime composers were Joseph Lamb and James Scott. Eventually, ragtime was replaced by jazz.
Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals is featured in Disney’s Fantasia and the newly released Fantasia 2000.
Salieri
Antonio Salieri lived from 1750 until 1825. Born in Legnago, he was brought as a boy to Vienna by Florian Gassmann, his predecessor as court Kapellmeister who supervised his musical training and education. He owed much to the influence and patronage of Gluck, to whom he seemed a natural successor in the field of opera. He won similar success to the latter also in Paris with his operas for the French stage. His pupils included Beethoven and Schubert, Czerny, Hummel, Moscheles and one of Mozart’s sons. He was a prolific composer, principally in vocal music of all kinds.
Thanks to Pushkin and Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as Shaffer and the film Amadeus, Salieri has been cast as the villain in the tragedy of Mozart’s early death. Antonio Salieri occupied a position of great importance in the music of Vienna. From 1774 he was court composer and conductor of the Italian opera, serving as court Kapellmeister from 1788 until 1824.
Salieri wrote some 45 operas, ranging from Tarare, with a libretto by Beaumarchais, for Paris and settings of libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte for Vienna to the Shakespearean comedy Falstaff and the operetta Prima la musica poi le parole (First the Music then the Words), staged at the imperial palace of Sch?nbrunn in 1786 on the same evening as Mozart’s German Singspiel Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario).
Salieri wrote a quantity of church music, as well as oratorios. He left still more secular vocal music, ranging from cantatas and choruses to duets and solo arias.
Rather less instrumental music by Salieri survives. This includes music for the ballet, sinfonias, concertos and music for various smaller ensembles.
As well as a significant quantity of ballet music, Salieri wrote concertos, including an organ concerto and a piano concerto, a Birthday Symphony and a set of variations on La folia di Spagna, (The Folly of Spain) the dance tune used by Corelli and many other Baroque composers.
Salieri’s chamber music consists principally of serenades, cassations and marches.
Satie
Erik Satie lived from 1866 until 1925 and was a French composer whose spare, unconventional, often witty music represents a first break with 19th century French Romanticism.
Scarlatti, Alessandro
(Pietro) Alessandro (Gaspare) Scarlatti lived from 1660 until 1725 and was the father of Domenico Scarlatti. Allessandro was a leading composer of early Italian opera and one of the most important figures in developing classical harmony.
Scarlatti, Domenico
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) is an important Baroque composer from Italy. He composed more than 500 keyboard sonatas, many of which are in one movement. Occasionally, he wrote them in pairs of similar or contrasting mood. Scarlatti used interesting melodies and combined them with a rhythmic vitality.
Scharwenka
Franz Xaver Scharwenka was born near Posen, Germany. He lived from 1850 until 1924 and was a pianist and composer. In 1881 he started a music school in Berlin, and spent the years from 1891 until 1898 in New York City directing the Scharwenka Music School. He composed symphonies, piano concertos, and Polish dances.
Schickele
Peter Schickele is a composer in his own right, in addition to “discovering” P.D.Q. Bach He recently arranged Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance for the new Disney movie Fantasia 2000.
Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg lived from 1874 until 1951. He was a German composer whose revolutionary method of composition (based on a series of 12 tones called 12-Tone Music) influenced many later composers.
Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert lived between 1797 and 1828. He is considered to be a romantic composer. He was an Austrian composer who was one of the greatest creators of melody and foremost writer of ‘lieder’ (German songs).
Although he only lived for 31 years, Schubert composed more than 600 songs, 22 piano sonatas and many short piano pieces. This melodic output has never been equaled either in quantity of quality. He was one of the first musicians to earn a living from the sale of his music.
Schubert’s Ave Maria was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia.
Schumann, Clara Wieck
Clara Wieck Schumann was a fine pianist and composer. She married Robert Schumann.
Schumann, Robert
Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, June 8, 1810 and died in Endenich, near Bonn, July 29, 1856. He was a German composer and pianist. With Chopin and Liszt he developed much of the technique of Romantic piano music.
He was a child prodigy, but his parents wanted him to become a lawyer. He did attend law school for a while but soon left to become a musician.
His earliest compositions were piano pieces, but he also wrote a popular piano concerto, several symphonies, and chamber music.
A master of the more intimate forms of musical compostitions, Schumann is unique in music history as being one of the great composers who concentrated on one musical genre at a time, with the bulk of his earliest compositions being for the piano. Schumann’s piano music (and later his songs) remain supreme examples of the Romantic style of the second quarter of the nineteenth-century. Immensely influenced by literature and poetry, it is the dreamy nature of his music which most affects the listener, as can be heard in the fifth movement from the piano suite entitled Carnaval. Aside from three piano sonatas, most of his work for the instrument is in the form of suites comprising short, poetic pieces, each expressing a different mood.
Schumann composed his 13-piece collection Scenes from Childhood in 1838, shortly after he became engaged to Clara Wieck, who also was a fine musician and the most celebrated woman pianist of her time. Clara Wieck was the daughter of his first music teacher, who had opposed their union.
In 1840, Schumann was finally able to marry Clara Wieck. Schumann’s happiness found an outlet in the great number of Lieder he wrote during that year. The first number from his song cycle Dichterliebe, Im wundersch?nen Monat mai (A Poet’s Love: “In the beautiful month of May” ) is another example of the composer’s harmonic and melodic style.
In order to publicize his own music and to stimulate and improve the musical tastes of the burgeoning concert-going public, Schumann founded Die Neue Zeitschrift f?r Musik (The New Journal for Music) in 1834, and remained active as its editor for ten years. In the pages of this publication, Schumann considerably raised the standards of music criticism and did much to promote the careers of young composers such as Fr?d?ric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, and especially Johannes Brahms, who was to become a very close friend of Schumann. Throughout his life, Schumann felt himself divided by two contrasting natures: the gentle, poetic, Apollonian side, which he called “Eusebius”; and the more forthright, dramatic and stormy side he named “Florestan”. Because of this rift in his personality, he feared insanity for much of his life, and eventually did spend his last years in an asylum.
Scott, Cyril
Cyril Meir Scott lived from 1879 until 1970. He was a composer, born in Oxton, Cheshire, NWC England, UK. As a child he studied the piano in Frankfurt, later returning there to study composition. His works won a hearing in London at the turn of the century, and in 1913 he was able to introduce his music to Vienna. His opera, The Alchemist, had its first performance in Essen in 1925. He composed three symphonies, piano, violin, and cello concertos, and numerous choral and orchestral works, but is best known for his piano pieces and songs.
Scott, James
James Scott (1886 to 1938) was a Ragtime composer along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb.
Although an extremely important figure in ragtime, Scott was always viewed as second to Scott Joplin in terms of musical expertise and prowess. However, Scott developed a very unique sound within the form of ragtime. He received lessons as a boy from John Coleman, a Missouri pianist, who recognized the boy’s genius. Soon after, he gained the attention of both the respected composer Charles Dumars, and the ragtime master himself, Scott Joplin, and the rest is history.
Seals, Son
Born in Osceola, Ark., Son Seals learned guitar from his father, a former minstrel show performer and juke joint operator. He initially established himself professionally as a drummer, working with guitarist Earl Hooker and appearing behind Albert King on the 1968 Stax album “Live Wire/Blues Power.”
Seals moved to Chicago in 1971 and began fronting his own groups on the city’s South Side.
Seals helped establish Chicago-based Alligator Records as the era’s premier blues label with a run of albums featuring his tough songs, brooding vocals and spikey guitar work. Signed to Alligator, he made an immediate impression with his impassioned 1973 debut “The Son Seals Blues Band.” After the release of its 1977 sequel “Midnight Son,” the New York Times called Seals “the most exciting young blues guitarist and singer in years.”
He won three W.C. Handy Blues Awards, and received a Grammy Award nomination in 1980 for his work on the live compilation “Blues Deluxe.”
Seals had a tempestuous relationship with Alligator and its founder-owner Bruce Iglauer, who also managed him; he departed the label in the mid-’80s, but returned to the fold in the ’90s. His last album “Lettin’ Go” was cut for Telarc in 2000.
He toured widely, despite the loss of a leg to diabetes. Late in his career he opened several shows for the jam band Phish, who covered his song “Funky Bitch.”
Seals had 14 children.
Segovia
Andrés Segovia lived from 1894 until 1987. He was a guitarist who was born in Linares, Spain. Largely self-taught, he gave his first concert in 1909, and quickly gained an international reputation. Influenced by the Spanish nationalist composers, he evolved a revolutionary guitar technique permitting the performance of a wide range of music, and many modern composers wrote works for him. He was created Marquis of Salobrena by royal decree in 1981
Shaw, Artie
Artie Shaw was born Arnold Jacob Arshawsky to a seamstress mother and photographer father in New York City on May 23, 1910, Shaw was about as restless a jazz star as one could find.
He formed and reformed bands, married and divorced eight times, gave up music for more than 30 years and put down his clarinet in 1954 never to play it in public again, quitting at age 44.
Critics dismissed his work at first. But soon they hailed him as a unique voice in swing-era jazz, especially for his beautiful tone and control of his instrument’s top register.
The Down Beat critic Howard Mandel once wrote: “In Shaw’s lips and hands the clarinet bent as pliantly as a blade of grass; it thrilled him to make glissandi, fast or sad melodies, and wonderful virtuosic turns.”
Among his famous songs were a 1938 rendition of “Begin the Beguine,” which made him a national star and chief rival to legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, “Oh, Lady Be Good,” “Stardust,” “Indian Love Call” and “Frenesi.”
He once said the success of “Begin the Beguine” was like an anchor around his neck.
As smooth as his tone was, Shaw was a man at war with himself. A crusty, self-declared perfectionist, Shaw gave up the clarinet because he said could not reach the level of artistry he desired.
In 1981, he ended a long musical intermission by reorganizing a band that bore his name and played his music — but with another clarinetist, Dick Johnson, leading the orchestra and playing the solos Shaw made famous.
Shaw traveled with the orchestra as a guest host and sometime conductor of the band’s signature opening number, “Nightmare.”
Shaw’s bands in the 1930s and 1940s featured a who’s who of jazz greats including Billie Holiday, Buddy Rich, Roy Eldridge and “Hot Lips” Page. At the height of his popularity, he earned $30,000 a week, a huge sum for the Depression Era.
He was one of the few white bandleaders who sought out black talent. Decades after Billie Holiday sang with him, Shaw still marveled at the sound of her voice.
“When she sang something, it came alive. I mean that is what jazz is all about,” he once said.
Shaw called himself a difficult man, a view his eight former wives, including novelist Kathleen Winsor and actresses Evelyn Keyes, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner might have agreed with. He recalled once almost erupting when a woman asked if he could play something with a Latin beat.
Of Shaw’s string of former wives, manager Curtis recalled, “He said he never had to pay any alimony because they were all as rich as he was.”
It was once a national joke to have as many wives as Artie Shaw had.
In a 1985 interview with Reuters, Shaw said he gave up playing when he decided he was aiming for a perfection that could kill him.
“I am compulsive. I sought perfection. I was constantly miserable. I was seeking a constantly receding horizon. So I quit,” he said.
“It was like cutting off an arm that had gangrene. I had to cut it off to live. I’d be dead if I didn’t stop. The better I got, the higher I aimed. People loved what I did, but I had grown past it. I got to the point where I was walking in my own footsteps,” he said in that interview.
Shaw spent his time as a guest on television game shows, writing an autobiography and a novel, traveling and lecturing.
But starting in the 1980s, Shaw returned to the road with his revived band as its host and sometime conductor of its opening number before turning over to Johnson.
Sibelius
Jean Sibelius (1865 until 1957) was the most famous composer in Finland. He is the best known of the Finnish composers chiefly remembered for his seven symphonies (Finlandia). In 1897, at the age of 32, Sibelius was awarded a lifelong pension by the Finnish government so that he could devote all his time to composing.
Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 to 1975) was a Russian composer renowned for his brilliant symphonies. His daring and experimental style brought him often in conflict with authorities.
Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto number 2 is featured in Disney’s newly released Fantasia 2000.
Schuetz
Heinrich Schuetz (1585- 1672) was a German composer who was born in Koestritz, Germany. Schuetz travelled to Italy to study in Venice. After his return he played an important role in bringing the Italian baroque style of music to Germany.
His compositions include church music, psalms, motets, passions, a German requiem, and the first German opera, Dafne, produced in Torgau in 1627. As a German Protestant Schuetz contributed greatly to German cultural unity after the 30-year war.
Smetana
Bedřich Smetana lived from 1824 until 1884. He wrote national music based on Bohemian folk tunes. Smetana was a child prodigy, playing is a string quartet by the age of 5 and composing by the age of 8.
He had to teach to support himself, but he maintained his Like Beethoven, Smetana did not allow his loss of hearing to stop him from composing. One of his greatest works was composed after his hearing was gone.
In The Bartered Bride he produced one of the greatest of all comic operas.
Smith
Bessie Smith (1894 to 1937) was perhaps the most influential female blues singer to ever live, so much so that she was given the nickname “the Empress of the Blues”. She was born into poverty in the 1890s, and started her singing career young. She was blessed with a deep, expansive voice that was powerful yet still had a very expressive quality to it. She rose to fame in the 1920s during the Depression, after she moved to New York City and began recording with jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. Sadly, she was killed in a tragic automobile accident in 1937, after her career was in shambles, and she had began turning to alcohol.
Sondheim
(Joshua) Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930 in New York City. Is is a composer, lyricist who received tutoring from family friend Oscar Hammerstein II and at age 17 was a production assistant for Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein. He wrote some music for television shows and for the play Girls of Summer (1956) before making his debut on Broadway by writing lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) and Jule Styne’s Gypsy (1959). He first wrote music as well as words for the successful farce, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). With producer-director Harold Prince he wrote both words and music for a string of innovative works, including A Little Night Music (1973) – which contained his best-known song, “Send in the Clowns” – and Pacific Overtures (1976), which combined elements of the Broadway musical with Japanese Kabuki theater. He won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize in drama for Sunday in the Park with George (1984).
Known for their often complex wordplay, evocative music, and unconventional subject matter, his works for stage, screen, and television mark him as one of the true artists of modern musical theater, one of the few who could inspire fans to wait overnight in freezing weather for tickets to merely a revue featuring his songs. He himself remains a private person, never courting publicity, and about all the public knows of him is that he enjoys word-based puzzles and party games.
Sor
Fernando Sor lived from 1778 until 1839. He is a Catalan composer chiefly known for his many compositions for guitar, his own instrument. Although originally opposed to the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, he later accepted a position under the French government and was, in consequence, obliged to seek refuge abroad, in London, and in Paris, where he established himself as a successful performer, teacher and composer.
Sor published a quantity of music for guitar, some of it pedagogical in purpose and some of it for concert performance. His Methode pour la guitarre, published in 1830, is among the most important books on guitar technique.
Sor wrote a number of boleros and seguidillas for voices and guitar, in addition to Spanish, Italian and English songs and duets for voice and piano.
Sor’s opera Telemaco nell’isola de Calipso (Telemachus on the Island of Calypso) was staged in Barcelona in 1797. Sor’s other theatre music was principally for the ballet, including a successful Cendrillon (Cinderella), a march from which he arranged for guitar.
SPEBSQSA
The SPEBSQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) was founded April 11, 1938 by 26 singing, striped-shirted gentlemen. Now we know that’s 6 quartets worth, but that?s what it took to get the organization humming. So, let?s head for the barbershop and ask for a “shave & a haircut, two bits!” or a refrain of Sweet Adeline.
By the way, Sweet Adeline, the love song that became a favorite of barbershop quartets, was written in 1903 by Richard Gerard and Henry Armstrong and there really was a sweet Adeline. She was opera singer Adelina Patti.
Today, female barbershop quartets are called Sweet Adelines.
Stern
Isaac Stern is a violinist who was born in Kremenets, Russia in 1920. Brought in infancy to the U.S.A. by his family, he grew up in San Francisco and took up the violin at age eight, later studying at the city’s conservatory from 1928 until 1931 and debuting with the orchestra at age 11. After years of further study and growth, he achieved an outstanding success at his Carnegie Hall debut in 1943. He went on to a career in the highest rank of international violinists – the only one to have been entirely trained in America. From 1961 he often played chamber music with pianist Eugene Istomin and cellist Leonard Rose; for many years he was president of New York’s Carnegie Hall, which he helped save from demolition. An intense and individual player, he both mastered the standard repertoire and introduced many new works. As a cultural ambassador he made tours of Russia in 1956 and of China in 1979.
Still
William Grant Still lived from 1895 until 1978. He was a composer who was born in Woodville, Miss. He has been called “the dean of Afro-American composers”. Still worked with W. C. Handy and graduated from Oberlin College. His music, while classical in technique, grew out of black life; his works include the Afro-American Symphony (1931).
Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was born in 1928 and has been among the leading avant-garde figures in German music since the 1950s. In spite of material difficulties, he studied in Cologne with Frank Martin and was subsequently strongly influenced by attendance at Darmstadt, where summer sessions contributed largely to the development of new music. He went on to study with Messiaen in Paris. Parallel to his work in electronic music, he explored the human element in performance, moving from total serialism, in which every aspect of a piece is controlled by a predetermined serial pattern, to a more flexible approach.
The numbering of Stockhausen’s works allows his earlier compositions the numbering of fractions, with his Kontre-Punkte of 1952 as the first whole number, No. 1. A varied and fascinating series of compositions includes Stimmung for electronically treated voices, Mantra, for two pianos, woodblocks and crotales, the result of a visit to the Osaka World Fair, at which his music was featured. Zyklus has an important part in modern percussion repertoire, while work continues on Licht, a project divided into seven days and involving dramatic use of instrumental performance. The size of this work, calculated to reach completion in 2002, is characteristic of the composer’s Wagnerian tendencies.
Of particular interest in the development of Stockhausen’s ideas is Gruppen, first performed in 1958, and using three orchestras surrounding the audience. Use of short-wave radio occurs in Hymnen, Spiral and his celebration of the bicentenary of Beethoven’s birth, Kurzwellen mit Beethoven (Short-Wave with Beethoven). Aus den sieben Tagen (From the Seven Days), a series of fifteen compositions, is written without notes but with verbal directions to performers, on whose particular imagination and ability he as so often relies. His continuing work Licht (Light) allows a significant dramatic element for solo trumpet in Donnerstag (Thursday), but all in all the comprehensive nature of Stockhausen’s work and its development over the last forty years defy succinct summary.
Stokowski
Leopold (b. Antoni Stanislaw Boleslawowicz) Stokowski lived from 1882 until 1977. He was a conductor who born in London, England. After musical studies in London, Paris, and Germany, Stokowski came to America in 1905 and four years later was named conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony. He left that post in 1912 for a long and celebrated tenure as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in which he cultivated a popular but later dated creaminess of sound. Stokowski became the great matinee idol of conductors – that despite his bold championing of advanced composers including Varese, Berg, and Schoenberg – and was for awhile linked with Greta Garbo. Resigning from Philadelphia in 1938, he went on to conduct for shorter periods orchestras including the NBC Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Houston Symphony (1955 to 1962), and American Symphony (1962 to 1973), the latter of which he founded. His popularity is reflected in the fact that he appeared in several movies, notably One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), Fantasia (1940) and Disney’s newly released Fantasia 2000.
Strauss, Johann Jr.
Johann Strauss Jr. (1825 – 1899) was the most famous of a musical family. He formed his own orchestra in Vienna and became known as The Waltz King.
Although his father wanted him to become a bank clerk, the supremely talented and devastatingly handsome Johann Strauss, Jr, was drawn to music. At the age of 19 he started his own orchestra, eventually providing orchestras for 14 of Austria’s ballrooms.
The Blue Danube was one of the more than 500 waltzes he composed and it became his “theme song”.
When Strauss visited the United States in 1872, he conducted 20,000 musicians and singers in a huge performance of The Blue Danube at the Boston Peace Jubilee.
Strauss, Johann Sr.
Johann Strauss, Sr. was an Austrian composer, best known for his “Radetzky March.”
Strauss, Richard
Richard Strauss was born June 11, 1864 in Munich, Germany. He died on September 8, 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He was a German composer and conductor known for his intense emotionalism in his symphonic poems. He characterized himself as ‘composer of expression’ which is born out in his colorful orchestration. In his operas he employed Wagnerian principles of music drama, but in a more compact form.
Strauss was composing by the age of six, having received basic instruction from his father, a virtuoso horn player. This was, however, his only formal training. The elder Strauss instilled in his son a love of the classical composers, and his early works follow in their path. Strauss’ first symphony premiered when he was seventeen, his second (in New York) when he was twenty. By that time, Strauss had directed his energies toward conducting, and in 1885 he succeeded Hans von B?low as conductor of the orchestra in Meiningen. For the next forty years, he conducted orchestras in Munich, Weimar, Berlin and Vienna.
As a conductor, Strauss had a unique vantage point from which to study the workings of the orchestra. From this vantage point he developed a sense for orchestration that was unrivaled. He immediately put this sense to use in a series of orchestral pieces that he called “tone poems”, including Macbeth, Don Juan, Tod und Verklärung, Till Eulenspeigels lustige Streiche and Don Quixote. These works are intensely programmatic, and in the last two, Strauss elevated descriptive music to a level not approached since the techniques of text painting during the Renaissance. He also used his knowledge of orchestral techniques to produce a revised version of Hector Berlioz’s important orchestration treatise; this edition remains a standard to this day.
After the turn of the century, Strauss began to shift his focus to opera. With his principal librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he created two forward-looking and shocking works: Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s controversial play, and Elektra, Hoffmannsthal’s version of the classical Greek tragedy. In these works, the intense emotions and often lurid narrative elicited a more daring and demanding musical language full of extreme chromaticism and harsh timbres. But with his next opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss seems to have left this aside, turning to a more focused, almost neoclassical approach in his later works. With this, Strauss settled into a comfortable place in German musical society, perhaps too comfortable, given his willingness to acquiesce to the artistic maneuverings of the rising Nazi regime. In the end, he broke with the Nazis on moral grounds, and died virtually penniless in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Musical Examples:
Don Quixote
Suite from Le Bourgoise gentilhomme, Op.60, Prelude
Also Sprach Zarathustra
One of Richard Strauss’ most popular works is Also Sprach Zarathustra since it was made popular in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick science-fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise of the same name. The composer conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts half an hour.
The work has been part of the classical repertoire since its first performance in 1896. The initial fanfare — entitled “Sunrise” in the composer’s program notes — became particularly well known to the general public due to its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as the theme music of the Apollo program. The fanfare has also been used in many other productions.
The piece starts with a sustained double low C on the double basses, contrabassoon and organ. This transforms into the brass fanfare of the Introduction and introduces the “dawn” motif (from “Zarathustra’s Prologue”, the text of which is included in the printed score) that is common throughout the work: the motif includes three notes, in intervals of a fifth and octave, as C–G–C (known also as the Nature-motif). On its first appearance, the motif is a part of the first five notes of the natural overtone series: octave, octave and fifth, two octaves, two octaves and major third (played as part of a C major chord with the third doubled). The major third is immediately changed to a minor third, which is the first note played in the work (E flat) that is not part of the overtone series.
“Of Those in Backwaters” (or “Of the Forest Dwellers”) begins with cellos, double-basses and organ pedal before changing into a lyrical passage for the entire section. The next two sections, “Of the Great Yearning” and “Of Joys and Passions”, both introduce motifs that are more chromatic in nature.
“Of Science” features an unusual fugue beginning in the double-basses and cellos, which consists of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. It is one of the very few sections in the orchestral literature where the basses must play a contra-b (lowest b on a piano). “The Convalescent” acts as a reprise of the original motif, and ends with the entire orchestra climaxing on a massive chord. “The Dance Song” features a very prominent violin solo throughout the section. The end of the “Song of the Night Wanderer” leaves the piece half resolved, with high flutes, piccolos and violins playing a B major chord, while the lower strings pluck a C.
One of the major compositional themes of the piece is the contrast between the keys of B major, representing humanity, and C major, representing the universe. Because B and C are adjacent notes, these keys are tonally dissimilar: B major uses five sharps, while C major has none.
Works:
Orchestral music, including symphonic poems: Macbeth (1888), Don Juan (1888-1889), Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration, 1889), Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, 1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1896), Don Quixote (1897) and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life, 1898); 2 symphonies (Domestic, 1903 and Alpine, 1915); 3 concertos (2 for horn, 1 for oboe)
15 operas, including Salome (1905), Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose, 1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912) and Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman, 1935)
Choral works (with and without orchestra), chamber works
Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky lived between 1882 and 1971. He is considered to be a twentieth century composer. Both Stravinsky and Prokofiev were students of Rimsky-Korsakov. Stravinsky is a Russian composer renowned for his ballet scores beginning with Firebird, and Petrushka for the Ballets Russes in Paris.
Rite of Spring created a scandal because of its complex rhythms and polytonal harmonies. Despite this, Stravinsky’s music greatly influenced contemporary music. After residing in France he moved in 1939 to the U.S. where he continued writing music for the stage.
His most famous works are for the ballet. His two most popular are The Firebird (featured in Fantasia 2000), based on a legend of a prince capturing a Firebird and receiving a magic feather, and Petrushka, in which a lovable doll is brought to life.
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia.
Suk
Joseph Suk lived from 1875 until 1935. He was born in Krhaechaovice, Czech Republic and was a composer and violinist. He studied in Prague under Dvorák, whose daughter he married, and carried on the master’s Romantic tradition by his violin Fantaisie (1903), the symphonic poem Prague, and particularly by his deeply felt second symphony, Asrael (1905), in which he mourned the deaths of his master and of his wife. He was for 40 years a member of the Czech Quartet, and in 1922 became professor of composition in the Prague Conservatory.
Sullivan
Arthur (Seymour) Sullivan was an operetta composer. He teamed up with Sir William Gilbert to write H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance and others. A recent movie about Gilbert and Sullivan, Topsy-Turvey, won an Oscar in 2000.
von Suppé
Franz von Suppé was an Austrian composer of light operas, notably “Poet and Peasant”. He lived from 1819 until 1895.
Suzuki
Shin’ichi Suzuki was born in 1898 in Nagoya, Japan and is a very famous music teacher. He studied in Tokyo and Berlin, and with three of his brothers founded the Suzuki Quartet. His mass instruction methods of teaching young children to play the violin have been adopted in many countries, and adapted to other instruments.
. 1937 ~ Music from the Raymor Ballroom in Boston, Massachusetts was beamed coast to coast on NBC radio. The special guests during this broadcast were Glenn Miller and his orchestra.
. 1937 ~ Three lovely ladies, known as The Andrews Sisters, recorded Decca record number 1562 this day. It became one of their biggest hits: Bei Mir Bist Du Schön.
. 1950 ~ The musical comedy, Guys and Dolls, from the pen of Frank Loesser, opened at the 46th Street Theatre in New York City. The show ran for 1,200 performances.
. 1958 ~ Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops was released, as was a disk by Ritchie Valens featuring Donna on one side and La Bamba on the other.
. 1958 ~ Harold Jenkins, who changed his name to Conway Twitty, got his first #1 hit on this day. It’s Only Make Believe was the most popular song in the U.S. for one week.
. 1972 ~ A Friday night show that would compete head-to-head with NBC’s Midnight Special premiered. In Concert featured Chuck Berry, Alice Cooper, Blood Sweat and Tears, Seals and Crofts and Poco. Robert W. Morgan of KHJ, Los Angeles was the offstage announcer for the ABC-TV show that was staged before a live audience. In Concert was the creation of the guy who dreamed up the fictitious group The Archies and brought fame to The Monkees: rock promoter, Don Kirshner.
. 1973 ~ Following over two years of retirement, Frank Sinatra went back to work again with a TV special on NBC titled, “Ol’ Blue Eyes is Back”. Despite the fact that the show finished third in the ratings (in a three-show race), at least one critic called the program, “The best popular music special of the year.”
. 1976 ~ The Band, appearing at the Winterland in San Francisco, announced that this was to be the group’s last public performance.
. 1985 ~ Big Joe Turner passed away
. 1991 ~ Freddie Mercury, British singer-songwriter (Queen – We are Champions), died at the age of 45
. 1993 ~ Albert Collins, passed away
. 2003 ~ Teddy Wilburn, half of the country music duo the Wilburn Brothers, died. He was 71. Wilburn and his brother, Doyle, had 30 songs on the country charts from 1955 to 1972, including the hits Hurt Her Once for Me, Trouble’s Back in Town and Roll, Muddy River. Doyle Wilburn died of cancer in 1982. Teddy Wilburn was born in the Ozark Mountain community of Hardy, Ark. He and Doyle first performed publicly at ages 6 and 5, with the Wilburn Family band. After recording on Decca records as the Wilburn Brothers, Teddy and Doyle joined the Grand Ole Opry cast. Between 1963 and 1974, the Wilburn Brothers were hosts of one of country music’s first syndicated color TV shows. In 1972 they were nominated for the Country Music Association’s Vocal Group of the Year award.
• 1763 ~ An instrument named the spinet was mentioned in The Boston Gazette newspaper on this day. John Harris made the spinet, a small upright piano with a three to four-octave range. There is no verifiable evidence to support the rumor that a man named Spinetti made the first spinet.
• 1809 ~ The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden re-opened after being destroyed by fire the year before. The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden began in Bow Street in 1732. It was designed by E.M. Barry in classical style. He also built for the theatre’s management the Floral Hall next door in glass and iron, meant to be a straightforward rival to the Bedford’s flower market. Both of Barry’s buildings are now part of the rebuilt Royal Opera House at Covent Garden complex.
• 1838 ~ Emil Scaria, Austrian bass-baritone
• 1899 ~ Scott Joplin was granted copyright for his “Maple Leaf Rag”, the most famous ragtime composition, by the US Copyright Office
• 1910 ~ Josef Tal, Polish-born Israeli composer and pianist
• 1917 ~ The Honolulu Ad Club registered a patent for the ukulele.
• 1927 ~ The Columbia Broadcasting System was born on this day, although its rival, NBC, had been on the air for some time. The Tiffany Network, as CBS was called, broadcast an opera, The King’s Henchman, as its first program. William S. Paley put the network together, purchasing a chain of 16 failing radio stations. The controlling interest cost between $250,000 and $450,000. The following year, the 27-year-old Paley became President of CBS. It only took one more year for him to profit 2.35 million dollars as the network grew to over 70 stations. In 1978 Paley received the First Annual ATAS (Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) Governor’s Award as Chairman of the Board of CBS.
• 1929 ~ Teddi King, Singer
• 1933 ~ Jimmie Rodgers, Singer
• 1939 ~ Frankie (Frances) Avalon (Avellone), American rock-and-roll singer
• 1947 ~ Country singers Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It was the first country show for the NYC venue.
• 1948 ~ The Original Amateur Hour returned to radio on ABC, two years after the passing of the program’s originator and host, Major Bowes. Bowes brought new star talent into living rooms for 13 years. Ted Mack, the new host, had also started a TV run with The Original Amateur Hour on the DuMont network in January of 1948.
• 1949 ~ Kerry Livgren, Guitar, keyboards with Kansas
• 1952 ~ Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin), Drummer with The Ramones
• 1955 ~ What had been The Toast of the Town on CBS Television (since 1948) became The Ed Sullivan Show. This “rilly big shew” remained a mainstay of Sunday night television until June 6, 1971. Sullivan was a newspaper columnist/critic before and during the early years of this pioneering TV show.
• 1957 ~ The Big Record, hosted by ‘the singing rage’, Miss Patti Page, debuted on CBS-TV. The Big Record was a live musical showcase featuring established artists singing their big songs. The Big Record lasted one big season.
• 1962 ~ Joanne Catherall, Singer with Human League
• 1967 ~ Ricky Bell, Singer with New Edition
• 1969 ~ Tiptoeing through late night TV, Tiny Tim announced his engagement to Miss Vicki Budinger. Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show, was so enthralled with the falsetto-voiced singer that he invited the couple to get married on the show. They did on December 17, 1969 and TV history was made.
• 1970 ~ Rock radio mourned the loss of rock music legend, Jimi Hendrix. He died at age 27 of an overdose of sleeping pills. His Purple Haze and Foxy Lady became anthems for a generation at war in Vietnam.
• 1985 ~ “Song & Dance” opened at Royale Theater NYC for 474 performances
“The Entertainer” is a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin. It was sold first as sheet music, and in the 1910s as piano rolls that would play on player pianos.
It was used as the theme music for the 1973 Oscar-winning film The Sting by composer and pianist Marvin Hamlisch.
The Sting was set in the 1930s, a full generation after the end of ragtime’s mainstream popularity, thus giving the inaccurate impression that ragtime music was popular at that time.
Find the sheet music in a variety of levels including Songs I Love to Play, Volume 1 and Alfred Premier Piano Course Book 4. It’s also available in Piano Maestro and to borrow from the O’Connor Music Studio
This is a more advanced piece but I really like it. Some students may have heard this since it’s an alarm tone on my phone. My dog, Mimi, recognized this music as her signal to go out for a walk!
I just love Zez Confrey’s music. It’s not overplayed like some of Scott Joplin’s works but it’s just as much fun.
This is a piece I have often played in recitals and just for fun.
If any of my students are interested in tackling this piece, just let me know and we’ll start learning!
In 1921 Confrey wrote his novelty piano solo “Kitten on the Keys”, inspired by hearing his grandmother’s cat walk on the keyboard of her piano. It became a hit, and he went on to compose many other pieces in the genre.
Considered to be one of the fastest and most challenging of all “novelty” piano solos, “Dizzy Fingers” was composed in 1923. and was Confrey’s other biggest seller.
He left behind more than a hundred piano works, songs and miniature operas, and numerous piano rolls, music publications and sound recordings.
Not surprisingly, this piece is not available on Piano Maestro!
“This collection represents a cross-section of Confrey’s works and encompasses the broad range of his styles. Besides his famous 1920s novelty works (including Kitten on the Keys), there are many wonderful, lesser-known gems of remarkable quality included here from later in his career. Appearing for the first time in print are transcriptions of one of his disc recordings (Poor Buttermilk) and two of his player piano roll arrangements (My Pet and Humorestless). Many of Confrey’s later works have long been out of print and are included here for the first time in decades.”
• 1763 ~ An instrument named the spinet was mentioned in The Boston Gazette newspaper on this day. John Harris made the spinet, a small upright piano with a three to four-octave range. There is no verifiable evidence to support the rumor that a man named Spinetti made the first spinet.
• 1809 ~ The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden re-opened after being destroyed by fire the year before. The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden began in Bow Street in 1732. It was designed by E.M. Barry in classical style. He also built for the theatre’s management the Floral Hall next door in glass and iron, meant to be a straightforward rival to the Bedford’s flower market. Both of Barry’s buildings are now part of the rebuilt Royal Opera House at Covent Garden complex.
• 1838 ~ Emil Scaria, Austrian bass-baritone
• 1899 ~ Scott Joplin was granted copyright for his “Maple Leaf Rag”, the most famous ragtime composition, by the US Copyright Office
• 1910 ~ Josef Tal, Polish-born Israeli composer and pianist
• 1917 ~ The Honolulu Ad Club registered a patent for the ukulele.
• 1927 ~ The Columbia Broadcasting System was born on this day, although its rival, NBC, had been on the air for some time. The Tiffany Network, as CBS was called, broadcast an opera, The King’s Henchman, as its first program. William S. Paley put the network together, purchasing a chain of 16 failing radio stations. The controlling interest cost between $250,000 and $450,000. The following year, the 27-year-old Paley became President of CBS. It only took one more year for him to profit 2.35 million dollars as the network grew to over 70 stations. In 1978 Paley received the First Annual ATAS (Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) Governor’s Award as Chairman of the Board of CBS.
• 1929 ~ Teddi King, Singer
• 1933 ~ Jimmie Rodgers, Singer
• 1939 ~ Frankie (Frances) Avalon (Avellone), American rock-and-roll singer
• 1947 ~ Country singers Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It was the first country show for the NYC venue.
• 1948 ~ The Original Amateur Hour returned to radio on ABC, two years after the passing of the program’s originator and host, Major Bowes. Bowes brought new star talent into living rooms for 13 years. Ted Mack, the new host, had also started a TV run with The Original Amateur Hour on the DuMont network in January of 1948.
• 1949 ~ Kerry Livgren, Guitar, keyboards with Kansas
• 1952 ~ Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Colvin), Drummer with The Ramones
• 1955 ~ What had been The Toast of the Town on CBS Television (since 1948) became The Ed Sullivan Show. This “rilly big shew” remained a mainstay of Sunday night television until June 6, 1971. Sullivan was a newspaper columnist/critic before and during the early years of this pioneering TV show.
• 1957 ~ The Big Record, hosted by ‘the singing rage’, Miss Patti Page, debuted on CBS-TV. The Big Record was a live musical showcase featuring established artists singing their big songs. The Big Record lasted one big season.
• 1962 ~ Joanne Catherall, Singer with Human League
• 1967 ~ Ricky Bell, Singer with New Edition
• 1969 ~ Tiptoeing through late night TV, Tiny Tim announced his engagement to Miss Vicki Budinger. Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show, was so enthralled with the falsetto-voiced singer that he invited the couple to get married on the show. They did on December 17, 1969 and TV history was made.
• 1970 ~ Rock radio mourned the loss of rock music legend, Jimi Hendrix. He died at age 27 of an overdose of sleeping pills. His Purple Haze and Foxy Lady became anthems for a generation at war in Vietnam.
• 1985 ~ “Song & Dance” opened at Royale Theater NYC for 474 performances
“The Entertainer” is a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin. It was sold first as sheet music, and in the 1910s as piano rolls that would play on player pianos.
It was used as the theme music for the 1973 Oscar-winning film The Sting by composer and pianist Marvin Hamlisch.
The Sting was set in the 1930s, a full generation after the end of ragtime’s mainstream popularity, thus giving the inaccurate impression that ragtime music was popular at that time.
Find the sheet music in a variety of levels including Songs I Love to Play, Volume 1 and Alfred Premier Piano Course Book 4. It’s also available in Piano Maestro and to borrow from the O’Connor Music Studio
. 1866 ~ Ferruccio Busoni, Italian pianist and composer
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