Born Sept. 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, Bohemia (now Czech Republic)
Died May 1, 1904 in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic)

For Dvorak, classical music was a vehicle to express the character of a nation, and native folk melodies were important in his works. A passionate proponent of his homeland, as was Smetana before him, he continued to develop a Czech style, inspired by folk music as heard in Slavonic Dances, in symphonic poems inspired by Czech folklore, and in many songs. His father was a butcher as well as a professional zither player, who encouraged his son to also become a butcher. Fortunately for the son and for the world, Dvorak opted for a career of music, and not butchery.

From 1892 to 1895, Dvorak was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. While in America, he was zealous about discovering an American style of music. One of his students, Henry Burleigh (one of the earliest African-American composers), introduced him to black spirituals, which Burleigh later transcribed and collected with his teacher’s encouragement. Dvorak’s search for an American musical idiom culminates in his 9th and last Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.”  While the themes are original, some show the inspiration of African-American and Native American melodies.  This most American of symphonies is still a worldwide favorite, a recording of which was even taken to the moon in 1969 on Apollo 11. Dvorak encouraged American musicians to continue to search for a national style, influencing such composers as Amy Beach and William Grant Still. Aaron Copland also incorporated American folk tunes in his music, which helped further define an American style of music.

Dvorak was musically influenced and encouraged by his friendships with Brahms and Tchaikovsky. He composed in all genres, including operas, symphonies, chamber music, songs, symphonic poems, concerti, choral works and more. Deeply religious, Dvorak composed his largest choral work, Stabat Mater, at the death of his daughter; today it is often performed at Easter in the Czech Republic.

Listen to the 2nd Movement of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, “From the New World”:

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.
     – George Gershwin

Born Sept. 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York
Died July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California

George Gershwin, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, is the quintessential American composer. His music-making started in Tin Pan Alley and wound up on Broadway and in the concert halls of America. He fulfilled his destiny and lived up to his own definition of music: “True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.”  If ever a musician was attuned to his age and country, it was George Gershwin.

What a pity his sudden death cut short the music that flowed from this Tin Pan Alley pianist/composer whose Jazz-age songs, Broadway and Hollywood musicals, piano and concert works had catapulted him to the pinnacle of success at a young age.  Gershwin’s first published song called “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Have ‘Em” earned him five dollars. Soon after he composed “Swanee” (with lyricist Irving Ceaser) and sold over a million copies. His star continued to rise until at age 39 he suddenly died, following a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. An irony of his short life is that estimates of earnings accrued during his lifetime rate him as the wealthiest composer of all time (The Guardian). Alas, “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Have ‘Em” and when you’ve earned the dough there’s no time to spend it.

Along with many popular song hits, his larger works included Broadway musicals  Lady Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (1927), and Girl Crazy (1930); his folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935); and orchestral works (also used in films) Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra (1924),   An American in Paris (1928), and Shall We Dance (1937).

Hear Gershwin playing his own Rhapsody in Blue in an early recording, which seems a bit fast but is not without its charms, and I love the “vinyl” sound quality of these old recordings:

 Personal Footnote:
In my own life Rhapsody in Blue was pivotal. On a trip to Dallas from my small home town in West Texas, I bought a copy of Rhapsody in Blue in Whittle’s Music Store, a revered Dallas institution which no longer exists.  I convinced my piano teacher Blanche Freeman to let me tackle it. I put everything I had into learning that piece, and it gave back generously. I have never identified with a work as closely as I did Rhapsody in Blue. The big jazz-inspired sounds of the city you hear in the piece captured my small-town ears and imagination. Even today I get inspired when walking on the streets of New York, and I thank Gershwin for the music that still sings in my ears and heart. And I still have my cherished copy of Rhapsody in Blue, with its tattered blue cover.

Educational resources on Gershwin

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by Anna Harwell Celenza, illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel. Introduce kids to the story and music of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in this Hardback and CD.  George Gershwin reads in the newspaper that he is performing a new concerto in Aeolian Hall in a few weeks. This is news to him! With encouragement from Paul Whiteman, and his brother Ira, he takes on the task and creates a truly American concerto–a musical kaleidoscope of urban sounds of the Jazz Age. Along the way we get glimpses of the musical scene in the 20′s in America. CD has a performance by Gershwin on a 1925 piano roll and accompanied by the Columbia Jazz Band. Hardback & CD #6582  $21.95 (available online at Music in Motion) 

Gershwin DVD. Dennis Kobray, an accomplished pianist and actor, portrays composer George Gershwin in full costume, using drama and musical performances to draw the viewer into the composer’s world. Students meet the composer face-to-face, hearing of his hardships, sacrifices, and triumphs. Elem.-high school. A tour de force! 54 min. Purchase includes public performance rights. DVD #5830  $24.95 (from Music in Motion)

Getting to Know. . .George Gershwin. Mike Venezia introduces young readers to classical music and to the lives of composers through playful tales, cartoons and source illustrations from the period.  This Gershwin book is one of a series for ages 4-9. Paperback Q364  $7.95 (from Music in Motion)

Born Sept. 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Died Aug. 9, 1975 in Moscow, Russia

A product of the Bolshevik Revolution, Shostakovich was the most famous of all  Soviet composers. He led a politically and personally troubled life, yet produced some of the century’s most celebrated and frequently performed works even today .

Born into a politically explosive era, with a revolutionary grandfather, leftist trade unionist father and a piano teaching mother, is it any wonder his political and musical wires were crossed? The demons of his life were the political fears and threats which constantly hovered over his career. He was the “darling” of the Soviets one moment and branded a “counter-revolutionary” in his music the next moment. His tumultuous relationship with Stalin was a yoke he could never shed, and his music always involved a dreaded dance with the devil of Soviet censorship and artistic control. His works were officially denounced in 1936 and 1948, and were periodically banned. Yet the ever popular Shostakovich received many accolades during his long career, from both the Russian people and the official Soviet state.

Shostakovich composed 15 symphonies, among them the popular “War” Symphonies Nos. 4 – 9 (which some thought were his musical protest against the crimes of Stalin), 15 string quartets, 6 concertos, numerous other chamber and orchestral works, piano pieces including 2 sonatas and 24 preludes and fugues for piano (like Bach),  2 operas and an operetta, 3 ballets, songs, cantatas, oratorios, stage and film music. His music ran the emotional gamut, from “warlike” and harshly propagandist to lyric and personal.  Probably because of his “pact with the Soviet devil,” Shostakovich’s place in musical history is controversial. While musicologist David Fanning in Grove writes that “he succeeded in forging a musical language of colossal emotional power,” Pierre Boulez dismissed him as a second or  even third-rate Mahler. English composer/musicologist Robin Holloway described his music as "battleship-grey in melody and harmony, factory-functional in structure; in content all rhetoric and coercion." But the reality of Shostakovich’s musical achievement should be judged apart from harsh political reactions to the man who, as many perceived, lacked the courage of his private convictions in standing up to Communist censorship and control. Please enjoy the richness and the inventiveness of his music, and judge not the man in political hindsight.

TESTIMONY: STORY OF SHOSTAKOVICH DVD

Tony Palmer’s film stars Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. The film dramatizes the life of the Russian composer who opposed the directives of Stalin and defied him with his music. Palmer sensitively uses Shostakovich’s music to enhance the drama, and to deepen our understanding of how the composer felt about what was happening in his homeland. With excerpts from 11 symphonies and more, performed by the London Philharmonic. 151 min. DVD 5943 $29.95
                  (available at Music in Motion)

An interesting footnote to musical history:

A lighter side of Shostakovich was his passionate love of soccer, as heard in his 1929 ballet The Golden Age when he recreates an actual soccer match. Enjoy Shostakovich’s energetic soccer match–a first in music history and a thrillingly athletic display of programmatic music.  (In this Soviet ballet the Communist team travels abroad to compete with the “capitalists,” and you can guess who wins!)

Born: September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia
Died: June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, Calif.

Ray Charles was born into poverty and at the age of 5 tragically witnessed the death of his younger brother who drowned in his mother’s laundry tub. Even at this age he loved music and started playing piano in a local cafe. Blinded by age 7, he attended St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he also studied music. After the death of his mother, at the age of 15 he left school to begin his professional career, successfully overcoming all physical, personal and racial obstacles to become one of the century’s great musicians. He combined gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz, in his music.  As composer, pianist, singer, and band leader,  first inspired by Nat King Cole,  he became an original and popular musical icon, recording such hits as Mess Around, I’ve Got a Woman, What’d I Say, Georgia on My Mind, Hit the Road Jack, and more. He received 13 Grammys, including a lifetime achievement award in 1987, and in 1986 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also honored at the Kennedy Center.

Ray Charles appeals to children too, as seen in his CD for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom #6974.  This popular children’s book by Bill Martin Jr. & John Archambault, illus. by Lois Ehlert, includes a CD by Ray Charles. Lively rhymes, cheerful pictures and Ray Charles’s bluesy voice are perfectly mixed in this beloved alphabet chant. Hear audio samples here.

Kids and adults alike will also get a lift from Ray Charles’s upbeat 1978 performance of Disney’s Zip a Dee Do Dah.

Born September 6, 1925 in Dunleith, Mississippi
Died August 29, 1976 in Oakland, California

Mathis James “Jimmy” Reed, musician and songwriter popular during the 1950’s and ‘60’s, was noted for his electric blues guitar sound, lowdown harmonica, and slack-voiced, twangy singing style (which was his charm and trademark sound which many musicians imitated). He composed a string of hits, often popularized by others including the Rolling Stones (who cite Reed as a major influence), Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley, and Etta James.  Some of his hits include Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby, Baby What You Want Me to Do,  Big Boss Man, and Bright Lights, Big City (the latter 2 were included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock Music).

Jimmy Reed battled alcoholism and died of respiratory illness at age 51. He was inducted posthumously to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.

Hear Jimmy Reed sing Down in Mississippi, and enjoy classic blues, with a  twist of Southern humor:

In case you didn’t understand Jimmy Reed’s lazy diction (which is what I love most about him!), here are the lyrics:

Down in Mississippi

by Jimmy Reed

Down in Mississippi where cotton grow tall,
get arrested for trouble you got to call the hound dog
Oh uh, down in Mississippi, whoa yeah, where the cotton grow tall
Yes, and on the other hand, baby, boll weevil wearing overalls

Go to work in the morning, you know, ’bout 4 o’clock
Uh, if the mule don’t holler, yeah, I don’t know when to stop
Down in Mississippi, baby, uh whoa yeah, where the cotton grow tall
Well, and on the other hand, baby, boll weevil wearing overall

I go to church in the morning, baby, you know, down the railroad track
Late over in the evening they bring, bring the preacher back
He eat up all the chicken now but uh right to the neck
Look over at my baby and he eat up all the rest ’cause he was uh down in Mississippi
Uh oh yeah, where the cotton grow tall
Well now, and on the other hand, baby, boll weevil wearing overalls

Born Sept. 5, 1912 in Los Angeles, California
Died Aug. 11, 1992 in Manhattan, New York

“There are two things that don’t have to mean anything;
one is music, and the other is laughter.”
- John Cage, paraphrasing Immanuel Kant. (Cage agreed with Kant that music and laughter don’t have to mean anything in order to give us deep pleasure.)

Avant garde composer, writer, artist, and philosopher, John Cage was a unique figure whose influence on 20th century music, art, and dance was perhaps even more important than his own artistic output. In fact, his most famous work was 4’33”, a piece composed for piano (or any other instruments!) that consisted of
4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence, divided into 3 movements. So obviously this minimalist loved a good laugh, and the joke doesn’t stop there: 4’33”  has even been included on several CD collections! Cage shared a lifelong partnership, both personally and professionally, with choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the two of them made a lasting impact on contemporary dance. As an artist and printmaker himself, Cage also influenced fellow artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and others in the art world.

Cage studied with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, radical composers in their own right.  He taught experimental music at Wesleyan University, where he was affiliated until his death in 1992.  He also taught at Mills College, UCLA, the Cornish College of the Arts, and The New School. Cage was influenced by Indian philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and I Ching, the Chinese classical text on changing events, which he used as a tool for composing chance or aleatory music. As a minimalist composer, he also experimented with found sounds, electronic music, and “prepared” piano (which consisted of sticking nuts, bolts, rubber, plates, etc. between the strings of the piano to create the effect of an entire percussion orchestra). Prepared piano often produced exotic effects resembling mbiras, marimbas, bells, gamelan, wood blocks and other percussion. Listen to Cage’s Sonata for Prepared Piano:

John Cage’s Sonata X for Prepared Piano

Now meet the humorous, iconic John Cage near the end of his life, as he expresses his thoughts about listening, music, sounds. . . and silences:

Born Sept. 4, 1892 in Aix-en-Provence, France
Died June 22, 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland

“Don’t be afraid of writing something people can remember and whistle. Don’t ever feel discomfited by a melody".  Milhaud to his student Burt Bacharach

Milhaud was a student of Charles Widor, Vincent d’Indy, and Paul Dukas.  A member of Les Six (“Group of Six” avant garde French composers), Milhaud was prolific and composed with apparent ease in many genres including operas, ballets, symphonies, concertos, solo and chamber works. Polytonality, jazz idioms (after his visit to Harlem), and Brazilian rhythms (after living in Brazil) are found in some of his works. His jazz ballet The Creation of the World and his ballet Le Boeuf sur le Toit (Ox on the Roof) were two of his most famous works. He also was a master of counterpoint, composing two string quartets (No. 14 and 15) which can also be performed as an octet (quite a contrapuntal feat!). While in Brazil he worked with French Ambassador and famous poet and playwright Paul Claudel, for whom he later wrote incidental music.

Composer, pianist, and eminent teacher, Milhaud taught alternate years at Mills College in California and the Paris Conservatory from 1947-1971.  Among his famous students are Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Burt Bacharach, Morton Subotnick, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis.

Enjoy Milhaud’s exuberant Brasileira from Scaramouche for 2 Pianos:

Born June 28, 1491, London, England
Died Jan. 28, 1547, London, England

Henry VIII, despite the image of the old, grossly obese tyrant and wife killer most of us retain from our spattering of English history in school, cut quite a dashing figure in his youth. Six feet tall, handsome, athletic, charming, intelligent and well educated, he was a lady killer (please pardon the pun) in every sense of the word. As described by a contemporary, he was “one of the goodliest men that lived in his time, in manners more than a man, most amiable, courteous and benign in gesture unto all persons.” But my oh my, how time, history, and six wives can change even the “goodliest” man. While travelling in England, I have encountered Henry’s looming historical presence wherever I go. Visiting the castles at Hever, the childhood home of Ann Boleyn, and Knole, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s home until Henry conviscated it, I realize that Henry still casts a tall shadow throughout the land. So I thought I would share some of my discoveries.

Not everyone knows about Henry VIII’s softer, more humane side. He was a poet, linguist, talented musician, accomplished composer, and a huge patron of the arts. He loved the musicians, acrobats, magicians, and jesters who provided lively entertainment for the court (oddly, not unlike the subjects fellow lady-killer Picasso loved to paint five centuries later). Henry might have joined the Cirque de Soleil had he been born 500 years later.  He could play the harp, viola, lute, organ, virginal, fife, and drums, and was a gifted dancer and singer as well, especially skilled in sight singing with his courtiers. What’s not to love in a tall, handsome, talented musician? He certainly must have had his share of court groupies. For more on Henry the musician read this lively blog on Henry VIII: A Machiavellian Musical Monarch.

Listen to some musical examples of Henry VIII’s compositions.

In the meantime, don’t lose your head over a handsome musician who wields a crown.

Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones

Born December 14, 1911 in Long Beach, California
Died May 1, 1965 in Los Angeles, California

If you’re too young to remember him  then it’s time for an introduction.  As a musician and band leader, Spike Jones was one of a kind. In the 1940’s and 50’s Spike and his City Slickers recorded and toured throughout the U.S. and Canada as “The Musical Depreciation Revue.”  He was a radio star (1945-49) who successfully transitioned into a television star with his own weekly shows (1954-61).  He was a trailblazer mixing music and found sounds (burps, hiccups, fog horns, gun shots, etc.) paving the way for Stomp, Blast, PDQ Bach, Monty Python,  Frank Zappa, the Beatles, “Weird Al” Yankovic & others.  As the son of a Southern Pacific Railroad agent, young Spike was initiated into “kitchen music” by a railroad chef who showed him  how to play pots and pans, knives and spoons. His musical parodies of classical, as well as pop, rock, and other genres of music, were legendary. Nothing was too serious to be spared his satirical touch. Spike even took on Hitler in 1942 with his famous “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” which Disney later used in a wartime Donald Duck cartoon parody (which won the 1943 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film).

THE SPIKE JONES STORY. This DVD documentary of Spike Jones’s  life and work is full of comic musical parodies from his TV shows, such as Cocktails for Two, Der Fuehrer’s Face, You Always Hurt the One You Love, All I Want for Music is My Two Front Teeth, 50’s rock and roll parodies and more. Enjoy interviews with those who knew him best, professionally and personally, including family. DVD 5015  $24.95 buy now

Hear Spike Jones’s “black and blue” rendition of Strauss’s The Blue Danube:

Born December 10, 1908 in Avignon, France
Died  April 27, 1992 in Clichy, France

“I give bird-songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colors for those who see none.” —Olivier Messiaen

The Musician who Loved Birds

Olivier Messiaen was perhaps the most influential French composer since Debussy. He redefined avant-garde, although his highly original works often reflect conservative values of spirituality, nature, and  beauty that set his music apart from the harsher trends of the 20th century. While others “musicalized” the harsh mechanized sounds of urban life, war, and the industrial age, Messiaen preferred nature, and most of all, birds.  As a passionate ornithologist, he painstakingly transcribed birdsongs, particularly the songbirds of France. Birds were the true musicians, he felt, and their songs were transformed exquisitely in his music, as seen in Catalogue de Oiseaux (1958).

Messiaen enjoyed a happy childhood filled with music and poetry. At age 10 after discovering Debussy he declared his intention to become a composer.  His mother penned a long colorful poem to him before he was born, and the synaesthesia which caused the composer to experience sounds as colors (as did fellow composers Rimsky-Korsakov and Scriabin) he attributed to her. “When I hear music, I hear colors,” he said. “When I compose, I see the colors as I see the sounds.” He described one of his harmonic sequences as changing “from blue striped with green to black spotted with red and gold, by way of diamond, emerald, purplish-blue, with a dominant pool of orange studded with milky white.” (Once he got a stomach ache at a ballet when the violet lighting clashed with his color conception of the Key of G!) His father,  a teacher of English, translated Shakespeare into French. As a child, Messiaen delighted in adapting Shakespeare plays for family productions.  Considering that Shakespeare wrote more about birds than any other poet,  is it any wonder that birds would sing in  Messiaen’s music more than in any other composer’s?

Messiaen underwent a rigorous classical musical education at the Paris Conservatoire (1919-30), studying with Paul Dukas, Charles-Marie Widor, and Marcel Dupré.  His education came full circle when he taught there from 1941-78, instructing such influential musicians as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Iannis Xenakis. The most profound influence in his life was his strict Roman Catholicism, which he expressed strongly in his music and in his 61-year tenure as organist of Eglise de la Trinité in Paris. [It was at La Trinité where I was privileged to hear Messiaen at the organ during the annual memorial service Nadia Boulanger held for her sister Lily Boulanger; this venerable neo-gothic church was at my metro stop during my junior year in Paris, near Mlle. Boulanger’s home in nearby Montmartre where I was privileged to attend her weekly music analysis classes.]  

Messiaen’s deep spiritual faith was akin to Bach’s. Both felt that the essential goal of music was to glorify God. “I want to write music that is an act of faith, a music that is about everything without ceasing to be about God,” declared Messiaen. When his faith was tested during his 2-year captivity in a German POW camp, he composed his most important work Quartet for the End of Time (1941). Written for piano, clarinet, violin and cello–the only 4 instruments available to him in the prison camp, this intensely mystical work had a profound effect on 5000 fellow prisoners in the camp, where it was performed for the first time.

Messiaen’s compositional innovations included the use of Greek meters, Hindu rhythms, rhythmic palindromes, adventurous harmonies, and a vivid use of color in his orchestrations through unusual percussion such as the ondes martenot (a vacuum tube instrument that was successor to the spooky theremin). He  also briefly experimented with electronic music (Fête des belles eaux, 1937) and serialism (Quatre études de rythme, 1949). His legacy includes  works for organ, piano, voice, orchestra, and an almost 6-hour-long opera (Saint Francois d’Assise, 1975-1983).  He was in ill health when he finally completed what he thought would be his final work,  but how fitting is it that St. Francis is the subject of his only opera. (Hear St. Francis’s ecstatic sermon to the birds, Act II, Scene 6). In this gentle saint Messiaen found someone who quietly worshipped God and passionately loved nature and birds as much as himself.

Biographers Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone reflect on Messiaen’s techniques of transcribing and composing with birdsongs:

Here’s a good children’s book on Messiaen:

Music for the End of Time

by Jen Bryant, illus. by Beth Peck

“In my hour of gloom, when I am suddenly aware of my own futility. . .what is left for me but to seek out the true, lost face of music somewhere off in the forest. . .among the birds.” -Messiaen

This poetic children’s biography  reveals the small miracle of how French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his most important work, Quartet for the End of Time. Imprisoned in a German POW camp, Olivier longs for his family, friends, and home. . .but most of all he misses music. A chance encounter with a nightingale and a German officer, however, provides him with the opportunity to write music again. When a make-shift concert on broken-down instruments takes place in the camp in 1941, Quartet for the End of Time (and the song of the nightingale which is in it) offers a message of hope and beauty that inspires Messiaen’s 5000 fellow prisoners.