Dale Cockrell's "Everybody's Doin' It: Sex, Music, and Dance in in New York 1840-1917" is a book that will bring to wider attention the scholarship of one of America's most original music historians -- someone whose work fearlessly challenges conventional wisdom. It was my pleasure to review this new Norton release in this weekend's "Wall Street Journal": On his first trip … [Read more...] about A Vital New Book about Music and Race
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Re-Thinking Aaron Copland
How did Aaron Copland’s film music attempt to counteract the Hollywood influence of Erich Korngold? To what degree did he draw inspiration from the master Mexican populist Silvestre Revueltas? How did the Red Scare change Copland’s style in the 1950s? These were some of the questions tackled by “Copland’s America,” this summer’s festival-within-a-festival at North … [Read more...] about Re-Thinking Aaron Copland
Ferruccio Busoni: “A Fresh Gust of Air”
Preparing an August 15 Busoni/Schoenberg/Kandinsky program for The Phillips Collection in DC, I discovered myself newly entranced by one of the most magical figures in the history of Western music. Around the same time, Kirill Gerstein's revelatory new CD of the Busoni Piano Concerto turned up -- and I felt impelled to take stock. I wound up writing 4,500 words: On the … [Read more...] about Ferruccio Busoni: “A Fresh Gust of Air”
A Fidelio for Yesterday
Faced with a twelve-hour drive, with wife and dog, from Manhattan to the idyllic Brevard (North Carolina) Music Festival, I threw some CDs in the car. I chose Fidelio because I had been eager to re-experience Beethoven’s opera since encountering David Lang’s Fidelio-for-today, A Prisoner of State, premiered by the New York Philharmonic as a season finale concert opera. This … [Read more...] about A Fidelio for Yesterday
Who Was the American Bartok?
Who was the American Bartok? The most plausible candidate, I would say, is Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), who led the “Indianists” movement in American music beginning around 1900. Here is a sampling – his “Pawnee Horses” for 16-part a cappella chorus, sung in Navajo. Farwell is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of American classical music. … [Read more...] about Who Was the American Bartok?