PostClassical Ensemble inaugurated its new residency at Washington National Cathedral with a World War II program – “Music in Wartime” – juxtaposing works by Hanns Eisler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The results were startling. Eisler’s strange odyssey is ripe for exploration. In Weimar Germany his workers’ songs linked to a Workers-Singers Union with 400,000 … [Read more...] about Music and WW II: Eisler, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Stravinsky
Arnold Schoenberg’s Musical Response to FDR
What kind of American was Arnold Schoenberg? In Los Angeles, a Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany, he adopted English as his primary language. He watched The Lone Ranger on TV. For his children, he prepared peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches cut into animal shapes. Then Pearl Harbor was bombed. Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, in reaction to Franklin Delano … [Read more...] about Arnold Schoenberg’s Musical Response to FDR
The Most Under-Rated 20th Century American Composer — Take Two
Back in the thirties and forties, there were no American music historians to tell the story of American classical music. So the task fell to a couple of composers: Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. According to the official Copland/Thomson narrative, noting much of consequence was composed by Americans before World War I. Their focus was on themselves and kindred composers, … [Read more...] about The Most Under-Rated 20th Century American Composer — Take Two
“The Difference Between Quality Art and Crap” Take Four
Processing my exchange with Vladimir Feltsman, I find myself distracted by something I have long more or less ignored: the art of the piano as manifest by the young artists who today dominate the scene -- what Feltsman calls "a new artform." I am … [Read more...] about “The Difference Between Quality Art and Crap” Take Four
“The Difference Between Quality Art and Crap” Take Three
Though as usual most of the feedback to my recent blogs comes via private emails rather than public responses, a flurry of interesting posted responses here and via Facebook spurs me to rant some more. Re: “quality art” versus “crap,” Joe Patrych – someone who knows what pianism once was -- writes: “Part of the problem is the audience – in order for a … [Read more...] about “The Difference Between Quality Art and Crap” Take Three