Orpheus Chamber Symphony
no conductor
It must have been extremely frustrating to Copland that so much of his music was ignored while a few pieces were played to death. This piece from 1933 is one I can't understand being largely ignored except that it doesn't have an evocative title or program.
You can hear something else which I'd imagine Copland noticed, what of Copland's style Leonard Bernstein lifted pretty much intact during the years Bernstein was composing. I believe it was Roger Sessions who advised Bernstein to go off, by himself in the woods for six months till he stopped hearing other peoples' music so he could find his own. Bernstein never took that advice.
Imagine the need for an Aaron Copland revival, one that didn't play his top five pieces, but we could really use one. It could be worse, we really need a Dukas revival that ignores his top one.
"I believe it was Roger Sessions who advised Bernstein to go off, by himself in the woods for six months till he stopped hearing other peoples' music so he could find his own. Bernstein never took that advice. "
ReplyDeleteThank Jeebus. Otherwise Lenny wouldn't have written those pieces of shit CANDIDE and WEST SIDE STORY
If he had maybe it wouldn't be possible for people to sit there and name the several composers, Richard Strauss, Mahler, Copland, Bizet, etc. who he rather shamelessly copied as the music is playing, in much the same way that Mitch Miller was able to do with that other great composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
DeleteI am pretty sure Lenny knew he was failure a composer, a failure in terms of his aspiration and his talent - which were both great - seldom doing anything more than producing pastiche based on other composers styles. Even good pastiche is known to be pastiche by the man who pasted it together. His Mass is one of the most embarrassing pieces of music I've ever heard. Aaron Copland never stooped to an artificial gesture and a pose, Leonard Bernstein seldom rose above those. If he'd chosen to not be a celebrity conductor he might have been a better, though perhaps not a rich, composer.
I have long told my students who wanted to write music that they had to write their own music, that if they're going to write music they think someone else would approve of they should let that person write their music. If they are going to write someone for someone else they may as well not bother.
I'm not the first person to say these things, and not only about his composition. Why, there was this critic at some minor publication, not your Stereo Review... now what was it called. Oh, yeah, the New York Times, who famously asked "will Lenny ever grow up?" If he'd followed Sessions' advice, the answer may well have been, Yes.
we really need a Dukas revival that ignores his top one.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Dukas's top one made him enough money that he could afford to write the other ones.
You would seem to know more about Dukas' music than he did himself, he was probably the first person to complain that L'Apprenti Sorcier had obscured his better and more substantial work. But, what did he know, he was only the composer, not a pop-muzak critic. They'd probably never have hired him at Stereo Review.
DeleteActually, I believe Dukas' s top one made him enough money to sit around the pool writing the other ones.
ReplyDeleteYou should stick with writing about what you know, Paul Anka, The Archies, 1910 Fruitgum Co.
DeleteOr in your case, how Darwin caused Jews being sent to Auschwitz.
ReplyDeleteYou degrade the memory of those Jews every time you use them, you don't even rise to the level of artificial gesture and pose, those are less vulgar states of mind than you're able to attain.
Delete"If he had maybe it wouldn't be possible for people to sit there and name the several composers, Richard Strauss, Mahler, Copland, Bizet, etc. who he rather shamelessly copied as the music is playing, in much the same way that Mitch Miller was able to do with that other great composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure Lenny knew he was failure a composer, "
Absolutely. Anybody who wrote CANDIDE and WEST SIDE STORY is by definition a failure who is already forgotten.
In your ignorance you don't even begin to understand what Leonard Bernstein aspired to as a composer. It might have included Broadway but it exceeded that by a long stretch. As it is, West Side Story has about one really good song in it, Something's Coming and the pieces he reset as symphonic dances, though they don't reach Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman, not to mention the even greater Duke Ellington. Candide has Glitter and be Gay, which is about the only piece anyone remembers from it and the overture, which is the quintessential piece of Bernstein pastiche. That tending our gardens song at the end is as quintessential an example of his vulgar poses as intellectual content. He wasn't as big a liar as Lillian Hellman but he was as big a phony. Like The Children's Hour, the last time I heard West Side Story all I could hear was several white guys presenting stereotypical views of people not like them to make some rather trite points. But, then, he was copying an aristocratic Brit using Italians, though Bacon or Marlowe or whoever wrote that thing had a few more ideas in his head than Lenny and co.
Delete"In your ignorance you don't even begin to understand what Leonard Bernstein aspired to as a composer. It might have included Broadway but it exceeded that by a long stretch"
ReplyDeleteThat Gershwin guy -- another Jew -- was also a huge failure because none of his stuff is as good as the late Beethoven quartets. Can you imagine how depressed he must have been?
Oh, is that how you feel about Gershwin? I thought he was quite successful, a far better composer than Bernstein, far more original far less derivative. He even had the compliment of a composer as good as Ravel obviously learning from him.
DeleteWhat does being Jewish have to do with it? They were both white, American men. I don't see that it played that much of a role in their music other than that one piece by Bernstein, as I recall I found it derivative of Bloch's music though it was forgettable enough that I don't really recall. What did Gershwin write on a Jewish theme? I'd like to hear it.
That said, I doubt Gershwin would have claimed to have been in Beethoven's league. Unlike you he knew something about music.
Delete"Why, there was this critic at some minor publication, not your Stereo Review... now what was it called. Oh, yeah, the New York Times, who famously asked "will Lenny ever grow up?"
ReplyDeleteYou do know that particular criticism was gay-baiting, right? You'd think you be a little sensitive about that, but maybe you're even stupider than I think.
As I recall, reading that review many years ago, it was criticizing his histrionics at the podium, his infamous foot stomping and his grotesque humming and even howling while he played the piano. I, frankly, couldn't have stood having him accompany me for it. He got away with murder because of the power he had as a super-star conductor. Gunther Schuller's analysis of his antics, based on his knowledge of his career, having played under him before Bernstein became a superstar, is certainly of a piece with that earlier criticism and it had nothing, whatsoever, to do with gay-baiting. It's there for anyone who wants to listen to a recording while looking at the score to hear and see.
DeleteI would give fifty dollars to know what Aaron Copland really thought when he listened to Lenny's music and heard the raw and obvious imitation of his music, though, since Copland was famous as a self-effacing diplomat, he's likely to have bitten his tongue and not said it. More surprising is how little Virgil Thomson said about it, though he certainly knew both the self-indulgence of Bernstein's performance antics and the derivative nature of his composing. I suspect that as a composer who would have loved to have his music performed by the NY Phil. that he might have said less about that than he would have liked to. If Bernstein had not managed to get that position, from which he could promote or kill music, composers who were critics would have said more about it. But the critic for the Times wasn't a composer so he felt no inclination to not mention it.
I would imagine you quickly looked up the reference and pretend to have read the review. Where do you find the gay-baiting in it? Can you give me a link?
Of course it was gay baiting, you simple shithead. It was the NY Times. And everybody understood that the phrase "grow up" meant something not so nice when applied to a closeted homosexual.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't think the Times indulged in that kind of stuff, read their Stonewall coverage. Or ask Dimitri Mitropoulos
Oh, well, I am sure that, as a gay man who read Harold Schonberg's music criticism I'd have noticed if he were an habitual gay basher. If he were, you wonder why he so lavishly praised so many far more openly gay artists and so many who were widely known in musical circles to have been gay. He was a specialist in pianists. One of his reviews of Richter's first NYC recitals, after noting the audience was skeptical of Richter's stratospheric reputation said, "Within 15 minutes all [skepticism] was dissipated in enthusiasm. Mr. Richter proved to be a pianist of style, poetry and imagination: a complete artist." He wrote that in the same years he was noting the married Bernstein was making an ass of himself on the podium. And, in the same period, Schonberg sometimes gave Bernstein a good review.
DeleteYou and he are of one mind in hating the music of Stefah Wolpe, another Jewish composer you have trouble with. Only Schonberg actually listened to his music instead of knowing him from one college song you know by chance. Schonberg was a notorious conservative who, if anything, would have preferred Bernstein's style if it had been used with originality, I'd guess.
I don't recall him being especially unkind to gay artists. No doubt you won't be able to come up with citations any more than you could come up with his name, which would have been an easy computer search away.
You're fakin' it, bunky. You aren't even doing a good imitation of google-based erudition.
I read Schoenberg's THE GREAT PIANISTS when I was in high school, Sparkles, so don't gimme that Google bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAnd Stefan Wolpe was a prof of mine in college. Nice guy and a good teacher, but the fact is that the Alma Mater he wrote for my old school is, objectively, the worst piece of music ever written in any genre in history.
You haven't supported your statement that Schonberg's question "will Lenny ever grow up" was an expression of gay-bashing. Go on, back it up, Simps.
ReplyDeleteYou know I have enough experience with you to know your method of making a statement you can't back up and when challenged you try to pretend you didn't say it. Which is fine with the rump of regulars at Duncan's play house but it doesn't work with me.
Go on, Simps, back it up.
I do, by the way, doubt you read Schonberg's book while you were in high school or ever had Wolpe for a class. What year did you graduate high school? Can you prove it? What class did you take with Wolpe. You know I could go through all of the statements you made about him here, I don't recall you ever making that claim before.
Go on, Simps, back up what you claimed. It might give your other claims credibility if you could do that. Though it's a pretty steep climb considering what a liar you are.
Back up your claim you're a gay man. Or that you play the piano.
ReplyDeleteI'll go Mae West one better and say I'm glad I can't give out samples.
DeleteIn short, you're lying about having read Schonberg's book in high school and having taken a course or more with the eminent composer Stefan Wolpe. I, somehow, doubt he taught on your level or non-music majors. Or are you going to claim that was your major, now?
You want to make me unhappy, tell the truth about something and back it up. It doesn't bother me to point out you're lying.
Post an MP3 of your scintillating keyboard stylings. A photo of you at the Continental Baths in NYC in the 70s would be nice too.
ReplyDeleteSims, you really have little to no clue about the gay bar scene in the 70s except what you read in magazines. People didn't generally have their pictures taken in them, it would be a good way to get bounced if you started taking pictures in them.
DeleteI've got nothing to prove that I haven't with documentation. You can't even document when you graduated high school.
BTW, Harold Schoenberg wrote for Stereo Review.
ReplyDelete:-)
Oh, did he gay bash there too? It doesn't surprise me, it was a pretty conservative advertising flyer.
DeleteHow about a shot of you dressed as Judy Garland at a Halloween parade in the Village. I'd settle for that.
ReplyDeleteIt's no surprise that you think in stereotypes, well, what passes as thinking at Duncan's brain trust. I suppose that gets them all yuckin' it up at the jr. high on the Delaware.
Delete