2. Never Seek to Tell Thy Love
3. Mad Song
4. O Thou with Dewy Locks
Warren Galjour, baritone
Leopold Stokowski orchestra
Leopold Stokowski, conductor
I don't know if this is the only performance this piece ever had but it's a wonderful piece that should be performed. This is a far from perfect recording, the balances between the instruments and voice aren't the best but it's the best you're likely to hear of it.
Update: This is from an article by one of Ben Weber's few students, the composer Roger Tréfousse THE STRANGE LIFE OF BEN WEBER.
A very vivid memory of studying with Ben is of the times when we would listen to music together. He would play a recording and we would listen through with the score. As the music proceeded, he’d make the occasional comment; pointing out a detail of structure, harmony, or orchestral technique. One of the first pieces of his own that he played for me was his Symphony on Poems of William Blake. He liked that it got quite wild in the Mad Song, and was pleased with the way the small forces he had chosen created such a big sound. Of particular interest to me was the way that he’d used a single cello to successfully create the sound of a full string section.
The Blake Symphony is one of Ben’s most powerful works, and we listened to it in the fabulous recording conducted by Leopold Stokowski, with his Symphony Orchestra and baritone soloist Warren Galjour. When we’d finished listening, Ben reminisced about the craziness surrounding the sessions for that RCA Victor recording. Stokowski, for some unknown reason, had become very angry with Galjour. So, when a comment needed to be made, Stokie, as Ben called the famous conductor, would turn to Ben and say, “Would you please tell Mr. Galjour such and such, because Mr. Stokowski is not speaking to Mr. Galjour.” As I listened to Ben’s story, the contrast between now and then was a bit haunting. Here I was, sitting in that cramped and dusty apartment with the creator of this phenomenal piece of music, now someone who barely ever left his rooms—and many days probably didn’t even get out of bed—hearing him tell tales about working with the legendary Leopold Stokowski.
That's from back in the day when major labels like RCA put out recordings of largely ignored American composers. I might have my criticisms of Stokowski, whose musical sins were many, but he did champion new music.
I had thought that the American Composer's Alliance might hold the score to this piece but it doesn't seem to be among the scores that Ben Weber or those near to him placed with them.
"I might have my criticisms of Stokowski, whose musical sins were many..."
ReplyDeleteReally? When was he ever boring?
God, you're a perishing snob.
I knew that would get your little fame fucker knickers in a knot, Simps, which is why I threw it in. Leopold Stokowski was frequently extremely vulgar and mangled more than a few scores, even those of living composers.
Delete"In an autobiography written with Robert Craft, Stravinsky sounded as if he was sorry he ever had anything to do with "Fantasia." He wrote that he and the choreographer George Balanchine went to a screening of the film in 1939. "I remember someone offering me a score and, when I said I had my own, the someone saying, 'But it is all changed,' " Stravinsky wrote. "It was indeed. The order of the pieces had been shuffled, and the most difficult of them eliminated -- though this did not save the musical performance, which was execrable."
Mr. Pope also said that the way "Rite of Spring" was listed on the package created a false impression. "It leads people to believe that what they're hearing is the whole 'Rite of Spring,' " he said, "when in fact what they're hearing is a severely truncated and bastardized version of Stravinsky's revolutionary work."
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/22/nyregion/who-owns-the-rights-to-rite.html
And, for another example, there is the cornball ending he tacked on to Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe Suite as documented by the late, great Gunther Schuller in The Complete Conductor.
Of course, you being as vulgar as Donald Trump, you wouldn't see a problem with that.
As I said, at least he played some living composers who, no doubt, tended to be happy with what he did for them, though, as Stravinsky shows, not always.
If I were you I'd say that you claimed that you knew more about music than Stravinsky. Only I'm not such a dolt as to need to lie about the stupid things you say.
Here's a clue, you dumb putz. Stravinsky and Ravel's original scores still exist, and there are tons of recordings of them.
ReplyDeleteNo permanent damage was done to them by anything Stowkowski did that you disapprove of.
You just called Stravinsky a "dumb putz" as he obviously objected to what Stowkowski did to his score.
DeleteIt's hilarious for someone who made their living and their pitiful claim to what passes as "fame" in your world on the basis of music criticism making the claims you are here. You just invalidated your entire line of work, idiot.
Yet another splendid example of the towering illogic you're so justly celebrated for.
ReplyDeleteI would risk putting it to a vote, which of us better exemplified illogic.
DeleteYou really can't grasp it, can you Simps, a guy who made his living out of criticizing other peoples music slamming me for agreeing with Stravinsky that Stokowski mashed The Rite of Spring in Fantasia, something which all you have to do is know the piece to understand beyond any informed doubt. You apparently figure the composer has no right to have an opinion about a hacked up, botched and distorted presentation of his own work at the hands of someone vulgar enough to do that.
That next to the last word explains you on this issue, as in so many others. You are an ignorant and attention deficient idiot and vulgarian.
First rule of holes, Sparky...
ReplyDeleteI'll leave the rules for holes to those of you who are them, ass.
DeleteTalking to yourself again? 'Cause that's the only way that comment makes sense.
DeleteSo what Stravinsky said is actually what you said first?
ReplyDeleteHow does time work, again?
Dyschronometria is a noted early sign of dementia, I think Simps started in on it at least twelve years ago. I know I wasn't aware of his existence before about that time.
DeleteI do know that if I'd encountered someone like him before going online and seeing how many others like him there are, I'd have suspected he belonged in custodial care. Now I think it's just too much TV as a child, too much expectation of things happening in, at the most, the length of a movie.
Says the guy who doesn't understand that the phrase "you dumb putz" refers to you, not somebody else.
ReplyDeleteSimps, are you trying to prove that you can resurrect irony single handedly? Because there are more accurate terms for someone who, like yourself, keeps saying the most obviously and ridiculously and patently self-referential things trying to make the apply to other people.
DeleteFor you to claim that my criticism of Stokowski's botch of a piece by Stravinsky in like with Stravinsky's own criticism of it is, somehow, wrong, you who made his career out of writing criticism of other peoples music, is just so deliciously funny. It's like Mae West calling someone else out on their sexual indiscretions, only she was never stupid enough to do such a thing, not even in her very advanced years.
And you, Simps, ain't never going to be no Mae West.
DeleteWhat you know about Mae West is what you know about Jews, straight boys, girls, and humor. Which is to say nada.
ReplyDeleteYou just keep telling yourself that, Simps. You and the rump of Duncan's commenting community, the ones who don't already know you're an ass.
DeleteAnd speaking of Mae West, Sparkles, did you know that Salvador Dali did an amazing portrait of her?
ReplyDeletehttps://goo.gl/images/KYYUQh
Of course, I have no doubt that Dali is one of those genius artists that you inexplicably feel superior to.
Oh, Simps, you really think I didn't know about that picture? Maybe if he'd done one of you it would be a trompe l'oeil of a public toilet. Actually, someone should do one or Trump like that, they could call it Trump L'oo.
DeleteLame plays on words. Like I've said, what you know about humor is between zilch and rien.
ReplyDeleteYou just don't get it because someone didn't tell you it was amusing. You've got to be told what's funny.
DeleteI had a conversation with someone about Dali recently, we both agreed he was more the kind of artist you're interested in when you're a teenager than grown up. Some of his paintings are quite beautiful, the ones of bread, the Crucifixion. Some of the landscapes, if you can ignore the extraneous junk. He's not anywhere near as interesting to me Hyman Bloom's pictures, the seance paintings or chandeliers. Or even the corpses.
Surrealism was based on some rather silly notions of early 20th century psychology that have been junked. It is intellectually trivial.
So yes --- Dali is one of those genius artists you inexplicably feel superior to. Thanks for confirming that.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting, list, of course. Oscar Wilde, Raymond Chandler, the Beatles, Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin...I've kind of lost count at this point.
Again, it is so hilarious for someone like you who spent their... um..... "working" life as a critic making that accusation.
DeleteDopey, no one is above criticism, not anyone on that list or any other. Raymond Chandler was a pathological racist and bigot whose work frequently went into the totally ridiculous - the number of times Marlow gets hit in the head or paralyzingly drunk in some of the books is absurd - The Beatles are probably the most over-rated four musicians in the history of music, Leonard Bernstein gave ol' Leopold a run for his money in distorting the composers intentions and his own career as a composer suffered enormously from his celebrity - not something unknown when a composer takes up a career in conducting, though not inevitably so, I don't know why you think I don't think George Gershwin was a genius, other than me pointing out that Brian Wilson's versions of his music are just awful and that those in control of the Gershwin estate are a bunch of vultures. I can't remember ever saying anything bad about him except, maybe repeating, with attribution, the great Oscar Levant asking, "If you had to do it all over, George, would you fall in love with yourself?"
I wouldn't have to ask that of you, Simps, you're incapable of self-criticism, you spend all of that on others.
So we can add Brian Wilson to this list of genius artists you inexplicably feel superior to?
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now fuck off, McCarthy. The new STAR TREK premieres in a few minutes and I've got more productive uses for my time till then besides smacking your crackpot ignorant ass down.
Brian Wilson, genius artist. Oh dear.
DeleteWhy don't you go watch STAR TREK, Simps. Actually, the guy I was talking to told me about being trapped in a car with his then girlfriend and one of her grad school buddies when they started talking Trekie. When her friend asked him why he'd gone silent, he said he wasn't into cults. It didn't go down with them but I laughed.
I watched a few Star Trek episodes, I couldn't get past the idea that in the distant future women would be glorified phone operators and everyone would still be wearing Orlon or whatever those absurd costumes were made of. I was more a Get Smart kind of guy. You clearly weren't.
Oh right. You were a huge GET SMART fan. A show with a New York Jewish sensibility.
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHGAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, yeah, like a. you get to define the humor of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry as your exclusive property. b. considering you just grooved out to Star Trek, about as Californiy a thing as ever was, it's hilarious that you'd say such a thing.
DeleteApparently you don't quite get that if Mel Brooks et al, depended on only "New York Jews" getting their stuff they'd never have had careers in TV or the movies, as most of the audience for those live outside of New York and are gentiles.
New York has some of the most cluelessly parochial and narrowly chauvinistic dolts who inhabit the United States. I've known people from Iowa and Louisiana who are more cosmopolitan than your variety of New Yorker. Even some from Maine, even New Hampshire.
" I've known people from Iowa and Louisiana who are more cosmopolitan than your variety of New Yorker. Even some from Maine, even New Hampshire. "
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm sure you've known such people. I'm also sure that some day trained ferrets will pilot NASA's first manned mission to the former planet Pluto.
If you want to confirm my point about your total ignorance of people outside of New York as in Friends or a Woody Allen movie, who am I to deny you that opportunity.
DeleteSimps, I'm sure there are even many residents of New York City who are more cosmopolitan than you are, some who know that it isn't the hub of the universe. We used to mock Bostonians who believed that but even they were more clued in to a wider reality than your kind of conceited, ignorant NYC boy.
"Simps, I'm sure..."
ReplyDeleteSparky-speak for You Have No Idea What You're Talking About. It's the equivalent of Trump's "Many people say..."
I'm now gonna go watch John Oliver and laugh at somebody who's actually funny.
Oh, you're denying that there are New Yorkers who are more cosmopolitan than li'l ol' you? Who don't realize NYC isn't the hub of the universe, because that's what I said I was sure of. You figure, you, Mr. Simps, is the most cosmopolitan of them all in the hub of the universe, you, the fixture at the bargain basement Algonquin Round Table that is Duncan's blog, former pop music scribbler for a glorified ad flyer, expert on white-boy pop music, etc. you are the cleverest of the clever, as the would-someday-be Fabian Beatrice Potter, would be Webb, claimed of herself. 'You're the cleverest member of one of the cleverest families in the cleverest class of the cleverest nation. Only replacing "nation" with "city".
DeleteI think if you were important and of consequence, John Oliver might use you as fodder for a minor line in one of his less important bits. Where did you read John Oliver was funny, who gave you permission to think that? Edroso?