The Best American Poetry

"It Might As Well Be Spring" [with Dick Haymes in 1972]

 

 

Happy birthday, Mozart -- and Jerry Kern [by DL]

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

They Didn't Believe Me (Jerome Kern's breakout song: 1917 )

And when I told them

How beautiful you are

They didn't believe me

They didn't believe me

Your lips, your eyes

Your curly hair

Are in a class beyond compare

You're the loveliest girl that one could ever see

And when I tell them

And I certainly am going to tell them

That I'm the man whose wife someday you'll be

They'll never believe me

They'll never believe me

That from this great big world you've chosen me!

 

Two Songs, Different Eras: Discuss. [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

The Piano Music of Charles Ives

The Piano Music of Charles Ives - Master Class with Dave Frank   www.davefrankjazz.com    Join NYC piano monster Dave Frank for a thoroughly unique, in-depth introduction to the life and music of America's greatest composer! ...   youtu.be   "I found this video that explains Ives's use of dissonance. If you start at 10 minutes and 30 seconds, the speaker explains the dissonances that Ives used." -- STL

 

Maxine Sullivan welcomes the new year

Loch Lomond ("you take the high road, and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye")

A Hundred Years from Today ("so laugh and sing, / make love the king, / be happy while ye may,/ there's always one / beneath the sun / that's bound to make you feel that way")

Let Doris Day take you on a sentimental journey home. .

.

 

Pilgrims on the Ocean [by Terence Winch & Eileen Estes]

 

    Terence Winch & Billy McComiskey, 2016                                                        Eileen Estes, Susan Campbell, & Chérie Campbellcat

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Last year I collaborated with one of my all-time favorite singers, Eileen Estes, on a song called “Pilgrims on the Ocean.”  Eileen wrote a beautiful air to my lyrics, and late last year we recorded the song at Blue House Productions in Silver Spring, Maryland, with Jeff Gruber at the controls. We asked our friend Billy McComiskey, the great Brooklyn-born button accordion player now at the center of Baltimore’s Irish music scene, to lend a hand. For an outro to the song, Eileen had the very good idea to have Billy go into a tune by the legendary Clare fiddle player Junior Crehan. The tune has a number of names, all variations on “With Her Long Dark Hair Flowing Down Her Back.”

The lyrics are below, and the song can be heard by clicking

Pilgrims on the Ocean

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pilgrims on the Ocean  

 

There’s an awful thing that happens when the people go out marching.

There’s a sad but true confusion when the walls come tumbling down.

When the emcee takes the microphone and shoves it in our faces

and the castles feel the tremors shake, and crumble to the ground.

 

We were stumbling in the darkness when the houses caught on fire.

We were eating late-night dinners when the cops came cruising by.

But we sold our books and diamonds and stripped off our posh attire

and surrendered to the gender squad when they all began to cry.

 

[bridge]

Where the mountain meets the lake

where the lovers hearts all break

in the greening without meaning

when the give all turns to take

 

We’re the pilgrims and the children all forsaken on the oceans

where the storms divide and waves collide and we’re about to drown.

That’s what it’s like down here tonight drenched in our emotions

but swimming for the sunlight and the sight of higher ground.

 

©words Terence Winch/music Eileen Estes

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                        Junior Crehan

On Seeing the Nutcracker Suite as an Adult [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Several years ago, a colleague who was leaving NYC for L.A., asked me what should be on her “bucket list” of things to do before heading west. “See a performance of the New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker Suite,” I said, without hesitation. That was my answer then, and it would be my answer today, even more emphatically so, having taken in a performance last Wednesday afternoon.

I can’t recall the first time I saw George Balanchine’s "Nutcracker" but I’m certain I was a child. Over the years I've had my doubts about how an adult could enjoy a ballet so geared to a child’s sensibility. Those doubts are put to rest. The show is magical, for any audience, at any age. The music, the costumes, the sets, the dancing! 

My sister Amy and I got our seats late in the game, and I was surprised to discover that the theater was mostly sold out by the time I logged on to get our tickets. The best available that we could afford were in the back row of the second ring—still excellent and far better than the fifth ring $1.00 seats that my parents subscribed to way back when.

One of the great pleasures this time around was in observing the audience. So many children! Little girls in their fanciest dresses, all lace and ribbons and embroidery; little boys in velvet suits and bow ties,  clutching the hands of a parent, also dressed to the nines, as if they could leap on stage and join the show.

Under most circumstances any noise from the audience during a performance—talking, unwrapping candy--would be an annoying distraction, but the sounds of awestruck children throughout the house marveling when the Christmas tree soars from 12 to 41 feet, or gasping when giant mice overrun the stage, or shrieking with delight when Harlequin and Columbine emerge life-sized from their gift-wrapped boxes, and laughing when they fold in on themselves to be put away, filled me with pleasure. “Where did they go?” whispers a curious boy. Even the occasional crying toddler was a joyful sound. Kudos to those parents who decided the time was right to bring their children to this annual spectacle.

It might be too late to find tickets for this year's run (maybe not?) but it's not too soon to plan for next.

-- sdl

Elvis and Frank

Deems Taylor introduces Frank Sinatra on V-Disc "for the men overseas" (1944)

Sinatra at the Stork Club, 1944

"If You Are But a Dream"
"Sunday, Monday and Always"  as "Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como." 
     "Why should it get their goat, each time I bend a note, Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como?"
     "The fact that girlies scream they say will bring me grief / but if they ever stop I'll find that I'm back on relief"
     "Every time I sing, I'm compared with Bing, by Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como?"
"Brahms's Lullaby"

"Tea for Two" & other duets with Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Bing Crosby et al

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Won't somebody tell me where's my Bess?" (Sinatra at the Waldorf, 1945)

Recorded for Columbia February 2, 1946.
Sang at the Waldorf-Astoria's Wedgwood Room, 1945.

<<<
Sinatra Takes Over Wedgewood Room and Wins Crowd Despite His Illness

The quality of laryngitis is strained these nights at the Waldorf-Astoria's Wedgwood Room where Frank Sinatra is making a belated start on a short engagement. It is painfully obvious that he shouldn't be singing until he has had proper rest yet he sang 14 numbers Wednesday night, the concluding one "Old Man River."

Ordinarily the slim technician of modern song-phrasing is in his element with a large band behind him-wasn't he once a swing band vocalist? And Dick Stable's 22-piece band, featuring numerous violins and a harp, lends splendid support, but the voice that has hypnotized millions was like a butterfly in a whirlpool.

It was a masterful performance, nevertheless. .  .

*

After rendering "My Romance," from the still-remembered "Jumbo," and "When I Marry Sweet Lorraine," he pulled the first surprise of the evening with "Bess, Where Is My Bess." A haunting, lovely tune, he sanit very well. >> f
rom Tips on Tables, by Robert W. Dana, Nov. 30, 1945. 

Doris Day Knocks it Out of the Park

Listen to her do "Ten Cents a Dance" (1955) -- and watch this incredibly sexy lady knock it out of the park:

Or "A Hundred Years from Today":

You can't tell me that hers isn't a sublimely sexy voice. -- DL

 

Lee Wiley, "Looking at You" (1939)

"Looking at you,
I'm filled with the essence of,
the quintessence of,
joy. 
Looking at you, /
I hear poets tellin' of
lovely Helen of
Troy."

-- Cole Porter, lyric writng at its most inspired

The great jazz singer Lee Wiley was part Cherokee Indian. A tall, handsome woman with olive skin and blonde hair, she was born in Port Gibson, Okla., on Oct. 9, 1915. She ran away from home at age 15. Two years later she sang with Leo Rieisman's band.  Her voice was gently husky, warmly sensual. Hearing her at a nightclub wsas an unforgettable experience. She died at 60./ (See New York Times, December 12, 1975). -- DL 

"Band Practice" [by Terence Winch]

                Band Practice

We have three bottles on the kitchen table.

One is filled with the music of a hundred old hornpipes

in the key of D that no one plays anymore. We drink

and play. Pretty soon they’re no longer hornpipes,

but tricky little reels from long-dead masters

remembered by no one but us. We play them

and they are like nothing anyone has ever heard

before now. Oh, the ins and outs and ups and downs

of them, like an old song the jolly ploughman

sings to the fair maiden at midnight under her

window, enticing her out for a forbidden fling

that will change her life forever. But pretty soon

all that’s left is an old waltz that we drag along

the living room floor by one foot till it falls apart 

before we even figure out the second half of it.

We never even get to the other two bottles.

it's far beyond the sun/ it's near beyond the moon / I know beyond a doubt / my heart will lead me there soon. . .

Shostakovich Symphony #13 [by Lewis Saul]

 

 

 

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933) was too young to have been stung by the murder hornet that was Josef Stalin.

Shostakovich, however, was envenomed by the murderous dictator over and over again, leaving a permanent welt on his soul, but the greatness of DS was his refusal to surrender to political forces; he continually composed music that would land him in trouble with the authorities.

The first time was in 1934-35, involving two massive works: The Fourth Symphony (see my post) and the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (post). The opera actually was a success with the public, but when Stalin attended the opera, and a rehearsal of the symphony (in both cases, perhaps offended by loud trombones), he ordered both works to be withdrawn. Neither would be heard again for nearly three decades. Shortly thereafter, a Party-approved article appeared in Pravda entitled "Muddle Instead of Music.

The Fifth Symphony (post) was subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Reply to Just Criticism." Whether or not Shostakovich was forced to use these words is still unknown today.

**

In the late 40's, DS was again "stung" by the Zhdanov Doctrine, condemning formalism in the arts. Banned works from this period include the Violin Concerto (post) and From Jewish Folk Poetry (1948 -- in defiance of his denunciation!).

**

Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 would have been a great day of celebration had not Sergei Prokofiev died on the exact same day.

As usual, Shostakovich had his say with notes. Stalin was infuriated with the Ninth Symphony (1945) (post), which -- rather than a glorification of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War -- was a light-hearted affair of short duration. The Tenth (1953) (post), however (premiered after Stalin's death), was a mammoth work of unbridled proportions, and in the second movement, Shostakovich no longer felt the need to hide his vivid portrayal of the maniac. It is electrifying music.

For the Eleventh (1957) (post) and Twelfth (1961), Shostakovich reverted to Soviet programs (1905; 1917), but it is notable that the Eighth String Quartet (1960) is today considered a musical suicide note. DS was seriously considering ending his life.

Perhaps Yevtushenko's poetry inspired him to live. The Thirteenth Symphony (1962) is one of the best of the Fifteen -- written for bass soloist, male chorus and orchestra. Each movement's title is a name or word, rather than just a tempo indication:

• I.. Babi Yar. Shostakovich and Yevtushenko transform the 1941 massacre into a denunciation of antisemitism. The poem becomes the basis for a series of operatical episodes -- the Dreyfus affair, the Białystok pogrom, the Anne Frank story. Shostakovich may have thought he was done with censorship, but censorship was not done with him. The authorities refused to allow a performance until DS & YY revised the original verse:
• Original: I feel myself a Jew / Here I tread across old Egypt / Here I die, nailed to the cross / And even now I bear the scars of it / I become a gigantic, soundless scream / Above the thousands buried here/ I am every old man shot dead here / I am every child shot dead here.
• Censored: Here I stand at the fountainhead / That gives me faith in brotherhood / Here Russians lie, and Ukrainians / Together with Jews in the same ground / I think of Russia's heroic dead / In blocking the way to Fascism / To the smallest dew-drop, she is close to me / In her being and her fate.
• II. Humour. Coloring Yevtushenko's imagery with a spirit of mocking burlesque
• III. In the Store. About the hardship of Soviet women queueing in a shop.
• IV. Fears. An elaborate parody, the subject is suppression: Fears are dying-out in Russia.
• V. Career: The movement opens with a feeling of sunshine after a storm; it quickly becomes something else: an attack on bureaucrats, robotic unanimity, while also a tribute to genuine creativity.

The best performance on YouTube, led by the cancelled Valery Gergiev

(Poem in the credits)

It's Round About Midnight and Happy Birthday to You, Thelonious Monk

"Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy."  T.M.

-- sdh

 

Quote of the Day: Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (1903-1989)

Born on this day, 1903, in Kyiv, Ukraine.

“Always there should be a little mistake here and there - I am for it. The people who don't do mistakes are cold like ice. It takes risk to make a mistake. If you don't take risk, you are boring.”

 

-- sdl

György Ligeti (1923-2006)

How many of you listen to "modern music" (i.e. Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, Kurtág, Xenakis, etc.) for sheer pleasure? I've been into this stuff since very early childhood so it's just as pleasurable for me to listen to a Mahler symphony as a Stockhausen opera.

But I completely understand the fact that our 21st century ears are still plugged into the 19th century ... our "pop" music is diatonic, the TV jingle is diatonic, the scores for Star Wars are definitely diatonic (or sometimes chromatic ... chromaticism can be used in both a diatonic and dodecaphonic context).

Most people react to non-diatonic music with a feeling of having listened to noise, incoherent musical sounds, or -- often -- just an annoying waste of time.

So I propose this experiment. Listen to all or some of the following four compositions by György Ligeti and observe your reactions:

1. Atmosphères (1961)
2. Requiem (Kyrie) (1963-65)
3. Lux Aeterna (1966)
4. Aventures (1962)

The first work is for orchestra; the other three all involve singers.

2001: A Space Odyssey
directed by Stanley Kubrick

Yes, I'm certain most of you recognized the above music as part of the score of this cinematic masterpiece from 1968. Were you able to enjoy the music on its own merits, or did you immediately begin to associate the sounds with images from the film?

It's not an academic question, because audio and visual cues comingle in our brains, and sometimes fuse together!

• Atmosphères plays over the first three minutes of the film, before the MGM logo even appears. You could say that the music "sets the mood," or in its urgency, is subtly telling the audience to quit jabbering and prepare for the experience. But if you soak up this non-visual prelude, you will find a gigantic pay-off later in the film.
• The next Ligeti we hear is when the apes meet the monolith -- the music is the Kyrie from the Requiem. This music will accompany every appearance of the monolith, except the final one. We see the syzygy as the music reaches a peak and Kubrick cuts it off abruptly. The camera looks out on the African plains and the Moonwatcher episode begins, culminating in the bone/satellite Also Sprach section.
• Lux Aeterna makes its first appearance when Floyd's shuttle is approaching the monolith site. The music takes a break while the crew has sandwiches and coffee, and then resumes until it turns back into the Kyrie -- the leitmotif of the monolith -- and is overwhelmed by the high-pitched shriek of the radio signal.
• If your home-video version leaves out the Intermission, you've missed Atmosphères again. Shorter than the opening cut, but still an important cue to what will come next.
• A supertitle: "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite." Kyrie returns as we observe another syzygy -- this time from Jupiter. We hear almost the entire movement (Kyrie eleison = Lord, have mercy) -- nature's cosmic terror; mercy seems irrelevant!
• Now the payoff from having heard Atmosphères so often. As Bowman passes through the Star Gate, and we observe his face in a frozen scream, we hear ten minutes of music, accompanying one of the best-known scenes in cinematic history.
• In the alien apartment, we now hear Aventures for the first time. Strange vocal noises pierce what seems like silence.

The actual techniques Ligeti used to compose these works is fascinating, maybe a subject for a future post.

Oh yes -- Kubrick and all his lawyers somehow neglected to pay (or even correctly credit) Ligeti for his brilliant music. Ligeti sued; it was settled, and all must have been forgiven, for Christiane Kubrick accompanied Ligeti to the premiere of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), after Stanley's death.