Irving Berlin (1888-1989) was the greatest songwriter in American history. Born in Imperial Russia his father, an itinerant cantor, brought his family to America after their house was burned to the ground during a pogrom. Irving was 5 years old when he arrived in New York. Raised in Dickensian poverty he was out on the…
America had a profusion of baritones in the 20th century. One of the most prominent then is much less so today. He’s the subject of this article. John Charles Thomas (1891-1960) was born in Meyersdale, PA. He was interested in singing from an early age. From 1910 to 1912 he studied voice at Baltimore’s Peabody…
Charles Ives (1874-1954) was a remarkable American who made his distinctive mark in two unrelated fields. A major force in the US insurance business he is one of the founders of financial planning. At the same time he was making a fortune as a businessman he was also a pioneering composer of genius. It is…
Sir Roger Scruton (1944-2020) was an English philosopher and polymath. His knowledge of music was deep and wide. He wrote two operas and one libretto. He could analyze a musical composition down to its most granular detail. The book discussed here was one of his last (published in 2018) and has an odd title. Writing…
I’m going to write a series of short articles on some of America’s great composers. I’ll start with the greatest – George Gershwin (1898-1937). Someone said were it not for his death from a brain tumor at age 38 that he’d have become the American Verdi. I think that if anything this assessment is an…
Art, in all its guises, is of course an invention. Its evolution was governed by the internal manipulation common to any human endeavor. But it was also greatly altered and influenced by inventions not initially intended to relate to art. Consider the discovery of electricity, most famously by Benjamin Franklin but by others as well,…
With the possible exception of the Bridal March from Lohengrin, the music that opens Act 3 of Die Walküre – The Ride of the Valkyries – is the most familiar written by Richard Wagner. The Ride takes around eight minutes, and begins in the prelude to the third act, building up successive layers of accompaniment…
It’s been 12 years since Yo-Yo Ma appeared as a guest artist with the LSO. His return last night was greeted with extravagant enthusiasm by a sold-out audience at the Buddy Holly Hall. The entire program was devoted to the music of Antonin Dvořák. The program’s first half consisted of two Slavonic Dances, the finale…
Mahler’s Second Symphony, The Resurrection Symphony, is one of the great works of Western Art. Titanic in its scale and overwhelming in its inspiration the demands it makes on a symphony orchestra are beyond formidable. Its stature is unsurpassed in the orchestral literature. Last night the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra performed the work in the First…
Some things are more eloquent than words. The brief video below serves no purpose other than mirth, though it shows that the dancers by the Bay have a sense of humor in posting the brief interlude. There’s always considerable risk when animals are assigned a part in a live performance. There is a great story…