Category Archives: Music
The Invention of Jazz
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 16th June 2020The conventional view is that jazz is an American art form that originated in African-American communities of New Orleans. It was a derivative of blues and ragtime. Over time it split into many branches. When one thinks of the original New Orleans version, names like King Oliver (1881-1938), Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1940), and Louis Armstrong…
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Opera Interludes
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st April 2020My subject is the instrumental music that occurs during a scene or between two. Excluded are overtures, preludes, and ballet music. Sometimes the distinction between an interlude or intermezzo and a prelude can be precious, but if the music below is called an interlude, an intermezzo, or in one case a meditation I accepted it…
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Haydn Piano Trios
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th April 2020No great composer wrote as much music as did Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). The quality of his music is as great as its amount. So vast is his output that it’s hard to count all his compositions. He is famed as the father of both the string quartet and the symphony. He wrote 68 of the…
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Chamber Music By Opera Composers
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th March 2020Most opera composers are specialists. There are only four greats who are equally noted for both operatic and instrumental music – Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, and Strauss. Chamber music is defined as: “Instrumental music played by a small ensemble, with one player to a part, the most important form being the string quartet which developed in…
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Touched By God
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd January 2020There are some artists whose gifts are so great, even by the standard of genius, that they seem the result of direct divine intervention. Franz Schubert was such an artist. Dead at 31, he left behind about 1500 compositions many of which are among the greatest pieces of music ever to issue from the mind…
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A Few Love Duets and a Jazz Encore
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th December 2019The days are short; accordingly there’s a lot of darkness around. So, I thought I might brighten things up a bit with a few love duets. Of course, the best of these duets portray characters who typically don’t survive the opera’s end. But they are lovely and make us forget that they lead to death….
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Shostakovich’s First Film Score
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th September 2019Dmitri Shostakovich wrote 29 film scores. The first of these was composed when he was 23 years old. The New Babylon is an expressionistic depiction of the Paris Commune of 1871. It was released in 1929 and was a failure. It’s plot is summarized here. The music is brilliant and presages virtually everything Shostakovich was…
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Stories Used By More Than One Composer – Romeo and Juliet
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th September 2019The Romeo and Juliet story, whether derived from Shakespeare or not, has been irresistible to composers. He are excerpts from four 19th century works and two 20th based on the doomed lovers. First up is Bellini’s take on the two teenagers. His I Capuleti e i Montecchi is based on a play by Luigi Scevola…
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Stories Used By More Than One Composer – Faust
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th August 2019You’d think there were enough good stories available so that composers didn’t need to recycle them. But there are a number of operas that are based on tales that have been around the operatic block more than once. This article is the first of a series examining operas and related musical works based on the…
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Korngold Documentary
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th August 2019Between Two Worlds is a documentary about the life and career of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). It’s very well done and worth the roughly one hour it takes to view. It seems strange that the film never mentions why Korngold was forced to move to Hollywood. The piece is in English, but has computer generated…
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