Most Transformative Classical Compositions Ever?
The Chicago Sinfonietta invites you to take survey to select musical works for its Think Big progam at this November’s Chicago Humanities Festival. One choice per category is allowed, and an write-in option appears at the end.
Nominees (below) were selected by Michael Abels, Henry Fogel, Tania Léon, Dominique-René de Lerma, Drew McManus, Steve Robinson and Alex Ross.
The Sinfonetta site doesn’t offer listing samples, be we’ll take care of that for you, via the magic of Rhapsody free trial tracks:
Classical Period
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Symphony No. 9 - Beethoven
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Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” - Beethoven*
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Don Giovanni - Mozart
Romantic Period
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Tristan und Isolde - Wagner*
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Symphonie Fantastique - Berlioz
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La Mer - Debussy
Modern
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Appalachian Spring - Copland
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Rite of Spring - Stravinsky
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Five Pieces for Orchestra - Schoenberg*
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Concerto for Orchestra - Bartok
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Desert Music - Steve Reich
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Sensemaya - Silvestre Revueltas
* Bonnie’s choices
Do We Know Johann Sebastian Bach?
An interesting article:
Harold Fromm doesn’t think we see Bach as a man, a personality.
Bach is in the very chemistry of Western musical blood, like red cells, white cells, and platelets in our material plasma.
But if Bach is The Father, why hasn’t he fired the popular imagination? We have soppy movies about Mozart and Beethoven as well as proliferating biographies for the intelligent general reader, but nothing really comparable for Bach. … We have fairly localizable “feelings” about Mozart because the personal letters producing those feelings are voluminous. We learn about Wolfgang as a circus freak driven by father Leopold, about the Mozart family’s obsession with “shit,” about Wolfgang’s castigation of Constanze for exposing her ankles, not to mention purported mysteries surrounding the uncompleted Requiem, perfect grist for the mills of pop culture. For Beethoven, again, many autograph materials providing insights into his “spiritual development” (to use the subtitle of an early biography) and his medical problems, his patrons, his financial independence, his nephew, his deafness, his “immortal beloved.” But what is the feel we get from Bach? In fact, who is this seemingly generic father and why has he failed to solidify as part of our cultural ethos? When we hear “Mozart” or “Beethoven,” we think of a person behind the music. When we hear “Bach,” we think of music only.
So Bach is the father, but one of those distant fathers like the ones from the Greatest Generation. We do not have for Bach the kind of immense, first person record comparable to the correspondence of Mozart, Beethoven, etc. The fact that Bach left behind nothing but boring administrative documents is the stereotype hilariously sent up in the Bach Portait by “P.D.Q. Bach” — it’s just like Copland’s Lincoln Portait, except the stentorian narration features Bach’s financial correspondence instead of Carl Sandburg’s poetry about Lincoln. And what we do have from contemporaries such as Bach’s children and students, “is not totally trusted by scholars.”
It would be cool to really get into how much a biographer goes about painting a picture of the person under these circumstances, but after this setup, the article has no choice but to give up and start discussing the major classes of Bach’s works, particularly the dramatic text setting of certain cantatas.
Update
on 2008-04-02 06:00 by John Gibbons
Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work
by Martin Geck
Buy Book Online:
J.S. Bach: A Life in Music
by Peter Williams
Buy Book Online:
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
by Christoph Wolff
Peter and the Wolf Nominated for Animated Short Film Oscar
Suzie Templeton’s stop-motion, non-narrated retelling of Prokofiev’s 1936 work Peter and the Wolf is nominated in the Animated Short Film category. Watch the movie and learn more about Peter and the Wolf.
Poster from Suzy Templaton’s animated short film of Peter and the Wolf, based on the musical work by Sergei Prokofiev.
One of the world’s greatest film composers may be about to win an Oscar – 70 years after he wrote the music, and 53 years after his death. Suzie Templeton’s stop-motion retelling of Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s 1936 “symphonic fairy tale for children,” is nominated for tonight’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
A longer, grittier Peter and the Wolf
As generations of Peter’s fans expect, specific musical instruments represent characters in the story. But Templeton dispenses with Prokofiev’s narrator and tells the story with music and imagery alone — this time, in a modern-day urban locale rather than the canonical bucolic setting. Another departure from tradition: Templeton interrupts the music with long periods of unscored action. These mostly-silent interludes bring the film’s running time to 29 minutes, twice the length of a the original concert work (and Disney’s 1946 animated classic).
Watch the Oscar-nominated animated short film Peter and the Wolf
Prokofiev’s story of one naughty kid who gloriously “gets away with it” is one of his most enduring works — in its original form and in several adaptations and parodies.
Notable Narrators of Peter and the Wolf
A very incomplete list of English-language narrators on recorded performances includes Leonard Bernstein, David Bowie, Sean Connery, John De Lancy (Q!), Dom DeLuise, Dame Edna, Jose Ferrer, Jon Gielgud, Hermione Gingold, Alec Guinness, Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa), Boris Karloff (Grinch!), Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Christopher Lee, Jack Lemmon, Sophia Loren, Dudley Moore, Itzhak Perlman, André Previn, Ralph Richardson, Patrick Stewart, and Sting. Sterling Holloway and Paige O’Hara (as Belle) narrated different editions of the Disney adaptation.
Prokofiev family members have lent their vocal talents to English recordings. The composer’s first wife, mezzo-soprano Lina Prokofieva (credited as Lina Prokofiev) narrates the Chandos / Neemi Jarvi recording. Son Oleg Prokofiev (a sculptor) & grandson Gabriel Prokofiev (an actor and musician) collaborate on the Hyperion recording under Ronald Corp’s baton.
Look who’s lent their vocal talents to Peter and the Wolf!
Listen for free, narrated by
Adaptations and Parodies of Peter and the Wolf
Comedic retellings of Peter and the Wolf have been crafted by Peter Shickele (“Sneeky Pete and the Wolf”), Weird Al Yankovic, and NPR’s “All Things Considered” (in a developing news treatment a la “You Are There”). American holiday movie fans will recognize the wolf’s brass theme as the leitmotiv for schoolyard bully Scut Farkus in “A Christmas Story.”
In the tradition of Wicked (the book and musical defending the witches’ side of the Wizard of Oz story), Peter and the Wolf has even been retold from the wolf’s point of view in The Wolf and Peter by Jean-Pascal Beintus (narrated by Bill Clinton on the Russian National Orchestra’s Peter and the Wolf/Wolf Tracks album).
Updated Monday 7:23 AM: And the Oscar goes to Peter and the Wolf!
Modern Mashup
Bob Simon profiles 26-year-old Venezuelan conducting phenom Gustavo Dudamel on 60 Minutes. Read the full story at the link or watch this video:
The piece dwells lovingly on Dudamel’s (extreme) youth and passion, setting up a rather Obama-like “hope and change” narrative. Dudamel himself is apparently a product of El Sistema, a social change movement disguised as a youth orchestra program for poor Venezuelan children.
The elderly (by comparison) composer Osvaldo Golijov is the subject of several news items lately, including this pretty good, short introduction from Style magazine. Caught him last week on NPR, teaching inner-city kids to compose “beats” with a laptop. As with Dudamel, it’s hard to get a sense of the actual work, so in love are the journalists with the narrative. (In an interesting tie-in, the Style piece discusses a work Golijov wrote for Dawn Upshaw… who received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur foundation for (can you guess?) “stretching the boundaries of operatic and concert singing.” Much like Golijov a few years ago got one for what one might call musical globalization.
If one is interested in modern music (and I mean both “standard repertory modern” and brand new) a reputable source is Counterstream Radio, a project of the American Music Center.
Top 12 List: Classical Music for Valentines Day - Without Cheating!
We haven’t been able to keep this blog on quite a daily basis lately. But we’re finally able to take break with a few days in Punta Gorda, Florida and on this Valentine’s Day I aim to become only the latest blogger to present a list of Classical Music for Valentine’s Day picks.
Certain choices show up on nearly all lists: the various settings of Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Gounod), Puccini’s La Boheme (entire second half of Act 1 but especially “Che Gelida Manina” and “O Suave Fanciulla”), Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, Tristan und Isolde or Die Walkure (Act 1, all of it), any number of opera arias and art songs, programmatic instrumental pieces by Liszt, Strauss, Schumann…
In just one of many La Scena Musicale has six musical valentines you can email to your loved one. Visit their website to hear the six musical selections, which are:
- Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Prelude)
Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra - Saint-Saëns: Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix (Samson et Dalila)
Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano, with Jon Vickers, tenor and Georges Prêtre conducting the
Orchestre du Théatre de l’Opéra de Paris - Duparc: L’invitation au voyage
Gérard Souzay, baritone with Dalton Baldwin, piano - Puccini: Che gelida manina (La Bohème)
Jussi Bjõrling, tenor with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the RCA Victor Symphony - Richard Strauss: Morgen
Jussi Björling, tenor with Harry Ebert, piano - Berlioz: Le spectre de la rose, (Les nuits d’été)
Linda Maguire, mezzo-soprano
These are very a short lists of only the most obvious selections — and they’re obvious because they’re among the best musical depictions or specifically romantic stories. Interestingly, the six musical valentine choices were chosen by web poll from a larger list that DID include purely instrumental selections. (http://www.scena.org/quiz/valentinequiz.asp) It’s not surprising that opera and song just seem more romantic.
Still, I think we can come up with many, many romantic choices from purely instrumental works without romantic programs (i.e. without cheating)? A search of blogs, news items, and concert event calendars shows that even in this narrower vein, the choices are vast. One short list I like is by The Harvard Independent’s Alana Mendelssohn (no relation, presumably) suggests
- Beethoven’s Cavatina from his String Quartet in B-flat major (Op. 130)
- the Adagios from his Harp Quartet (Op. 74 No. 10), and his Fifth Piano Concerto
- the second movement of Brahms’ First Symphony
- the Adagio from Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major
- the Adante Cantabile from Schumann’s Piano Quartet Op. 47
Here are some of my favorite romantic, purely instrumental choices. It can’t help but be a little cello-centric.
- Bach, Oboe & Violin Concerto, BWV 1059R, Siciliano
- Borodin, “Nocturne” (from String Quartet No. 2)
- Chopin, impossible to choose one piano piece, but I can vouch for the Polonaise Brilliante for Cello and Piano
- Elgar, Cello Concerto, Adagio Moderato
- Franck, Violin Sonata in A Minor
- Grenados, anything played by himself on a piano roll.
- Grieg, Holberg Suite, Op. 40, Sarabande
- Mahler, Fourth Symphony, Adagio
- Mendelssohn, Frühlingslied from Lieder ohne Wörte No.30 in A, Op.62 No.6
- Mozart, Flute Quartet No. 1, K.285, Slow movement
- Rachmaninoff, Second Piano Concerto and Vocalise (yep, I’m counting that as instrumental)
- Schumann, Fantasiestucke for Cello and Piano, or the Piano or Cello Concertos
After you send your Tristan valentine and it does the trick, how should you set the ambience if you don’t have any of these selections on your music system? The answer is on your desktop.
In the tradition of the WPIX Yule Log, play this YouTube video (from wintermood) of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, with a file of moon photography.
"Courage has grown so tired, and longing so great."
I recently promised to devote special attention on this site to Entartete Musik (music deemed “degenerate” in the Third Reich). My first subject is Viktor Ullmann, a composition student of Schoenberg, a conducting protege of Zemlinsky, and a leader of musical life in the Terezin concentration camp before being murdered in Auschwitz in September 1944. Our Ullmann Resource Guide is still taking shape, but I wanted to offer this unique preview from my YouTube travels.I recently promised to devote special attention on this site to Entartete Musik (music deemed “degenerate” in the Third Reich).
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My first subject is the Czech/German composer Viktor Ullmann, a student of Schoenberg, a conducting protege of Zemlinsky, and a leader of musical life in the Terezin concentration camp before being murdered in Auschwitz in September 1944.
Holde Kunst’s Ullmann Resource Guide is still taking shape, but I wanted to offer this unique preview from my YouTube travels.
This production of ARBOS - Company for Music and Theater is presented at the former frontline of World War I (a frequent source material for Ullmann) between Italy and Austria at the Valentinalm near the Plöckenpass. In This video clip Rupert Bergmann performs the character of the Cornet and Alfred Melichar performs the music of Ullmann on the accordion (from the YouTube listing)
Video: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke
(The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke) - Excerpt
Spoken song cycle by Viktor Ullmann · Text by Rainer Maria Rilke · Written 1944 in Terezin
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau speaks the Ullmann-Rilke cycle on his album “Melodramas”.
Get the German and English for all five movments
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Text for video excerpt
im Falle sein Bruder Christoph (der nach beigebrachtem Totenschein als Cornet in der Compagnie des Freiherrn von Pirovano des kaiserl. Oesterr. Heysterschen Regiments zu Ross …. verstorben war) zurückkehrt….
Reiten, reiten, reiten, durch den Tag, durch die Nacht, durch den Tag. Reiten, reiten, reiten. Und der Mut ist so müde geworden und die Sehnsucht so groß. Es gibt keine Berge mehr, kaum einen Baum. Nichts wagt aufzustehen. Fremde Hütten hocken durstig an versumpften Brunnen. Nirgends ein Turm. Und immer das gleiche Bild. Man hat zwei Augen zuviel. Nur in der Nacht manchmal glaubt man den Weg zu kennen. Vielleicht kehren wir nächtens immer wieder das Stück zurück, das wir in der fremden Sonne mühsam gewonnen haben? Es kann sein. Die Sonne ist schwer, wie bei uns tief im Sommer. Aber wir haben im Sommer Abschied genommen. Die Kleider der Frauen leuchteten lang aus dem Grün. Und nun reiten wir lang. Es muß also Herbst sein. Wenigstens dort, wo traurige Frauen von uns wissen.
In the case of his brother Christopher (who, according to the death certificate, was killed while serving as a Cornet in the Compagnie des barons of Pirovano The kaiserl. Oesterr. Heysterschen cavalry regiment
…. Riding, Riding, Riding, through the day, through the night, through the day. Riding, riding, riding. And courage has grown so tired, and longing so great. There are no more mountains, hardly a tree. Nothing dares to stand up. Foreign huts squat thirstily at muddied wells. Nowhere a tower. And always the same picture. One finds that one has two eyes too many. Only at night does one sometimes believe one knows the way. Perhaps at night we always return to the stretch of road that we gained so painfully under the foreign sun? It may be. The sun is heavy, as it is during the depth of our summer. But it was summer when we took our leave. The dresses of the women shimmered for a long time among the green. And now we are riding along. So it must be Autumn. At least in the place where sad women know of us.
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"Buzzards Gotta Eat, Same as Worms"-Some Listening Suggestions for Carneval Season
For those snobbishly inclined persons (you know who you are) who won’t watch a perfectly good Western, the title quote refers to a scene from “The Outlaw Josie Wales” in which the titular character mocks the notion of burying some villains whom he and his pard have just (quite rightly) sent on a Missoura boatride to eternity. Well, reckon I got to doin’ some of that there thinkin’ bout this here blog business, and I’ll be be-danged with a horseshoe if’n lions don’t gotta eat, same as humans. Which brings us to Respighi’s Feste Romane, which is the first of several…
LISTENING SUGGESTIONS FOR CARNEVAL SEASON
1. For those lily-livered weak-kneed aesthetes who can’t stand jolly noise and mayhem (Go Lions!) Be my guest; give “Games in the Circus Maximus” a miss. The finale of Feste Romane features a full scale caneval bacchanalia complete with tarantella.
2. Better yet, if you need to satiate the all-too-common malady of “Jonesing for Respighi”, why not try his masterpiece, the Trittico Bottecelliano? Carneval is at least partly about love, and Venus is the Goddess of love. “The Birth of Venus Rising from the Sea” is the best thing Respighi ever did. It’s the best thing Botticelli ever did. Get a load of the visage on that painted lady! Ooh-la-la!
3. Now that hopefully I’ve offended the snobs, the devout, and the Self-Appointed-Guardians For Defending-Respect-For-Great-Art, its time to offend somebody else. Let’s see. Carneval is derived from the word for “flesh”, non? Who knows this topic better than the French! This one’s for the gentlemen, although the gentleman who wrote the piece was guided by different impulses. Messieurs! c’est tres bon! Ici, Poulenc’s Mammelles de Tiresias, s’il vous plait!
4. Want some tasteless vulgarity? Give Bourbon street a pass, and try Orff’s inimitable Carmina Burana. It has gluttony, drunkeness, sex and appallingly bad music, the worst vice of all.
5. Yep, those Carneval overtures need to be mentioned. Go ahead and listen to Dvorak’s piece, it’s charming and vivacious; approximately as good as Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italian, although I’d rather have carpaccio Italian! As for Berlioz, cut out the middle man. Forget Roman Carneval overture and spend your time with the real McCoy, the wonderful opera Benvenuto Cellini.
6. Anything Venetian will do you just fine for Carneval, except Vivaldi. How many times do I have to keep telling you that! And as for you, you striped shirted, straw hatted gondoliers! Stop ferrying tourists to Vivaldi concerts! Nevertheless, Venice is the Carneval capital. Go ahead and listen to La Gioconda, see if I care. I Due Foscari? Getting warmer. Simon Boccanegra? That’s Genoa, you! Tales of Hoffmann? Warmer still! Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’Ete with its lagoon song? Bingo!
What's So Degenerate About Korngold?
While blogging about Renee Fleming’s performance of “Ich ging zu ihm,” I mentioned in passing that Korngold’s opera was considered Entartete Musik (“degenerate music”). What does this mean?
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Entartete (“degenerate” or “decadent” in English) was Nazi epithet for art and music the regime considered objectionable for racial or ideological reasons. Korngold, as a Jewish composer, was automatically in this category, but race was not the only way to be designated decadent. Ties with Jewish friends and colleagues would do it, as Anton Webern (somewhat a Hitler supporter in the early years) would learn. Content (like the black characters in Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf) would do it. Being too modern or too jazzy (i.e. “African”) qualified as well. (See our recommended books.)
The Nazi campaign against many of its best musicians was part of a larger, more notorious campaign against modern art, which in 1937 climaxed in a multi-city exhibition of “degenerate” art selected from thousands of pieces stolen from museums. The following year, an exhibit on degenerate music opened in Düsseldorf. An image of the Entartete Musik exhibition catalog can seen here. (Warning: it’s pretty offensive.)
Decca released an Entartete Musik CD series beginning in the 1990s, with special emphasis on more rarely performed works.
“From a purely musical point of view, the “Entartete Musik” series has, with unanimous international critical acclaim, brought back to life more than 30 forgotten key works from the first half of this century by composers such as Braunfels, Goldschmidt, Haas, Korngold, Krása, Krenek, Ullmann and Waxman. These recordings may help the listener imagine what the musical life in Europe was before its destruction by the Nazis, and what it might have been if these great branches had not been abruptly cut off.” (Decca press release)
Korngold was among the lucky ones — he made it to Hollywood and wrote several popular film scores. But some of the composers mentioned in this Decca press release (Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, Viktor Ullman) died in the Holocaust. I will try to get together a list of the “degenerate” composers and performers along with their main works and fates. For now, I just have a great
Hope You Didn't Miss This
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Several comments on yesterday’s Met Opera broadcast of Prokofiev’s War and Peace:
For those who don’t know the opera, it consists of an epigraph and thirteen reasonably lengthy scenes divided into two gargantuan segments, “peace”, and then “war” based on Tolstoy’s novel. The “peace” segment vitally draws the personalities and ambitions and situations of the principal characters with consummate skill and sympathy, thus making their various fates in the “war” segment deeply involving for the listener. The piece is patriotic, but movingly so; neither obnoxious in the Soviet style nor witlessly jingoistic. Stylistically, the piece inhabits a similar world as the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the music for the film (also turned into a cantata) Alexander Nevsky. In fact, if you don’t know the opera, you might imagine a sort of cross between those works; eloquent dance elements as well as massive and powerful episodes..and like those works, a serious mein, but leavened with considerable humor. And the libretto, by Prokofiev and his wife, Mira, is a winner…combining grandeur and intimacy. Also, the piece is consistently inspired from beginning to end, there are no longeurs…to yesterday’s broadcast:
1. The conductor Valery Gergiev proves once again how important the conductor is…his mastery of the score is immediately evident, and his (relatively) quick pacing and control of tempo, the breadth and unity of conception, the precision of the colors evoked by this onamonapoetic score, and the immense variety of his articulations serve the work well, to say the least.
2. But why the cuts? Oh, I know that everybody but Rostropovich in that Erato record of his makes cuts, and as far as it goes, several performances I’ve heard cut a lot more. But I have the score, and as I followed the performance I can assure you that the music left on the table is not just perfectly viable, but as inspired as the rest. And I’ve heard it uncut, and liked it that way. But Gergiev knows what he’s doing, obviously…there are probably sufficient reasons for the cuts, which in any case were not particularly heavy…You know, I feel the same way about cuts in Frau Ohne Schatten; it’s just about always cut, and when I heard Solti do it from Salzburg uncut, I liked it that way. Guess I just don’t like cuts, I almost always feel cheated. Erich Leinsdorf in one of his books completely dismisses objections to cuts, and claims they are absolutely necessary in many works to make the piece stronger. I just can’t think of any cuts I like in any works I like. Cut away in pieces I don’t like, however; be my guest!
2. If the Met had made this one of their big whoop-de-doos at movie theatres, it would have sold out everywhere and been one of the events of the year. Why didn’t they?
3. Alexej Markov as Andrei and Maria Poplovskaya as Natasha were superlative; especially because their acting and vocal characterizations were so convincing. And it’s nice to have such an Andrei, powerful and charismatic; makes the lyrical stuff all the more moving. The outstanding Kim Begley was wonderful as Pierre, but you might not notice it, ‘cause Pierre is such a difficult role. Sam Ramey as Kutuzov has a beautiful voice and plenty of power, but the wobbling continues to be a significant distraction. A friend I listened with thought it wrecked his passages. I thought so too, but am not saying so because I’ll get yelled at! But Ramey’s place as a great singer of our time is secure, he’s done so many good things.
4. This greatest of Prokofiev’s works contains his single greatest passage, the desperately sad death scene of Andrei… his farewell to the beloved walls of the Kremlin and his hallucinatory reunion with Natasha will shock you with its poignancy… how can this beautiful world continue to exist without Andrei to see it? “The world ends when you die.” This is haunting.
Guest Blogger "Charley in the Box" Unveils the "Island of Misfit Scores"
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A preliminary note from Mr. Gibbons: Recently, when reluctantly co-opted for a search for a runaway reindeer, an eccentric prospecter, and a renegade elf, I had the, let’s say, interesting experience of being marooned on a most quaint little island, to wit, the “island of misfit toys”…I didn’t have a chance to meet the big man on campus, some insufferably pompous flying lion gradiosely appelated “King Moonracer”, but I did while away considerable time jawing with the moody and sentimental sentry (not to put too fine a point on it), Mr. Charley-In-The-Box, hereafter referred to as Chasbo. (With his indulgent permission!)… Well, the upshot of the deal was that, given Chasbo’s deep knowledge of classical music, I invited him to do today’s column, his choices for works deserving to be marooned on their own “island of misfit scores”. These are his choices, not mine. I love to death all the works he derides. If you have a complaint, don’t come to Holdekunst! Send a letter to: “Sentry Charley-In-The-Box”, C/O King Moonracer, the Isle of the Misfit Toys, Vicinity of the North Pole”-I’m sure that’ll get there just fine. With no further ado, I yield the rest of the post to Chasbo, with the stipulation that the works he chooses have to be either important, popular, or at least substantial. It’s just too easy to send some symphony by Dittersdorf or some Vivaldi concerto to the island. I’ll see you at the end for a postscript.
We so-called “unwanted toys” may not delight boys and girls as we would like, but we solace ourselves by looking at the majestic lights of the North, the Aurora Borealis. But how many bores can you fit in Borealis? Boring works should go to the Island of Misfit Scores!
I hereby nominate Faure’s dud of a Requiem, Mendelssohn’s dud of a second symphony, and that pseudo-mystical dud of alltimes, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. There’s limits to the patience even of misfit toys!
We have our own “Moon” deal going here, in the August Person of our Beloved Comrade and Leader, the inestimable King Moonracer. We need no dissertations on the moon. To the Island of Misfit Scores with you, Pierrot Lunaire! (that doesn’t go for you, Dvorak’s Rusalka, you can come by, anytime… )
My friend, the “boomerang who doesn’t come back” (he merely plops and stays) begged me to include a piece that once heard, you want to banish forever, with no hope of its obnoxious notes ever returning to sender: Mr. Orff! Tear down this Carmina Piranha! And take itto the Island of Misfit Scores!
Sacrificing a maiden to death? Are you kidding? We don’t even consider doing that to the most misfitted of our misfit dollies. I had to close young Rudolph’s ears. Get thee hence, Sacre du Printemps!
“A scooter for Jimmy, a dolly for Sue, the kind that will even say, ‘how do you do’”… How Do You Do! Our misfit doll says it, and that’s respect, if you like, but there’s precious little respect in today’s world, we misfits have occasion to know this really personally! (editor’s note: Here Chasbo sobs uncontrollably. Itold you he was sentimental! But I don’t know what impolite score he had in mind….Oh, now he’scomposed himself)…Varese’s Ameriques! It’s just noise, how rude can you get? And Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue! It’s rude to insult our intelligence with such potboiling potpourris! To the Island of Misfit Scores, if you’d be so polite as to acommodate us in this regard, Sir, we would certainly greatly appreciate it, if it’s not too much trouble.
Herme wants to be a dentist, and that’s cool with us misfits, but for the island of misfit scores, he needs a dentist that has gone bad. I can only think of one, in Willaim Bolcom’s McTeague. This may not seem fair, but life isn’t fair; who knows this better than us? Welcome to the Island of Misfit Scores!
Did you know there was a great pianist who was a misfit like us? Yep, Glenn Gould. And he said, and I quote, “Beethoven’s Violin Concerto gets by on guts and one good tune.” In a gesture of solidarity with a fellow misfit, to the Island of Misfit Scores! (and you’re too long, anyway.)
Well, that’s ten misfit scores, a conventional number for lists such as this. Now I’m going to close the lid of my box and dream of being rescued and placed in the hands of a loving child. Merry Christmas!
Guest Editor’s note: This is Burl Ives, the Talking Snowman. Mr. Gibbons says he’s “indisposed” so I’m nominated to do the postscript. I think I have a pretty good idea why our friend is indisposed- I don’t think he liked ol’ Charlie’s list. Fact of the matter is, I heard him grumble something about “Charlie’sbeen in that box too long”…Our friend Yukon complained that Herme gotdentist score and he didn’t get a prospecter score. I can only think of one score with prospecters, however, “La Faniciulla del West” maybe we’ll run that by our tempermental friend!