Cecilia This Week
Cecilia This Week
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St. Cecilia's Day
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 Carl Maria von Weber1786 - 1826 |
Weber, Carl
Maria von He was born Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst Von Weber in Eutin, Germany to an extended family of many musicians and composers. His cousin was Mozart's Constanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio. Mozart in was in love with her for a time and wrote several concert arias for her as well. Weber was a composer, conductor and pianist. He studied with his father and Michael Haydn (nephew to Franz Joseph) under whom he became a chorister at Salzburg. Further study continued in Munich in 1798. He appeared as solo pianist in several towns and wrote his first opera Das Waldmaedchen which premiered in Freiberg in 1800. Settling in Vienna in 1803 he studied with Vogler. Weber became conductor of the theater in Breslau between 1804 & 6 and Secretary to Duke Ludwig of Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart between 1807 & 10. Banished by the King of Wuettemberg in 1810 he moved to Mannheim and then to Darmstadt. After several concert tours he was appointed conductor at Prague in 1813 and then to the Dresden opera in 1816. He, like Virgil Thomson, was also active as a music critic. For more see November Composers |
 Weber conducting. |
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Street Date (new releases-Cecilia picks)
Does classical
music have sense of humor?
November
Composers Street Date (new releases)
Current
Film Reviews
Public
Radio Research
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Copland, Aaron Although he disliked the title because it sounded professorial he was called "the Dean of American composers." Copland was a composer, an author, lecturer and pupil of Nadia Boulanger. His family name is Kaplan, mistakenly changed by officials when Copland's father immigrated to Great Britain before coming to the U.S. Copland was born in Brooklyn in1900 and spent his first twenty years there on, "... a street that (he said) can only be described as drab." He had some early piano lessons and at about the age of 15 he gradually began to think about becoming a composer. At 17 he took harmony lessons with Rubin Goldmark,
nephew of composer Karl Goldmark. At 21 he was able, through
summer earnings, to go to Paris to study at first with Paul Vidal
and then with Nadia Boulanger. With Boulanger he learned lucidity
and perfect mastery of the tools available to a 20th century
composer, an essential part of his thorough technical training.
He really didn't take lessons in composing. There's more at November Composers
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 François Couperin 1668 - 1733 |
Couperin, François le grand
He did much to perfect the rondo form later used on a larger scale by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven usually as the final movement of a sonata, chamber work or an orchestral piece. His chamber works consist of several sonatas. These were the earliest examples of sonatas in France and they were written for two violins or wind instruments and continuo. With these sonatas he was working to combine (as did other French composers) the French and Italian approaches. The Italian sonata tended to more brilliant, forceful, rhythmic and with more contrapuntal invention. The French focused on dance rhythms and their ornamentation. Couperin wrote his sonatas, especially the late ones with French style dance movements but used the fugal development of the Italians. And he wrote them with a great sense of 17th Century French refinement. For more seeNovember Composers |
Schuller, Gunther
November 22, 1925
Gunther Schuller talks
with Cecilia This Week
(March 1992)
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Gunther Schuller was in Columbus, Ohio to perform new works by Russian composers in 1992. Cecilia This Week's Director, Bill Munger interviewed him for WCBE. MUNGER: The first time I met you was at the John Lewis School for Jazz in 1959. A lot has changed, in music, since then. Some for the worse and so much, I think, has changed for the better. SCHULLER: Ya! Do you want me to make a philosophical
statement here? Of course a lot has happened, particularly since
you mentioned jazz. There is the whole idea of rapprochement
between jazz and contemporary classical music. It was a concept
that I fought for even before 1959: "Third Stream Music,"
a way of bringing different musics together. Even the record
companies have caught on. They call it fusion or world music
or "Third World Music" or all these other... crossover
that's another favorite buzz word. They've caught on to the commercial
possibility in bringing musics together rather than keeping them
segregated. And what's so interesting in composition is that
so many composers, so called classical composers, have had quite
a bit of experience as jazz musicians. And many jazz musicians
are very broadly trained and sophisticated in their knowledge
of contemporary classical music. MUNGER: You're in Columbus to conduct the Petrov's "The Bells, A Russian Fantasy for Orchestra" (on a theme by Mussorgsky). Continues at November Composers |
 Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller & John Lewis John Lewis School for Jazz/Lenox,MA 1959 |
 Charles Koechlin 1867-1950 |
Koechlin, Charles This composer, teacher and musicologist was
born in Alsace-Lorraine and studied at the Paris Conservatory
first with Massenet then under Faure. His compositions are numerous.
Many, until recently, were only know to small circle of friends
because he hated publicity. They include 3 string quartets, a
piano quintet, sonatas for violin, viola, cello. flute, oboe,
clarinet, bassoon and horn. He has many piano pieces, songs,
ballets and a small group orchestral works.
There's more on Koechlin at November Composers
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 Alexander Borodin 1833 - 1887 |
Borodin, Alexander Porphyrievich
There's more at November Composers
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Thomson, Virgil He was born in Kansas City and known equally
as a composer and music critic. At five he was playing the piano.
At 12 he began to study with Kansas City teachers. The next year
he was appointed organist to his family's church, Calvary Baptist.
After high school he went on to junior college. For more see .November Composers |
 US students of Nadia Boulanger from left to right: Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, Herbert Elwell and Aaron Copland. (Herbert Elwell was head of compostion and theory for The Cleveland Institute of Music and critic for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.) |
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Purcell, Henry Since no records exist establishing his birth,
Henry Purcell's recognition day usually falls on the day he died
at age 36. He was an organist and one of the great composers
of the early baroque. In 20th century college music courses Dido's
(lament) aria from Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" has
been used for decades, in college music classes, as an example
of ground bass as found in music of the baroque. Like his contemporary Vivaldi he wrote music for amateurs and the young (teenagers). He was active in every type of music: theatre, church, court odes, secular and sacred songs and instrumental music. See for more check November Composers
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 Aaron Copland 1900-1990 |
 Samuel Barber 1910-1981 |
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 Bela Bartok 1881-1945 |
 Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) arrives in Chicago greeted by Sarah Brewster (Chicago Tribune - Permission requested.) |
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 Easter Sunday In Harlem _ Oskar LebeckBoth Sunday In Harlem & Harlem Market were used by Crystal for CDs by The Verder Trio - American Images I & II. |
 Irvimg Mills, Duke's agent; Percy Grainger (1882 - 1961); Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974); in Grainger's classroom/New York University where Grainger was Chair of the Music Dept. |
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 Assistant Kapellmeister at Kassel 1884 |
 In 1897 he was appointed Conductor & Music Director of the Vienna Opera. 1890s |
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 Kolisch Quartet rehearsing Berg's Lyric Suite for a performance in Vienna January 8, 1927. Berg is next to the oval. Schönberg is standing. The Quartet is lead by the late University of Wisconsin Professor Rudolf Kolisch. He married Schoeberg's sister. |
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