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May 2012 Street Date (new releases) Does classical
music have sense of humor? May
Composers Street Date (new releases - Cecilia Picks) Speaking
of Movies Public Radio
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Brahms, Johannes In spite of his powerful Romantic characteristics Brahms imposed a traditional sense of order on his music. He ranks as a figure of constructive classical inclinations in a Romantic age. He was widely acclaimed in his own day as the true upholder of a central German tradition. On his father's side he came from artisan stock in Dithmarschen, Holstein where his grandfather Peter Hinrich Brahms was an innkeeper in the town of Heide. His father was the first in the family to take up music. He met with family opposition to his career as a musician and so moved to (the sin city) of Hamburg where he started as a street and dance musician, later joining the Hamburg Stadttheatre Orchestra as a double bass player. His mother was his father's housekeeper who was 17 years older than his father and came from a respectable but impoverished middle class family. Johannes was their second child. Two years later they had a third, Fritz, also a musician, who worked for a while as a music teacher in Venezuela. Fritz died in Hamburg in 1885. As a child prodigy Brahms gained renown as a proficient pianist who at first had to make money playing in sailors' taverns and dancing saloons in Hamburg. By 1843 an American agent tried to take Johannes on the road. His teacher had the good sense to prevent it. And at 13 Brahms was studying music theory, helped by his family of modest means. He did learn arranging by working as a composer and arranger for the small Alster Pavilion Orchestra. His father worked for that orchestra as well. Soon he gained further experience arranging music for small ensembles: this trained his musicial sense and developed his talent for improvisation. At 15 he gave his first solo recital. At that time he was mainly studying Bach and Beethoven as well as contemporaries Thalberg and Herz. He was also studying composition intensively and sent a parcel of his compositions to Robert Schumann. The parcel was returned unopened. For more see May Composers
Two drawings of Saint-Saens by Faure.
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 Gabriel Fauré 1830 - 1914 |
Fauré, Gabriel
Urbain More? See May Composers
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Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie May 17, 1866 Continued at May Composers  Parade is one of Satie's finest works. The ballet mocks modern life and depicts how much is missing from it. It's a ballet but you don't have to see it for it to make its point. A typewriter, siren, gun shot etc are called for in the score but its not a novelity. The story is by Cocteau, choreoghraphy by Massine and sets by Picasso. He uses a tiny fugato prelude and epilogue. He said of these "I like this genre, slightly pompous and feignedly naive." |
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A portrait of 19th century French composer Erik Satie bequeathed to the Northwestern University Library by the family of Charles Deering was featured for the second time in a prominent national art exhibit. Ramon Casas's 1891 painting The Bohemian, depicting Satie in Monmartre, was requested for inclusion in the exhibit Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudi, Miro, Dali, which opened in October 2006 at the Cleveland Museum of Art and travelled on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in March of 2007. In 2005, the portrait appeared in the exhibition Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre, which opened in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and then traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago. The online image appears with Northwestern University Library's permission. http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2005/09/satie.html/
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Albeniz, Isaac
Born in Camprodon, Catalonia, he was one of the first Spanish composers of importance to develop native rhythms and native melodic phraseology in his music. He gave his first recital at the age of four and applied for admission to the Paris Conservatory three years later. He was turned down because of age and studied at the Conservatory of Madrid. At nine he ran away and gave recitals all over Spain then hid on a boat leaving for Puerto Rico and paid for his passage by giving performances. Alone he undertook a concert tour from Cuba to San Francisco. He came back to Europe at 13, played in Liverpool and London and studied for a year in Leipzig. He returned, broke, to Spain and was accorded a royal grant enabling him to study at Brussels and again at Leipzig. At 20 he toured Cuba, Argentina and Mexico. Upon return to Spain he continued to give concerts There's more at May Composers |
 1860 -1909 |
 William Grant Still 1895 - 1978 |
Still, William Grant After his father, a Woodville, Mississippi
bandmaster, died the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. There
Grant began studying the violin. He entered Wilberforce College
intending to study medicine but became involved in musical activities;
during this period he was influenced by Coleridge-Taylor, son
of a West African doctor. Still left Wilberforce without graduating
and then worked for various musical ensembles, including that
of W.C. Handy in 1916. He enrolled in Oberlin where his professors
encouraged him to compose. A bit more can be found at May Composers |
 An evening performance at the John Lewis School of Jazz in the summer of 1959. (left to right) Dave Brubeck, Gunther Schuller and John Lewis. (A Cecilia This Week photo.) |
Lewis, John Aaron May 3, 1920 He was born in La Grange, IL and raised in
Albuquerque, NM. His father was an optometrist.his mother a studied
singing with Schumann-Heink's daughter. John studied piano from
1927 and majored in anthropology and music at the University
of New Mexico until 1942. His studies were interrupted by World
War II. He served in the US Army from 1942 to November 1945.
While in the Army he met drummer/jazz pioneer Kenny Clarke who
helped him start his jazz career. In New York he joined Dizzy
Gillespie's band as pianist/arranger while attending the Manhattan
School of Music. His first major work Toccata for Trumpet &
Orchestra was introduced by Dizzy at Carnegie Hall in 1947. After a European tour with Diz he worked for
two months for Tony Proteau's band in Paris. Upon his return
to the US he joined the Illinois Jacquet band in 1948. He stayed
for 8 months. Later he played and recorded with Lester Young
and Charlie Parker. He was pianist/arranger for the Birth of
the Cool album on Capitol. The nine-piece ensemble was led by
Miles Davis. The album is considered a ground breaking event
in jazz. He continued at the Manhattan School of Music where he included some voice lessons in his curriculum. He sang with the Schola Contorum there. He was awarded two degrees from Manhattan and devoted some time to the teaching of piano and theory. There's more at May Composers |
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Alfven, Hugo
He was a Swedish composer, conductor and violinist born in Stockholm, attending the Stockholm Conservatory (1887 - 91). After graduation he took private lessons with Lindgren (composition) and Zetterquist (violin). From 1887 he also studied painting. In addition to working in watercolors he was an author. He conducted various choirs in Sweden including the Orpheo Draengar with whom he made 22 tours throughout most of Europe. Alfven's music is distinguished by orchestral subtlety and by a painterly exploitation of harmony and timbre. His output is almost entirely program music influenced by the Swedish contemporary events, folk music and culture, history and landscape. "My best ideas have come during my sea voyages at night, and, in particular the wild autumns have been my most wonderful times for composition." Midsommarvaka (Midsummer Vigil/Swedish Rhapsody No. 1, Op. 19) written in 1903 is a picture of the Swedish summer noted for its orchestral color, based on Swedish folk music and inspired by a peasant wedding. A bit more with some recommended recordings can be found at May Composers |
 Hugo Alfven 1872 -1960 |
