Podcast appearances and mentions of william schuman

Den amerikanska revolutionen var mer än bara en kamp om representation och frihet. I Boston var flera av de ledande revolutionärerna rika handelsmän som såg sina affärsintressen hotade av brittiska tullar. I Philadelphia och New York växte motståndsnätverk fram som försvarade rätten till fri handel.Under 1700-talet var dessa tre städer sammanlänkade genom ett livligt nätverk av både laglig handel och en omfattande smuggling. Tillsammans utgjorde de ett slags ekonomiskt kluster som agerade mer som rivaler än lydiga provinser under London. Genom smuggling och handelsförbindelser med franska, portugisiska och nederländska hamnar byggde de upp ett parallellt system som effektivt kringgick brittiska handelshinder.I detta avsnitt av podden Historia Nu samtalar programledaren Urban Lindstedt med ekonomhistorikern Jeremy Land om de ekonomiska orsakerna bakom den amerikanska revolutionen. Han är aktuell med boken Colonial Ports, Global Trade, and the Roots of the American Revolution (1700–1776).När vi tänker på den amerikanska revolutionen är det ofta dramatiska scener som dyker upp: Boston Tea Party, vapenskrammel vid Lexington och Concord, rop om frihet och självständighet. Men kampen för ekonomisk frihet från kolonialmakten Storbritannien föregick den politiska självständigheten.Storbritannien försökte tygla denna utveckling med lagar och tullar, men saknade resurser för att få full kontroll. Tulltjänstemän var få och ofta korrumperade, och lokala handelsmän hade både pengar och makt att göra motstånd. Denna relativa ekonomiska frihet ledde till en form av mental och praktisk självständighet långt innan självständighetsförklaringen skrevs. Boston, New York och Philadelphia började agera som ekonomiska aktörer med egna intressen – inte som kuggar i ett imperium.När britterna på 1760-talet skärpte tonen med skatter som Stamp Act och Townshend Acts utbröt inte bara vrede – utan också organiserat motstånd. Bojkotter, smuggling och politisk mobilisering blev vardag. Det var handelsmännen, de ekonomiska motorerna i kolonierna, som ofta stod i spetsen för revolutionen.Det är i skärningspunkten mellan ekonomi och politik som den amerikanska revolutionen verkligen tar form. De koloniala hamnarna var inte bara strategiska punkter på en karta – de var hjärtat i en ekonomisk förändring som gjorde revolutionen oundviklig.Det var köpmännen i hamnstäderna som i praktiken började skriva självständighetens förhistoria. Långt innan de första skotten avlossades i Lexington, pågick en annan kamp – tystare, men minst lika avgörande – i hamnmagasin, på handelsfartyg och i de koloniala gatornas skuggor.Bild: Förstörelsen av teet i Bostons hamn, en ikonisk litografi från 1846 av Nathaniel Currier; uttrycket "Boston Tea Party" hade ännu inte blivit vedertaget. Notera att få av männen som kastade teet som faktiskt var förklädda till ursprungsamerikaner enligt den vanliga historien.Musik: ”Chester” är en patriotisk hymn komponerad av William Billings och sjöngs under det amerikanska revolutionskriget. Chester av William Billings (kompositör), William Schuman (arrangör). framförd av United States Marine Corps Band, 2014. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.Lyssna också på Göteborgs briljanta historia.Klippare: Emanuel Lehtonen Vill du stödja podden och samtidigt höra ännu mer av Historia Nu? Gå med i vårt gille genom att klicka här: https://plus.acast.com/s/historianu-med-urban-lindstedt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vandaag twee late kwartetten van componisten die in de jaren vijftig tot de voorhoede behoorden: William Schuman en Elliott Carter, al was de eerst genoemde gematigder dan de tweede. Het gehele Vijfde kwartet van Schuman is een opvallend ingetogen en intieme compositie, die op een concertprogramma uitstekend zou passen naast een laat kwartet van Beethoven, […]

in deze uitzending vier geheel verschillende Amerikaanse kwartetten uit de jaren zestig, het Negende kwartet van David Diamond, het Eerste strijkkwartet van Philip Glass, het Derde kwartet van Ben Johnston en Modes voor strijkkwartet van Dorothy Rudd Moore. Diamond was een traditionalist in de trant van Walter Piston en William Schuman. Glass was in zijn […]

SynopsisBy the time of his death in 1998, pop singer Frank Sinatra was such a domineering figure in his field that he was known as “The Chairman of the Board.” By the time of his death in 1992, the same nickname might have applied to the American composer William Schuman, who was, at various times, director of publications for G. Schirmer, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center, and on the board of many other important American musical institutions. William Schuman even looked the part of a distinguished, well-dressed CEO. Oddly enough, he came rather late to classical music.Schuman was born on today's date in 1910, and, as a teenager in New York City, was more interested in baseball than music, even though his dance band was the rage of Washington High School. It was with some reluctance that 19-year old Billy Schuman was dragged to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The program included a symphony by someone named Robert Schumann, and Billy was pretty impressed. A few years later, in 1933, when he heard the First Symphony of the contemporary American composer Roy Harris, Schuman was hooked, and soon was writing concert music himself. By 1941, when his Third Symphony premiered, Schuman was recognized as a major talent, and in 1943 he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music.Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam Schuman (1910-1992) Symphony No. 3 New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor. Sony Classical 63163Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) Symphony No. 1 (Spring) Berlin Philharmonic; James Levine, conductor. DG 435 856Roy Harris (1899-1979) Symphony No. 1 Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor. Albany/Louisville First Edition 012

SynopsisOn today's date in 1950, at the Interlochen Summer Music Camp, the Michigan All-Star Band, under the direction of Dale Harris, gave the premiere performance of a new work entitled George Washington Bridge. This music was written by the American composer William Schuman, who was experiencing an especially creative period in the early 1950's. Schuman was living in New Rochelle, New York, but as president of the Juilliard School, spent much of his time in Manhattan, and, as Schuman explained:"There are few days in the year when I do not see the George Washington Bridge. I pass it on my way to work as I drive along the Henry Hudson Parkway on the New York shore. Ever since my student days when I watched the progress of its construction, this bridge has had for me an almost human personality, and this personality is astonishingly varied, assuming different moods, depending on the time of day or night, the weather, and, of course, my own mood as I pass by… I have walked across it late at night when it was shrouded in fog, and during the brilliant sunshine hours of midday… It is difficult to imagine a more gracious welcome or dramatic entry to the great metropolis."The piece itself is in ABCBA form—a little like the rising and falling arch of a suspension bridge, in fact, and, since its 1950 premiere at Interlochen, Schuman's George Washington Bridge has won a secure place as a classic of the wind band repertory.Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam Schuman (1910 - 1992) George Washington Bridge Rutgers Wind Ensemble; William Bertz, conductor. Naxos 572230

Synopsis We probably have the irrepressible playwright, music critic, and ardent socialist George Bernard Shaw to thank for this music—the Third Symphony of Sir Edward Elgar. Shaw had been trying to persuade Elgar to write a Third Symphony, and, early in 1932, had written to Elgar: "Why don't you make the BBC order a new symphony. It can afford it!" A few months later, Shaw dashed off a postcard with a detailed, albeit tongue-in-cheek program for the new work: "Why not a Financial Symphony? Allegro: Impending Disaster; Lento mesto: Stone Broke; Scherzo: Light Heart and Empty Pocket; Allegro con brio: Clouds Clearing." Well, there was a worldwide depression in 1932, but the depression that had prevented Elgar from tacking a new symphony was more personal: the death of his beloved wife in 1920. Despite describing himself as "a broken man," unable to tackle any major projects, when Elgar died in 1934, he left behind substantial sketches for a Third Symphony, commissioned, in fact, by the BBC. Fast forward 64 years, to February 15th, 1998, when the BBC Symphony gave the premiere performance of Elgar's Third at Royal Festival Hall in London, in a performing version, or "elaboration" of Elgar's surviving sketches, prepared by the contemporary British composer Anthony Payne. It was a tremendous success, and, we would like to think, somewhere in the hall the crusty spirit of George Bernard Shaw was heard to mutter: "Well—about time!" Music Played in Today's Program Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Symphony No. 3 (elaborated by Anthony Payne) BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor. NMC 053 On This Day Births 1571 - possible birth date of German composer Michael Praetorius, in Creuzberg an der Werra, near Eisenach; 1847 - Austrian composer Robert Fuchs, in Frauenthal, Styria; 1899 - French composer Georges Auric, in Lodève; 1907 - French composer and organist Jean Langlais, in La Fontenelle; 1947 - American composer John Adams, in Worcester, Mass.; 1949 - American composer Christopher Rouse, in Baltimore, Maryland; Deaths 1621 - German composer Michael Praetorius, supposedly on his 50th birthday, in Wolfenbüttel; 1857 - Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, age 52, in Berlin; 1887 - Russian composer Alexander Borodin (Gregorian date: Feb. 27); 1974 - Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg, age 86, in Stockholm; 1992 - American composer William Schuman, age 81 in New York; He won the first Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1943 for his Walt Whitman cantata, "A Free Song"; Premieres 1686 - Lully: opera "Armide et Renaud," (after Tasso) in Paris; 1845 - Verdi: opera "Giovanna D'Arco" (Joan of Arc) in Milan at the Teatro all Scala; 1868 - Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1 ("Winter Dreams") (first version), in Moscow (Julian date Feb. 3); A revised version of this symphony premiered in Moscow on Nov. 19/Dec. 1, 1883; 1874 - Bizet: "Patrie" Overture, in Paris, by the Concerts Pasedeoup; 1884 - Tchaikovsky: opera "Mazeppa" in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater (Julian date: Feb. 3); 1919 - Loeffler: "Music for Four Stringed Instruments" at New York's Aeolina Hall by the Flonzaley Quartet; 1939 - Miakovsky: Symphony No. 19 for wind band, in Moscow; 1945 - Paul Creston: Symphony No. 2, by the New York Philharmonic, with Arthur Rodzinski conducting; 1947 - Korngold: Violin Concerto, by the St. Louis Symphony, with Jascha Heifetz as soloist; 1958 - Diamond: orchestral suite "The World of Paul Klee," in Portland, Ore.; 1965 - B.A. Zimmermann: opera "Die Soldaten" (The Soldiers), in Cologne at the Städtische Oper; Others 1940 - American Music Center, a library and information center for American composers, is founded in New York City. Links and Resources On Elgar

Synopsis On today's date in 1948, Leonard Bernstein, age 29, conducted the Boston Symphony in the premiere of a new orchestral work by Harold Shapero, age 27. This was Shapero's “Symphony for Classical Orchestra,” a work modeled on Beethoven but sounding very much like one of the Neo-Classical scores of Igor Stravinsky. This was exactly what Shapero intended, but some found the music perplexing. Aaron Copland, for one, wrote: “Harold Shapero, it is safe to say, is at the same time the most gifted and baffling composer of his generation.” That comment by Copland, one should remember, came at a time when Shapero's generation included the likes of Barber, Bernstein, Menotti and Rorem. But Copland continued, “Stylistically, Shapero seems to feel a compulsion to fashion his music after some great model. He seems to be suffering from a hero-worship complex – or perhaps it is a freakish attack of false modesty.” “Copland was so original,” Shapero responded, “that he just couldn't understand anyone who wasn't.” Even so, Shapero's superbly crafted orchestral imitations suffered many decades of neglect. In the 1980s, however, conductor and composer Andre Previn fell in love with Shapero's Symphony, performing and recording it with the LA Philharmonic, and declared its Adagietto movement the most beautiful slow movement of any American symphony. Music Played in Today's Program Harold Shapero (b. 1920) Symphony for Classical Orchestra Los Angeles Philharmonic; André Previn, conductor New World 373 On This Day Births 1697 - German composer and flutist Johann Joachim Quantz, in Oberscheden, Hannover; 1861 - French-born American composer Charles Martin Loeffler, in Alsace; 1862 - German-born American composer and conductor, Walter Damrosch, in Breslau; Deaths 1963 - French composer Francis Poulenc, age 64, in Paris; Premieres 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 81 ("Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen?") performed on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany as part of Bach's first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24); 1735 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 14 ("Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit") performed in Leipzig on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany; 1892 - Rachmaninoff: “Trio élégiaque” No. 1 in G minor (Gregorian date: Feb. 11); 1893 - Brahms: Fantasies for piano Nos. 1-3, from Op. 117 and Intermezzo No. 2, from Op. 117, in Vienna; 1917 - Zemlinsky: opera "A Floretine Tragedy," in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater; 1920 - Frederick Converse: Symphony in c, by the Boston Symphony, Pierre Monteux conducting; 1942 - Copland: Orchestral Suite from "Billy the Kid" ballet, by the Boston Symphony; 1948 - Harold Shapero: "Symphony for Classical Orchestra," by the Boston Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein; 1958 - Walton: "Partita" for orchestra, in Cleveland; 1959 - Hindemith: "Pittsburgh Symphony," by the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by the composer; 1970 - William Schuman: "In Praise of Shahn," in New York; 1985 - Libby Larsen: Symphony ("Water Music"), by the Minnesota Orchestra, Sir Neville Marriner conducting. Links and Resources On Harold Shapero

Synopsis On today's date in 1943, the Boston Symphony and conductor Serge Koussevitzky gave the first performance of a Symphony for Strings by the American composer William Schuman. Schuman was just 33 years old at the time, but Koussevitzky had already been programming and commissioning Schuman's music for about 5 years. Koussevitzky had already given the premiere performances of his popular “American Festival Overture” and the Third Symphony. Schuman's Symphony for Strings is dedicated to the memory of Koussevitzky's wife, Natalie, whose family fortune that enabled Serge Koussevitzky to establish himself as a conductor, found a publishing house, and commission many of the 20th century's most significant works, including Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Bartok's “Concerto for Orchestra.” In Russia, the Koussevitzkys championed Russian music. In France, they supported French composers. And, beginning in 1924, when Koussevitzky became the music director of the Boston Symphony, many American composers benefited from this remarkable couple's enthusiasm for new music. Schuman's Symphony for Strings is just one of a long list of the Koussevitzky's American commissions, which includes works by Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, Walter Piston, and Leonard Bernstein. Taken as a whole, the concert music commissioned by Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky remains one of the most remarkable musical legacies of the 20th century. Music Played in Today's Program William Schuman (1910-1992) Symphony No. 5 (Symphony for Strings) I Musici de Montreal; Yuli Turovsky, cond. Chandos 9848

Synopsis If you had arrived early for the gala reopening celebration of Vienna's Josephstadt Theater on today's date in 1822, you might have heard the theater orchestra frantically rehearing a new overture by Beethoven. They had just received the score, and so at the last minute were getting their first look at the new piece they would perform that evening. Beethoven's “Consecration of the House” Overture was a last-minute commission and interrupted Beethoven's work on two bigger projects: his “Missa Solemnis” and the Ninth Symphony. This overture begins with a series of solemn chords, continues with a stately march, and closes with a fugue – a tribute to Handel, whose music was much on Beethoven's mind at the time. One hundred forty-six years later to the day, another festive occasion was observed with new music, when, on October 3rd, 1968, the New York Philharmonic, as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations, premiered a new orchestral work by the American composer William Schuman. Leonard Bernstein conducted. Schuman's piece was entitled “To Thee Old Cause,” and was scored for solo oboe and orchestra. Originally, Schumann planned an upbeat, celebratory work, but the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy changed all that and more somber music, dedicated to their memory, was the result. Music Played in Today's Program Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Consecration of the House Overture –Berlin Philharmonic; Bernhard Klee, cond. (DG 453 713) Willliam Schuman (1910-1992): To Thee Old Cause –New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. (Sony 63088)

Synopsis In the summer of 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC, and soon the term “Watergate” came to signify a political scandal that nearly led to the impeachment of then-president Richard Nixon. But if you had said, “Watergate” to someone in D.C. in July some 30 years earlier, you probably were referring to a series of outdoor concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, whose “Watergate Concerts” were held on the banks of the Potomac near the Lincoln Memorial. These concerts presented a mix of old and new music, classical favorites and recently composed works by American composers. For example, on today's date in 1945, the weather in DC was clear and warm when Alexander Smallens conducted an outdoor Watergate Concert that included the recently-composed suite from Aaron Copland's ballet “Rodeo,” and “Newsreel,” an orchestral suite by William Schuman. Schuman's suite was inspired by the popular newsreel features shown at movie theaters in those days – a time when radio ruled, and if people wanted to SEE footage of faces and places in the news, they had to turn to the movies, not CNN or the internet. Music Played in Today's Program Aaron Copland (1900-1990) – Rodeo (London Symphony; Aaron Copland, cond.) Sony Classical 60593 William Schuman (1910-1992) – Newsreel (Milwaukee Symphony; Lukas Foss, cond.) Pro Arte 102

Synopsis On today's date in 1733, Georg Friderich Handel paid a visit to Oxford to conduct the premiere performance of his new oratorio, “Athalia,” at the Sheldonian Theater. Handel had been invited by the University to add some musical pizzazz to an elaborate ceremony know as “The Publick Act,” during which honorary degrees were bestowed on worthy individuals. It was apparently a terrific performance, with one visitor from London reporting: “Never has there been such applause and marks of admiration.” But not everyone in Oxford was happy. One crusty don, apparently not a fan of new music, complained of the presence of “Handel and his lousy crew – a great number of foreign fiddlers.“ Handel was offered an honorary degree by Oxford, but he did not accept, claiming he was “too busy,” but maybe he just balked at paying the University's required fee of 100 pounds to receive the honor. In the 19th century, Oxford and its rival Cambridge would bestow honorary degrees on other major composers like Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, and, in our own time, between 1949 and 1990, one American composer, William Schuman received no fewer than 28 honorary degrees. In fact, Schuman had so many that he had a quilt sewn together from pieces of his ceremonial gowns, so that, as he liked to quip, “He could take his naps by degrees.” Music Played in Today's Program George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) – Sinfonia, from Athalia (Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, cond.) L'Oiseau-Lyre 417 126 William Schuman (1910-1992) – Chester (Variations for Piano) (Alexei Sultanov, piano) Teldec 46103

Episode one hundred and forty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, and the history of the theremin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "You're Gonna Miss Me" by the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-four years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of "Good Vibrations". Oddly, the single version of "Good Vibrations" is not on the The Smile Sessions box set. But an entire CD of outtakes of the track is, and that was the source for the session excerpts here. Information on Lev Termen comes from Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky Transcript In ancient Greece, the god Hermes was a god of many things, as all the Greek gods were. Among those things, he was the god of diplomacy, he was a trickster god, a god of thieves, and he was a messenger god, who conveyed messages between realms. He was also a god of secret knowledge. In short, he was the kind of god who would have made a perfect spy. But he was also an inventor. In particular he was credited in Greek myth as having invented the lyre, an instrument somewhat similar to a guitar, harp, or zither, and as having used it to create beautiful sounds. But while Hermes the trickster god invented the lyre, in Greek myth it was a mortal man, Orpheus, who raised the instrument to perfection. Orpheus was a legendary figure, the greatest poet and musician of pre-Homeric Greece, and all sorts of things were attributed to him, some of which might even have been things that a real man of that name once did. He is credited with the "Orphic tripod" -- the classification of the elements into earth, water, and fire -- and with a collection of poems called the Rhapsodiae. The word Rhapsodiae comes from the Greek words rhaptein, meaning to stitch or sew, and ōidē, meaning song -- the word from which we get our word "ode", and  originally a rhapsōdos was someone who "stitched songs together" -- a reciter of long epic poems composed of several shorter pieces that the rhapsōdos would weave into one continuous piece. It's from that that we get the English word "rhapsody", which in the sixteenth century, when it was introduced into the language, meant a literary work that was a disjointed collection of patchwork bits, stitched together without much thought as to structure, but which now means a piece of music in one movement, but which has several distinct sections. Those sections may seem unrelated, and the piece may have an improvisatory feel, but a closer look will usually reveal relationships between the sections, and the piece as a whole will have a sense of unity. When Orpheus' love, Eurydice, died, he went down into Hades, the underworld where the souls of the dead lived, and played music so beautiful, so profound and moving, that the gods agreed that Orpheus could bring the soul of his love back to the land of the living. But there was one condition -- all he had to do was keep looking forward until they were both back on Earth. If he turned around before both of them were back in the mortal realm, she would disappear forever, never to be recovered. But of course, as you all surely know, and would almost certainly have guessed even if you didn't know because you know how stories work, once Orpheus made it back to our world he turned around and looked, because he lost his nerve and didn't believe he had really achieved his goal. And Eurydice, just a few steps away from her freedom, vanished back into the underworld, this time forever. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop: "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Lev Sergeyevich Termen was born in St. Petersburg, in what was then the Russian Empire, on the fifteenth of August 1896, by the calendar in use in Russia at that time -- the Russian Empire was still using the Julian calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world, and in the Western world the same day was the twenty-seventh of August. Young Lev was fascinated both by science and the arts. He was trained as a cellist from an early age, but while he loved music, he found the process of playing the music cumbersome -- or so he would say later. He was always irritated by the fact that the instrument is a barrier between the idea in the musician's head and the sound -- that it requires training to play. As he would say later "I realised there was a gap between music itself and its mechanical production, and I wanted to unite both of them." Music was one of his big loves, but he was also very interested in physics, and was inspired by a lecture he saw from the physicist Abram Ioffe, who for the first time showed him that physics was about real, practical, things, about the movements of atoms and fields that really existed, not just about abstractions and ideals. When Termen went to university, he studied physics -- but he specifically wanted to be an experimental physicist, not a theoretician. He wanted to do stuff involving the real world. Of course, as someone who had the misfortune to be born in the late 1890s, Termen was the right age to be drafted when World War I started, but luckily for him the Russian Army desperately needed people with experience in the new invention that was radio, which was vital for wartime communications, and he spent the war in the Army radio engineering department, erecting radio transmitters and teaching other people how to erect them, rather than on the front lines, and he managed not only to get his degree in physics but also a diploma in music. But he was also becoming more and more of a Marxist sympathiser, even though he came from a relatively affluent background, and after the Russian Revolution he stayed in what was now the Red Army, at least for a time. Once Termen's Army service was over, he started working under Ioffe, working with him on practical applications of the audion, the first amplifying vacuum tube. The first one he found was that the natural capacitance of a human body when standing near a circuit can change the capacity of the circuit. He used that to create an invisible burglar alarm -- there was an antenna sending out radio waves, and if someone came within the transmitting field of the antenna, that would cause a switch to flip and a noise to be sounded. He was then asked to create a device for measuring the density of gases, outputting a different frequency for different densities. Because gas density can have lots of minor fluctuations because of air currents and so forth, he built a circuit that would cut out all the many harmonics from the audions he was using and give just the main frequency as a single pure tone, which he could listen to with headphones. That way,  slight changes in density would show up as a slight change in the tone he heard. But he noticed that again when he moved near the circuit, that changed the capacitance of the circuit and changed the tone he was hearing. He started moving his hand around near the circuit and getting different tones. The closer his hand got to the capacitor, the higher the note sounded. And if he shook his hand a little, he could get a vibrato, just like when he shook his hand while playing the cello. He got Ioffe to come and listen to him, and Ioffe said "That's an electronic Orpheus' lament!" [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Mr. Theremin's Miserlou"] Termen figured out how to play Massenet's "Elegy" and Saint-Saens' "The Swan" using this system. Soon the students were all fascinated, telling each other "Termen plays Gluck on a voltmeter!" He soon figured out various refinements -- by combining two circuits, using the heterodyne principle, he could allow for far finer control. He added a second antenna, for volume control, to be used by the left hand -- the right hand would choose the notes, while the left hand would change the volume, meaning the instrument could be played without touching it at all. He called the instrument the "etherphone",  but other people started calling it the termenvox -- "Termen's voice". Termen's instrument was an immediate sensation, as was his automatic burglar alarm, and he was invited to demonstrate both of them to Lenin. Lenin was very impressed by Termen -- he wrote to Trotsky later talking about Termen's inventions, and how the automatic burglar alarm might reduce the number of guards needed to guard a perimeter. But he was also impressed by Termen's musical invention. Termen held his hands to play through the first half of a melody, before leaving the Russian leader to play the second half by himself -- apparently he made quite a good job of it. Because of Lenin's advocacy for his work, Termen was sent around the Soviet Union on a propaganda tour -- what was known as an "agitprop tour", in the familiar Soviet way of creating portmanteau words. In 1923 the first piece of music written specially for the instrument was performed by Termen himself with the Leningrad Philharmonic, Andrey Paschenko's Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra. The score for that was later lost, but has been reconstructed, and the piece was given a "second premiere" in 2020 [Excerpt: Andrey Paschenko, "Symphonic Mystery for Termenvox and Orchestra" ] But the musical instrument wasn't the only scientific innovation that Termen was working on. He thought he could reverse death itself, and bring the dead back to life.  He was inspired in this by the way that dead organisms could be perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. He thought that if he could only freeze a dead person in the permafrost, he could then revive them later -- basically the same idea as the later idea of cryogenics, although Termen seems to have thought from the accounts I've read that all it would take would be to freeze and then thaw them, and not to have considered the other things that would be necessary to bring them back to life. Termen made two attempts to actually do this, or at least made preliminary moves in that direction. The first came when his assistant, a twenty-year-old woman, died of pneumonia. Termen was heartbroken at the death of someone so young, who he'd liked a great deal, and was convinced that if he could just freeze her body for a while he could soon revive her. He talked with Ioffe about this -- Ioffe was friends with the girl's family -- and Ioffe told him that he thought that he was probably right and probably could revive her. But he also thought that it would be cruel to distress the girl's parents further by discussing it with them, and so Termen didn't get his chance to experiment. He was even keener on trying his technique shortly afterwards, when Lenin died. Termen was a fervent supporter of the Revolution, and thought Lenin was a great man whose leadership was still needed -- and he had contacts within the top echelons of the Kremlin. He got in touch with them as soon as he heard of Lenin's death, in an attempt to get the opportunity to cryopreserve his corpse and revive him. Sadly, by this time it was too late. Lenin's brain had been pickled, and so the opportunity to resurrect him as a zombie Lenin was denied forever. Termen was desperately interested in the idea of bringing people back from the dead, and he wanted to pursue it further with his lab, but he was also being pushed to give demonstrations of his music, as well as doing security work -- Ioffe, it turned out, was also working as a secret agent, making various research trips to Germany that were also intended to foment Communist revolution. For now, Termen was doing more normal security work -- his burglar alarms were being used to guard bank vaults and the like, but this was at the order of the security state. But while Termen was working on his burglar alarms and musical instruments and attempts to revive dead dictators, his main project was his doctoral work, which was on the TV. We've said before in this podcast that there's no first anything, and that goes just as much for inventions as it does for music. Most inventions build on work done by others, which builds on work done by others, and so there were a lot of people building prototype TVs at this point. In Britain we tend to say "the inventor of the TV" was John Logie Baird, but Baird was working at the same time as people like the American Charles Francis Jenkins and the Japanese inventor Kenjiro Takayanagi, all of them building on earlier work by people like Archibald Low. Termen's prototype TV, the first one in Russia, came slightly later than any of those people, but was created more or less independently, and was more advanced in several ways, with a bigger screen and better resolution. Shortly after Lenin's death, Termen was invited to demonstrate his invention to Stalin, who professed himself amazed at the "magic mirror". [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] Termen was sent off to tour Europe giving demonstrations of his inventions, particularly his musical instrument. It was on this trip that he started using the Romanisation "Leon Theremin", and this is how Western media invariably referred to him. Rather than transliterate the Cyrillic spelling of his birth name, he used the French spelling his Huguenot ancestors had used before they emigrated to Russia, and called himself Leo or Leon rather than Lev. He was known throughout his life by both names, but said to a journalist in 1928 "First of all, I am not Tair-uh-MEEN. I wrote my name with French letters for French pronunciation. I am Lev Sergeyevich Tair-MEN.". We will continue to call him Termen, partly because he expressed that mild preference (though again, he definitely went by both names through choice) but also to distinguish him from the instrument, because while his invention remained known in Russia as the termenvox, in the rest of the world it became known as the theremin. He performed at the Paris Opera, and the New York Times printed a review saying "Some musicians were extremely pessimistic about the possibilities of the device, because at times M. Theremin played lamentably out of tune. But the finest Stradivarius, in the hands of a tyro, can give forth frightful sounds. The fact that the inventor was able to perform certain pieces with absolute precision proves that there remains to be solved only questions of practice and technique." Termen also came to the UK, where he performed in front of an audience including George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, Henry Wood and others. Arnold Bennett was astonished, but Bernard Shaw, who had very strong opinions about music, as anyone who has read his criticism will be aware, compared the sound unfavourably to that of a comb and paper. After performing in Europe, Termen made his way to the US, to continue his work of performance, propagandising for the Soviet Revolution, and trying to license the patents for his inventions, to bring money both to him and to the Soviet state. He entered the US on a six-month visitor's visa, but stayed there for eleven years, renewing the visa every six months. His initial tour was a success, though at least one open-air concert had to be cancelled because, as the Communist newspaper the Daily Worker put it, "the weather on Saturday took such a counter-revolutionary turn". Nicolas Slonimsky, the musicologist we've encountered several times before, and who would become part of Termen's circle in the US, reviewed one of the performances, and described the peculiar audiences that Termen was getting -- "a considerable crop of ladies and gentlemen engaged in earnest exploration of the Great Beyond...the mental processes peculiar to believers in cosmic vibrations imparted a beatific look to some of the listeners. Boston is a seat of scientific religion; before he knows it Professor Theremin may be proclaimed Krishnamurti and sanctified as a new deity". Termen licensed his patents on the invention to RCA, who in 1929 started mass-producing the first ever theremins for general use. Termen also started working with the conductor Leopold Stokowski, including developing a new kind of theremin for Stokowski's orchestra to use, one with a fingerboard played like a cello. Stokowski said "I believe we shall have orchestras of these electric instruments. Thus will begin a new era in music history, just as modern materials and methods of construction have produced a new era of architecture." Possibly of more interest to the wider public, Lennington Sherwell, the son of an RCA salesman, took up the theremin professionally, and joined the band of Rudy Vallee, one of the most popular singers of the period. Vallee was someone who constantly experimented with new sounds, and has for example been named as the first band leader to use an electric banjo, and Vallee liked the sound of the theremin so much he ordered a custom-built left-handed one for himself. Sherwell stayed in Vallee's band for quite a while, and performed with him on the radio and in recording sessions, but it's very difficult to hear him in any of the recordings -- the recording equipment in use in 1930 was very primitive, and Vallee had a very big band with a lot of string and horn players, and his arrangements tended to have lots of instruments playing in unison rather than playing individual lines that are easy to differentiate. On top of that, the fashion at the time when playing the instrument was to try and have it sound as much like other instruments as possible -- to duplicate the sound of a cello or violin or clarinet, rather than to lean in to the instrument's own idiosyncracies. I *think* though that I can hear Sherwell's playing in the instrumental break of Vallee's big hit "You're Driving Me Crazy" -- certainly it was recorded at the time that Sherwell was in the band, and there's an instrument in there with a very pure tone, but quite a lot of vibrato, in the mid range, that seems only to be playing in the break and not the rest of the song. I'm not saying this is *definitely* a theremin solo on one of the biggest hits of 1930, but I'm not saying it's not, either: [Excerpt: Rudy Vallee, "You're Driving Me Crazy" ] Termen also invented a light show to go along with his instrument -- the illumovox, which had a light shining through a strip of gelatin of different colours, which would be rotated depending on the pitch of the theremin, so that lower notes would cause the light to shine a deep red, while the highest notes would make it shine a light blue, with different shades in between. By 1930, though, Termen's fortunes had started to turn slightly. Stokowski kept using theremins in the orchestra for a while, especially the fingerboard models to reinforce the bass, but they caused problems. As Slonimsky said "The infrasonic vibrations were so powerful...that they hit the stomach physically, causing near-nausea in the double-bass section of the orchestra". Fairly soon, the Theremin was overtaken by other instruments, like the ondes martenot, an instrument very similar to the theremin but with more precise control, and with a wider range of available timbres. And in 1931, RCA was sued by another company for patent infringement with regard to the Theremin -- the De Forest Radio Company had patents around the use of vacuum tubes in music, and they claimed damages of six thousand dollars, plus RCA had to stop making theremins. Since at the time, RCA had only made an initial batch of five hundred instruments total, and had sold 485 of them, many of them as promotional loss-leaders for future batches, they had actually made a loss of three hundred dollars even before the six thousand dollar damages, and decided not to renew their option on Termen's patents. But Termen was still working on his musical ideas. Slonimsky also introduced Termen to the avant-garde composer and theosophist Henry Cowell, who was interested in experimental sounds, and used to do things like play the strings inside the piano to get a different tone: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] Cowell was part of a circle of composers and musicologists that included Edgard Varese, Charles Ives, and Charles Seeger and Ruth Crawford, who Cowell would introduce to each other. Crawford would later marry Seeger, and they would have several children together, including the folk singer Peggy Seeger, and Crawford would also adopt Seeger's son Pete. Cowell and Termen would together invent the rhythmicon, the first ever drum machine, though the rhythmicon could play notes as well as rhythms. Only two rhythmicons were made while Termen was in the US. The first was owned by Cowell. The second, improved, model was bought by Charles Ives, but bought as a gift for Cowell and Slonimsky to use in their compositions. Sadly, both rhythmicons eventually broke down, and no recording of either is known to exist. Termen started to get further and further into debt, especially as the Great Depression started to hit, and he also had a personal loss -- he'd been training a student and had fallen in love with her, although he was married. But when she married herself, he cut off all ties with her, though Clara Rockmore would become one of the few people to use the instrument seriously and become a real virtuoso on it. He moved into other fields, all loosely based around the same basic ideas of detecting someone's distance from an object. He built electronic gun detectors for Alcatraz and Sing-Sing prisons, and he came up with an altimeter for aeroplanes. There was also a "magic mirror" -- glass that appeared like a mirror until it was backlit, at which point it became transparent. This was put into shop windows along with a proximity detector -- every time someone stepped close to look at their reflection, the reflection would disappear and be replaced with the objects behind the mirror. He was also by this point having to spy for the USSR on a more regular basis. Every week he would meet up in a cafe with two diplomats from the Russian embassy, who would order him to drink several shots of vodka -- the idea was that they would loosen his inhibitions enough that he would not be able to hide things from them -- before he related various bits of industrial espionage he'd done for them. Having inventions of his own meant he was able to talk with engineers in the aerospace industry and get all sorts of bits of information that would otherwise not have been available, and he fed this back to Moscow. He eventually divorced his first wife, and remarried -- a Black American dancer many years his junior named Lavinia Williams, who would be the great love of his life. This caused some scandal in his social circle, more because of her race than the age gap. But by 1938 he had to leave the US. He'd been there on a six-month visa, which had been renewed every six months for more than a decade, and he'd also not been paying income tax and was massively in debt. He smuggled himself back to the USSR, but his wife was, at the last minute, not allowed on to the ship with him. He'd had to make the arrangements in secret, and hadn't even told her of the plans, so the first she knew was when he disappeared. He would later claim that the Soviets had told him she would be sent for two weeks later, but she had no knowledge of any of this. For decades, Lavinia would not even know if her husband was dead or alive. [Excerpt: Blake Jones and the Trike Shop, "Astronauts in Trouble"] When Termen got back to the USSR, he found it had changed beyond recognition. Stalin's reign of terror was now well underway, and not only could he not find a job, most of the people who he'd been in contact with at the top of the Kremlin had been purged. Termen was himself arrested and tortured into signing a false confession to counter-revolutionary activities and membership of fascist organisations. He was sentenced to eight years in a forced labour camp, which in reality was a death sentence -- it was expected that workers there would work themselves to death on starvation rations long before their sentences were up -- but relatively quickly he was transferred to a special prison where people with experience of aeronautical design were working. He was still a prisoner, but in conditions not too far removed from normal civilian life, and allowed to do scientific and technical work with some of the greatest experts in the field -- almost all of whom had also been arrested in one purge or another. One of the pieces of work Termen did was at the direct order of Laventy Beria, Stalin's right-hand man and the architect of most of the terrors of the Stalinist regime. In Spring 1945, while the USA and USSR were still supposed to be allies in World War II, Beria wanted to bug the residence of the US ambassador, and got Termen to design a bug that would get past all the normal screenings. The bug that Termen designed was entirely passive and unpowered -- it did nothing unless a microwave beam of a precise frequency was beamed at it, and only then did it start transmitting. It was placed in a wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States, presented to the ambassador by a troupe of scouts as a gesture of friendship between the two countries. The wood in the eagle's beak was thin enough to let the sound through. It remained there for seven years, through the tenures of four ambassadors, only being unmasked when a British radio operator accidentally tuned to the frequency it was transmitting on and was horrified to hear secret diplomatic conversations. Upon its discovery, the US couldn't figure out how it worked, and eventually shared the information with MI5, who took eighteen months to reverse-engineer Termen's bug and come up with their own, which remained the standard bug in use for about a decade. The CIA's own attempts to reverse-engineer it failed altogether. It was also Termen who came up with that well-known bit of spycraft -- focussing an infra-red beam on a window pane, to use it to pick up the sound of conversations happening in the room behind it. Beria was so pleased with Termen's inventions that he got Termen to start bugging Stalin himself, so Beria would be able to keep track of Stalin's whims. Termen performed such great services for Beria that Beria actually allowed him to go free not long after his sentence was served. Not only that, but Beria nominated Termen for the Stalin Award, Class II, for his espionage work -- and Stalin, not realising that Termen had been bugging *him* as well as foreign powers, actually upgraded that to a Class I, the highest honour the Soviet state gave. While Termen was free, he found himself at a loose end, and ended up volunteering to work for the organisation he had been working for -- which went by many names but became known as the KGB from the 1950s onwards. He tried to persuade the government to let Lavinia, who he hadn't seen in eight years, come over and join him, but they wouldn't even allow him to contact her, and he eventually remarried. Meanwhile, after Stalin's death, Beria was arrested for his crimes, and charged under the same law that he had had Termen convicted under. Beria wasn't as lucky as Termen, though, and was executed. By 1964, Termen had had enough of the KGB, because they wanted him to investigate obvious pseudoscience -- they wanted him to look into aliens, UFOs, ESP... and telepathy. [Excerpt, The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (early version)" "She's already working on my brain"] He quit and went back to civilian life.  He started working in the acoustics lab in Moscow Conservatory, although he had to start at the bottom because everything he'd been doing for more than a quarter of a century was classified. He also wrote a short book on electronic music. In the late sixties an article on him was published in the US -- the first sign any of his old friends had that he'd not  died nearly thirty years earlier. They started corresponding with him, and he became a minor celebrity again, but this was disapproved of by the Soviet government -- electronic music was still considered bourgeois decadence and not suitable for the Soviet Union, and all his instruments were smashed and he was sacked from the conservatory. He continued working in various technical jobs until the 1980s, and still continued inventing refinements of the theremin, although he never had any official support for his work. In the eighties, a writer tried to get him some sort of official recognition -- the Stalin Prize was secret -- and the university at which he was working sent a reply saying, in part, "L.S. Termen took part in research conducted by the department as an ordinary worker and he did not show enough creative activity, nor does he have any achievements on the basis of which he could be recommended for a Government decoration." By this time he was living in shared accommodation with a bunch of other people, one room to himself and using a shared bathroom, kitchen, and so on. After Glasnost he did some interviews and was asked about this, and said "I never wanted to make demands and don't want to now. I phoned the housing department about three months ago and inquired about my turn to have a new flat. The woman told me that my turn would come in five or six years. Not a very reassuring answer if one is ninety-two years old." In 1989 he was finally allowed out of the USSR again, for the first time in fifty-one years, to attend a UNESCO sponsored symposium on electronic music. Among other things, he was given, forty-eight years late, a letter that his old colleague Edgard Varese had sent about his composition Ecuatorial, which had originally been written for theremin. Varese had wanted to revise the work, and had wanted to get modified theremins that could do what he wanted, and had asked the inventor for help, but the letter had been suppressed by the Soviet government. When he got no reply, Varese had switched to using ondes martenot instead. [Excerpt: Edgard Varese, "Ecuatorial"] In the 1970s, after the death of his third wife, Termen had started an occasional correspondence with his second wife, Lavinia, the one who had not been able to come with him to the USSR and hadn't known if he was alive for so many decades. She was now a prominent activist in Haiti, having established dance schools in many Caribbean countries, and Termen still held out hope that they could be reunited, even writing her a letter in 1988 proposing remarriage. But sadly, less than a month after Termen's first trip outside the USSR, she died -- officially of a heart attack or food poisoning, but there's a strong suspicion that she was murdered by the military dictatorship for her closeness to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the pro-democracy activist who later became President of Haiti. Termen was finally allowed to join the Communist Party in the spring of 1991, just before the USSR finally dissolved -- he'd been forbidden up to that point because of his conviction for counter-revolutionary crimes. He was asked by a Western friend why he'd done that when everyone else was trying to *leave* the Communist Party, and he explained that he'd made a promise to Lenin. In his final years he was researching immortality, going back to the work he had done in his youth, working with biologists, trying to find a way to restore elderly bodies to youthful vigour. But sadly he died in 1993, aged ninety-seven, before he achieved his goal. On one of his last trips outside the USSR, in 1991, he visited the US, and in California he finally got to hear the song that most people associate with his invention, even though it didn't actually feature a theremin: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Back in the 1930s, when he was working with Slonimsky and Varese and Ives and the rest, Termen had set up the Theremin Studio, a sort of experimental arts lab, and in 1931 he had invited the musicologist, composer, and theoretician Joseph Schillinger to become a lecturer there. Schillinger had been one of the first composers to be really interested in the theremin, and had composed a very early piece written specifically for the instrument, the First Airphonic Suite: [Excerpt: Joseph Schillinger, "First Airphonic Suite"] But he was most influential as a theoretician. Schillinger believed that all of the arts were susceptible to rigorous mathematical analysis, and that you could use that analysis to generate new art according to mathematical principles, art that would be perfect. Schillinger planned to work with Termen to try to invent a machine that could compose, perform, and transmit music. The idea was that someone would be able to tune in a radio and listen to a piece of music in real time as it was being algorithmically composed and transmitted. The two men never achieved this, but Schillinger became very, very, respected as someone with a rigorous theory of musical structure -- though reading his magnum opus, the Schillinger System of Musical Composition, is frankly like wading through treacle. I'll read a short excerpt just to give an idea of his thinking: "On the receiving end, phasic stimuli produced by instruments encounter a metamorphic auditory integrator. This integrator represents the auditory apparatus as a whole and is a complex interdependent system. It consists of two receivers (ears), transmitters, auditory nerves, and a transformer, the auditory braincenter.  The response to a stimulus is integrated both quantitatively and selectively. The neuronic energy of response becomes the psychonic energy of auditory image. The response to stimuli and the process of integration are functional operations and, as such, can be described in mathematical terms , i.e., as  synchronization, addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. But these integrative processes alone do not constitute the material of orchestration either.  The auditory image, whether resulting from phasic stimuli of an excitor or from selfstimulation of the auditory brain-center, can be described only in Psychological terms, of loudness, pitch, quality, etc. This leads us to the conclusion that the material of orchestration can be defined only as a group of conditions under which an integrated image results from a sonic stimulus subjected to an auditory response.  This constitutes an interdependent tripartite system, in which the existence of one component necessitates the existence of two others. The composer can imagine an integrated sonic form, yet he cannot transmit it to the auditor (unless telepathicaliy) without sonic stimulus and hearing apparatus." That's Schillinger's way of saying that if a composer wants someone to hear the music they've written, the composer needs a musical instrument and the listener needs ears and a brain. This kind of revolutionary insight made Schillinger immensely sought after in the early 1930s, and among his pupils were the swing bandleaders Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and the songwriter George Gershwin, who turned to Schillinger for advice when he was writing his opera Porgy and Bess: [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, "Here Come De Honey Man"] Another of his pupils was the trombonist and arranger Glenn Miller, who at that time was a session player working in pickup studio bands for people like Red Nichols. Miller spent some time studying with him in the early thirties, and applied those lessons when given the job of putting together arrangements for Ray Noble, his first prominent job. In 1938 Glenn Miller walked into a strip joint to see a nineteen-year-old he'd been told to take a look at. This was another trombonist, Paul Tanner, who was at the time working as a backing musician for the strippers. Miller had recently broken up his first big band, after a complete lack of success, and was looking to put together a new big band, to play arrangements in the style he had worked out while working for Noble. As Tanner later put it "he said, `Well, how soon can you come with me?' I said, `I can come right now.' I told him I was all packed, I had my toothbrush in my pocket and everything. And so I went with him that night, and I stayed with him until he broke the band up in September 1942." The new band spent a few months playing the kind of gigs that an unknown band can get, but they soon had a massive success with a song Miller had originally written as an arranging exercise set for him by Schillinger, a song that started out under the title "Miller's Tune", but soon became known worldwide as "Moonlight Serenade": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Moonlight Serenade"] The Miller band had a lot of lineup changes in the four and a bit years it was together, but other than Miller himself there were only four members who were with that group throughout its career, from the early dates opening for  Freddie Fisher and His Schnickelfritzers right through to its end as the most popular band in America. They were piano player Chummy MacGregor, clarinet player Wilbur Schwartz, tenor sax player Tex Beneke, and Tanner. They played on all of Miller's big hits, like "In the Mood" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo": [Excerpt: Glenn Miller, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo"] But in September 1942, the band broke up as the members entered the armed forces, and Tanner found himself in the Army while Miller was in the Air Force, so while both played in military bands, they weren't playing together, and Miller disappeared over the Channel, presumed dead, in 1944. Tanner became a session trombonist, based in LA, and in 1958 he found himself on a session for a film soundtrack with Dr. Samuel Hoffman. I haven't been able to discover for sure which film this was for, but the only film on which Hoffman has an IMDB credit for that year is that American International Pictures classic, Earth Vs The Spider: [Excerpt: Earth Vs The Spider trailer] Hoffman was a chiropodist, and that was how he made most of his living, but as a teenager in the 1930s he had been a professional violin player under the name Hal Hope. One of the bands he played in was led by a man named Jolly Coburn, who had seen Rudy Vallee's band with their theremin and decided to take it up himself. Hoffman had then also got a theremin, and started his own all-electronic trio, with a Hammond organ player, and with a cello-style fingerboard theremin played by William Schuman, the future Pulitzer Prize winning composer. By the 1940s, Hoffman was a full-time doctor, but he'd retained his Musicians' Union card just in case the odd gig came along, and then in 1945 he received a call from Miklos Rozsa, who was working on the soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's new film, Spellbound. Rozsa had tried to get Clara Rockmore, the one true virtuoso on the theremin playing at the time, to play on the soundtrack, but she'd refused -- she didn't do film soundtrack work, because in her experience they only wanted her to play on films about ghosts or aliens, and she thought it damaged the dignity of the instrument. Rozsa turned to the American Federation of Musicians, who as it turned out had precisely one theremin player who could read music and wasn't called Clara Rockmore on their books. So Dr. Samuel Hoffman, chiropodist, suddenly found himself playing on one of the most highly regarded soundtracks of one of the most successful films of the forties: [Excerpt: Miklos Rozsa, "Spellbound"] Rozsa soon asked Hoffman to play on another soundtrack, for the Billy Wilder film The Lost Weekend, another of the great classics of late forties cinema. Both films' soundtracks were nominated for the Oscar, and Spellbound's won, and Hoffman soon found himself in demand as a session player. Hoffman didn't have any of Rockmore's qualms about playing on science fiction and horror films, and anyone with any love of the genre will have heard his playing on genre classics like The Five Thousand Fingers of Dr T, The Thing From Another World, It Came From Outer Space, and of course Bernard Hermann's score for The Day The Earth Stood Still: [Excerpt: The Day The Earth Stood Still score] As well as on such less-than-classics as The Devil's Weed, Voodoo Island, The Mad Magician, and of course Billy The Kid Vs Dracula. Hoffman became something of a celebrity, and also recorded several albums of lounge music with a band led by Les Baxter, like the massive hit Music Out Of The Moon, featuring tracks like “Lunar Rhapsody”: [Excerpt: Samuel Hoffman, "Lunar Rhapsody”] [Excerpt: Neil Armstrong] That voice you heard there was Neil Armstrong, on Apollo 11 on its way back from the moon. He took a tape of Hoffman's album with him. But while Hoffman was something of a celebrity in the fifties, the work dried up almost overnight in 1958 when he worked at that session with Paul Tanner. The theremin is a very difficult instrument to play, and while Hoffman was a good player, he wasn't a great one -- he was getting the work because he was the best in a very small pool of players, not because he was objectively the best there could be. Tanner noticed that Hoffman was having quite some difficulty getting the pitching right in the session, and realised that the theremin must be a very difficult instrument to play because it had no markings at all. So he decided to build an instrument that had the same sound, but that was more sensibly controlled than just waving your hands near it. He built his own invention, the electrotheremin, in less than a week, despite never before having had any experience in electrical engineering. He built it using an oscillator, a length of piano wire and a contact switch that could be slid up and down the wire, changing the pitch. Two days after he finished building it, he was in the studio, cutting his own equivalent of Hoffman's forties albums, Music For Heavenly Bodies, including a new exotica version of "Moonlight Serenade", the song that Glenn Miller had written decades earlier as an exercise for Schillinger: [Excerpt: Paul Tanner, "Moonlight Serenade"] Not only could the electrotheremin let the player control the pitch more accurately, but it could also do staccato notes easily -- something that's almost impossible with an actual theremin. And, on top of that, Tanner was cheaper than Hoffman. An instrumentalist hired to play two instruments is paid extra, but not as much extra as paying for another musician to come to the session, and since Tanner was a first-call trombone player who was likely to be at the session *anyway*, you might as well hire him if you want a theremin sound, rather than paying for Hoffman. Tanner was an excellent musician -- he was a professor of music at UCLA as well as being a session player, and he authored one of the standard textbooks on jazz -- and soon he had cornered the market, leaving Hoffman with only the occasional gig. We will actually be seeing Hoffman again, playing on a session for an artist we're going to look at in a couple of months, but in LA in the early sixties, if you wanted a theremin sound, you didn't hire a theremin player, you hired Paul Tanner to play his electrotheremin -- though the instrument was so obscure that many people didn't realise he wasn't actually playing a theremin. Certainly Brian Wilson seems to have thought he was when he hired him for "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"] We talked briefly about that track back in the episode on "God Only Knows",   but three days after recording that, Tanner was called back into the studio for another session on which Brian Wilson wanted a theremin sound. This was a song titled "Good, Good, Good Vibrations", and it was inspired by a conversation he'd had with his mother as a child. He'd asked her why dogs bark at some people and not at others, and she'd said that dogs could sense vibrations that people sent out, and some people had bad vibrations and some had good ones. It's possible that this came back to mind as he was planning the Pet Sounds album, which of course ends with the sound of his own dogs barking. It's also possible that he was thinking more generally about ideas like telepathy -- he had been starting to experiment with acid by this point, and was hanging around with a crowd of people who were proto-hippies, and reading up on a lot of the mystical ideas that were shared by those people. As we saw in the last episode, there was a huge crossover between people who were being influenced by drugs, people who were interested in Eastern religion, and people who were interested in what we now might think of as pseudo-science but at the time seemed to have a reasonable amount of validity, things like telepathy and remote viewing. Wilson had also had exposure from an early age to people claiming psychic powers. Jo Ann Marks, the Wilson family's neighbour and the mother of former Beach Boy David Marks, later had something of a minor career as a psychic to the stars (at least according to obituaries posted by her son) and she would often talk about being able to sense "vibrations". The record Wilson started out making in February 1966 with the Wrecking Crew was intended as an R&B single, and was also intended to sound *strange*: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] At this stage, the song he was working on was a very straightforward verse-chorus structure, and it was going to be an altogether conventional pop song. The verses -- which actually ended up used in the final single, are dominated by organ and Ray Pohlman's bass: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] These bear a strong resemblance to the verses of "Here Today", on the Pet Sounds album which the Beach Boys were still in the middle of making: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Here Today (instrumental)"] But the chorus had far more of an R&B feel than anything the Beach Boys had done before: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-02-18"] It did, though, have precedent. The origins of the chorus feel come from "Can I Get a Witness?", a Holland-Dozier-Holland song that had been a hit for Marvin Gaye in 1963: [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Can I Get a Witness?"] The Beach Boys had picked up on that, and also on its similarity to the feel of Lonnie Mack's instrumental cover version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee", which, retitled "Memphis", had also been a hit in 1963, and in 1964 they recorded an instrumental which they called "Memphis Beach" while they were recording it but later retitled "Carl's Big Chance", which was credited to Brian and Carl Wilson, but was basically just playing the "Can I Get a Witness" riff over twelve-bar blues changes, with Carl doing some surf guitar over the top: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Carl's Big Chance"] The "Can I Get a Witness" feel had quickly become a standard piece of the musical toolkit – you might notice the resemblance between that riff and the “talking 'bout my generation” backing vocals on “My Generation” by the Who, for example. It was also used on "The Boy From New York City", a hit on Red Bird Records by the Ad-Libs: [Excerpt: The Ad-Libs, "The Boy From New York City"] The Beach Boys had definitely been aware of that record -- on their 1965 album Summer Days... And Summer Nights! they recorded an answer song to it, "The Girl From New York City": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "The Girl From New York City"] And you can see how influenced Brian was by the Ad-Libs record by laying the early instrumental takes of the "Good Vibrations" chorus from this February session under the vocal intro of "The Boy From New York City". It's not a perfect match, but you can definitely hear that there's an influence there: [Excerpt: "The Boy From New York City"/"Good Vibrations"] A few days later, Brian had Carl Wilson overdub some extra bass, got a musician in to do a jaw harp overdub, and they also did a guide vocal, which I've sometimes seen credited to Brian and sometimes Carl, and can hear as both of them depending on what I'm listening for. This guide vocal used a set of placeholder lyrics written by Brian's collaborator Tony Asher, which weren't intended to be a final lyric: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (first version)"] Brian then put the track away for a month, while he continued work on the Pet Sounds album. At this point, as best we can gather, he was thinking of it as something of a failed experiment. In the first of the two autobiographies credited to Brian (one whose authenticity is dubious, as it was largely put together by a ghostwriter and Brian later said he'd never even read it) he talks about how he was actually planning to give the song to Wilson Pickett rather than keep it for the Beach Boys, and one can definitely imagine a Wilson Pickett version of the song as it was at this point. But Brian's friend Danny Hutton, at that time still a minor session singer who had not yet gone on to form the group that would become Three Dog Night, asked Brian if *he* could have the song if Brian wasn't going to use it. And this seems to have spurred Brian into rethinking the whole song. And in doing so he was inspired by his very first ever musical memory. Brian has talked a lot about how the first record he remembers hearing was when he was two years old, at his maternal grandmother's house, where he heard the Glenn Miller version of "Rhapsody in Blue", a three-minute cut-down version of Gershwin's masterpiece, on which Paul Tanner had of course coincidentally played: [Excerpt: The Glenn Miller Orchestra, "Rhapsody in Blue"] Hearing that music, which Brian's mother also played for him a lot as a child, was one of the most profoundly moving experiences of Brian's young life, and "Rhapsody in Blue" has become one of those touchstone pieces that he returns to again and again. He has recorded studio versions of it twice, in the mid-nineties with Van Dyke Parks: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Rhapsody in Blue"] and in 2010 with his solo band, as the intro and outro of an album of Gershwin covers: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Rhapsody in Blue"] You'll also often see clips of him playing "Rhapsody in Blue" when sat at the piano -- it's one of his go-to songs. So he decided he was going to come up with a song that was structured like "Rhapsody in Blue" -- what publicist Derek Taylor would later describe as a "pocket symphony", but "pocket rhapsody" would possibly be a better term for it. It was going to be one continuous song, but in different sections that would have different instrumentation and different feelings to them -- he'd even record them in different studios to get different sounds for them, though he would still often have the musicians run through the whole song in each studio. He would mix and match the sections in the edit. His second attempt to record the whole track, at the start of April, gave a sign of what he was attempting, though he would not end up using any of the material from this session: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: Gold Star 1966-04-09" around 02:34] Nearly a month later, on the fourth of May, he was back in the studio -- this time in Western Studios rather than Gold Star where the previous sessions had been held, with yet another selection of musicians from the Wrecking Crew, plus Tanner, to record another version. This time, part of the session was used for the bridge for the eventual single: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-04 Second Chorus and Fade"] On the twenty-fourth of May the Wrecking Crew, with Carl Wilson on Fender bass (while Lyle Ritz continued to play string bass, and Carol Kaye, who didn't end up on the finished record at all, but who was on many of the unused sessions, played Danelectro), had another attempt at the track, this time in Sunset Studios: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Sunset Sound 1966-05-24 (Parts 2&3)"] Three days later, another group of musicians, with Carl now switched to rhythm guitar, were back in Western Studios recording this: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations: Western 1966-05-27 Part C" from 2:52] The fade from that session was used in the final track. A few days later they were in the studio again, a smaller group of people with Carl on guitar and Brian on piano, along with Don Randi on electric harpsichord, Bill Pitman on electric bass, Lyle Ritz on string bass and Hal Blaine on drums. This time there seems to have been another inspiration, though I've never heard it mentioned as an influence. In March, a band called The Association, who were friends with the Beach Boys, had released their single "Along Comes Mary", and by June it had become a big hit: [Excerpt: The Association, "Along Comes Mary"] Now the fuzz bass part they were using on the session on the second of June sounds to my ears very, very, like that intro: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (Inspiration) Western 1966-06-02" from 01:47] That session produced the basic track that was used for the choruses on the final single, onto which the electrotheremin was later overdubbed as Tanner wasn't at that session. Some time around this point, someone suggested to Brian that they should use a cello along with the electrotheremin in the choruses, playing triplets on the low notes. Brian has usually said that this was Carl's idea, while Brian's friend Van Dyke Parks has always said that he gave Brian the idea. Both seem quite certain of this, and neither has any reason to lie, so I suspect what might have happened is that Parks gave Brian the initial idea to have a cello on the track, while Carl in the studio suggested having it specifically play triplets. Either way, a cello part by Jesse Erlich was added to those choruses. There were more sessions in June, but everything from those sessions was scrapped. At some point around this time, Mike Love came up with a bass vocal lyric, which he sang along with the bass in the choruses in a group vocal session. On August the twenty-fourth, two months after what one would think at this point was the final instrumental session, a rough edit of the track was pulled together. By this point the chorus had altered quite a bit. It had originally just been eight bars of G-flat, four bars of B-flat, then four more bars of G-flat. But now Brian had decided to rework an idea he had used in "California Girls". In that song, each repetition of the line "I wish they all could be California" starts a tone lower than the one before. Here, after the bass hook line is repeated, everything moves up a step, repeats the line, and then moves up another step: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] But Brian was dissatisfied with this version of the track. The lyrics obviously still needed rewriting, but more than that, there was a section he thought needed totally rerecording -- this bit: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations: [Alternate Edit] 1966-08-24"] So on the first of September, six and a half months after the first instrumental session for the song, the final one took place. This had Dennis Wilson on organ, Tommy Morgan on harmonicas, Lyle Ritz on string bass, and Hal Blaine and Carl Wilson on percussion, and replaced that with a new, gentler, version: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys: "Good Vibrations (Western 1966-09-01) [New Bridge]"] Well, that was almost the final instrumental session -- they called Paul Tanner in to a vocal overdub session to redo some of the electrotheremin parts, but that was basically it. Now all they had to do was do the final vocals. Oh, and they needed some proper lyrics. By this point Brian was no longer working with Tony Asher. He'd started working with Van Dyke Parks on some songs, but Parks wasn't interested in stepping into a track that had already been worked on so long, so Brian eventually turned to Mike Love, who'd already come up with the bass vocal hook, to write the lyrics. Love wrote them in the car, on the way to the studio, dictating them to his wife as he drove, and they're actually some of his best work. The first verse grounds everything in the sensory, in the earthy. He makes a song originally about *extra* -sensory perception into one about sensory perception -- the first verse covers sight, sound, and smell: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] Carl Wilson was chosen to sing the lead vocal, but you'll notice a slight change in timbre on the line "I hear the sound of a" -- that's Brian stepping into double him on the high notes. Listen again: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"] For the second verse, Love's lyric moves from the sensory grounding of the first verse to the extrasensory perception that the song has always been about, with the protagonist knowing things about the woman who's the object of the song without directly perceiving them. The record is one of those where I wish I was able to play the whole thing for you, because it's a masterpiece of structure, and of editing, and of dynamics. It's also a record that even now is impossible to replicate properly on stage, though both its writers in their live performances come very close. But while someone in the audience for either the current touring Beach Boys led by Mike Love or for Brian Wilson's solo shows might come away thinking "that sounded just like the record", both have radically different interpretations of it even while sticking close to the original arrangement. The touring Beach Boys' version is all throbbing strangeness, almost garage-rock, emphasising the psychedelia of the track: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live 2014)"] While Brian Wilson's live version is more meditative, emphasising the gentle aspects: [Excerpt Brian Wilson, "Good Vibrations (live at the Roxy)"] But back in 1966, there was definitely no way to reproduce it live with a five-person band. According to Tanner, they actually asked him if he would tour with them, but he refused -- his touring days were over, and also he felt he would look ridiculous, a middle-aged man on stage with a bunch of young rock and roll stars, though apparently they offered to buy him a wig so he wouldn't look so out of place. When he wouldn't tour with them, they asked him where they could get a theremin, and he pointed them in the direction of Robert Moog. Moog -- whose name is spelled M-o-o-g and often mispronounced "moog", had been a teenager in 1949, when he'd seen a schematic for a theremin in an electronic hobbyist magazine, after Samuel Hoffman had brought the instrument back into the limelight. He'd built his own, and started building others to sell to other hobbyists, and had also started branching out into other electronic instruments by the mid-sixties. His small company was the only one still manufacturing actual theremins, but when the Beach Boys came to him and asked him for one, they found it very difficult to control, and asked him if he could do anything simpler. He came up with a ribbon-controlled oscillator, on the same principle as Tanner's electro-theremin, but even simpler to operate, and the Beach Boys bought it and gave it to Mike Love to play on stage. All he had to do was run his finger up and down a metallic ribbon, with the positions of the notes marked on it, and it would come up with a good approximation of the electro-theremin sound. Love played this "woo-woo machine" as he referred to it, on stage for several years: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations (live in Hawaii 8/26/67)"] Moog was at the time starting to build his first synthesisers, and having developed that ribbon-control mechanism he decided to include it in the early models as one of several different methods of controlling the Moog synthesiser, the instrument that became synonymous with the synthesiser in the late sixties and early seventies: [Excerpt: Gershon Kingsley and Leonid Hambro, "Rhapsody in Blue" from Switched-On Gershwin] "Good Vibrations" became the Beach Boys' biggest ever hit -- their third US number one, and their first to make number one in the UK. Brian Wilson had managed, with the help of his collaborators, to make something that combined avant-garde psychedelic music and catchy pop hooks, a truly experimental record that was also a genuine pop classic. To this day, it's often cited as the greatest single of all time. But Brian knew he could do better. He could be even more progressive. He could make an entire album using the same techniques as "Good Vibrations", one where themes could recur, where sections could be edited together and songs could be constructed in the edit. Instead of a pocket symphony, he could make a full-blown teenage symphony to God. All he had to do was to keep looking forward, believe he could achieve his goal, and whatever happened, not lose his nerve and turn back. [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Smile Promo" ]

durée : 00:58:32 - Le Quatuor Juilliard s'impose dans Beethoven - par : Aurélie Moreau - Le quatuor Juilliard est avant tout une institution fondée en 1946, par William Schuman, le président de la Juilliard School de New-York. Ils ont touché à tous les répertoires et leur intégrale Beethoven est indiscutablement une grande réussite. - réalisé par : Olivier Guérin

On today’s date in 1941, the Boston Symphony gave the first performance of a new symphony by a 31-year old American composer named William Schuman. It is numbered as Schuman’s Third Symphony but, in reality, you might as well say it’s his First. Now, Schuman was not an early devotee of the New Math. The explanation is a fairly simple one: Schuman had written two earlier symphonies, but these were composed very much under the influence of his teacher, the American composer Roy Harris. Schuman wrote his first symphony in 1935 and a second in 1937. The Second was very well received, and had even been played by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky. It was Koussevitzky who commissioned Schuman to write a Third Symphony, and conducted its premiere on today’s date in 1941. It was with this work that Schuman felt he really found his own distinct voice as a composer. He withdrew his two earlier symphonies, and they were never published. By the time of his death in 1992, William Schuman had completed a Symphony No. 10. So—subtract the first two, and that makes eight “authentic” and “officially authorized” William Schuman symphonies in all.

 So this is it, ladies and gents, the episode where we discuss the piece for which this podcast was named and the composer that wrote it: William Schuman and his Symphony No. 10 ‘American Muse'! The man literally got letters in the mail telling him either how awful his music was, OR how it had changed someone's life. Were he still alive today, I would absolutely send him a physical letter thanking him for so dramatically effecting my life. Ironically, I did in fact send his two children, Andrea and Anthony, physical letters to ask for their permission to use the music you just heard at the beginning of this podcast! Anyway, let's talk about this man and his fantastic compositions.###Background- I first heard music by William Schuman when I was an eager young musician in middle school. I listened to his Symphony No. 5, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic string section, recorded on a vinyl record (I kid you not). The opening bars explode with energy and melodic creativity unlike I had ever heard. It was forceful, bold, full of life. It drew me in and to this day has not let go. From that moment I knew I had to know more about this man and his music. He and his music are a large part of the reason I began this podcast, my blog, and my book to be released next year, _Secrets of American Orchestral Music_.####Bio- One of the first things one learns about Schuman is the story of how he came to be a composer in the first place. He did play bass in a dance band, but never considered it very serious. Then he went to a concert at Carnegie Hall and heard the New York Philharmonic, conducted by the great Arturo Toscanini. He was so blown away by the performance he said "I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer." So, he dropped out of New York University, quit his job, enrolled at the Malkin Conservatory of music to study composition, and a short 5 years later he graduated from Columbia University. Who knew it could be so easy? While this anecdotal story is humorous, it accurately shows a key characteristic of Schuman's personality. He is an optimist, endlessly curious, and has a child-like approach to new endeavors. He is also steadfast and resolute in his values, many times refusing to compromise his artistic work or arts administration efforts. - Though not all of William Schuman's biographical history is pertinent here, some key positions and career events as well as insight into his composition process help to contextualize the unique nature of the man and his music. One fortuitous happenstance came at the beginning of his journey to become a composer. In 1930, primed by having just attended his first orchestral concert, Schuman saw a sign for the Malkin Conservatory, walked in, and according to him “registered for a course in harmony because he had heard somewhere that composers begin by studying harmony.” This placed him with Max Persin, a teacher more interested in discovering the intricacies of each individual piece rather than regurgitating from quote “a textbook of dull orthodoxy.” Not long after earning a teaching degree from the Columbia University Teachers College, Schuman carved out a teaching and administrative position at Sarah Lawrence College. The way in which this came about is characteristic of Schuman's free-form thinking and commitment to the highest quality in any endeavor he undertook. Schuman convinced the president and Faculty Advisory Committee on Appointments at Sarah Lawrence to make him the quote "one man... coordinator, working from a single focal point" on a new set of freshman focused courses. Schuman connected with the faculty and administration at Sarah Lawrence on a philosophical level, influenced by the progressive education movement of John Dewey and the concept that "making knowledge one's own was the central goal of education…” This desire for individuality and freedom from convention carried over into Schuman's composing. Keenly aware of contemporary trends, Schuman casts the "emergence of a contemporary tonal language" in the twentieth century as "a musical revolution." Referring to contemporary composers (presumably including himself), Schuman posits “[t]he process of seeking a way of creating fresh sounds is a natural one for a truly creative musician. It may be conscious or subconscious, or both. But whatever the process, the result is innovation in musical speech." Even Copland recognized the boldness of Schuman's work, describing it as "music of tension and power," and expounding on his rhythmic writing as "so skittish and personal, so utterly free and inventive."- Schuman's commitment to his own musical and educational standards resulted in his being tapped as president of Juilliard in 1945. Schuman was reluctant to even consider the post because, as Steve Swayne puts it in his biographic work _Orpheus in Manhattan_, “[h]e could see no possible marriage between Juilliard's hidebound, rote education and the progressive, student-oriented approach that he enjoyed at Sarah Lawrence." Partly due to this honesty expressed to Juilliard's board of directors, Schuman was offered and eventually accepted the position. As a sign of the school's desire for change, Schuman immediately made drastic alterations to the Juilliard curriculum and faculty. One program he spearheaded is particularly of note here. Showing his independent thinking and will to move forward, Schuman explains his educational philosophy:> The first requisite for a musician in any branch of the art is that he be a virtuoso listener. It has been a student who is adept at the writing of melodic dictation may be incapable of listening to a symphonic composition with an understanding of its design. In other words, an ability to hear the component parts of the language of music… does not ipso facto mean integrated understanding--an understanding that can only be achieved when the whole work is clearly viewed as the sum of these parts... In an effort to replace conventional theory with more meaningful studies, the Juilliard School has discontinued its Theory Department and added to its curriculum a new department--Literature and Materials of Music.- This is the kind of ideology Schuman applied to his composition and administrative roles. In a 1986 interview, Schuman illustrates the interconnected nature of all his endeavors: "composition has been the continuum of my life's work, but it's been by no matter of means my sole pursuit. I would never be happy just being a composer. I've always wanted and needed to do other things of a general societal nature."####Culture- Even through his compositional process, Schuman shows his independent thinking. Intending not to be bound by the limitations of both his piano skill and of the instrument itself, according to a biography written by Vincent Persichetti, Schuman "writes for the instruments of the orchestra directly... sings the parts at the top of his lungs... because his music is essentially melodic... He does, however, use the piano for new vocabulary departures; that is, for experimentation.”- One more quote by Schuman from 1977, helps summarize his philosophy on the balance of artistic honesty and the ambition needed for such a high profile career he had to that point:> I would like to be loved through my music, as anybody would be. But I recognized that this was not necessarily to be the case, and it would be much better to be despised and write what you want than to be loved and write what you didn't want.… I was asked that question just the other day [in February 1977] … “Why—when you write these difficult symphonies that hardly anybody ever plays, and you can write the New England Triptych or orchestrate Ives' Variations on America—why don't you write a holiday overture that would make you a lot of money and would be played a lot?”- Hopefully the continued reverence of Schuman's music will suffice as an answer to that question.- Schuman's symphonic output is quite varied, ranging from symphonies and concertos to ballet and opera. Schuman got the most mileage out of his symphonies, and he admittedly put most of his focus on their creation. Schuman's symphonies are most representative of all his compositional work, even by his own statements in an interview with Overtones: > “It never occurred to me not to write symphonies... I like every medium in music when I'm working on it… [but] I believe that as long as writers write long and complicated novels, composers are going to write in the symphonic forms, because they give an opportunity that nothing else gives.”- Schuman wrote 10 numbered symphonies, though he “withdrew” the first two.###Analysis of piece####Overall scope- Now to Symphony No. 10, the ‘American Muse' itself.- The recorded excerpts you will hear today are from a 2005 NAXOS recording of the Seattle Symphony conducted by Maestro Gerard Schwarz, a dear friend of this podcast.- Written and premiered in 1976, this symphony was commissioned for the American Bicentennial by the National Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Antal Dorati. - The work is in 3 movements: Con Fuoco, Larghissimo, and the third movement goes through many different speeds, but does begin and end with a Presto.- The orchestration is outrageously large: 4 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, Eb clarinet, 3 Bb clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, percussion that calls for 4 players, timpani, piano, harp, celesta, and strings. Whew! None of this would have been surprising coming from Schuman at that point, but even today that is quite a task to take on.####Excerpts- The opening fanfare sets a tone of muscularity, optimism as Schuman might put it...- And then gives way to a mostly brass chorale, punctuated by moments of woodwind interaction.- Not long after, we have a section of what we call homorhythm. This is when all or large portions of the orchestra are playing the same active rhythms, but not the same notes, in fact they are usually quite dissonantly contrasting notes. It is a powerful effect as Schuman builds a great deal of tension. In this excerpt there is a short unison of homorhythm followed by 2 independent layers.- After spending this entire movement in tonic disarray, giving a bit of tonal center, but then taking it away with swaths of dissonance, Schuman suddenly takes an about face at the end and we get, at first, blips of tonal, recognizable chords, before a final Eb major chord grabs hold and blares to the end as if we had been in that bright, happy key all along!- I LOVE that moment!- The second movement, Larghissimo, is a work of beauty, but you have to stick with it. Schuman lets his slow movements develop as organically as possible from the simplest of musical aspects. Here, he begins basically with a chord cluster, again moving only in homorhythmic motion, and very slowly at first. While the violas and then cellos take the lyrical line, which again does not change very much at all, but makes big glissando jumps when it does.- Then what follows is an iconic Schuman sound if there ever was one, I swear I could pick this writing out from any other composer on the planet. The violins slowly expand a high, and still higher reaching, melodic line over chromatically moving chordal movement in the violas and cellos, and just as the line starts to peak, he opens up the sound more, then again as another peak comes, he adds horns... and on and on, one layer after another. It is a long section, but here is a fairly representative moment. 『- And again, just like in the first movement, though this movement isn't quite so tonally wandering, he lets out all the tension, leaves off with a question mark... and gives us a big, fat, juicy Eb major chord!- The final movement, beginning Presto, starts a series of homorhythmic sections, first strings alone, then trading off with the woodwinds. The activity begins with much space, but quickly becomes lively, almost furious! 『- One element we had yet to come across was Schuman's craftiness with a fugue. Finally, in the last symphonic movement he ever wrote, in order to build up as much energy and tension as possible, Schuman writes a complex double fugue. This is not a tightly formed, rule-following Bach-like fugue you would expect, but most of the elements you would expect are there. It gives him the chance to push forward and pull back at will. One theme is very active, harmonically and rhythmically, while the other is long held out notes with little movement.- Now you must be wondering if and when we get that Eb major chord we've gotten at the end of every other movement. We do! And in similar fashion, Schuman prefaces it with heavy dissonance and confusion. This time, though, the final brilliant chord arrives and finishes in full fanfare. Instant standing ovation!###Closing- Beyond composition, Schuman taught at Sarah Lawrence College, served as president of the Juilliard School, facilitated it's move into the newly built Lincoln Center, founded the Juilliard String Quartet, served as president of Lincoln Center itself, and won 2 Pulitzer Prizes and the National Medal of Arts. Many people desire to change or effect the world in some way. William Schuman did that and more during his time. As long as we perform or hear his music, he still does.Music:Symphony No. 10By: William SchumanPerformed by: Gerard Schwarz; Seattle Symphony OrchestraCourtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/american-muse-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

- In this episode we will look at George Whitefield Chadwick, a member of the so called Boston 6, and dubbed by John Phillip Sousa as the “Pride of New England”. We will hear parts of his single movement work _Aphrodite_ , and find out how closely the music ties to the mythical figure herself. Also, we will explore Chadwick's time as student, teacher, then president of the New England Conservatory of music.###Composer- George Whitefield Chadwick's life spans an interesting series of world historical events and societal shifting inventions. I'm quoting from Bill Faucett's biography on Chadwick, as he puts it very articulately: “Born in 1854, just a few years before the first volley of the Civil War, he lived to see the devastation of the Great War and the turmoil wrought by the onset of the Great Depression.” “Chadwick also watched as technology improved—and sometimes invaded—his life via electricity, the phonograph and the gramophone, the telephone, and the motion picture. He traveled widely—first by horse cart and train, then by steamship and automobile, and eventually by air—in the United States and abroad. Chadwick's travels enabled his presence at many of the age's most consequential musical events…” Can you even imagine? Living and being so highly productive before electricity, the car, and the telephone? I know there are many others that did this, but it is a heavy concept to take in.- So Chadwick, born in Massachusetts, studied piano for a little bit at the New England Conservatory in Boston, then with an eye toward studying in Europe, as did most musicians at the time, he took a teaching position at the Michigan Conservatory of Olivet College to earn and save money. After 3 years, he went to Germany and studied piano and organ at the Munich Conservatory. After 2 years there, in 1879, seemingly ready to come back to the US anyway, Chadwick was invited to conduct his own _Rip Van Winkle_ Overture at Boston's Handel and Haydn Society Triennial Festival. So, he packed up and came back to Boston for good. Then, over nearly a decade, Chadwick held various church organ positions, conducted orchestras, managed festivals, and composed more and larger pieces. In 1897, though reticent at first to accept the position, Chadwick became director of the New England Conservatory of Music. (as a side note, this is very similar to how William Schuman became director of Juilliard, after declining the position multiple times) Though the position took up much of his time, Chadwick continued to teach composition and compose a great deal himself. He was even commissioned to write for Connecticut's Norfolk Music Festival, for which among other pieces he composed _Aphrodite_, the piece we will discuss shortly. - Chadwick's composition portfolio is large and eclectic. Piano and organ works, chamber music, orchestral, concerti, choral and stage pieces. He worked a great deal between that and his position at NEC. The ONLY thing that slowed him down was his health. First, it was Rheumatism, which made him lose some teeth and degraded his eyesight. That led to gout, which gave him a lot of chronic pain. But what did him in was a heart condition. Because he consistently wrote in his diary throughout his life, we have a clear though sobering account of the days leading up to his death. For example, on December 27, 1930 he writes “Paderewski dinner and concert,” “Had a heart attack and could not go.” Just like that! As if it was a minor inconvenience!###Culture- Our piece today is _Aphrodite_, written in 1911, Chadwick actually wrote this long, one movement work in a single month! The piece itself is quite hefty orchestrationally as well, notably calling for triple woodwinds, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, off-stage trumpets, both harp and celesta, and field drums.- As I mentioned, Chadwick wrote this piece for the Norfolk Festival. To put the Norfolk Festival performance into perspective, June of 1912, this was only 6 weeks after the sinking of the Titanic! Even Chadwick remarked “[it] has so overshadowed all other affairs that I could not get into any mood to write.”###Back story and anecdote of piece- Apparently, the impetus for this work was born from Chadwick's fascination with the marble bust of Aphrodite herself at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Though the work is entirely instrumental, Chadwick worked out a translation of ancient Greek poetry to accompany the score:In a dim vision of the long agoWandering by a far-off Grecian shoreWhere streaming moonlight shone on golden sandsAnd melting stars dissolved in silver seas,I humbly knelt at Aphrodite's shrineImploring her with many a fervid prayerTo tell the secret of her beauty's powerAnd the depths of the ocean whence she sprang.At last the wave-born goddess raised her handAnd smiling said: “O mortal youth, behold!”Then all these mysteries passed before mine eyes.- Intriguingly, while the vast majority of Chadwick's work is Romantic, Germanic, structured in form, this piece is, obviously, highly programmatic. While it is one movement, he designates titled sections: Moonlight on the sea, Storm, Requiem, The Lovers, Children Playing, Approach of a Great Army and Hymn to Aphrodite, Moonlight scene partly repeated, and Finale. A thematic strain is persistent throughout, instead of a formal rotation.###Analysis of pieceNow let's hear the piece itself. This 2002 NAXOS recording is of the Nashville Symphony conducted by Kenneth Schermerhorn. On a side note, because of the pandemic, the Nashville Symphony was forced to cancel their entire 2020-2021 season. This is of course grave news for the organization, the musicians, and their audience. I truly hope that the situation turns around for the Nashville Symphony and they get back to making music as quickly as is possible for everyone's safety.- A very melancholy beginning, the solo viola plays a variation of the Aphrodite motive that will persist throughout the piece. Accompanied by clarinets, the short phrase ends on a deceptive and un-resolving chord, followed by an ominous statement by the timpani.- After this repeats, building suspense, the texture settles in, an undulating figure in the strings, while the English horn plays the Aphrodite motive.- Though this section expands and builds, it is never harsh, never erupts. Not only does the activity remain relatively calm, the melody itself is rarely presented with a bright instrument, like oboe or flute, and even when it is it's combined with clarinet or English horn to mitigate the brighter timbre of the instrument. This is a keen insight of orchestration on the part of Chadwick- Eventually this transitions to a raucous Storm section, heavy on the low brass and percussion.- Having built up a substantial amount of tension, Chadwick opens up directly into the Requiem. Immediately, the simple theme is accompanied by quick running chromatic scales in the lower register, swelling over and over.- Having released a great deal of the opening tension during the requiem, Chadwick enters “The Lovers” section. This opens with a violin and horn duet that develops an intimate melodic line, likely signifying the lovers themselves.- After this opening, the lyrical line is developed to a fulfilling crest, and in Wagnerian style opens into a lightness and quicker tempo only to arrive at yet another, greater, fuller moment of bliss.- Following a very light, waltz-like section meant to be the “Children Playing”, Chadwick then makes use of offstage drums and trumpets to introduce the extended march of an approaching “Great Army”. The march builds up and as the army arrives, a grand Maestoso gives way, presenting a “Hymn to Aphrodite”.- When the drama finally plays out, Chadwick reprises the “Moonlight” theme from the opening, but this time with a bit more brightness. At last, he brilliantly allows the undulating accompaniment to organically expand, adding broader and larger swelling wind chords over the top, as if breathing in sweet relief to the end.###Outro- Chadwick was often accused, notably by his own colleague Horatio Parker, for being technical, craftsman like. Honestly, I don't hear what they hear. I find my self more engaged in this music every time I hear it. On top of that, Chadwick partly has a lot to do with the fact that in my own conservatory training I was offered and even at times encouraged to enrich myself with traditions other than just that of Europe. Do not get me wrong, I can play Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, etc. ALL DAY LONG. Though, I am thankful to people like Chadwick who encouraged American teachers, performers, and composers to believe in their own set of traditions, skills, instincts. Now, we have a mix of everything. What could be better?Music:'Aphrodite'By: George Whitefiled ChadwickPerformed by: Kenneth Schermerhorn, Nashville Symphony OrchestraCourtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/american-muse-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Introducing the American Muse Podcast!Hello! My name is Grant Gilman. I am a conductor, violinist, and author, based in Atlanta, Georgia. I grew up the son of 2 violinists, who both went to Eastman and became professionals. Beyond that, I have a pretty typical musician story. I was bitten by the music bug very young, and despite everyone, including my parents, constantly reminding me there is no money in classical music, I couldn't do anything else.I remember playing in youth orchestra and constantly breaking my bow hair. It is not unusual to break a hair every once in a while, but I did it regularly. I realized that I wanted to play my part AND the winds AND the percussion all at once, that's why I was pressing so hard. I knew, even then, that my place was on the podium. That's where I could be a part of all the sounds at once. Then my high school orchestra director let me conduct both my own composition and Elgar's famous Enigma Variations, both in concert. Well, that was it, no going back. I was going to be a conductor, for better or worse.So, I went to the Peabody Conservatory of Music, studied violin with Martin Beaver, former 1st violin of the Tokyo String Quartet, Misha Rosenker, and Pamela Frank, world renowned soloist and chamber player. It just so happened that one of the best conducting programs in the world is ALSO at Peabody, so I stayed for my Masters degree, and got to study with Gustav Meier (rest in peace, my friend) and Markand Thakar.After playing and conducting in various positions all over the country, I decided to get my doctorate. That took me to the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, or CCM as we call it, and I studied under Mark Gibson.Now, it just so happens I married up! My wife, Kim, is a fantastic horn player. After 10 years playing under JoAnn Falletta in the Virginia Symphony, she won 2nd horn with the Atlanta Symphony, under the baton of Robert Spano. So, after having grown up in south Texas, I now live in another very hot and humid area of the country. But, Atlanta is great!When I was still quite young, I would actually listen to my mother's collection of vinyl records. No, this is not a joke. She had tons of them! One that I found was so striking because I had never heard of the composer, and certainly not the piece, but the music blew me away EVERY time I listened to it. The conductor was Leonard Bernstein, leading the strings of the New York Philharmonic. The piece was Symphony No. 5 by William Schuman. And that is where my journey began.I never lost that sound from my mind, the optimism, boldness, complex, driving rhythmic movement, dense and engaging harmonic support. Until that moment I knew only the most prevailing composers of history. Now I had another world to discover.So I'm starting a podcast! The title is “American Muse”, in honor of William Schuman, which is what he titled his 10th and final symphony. This podcast is for all of those people, like my young self, that have never heard of these American orchestral composers from the 19th and 20th centuries. I want to find and share hidden and lesser-known gems that will brighten your day and bring depth to your world, as only art and music can do.Now of course our team will need help! You can expect to hear a collection of extraordinary guests that are experts in this field. I will be interviewing them, asking them some pointed questions that we think you will find not only entertaining but also very educational. And the first guest will be none other than JoAnn Falletta!Beyond that, we want you to be as involved as possible. We want to know if you have a composer or piece you would like us to feature. We love finding new pieces!Also, we want to know if you have a guest to propose I interview. Like the composers themselves, the experts in this niche can be just quite elusive.Furthermore, If you are an educator and have an idea, something that would tie in with your curriculum that would be of benefit to you, please reach out to us. We plan to dedicate an episode each season toward educating young musicians and students.Thanks for listening to my short introduction, and I hope you are as excited as we are! The show will be available anywhere you get your podcasts already, a video version will be on YouTube, and you can also find links and show notes on my website grantgilman.com/americanmusepodcast. Feel free to contact us with thoughts or ideas at americanmusepodcast@grantgilman.com.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/american-muse-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

By the time of his death in 1998, pop singer Frank Sinatra was such a domineering figure in his field that he was known as “The Chairman of the Board.” By the time of HIS death in 1992, the same nickname might have applied to the American composer William Schuman, who was, at various times, director of publications for G. Schirmer, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center, and on the board of many other important American musical institutions. William Schuman even LOOKED the part of a distinguished, well-dressed CEO. Oddly enough, he came rather late to classical music. Schuman was born on today’s date in 1910, and, as a teenager in New York City, was more interested in baseball than music, even though his dance band was the rage of Washington High School. It was with some reluctance that 19-year old Billy Schuman was dragged to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The program included a symphony by someone named ROBERT Schumann, and Billy was pretty impressed. A few years later, in 1933, when he heard the First Symphony of the contemporary American composer Roy Harris, Schuman was hooked, and soon was writing concert music himself. By 1941, when his Third Symphony premiered, Schuman was recognized as a major talent, and in 1943 he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music.

By the time of his death in 1998, pop singer Frank Sinatra was such a domineering figure in his field that he was known as “The Chairman of the Board.” By the time of HIS death in 1992, the same nickname might have applied to the American composer William Schuman, who was, at various times, director of publications for G. Schirmer, president of the Juilliard School, president of Lincoln Center, and on the board of many other important American musical institutions. William Schuman even LOOKED the part of a distinguished, well-dressed CEO. Oddly enough, he came rather late to classical music. Schuman was born on today’s date in 1910, and, as a teenager in New York City, was more interested in baseball than music, even though his dance band was the rage of Washington High School. It was with some reluctance that 19-year old Billy Schuman was dragged to a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The program included a symphony by someone named ROBERT Schumann, and Billy was pretty impressed. A few years later, in 1933, when he heard the First Symphony of the contemporary American composer Roy Harris, Schuman was hooked, and soon was writing concert music himself. By 1941, when his Third Symphony premiered, Schuman was recognized as a major talent, and in 1943 he was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music.

On today's date in 1950, at the Interlochen Summer Music Camp, the Michigan All-Star Band, under the direction of Dale Harris, gave the premiere performance of a new work entitled "George Washington Bridge." This music was written by the American composer William Schuman, who was experiencing an especially creative period in the early 1950's. Schuman was living in New Rochelle, New York, but as president of the Juilliard School, spent much of his time in Manhattan, and, as Schuman explained: "There are few days in the year when I do not see the George Washington Bridge. I pass it on my way to work as I drive along the Henry Hudson Parkway on the New York shore. Ever since my student days when I watched the progress of its construction, this bridge has had for me an almost human personality, and this personality is astonishingly varied, assuming different moods, depending on the time of day or night, the weather, and, of course, my own mood as I pass by… I have walked across it late at night when it was shrouded in fog, and during the brilliant sunshine hours of midday… It is difficult to imagine a more gracious welcome or dramatic entry to the great metropolis." The piece itself is in ABCBA form—a little like the rising and falling arch of a suspension bridge, in fact, and, since its 1950 premiere at Interlochen, Schuman's "George Washington Bridge" has won a secure place as a classic of the wind band repertory.

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the winner of the first Pulitzer Prize in Music, William Schuman and his Secular Cantata No. 2, "A Free Song." The work was William Schuman's contribution to the American war effort during World War II, but remains more of a curiosity than a mainstay in the choral/orchestral repertoire. If you'd like to know more about William Schuman and how he won the prize, we recommend: Steve Swayne's biography Orpheus in Manhattan: William Schuman and the Shaping of America's Musical Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) Steve Swayne's article on "A Free Song," "William Schuman, World War II, and the Pulitzer Prize," The Musical Quarterly, Volume 89, Issue 2-3 (Summer-Fall 2006): 273–320 Finally, several listeners have asked about our wonderful announcer for the podcast; Dale Morehouse is a marvelous singer, teacher, and stage director, and we're fortunate he agreed to help us out with the podcast.

Visit agreatbigcity.com/support to learn how to support New York City local news and allow us to keep bringing you this podcast. If you are a New York-based business and would be interested in sponsoring our podcasts, visit agreatbigcity.com/advertising to learn more. We've been following the 14th Street busway since it was first proposed, and after being blocked twice by legal complaints, the street has been swept free of cars and the buses have been roaming free for two weeks now. In a press release from the MTA, preliminary data shows that ridership is up and buses are moving faster along 14th Street. A cross-town trip from Third Avenue to Eighth Avenue will now take 10.6 minutes, compared to a 15 minute trip from last year. While collecting data on the Select Bus Service plan implemented along the M14 route, the MTA saw a jump in ridership, with 15% more people choosing to take the prioritized buses, and in the short time the 14th Street busway has been operating, the ridership has jumped again, topping 31,000 daily riders on an average weekday. The busway, which limits traffic on 14th Street from 6am to 10pm, is planned to last 18 months, after which the DOT will assess the impact it has had on bus transit and traffic in the surrounding area. — Also this week, independent data analysis firm INRIX evaluated traffic data from the streets surrounding the 14th Street busway and found that there was no change in traffic speeds, and zero impact on traffic to the immediate north or south of 14th. The initial objections raise by local community groups claimed the busway would negatively impact nearby streets by pushing 14th Street's traffic into their neighborhoods, but the speed increase for 31,000 daily bus riders came at no expense to traffic, with differences in average speeds on surrounding streets never slowing more than a half a mile per hour. Here's how INRIX described the results: "The impact, or lack-there-of, may seem surprising but similar projects around the world have had similar results. The reallocation of space from vehicles to buses represents a far more efficient use of a limited public resource. Whereas one urban lane in congestion can move roughly 1,000 people an hour, a transit way can hit 25,000. As a result of this project, more people are getting where they need to be faster and more reliably." 53 years ago on October 17, 1966 — 12 members of the FDNY are killed when a burning building collapses, becoming the largest single loss of life in FDNY history until the 9/11 attacks 18 years ago on October 24, 2001 — A 14-story construction scaffolding and brick building façade collapses, killing five workers and seriously injuring 10 others in a courtyard at 215 Park Ave South near Union Square 54 years ago on October 18, 1965 — Closing day of the NY World's Fair at Flushing Meadows Park — Bowery Boys podcast 24 years ago on October 23, 1995 — A Greenpeace activist piloting a "gas-powered parachute" flies a banner outside the UN building 88 years ago on October 24, 1931 — The upper level of the George Washington Bridge is opened in a dedication ceremony, and opens to traffic the next day — United States Marine Band conducted by Leonard Slatkin playing William Schuman's 1950 composition "George Washington Bridge" 60 years ago on October 21, 1959 — The Guggenheim Museum Opens on the Upper East Side 136 years ago to October 22, 1883 — The original Metropolitan Opera House opens Beginning October 18th through the 20th, you'll have the once-a-year opportunity to explore the city like never before when Open House New York brings you exclusive tours of the city's architectural masterpieces that are sometimes hidden from public view or pass by unnoticed the rest of the year. Visit ohny.org for the full schedule of events, some of which require advance registration, but most of which are open all day to the public. The choices range from brand-new developments like 277 Mott Street to historic homes like the Alice Austen House, built on Staten Island in the 1690s. Going beyond architecture, you can also tour special projects like a solar rooftop in Harlem and an urban farm run by Brooklyn Grange in Long Island City. Each site sets its own visitation hours, so visit ohny.org to plan out your weekend! And, if you're planning on marching in the Village Halloween Parade, you better be finishing up your costume soon! Halloween is less than two weeks away, and the city's biggest party will be stepping off Thursday, October 31st at 7pm at Sixth Avenue and Canal. The parade is unique because it lets anyone participate! If you wear a costume centered around this years theme of "Wild Thing", you'll be allowed to march is a special section of the parade, but anyone who shows up in a costume will become part of the parade, and usually more than 50,000 people show up! Visit halloween-nyc.com for full info, and if you haven't decided on a costume yet, visit the AGBC costume ideas generator at agreatbigcity.com/halloween-costumes where you can get funny New York-themed costume ideas like dressing up as a vintage traffic jam now that the 14th Street busway is open or strike fear in the heart of anyone who has walked the city streets by becoming the Starbucks Bathroom of Doom! A Great Big City has been running a 24-hour newsfeed since 2010, but the AGBC News podcast is just getting started, and we need your support. A Great Big City is built on a dedication to explaining what is happening and how it fits into the larger history of New York, which means thoroughly researching every topic and avoiding clickbait headlines to provide a straightforward, honest, and factual explanation of the news. Individuals can make a monthly or one-time contribution at agreatbigcity.com/support and local businesses can have a lasting impact by supporting local news while promoting products or services directly to interested customers listening to this podcast. Visit agreatbigcity.com/advertising to learn more. AGBC is more than just a news website: Every evening, just before sundown, A Great Big City checks the Empire State Building's lighting schedule and sends out a notification if the tower's lighting will be lit in special colors for a holiday or celebration. Follow @agreatbigcity on social media to receive the alerts. Park of the day Crotona Park Parks Events 10th Annual Harvest Festival in Brooklyn Bridge Park — Saturday, October 19, 2019 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Concert Calendar This is the AGBC Concert Calendar for the upcoming week: The Misfits with Rancid and The Damned are playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Saturday, October 19th at 7pm. Mana is playing Barclays Center in Boerum Hill on Saturday, October 19th at 8pm. Steely Dan is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Saturday, October 19th at 8pm. Benin International Musical is playing Carnegie Hall - Stern Auditorium in Hell's Kitchen / Midtown on Saturday, October 19th at 9pm. 85 South is playing Apollo Theater in Central Harlem on Sunday, October 20th at 5pm. 85 South is playing Apollo Theater in Central Harlem on Sunday, October 20th at 9pm. Tidal X with Alicia Keys is playing Barclays Center in Boerum Hill on Monday, October 21st at 8pm. Steely Dan is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Monday, October 21st at 8pm. Charli XCX is playing Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen / Midtown on Monday, October 21st at 8pm. Charli XCX with Allie X is playing Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen / Midtown on Tuesday, October 22nd at 8pm. Steely Dan is playing Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side on Tuesday, October 22nd at 8pm. Dermot Kennedy with Talos is playing Kings Theatre in Ditmas Park / Flatbush on Tuesday, October 22nd at 8pm. Jessie Reyez is playing Brooklyn Steel in Greenpoint on Wednesday, October 23rd at 8pm. Fantasia with Robin Thicke is playing The Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Friday, October 25th at 7pm. Billy Joel is playing Madison Square Garden in Midtown West / Chelsea / Hudson Yards on Friday, October 25th at 8pm. Alec Benjamin is playing Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen / Midtown on Friday, October 25th at 8pm. Find more fun things to do at agreatbigcity.com/events. Today's fact about New York Here's something you may not have known about New York: In 2016, the MTA had 5,710 buses in its citywide fleet Weather The extreme highs and lows for this week in weather history: Record High: 88°F on October 22, 1979 Record Low: 30°F on October 19, 1940 Weather for the week ahead: Light rain on Sunday through Wednesday, with high temperatures rising to 67°F next Friday. AGBC Weather Weather.gov forecast Thanks for listening to A Great Big City. Follow along 24 hours a day on social media @agreatbigcity or email contact@agreatbigcity.com with any news, feedback, or topic suggestions. Subscribe to AGBC News wherever you listen to podcasts: iTunes, Google Play, or Pocket Casts, Spotify, Player FM, or listen to each episode on the podcast pages at agreatbigcity.com/podcast. If you enjoy the show, subscribe and leave a review wherever you're listening and visit our podcast site to see show notes and extra links for each episode. Intro and outro music: 'Start the Day' by Lee Rosevere — Concert Calendar music from Jukedeck.com

In a program that first aired April 21, 2014, Andrew Patner's guest is conductor Leonard Slatkin discussing his work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and in Lyon, and the music of William Schuman.   [...]

Andrew's guest is conductor Leonard Slatkin discussing his work with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and in Lyon and the music of William Schuman. Mr. Slatkin leads one more performance of Schuman, Barber, Bates, and Gershwin with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Tuesday evening and returns this summer after many years to the Grant Park Music Festival [...]

Barber’s Violin Concerto, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Copland’s Appalachian Spring are among a small handful of American works that have become staples of the orchestra repertoire. Since the United States has nurtured a good century-and-a-half of orchestral compositions, there are those who feel that this is not just an oversight, but a disgrace. Earlier this month, a group of composers and academics decided to confront the issue where it starts: with the major orchestra in their city. They wrote a letter to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer accusing the Cleveland Orchestra of “blatantly ignoring music of its own country” by programming only one work by an American composer next season. “We looked at this and said, this is approximately one percent of the programming and really, we have to say something about this,” said Keith Fitch, head of the composition department at the Cleveland Institute of Music, who was one of the letter’s co-signers. Fitch argues that the problem is not limited to Cleveland, nor is it even confined to living composers. There is a wide swath of “diverse and compelling” American repertoire, he says, that is seldom represented on orchestra programs, including pieces by William Schuman, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Walter Piston and even Charles Ives – “the music that has defined us as a culture.” The Cleveland Orchestra did not respond to invitations to participate in this segment, nor did it respond to the letter, which has been widely circulated on social media. Ed Harsh, the president and CEO of the advocacy organization New Music USA, notes that a number of orchestras are making an effort to program American works, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and Albany Symphony. The upcoming Spring for Music festival of American orchestras at Carnegie Hall is due to feature major works by Hanson and John Adams (WQXR will broadcast the six-concert festival live). "It’s by no means a blanket problem,” Harsh said. “But in some ways this is such an old, agonizing story.” In 2011, the League of American Orchestras, a national service organization, reported that just two out of the top 20 most-performed composers were American that year: Barber and Leonard Bernstein (at numbers 17 and 20, respectively). A ranking of the top 20 works performed did not bring up a single American piece. Harsh believes that living American composers should be essential to orchestras' community outreach and audience-building efforts; they can personalize and talk about the music in a way that long-dead composers can't. “It may seem expedient to become a museum of immutable masterpieces that everyone loves,” he said. “That’s long-term suicide.” To some extent, orchestras must persuade audiences to try unfamiliar music of whatever era or nationality, said Simon Woods, the executive director of the Seattle Symphony, in the second part of this podcast. Seattle has recently launched an in-house record label with an album of music by Ives, Gershwin and Elliott Carter. But Woods also believes there are no absolutes. "I start getting nervous when I hear discussions about whether there should be some kind of moral imperative to play American music," he added. "What's interesting about orchestras in this country is this huge diversity of repertoire that they play, and each one has a different personality." Listen to the full segment above and share your comments below: should orchestras program more American works? Why or why not?

Donald Macleod introduces the life and career of William Schuman - one of the most influential American composers and music administrators of the 20th century.