Author: sohothedog

He’ll be filled with diff’rent mixtures

The blog’s gone purple today for Spirit Day, in support of LGBT teens and against anti-LGBT bullying. If you’re an LGBT teenager, be proud! On the other hand, if you’re one of those who needs your consciousness expanded on this particular point, then the golden age of the Hollywood musical would like a word with you—specifically, Ethel Merman and Mitzi Gaynor in 1954’s There’s No Business Like Show Business, throwing “don’t ask, don’t tell” and traditional gender roles to the wind:



As those better qualified than me to say it have said, it gets better—and if your definition of “better” includes Ethel Merman in sideburns, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Some people work for a living, some people work for fun

After too long a delay, I’m back with more rambling over at NewMusicBox. This is what happens when I get told I can’t like what I like one too many times.

Also, some Boston Globe catch-up:

Some CD reviews: part one (scroll down), part two.
Reviewing Garrick Ohlsson.
Reviewing the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The book is nearing an end. But I could use some help on something. I was writing up my bit on Landsberg 6—the sketchbook that contains the first inklings of Beethoven’s Fifth. Now, there isn’t much, if anything, left to say about Landsberg 6, which musicologists have pretty well picked over since Nottebohm first wrote about it back in 1880. But, my brain being what it is, I ended up spending all of yesterday banging my head against the wall over the paucity of information on the sketchbook’s namesake, Ludwig Landsberg. Born in Breslau (in 1804, 1805, or 1807, depending on who you believe), a tenor in the Berlin Opera chorus, also a violinist, he ended up living in Rome for twenty-some years, hosting soirees and promoting German music (most scholarly mentions surround one such salon at which the guest of honor was Fanny Mendelssohn). But he also owned a trove of manuscripts—not only Beethoven, but also Schubert, and Chopin, and scads of early music. My question: where did he get the money to amass that collection? Sure, manuscripts were cheaper back then, but they weren’t free, and Landsberg’s collecting was on a scale I would not expect on an expat violinist’s salary. Was he well-connected? Did he have family money? (Apparently his brother back in Breslau was a banker, according to Thayer, who didn’t bother mentioning his brother’s first name.) My spidey sense is going crazy thinking that there has to be something more interesting going on with Landsberg that indicated in his Grove blurb, but every lead hits a brick wall.

Follow the Fleet

All kinds of recent business, including this hefty bit of concision:

Reviewing the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music.
Boston Globe, August 19, 2010.

A couple of other reviews:

Reviewing the Monadnock Music Festival.
Boston Globe, August 10, 2010.

Reviewing Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
Boston Globe, August 12, 2010.

Oh, and this bit of goofiness over at The Faster Times.

And, since I’m trying to finish a book, and writers always drink to excess, I’ve been dipping back into the greatest cocktail book of all time, that being the second volume of Charles H. Baker, Jr.’s The Gentleman’s Companion. On page 110, Baker trots out something called “Admiral Schley Punch,” named for Winfield Scott Schley, troublemaking hero/loose cannon of the Spanish-American War. Take it away, Mr. Baker:

ADMIRAL SCHLEY PUNCH

This is supposed to have been named after the American admiral, and we shouldn’t mind such a pleasant piece of business being named after us.

St. Croix or Barbados rum, ½ jigger
Bourbon, ½ jigger
Sugar, 1 tsp
Lime, peel and juice, 1

Shake with fine ice, and turn into goblet—ice and all. Garnish with sprigs of mint, a stick of ripe pineapple, and so on.

Holy mother of pearl, this might just be the best summer drink ever concocted. We salute you, Admiral Schley!

Wish I Was Here

I’ve been terribly remiss on linking to Globe stuff, so here’s a month’s catch-up:

Classical Notes.
Boston Globe, July 23, 2010.

Subbing for David Weininger with my usual terminal obliqueness. (Yes, I did play a lot of deep left field during my brief and thoroughly undistinguished career as a Little Leaguer. Why do you ask?)

Reviewing Audra McDonald.
Boston Globe, July 20, 2010.

Damn, this was a good recital.

Reviewing the SICPP Iditarod.
Boston Globe, June 22, 2010.

Summer doesn’t really start for me until the Iditarod. Tricks of the trade: how do you make it through a seven-hour concert? You smuggle in iced coffee and gummi bears.

Reviewing the Boston Trio.
Boston Globe, June 19, 2010.

Joe Barron sent me a nice note wondering why the Ives Trio doesn’t get more love, and I’m inclined to agree with him. It might be the perfect Ives piece for people who think they don’t like Ives—he does all his usual Ivesianisms, but the context makes the connections to his recurring underlying worldview unusually clear. (The new Rockport hall really is as gorgeous as everyone says.)

Reviewing Blue Heron Renaissance Choir.
Boston Globe, June 15, 2010.

An unusually smart program, this one, one of the only musicological-connection-type early-music concerts I’ve heard where the connections were all absolutely audible.

Anyway, it’s still going to be bare-bones links for another couple of months around here, but the end of the book is in sight. I’m currently in a tag-team wrestling match with, alternately, August Röckel and Walter Murphy. Funny, I don’t remember them making it into Grout and Palisca.

See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.

Hey, it’s Bloomsday. Yes I said yes I will Yes! I’m celebrating by plowing through a little more of the book at a protracted, Joyce-like pace. Today’s assignment: Karl Marx and History. I love that song!



As far as I know, Marx only gets one mention in Ulysses, as Bloom taunts the anti-Semitic “Citizen” in a pub:

Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.

Anyway, back to work corralling my insatiable appetite for tangent. But I could talk about leftist punk rock and Joyce and Lacanian psychoanalysis and somehow tie in Stalin’s “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics”! No, no you can’t. Now write that damn transition into that discussion of Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence already!

Through restful waters and deep commotion

It’s Robert Schumann’s 200th birthday today. Happy birthday! Over at The Faster Times, there’s some more celebratory rambling, in which I propose that Schumann was, among other things, the first great classical-music fan. One bit of evidence: as far as I can tell, Schumann is the first composer to use the B-A-C-H motive as a tribute, in his six op. 60 Fugues. (Beethoven, apparently, did toss around the idea of a B-A-C-H overture, but never actually wrote it.) Here’s Silvio Celeghin playing the second of Schumann’s B-A-C-H fugues on one of Schumann’s favorite instruments, the incredibly cool pedal piano:



Incidentally, the more I think about it, the more the comparison I make between Schumann and Brian Wilson holds up. One other parallel: they both love repetition, taking comfort and sustenance in particularly nourishing harmonic or melodic loops. When you think about it, both musically and biographically, “Sail On Sailor” might be the most Schumannesque rock song ever written.