Unanswered Question
January 15, 2008
A highly regarded composer of both classical and broadway, an accomplished pianist, a great conductor, and an eloquent musicologist. Bernstein was all of the above and more.
The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
By: Leonard Bernstein
“Leonard Bernstein’s Norton Lectures on the future course of music drew cheers from his Harvard audiences and television viewers. In this re-creation of his talks, the author considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel to Copland, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.”
Author’s Note: “The pages that follow were written not to be read, but listened to
Brahms and His World
January 13, 2008
Brahms and His World should prove a valuable reader or source book for anyone interested in the composer. Preview this book @ My Google Library
“Brahms and His World” By: Frisch, Walter
Unlike some recent volumes on Brahms, which have served mainly to bring together miscellaneous papers read at conferences, this collection seeks to locate the composer more directly in the context of his personal, professional, and musical environment. The volume consists of three parts.
In Part I essays by six prominent scholars explore different aspects of Brahms’ relationship to his world. The topics include time, memory, and concert life in Brahms’ Vienna (Leon Botstein); Brahms’ complex personality, studied by a leading psychoanalyst (Peter Ostwald, M.D.); Brahms and Clara Schumann (Nancy B. Reich); Brahms and the New German School (David Brodbeck); Brahmss pianos (George S. Bozarth and Stephen H. Brady); and Brahmsian influences on his contemporaries (Walter Frisch).
Part II presents commentary on Brahmss music culled from some of the most important critics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of this material has never appeared in English before. Included are excerpts from the earliest published survey of Brahms’ works, written in 1862 by Adolf Schubring; reviews by the powerful Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick; analyses of the symphonies by Hermann Kretschmar; and an analysis of Joseph Joachims Hungarian Concerto by Donald F. Tovey.
Part III offers substantial portions from memoirs about Brahms written by contemporaries who in themselves were leading musical figures. These excerpts, most translated into English for the first time, are taken from Hanslick and from the composers Alexander Zemlinsky, Karl Weigl, and Gustav Jenner, the latter being Brahms’s only private pupil in composition. An appendix provides a list of all known musical works dedicated to Brahms. Read more
Talking with Composers
January 6, 2008
… finish re-reading A. M. Abell’s book “Talks with Great Composers” and I’d like to share some thoughts with you, starting with this quote: “No atheist has ever been or will be a great composer”; and with my question: Is it the luck of religiosity, spiritual commitment and craftmenship in some ways causing a decline of a thought provoking, deep and well crafted music?
Preview this book @ Amazon Online Reader
Talks with Great Composers By: Arthur M. Abell
Between 1890 and 1917, Abell engaged in lengthy, candid conversations with the greatest composers of his day: Johannes Brahms, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Strauss, Engelbert Humperdinck, Max Brunch, and Edvard Grieg about the intellectual, psychic, and spiritual tensions of their creative endeavors. This book is the result of those conversations, and is, quite simply, a masterpiece that reveals the agony, triumphs, and the religiosity inherent in the creative mind.
Excerpt: “All truly inspired ideas come from God, and the consciousness of being inspired by him. Your religiosity will make you more conscious and aware of that fact, and of the fact that God is nearer to you than others in your craft, and that you can consort with him without fear.
The contact of inspiration through God cannot be done merely by will power working through the conscious mind, which is an evolutionary product of the physical realm and perishes with the body. It can only be accomplished by the soul-powers within - the real ego that survives bodily death. Those powers are quiescent to the conscious mind unless illumined by Spirit. Read more
About Viola Sonata.
December 16, 2007
Notes and translation by: Sergei V. KorschminI was asked to translate this letter by a music student of the University of Queensland some time ago. I am not a professional translator so I was wondering if you may have any suggestions for improvement. The Russian text of the letter was located in the first couple of pages of the viola sonata. Unfortunately I do not remember nor can I locate the publisher. Maybe you could help with this too?
“Letter from Leningrad”
By: Boris Tishenko [a former student of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich and a head figure of the Composers’ Union in St. Petersburg.]
The task of drawing parallels between the personality of an artist and his work is a difficult but necessary one. Difficult because it is easy to fall victim to vulgar flat assimilations, and necessary because it is evident that a composer’s creation is a humanistic (personal) self portrayal and because understanding an author’s humanism helps to unravel the secrets of his composition. While analysing the “personal” aspects of this music, one relies on the external and visible characteristics, leaving behind the boundaries of what is the material and internal side of a musical work and what is verbally indescribable. Also, it is difficult to discuss this Sonata because it has not yet been performed. [Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975. This letter was written on September 11, 1975. The Viola Sonata, Op. 147 was Shostakovich’s last work. It was dedicated to the violist Fyodor Druzhinin. Work was premiered in Leningrad on October 1, 1975.] Read more
