Gestern entdeckte ich ein zauberhaftes Blog, Silvae von Jay Loomings, einen pensionierten Hochschullehrer (ich vermute: Literatur) aus »Norddeutschland« (ich vermute: Bremen). Wie ich schreibt er deutsch und über Kunst, aber anders als ich schreibt er auch über viele andere schöne Dinge und alles ist von ihm selbst verfaßt.
Dies ist fast unglaublich. Seit 3.Jänner 2010 verfaßt Jay täglich (und öfter) eine liebevolle, geschmackvoll bebilderte Abhandlung über z.B. Childe Hassam, Thornton Wilder, Johan Christian Clausen Dahl, Edward Albee, Daliah Lavi, Louis Ferdinand von Preußen, Cervantes, Don Giovanni, … und und und.
Zuerst hatte ich mir für Silvae ein Lesezeichen angelegt. Dann hatte ich Silvae als Feed abonniert. Zuletzt habe ich beschlossen, alle Artikel zu lesen, vom ersten an.
Überzeugen Sie sich, dass Sie es mir nachmachen müssen!
What an eye-catcher for my 3rd bunch of new entries in my list of "public lossless classical music blogs" (there are 85 blogs currently listed). And my next post (on Monday, 3rd of September) to the Kammermusikkammer concerns to Max Reger and Frantisek Kupka - the painter of this "Path of Silence" (1903).
As I already mentioned with my former posts:It’s for your convenience only. All figures and ciphers are very about. No harms intended.
"Un espacio para compartir mis modestos conocimientos musicales y mi pequeña discoteca, pero con el mayor gusto y entusiasmo por nuestra pasión: la música de los grandes."
Since yesterday I re-ripped and re-posted another 10 broken links in the Kammermusikkammer. Beginning with the 23th of April, I refreshed 70 titles up to now. They are all listed below, the new ones are backgrounded in red
During the last days I reposted another dozen of broken links in the Kammermusikkammer. Beginning with the 23th of April, I refreshed 60 titles up to now. They are all listed below, the new one are backgrounded in red, like Zelenka's fabulous trio sonatas.
You probably knew that already, but perhaps you didn't know this: His first album, Songs By Tom Lehrer, was one of the most profitable investments in the history of the music business. Recorded for an initial studio cost of $15 (15 dollars - for the entire album) and initially released for sale only on and around the Harvard University campus, Songs By Tom Lehrer went on to sell 370,000 copies on Lehrer's own do-it-yourself label, becoming one of America's biggest-selling - if not the biggest-selling - humorous-music album of the 1950s on any label, large or small.
Lehrer’s career as an entertainer was as brief as it was brilliant. He didn’t become a professional performer until 1952, just before he made his first album. He dropped out of showbiz in 1960, and two years of that eightyear span were spent in the Army. Aside from a very short comeback in the mid-'60s (when he recorded his highest-charting album, That Was The Year That Was), he's spent his time teaching and, by his own account, taking life easy.
Tom Lehrer was born (April 9, 1928) and raised in New York City.
"My father was a tie manufacturer, a big man in the industry. I had a normal childhood, I would say. I took piano lessons; everybody did in those days. I didn't like classical music, though. I would practice the absolute minimum that I had to for my piano lesson, and then I would start picking out popular tunes I'd heard on records, and my parents finally caught on. They didn't have many pop-piano teachers in those days, but my mother, bless her, actually scouted around and finally found me one.“
A precocious student, Lehrer graduated from high school at age 15 and entered Harvard. He soon began writing little songs and parodies for parties and special occasions. (In 1945, at age 17, he wrote "Fight Fiereely, Harvard".) He got his bachelor's degree in mathematics at 18 and remained at Harvard as a graduate student until 1953, except for one year spent at Columbia University.
"The first time I ever sang for anybody, other than at a private party, was when I was in graduate school. They had a quartet singing contest at a law school dance, and four of us entered and sang some of my songs. We were the only entry, so they refused to give us the prize, but we sang anyway! Then we got hired to sing at the Harvard freshman smoker, an annual event where the whole freshman class – all boys in those days - got together to drink beer and throw up. The other three singers went on to other careers after that, but I continued to sing on my own around the campus, at dance intermissions, things like that.“
"My first real public performance was in the fall of 1952, at a nightclub called Alpini's Rendezvous in Boston, for $15 a night. I got a couple of $5 raises, but when I got to $30 they said that was too much, so I quit"
The LP record had recently been introduced, which made it more feasible to record and release an album on one's own than it had been in the days of fragile, cumbersome 78-r.p.m. discs.
"There was a doctor in Boston named Shep Ginandes, who sang folk songs. He made an album of them and issued it privately. I called him up, and he helped me a great deal. I found a studio in Boston, and they set up the recording session plus the LP pressings and the printing of the jackets. I recorded the first album on Januara 22, 1953, all in one session. I think it just took an hour; it might have been a little longer.“
„The whole idea was just to sell it around Harvard. Record stores agreed to take it for $3 and sell it for $3.50, just as a public service to the community. Also, each dormitory at Harvard had a newsstand kind of thing, and they would also sell it, give me $3 and sell it for $3.50. The first 400 copies have my home address at the time on the back: 6 Kirkland Road."
"I began getting orders from college towns around the country. Then I began getting a lot of orders from San Francisco, which I couldn't figure out. It turns out that the music reviewer of the San Francisco Chronicle had devoted a whole column to the record, giving the price and the address."
At Christmastime 1953 Lehrer was booked into the Blue Angel, then one of the top nightclubs in New York. After he talked the city's two largest specialty record stores into carrying the album, which promptly began flying out the doors, several major record labels expressed interest. All of them eventually backed off because of the album's controversial lyrics. Like it or not, Lehrer remained an independent entrepreneur.
"I spoke to Manny Sachs at RCA. He explained that RCA sold refrigerators and other consumer items and wouldn’t want any protests because of something on their record label.“
Radio also shied away from Songs By Tom Lehrer, except for a few FM stations late at night (those were the days when only serious music and hi-fi buffs had FM radios). But those mail orders continued to roll in, more and more each week. Tom eventually set up a downtown office for Lehrer Records and hired assistants to take orders and deal with the pressing plant and the jacket manufacturers. There was another pressing maller, though, that he had to handle personally: the draft.
More Of Tom Lehrer was recorded on July 3, 1959. This time it cost a bit more than $15 - the session was held at RCA's first-class studios in New York. Once again, though, the entire LP was cut in a single session - three hours including playback and editing time.
Lehrer held firm to his decision to abandon the concert hall for the classroom. Did he not enjoy performing, one wonders?
"Oh no, it was fine. I enjoyed high school but I wouldn't want to do that again either. I had a good time, going to new places and meeting new people, but getting out onstage and performing was not all that interesting. I felt like a novelist being asked to read his novel every night. One night I was performing at New York's famous Town Hall. I sang 'Fight Fiercely, Harvard' and I started with the second verse instead of the first, and I thought How am I going to get out of this? So I just stopped, and started again, and got confused again, and finally said, 'Oh, you all know this song anyway. Let's go on to the next one.' It was embarrassing. I hadn't been thinking about the song, but about what I was going to have for dinner afterwards or something. So I thought OK, the time has come."
Tom Lehrer has been comedy’s most celebrated nonperformer ever since. But he has never totally retired. He continues to teach a variety of courses in musical theater and in mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Despite having turned his back on his songwriting and performing career, he retains a lot of pride and affection for his creations.
Source: Dr. Demento, in the booklet of „Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer“. (Quotes from Tom Lehrer are from an interview contucted with him in August 1996)
Almost certainly, she was the most intelligent singer
ever to have graced the face of the earth.--
Massimo Mila (1910-1988), Italian musicologist
It is twenty five years since Cathy Berberian, the celebrated mezzo-soprano, composer, polyhistor and artistic non-conformist died in Rome at the age of 57. She was an incredible artistic personality who inhabited her own exquisitely hybrid Universe of The Arts blending music, theatre, cinema, dance, languages, design and devilishly clever wit. She was as funny as she was intelligent: a very rare and uniquely special person. Her individualistic interpretation and colourful performances were so distinctive that many composers -- Berio, Bussotti, Cage, Henze, Maderna and Stravinsky (amongst many others including the author Anthony Burgess) composed for her inimitable capacities and talent. Cathy Berberian invented the new vocal techniques, 'la nuova vocalità'. She unsettled encroached conservative conceptions by sheer individuality, talent and ability. Her capacities as an actress were as dazzling as her musicianship, according to Peter Brooke with whom she worked. She shook free Monteverdi from years of dust and reached across centuries of répertoire to the avant-garde of her day, ennobling Kurt Weil, Folk Music and The Beatles en passant. Cathy was a true multiartist with a comparativist perspective and philosophy, the centrepin of which was: There is no division between the Arts -- there is good and there is bad; nothing else! She appreciated all genres of music and art inside a multi-disciplinary concept. To be aware, to appreciate, to be forever inquisitive upon a deeper level of study and social history were her prerequisites for work within every discipline. She acted, translated, composed, researched brilliant programmes and filed her work in a pre-computer age inside her head and paper folders. Cathy Berberian's rightful place as Muse to the evolution of Music in the second half of the twentieth century is yet to be fully appreciated. Source: Jennifer I Paull, Vouvry, Switzerland, in an article from 6 March 2008, in Music and Vision. Visit my recent post "Luciano Berio - Cathy Berberian - Recital I for Cathy in the Kammermusikkammer
Reinecke is best known (if at all) today as a composer. He was also a highly regarded pianist and conductor, and he has the honour of being the oldest pianist to commit any performance to a recording. He made no acoustic recordings, but made a number of piano rolls for the Welte reproducing piano. This system captured dynamics, pedalling and attack of notes. It did not satisfactorily reproduce the tonal variations or the subtle inner voicings within chords so well. Bad rolls, or badly adjusted reproducing equipment can easily lead to rhythmically lumpy playback or other aberrations, leading to a bad name for piano rolls amongst many critics. However, in a good reproduction the recording can be very fine, and convincing.
This performance is Reinecke's transcription of the slow movement Larghetto from Mozart's Piano Concerto in D K.537. The roll dates from 1905, towards the end of Reinecke's life.
Robert Volkmann: "Romance" op. 7 for Cello and Piano, Peter Bruns / "Ex Pablo Casals" Tononi cello 1730 Annegret Kuttner / piano world premiere performance
Many new lossless classical music blogs occurred since my last notification in September 2010. Finally I found time to tabulate the first bunch (of two) for your convenience.
All figures and ciphers are very about. No harms indended!
Please - what is the name of the picture you use at the top of your kammermusikkammer blog - the one with musicians seen from below around wooden railings? And who is the artist? many thanks Stuart Hall
Reply:
Gerrit van HONTHORST (b. 1590, Utrecht, d. 1656, Utrecht) Musical Group on a Balcony 1622 Fresco Private collection
