Twentieth Century

Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim

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Stephen Sondheim, the American composer and lyricist, celebrates his 87th birthday today. Last summer, there were rumors that a new Sondheim show, currently in the “workshop” phase, would open this year, off-Broadway. With or without a new work, Sondheim’s contribution to American musical theater is undeniable. With Sondheim, the modern, plot-driven musical (a genre which emerged with Jerome Kern’s 1927 Show Boat and matured with Rodgers and Hammerstein) reached its zenith. Sondheim scores such …

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Salut Printemps: Debussy’s Music of Spring

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I would like to paint the way a bird sings. -Claude Monet Nature’s colorful reawakening in springtime was a significant influence for French impressionist painter Claude Monet. (Monet’s 1886 Springtime is pictured above). Claude Debussy (1862-1918) may be the composer who mirrors most clearly the atmosphere of Monet’s paintings. In fact, the descriptive titles of Debussy’s pieces often are suggestive of titles you might associate with works of visual art. Debussy’s piano student Madame Gérard …

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Percy Grainger: Irish Tune from County Derry

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I have vague, early childhood memories of hearing my dad play trombone in Dr. Harry Begian’s band at the University of Illinois. Begian, who passed away in 2010, was the University’s Director of Bands between 1970 and 1984. He favored the full, majestic “symphonic band” sound over the leaner sound of a wind ensemble. He recounted stories of sneaking into Detroit’s Symphony Hall as a child to watch the great “old school” maestros of …

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Anne-Sophie Mutter Plays Takemitsu

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At the end of April, German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will be appearing with conductor Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony. The program will pair the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with an exciting lesser-known work: Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu’s Nostalghia for solo violin and orchestra, written in 1987 in memory of the Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky. Takemitsu was inspired by Tarkovsky’s use of wide, long, gradually unfolding landscape shots. Here is what Mutter said about the piece in a Huffington …

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Barber’s Second Essay: Mid-Century American Romanticism

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Samuel Barber (1910-1981) composed his first piece, a 23-measure piano composition in C minor called Sadness, at the age of seven. At the age of nine he wrote this precocious letter: Dear Mother: I have written this to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now without any nonsense. To begin with I …

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Barbara Bonney: Samuel Barber’s Four Songs, Op. 13

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Think twentieth-century music and what comes to mind? Probably the atonal serialism of Arnold Schoenberg, Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, or Karlheinz Stockhausen, along with the witty, neoclassical utterances of Stravinsky. But we should never forget that twentieth-century music is also the distinctive, Neo-Romantic voice of American composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Perhaps no composer in the twentieth century contributed to the genre of the art song more profoundly than Barber, who seems to have inherited the …

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The 2017 Oscars: Nominees for Best Original Score

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The 89th Academy Awards are coming up this Sunday. Here are some excerpts from this year’s nominees for “Best Original Score: “Moonlight” (Nicholas Britell) Nicholas Britell’s score for Moonlight alters and manipulates sound in a way that is similar to expressive techniques used in cinematography. In this interview with The Frame, the Juilliard-trained pianist and composer said, Barry [Jenkins, the director] told me right from the beginning about his love of “chopped and screwed” music, which …

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