ARNOLD SCHOENBERG ~ September 13, 1874 ~ July 13, 1951

Arnold Schoenberg (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. He used the spelling Schönberg until after his move to the United States in 1934 (Steinberg 1995, 463), "in deference to American practice" (Foss 1951, 401), though one writer claims he made the change a year earlier (Ross 2007, 45).

Schoenberg was known early in his career for successfully extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic traditions of both Brahms and Wagner, and later and more notably for his pioneering innovations in atonality. During the rise of the Nazi party in Austria, his music was labeled, alongside swing and jazz, as degenerate art. In the 1920s, he developed the twelve-tone technique, a widely influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation, and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea. Schoenberg's approach, both in terms of harmony and development, is among the major landmarks of 20th century musical thought; at least three generations of composers in the European and American traditions have consciously extended his thinking and, in some cases, passionately reacted against it.

Schoenberg was also a painter, an important music theorist, and an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, and many other prominent musicians. Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method, and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many of the 20th century's significant musicologists and critics, including Theodor Adorno, Charles Rosen, and Carl Dahlhaus.

Schoenberg's archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com

A Birthday in Edinburgh

Today is my friend Martin Krupa's birthday. He stayed in the Venetian room in my flat for two summers while on holiday from graduate school. He was working on his doctorate from the University in Bratislava, Slovakia. He works at a fine hotel in Edinburgh, where he lived with his sister, just recently licensed as a medical doctor.  I met Martin through my Polish friend Adam.

Martin was best friend to my three dogs, dear Rose, Prince Rupert, and Renzo. In fact, I called her 'dear' Rose because that's what Martin always called her. Unfortunately she left us just before Thanksgiving two years ago. He also was a very special friend to my Rupert. For the previous two summers Martin had an early job at the Chancellor Hotel on Powell Street near Union Square. When he got off work in the afternoon, he'd come home and take the dogs to Dolores Park and play ball with Rupert for several hours at a time. Of course, Rupert adored Martin. Renzo got to know him when Martin house sat for me during my holiday in Italy three years ago last September and October.

six years ago, I was getting ready to go on a music holiday with Chanticleer to Vienna, Prague and Budapest. I flew into Vienna a few days early, took a bus to Bratislava, and spent the weekend with Martin. Bratislava is a charming city -- the capital of Slovakia. It was Alexander Dubcek's hometown. It has a handsomely restored historical area.

My weekend visit included a Sunday afternoon and evening in Vienna, which is very close by train. We had a pleasant visit with two of his Viennese friends. After returning to Bratislava Sunday evening, I went back to Vienna on Monday morning, checked into my hotel, and had a delightful visit to Schloss Schonbrunn before joining the Chanticleer tour.

Martin is a good guy and I wish him well on his birthday! His friend Susan from the Chancellor Hotel extends her birthday greetings as well!

GUSTAV MAHLER ~~ July 7, 1860 ~ May 18, 1911

Gustav Mahler; (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Bohemian-Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in humble circumstances, Mahler showed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

Mahler's oeuvre is relatively small—for much of his life composing was a part-time activity, secondary to conducting—and is confined to the genres of symphony and song, except for one piano quartet. Most of his ten symphonies are very large-scale works, several of which employ soloists and choirs in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and were slow to receive critical and popular approval; an exception was the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Mahler's immediate musical successors were the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955, to honour the composer's life and work.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

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Mahler is one of my favorite composers. I sang in the chorus for the Second Symphony with the Yale Symphony Orchestra back in college. Later I sang it again with the San Francisco Symphony. I sang in the chorus for the Eight Symphony for the opening of Davies Symphony Hall, I think in 1980. Both of those are thrilling choral-orchestral works. My favorite sections of Mahler, however, are the Adagios, particularly the last movement of the Third and Ninth Symphonies -- also the slow movement of the Sixth.

CHANTICLEER at MUSIKVEREIN Vienna 2008

photo.static.guim.co.uk

Just one year ago, I was with Chanticleer on a concert tour of Central Europe. They gave a marvelous concert at the Musikverein in Vienna. That's the hall where PBS shows the annual New Year's Eve Concert.