Reality Check on Charting in the Classical Recording Biz

My jaw is still pretty well dropped after reading this article by Anne Midgette in the Washington Post this afternoon.

The Running Joke about Television in 1962

Fifty years later, has it come to pass?

I knew nothing at all about television--other than the running joke that this fabulous new medium would thrive on how-to and pornography programs--but in June 1962 I taped the three experimental half-hour shows or pilots, that WGBH had suggested.

WGBH, Channel 2, was Boston's fledgling public TV station. It didn't have much mazuma and was mostly run by volunteers, but they had managed to cobble together a few hundred dollars to buy some videotape. Russell (Russ) Morash, producer of Science Reporter would be our producer-director, and Ruthie Lockwood, who had worked on a series about Eleanor Roosevelt, would be our assistant producer. Ruthie scrounged up a sprightly tune to use as our theme song. And after considering dozens of titles, we decided to call our little experiment The French Chef until we could come up with something better.

From My Life in France by Julia Child

Banjo and Fiddle à la Lucy

Lucille Ball obviously isn't playing in the above clip, but the way she holds the fiddle (nails aside) and the bow, shows that she might indeed have taken violin lessons at some point in her life.

And here she is playing the banjo (or looking like she's playing it).

Here's her comedy with a cello.

This clip has bits from the above episode, partially shot in color by an audience member at the "club." The color bits are edited into the video. And there is some more color footage from the "I Love Lucy" here too.

More Photos of Amanda Maier and her Family

Amanda Maier's great grandson Fridtjof Thaidens sent more family photographs! He also identified some of the people in the photographs in a previous post about Amanda Maier. If you haven't read it yet, make sure to read this post about her as well.


Amanda's father, Carl Edward Maier who like his daughter passed the "Musik-direktor" exam in Stockholm (1852). He was the son and grandson of a schoolmaster in Riedlingen in the former kingdom of Wuertemberg in Germany.


Amanda with her eldest son Julius Jr., Fridtjof Thiadens' father.


Julius Jr. with his Norwegian wife, and Agnes Roentgen in New York where they lived from 1908 to 1913. Julius Jr. was the second violinist in the famous Kneisel Quartet, from 1907-1912 traveling through all of North America playing the Stradivarius that he inherited from his grandfather, Engelbert Roentgen Sr.



The two sons of Amanda in Woodstock USA 1947:  Julius Roentgen Jr. (with the violin) and Engelbert Roentgen Jr. (with the cello). At the beginning of World War I Engelbert escaped to America. He subsequently returned with the U.S. army to France, playing as cellist for the generals, and as trumpeter for the troops. He worked all his life in America, mainly as first cellist in the New York Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

A Clavichord Changes Hands in 1781

Stephen Hough and Pianiastic Gaydar

I don't know if I agree with his argument, but the comments on this article by Stephen Hough are fascinating.

Thank You Howard Zinn

Nobody lives forever. But Howard Zinn, who lived until today, and made the very most of his 87 years, will (in a way). He changed the way we look at history, and the way we think about history. He redefined the meaning of activism, and was the most eloquent of critics. His work will always be current, even if he is no longer here to do it himself.

I was introduced to the work of Howard Zinn by David Dubal. After he told me about A People's History of the United States, I immediately went to the library to find it. On the same shelf (in the Zinn section), I saw a small play called "Emma" which I hoped would be about Emma Goldman, one of my personal heroes. It was. I was very excited. I checked out both books, and read the play first.

The Emma Goldman in his play was the Emma Goldman I "knew" from reading everything she ever wrote and everything written about her. The play was deeply musical, but it needed actual music. I wrote to Howard Zinn and asked his permission to make the play into an opera, and he was very excited about the idea.

I sent him tapes of scenes as I did them (with me singing all the parts), and he was very encouraging. He loved to hear Emma sing (even if it was with my voice). When the opera was finished (it took nearly a year, and hundreds of email messages) he tried to get it performed in Boston, but was discouraged to find that nobody, even his close friends, even people who closely associated with the play, would take the financial risk to produce an opera by an unknown composer. I tried everything I could to have a performance in Illinois, but I didn't have success here either. I even sent a score and parts to an old friend who teaches music at a high school in Newton, Mass (the city where I grew up, and the city where Howard lived), but nothing came of it.

We donated the score and parts to the Emma Goldman Papers Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and put PDF files of all the music (full score, piano score, and parts) on the Werner Icking Music Archive with the hope that someone would consider performing the opera. I had hoped that it would be performed during Howard's lifetime, and it makes me very sad to know for sure that it is no longer a possibility.

I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to work on this project with Howard.

Here's more about Emma.

Dussek's Tribute to Marie Antoinette

The piece is also know as "Le mort de Marie Antoinette" or "Le tableau Marie Antoinette." Marie Antoinette was a pianist from Vienna who had the bad luck to marry into the French royal family at the wrong time. The program for this piece is taken from the information on YouTube (so you can listen from here without missing any vital programmatic information).

The wigged pianist is Richard Pohl.

The Queen's Imprisonment (Largo)
She reflects on her former greatness (Maestosamente; doloroso)
They separate her from her children (Agitato Assai)
The Farewell of her children (Andante)
They pronounce the sentence of death (Allegro con furio)
Her resignation to her fate (Allegro Innocente)
The situation and reflections the night before her execution (Andante agitato)
The Guards come to conduct her to the place of Execution
They enter the Prison door March (Lento)
The savage tumult of the rabble (Presto Furioso)
The Queens invocation to the Almighty just before her death (Molto Adagio Devotamente)
The Guillotine drops (yes, at the point of the keyboard-wide glissando)
The Apotheosis (Allegro Maestoso)

By the way, it seems that she never did say, "let them eat cake."

Ralph Kirkpatrick on Rhythm

From Ralph Kirkpatrick's biography of Domenico Scarlatti:

It must not be forgotten that the ear is not necessarily a mathematical instrument. What is important to the ear is not necessarily measurable in terms of the metronome: it is what sounds ordered and exact. Like the eye, the ear is constantly capable of being tricked. As visual impressions constantly have to be corrected to ensure their desired effect on the eye, straight lines altered into slight curves in order to appear straight, so aural impressions, constantly qualified by varying musical elements and by acoustical effects, frequently need adjustment to meet the terms of the ear. The ear does not demand literal exactness any more than the eye demands geometrical precision. It demands the impression of a constant and unchanging set of proportions and dimensions, even though they may frequently be at variance with the physical reality.

You can hear him demonstrate his ideas about rhythm here.

Julia Child's Reaction to Failure

Failure is a harsh word. It is a four-letter word with a three-letter appendage. I don't like to use it, and I don't like to experience it, though I have. Noble and stoic reactions to failure are, I suppose, something that should be admired. But my deepest admiration goes to Julia Child, and the way she describes her reaction to not being able to answer some written questions on her final exam at the Cordon Bleu. The scene is touched upon in Julie and Julia, but only Julia Child's own words will do for me. This is an excerpt from My Life in France.

My disgruntlement was supreme, my amour-propre enraged, my bile overboiling. Worst of all, it was my own fault!

I despaired that the school would ever deign to grant me a certificate. Me, who could pluck, flame, empty, and cut up a whole chicken in twelve minutes flat! Me, who could stuff a sole with forcemeat of weakfish and serve it with a sauce au vin blanc such as Madame Brassart could never hope to taste the perfection of! Me, the Supreme Mistress of mayonnaise, hollandaise, cassoulets, charcroutes, blanquettes de veau, pommes de terre Anna, souflé grand Marnier, fonds d'artichauts, oignons glacés, mousse de faisan en gelée, ballottines, galantines, terrines, pâtés . . . Me, alas!

Later that afternoon, I slipped down to the Cordon Bleu's basement kitchen by myself. I opened the school's booklet, found the recipes from the examination--oeufs mollets with sauce béarnaise, côtelettes de veau en surprise, and crème renversée au caramel--and whipped them all up in a cold, clean fury. Then I ate them.

J.J. Rousseau's Dictionary of Music

I imagine you will want to spend hours looking through this English translation of Jean Jacques Rousseau's famous musical dictionary


Drat! I have places to go and things to do, so I had better bid Rousseau's dictionary "adieux" (for now). "Jargon," the entry that follows "Jar" is quite interesting. Everything here is interesting . . . Perhaps I might take one more peek.

A Moment (actually five minutes) of Real Beauty

My Kitchen, Julia Child's Kitchen

What a thrill to watch tapes of the first French Chef shows and see that they could easily have taken place in our kitchen. We even had a brown GE oven (circa 1959) like that one until about two years ago.

For the proper musical ambiance, listen to the show's first theme song which starts about 17 seconds in. WGBH obviously modernized her kitchen by the time she made the egg show, and eventually they changed theme songs when they went to color. The music starts at about 29 seconds.

And now you can watch Julia Child playing around with editing a videotape of an orchestral concert:

Photos of Amanda Maier

Thanks to André and Frederik, our blog-reading friends in Sweden, we now have a motherlode of photos of Amanda Maier to supplement this earlier post about her, and a huge thanks to Amanda Maier's great grandson Fridtjof Thiadens for identifying the other people in the photographs.



(There's sure to be some kind of a story behind this one.)






(Amanda with violin, the soprano Louise Pyk standing, the pianist Augusta Kiellander at the piano, and Amanda's father Carl Edvard Maier standing.

(These people were probably Swedish relatives or friends. Amanda's mother was the youngest daughter of Anders Nillson Sjöbeck, blacksmith of the village Tirup near Landskrona. All Sjöbeck's were blacksmiths, farriers, veterinarians and served in times of war in the South Skaane cavalry- and dragoon regiments since the 16the century.)

This portrait must be of Amanda Maier with her soon-to-be husband Julius Röntgen. Here's another photo of him.

(Amanda was already Ill here.)

Rameau-ver the Top

. . . and again in costume