Female musicians in the United States have gone from playing piano in their families' drawing rooms during the early 20th century to conducting or composing for some of the country's most renowned orchestras today. But it hasn't been an easy road to travel. Women who have faced incidents of prejudice in their careers as musicians recount the hurdles they've had to overcome in Instrumental Womenâa two-hour radio special that celebrates women's contributions to 20th century classical music.
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With the season of carols upon us, and our own Festival of Carols right around the corner, MPR asks VocalEssence Series Artistic Director (and annual Welcome Christmas! Carol Contest judge) Philip Brunelle to educate us on the sounds of Christmas.
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Over the years, Aaron Copland has been hailed as the quintessential American composer by everyone from Leonard Bernstein, who said, "He's the best we've got," to director Spike Lee, who paid musical tribute to Copland in his films. November 2000 marks the centenary of his birth - 100 years of Copland. To mark the occasion, we've come up with 10 nuggets about 10 aspects of the composer - 100 audio clips, anecdotes, quotes, and more.
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Like your Thanksgiving Day feast, Giving Thanks combines traditional fare with unexpected delights. For Thanksgiving 2000, we've invited some wonderful new guests to the program, including Studs Terkel, Tom Bodett, Lynne Rossetto-Kasper, Donald Hall, Bill Holm, and Ellen Kushner In addition to Garrison Keillor and Bill Moyers, a rare recording of Charles Laughton returns to Giving Thanks. His spellbinding story connects his personal discovery of Chartres Cathedral with an excerpt from Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and the 104th Psalm. It's a moving and powerful tale, giving thanks for the discovery that art connects us all to the creative spirit, offering a beautiful focus for the program and the day.
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Can you recommend some pieces of Halloween music? Some real scary ones? And so in that spirit, from the world of classical music, we bring you a passel of quirky, ghoulish and upsetting lore about the people who created it.
But be warned. There are no peeled grapes here. Everything you will read here is, as far as can be ascertained, quite true. If you prefer to think of Beethoven as a master musician who made important advances in the treatment of symphonic form, you may want to turn back at this point. But if you're curious who got hold of his skull in 1888. . . .
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The cultural rebelliousness lit by Jean Cocteau and driven by Erik Satie spawned the next batch of eccentrics from which Les Six, a new musical avant-garde led by Satie and consisting of Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Germaine Tailleferre, and Georges Auric, was born. Many of their early works were good-naturedly Dadaist and make witty use of quotation and parody, popular music-hall style as well as jazz - a self-consciously simple style reacting against both Romanticism and Impressionism.
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Sounds Irish features a sampling of Ireland's prominent classical artists and ensembles, presenting music by the National Symphony of Ireland, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, pianist John O'Conor, the RTE Vanbrugh String Quartet, choral phenomenon Anúna, and composer/pianist MÃcheál à Súilleabháin. Listeners will also enjoy host Tom Crann's conversations with several of the musicians.
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It's a scenario that plays out every year, and one in which you yourself may have been an observer, or even a participant.
The audience is assembled in the concert hall, or church, or school auditorium. The orchestra tunes, the conductor appears, the conversations come to a halt, there is a welcoming round of applause. The orchestra strikes up a brief, vigorous overture. Then the tenor soloist rises to his feet and intones the opening words, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people" - and another performance of Handel's Messiah is underway.
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ANTONÃN DVORÃK started life as the son of a peasant in the provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and ended it as one of the most famous musicians in the world, whose pieces were eagerly received by audiences in the capitals of Europe and America. And there can't be too many American music lovers, especially in the Midwest, who haven't thought about retracing some of the steps of the remarkable journey that Dvorák took to the United States in the 1890s.
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When you think about music and film directors, Alfred Hitchcock might not be the first name to come to mind. Stanley Kubrick was a greater recycler of classical music, Quentin Tarantino has done the same for Motown, Bergman and Zeffirelli have filmed more operas - and the list could continue. But Hitchcock has his share of big music moments. As the film world commemorates his 100th birthday on Friday, August 13, heres a chance to see how many you can identify.
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