No, it's not the actual greatest generation. Even if that existed, this might not be it, and even if it were, how can one prove it? There is no 'greatest' anything in art, one can't quantify quality, one can only talk about various kinds of greatness. Perhaps people can objectively value one kind of greatness over another as being more essential to our quality of life, but even if we could, how do we quantify an essence?
Perhaps the only way to do so is by its uniqueness. And in the sense of what is unique, this period of composition - composers born between 1855 and 1885, is in many ways the most unique for reasons which we can get further into over these dozens of episodes. The basic thesis is this: 'absolute music' was so important to the life of the middle class over the long 19th century that this music, with its definite rules of tonality and sonata form, with its millions of amateurs who mastered instruments and learned to be musically literate just as they were literate in any language, accumulated ever new ways to be complex and unique until the invention of the electronic recording, which completely changed our relationship to music. Musicians and music lovers who did not remember a time when we could listen to music without playing it thought of music differently, wrote music differently, played music differently, listened to music differently. The era from which they emerged was a long and glorious sunset. With the dawn comes the excitement and hope for ever new possibilities, but also the necessity of re-learning from scratch everything we once thought we knew.
Each of these podcasts will be no more than an hour long, with many recorded illustrations:
Unfinished Beginnings: Mussorgsky
Unfinished Beginnings: Bizet
Elgar the Pilgrim
Imperial Elgar:
Unimperial Elgar:
Verismo:
Verismo: Cav and Pag
Verismo in Puccini:
Modern Puccini:
Mahler: Origins
Mahler: Originality
Mahler: Vienna
Mahler: Farewells
Mahler: The Anxiety of Influence
Debussy: Musical Stasis
Debussy: Musical Color
Debussy: Musical White and Black
Debussy: The Anxiety of Influence
Strauss: The New Poem
Strauss: The New Poem II
Strauss: Operatic Radical
Strauss: Operatic Conservative
Strauss: Collaborator and Mourner
Janacek: A Different Modernity
Janacek: Folklorist
Janacek: Slavophile
Janacek: The Power of Speech
Janacek: Old Man in Love
Delius in France
Delius in Germany
Delius and Fenby
Sibelius: Voice of a Nation
Sibelius: Ainola - Retreat to the Forest
Sibelius and the Gods
Sibelius in the Theater
Sibelius: The Road to Silence
Nielsen: Psychology
Nielsen at War
Nielsen: Tonality, Clarity, Strength
Busoni: The Piano Transcriber
Busoni Goes Home
Busoni's Faust
Busoni: That Piano Concerto
Koechlin: Forgotten Genius
Koechlin: Pantheist
Koechlin: Time Becomes Space
Koechlin: The Jungle Book
Koechlin: Hollywood
Schmitt: Imperial France
Joplin: American Bach
Joplin: Treemonisha
Beach: American Women
Price: African-American Women
Taneyev: The Russia that Was
Glazunov: The Russia that Was II
Arensky and Ivanov: The Russia that Was III
Zemlinsky: The Dwarf
Zemlinsky: Viennese Eros
Schrecker: Viennese Eros II
Schmidt: Viennese Eros III
Mystic Holst
Rural Holst
Choral Holst
Vaughan Williams at Cambridge
Vaughan Williams in France
Vaughan Williams's Women
Vaughan Williams in the Home Office
Vaughan Williams: The Lion in Winter
Reger: Variations on the Classical
Reger: Variations on the Baroque
Scriabin: Divinity
Scriabin: Ecstasy
Scriabin: Fire
Scriabin: Toward the Flame
Rachmaninov: Gold Watches and Hypnosis
Rachmaninov: Voluntary Exile
Rachmaninov: Involuntary Exile
Ives in New England
Ives in Concord
Ives in New York
Ives in the Transcendent
Ives: The Anxiety of Influence
Ravel: The Apache
Ravel at the Opera-Comique
Ravel and His Mother
Ravel at War
Ravel: Le Jazz
Falla and Albeniz
Falla: Spanish Phantoms
Falla's Musical Puppets
Schoenberg: An Irritating Young Man
Schoenberg: Free Classical
Schoenberg: Other Planets
Schoenberg: The Twelve Commandments
Schoenberg: Arnie in America
Schoenberg: Arnie and Adolph
Respighi in Rome
Respighi in History
Respighi in Concert Mode
Bartok: No Hungarian Rhapsodies
Bartok: Rejected Love
Bartok: A Little Night Music
Bartok's Children
Bartok: East Meets West
Bartok in America
Bloch: Judaism Speaks
Bloch: Time Becomes Space
Bloch and the Quartet
Foulds: Forgotten Genius
Foulds: Mystic Researcher
Foulds: The World Requiem
The Kodaly Method
The Kodaly Voice
Szymanowski in France
Szymanowski's Men
Szymanowski in Poland
Stravinsky: Firebird
Stravinsky: Petrushka
Stravinsky: The Rite
Stravinsky: Leaving Russia
Stravinsky: Here Time Becomes Space
Stravinsky and God
Stravinsky and Gods
Stravinsky vs. Schoenberg
Stravinsky: The Anxiety of Influence
Villa Lobos and Bach
Villa Lobos and Brazil
Villa Lobos and Europe
Villa Lobos and the Guitar
Bax: Englishman Gone Irish
Bax: English Institution
Berg: Old Vienna
Berg: Wozzeck
Berg: Lulu
Berg: The Memory of an Angel
Berg: The Anxiety of Influence
Webern: Here Time Becomes Space
Webern and Science
Webern: Brevity is the Soul of...
Still need places for: Magnard, Dukas*, Bridge*, Suk*, Godowsky, Enescu*, Gliere, Kalinnkov, Liadov, Medtner, Myaskovsky, Stenhammer, Alfven, Wellesz, Casella, Braunfels, Albeniz*, Granados
Still need places for: Magnard, Dukas*, Bridge*, Suk*, Godowsky, Enescu*, Gliere, Kalinnkov, Liadov, Medtner, Myaskovsky, Stenhammer, Alfven, Wellesz, Casella, Braunfels, Albeniz*, Granados
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