music

Comparing four Beethoven recordings   Recently updated !

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I’ve never been very good at noticing differences in performances of classical pieces and picking a favorite. Occasionally one really jumps out, like the Zurich Tonhalle’s recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, but usually the differences are subtle. It takes careful listening even to notice that there are differences. As an exercise, I picked out four recordings of a piece I know well and listened to them repeatedly to compare them. There really are differences.

The piece I picked was Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. The recordings were:
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Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood

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That’s the exact title of the 1922 movie — Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood — that I’ll be accompanying at the Plaistow (NH) Library on January 13. They called it that because anyone could make a movie called “Robin Hood” to draw off confused moviegoers, but no one else could legally claim superstar Fairbanks was in it.

Many movies have been made about Robin Hood, and there’s no canonical story. Some emphasize his “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.” Others show him as a partisan of King Richard, fighting against the encroachments of Richard’s brother John. This movie is in the latter category. Robin Hood is the Earl of Huntingdon, fighting the tyranny John exercises while Richard is away for a Crusade. The first part of the movie shows John plotting for power and achieving it, and Huntingdon becomes Robin Hood only after reluctantly deserting his king. His chief enemies are Prince John and Guy of Gisbourne. The Sheriff of Nottingham is basically a walk-on part.
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New on YouTube: A Christmas Carol (1910) 2

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It’s that time of year, so I went looking for Christmas-themed silent movies. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was adapted multiple times. The earliest known version was directed by Walter R. Booth and released in 1901. It survives only in a five-minute fragment. A 1908 treatment is considered lost. That leaves Edison’s 1910 film as the earliest treatment that survives in a reasonably complete form. Marc McDermott is an enjoyable Scrooge, and Charles Ogle, better known as the first actor to portray Frankenstein’s monster on the screen, is Bob Cratchit. This is the film I’ve combined with my accompaniment on YouTube.
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In memoriam: Leslie Fish 4

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Leslie Fish, one of the best-known members of the filk music community, has died. She was talented, opinionated, outgoing, and just weird (in the best sense of the word). I didn’t know her well, but I’d seen, heard, and talked with her on many occasions. Other people who knew her better will write about her, but I should give my perspective here.

She appeared on the fannish scene around 1975. With a group called the DeHorn Crew, she produced a vinyl LP called Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain’t Even Been Yet. Another, Solar Sailors, came out the next year. The songs focused on Star Trek and space travel. In addition to being a fan, she was an anarcho-syndicalist, associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka the “Wobblies.” She was no fan of central economic planning, and her politics often ran in a libertarian direction.
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Hunchback of Notre Dame and the power of pianissimo

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The showing on October 28 where I accompanied the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame drew the biggest crowd I’ve had yet for a silent film, and I got lots of compliments afterward. With every movie, I try to improve my technique. The innovations for this show worked, as far as the audience and I were concerned.

There are many approaches to accompanying a movie. Some accompanists try to capture the sheer excitement, fear, and passion in each scene. My style is more introspective. I try to underscore what the characters are thinking and feeling. I go for excitement where it’s called for. In this movie, the siege of the cathedral, with Quasimodo conducting a one-man defense against a vast mob, called for thrilling music. But there are many scenes about what Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Phoebus, and other characters are experiencing. They call for more subtle music: contemplative passages, dynamic contrasts, and sudden accents and dissonances.
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Plaistow, October 28

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It’s time for another classic silent movie! On Tuesday, October 28, at 6 PM, I’ll accompany the 1923 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Plaistow, NH Library. Nearly half the available spaces have already been reserved, so be sure to sign up in advance. The film, based on Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris, highlights Lon Chaney’s makeup skills and his ability to win empathy for a deformed-looking character.

Hugo’s novel has been adapted many times for film. There were at least four before the Lon Chaney film. Charles Laughton, Anthony Quinn, and Anthony Hopkins are among the actors who have played Quasimodo. Disney turned it into a cartoon and compounded the blasphemy with a sequel where Quasimodo and Esmeralda are still alive. The 1923 version is widely considered one of the best adaptations.

Just by the way, I’ve noticed that the emailed version of these posts delivers the text only to the “More” marker and gives no clue that it’s incomplete. From now on, I’ll add an indicator that there’s more to the post, like this:

…….
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A week in Germany

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On Wednesday I returned from an eight-day trip to Germany, one day longer than planned. I was nervous about leaving and re-entering the US, and if I’d known when I made my reservations how fast things would get worse, I might have changed my mind. The US border has long been a Fourth Amendment-free zone, but now it’s First Amendment-free as well. Fortunately, I seem too obscure to bother with.

Delayed flights have become common. The closest airport to my destination was Hannover, which is relatively small, so I had to change flights both ways within Germany. In retrospect, I should have found a direct flight to a major city and taken the train the rest of the way. Trains are also horrible for delays, but there’s almost always a next one the same day if you miss a connection. If there’s an ICE train (Inter-City Express, no relation to the US gang) to your destination, it will get you there quickly without airport annoyances. Fortunately, there were no problems with changing planes in Munich.
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Tom Lehrer and Georg Kreisler

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Tom Lehrer’s satirical songs are familiar to many of you, I’m sure. Not many of you will have heard of another satirical songwriter, Georg Kreisler, if only because he wrote in German. If you’re American and have heard of him, it’s probably because of the striking similarities between two of his songs and two of Lehrer’s. Let’s take a look at them.
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“A Trip to the Moon” is now available on YouTube

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This morning I saw that my video of Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is no longer blocked on YouTube. Its status now says “Visibility restrictions are lifted until the dispute is resolved.” That means it could disappear again.

Again, the is the complete version, with a celebration at the end, and the accompaniment is my original, improvised music. I did a better job this time than in my earlier public performances.
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Tom Lehrer as composer 3

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A couple of days ago I was saddened but not surprised to learn that Tom Lehrer had died. He was 97 years old, after all. He remarked many years ago that “It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year,” but he went on to surpass the lifespans of nearly every well-known writer of music. Irving Berlin and Elliott Carter broke the century mark, but that’s about it. His songwriting career was only a short interlude in a long academic career, but his fans know nearly all of his thirty or so songs.

The lyrics of those songs are widely quoted and discussed, but not as much is said about his music. He set his satirical lyrics to tunes that are inventive, catchy, and full of solid musicianship. I’d like to say a few things about that music, to restore a bit of balance.
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