The Life and Music of Lili Boulanger
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Release Date: 07/04/2024
Brahms Clarinet Quintet
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
The muses were Ancient Greek goddesses of inspiration. Throughout history, the term muse has been used to describe any number of people, all of whom inspired works of great art and/or literature. In the popular imagination, muses are almost always women, inspiring brilliant men to their greatest artistic achievements. Why am I bringing this up? Because in the case of the piece we are going to talk about today, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, the muse, and the source of inspiration, was very different. In 1890, Brahms retired from composing. In a way this was very rare. Composers very rarely...
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Politics in Classical Music
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Classical music and politics have never been easy bedfellows. Composers and performers throughout history have relied on patronage and support from wealthy sources in order to keep their dreams afloat, and so unlike many other forms of music, classical music often has the reputation of being a politics-free zone. But the truth is that there is a whole repertoire of classical music that is infused with politics, and not just music from the 20th and 21st centuries. Today, with the American election looming just around the corner, we'll explore a series of pieces that all had political messages,...
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Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from Westside Story
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
The original production of Westside Story ran for 732 performances, spawned a movie that won 11 Academy Awards, and is still a go to on every list of the greatest Broadway Musicals ever written. The collaboration between Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins was a revolution on par with the collaborations of Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Nijinsky on the Rite of Spring. No Broadway show had ever been so gritty, so tragic, and so raw. The first performances of Westside Story were done against the backdrop of a rise in gang violence in New York City. The...
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A Conversation with Composer Caroline Shaw
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Caroline Shaw is one of the most fascinating, innovative, and brilliant composers of our time. Since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, she rocketed onto the scene and has stayed there ever since, writing music that has captivated audiences around the world. In this conversation, which dates back to 2020(so there is a bit of pandemic talk at the beginning), we talked about her musical upbringing, the shock and surprise of her Pulitzer win, her compositional process, and much much more. This was a really fun and edifying conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
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Ives Three Places in New England
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
In 1929, the conductor Nicolas Slonimsky contacted the American composer Charles Ives about performing one of his works. This was a bit of a surprise for Ives, since he had a checkered reputation among musicians and audience members, if they even were familiar with his name at all. In fact, he was much more famous during his lifetime as an extremely successful insurance executive! Ives mostly composed in his spare time, and his music was mostly ignored or ridiculed as that of a person suffering from a crisis of mental health. Most of his music was never performed during his lifetime, and even...
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William Grant Still Symphony No. 1, "Afro-American"
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Fundraiser link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1026719635067?aff=oddtdtcreator On October 29th, 1931, The Rochester Philharmonic in New York State presented the world premiere of a new symphony by the composer William Grant Still. A symphonic premiere is always something to look out for in musical history, but this one had an even greater significance. The premiere of Wiliam Grant Still’s First Symphony, subtitled “Afro American,” was the first time a symphony written by a Black American composer was performed by a leading orchestra. William Grant Still was a man of many...
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Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
"It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise.... And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached...
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Bartok Violin Concerto No. 2
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
During Bartok’s life, the violin concerto we now know as Violin Concerto No. 2 was simply known as Bartok’s only violin concerto. The reason? His first concerto, written when he was a much younger man, had never been performed or published. This was a deeply painful memory for Bartok, who had written the concerto for a woman he was in love with, Stefi Geyer, but Geyer refused both Bartok’s advances and the concerto itself, and so it remained unperformed and unpublished until after Bartok’s death. Bartok had written other works for violin and orchestra, including a rhapsody written for...
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Dvorak Symphony No. 7
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
In December of 1884, Dvorak wrote to a friend about the composition of a new symphony: "I am now busy with this symphony for London, and wherever I go I can think of nothing else. God grant that this Czech music will move the world!!" He was in the midst of working on what would become his 7th symphony, and even though it is nowhere near as popular as his 9th symphony(The New World Symphony) or even the sunny 8th symphony, it is often thought of as Dvorak’s greatest symphony, and for the record, I agree. This symphony is Dvorak at his most serious, most passionate, and most intense....
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Shostakovich Symphony No. 4
Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast
Shostakovich’s 4th symphony is not for the faint of heart. It is a massive work, around an hour in length, and it calls for the second largest orchestra of any in Shostakovich’s output. It is uncompromising, sometimes brutal, and it isn't nearly as lyrical that later Shostakovich has in spades. But with all that said, many people, including myself, consider this symphony Shostakovich’s symphonic masterpiece. It has been described as the symphony containing the kernels of everything Shostakovich would ever write after. It also marks the final piece Shostakovich wrote before his 1936...
info_outlineThe history of classical music is littered with the stories of great composers who tragically died young. The composer I’ve been talking about for the last two episodes, Franz Schubert, died at 31. Mozart died at 36, Mendelssohn at 38, Bizet at 37, Gershwin at 38, Gideon Klein at 25, Purcell at 36. The composer I will tell you about today is part of this sad list. Lili Boulanger, one of the most talented and promising composers of her era, died at the age of just 24, and her entire life since the age of 2 was marked by illness and poor health. In her short life she wrote around 24 works, many of which show extraordinary prowess for such a young composer. Boulanger was the first woman to win the famous Prix de Rome, a French composition prize won by past luminairies such as Berlioz, Gounod, Debussy, Faure, Massenet, and many other greats of French composition. It was also won by Boulanger’s father, a story we’ll get to as we go through Boulanger’s life. Her music was marked by the influences of impressionism, but also by the influence of her perhaps more well known sister, Nadia, who became a legendary composition teacher throughout the 20th century. Today I’ll take you through some of the key moments in Boulanger’s life, and we’ll also take a look at 3 of her pieces: Les Sirenes, Faust Et Helene, the piece that won Boulanger the Prix de Rome, written when she was just 18, and we’ll finish with an orchestral piece that might be the most frequent way you might encounter Boulanger’s music in the concert hall these days entiled D’un Matin de Printemps. Boulanger, despite her short life, is one of hte most fascinating and underrated musical figures in classical music history, so if you aren’t already familiar with her music, I can’t wait to introduce you to her this week. Join us!
A big thank you to Thomas Goss for his research on Lili Boulanger - his fantastic article on her is available here: https://orchestrationonline.com/lili-boulanger-in-her-own-right/
Performances:
Les Sirenes: Chorus: Philharmonia Chor Stuttgart with Helene Schneiderman, mezzo-soprano and Émile Naoumoff, piano
Faust Et Helene: Ann Murray (mezzo-soprano), Bonaventura Bottone (tenor), Jason Howard (baritone), BBC Philharmonic, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Conductor
D'un Matin de Printemps: BBC Philharmonic, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Conductor