Category Archives: Literature

“I base my identity on being a composer, who does other things.” Ned Rorem

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Another birthday – it was Ned Rorem’s 90th yesterday..

It’s an occasion that would be easy to miss. Apart from some concerts here and there, there has not been a fanfare, or any special mention in the media for this prolific American composer and Pulitzer Prize winner.
He became notorious for his diaries published from the 1950s and he is far better known in certain circles for his literary work than as a composer. As he put it to the Paris Review in 1999, his early diaries were “filled with drunkenness, sex, and the talk of my betters.”
In an interview with WYNC’s Sarah Fishko in 2002 he reminisces about his teacher who introduced him to the music of Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel, and also pointedly adds

“I never go to classical concerts any more and I don’t know anyone who does. It’s hard still to care whether some virtuoso tonight will perform [Beethoven‘s] Moonlight Sonata a bit better or a bit worse than another virtuoso performed it last night.”

Here is the full article celebrating his achievements by of NPR Classical.

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“Without music, life would be a mistake” – Friedrich Nietzsche

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Just a nod in the direction of the German philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer, Friedrich Nietzsche, whom many remember for his declaration “God is dead”.

It’s his 113th birthday today (Nietzsche’s) and is celebrated by the Google Doodle.

Nietzsche made quite an impact on composers during the 1890s.  Continue reading →

Reißiger’s Waltz

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When Carl Maria von Weber died in 1826, amongst his belongings was a manuscript which came to be known as “Weber’s Last Waltz” although it was actually by Carl Gottlieb Reißiger an ex-student of Salieri who succeeded Weber as Kappellmeister at the court of Dresden.
This waltz became extremely popular amongst pianists, and is primarily of interest to guitarists because it was the favourite piece of the eponymous Roderick Usher of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”
“his heart is a suspended lute, as soon as it is touched, it resounds” -quote from “Le Refus” (1831) by the French songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857)

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James Joyce’s guitar chord

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Continuing my occasional foray into the guitar in literature, here is a famous picture of the author of “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” presumably trying out a tune before a session (or maybe about to smash the guitar in frustration). In fact, Joyce was reputed to have had a fine tenor voice, and the singer John McCormack offered to teach him, encouraging him to take music as a career.

The original photo, taken by Ottocaro Weiss ,a friend who was “scandalized” by Joyce’s guitar playing, is housed in Cornell’s James Joyce collection, in an exhibit in a glass closet titled “Poetry and Music.”

Joyce

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Frankenstein’s guitar, Shelley to van Halen

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With news that scientists have succeeded in growing a mini brain in a Petri dish, Mary Shelley’s “creature” might well be on the way to being created in a lab.
Mary Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
For our purposes, she was also married to the man who wrote a rather soppy poem about the guitar to Jane Williams with whom he was infatuated when his marriage was on the rocks.He was particularly taken by her musical gifts and skill as a housewife. Gadzooks! What a piece of male chauvinist lumber!
He was even too cheap to buy her what she really wanted, which was a harp from his friend Horace Smith in Paris, and when this proved too expensive gave her a guitar made in Pisa by Ferdinando Bottari around 1815. ‘I have contrived to get my musical coals at Newcastle itself’, he told Smith.
Shelley's guitar

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