Four Centuries of Great Music May 11, 2025 Anniversaries of the May Births of Composers

FCGM-05-11-25-   May Birthdays


Louis Moreau GOTTSCHALK

Louis Moreau Gottschalk  was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 8, 1829 and was an composer, pianist, and virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works.  He started playing the piano early and was soon recognized as a prodigy by the New Orleans bourgeois establishment, making his informal public debut in 1840 at the new St. Charles Hotel.   Two years later, at the age of 13, Gottschalk left the United States and sailed to Europe, as he and his father realized a classical training was required to fulfill his musical ambitions. The Paris Conservatoire, however, rejected his application without hearing him, on the grounds of his nationality.  Gottschalk eventually gained access to the musical establishment through family friends, and important early compositions like Bamboula (Danse Des Nègres) and La Savane establish him as a genuinely American composer, and not a mere imitator of European compositions.   However he spent most of his professional life outside of the United States.

We open with

Louis Moreau GOTTSCHALK:  Symphony No. 1 - La Nuit Des Tropiques (A Night In the Tropics) - I. Noche en los Tropicos (A Night In the Tropics)
Louis Moreau GOTTSCHALK:  Symphony No. 1 - La Nuit Des Tropiques (A Night In the Tropics) - II. Festa Criolla


Hot Springs Music Festival Symphony Orchestra & Richard Rosenberg
Gottschalk: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2, Escenas Campestres Cubanas, Grande Tarentelle
Naxos

William Grant STILL

William Grant Still was born on May 11, 1895, in Woodville, Mississippi.   We have talked about him regularly on this program so lets dive into the music for today, his "Suite for Violin and Orchestra"

Originally written for violin and piano, William Grant Still's "Suite for Violin and Orchestra" was inspired by significant artists of the Harlem Renaissance.   Each of the three movements depict three sculptures created in the 1930s: Richmond Barthé’s African Dancer, Sargent Johnson’s Mother and Child, and Augusta Savage’s Gamin. The suite follows traditional fast-slow-fast Classical form. The first movement, African Dancer, illustrates the unrestrained urgency of the dancing figure using varying tempi and hints of the jazz. Mother and Child, later arranged for string orchestra alone, sings a gently syncopated melody in a soothing lullaby. The final movement, like the child in the sculpture Gamin, invokes mischievous and playful motifs with blues-infused fiddle techniques.


William Grant STILL:  Suite for Violin and Orchestra - African Dancer
William Grant STILL:  Suite for Violin and Orchestra - Mother and Child
William Grant STILL:  Suite for Violin and Orchestra - Gamin

Randall Goosby, violin and Zhu Wang, piano
Roots
Decca Classics


We will be closing this first hour celebrating the anniversaries of the birthdays of composers born in May with early baroque Italian Claudio MONTEVERDI.   MONTEVERDI was born in Cremona, and baptized on May 15,1567.  While he worked extensively in the tradition of earlier Renaissance polyphony, as evidenced in his madrigals, he undertook great developments in form and melody, and began to employ the basso continuo technique, distinctive of the Baroque. No stranger to controversy, he defended his sometimes novel techniques as elements of a seconda pratica, contrasting with the more orthodox earlier style which he termed the prima pratica. Largely forgotten during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries, his works enjoyed a rediscovery around the beginning of the twentieth century. He is now established both as a significant influence in European musical history and as a composer whose works are regularly performed and recorded.

Today we will be listening to the Magnificat from his larger work Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin.  

Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat - Magnificat
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat - Et exultavit
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat - Quia respexit
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Quia fecit mihi magna
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat - Et misericordia
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Fecit potentiam
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin: Magnificat -  Deposuit potentes de sede
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Esurientes implevit bonis
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Suscepit Israel
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Sicut locutus est
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Gloria Patri
Claudio MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin:  Magnificat -  Sicut erat in principio

The Scholars Baroque Ensemble
MONTEVERDI: Vespers Of The Blessed Virgin
Naxos


We open the second hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating the anniversaries of the births of composer born in May with the String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 of  Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD. KORNGOLD was born in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (present-day Brno, Czech Republic) on May 29, 1897.  He was a child prodigy praised by Mahler as a genius and his opera.  When he was 11, his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) became a sensation in Vienna.   He fled Europe with the rise of the Nazi’s and became an American citizen and famous film composer.  

Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD: String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10: I. Moderato – Allegro
Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD: String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10: II. Adagio
Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD: String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10: III. Intermezzo - Moderato, con grazia
Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD: String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10: IV. Finale - Presto


The Raphael Ensemble
Korngold: String Sextet - Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht
Hyperion Records

May is also the birth month of Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY, born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia.  We will close this episode of

Francesca Da Rimini, Op. 32
Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela & Gustavo Dudamel
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 & Francesca da Rimini
Deutsche Grammophon


Thank you for joining me today on Four Centuries of Great Music and join me again next Sunday at 3pm.