I occasionally play organ music to accompany silent films (and did so at a concert yesterday evening). When I do this, I like to steal borrow melodies from other composers. One of the pieces I used last night was Csárdás – though I admit that I knew nothing about the piece or its composer. (I’ll never forget the first time I heard it, though, under a funny circumstance***).

So here it is: Vittorio Monti‘s only lasting contribution to the Art Music world – but it’s a good one!

*** The funny circumstance: I was teaching at a university, and giving a final exam in Music Theory. The students were silent, hard at work, concentrating deeply. Suddenly, music broke out from the practice room next door – it was a marimba playing the fast section of Csárdás. The music can be a bit silly to begin with, and having it break the solemn silence of an exam made all the students’ heads pop up, eyes wide open – and then we all had a good laugh. I guess you had to be there.

Amy Beach was the first successful female American composer. She remains unsung today, but ironically this has less to do with her sex than it has to do with the year she was born.

Beach was one of the members of the “Boston Six” – Six American composers whose musical success marked a new era for Art Music in the US. After centuries of being considered a backwards musical wasteland, the United States was finally on the Art Music map. So what happened? Why are the Boston Six not household names? Well, their writing was very rooted in the European style (German, specifically), and there is little that is uniquely American about their music. This wasn’t a big deal during the height of their careers; but soon afterwards they became completely overshadowed by two things: Charles Ives and Jazz. Ives became the poster-boy for academic, aloof, cultivated Art Music, while Jazz quickly became the defining American musical idiom.

Back to Amy Beach – her music is truly fantastic; as good, if not even better, than the European masters who get overplayed.

Midsummer is celebrated various ways by various cultures on various dates throughout the week after the Summer Solstice. This is good news for my blog, because, not surprisingly, this mystical, magical, and religiously important time of year has a lot of significant music written about it.

Before Cheech & Chong, the best acid trip entertainment was undoubtedly Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gods, goddesses, fairies, and magic potions, there is even a character named Bottom who gets turned into an ass; now that’s top-quality play-writing! Felix Mendelssohn, like many other composers, wrote incidental music for this play. Here is the overture from the suite.

Hear the rollicking scherzo from earlier this week!