I learned the term “homeroom quickie” from my high school Latin teacher. Whenever a large paper or project was due, inevitably among the carefully typed and prepared papers there was one which was hastily scribbled in pencil on line paper, ripped out of a 3-ring binder. The students who turned in these quickies usually did so either with their faces shamefully pointed to the floor, or with a carefree attitude of “yes, this IS my project I’ve been working on for weeks.” It was always easy to identify a homeroom quickie.

Imagine my surprise as an adult to find out that homeroom quickies typically grow up to become office quickies. Take, for example, the Samuel Barber‘s Violin Concerto. Barber was given a due date of Oct 1st, 1939, as the piece was supposed to be premiered in January 1940. Barber, however, failed to turn in the assignment on time; like any good quickie, though, there was a good excuse. He had begun the work in the summer, while he was in Switzerland – but the impending war caused a delay while he fled Europe. Nonetheless, by mid-October he had turned in two of the work’s three movements. With the clock ticking, the premiere approaching, and the violin soloist getting very nervous, the pressure was on to produce quickly. In late November, Barber whipped off a very short, very fast, very difficult finale to the concerto.

With just a little more than a month to learn and prepare this piece, the violinist rejected the work, gave a long list of criticisms and suggested edits, and ended up performing Dvorak‘s concerto instead. Barber stuck to his guns and didn’t edit his work, which was a good thing, because his concerto has since become a staple of the American Art Music repertoire.

So this “homeroom quickie” might have received an F from a teacher, but in the long run, A+. And, if ever a piece sounded like a desperate student trying to frantically write a twenty-page-paper in just three minutes, it’s this one.

 

On this day in 1957, West Side Story opened on Broadway. It has since become a permanent part of American music culture – everybody knows and loves this show and its singing, snapping, dancing gangs. When Leonard Bernstein wrote the music to this show, he had just been appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. The fact that the conductor of one of the world’s finest orchestras was also writing for music theater showed the depth and breadth of Bernstein’s abilities.

Today’s post comes from composer Kile Smith – I had to share this. I heard it on the radio this week and was really caught off guard by his words. His analysis helps to capture the difference between what is Art Music and what is not (“rock rolled over sophistication”).

The original post comes from the WRTI blog, “Arts Desk“. Here it is:

Two Englishmen, Guy Wood and Robert Mellin, slipped it into the Great American Songbook just before it closed, just as rock rolled over sophistication. It begins from below, a slowly twisting Roman candle of a tune, and explodes in the top range of the singer, as the eyes of onlookers reflect the glory of what songs once were.

Sinatra recorded “My One and Only Love” right away, in 1953, but ten years later John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman made it a landmark of an age.

Johnny Hartman sounds like a man who breaks his heart open, and yours.

Coltrane’s tenor saxophone sounds as if it’s made of something not of this world, and yet it is uncannily apt. Every note is a discovery, every phrase an experiment that comes out exactly right.

Johnny Hartman sings the way every man wishes to sing—an everyman standing up in a room suddenly silent—sounding like a man, but a man who breaks his heart open, and yours. And just when he sounds like anybody, that voice turns into one in ten million.

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman spread their mystic charms, especially in the high ranges of their low instruments. In “My One and Only Love” they made a song for the ages. Remember what songs once were.