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Tag Archives: Music
Music from the Smithsonian Part 1
James Weaver discusses the collection, restoration, and performance of restored musical instruments at the Smithsonian, a research-based assembly of instruments spanning the 17th through the 20th-centuries and representing in American music history both continental and English as well as Afro-American influences. Music on this edition of Soundings includes selections by the mid-18th-century composer Jacques Duphly, by Handel, and by Mozart.
Modern Music and the Tradition Part 2
Following episode 257, Sept. 1, 1985, about the status of classical music in the 1980s, the musical canon and its historical and contemporary shapers, Soundings presents a performance of the 1984 Kennedy Center Friedheim Award-winning composition, “Symphony Number Two” (performed by musicians from the Curtis Institute of Music). William Prizer joins the composer, Edward Applebaum, in a discussion of his award-winning composition.
At the time of this interview, Applebaum was professor of music composition and theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. William Prizer was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center and professor of musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
Modern Music and the Tradition Part 1
Music, the greatest good that mortals know/And all of heaven we have below. So wrote Joseph Addison, the 18th-century English man of letters. But agreement about Addison’s couplet among 20th-century audiences might prove problematic. What is the status of Classical music in the 1980s? If there is a musical canon, where does it come from, and who determines its contemporary outlines?
Music at Mantua
Throughout history, music for both popular and specialized audiences has come from cultural and social contexts that are froeign to modern listeners. One example is the music of the Italian courtesans of the 15th and 16th-centuries, duing the Renassiance period in Europe. What was the social function of music in the Italian Renaissance courts? How does music come to us in the 1980s, and what is its influence in the writing of music history?