German composers
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Nazis, Napoleon and the Saxophone, pt. 2, how Nazis weaponized gender to change the image of the saxophone
In a previous post on the opera Napoleon by Edmund von Borck, I made the argument that this opera works as a piece of wartime propaganda. The only piece of the opera that doesn’t fulfill the propaganda use is the style of the music and the use the saxophone in the orchestration. Wasn’t the saxophone…
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Nazis, Napoleon, and the Saxophone, how Edmund von Borck’s 1942 opera, “Napoleon” is the perfect wartime propaganda
Last month, Jonas who is a saxophone student in Norway, wrote to me to tell me about Edmund von Borck’s operas and how they were missing in my list. He pointed to Dr. Wildy Zumwalt’s dissertation on Edmund von Borck and how I can find more info there. The opera that stood out to me…
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Kommisar Rondart, the opera that led Sigurd Rascher to Edmund von Borck
All of the entries in my database have one thing in common, they all received a premiere, if not on an opera stage, then as an orchestral work. This opera defies that simple distinction, it never premiered on the stage. Despite that absence, Kommisar Rondart by Edmund von Borck is essential to saxophone history, as…
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Erwin Schulhoff’s Flammen returns to the stage 90 years after its debut
Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff’s only opera, Flammen is returning to the stage in the original Czech for the first time since its premiere in 1932. The opera is a part of the National Theatre of Prague’s Musica non Grata series—translation: unwelcomed music—“revives the artistic legacy of male and female composers important to the musical life…
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Discover Günter Raphael’s ballet, Jabonah
Günter Raphael’s (1903-1960) life was surrounded by war and upheaval. Born into a musical family in Germany, he entered the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin in 1922. In 1926 he became professor of composition and theory at State Conservatory and at the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut, Leipzig in 1926. But this was short lived. When Nazis assumed…
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A Saxophone oratorio? Listen to Wladimir Vogel’s 1930 oratorio, Wagadus Untergang durch die Eitelkeit
When I started making the list of operas and ballets in the database, I did not include oratorios for one simple reason, the saxophone wasn’t used in oratorios. There’s an exception here and there (Massenet has an oratorio in this database) but for the most part, the oratorio excludes the saxophone. Imagine my surprise when…
the Operatic Saxophone 