music
-
Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Kathrin; the jazz age opera Nazi’s tried to destroy
Erich Wolfgang Korngold is one of the most celebrated late romantic composers in the 20th century. A child prodigy whose brilliance was celebrated by Mahler and Richard Strauss, Korngold wrote his first opera, Die tote Stadt at the age of 23. Korngold was committed to late romantic harmony, he was unmoved by the new styles…
-
Saxophone Mythbusters: Ibert’s Concertino da Camera is NOT Bebop
In the saxophone world, I sometimes hear saxophone professors proclaim ideas that are based on questionable knowledge of the history of saxophone literature and performance practice. After recently hearing from not one professor, but two, that Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da Camera is bebop I feel the need to provide a quick refresher of the relationship…
-
Rethinking Elise Hall
On the 100th anniversary of her death, The Legacy of Elise Hall–now available from Leuven University Press– provides a new outlook on Hall’s life and legacy as one of the major performers and concertizers of the saxophone. In various dissertations, articles and books, most writing on Hall has been colored with misogyny, talks of her…
-
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…
-
Selmer high pitched alto saxophone, the mystery continues….
Last year, a reader emailed me to inform me on his unique Selmer Cigar Cutter saxophone pitched in E. It turns out it was a high pitched alto saxophone. Selmer was not in the business of manufacturing high pitched saxophones, based on the information from Selmer there were only 10 made in the year of…
-
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…
-
1855 Italian opera, L’ebreo, how did the saxophone get in the score?
I searched through the website ilsaxofonoitaliano.it and found one of the oldest works for saxophone in Italian repertoire: the 1855 Giuseppe Apolloni opera, L’ebreo. There is little information about the saxophone, so I went to find out more about this work and how the saxophone became a part of the opera. Looking at my database,…
-
Il Saxofono italiano is now in the database, listen to the Italian Saxophone
One area of opera I was missing in my database was early Italian opera. The earliest opera I found that used the saxophone was Giaccomo Puccini’s Turandot. Is this really the first Italian opera that used the saxophone? I knew I was missing some works. I was getting ready to dig into Italian opera featuring…
the Operatic Saxophone 