Ether Game: Your Daily Dose of Musical Fun and Frustration (A Production of WFIU Public Radio)

International tensions were high in 1938 when Sergei Prokofiev composed a musical score for Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark film Alexander Nevsky. The film tells the story of St. Alexander Nevsky, the Medieval Russian general who led Russian troops against an invasion of German crusaders in 1242. In a classic example of “socialist realism”, Josef Stalin commissioned Eisenstein to create a film that would warn the Russian people of aggression from their then-contemporary enemy – Nazi Germany. What resulted was one of the most celebrated Russian films of all time accompanied by a score that has lasted as one of Prokofiev’s greatest works. Prokofiev would later re-work his movie score into a cantata for chorus, mezzo-soprano soloist and orchestra, and this selection is from that arrangement. In the scene we just heard, the invading Germans force their way into the city of Pskov and strike fear in the hearts of the Russian peasants who live there.

If you want music that sparkles like a bottle of French champagne, you can always count on the music of Jacques Offenbach! Offenbach’s tunes have been hummed and sung ever since they first appeared in the dance halls and cabarets of the 19th century. Offenbach’s music is so popular that it eventually became the focus of a famous ballet in the early 20th century, titled La gaité parisienne. It was the brain child of the Russian choreographer Leonid Massine, an original member of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe and founding member of the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo. La gaité parisienne was arranged by the French composer Manuel Rosenthal and gave its world premiere performance at the Theatre de Monte Carlo in 1938. The ballet doesn’t follow a traditional narrative, so to speak. Instead, a variety of quirky characters are characterized by several Offenbach themes. Shenanigans and hilarity ensue until the cast gets together and dances to Offenbach’s most well-known tune: the can-can from Orpheus in the Underworld.

Beethoven loved to look back at the music of past masters, especially at works by Bach, Handel and Mozart. In fact, he loved to quote themes or create pieces based on snippets of their music. Over the course of his life, he wrote several sets of themes and variations for various ensembles based on themes from such works as Mozart’s The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, Salieri’s version of Falstaff, and even a set of variations on “God Save the King” and “Rule, Britannia.” This piece, a set of variations on “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” is based on a chorus from Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus . This isn’t the only time that Beethoven looked to Handel for inspiration, though. In a very famous passage in his monumental Missa Solemnis, Beethoven quotes the phrase “And he shall reign for ever and ever” from the Messiah ! You can say that Beethoven had a particular love for the music of Handel, even going so far as to call him, at that time, “the greatest composer that ever lived.”

Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe is full of intense moods and feelings, a quality that helped to establish it was one of the most famous song cycles ever written. The dark subject matter of Schumann’s music and Heinrich Heine’s poetry would later become the inspiration behind a play by Jon Marans, titled Old, Wicked Songs after this final selection from Schumann’s cycle. In the play, a young American pianist travels to Europe to overcome an artistic block that threatens his career. Through his work with a renowned Viennese musician with a chequered past, the two explore the nature of meaning and artistry through an intense and in-depth study of Dichterliebe. Old, Wicked Songs has seen several successful productions, earned several theatrical awards and was even nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1996.

In 1926 George Gershwin read the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward and immediately wrote to the author suggesting that they collaborate on a folk opera based on the novel. Heyward, who with his wife Dorothy wrote a play based on his own book, was enthusiastic, but George and Ira didn’t begin working on the project until 1934. Their finished project, Porgy and Bess, debuted on Broadway in 1936 to both critical acclaim and a bit of controversy over the depiction of African Americans in the show. Porgy and Bess has enjoyed several notable productions over the years and continues to be a classic of American music. George later prepared an orchestral suite containing music from the opera after Porgy and Bess closed early on Broadway. Though originally titled “Suite from Porgy and Bess“, Ira later renamed the suite Catfish Row.

You may as well consider Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music to be candy for the ears!

His tuneful melodies have been popping up in popular culture ever since he first scribbled them on paper.

The overture to his operatic masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro, is by far one of his most recognizable ditties, and it even makes a very “notable” appearance in the classic film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Towards the beginning of the tour, Mr. Wonka leads the tour group of the five children and their parents to a door that leads to the main epicenter of his factory.

This door has a musical lock, and the grand master of sweet confections plays the opening motive of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture to open the lock.

Mrs. TeeVee, being not-so-musically knowledgeable, then smugly says that the composer of the little ditty is Rachmaninoff!