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

Richard Wayne Penniman was born December 5, 1932 one of twelve children. As a child, Richard sang gospel with the Penniman Singers before leaving home by age 15 to become a regular with Sugarfoot Sam’s Minstrel Show. Later working as a dishwasher, he sent a demo tape to Specialty Records and was invited to a recording session about six months later. The session went poorly, as Richard chose to record only slow blues. During a break, Richard and recording engineer Bumps Blackwell went to a tavern, where Richard began crazily playing a piano and singing raucous songs with gloriously lewd lyrics. After a frantic re-write, the pair returned to the studio where, with only 15 minutes remaining in the session, Richard recorded “Tutti Fruitti.” From early 1956 to mid-1957, everything Little Richard recorded was a hit. In 1957, he quit to become a preacher in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. In October 1962 he returned to rock ‘n’ roll, touring England and later all of Europe with the ROLLING STONES as his opening act.

Strauss was a talented composer and an enterprising businessman, and virtually every social, cultural, technological, or political event was commemorated by music from his pen. After the success of his operetta Die Fledermaus, Strauss undertook an extended visit to Italy which would feature some 21 of his recent concert engagements. He commemorated the tour by composing a new waltz which he called Bella Italia. Soon the work had a new title, translated as “Where the Lemon-Trees Bloom,” adopted from a line of poetry by Goethe. The piece also soon had a new text and orchestration, thanks to one of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus collaborators, RICHARD GENÉE.

The copyright on Arthur Sullivan’s music expired in 1950, but W. S. Gilbert’s words enjoyed protection for another eleven years. The Sadler’s Wells Theater in London created a ballet based on Gilbert’s ballad “The Bumboat Woman’s Story” and set it to music arranged completely from Sullivan. The result was Pineapple Poll, from which we have just heard excerpts. The task of arranging Sullivan’s music fell to Australian-born conductor CHARLES MACKERRAS. The ballet premiered in March 1951 and was an immediate success, remaining in Sadler’s Wells repertory for years to come.

It was the Sugar Plum Fairy connection we were looking for – and Tchaikovsky’s Nutracker just happened to have one. The famous Nutcracker Ballet was not easy to compose – Tchaikovsky was in the middle of a writer’s block. To make matters worse, he was obliged to take a voyage to America, in April and May of 1891. The reason for his visit was to celebrate the OPENING OF CARNEGIE HALL. After his return to Russia, The Nutcracker was finally completed and was first performed at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, December 1892.

Composer Sergei Prokofiev arrived in New York in September 1918 with no firm plans as to how to support himself. He started giving piano recitals, but his November 1918 debut in New York was only moderately successful. After a performance in Chicago in 1919, Prokofiev was introduced to CLEOFONTE CAMPANINI, conductor of the Chicago Opera. This meeting led to the commissioning of Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges. A number of difficulties, including a financial dispute and the death of conductor CAMPANINI, delayed the first performance until December 1921, but the work proved to be Prokofiev’s most successful opera.

In order to cure an ailing princess, the title character of Igor Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale enters her bedroom and plays three dances on his violin. Upon hearing the opening tango, the princess is aroused from sleep, and by the end of the ragtime, she seems to be in good health. Stravinsky envisioned the “Soldier’s Tale” as a money making venture. Unlike his large orchestral ballets, such as the Firebird and the Rite of Spring, A Soldier’s Tale only required eight instrumentalists, two dancers and three actors. Due to the economic hardships of wartime Europe, the premiere only took place with generous financial backing, and the project was, on the whole, an economic failure. The moralistic libretto for the work was penned by Stravinsky’s collaborator and noted Swiss novelist Chrles Ferdinand Ramuz.