Ether Game

How are you faring in the Blitz?

A long bout of depression almost prevented the completion of this piece. What procedure successfully treated this composer and allowed him to finish?

Email your answer to ethergame@indianapublicmedia.org. And don’t forget to include the “tasteful pseudoynm” you play under.  Answer correctly and we’ll add 10 points to your overall score.

Check back each day through June 4th for more chances to win bonus points, and don’t forget to check us out on facebook for more chances to win.

The Blitz continues with another chance at 10 bonus points.

The aria performed here is from an opera left incomplete at the end of the composer’s life. Can you name composer tasked with completing the opera for it’s premiere?

Email your answer to ethergame@indianapublicmedia.org. And don’t forget to include the “tasteful pseudoynm” you play under.  Answer correctly and we’ll add 10 points to your overall score.

Check back each day through June 4th for more chances to win bonus points, and don’t forget to check us out on facebook for more chances to win.

The Bonus Blitz continues with a famous “track” from 40s.

The composer of this tune died 45 years ago today. Can you name the private conservatory he attended after high school?

Email your answer to ethergame@indianapublicmedia.org. And don’t forget to include the “tasteful pseudoynm” you play under.  Answer correctly and we’ll add 10 points to your overall score.

Check back each day through June 4th for more chances to win bonus points, and don’t forget to check us out on facebook for more chances to win.

Let’s start out our Spring Bonus Blitz week with a little film music trivia.

This music was used in the climactic scene of a recent Academy Award-winning film. Can you name the film?

Email your answer to ethergame@indianapublicmedia.org. And don’t forget to include the “tasteful pseudoynm” you play under.  Answer correctly and we’ll add 10 points to your overall score.

Check back each day through June 4th for more chances to win bonus points, and don’t forget to check us out on facebook for more chances to win.

Eric Ewazen was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1954. He studied at Eastman and Juilliard under such noted composers as Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt, Gunther Schuller, and Joseph Schwantner. He has won a number of awards, including the BMI Award, the George Gershwin Prize, the Howard Hanson Prize, and the Bernard Rogers Award. A trombonist, Ewazen has composed a number of works for solo brass instruments, brass ensembles, and band. He was commissioned to write a symphony for wind ensemble to commemorate the bicentennial of West Point.

Charles Ives has been presented to the world as a wild-eyed modernist. Indeed, many of his works are highly experimental, sharply dissonant, and challenging to the listener. What is often overlooked is the fact that early in his career Ives pursued a very traditional musical path. He had been a church organist since his youth. He had hoped, like John Knowles Paine or Horatio Parker, to parlay this success into a broader career as composer and academic. In 1902, Ives produced the cantata The Celestial Country, patterned after his teacher Parker’s famous oratorio Hora novissima. Although the cantata received favorable reviews, Ives abandoned career aspirations in music, keeping it as an active avocation while becoming a successful businessman.

The English poet, composer, theorist and physician Thomas Campion did not earn his living as either a professional musician or a poet, but with his work as a doctor. His musical reputation mainly rests on his airs, for which he wrote both music and poems. After John Dowland , he was the most prolific of the English lute-song composers with well over 100 songs to his name. Today he is well known as a composer-poet, having received more critical attention from 20th-century commentators than most of his contemporaries, including Dowland. He was also an important exponent of the Stuart masque and a conspicuous theorist of both poetry and music.

In November 1910, Puccini set sail for America for the premiere of The Golden Girl of the West, the first world premiere ever held at the Metropolitan Opera House. No expense had been spared. The cast included Emmy Destinn and Enrico Caruso, and was conducted by Toscanini. To all appearances the opera was a triumphant success, with the composer receiving 55 curtain calls, but the critics were guarded. Although Puccini declared it his best opera to date, it failed to enter the general repertory; nor until late in the century did it estimate at its true worth.

After Debussy’s death in 1918, Ravel was generally regarded as France’s leading composer. Recognition by the French state led to his being offered the Légion d’Honneur in 1920, a decoration he publicly refused. But this new-found status had the result of alienating him from some of his colleagues, in particular from Satie and the younger generation, including some of Les Six. Ravel emphasized his isolation by moving west of Paris, where he lived with his cats and was looked after by his housekeeper until his final illness. His house, with its original furnishings, is now a museum in his honor.

After composing the giant work Fontane di Roma, Ottorino Respighi was interested in writing for smaller ensembles. Some years later, he produced his Trittico Botticelliano, based on three paintings by Botticelli that hung in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. One of those was the one entitled L’adorazione dei Magi, which depicted the meeting of Melchior, Casper and Balthazar with the Holy Family. The story of their journey, guided by the Star of Bethlehem, and the bestowing of their gifts, were well known to the composer, and he added these ingredients to his musical picture. Respighi also used the hymn tune Veni Emmanuel at the beginning to depict the faith of the Wise Men, and concluded his musical picture with Melchior, Casper and Balthazar returning to their homes in the east.