This week, we presented part two of our Trick r' Treat miniseries: The Treat Show. Spoil your sweet tooth, and browse nine sugar-coated selections of classical candy below. 

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899) Wiener Bonbons, Op. 307 In 1866, Johann Strauss decided to turn over the spotlight to his younger brother Josef, and allowed him to conduct an important ball in Vienna for the Association of the Industrial Societies. The patron of the ball was Princess Pauline Metternich-Winneburg, the wife of the Austrian Ambassador in Paris. Princess Pauline made the ball a benefit concert, using proceeds to construct a new German hospital within Paris. Josef wrote two works for the ball, but Johann couldn’t resist. He composed a brand new work for the occasion, a sweet treat for the patron. The work’s title combined the French word for chocolate candy with the German language, becoming Wiener Bonbons. The title page of the work even included a twisted bonbon wrapper. Wiener Bonbons delighted Princess Pauline so, that she asked the Strauss brothers to play in Paris the following year. 

Scott Joplin (1868-1917) Sugar Cane If the opening of Sugar Cane sounded to you like an alternate reality version of Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, you’d be spot on. Sugar Cane was composed a decade after The Maple Leaf, which was Joplin’s most successful piece of music, selling a record-breaking 1 million copies upon publication. It’s no surprise Joplin would try to recapture that success with a sequel. Sugar Cane does have some notable differences from The Maple Leaf however. The sixteenth note flourishes in the opening bars make it a more difficult piece. It’s also in the key of B-flat rather than Maple Leaf’s A major, which was dubbed (conveniently for our show) as a “sweeter key” by ragtime pianist Brandon Byrne. Sugar Cane is not Joplin’s only sugar coated dance composition. He wrote numerous cake-walks, a Non-pareil rag, The Peacherine and The Pineapple.   

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) Candide: Overture Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide (or we should say Candied for tonight’s show.)  has had a very tumultuous history. It was a flop at its 1959 premiere on Broadway. Over the next 30 years it went through numerous revisions and re-hatchings. It wasn’t until 1989 that Bernstein recorded his final and definitive version of the work with the London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. Candide is based on Voltaire’s satire about a young, naïve man who takes a crazy journey around the world in search of “the best of all possible worlds.” Since its first concert performance on January 26, 1957 by the New York Philharmonic, the overture to Candide has become one of the most frequently performed orchestral compositions from a 20th century American composer.  

Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) Clarinet Candy Two years before the death of George Gershwin in 1935, Leroy Anderson left his position as an academic at Harvard University to pursue a freelance career in music. Like Gershwin, Anderson’s name became synonymous with a distinct style of American music. He  embraced his talent for writing light, popular pieces even though he had spent half of his career as a university organist, choir director and symphony conductor. He took up the baton again to become the 18th conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a group that was finely tuned to play his compositions, many of which employed creative sound effects and nonmusical equipment such as typewriters and sandpaper. In 1962, Anderson wrote that his composition Clarinet Candy required a “mature clarinet section.”  All the clarinets in the orchestral version are treated as solo instruments. As we heard, for a clarinetist who craves the spotlight like we crave candy, this piece is a king-sized Snickers bar.

Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley Pure Imagination (From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory In the 1971 film version of Roald Dahl’s classic book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, titled Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, five lucky children are granted the opportunity to explore the magic-filled chocolate factory of the mysterious and eccentric Willy Wonka, played by Gene Wilder (may he rest in peace). One room of the factory is the Chocolate Room, an immense garden where everything from the trees, to the flowers, to the chocolate river is edible. Before they enter the Chocolate Room, Wonka must unlock it with a musical lock. He crouches down, approaches the tiny keyboard of the lock, and performs the opening note of the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. As a humorous aside for all the music fans, one of the characters, Mrs. Teevee, turns to her neighbor with a knowing glance and confidently declares the name of the composer: “Rachmaninoff.”  

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) Caramel Mou (Shimmy) Darius Milhaud was one of many French composers in the early 20th century who were eager to cast off any influence of German romanticism in favor of a more direct neo-classical style, inspired by modern industrial life. The time was ripe for experimentation, and with composers looking for new ways to define western art music, it was an ideal time for jazz to be introduced to France. With a more politically-favorable allyship with the United States than some of its neighbors, France readily embraced American musical influences, particularly those stemming from Black and Latin American music. By 1925, any cabaret or bar on Montmartre worth its salt had a band which included saxophones and banjos. Although tonight’s selection is a piano transcription, Milhaud originally wrote Caramel Mou as a concert piece for small jazz band and a single dancer, who is to perform the shimmy. The work uses blues-inspired harmony, but in true French avant-garde fashion also incorporates bitonality, whole tone scales and a nonsensical surrealist text written by Jean Cocteau.     

Chiel Meijering (b. 1954) Caixa de Dolços (Candy Box) Dutch composer Chiel Meijering began his music education conventionally, studying piano and percussion at the Amsterdam Conservatory. However, he eventually dropped out and opted to join a rock band instead. He has forged ahead as a prolific composer, maintaining his reputation as an outsider to the traditions of classical music and advocating for spontaneous and uninhibited composition. His compositional techniques source from pop, classical, and world music alike, and many of his nearly 900 works sport cheeky and provocative titles, including such gems as I Hate Mozart and Background Music for Non-Entertainment Use in Order to Cover Unwanted Noise. He typically writes for small chamber ensembles, but has expanded into opera and orchestral music as well.  

José Luis Greco (b. 1953) Sweet as Candy "7 Flavors for Guitar": No. 6, Thriller Born in New York City to two flamenco dancers, Spanish-American composer Jose Luis Greco was taught piano, guitar, dancing and acting before he settled on studying composition at Columbia University. He built his reputation in Amsterdam throughout the 1980’s as a co-founder of the multi-media performance group Cloud Chamber, which was supported by the Dutch Ministry of Culture for ten years. Since 1994 he has lived in Madrid, where he’s focused on composing symphonic and ballet music, and music for youth orchestra. His expansive work Sweet as Candy: 7 Flavors for Guitar employs many techniques idiomatic to guitar playing. Commenting on the motivation behind the work, Greco has said ”I’ve always had a sweet tooth. The question is how to gratify it without becoming enslaved by it.” 

Julius Edward Dixson (1913-2004) Lollipop The all-female vocal quartet from Sheboygan known as The Chordettes got their big break after appearing on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scout Show. The program aired for ten years on CBS and vaulted many amateur musicians into pop stardom during the 1950’s. The Chordettes were a recurring act on the show for four years, eventually earning themselves a recording contract with Cadence Records. Dressed in long sweeping gowns, the group sang covers and sweetly sentimental numbers which fell on the jazzier side of barbershop quartet. Their first major hit “Mr Sandman” sold 2 million records in 1954 and eight years later their second hit “Lollipop” reached #2 on the Billboard top 100. Though the timeless appeal of these two songs gave the Chordettes pop immortality, the exuberant “Lollipop” was the closest the clean-cut Chordettes ever came to having an edge, and was not enough to survive the onset of rock n roll.