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American Muse

American Muse

Written by: Grant Gilman
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Podcast about American orchestral music. Featuring interviews with guests including JoAnn Falletta and Gerard Schwarz.

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Episodes
  • Chelsea Tipton - Interview

    Chelsea Tipton - Interview
    Mar 21 2021

    Today’s guest on the American Muse Podcast is a dynamic person and fantastic conductor and musician. In addition to his position as Music Director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas (where my father has played under him for many years), he is Principal Pops Conductor with the New Haven Symphony. Having already guest conducted all over the United States and Europe, he is persisting through the pandemic to conduct this season in Greensboro, Bridgeport, Lake Charles, Toledo, and at the Colour of Music Festival in Charleston. His work and community leadership is very well regarded. The Niches River Festival in Beaumont, TX named him Citizen of the Year, Capital One Bank gave him the Community Spotlight Award, and none other than the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra made him the first annual Aspire Award recipient. And as if all that wasn’t enough, I’ve been told he’s one of the nicest people you will ever meet! Here he is Maestro Chelsea Tipton!


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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Horatio Parker - "A Northern Ballad"

    Horatio Parker - "A Northern Ballad"
    Mar 4 2021
    A precocious young composer, the teacher of Charles Ives, and a NON-nationalistic Scottish work undeniably influenced by Tchaikovsky (even though it may have been intended to do the exact opposite), are all headline descriptions of the topic for this episode of the American Muse podcast: Horatio Parker and his work _A Northern Ballad_. ###Background####Bio- Youngest of the “Boston 6”, Horatio Parker was born 1863 in Auburndale, MA, a rural area at the time, now subsumed by the Boston city limits. He studied with George Whitefield Chadwick at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) and eventually, like most serious musicians at the time, went to Europe and studied with Josef Rheinberger at the Royal Music School in Munich. A similar comment by both these teachers points to a characteristic that Parker carried throughout his compositional career. Chadwick, speaking of the young Parked, roughly aged 17-19, says:> He was far from docile. In fact, he was impatient of the restrictions of musical form and rather rebellious of the discipline of counterpoint and fugues. His lessons usually ended with his swallowing his medicine, but with many a wry grimace.- This quote probably says as much about the youthfulness of Parker as it does the fastidious Chadwick and his own workmanship-like character. Yet, while later studying with Rheinberger, also a former teacher of Chadwick, an observation by the Boston music critic William Apthorp would confirm Parker’s temptation to go against the grain:> It is said of H. W. Parker that when he was a student in Munich under Rheinberger he was repeatedly introducing some new wrinkle, some unheard of effect... Certain of these musical inventions were distasteful to the master... and others were railed at playfully but secretly endorsed and even imitated by Rheinberger himself.- Upon returning to the United States, Parker moved to New York and bounced around several church positions. This is where Parker found the strongest market for his compositions, as any choral, organ, or piano work he wrote was quickly performed and highly praised. At the end of his time in New York, Parker spent one, lone year teaching at the famous National Conservatory of Music in America. Famous mostly because this is the school at which Antonín Dvořák taught during his highly publicized visit to the “New World”. And, that lone year, 1892-1893, overlapped with Dvořák’s first year.- Eventually, Parker returned to Boston, having a substantial reputation as a composer, mostly of choral works. In an ironic twist, relating to the observations of Parker as a young man, musicologist and biographer William Kearns found in Parker’s diaries that one of the reasons he left his church position was “problems of discipline among the boys in the Holy Trinity Choir... he complained that they are a ‘burden’ to the choirmaster and expressed the hope that the adult mixed choir at his new appointment would leave him more time for the important work of composition.” I am sure Chadwick had a laugh about that!- Parker’s stay in Boston only lasted one year, as he then took a teaching position at Yale. There, Parker developed a long legacy of composition students, punctuated by Roger Sessions and the inimitable Charles Ives. Parker developed _The History of Music_ course, served as editor of _Music and Drama_, served as dean of the School of Music, conducted and developed the New Haven Symphony Orchestra as both a professional ensemble and lab orchestra for Yale music students, all while continuing to compose. It was from this position that the rest of his life would be based. Also, this move towards academia would nudge Parker to analyze his own thinking about music, it’s place in society, and cause him to make definitive statements on the subject. Near the end of his life, Parker wrote in the _Yale Review_:> In truth there are two very different kinds of taste. May I call them high and low to save space?... I think an enormous part of our national common progress is made by breaking down barriers between such types. Training the lowly to enjoy exalted music is known to be meritorious. I never heard anyone commend the reverse process of training the fastidious to recognize vulgar excellence.- The man comes full circle! A somewhat rogue youth, tamed by well-disciplined teachers, now embracing the diversity of musical options. And as can be seen, these phases manifest in his composition as well###Analysis of piece- And the main event: Parker’s tone poem _A Northern Ballad_- Written over the 1898-99 winter, the symphonic poem was premiered by the New Haven Symphony, conducted by the composer himself.- Overall, Parker’s pure orchestral output is limited, though what he did produce was compelling. _A Northern Ballad_ being one of his most mature works elicited quite a review from a New York newspaper in 1901: “The impression left by the whole is that if Mr. Parker would give up writing ...
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    26 mins
  • Mark Gibson Interview

    Mark Gibson Interview
    Feb 18 2021

    He is director of orchestral studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where he has been for over 20 years. He has guest conducted orchestras and opera companies all over the United States and the world, and has traveled just as far to teach master classes, conducting workshops, and conduct student orchestras. Most recently, he was appointed head of the Conducting Institute at the Miami Music Festival. In 2017, Oxford University Press published his book _The Beat Stops Here_ to critical acclaim, and he is currently working on the 8th edition of _The Modern Conductor_. His premiere recording of the Gregory Spears’ opera _Fellow Travelers_, performed with the Cincinnati Opera in 2017, can be found on IDAGIO and Apple Music, and pandemic conditions allowing, he will be on a podium in Cincinnati this season. Maestro Mark Gibson joins me for this episode of the American Muse podcast!



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    46 mins
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