Benjamin Lees: Quo Vadis?

Tempo ◽  
1990 ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Bret Johnson
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
Double Concerto ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Individual Personality ◽  
Quo Vadis ◽  
Sound Spectrum

Fifteen years ago, Nicolas Slonimsky wrote of Benjamin Lees in Tempo: ‘At a time when so many otherwise valiant composers are star-crossed and complain of malign neglect, Benjamin Lees rises “in excelsis” in the musical firmament’. And so he has continued since, with many commissions and numerous major works to his credit, matched by frequent performances in the United States. It is a time that has seen the creation of his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, a set of Variations for Piano and Orchestra, a Concerto for Brass Choir and Orchestra, a Double Concerto for Piano, Cello and Orchestra, at least four other orchestral compositions of substantial scale, and the Third and Fourth String Quartets. All of these have contributed to his continuing high profile in the American musical scene. When one surveys Lees's entire corpus of music over the last four decades, one sees an impressive range of works, achievements and awards. Such pieces as the Violin Concerto (1958), Third Symphony (1969) and Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (1965), all commercially recorded, stand out as landmarks not only of his own music but of postwar American music generally. His style has continued to evolve in recent years and whilst his hallmark is still his adherence to form and structure, he has become more concerned with orchestral sonority and, without becoming explicitly programmatic, practises his art within an ever-widening sound spectrum and colouristic palette. He has always possessed a strongly individual personality, and the ‘Lees Sound’ is unquestionably unique, even through his exposition and development of musical ideas-and the technique of continual evolution which he favours at present-derive, at source, from his most important early musical teacher: George Antheil.

Performance and Reception of Bartók’s Violin Music during His First Concert Tour of the United States (1927–1928)

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-116
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
The United States ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Violin Music ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
Lecture Recitals ◽  
Violin And Piano

Abstract During his first concert tour of the United States (1927–1928) Bartók played primarily his own music in lecture-recitals, orchestra performances, and chamber music concerts in fifteen American cities. Over the course of the tour, he collaborated with violinists Jelly d’Arányi and Joseph Szigeti to present a few of his works for violin and piano to members of musical clubs in New York City and Philadelphia, and before dignitaries at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C. – namely his Sonata for Violin and Piano no. 2 (1922), Hungarian Folk Tunes, for violin and piano (arranged by Joseph Szigeti, 1926), and Romanian Folk Dances for Violin and Piano (arranged by Zoltán Székely, 1925). In Boston and New York, Bartók played on recitals that also included performances of his String Quartets nos. 1 and 2. In this article I document the American reception of Bartók’s violin music during his U.S. recitals of early 1928. Music criticism in American newspapers and music journals, as well as detailed program notes from the string quartet performances, have been taken into account to reveal the assessment of Bartók’s violin music and string quartets and the characterization of the composer in the American press and concert halls. The reviews have also been considered in comparison to later recordings of the violin and piano works made by Bartók and Szigeti.

Nicolaus Zmeskall und die Initialen „NZ“ auf einigen Abschriften von Werken J. Haydns und A. Zimmermanns

2008 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Anna Schirlbauer
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Joseph Haydn ◽  
Great Similarity ◽  
Violin Concerto

Several copies of works by Joseph Haydn and Anton Zimmermann, located mainly at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, have some striking features in common: almost identical calligraphic initials “NZ,” dates ranging from 1776 to 1778 on the cover pages, and great similarity in the handwriting of text and music. This handwriting was analysed by the author and compared to the surviving contemporary manuscript copies (paper, watermarks, script) of string quartets by Nicolaus Zmeskall (1759–1833), Beethoven’s friend in Vienna. Using previously unknown samples of Zmeskall’s handwriting from the period of his high school studies in Pressburg (Bratislava, Slovakia), it was possible to identify his music-copying style, and determine conclusively that his string quartet manuscripts are autographs. This study proves that the manuscript copies of the Haydn and Zimmermann works (including Haydn’s Violin Concerto in G Major and two symphonies by Zimmermann) were written out by Zmeskall, while he was living in Pressburg. This previously unknown aspect of Zmeskall’s biography is treated at length and it is suggested that this talented cellist and composer may have been in contact with Haydn much earlier than hitherto suspected.

Stranger Danger

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Renfro
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Sex Offender ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Amber Alerts ◽  
Actual Figure ◽  
Stranger Danger ◽  
Murdered Children

Starting in the late 1970s, a moral panic concerning child kidnapping and exploitation gripped the United States. For many Americans, a series of high-profile cases of missing and murdered children, publicized through an emergent twenty-four-hour news cycle, signaled a “national epidemic” of child abductions perpetrated by strangers. Some observers insisted that fifty thousand or more children fell victim to stranger kidnappings in any given year. (The actual figure was and remains about one hundred.) Stranger Danger demonstrates how racialized and sexualized fears of stranger abduction—stoked by the news media, politicians from across the partisan divide, bereaved parents, and the business sector—helped to underwrite broader transformations in US political culture and political economy. Specifically, the child kidnapping scare further legitimated a bipartisan investment in “family values” and “law and order,” thereby enabling the development and expansion of sex offender registries, AMBER Alerts, and other mechanisms designed to safeguard young Americans and their families from “stranger danger”—and to punish the strangers who supposedly threatened them.

Antiracist Curriculum and Digital Platforms: Evidence from Black Lives Matter

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saharsh Agarwal ◽  
Ananya Sen
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Public School Teachers ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Null Effect ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, we examine the impact of racially charged events on the demand for antiracist classroom resources in U.S. public schools. We use book requests made by teachers on DonorsChoose, the largest crowdfunding platform for public school teachers, as a measure of intent to address race-related topics in the classroom. We use the precise timing of high-profile police brutality and other racially charged events in the United States (2010–2020) to identify their effect on antiracism requests relative to a control group. We find a significant increase in antiracism requests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and a null effect for all other events in the decade. We also find an increase in requests for books featuring Latinx, Asian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, suggesting that a focus on equality for one group can spill over and yield culturally aware dialogues for other groups as well. Event studies suggest that local protests played a role in motivating some of the teachers to post these requests. In just four months following George Floyd’s death, $3.4 million worth of books featuring authors and characters from marginalized communities were successfully funded, reaching more than half a million students. Text analysis of impact notes posted by teachers suggests that hundreds of thousands of young students are being engaged in discussions about positive affirmation and cross-cultural acceptance. This paper was accepted by D.J. Wu, information systems.

Fighting for the local: Americans for Prosperity and the struggle for school boards

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Schirmer ◽  
Michael W. Apple
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
School Board ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jefferson County ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
News Reports ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
School Board Elections

Corporate-backed philanthropic groups have become increasingly involved in political processes in the past ten years. The Koch Brothers’ and their political advocacy groups, have become particularly prominent players. Their influence extends beyond high-profile state-level elections and increasingly have begun investing in municipal affairs of small cities and towns, such as school board elections like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Jefferson County, Colorado in the US. This chapter asks, why do groups like Americans for Prosperity care about small-town school board elections? This chapter highlights two particularly significant local examples in the United States: school board elections in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2014 and Jefferson County, Colorado in 2015. Through documentary analysis of school board records, news reports, and district evaluations, in both Wisconsin and Colorado, we chronicle the political contest for control of each school board. Our findings illustrate the ideological and political project of corporate, conservative influence in public education in the United States.

Ernest Bloch's Second String Quartet

Tempo ◽  
1959 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Frederick Rimmer
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
The Right

The four string quartets* of Bloch are a convenient medium for assessing both the strength and weakness of his unusual talent, revealing, as they do, an imperfect endowment of those processes of thought and feeling from which, in the right amalgam, a masterpiece of musical expression can emerge. Only the second quartet represents him at his best. It is one of the few works where inspiration and emotion are under the control of the intellect. There are weaknesses in the other quartets largely brought about by preoccupation with cyclic procedures—a notorious and dangerous expedient for a composer unable by nature to accept the traditional usages and disciplines of sonata form.

Violin Concerto; Double Concerto

1970 ◽  
Vol 111 (1526) ◽  
pp. 395
Author(s):  
Robert Anderson ◽  
Brahms ◽  
Oistrakh ◽  
Rostropovich ◽  
Cleveland Orchestra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Double Concerto ◽  
Violin Concerto
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