“I’m gonna lose my strength, I’m gonna seize and die, And all that Jazz”! Neurological diseases in jazz legends

ABSTRACT Even though jazz is a musical style that excels in improvisation and virtuosity, it is not without its share of anecdotes, drama, and downright tragedy, and the biographies of jazz musicians and their demise are fraught with ominous and dire straits. Unsurprisingly, some would develop chronic and fatal diseases. The neurological diseases that afflicted the following six composers and musicians, all of whom are considered jazz legends, are briefly discussed: Charles Mingus, diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Lester Young and Charlie Parker, both diagnosed with neurosyphilis; Thelonius Monk, who had possible frontotemporal dementia; George Gershwin, who died as a result of brain glioma; and Cole Porter, who developed phantom limb pain following an amputation. The association of lifestyles, with drug abuse, particularly alcohol and heroin, in addition to great sexual promiscuity factors contributed to the development of a series of diseases such as syphilis. In addition, we also described some fatalities such as neurodegenerative diseases and cerebral glioma.

The Best Years of Our Lives

Hugo Friedhofer’s widely acclaimed score to Best Years of Our Lives successfully evokes an American sound that simultaneously universalizes and authenticates this story of post-war readjustment. He accomplishes this through harmonic and rhythmic approaches indebted to Aaron Copland, but also borrows stylistic devices from jazz, as filtered through the likes of George Gershwin and other concert composers who used the jazz idiom. Friedhofer’s specific use of leitmotif in this film emphasizes the common over the specific, further unifying three stories and generalizing shared post-war experiences.

The Three Piano Sonatas by José de Almeida Penalva

This research project discusses the three piano sonatas by José de Almeida Penalva (1924-2002), a priest and composer from the southern region of Brazil, who lived most of his life in the city of Curitiba, in Paraná state. Along with overall information about the composer’s life and general output, the reader will find brief discussions of Penalva’s keyboard works, along with comprehensive formal analyses of his three piano sonatas. Sonata no. 1 (1970, chronologically the second to be written) appears in one large movement that reveals two distinct sections. Its language is atonal and its first section displays sonata-allegro form. The work employs twelve-tone technique along with folklore elements from the Brazilian genres seresta and desafio. Sonata no. 2 (1960, chronologically the first to be written) employs free modal language in each of its three contrasting movements. According to Penalva’s own indications, the first movement draws on the styles of George Gershwin and Béla Bartók, the second movement refers to Camargo Guarnieri (Brazilian composer who lived from 1907-1993), and the third evokes Anton Webern. Although no material from these composers is directly quoted, it is possible to recognize their stylistic traits within the respective movements. Sonata no. 3 (1991) is the most complex and technically demanding among the three sonatas. It employs free atonal language and displays three highly contrasting movements. Some folk elements also appear, as for example the third movement's energetic rhythm, which clearly suggests the Brazilian popular genre baião. This research project is the first part of a larger undertaking that the author hopes will eventually include a commercial recording of all three sonatas, along with preparing a new performance edition that takes into account the many discrepancies among the composer’s manuscripts and the currently available editions. It is the author’s sincere hope that this research can help to popularize this repertoire, which is colorful and satisfying, but remains relatively unknown, both in Brazil and beyond.

Stairway to Paradise

In November 1914, Max Steiner arrived in New York City, with little money and few prospects. This chapter details another formative time in Steiner’s life: his ascent from a struggling Tin Pan Alley music copyist to successful Broadway conductor. It also details his first professional experience with cinema (then silent), as musical supervisor and composer for a chain of New York theaters owned by William Fox. Steiner’s gregariousness and his gift for quick problem-solving led to work with celebrated composer Victor Herbert. Steiner also formed friendships with rising talents like Jerome Kern, Oscar Levant, and George Gershwin. Stage hits like the Gershwin-scored George White’s Scandals expanded Steiner’s musical language, which was fundamentally European, to include American jazz. However, his own attempt to write a Broadway show—1923’s Peaches—was a failure, discouraging him for a time from further composition.

Music by Max Steiner

During a seven-decade career that spanned from 19th-century Vienna to 1920s Broadway to the golden age of Hollywood, three-time Academy Award winner Max Steiner did more than any other composer to establish and codify the language of film music. Composers today like John Williams use the same techniques perfected by the classically trained Steiner, in his scores for such motion pictures as Casablanca, King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Searchers, Now, Voyager, the Astaire-Rogers musicals, and more than two hundred other titles. Steiner’s private life was as tumultuous as the films he scored. Born into an Austrian theatrical dynasty, he became one of Hollywood’s highest-paid composers. But he was constantly in debt, due to financial mismanagement, four marriages, and the actions of his emotionally troubled son. Steiner ended his career in triumph: at age 71, although practically blind, he wrote what Billboard called the most successful instrumental single of the era: “Theme from A Summer Place.” Throughout his chaotic life, Steiner was buoyed by a quick wit and an instinctive gift for melody, as he met and worked with a Who’s Who of artists: Johann Strauss Jr., Richard Strauss, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, David O. Selznick, Frank Sinatra, Frank Capra, and many more. This first full biography of Steiner brings to life the previously untold story of a musical pioneer and master dramatist who helped create a vital new art form (and multimillion-dollar industry), while writing many of the greatest scores in cinema history.

Origin Stories 1941–1947

This chapter examines 1940s jazz films that depict the early days of jazz and its spread from the African American community to white musicians and audiences. These films are placed in the context of early research into the music’s origins, and of the 1940s dixieland revival. Two films feature child prodigies. Parallels between the plots of 1942’s Syncopation and 1947’s New Orleans are highlighted, and the ways they depict the closing of New Orleans’ Storyville prostitution district are compared. The George Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue erases the direct influence of African American musicians on Gershwin’s development as composer. The 1943 black musical Stormy Weather is briefly discussed, noting its portrayal of ragtime-to-jazz bandleader James Reese Europe.

Stephen Foster

Stephen Collins Foster (b. Lawrence, near Pittsburgh, PA, 4 July 1826–d. New York, 13 January 1864) was the first professional songwriter in the United States, and the earliest to write songs whose images pervaded American culture and whose melodies endure into the 21st century. For his most familiar songs, he wrote both lyrics and music, though he also set poems that had appeared in household magazines, and toward the end of his life he partnered with poet George Cooper. His oeuvre includes principally songs for solo voice (or solo voice plus four-voice chorus) with piano accompaniment, four-voice hymns, and instrumental works (mostly dances, for piano). His songs for blackface minstrels (which provided him with the majority of his income, though they amount to less than one-tenth of his 287 authenticated compositions) were controversial from the start; they made Foster’s reputation, even as he attempted to create “refined” songs in a genre he considered to be rife with “trashy and really offensive words” (Foster letter to E. P. Christy, 25 May 1852). He was of Scots-Irish descent, and as a resident of a northern industrializing urban center that drew workers from throughout Western Europe, he was attuned to different national styles of song and common sentiments of lyric poetry not confined by ethnicity, race, or social class. His song structures and lyrics became models for other songwriters well into the Tin Pan Alley era; his inability to control copyrights (which were owned by his publishers) and his death in poverty (with 38 cents in his pocket) were factors in the establishment of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) fifty years later. It is perhaps not coincidental that songs quoting Foster’s “Swanee River” (“The Old Folks at Home”) helped launch the careers of two of the most significant American songwriters of the 20th century, Irving Berlin (“Alexander’s Ragtime Band”) and George Gershwin (“Swanee”). This bibliography summarizes the major sources of archival, published, and online information about Foster’s life, career, music, and their interpretation and influence in the social and cultural history of the United States, Europe, and East Asia. It omits the sound recordings, plays, films, novels, and other creative works that reflect and contribute to that influence.

FEMALE IMAGES IN OPERA CREATIVITY OF THE AMERICAN COMPOSERS

The purpose of this article is to analyze and understand the interpretation of female images in the works of Opera composer’s national American school. One of the reasons, which prompted the author to dive into the problem and answers Opera performances of American composers such as K. Floyd, John. K. Menotti, J. Gershwin. Methods. In achieving this goal, applied the following research methods a namely the source, comparison, systematization, analysis, generalization of the research problem, used many specialized works on the theory and history of culture. Scientific novelty of the work is that needs to expand views about the development of the Opera genre in American music. In addition, the inspection should be disclosed images of women in the perspective of self-identity of American music like the classic design in the field of Opera. This is due to the necessity of paying attention by the singer relative to the faithful and meaningful interpretation of the female character (Clara – George. Gershwin), Susanna K. Floyd, Monica K. Menotti), as in the dramaturgic sense, and the performing, as well as the emphasis on the vocal abilities of the singer and his acting skills. Conclusions. The analysis of this study was to identify patterns in the musical and thematic material of American Opera composers (K. Floyd, John. K. Menotti, J.Gershwin). In the plots of the operas presented by the harsh realities of the treatment of women at that time. In the women's images traced the line of resistance, the struggle for the future bright and strong-willed traits. The suffering and pain which resonates with the despair, but at the end of the story, spill over into the acceptance of his dark fate. Singer, in the performance of these works, will be able to learn the history of the characters, to understand their national and ideological features, for a more accurate interpretation of the characters in the performance of solo numbers in the Opera. Note also that the transformation of women’s images, which provides an opportunity to trace the psychological and spiritual aspects of their development. This primarily happens due to the influence of social, political and historical moments.