Music History Monday | Podcast Guru

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Exploring Music History with Professor Robert Greenberg one Monday at a time. Every Monday Robert Greenberg explores some timely, perhaps intriguing and even, if we are lucky, salacious chunk of musical information relevant to that date, or to … whatever. If on (rare) occasion these features appear a tad irreverent, well, that’s okay: we would do well to remember that cultural icons do not create and make music but rather, people do, and people can do and say the darndest things.

Recent Episodes

Music History Monday: An American in Paris

AUG 26, 2024

Music History Monday: An American in Paris

<img src=https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/25173345/11.jpg class="RSSimage" style="width:100%;margin-bottom:16px;" "border="0" tabindex="0" /><p>We mark the London premiere on August 26, 1952 – 72 years ago today – of the film “An American in Paris.” With music by George Gershwin (1898-1937), directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant, the flick won six Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture. While the film actually opened in New York City on October 4, 1951, this London premiere offers us all the excuse we need to examine both the film and the music that inspired it, George Gershwin’s programmatic orchestral work, An American in Paris. Here’s how we’re going to proceed. Today’s Music History Monday post will deal specifically with Gershwin’s An American in Paris, a roughly 21-minute workfor orchestra composed in 1928. Tomorrow’s Dr. Bob Prescribes post will feature the 1951 film of the same name, focusing on (and excerpting) four of its musical numbers. Statement George Gershwin is among the handful of greatest composers ever born in the United States. His death at the age of 38 (of a brain tumor) should be considered an artistic tragedy on par with the premature deaths of Schubert (at 31), Mozart (at 35), and Chopin (at 39). He was born Jacob […]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-an-american-in-paris/">Music History Monday: An American in Paris</a> first appeared on <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com">Robert Greenberg</a>.</p>

20 MIN

Music History Monday: Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev

AUG 19, 2024

Music History Monday: Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev

<img src=https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/19072042/1-1.jpg class="RSSimage" style="width:100%;margin-bottom:16px;" "border="0" tabindex="0" /><p>We mark the death on August 19, 1929 – 95 years ago today – of the Russian impresario, patron, art critic, and founder of the Ballets Russes Serge (or “Sergei”) Pavlovich Diaghilev, in Venice. Born in the village of Selishchi roughly 75 miles southeast of St. Petersburg on March 31, 1872, he was 57 years old when he died. Movers and Shakers Serge Diaghilev was one of the great movers-and-shakers of all time. In a letter to his stepmother written in 1895, the 23-year-old Diaghilev described himself with astonishing honesty and no small bit of prescience, given the way his life went on the develop: “I am firstly a great charlatan, though con brio [meaning vivacious and spirited!]; secondly, a great charmer; thirdly I have any amount of cheek [meaning chutzpah; moxie; nerve!]; fourthly, I am a man with a great quantity of logic, but with very few principles; fifthly, I think I have no real gifts. All the same, I think I have found my true vocation – being a patron of the arts. I have all that is necessary except the money – but that will come.” Serge Diaghilev’s audacious and spectacular career was intertwined completely with […]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-serge-pavlovich-diaghilev/">Music History Monday: Serge Pavlovich Diaghilev</a> first appeared on <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com">Robert Greenberg</a>.</p>

18 MIN

Music History Monday: Giovanni Gabrieli and the Miracle That is Venice!

AUG 12, 2024

Music History Monday: Giovanni Gabrieli and the Miracle That is Venice!

<p>We mark the death on August 12, 1612 – 412 years ago today – of the composer Giovanni Gabrieli. Born in Venice circa 1555, he grew up and spent his professional life in that glorious city, and died there as a result of complications from a kidney stone. Gabrieli’s magnificent, soul-stirring music went a long way towards helping to define the expressive exuberance of what we now identify as Baroque era music. The impact and influence of his music was ginormous, an impact and influence that culminated a century later in the German High Baroque music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)! To a degree beyond any other composer before or after him, Gabrieli’s music has come to be identified with his hometown of Venice, in particular the acoustically unique Venetian performance venues for which so much of his music was composed. It is necessary, then, for us to spend some time in Venice, if only to get some inkling of what makes this singularly remarkable city so spiritually, artistically, and architecturally unique; and why Gabrieli’s music is uniquely Venetian.… Continue Reading, only on Patreon!</p> <p>The post <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-giovanni-gabrieli-and-the-miracle-that-is-venice/">Music History Monday: Giovanni Gabrieli and the Miracle That is Venice!</a> first appeared on <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com">Robert Greenberg</a>.</p>

22 MIN

Music History Monday: The First Professional Composer

AUG 5, 2024

Music History Monday: The First Professional Composer

<img src=https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/05092450/1-3-559x1024.jpg class="RSSimage" style="width:100%;margin-bottom:16px;" "border="0" tabindex="0" /><p>Easy Times! We’ve been having a good time, an easy time here at Music History Monday these last few weeks. Five of our last six MHM posts have featured fairly recent musical events from the “popular” side of the musical aisle. Music History Monday for June 24 focused on Disco; on July 1, the invention and marketing of Sony’s Walkman; on July 8, the American crooner Steve Lawrence (who was born, as I know you recall, Sidney Liebowitz); on July 22, Taylor Swift; and on July 29, Cass Elliot (born Ellen Naomi Cohen). Today we get back to the historical repertoire. But let me assure you: the composer we will focus on was as ground-breaking as Sony’s Walkman; his music as gorgeous as the silken voices of Steve Lawrence and Cass Elliot; his rhythmic sensibilities as sharply honed as those of the Bee Gees and Taylor Swift (though, to my knowledge, a concert of his music never simulated a magnitude 2.3 earthquake in downtown Seattle, as did Ms. Swift’s on July 22, 2023). Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Guillaume Du Fay! We celebrate the birth on August 5, 1397 – 627 years ago today – of the composer Guillaume Du […]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-the-first-professional-composer/">Music History Monday: The First Professional Composer</a> first appeared on <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com">Robert Greenberg</a>.</p>

22 MIN

Music History Monday: Cass Elliot and the Making of an Urban Legend

JUL 29, 2024

Music History Monday: Cass Elliot and the Making of an Urban Legend

<img src=https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/28173818/1-5-1024x1024.jpg class="RSSimage" style="width:100%;margin-bottom:16px;" "border="0" tabindex="0" /><p>We mark the death of Cass Elliot on July 29, 1974 – 50 years ago today – in an apartment at No. 9 Curzon Street in London’s Mayfair District. Born on September 19, 1941, she was just 32 years old at the time of her death. Brief Biography Cass Elliot was born Ellen Naomi Cohen in Baltimore, Maryland. According to her biography, “all four of her grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants.” The Pale of Settlement (Parenthetically, I grew up hearing that all four of my great-grandparents were, likewise, from “Russia,” which created a misunderstanding that I carried around with me until my twenties. As it turns out, in this case, “from Russia” actually means from the Pale of Settlement, that part of the western region of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live. Today, the territory that encompassed the Pale includes all of Belarus and Moldova, much of Ukraine and Lithuania, part of Latvia, and only a small area of what is today the western Russian Federation.) It was while she was in high school that Ellen Cohen was bitten by the musical theater bug and began calling herself “Cass Elliot.” Ms. Elliot’s parents fully expected her to go to college, so […]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-cass-elliot-and-the-making-of-an-urban-legend/">Music History Monday: Cass Elliot and the Making of an Urban Legend</a> first appeared on <a href="https://robertgreenbergmusic.com">Robert Greenberg</a>.</p>

18 MIN