American Music

[jerfilm]

Roxio Creator has a utility for converting audio files.   If you're in to YouTube downloads, TubeSucker (horrid name) will convert videos into all kinds of audio or video files. 

Jerry

Oh, yes, thanks for the advice on AOL.  My wife has been talking getting rid of it for a long time.  The thought of changing email addresses after so many years is a bit daunting.....

[Lionel Harrsion]

Oh, yes, thanks for the advice on AOL.  My wife has been talking getting rid of it for a long time.  The thought of changing email addresses after so many years is a bit daunting.....

Jerry, you can retain your AOL email address -- you just access your AOL mailbox by going to www.aol.co.whatever county!

[Dundonnell]

I think there is less here than meets the eye. I'm still discovering technical things as I go along.

Ward 2 came to me as an MP3 file and, evidently, what comes in as an MP3 goes out as an MP3. I'm not certain that that is always the case - this is just a single example now that I pay it attention.

The other three Wards I put into my computer from discs burned on my stand-alone recorder. I don't know what they were to start with but my computer turned them out as M4As - there was no choice on my part.

I have Ward 5 in good sound and would be happy to put it up - why not? - but it is one of those big, billowy "city on the hill" bicentennial commemorations with an emoting speaker.

Best to all.

I certainly would welcome the Ward 5th....if only to complete the set

As far as technology is concerned: we-or I should really say I are all learning all the time I know that I have learned a lot about the 'new technology' of uploading, downloading, types of files etc over the last few months and, that for a real technophobe, that is no small achievement. There may be little glitches along the way but these can be sorted Keep the good music coming

[JimL]

Roxio Creator has a utility for converting audio files.   If you're in to YouTube downloads, TubeSucker (horrid name) will convert videos into all kinds of audio or video files. 

Jerry

Oh, yes, thanks for the advice on AOL.  My wife has been talking getting rid of it for a long time.  The thought of changing email addresses after so many years is a bit daunting.....

Is your AOL dial-up?  If you have an Internet service that provides Mozilla or IE, you can open up a new email account by making Yahoo or MSN your homepage and using their free email.

[jerfilm]

No, heaven forbid.  If I had to live with dial up I'd give up the computer.

Incidentally, did you get the two emails i sent you?

Jerry

[Dundonnell]

Thanks for the Robert Ward 5th, Shamokin

[JimL]

No, heaven forbid.  If I had to live with dial up I'd give up the computer.

Incidentally, did you get the two emails i sent you?

Jerry

Indeed I did.  I'm thinking two weeks. 

[jowcol]

I have the pleasure of announcing the upload of a collection of music by American composer Ronald LoPresti, who is definitely, in my opinion, one of the most underrated American composers. Lopresti, a clarinetist as well as a composer, was born in 1933 in Williamstown, Massachusetts. A pupil of Howard Hanson, he graduated from the prestigious Eastman School of Music, and taught at Arizona State University.   He is most known for a band composition,  his moving elegy for JFK, "Elegy for  a Young American". (If you search youtube, you will find many versions of this).  His two movement Orchestral Suite "Masks", conducted by Hanson, was released as part of the Mercury Living Presence series, and is also a strong work, but, to date, far too little of his work has been commercially released.

I've uploaded a collection of live performances of some of his never-released orchestral works:  two excellent symphonies, a nocturne for viola and strings, and other works.  This collection is first of a series I will be sharing from the collection of musical archivist Karl Miller (with his permission, naturally).

Note:
There are some of LoPesti chamber works available through the Arizona State University web site at
http://repository.asu.edu/search?q=lopresti

[semloh]

I have the pleasure of announcing the upload of a collection of music by American composer Ronald LoPresti, who is definitely, in my opinion, one of the most underrated American composers. .......

Totally agree! And, thank you so much for the uploads - giving us a chance to hear these engaging and carefully crafted works.  The 2nd Symphony is - to my neo-romantic ears at least - a real masterpiece, combining shimmering beauty with powerful majesty.

So, thank you again, jowcol. 

[jowcol]

I've just posted the Elie Seigmeister Symphony 8 in the downloads section.



Wikipedia Entry:

Elie Siegmeister (b. January 15, 1909, New York City – March 10, 1991, Manhasset, New York) was an American composer, educator and author.

His varied musical output showed his concern with the development of an authentic American musical vocabulary. Jazz, blues and folk melodies and rhythms are frequent themes in his many song cycles, his nine operas, his eight symphonies, and his many choral, chamber, and solo works. His 37 orchestral works have been performed by leading orchestras throughout the world under such conductors as Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Lorin Maazel, and Sergiu Comissiona. He also composed for Hollywood (notably, the film score of They Came to Cordura, starring Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, 1959) and Broadway ("Sing Out, Sweet Land," 1944, book by Walter Kerr).

His Western Suite was premiered by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra during a broadcast concert on November 25, 1945, in NBC Studio 8-H. Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra later made a stereo recording of the music, which incorporates familiar cowboy tunes and garnered him many black friends. Biographer Mortimer Frank said Toscanini's premiere (preserved on transcription discs) is a remarkable performance led by a conductor whose roots went not to the Old West but the Parma conservatory.[1]

Siegmeister wrote a number of important books on music, among them "Treasury of American Song" (Knopf, 1940–43, text coauthored with Olin Downs, music arranged by Siegmeister), second edition revised and enlarged (Consolidated Music Publishers); "The Music Lover's Handbook" (William Morrow, 1943; Book-of-the-Month Club selection), revised and expanded as "The New Music Lover's Handbook" (1973); and the two-volume "Harmony and Melody" (Wadsworth, 1985), which was widely adopted by college and conservatory curricula. In 1960, Siegmeister also recorded and released an instructional album of music, Invitation to Music, on Folkways Records, on which he discusses the fundamentals of music.

From 1977 until his death, he served on the Board of Directors of ASCAP and chaired its Symphony and Concert Committee. Among his signal achievements, he was composer-in-residence at Hofstra University 1966-76, having organized and conducted the Hofstra Symphony Orchestra; established 1971 and chaired the Council of Creative Artists, Libraries, and Museums; and initiated 1978 the Kennedy Center's National Black Music competition. In 1939, he organized the American Ballad Singers, pioneers in the folk music renaissance whom he conducted for eight years in performances throughout the United States. He was the winner of numerous awards and commissions, among them those of the Guggenheim, Ford, and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundations, the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the USIA.

Siegmeister earned a B.A. cum laude at the age of 18 from Columbia University, where he had studied music theory with Seth Bingham. He studied conducting with Albert Stoessel at the Juilliard School and counterpoint with Wallingford Riegger. He was among the numerous American composers, including Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, who were students of the influential teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris. The best known of his own students was Stephen Albert (1941–92), winner of a 1985 Pulitzer Prize for music. Other students included clarinetist Naomi Drucker and composers Michael Jeffrey Shapiro, Daniel Dorff, Leonard Lehrman, Herbert Deutsch, Joseph Pehrson, and Grammy-winner Jack Gallagher.

[Dundonnell]

It will be good to hear another Siegmeister symphony I have the 3rd on disc and his Flute and Clarinet Concertos but I have been hoping to hear more of the symphonies

[shamokin88]

Elie Siegmeister

Unless I am beaten to the draw I will oblige with Siegmeister's symphonies nos.1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 over the weekend; missing 7 though.

I have a pamphlet of his entitled Music and Society published in 1938 by the Critics Group Press in New York. It is something of a curiosity. Their other titles advertised and some offered by another publisher in the end pages suggests some strong Marxist/Leninist sympathies on Siegmeister's part although that was nothing unusual three-quarters of a century ago. I have often wondered why he did not get in difficulties during the McCarthy period whereas Copland, briefly, did. Of course by mid-century Copland offered a much bigger target to those in search of one.

Can anyone speak to this?

Best to all.

[jowcol]

I can't speak to the Red Scare issue, but I would welcome the symphonies!

[Dundonnell]

Many thanks to shamokin for the uploads of five Elie Siegmeister symphonies Together with the Eighth uploaded by jowcol and the 3rd which is on cd, that makes almost the complete set

[karl.miller]

Third time lucky

The download works now

It is fascinating to be able to listen to the symphony which, as you know, was withdrawn by the composer. The performance you have been able to make available is, as you say, the last time it was performed. I have always found this decision by Schuman rather strange. Copland certainly expressed his very strong admiration for the symphony.

***********************

This was not the last time it was performed. It was also done in Baltimore. To the best of my knowledge it was performed 4 times: Greenwich Symphony [25 May 1938]; CBSSO [11 September 1938]; Boston Symphony [17 February 1939]; Baltimore Symphony [1939]. For more information, you can consult the Steve Swayne Schuman bio.

Bill had considered revising the work. There may have been some political reasons why he withdrew it, but I believe it is worthy of a recording. In a conversation I had with him he suggested that the opening trumpet might be replaced by an oboe. I suggested that he leave the piece as it is. He seemed pleased that someone thought highly of the work. I assume the transfer being offered is the one I restored. It is likely that it is an early version which is incorrectly pitched. The sustained trumpet note is a C...my first restoration, had it a B flat.

Karl