64: Retrospectives

Strauss in film, ladies in concert

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune was submitted by Listener Jeremy. Here’s your hint: Among certain classical music listeners, this composer is considered something of a one-hit wonder. Among more rabid listeners, this is the kind of instrumentation often associated with this composer.

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 63
Richard Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier: “Wie du warst”

Another week, another round of success stories! Listeners Jeremy and Kevin wrote in immediately with the correct answer this week. As for me, I (Will) sussed out that it was Strauss, though, as Jeremy noted in the comments, I neglected to say which Strauss (about which, more below).

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Dynasty

After Listener Jeremy’s nettlesome response to my NTT guess, I (Will) naturally wished to respond in a similarly obnoxious fashion, so I went looking through the Strauss family tree to find the most obscure cousin of the Waltz King himself.

As you may or may not know, the Strauss family was a dynasty, beginning with Johann Strauss Vater (composer of the “Radetzky March”) and then continuing in the next generation with Johann’s sons Johann Strauss Sohn (the official Waltz King), Josef (“Pizzicato Polka”), and Eduard Strauss (“Sharpshooter Quadrille”). Eduard’s son, Johann Strauss III also became a composer of light music.

What I learned in looking up all of this stuff is that there seems to have been a major revival of interest in the music of the Strauss music in the anglosphere of the late 20th century. There were two miniseries and a movie made about the Strauss family.

First came 1972’s The Strauss Family, a six-part British miniseries which aired in the U.S. on ABC — ABC! Not even PBS!

The really insane thing is in 1972, there was also an American film about the Strausses called The Great Waltz (the remake of a 1938 film of the same name):

In 1991 came The Strauss Dynasty, a six-part miniseries, an Austrian production filmed in English, directed by Noam Chomsky’s cousin!

...and all of that isn’t even to mention 1932’s Hofballmusikdirector.

It just goes to show you how fashions ebb and flow, even in the supposedly rigidly conservative domain of classical music. These days, the Strausses have been thoroughly sidelined (as has most light music), their stuff occasionally pulled out of the trunk on New Year’s Eve or programmed in children’s concerts. But the music is fantastic, so maybe it’s time we take a closer look at some 1970s miniseries!

“Living New York”: A Concert!

Joey (piano) and Sophie Delphis (mezzo-soprano) performing Tania León’s “Atwood Songs”

On October 27, I (Joey) and Listener Rebecca put on a concert that was the culmination of many hours, days, and months of work. 

It all began in the waning days of 2022, when we wrote a grant application for the Elebash Grant, a stipend funded by the CUNY Graduate Center (our school) to create a project related to the city of New York. Citing the low percentage of music programmed by women composers at professional orchestra concerts (12%, with only 9% by living women), we decided to program a chamber concert comprised entirely of music by living women composers associated with New York.

We curated a mix of the old guard and the up-and-comers, and tried to maximize stylistic and instrumental diversity. Here’s what we ended up with: 

I took the stage first, accompanying a lush and sometimes jazzy song cycle, titled “Atwood Songs,” by Cuban-American Tania León (CUNY Professor Emerita) that set the poetry of Margaret Atwood. Following this was New Rochelle native Joan Tower’s “Snow Dreams,” an alternately rhythmic and … well, dreamy piece for guitar and flute. Finishing up the first half was “Lament: The Fallen City,” by Susan Botti (composition faculty at the Manhattan School of Music), for violin and piano (I played again). 

In the second half, a solo piano piece by Sato Matsui (Juilliard alumna) was sandwiched by two quartets, one a commission by MSM alum Yike Zhang for piano, flute, cello, and violin (both I and Listener Rebecca performed), and the other the ever-popular “Entr’acte” for string quartet by NYC-based Caroline Shaw.

My main takeaway from the whole experience, aside from it being a very fulfilling and lovely experience overall, was that the world of arts administration is quite the challenge. Between audience wrangling, grant writing, tracking down a recording engineer, managing payments, and finding practice rooms for all our ensembles, it was no joke organizing this thing. And to think that compared to managing an orchestra, for example, this was a small task. (Kudos to Will and Harmonia’s team!)

Tone Praise

Meredith Monk, Panda Chant II

I (Will) heard this piece at a friend’s conducting recital this past weekend and it was the funnest concert opener I’ve heard in a long, long time.

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)