68: I, Too, Sing America

Orchestral diversity stats and a great American composer

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Maestro Will special. Most of you will probably be able to guess the composer from his distinctive style, and I’ve let the clip run just long enough to reveal the genre. But can you guess which piece it is? There’s not much to give it away!

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 67
Jean Cras, String Trio

For me, this submission from Listener Ian was a real puzzlement, as it seems to have been for the rest of the Tone Prose gang: I was the only weigher-in in the comment section. I went with Ibert, Tomasi, and Messager, and I thought I was reaching pretty deep into the well of obscure French composers, but alas, it was not deep enough.

But believe it or not, the one and only other submission came via email, and it was from Listener Victor who wrote in with the EXACT composition — within hours of the newsletter hitting inboxes!

I’d almost be tempted to accuse Listeners Ian and Victor of engaging in some sort of NTT conspiracy, but if they were in cahoots, certainly Listener Victor would have put his guess in the comments section and played slightly dumb.

Anyway, Listener Victor, you are truly the Victor Listener this week, and please accept Tone Prose’s congratulations on a really astonishing feat of musical identification!

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.

NEWS!

The League of American Orchestras has published its 2023 Orchestra Repertoire Report. Here are the headline takeaways:

Between the 2016-17 and 2022-23 seasons:

• The programming of works by living composers grew from 10.7% to 21.9%:

• The programming of works by women and non-binary composers (both living and deceased) increased from 1.7% to 12.3%:

• The programming of works by BIPOC composers (both living and deceased) rose from 2.6% to 18%:

  • Black composer programming increased from 0.3% to 10.3%: In 2022-2023, over twice as many works by Black composers were performed than by composers from every other racial/ethnic demographic combined.

  • Latinx composer representation increased from 1.1% to 4.2%:

  • Asian composer representation increased from 0.9% to 2.8%:

• The programming of works by White men decreased from 95.3% to 75.1%:

Finally Someone Gets It

A truly wonderful bit of journalism appeared in the New York Times this past week courtesy of Joshua Barone. Titled Stephen Sondheim Belongs In The Pantheon of American Composers, it is basically a primer on Sondheim’s musicals, hinting to the various influences that made Sondheim sound like Sondheim.

If I (Will) had written the article, it would have been “Stephen Sondheim Belongs in the Pantheon of Classical Composers,” but I basically did that already as an audio documentary on episode 67 of the Classical Gabfest. Anyway, here are a few good quotes that name-check other members of the classical pantheon:

He was often asked which came first, the music or the lyrics. The most accurate answer is probably sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both, but with a deference to clarity of text. Like Wagner, who wrote the librettos of his operas, Sondheim wanted his lyrics to be heard and understood; his vocal lines resemble those of Janacek and Debussy, whose dramas unfurl with the rhythm of speech.

[...]

Sondheim’s most prolific, and ambitious, period began with the concept musical “Company” (1970) and his collaborations with the eminent producer and director Hal Prince. Gemignani said that, together, they “never compromised on bringing their ideas to life.” It was during this period that Sondheim emerged as a postmodernist in the vein of John Adams, with a deep well of references presented with a wink or sincerity, but above all with dramaturgical purpose.

For “Pacific Overtures” (1976), Sondheim took a similar approach to Puccini in “Turandot,” by putting authentic sounds — in this case, Kabuki music — through his own idiomatic prism. But, like Puccini, he suggests rather than represents, unable to escape a Western perspective while purportedly telling a story from a Japanese point of view.

Inspired by the spareness of Japanese visual art, Sondheim composed an analogue in a song that does little more than develop a single chord, over and over. As Philip Glass and Steve Reich were applying a world-music sensibility to the classical sphere, Sondheim wrote his own kind of repetitive phase music. “It’s not insignificant that when I met Steve Reich,” Sondheim later wrote, “he told me how much he loved this show.”

He was on culturally surer ground with “A Little Night Music” (1973), in which the idea of variation is applied to waltz-like melodies in three. He wrote that his favorite form was the theme and variations, and that he respected Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” This musical came closer to that piece than anything else Sondheim wrote, with a hint of Sibelius.

[...]

Gemignani called “Sweeney” Sondheim’s “Porgy and Bess.” Like that show, it has played in Broadway theaters and opera houses alike. And like that show, it’s the masterpiece of a great American composer.

Tone Praise

Erik Satie, Gnossienne No. 5

As the king of outsiders, Satie is a fascinating composer for me (Joey). Fortunately, there is a huge amount of piano music (if “music” is really the word), and in second place among that oeuvre are his six Gnossiennes, of which #5 is my favorite. (The Gymnopédies, or at least the first one, are certainly in first place.) According to Wikipedia, “the etymology of the word gnossienne is contentious,” but it is almost certainly related to Satie’s classicism, and in particular his Grecophilia.

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