[78-L] Lenny

Sun Jul 7 20:44:31 PDT 2013

Your discussion on borrowed-stolen music themes reminds me of a 1941 Bluebird Jan Savitt 78 I have on a 33 called "The Things I Love" with a vocal by Allan DeWitt.I first heard it in the late '70s and didn't give it much thought until I heard the melody in a string quartet piece years later.I believe it was by Tschaikovsky.I've heard several Tschaikovsky themes show up in so called "pop music" recordings of the '40s.I have bad version of Tschaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fair" by Larry Clinton done under the title of "Bounce of the Candy Fairy".I can't remember the title of the other side,but it was a good tune and if it weren't for that,I would have broken the record just out of respect for Tschaik-
kovsky.Les Brown's "Everybody's Making Money But Tschaikowsky" was another matter:I saw that one by Spike Jones and his City Slickers in a junk store but never bought it.I can't remember if it was on Victor or Bluebird.There was a nice,dancable version of his "Pathetique" symphony I had on OKeh,but I don't remember if it was Les Brown or from other band like Frankie Masters.It was a nice record.I once tried to write a set of lyrics to it:they went something like,"Forever,I will give my love to you...."That was some 30+ years ago for a woman I was madly in lust over.She was HOT.

--- On Sun, 7/7/13, DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com> wrote:

From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
Subject: [78-L] Lenny
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Date: Sunday, July 7, 2013, 1:58 PM

I'm impressed by all of the vitriol directed at Bernstein here!  It is so easy to find examples of composers stealing from other composers or even from themselves;  Bach and Handel used their own music over and over, (without records or radio nobody would likely notice), Stravinsky, Brahms, Copland, Tchaikovsky, etc. etc. borrowed themes from others.  The first movement of Weingartner's 6th symphony is a direct steal of the third movement of Schubert's 8th Symphony, (Unfinished), but if these artisans are able to expertly rework the material into something fresh, I have no problem with that.  How many hear Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu without thinking of "I'm always chasing rainbows"?  I would probably never say that Bernstein is my favourite conductor or my favourite interpreter of any composer but I think as a music lover I would be poorer without his interpretations of Haydn, Mahler, Ives, Copland, Shostakovitch, Sibelius, Stravinsky, etc.
 Sometimes his emoting is over the top, sometimes his ego gets between the music and the listener, but I've never had a problem suffering a justified ego.  If you've listened to his Harvard Lectures, you can appreciate the depth of his understanding of the music he is presenting.  Other conductors, such as Celibidache, seem to believe that they know the music much better than the composer himself did, (I don't know of Celibidache ever conducting the music of a female composer), but I've never gotten that feeling from Bernstein; I've always felt he's doing his best to delve into the soul of the composer to find details which, perhaps, were never revealed before.  

While Rhapsody in Blue has jazz elements, I wouldn't really call it jazz;  as far as I know, the entire piece is scored, there are no ad-libbed solos, and I wouldn't think that Bernstein has the same jazz skills as, say, Andre Previn, (who conducts much of the same repertoire as Bernstein, has done an excellent Gershwin recording of the 3 biggies, as well as items that Bernstein never touched such as Elgar and Vaughan-Williams Symphonies).

db

>________________________________
> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com> 
>Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2013 8:34:59 AM
>Subject: Re: [78-L] Bernstein's Rhapsody
> 
>
>On 7/7/2013 8:56 AM, Don Cox wrote:
>> On 07/07/2013, David Lennick wrote:
>>
>>> Don't get me started on that thief already. Listen to "Fancy Free" and
>>> "On the Town" where he's stolen the theme from the first movement of
>>> Dohnanyi's Serenade in C, as well as a nice chunk of Hindemith's Weber
>>> Variations (which the PSONY premiered at a time when he was probably
>>> backstage scribbling furiously).
>>> dl
>>>
>> If Hindemith can steal from Weber, why can't Bernstein steal from
>> Hindemith ?
>>
>> Regards
>
>Ah, but Lenny didn't call his ballet "Three Dances from Fancy Free, one of them 
>based on a motif from Hindemith's Variations on a theme by Carl Maria von 
>Weber". the Jermiah Symphony is equally derivative (lots of Strauss and 
>Shostakovich).
>
>dl
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