Author Archives: David Guion

An unexpected crossover: a rock guitarist plays opera

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I will confess that I have never liked very much of the popular music of my lifetime. Once I got out of college, I stopped paying attention entirely. As I have studied the history of popular music, I noticed that from its beginnings at the end of the eighteenth century through the heyday of Tin Pan Alley, it was marketed to adults.

Beginning with the rock music, marketers have sought to appeal to teenagers or even younger children. It appears that the audiences age along with the performers. Many people in their thirties and forties consider the Rolling Stones to old to keep playing rock, for instance.

And so I wondered, where will there be continuity? Is there still an audience for Tin Pan Alley songs that’s much younger than I am? Will any music popular to one generation be of any interest to any later one? And with so many school music programs as risk from funding cuts, how will any critical mass of young people even hear classical music?

Those of you who enjoy recent popular music and know the scene, please hold your laughter, go on to the videos, and enjoy some very expressive performances. But first let me explain why they are a revelation to me. Continue reading →

The beginnings of American concert music

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Academy of Music, New York. trombone reputation 19th century

Academy of Music, New York, erected 1845

The earliest American orchestras appear to have formed for a single concert. A little later, the larger cities saw the formation of rehearsal orchestras, where members got together to play through the symphonies of Haydn and similar music. Some of them presented occasional public performances.

Beginning in the 1820s, musicians in several cities attempted to establish permanent concert orchestras. Every one of them failed until the founding of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1842. Continue reading →

Jullien: a good book gaudily bound

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Jullien, promenade concerts

Jullien, conductor of popular promenade concerts

Revised 11/14/20

Nowadays, we are accustomed to entertainers who go by only one name, but in the nineteenth century, there was only Jullien (1812-1860). He was born with more than one name. In fact, his father conducted a French orchestra and every member became the young son’s godfather: he had 37 Christian names!

Here goes:

Louis George Maurice Adolphe Roch Albert Abel Antonio Alexandre Noé Jean Lucien Daniel Eugène Joseph-le-Brun Joseph-Barême Thomas Thomas Thomas-Thomas Pierre Arbon Pierre-Maurel Barthélemi Artus Alphonse Bertrand Dieudonné Emanuel Josué Vincent Luc Michel Jules-de-la-plane Jules-Bazin Julio César Jullien.

With a start in life like that, no wonder he became eccentric! Something of a child prodigy on the violin, his father touted him as the Paganini of the Alps. Jullien entered the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1831 but withdrew because he was more interested in light music than the classics.

According to William Weber, important social distinctions became important to music in the 1820s and 1830s. The nobility and the upper middle class each became divided between partisans of classical music and what he called high-status popular music. Low-status concerts featured the same music as high-status concerts but drew less affluent audiences. Continue reading →

Second symphony, in D major, op. 73, by Johannes Brahms

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Johannes Brahms 1872. Second Symphony

Johannes Brahms / photo by unknown photographer, 1872

Revised July 2, 2022

Johannes Brahms composed his Second Symphony during the summer of 1877, on the shores of an Austrian lake. Its cheerful, bucolic nature has caused some people to call it Brahms’ “Pastoral” symphony. Unlike Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, however, Brahms made no attempt to describe birdsong, storm, or any other aspect of nature.

Of his four symphonies, the Second remained his personal favorite. Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic premiered it on December 20, 1877.  Continue reading →

The Unanswered Question, by Charles Ives

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question marks. The Unanswered Question by Charles IvesOne thing Charles Ives learned at Yale: he had no chance of earning a living as a professional musician if he wanted to be true to his own ideals.

Not only did his musical idiom confuse his teachers, it also confused his fellow students. He went into the insurance business and composed music as a hobby.

After a long day at the office, he composed during the evening in his Manhattan apartment. He spent quiet weekends at a cabin in Connecticut, meditating, writing, and planning new compositions.

Ives began two new works in 1906, both called Contemplation. In later years, he had forgotten whether he intended them as a single two-movement piece or not.

The full titles reveal both similarities of intention and profound differences in character: A Contemplation of Nothing Serious; Or, Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summer Time and A Contemplation of a Serious Matter; Or, The Unanswered Perennial Question.

Apparently, all of his weekend meditations on the meaning of existence had not given him any satisfactory answers. He decided to express the question in what he called a “cosmic landscape.” Continue reading →

Nighttime danger: how night watchmen became the medieval alta band

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The Towers of 11th-century Bologna

The Towers of 11th-century Bologna

Updated June 10, 2023

Modern wind bands trace their ancestry back to the medieval alta band. These ensembles, initially two or three loud instruments. started out with a completely non-musical function: watch duty.

Towns had walls and watch towers in the Middle Ages to provide protection from wars, fires, thieves, and local robber barons. Watchmen posted on the towers could use flags and hand signals during the day, but not after dark.

They found that signals from a trumpet, horn, or shawm provided the best nighttime communication. In medieval times, trumpets and horns could play only a few notes at the bottom of the overtone series, but that was enough to create a number of signals. Watchmen served not only from towers but also performed street patrols. Other duties included sounding the hours.

Eventually, civic leaders recognized that a group of trumpets and shawms could do more for them than just play signals from the towers at night. They could lend dignity and splendor to proclamations and other civic ceremonies on the ground. They could even provide entertainment. With that realization, we can begin to think of the watchmen as a musical institution: the alta band.

Continue reading →