hindsight!

I had an awesome time today working with the students at White Bear Lake High School's north campus on The Arrow & The Song. I packed my camera especially for this trip but promptly forgot to bring it in so, unfortunately, I have no pictures of the blessed event. Needless to say, they did amazing! Go, Bears!

Despite that, a really interesting musical event presented itself in place of said workshop: I stopped through Bloomington on the way home to do some spring break jamming with a friend who is not only an insane guitar player, but an amazing middle school music educator as well. (Nobody would disagree that the world needs more of them, right?)

Brian has an incredible music library and, in this treasure trove, is a leather-bound book that a colleague apparently gave him a little while ago called Manual of Music.













The copyright on this thing is 1888. Yeah. That's right. I can't believe somebody would give it away! I doubt he has any plans to do so in the near future.













At the time of the publication of this book, Brahms was still alive! They even have an entry on him. The picture of him is definitely not one of the few we associate him with most often.













Here's a portion of the entry they have for him (click on it to make it larger...and read for yourself).













My favorite part is when it introduces him by saying, "Probably the most talented German composer since Wagner, and ranking far in advance of all his own contemporaries, save Rubinstein only..." Who's Rubinstein, right? Is he included in The Three B's?

They go on about "Edward" Grieg for a while...with an obvious prejudice against Scandinavia: "The development of the fine arts seems to be the peculiar province of those people who are climatically favored."













Minnesota kind of proves that wrong, right? A Pulitzer/Grammy winner, an internationally-recognized theatre as well as an s-load of classical music organizations. Of course it might be a little different now than it was 120 years ago.

But the Norway-haters don't stop there: "The cold and frigid North has not been prolific in the production of men of rank in the world's aristocracy of art. Passion and sentiment, which are the spontaneous characteristics of those who are favored by the genial influences of sunny southern skies, flourish amid the less congenial conditions of the North with feeble intensity..."

Verbose, much? I realize that the English language was a little different back in 1888 but they could have easily just have said, "People who live in cold climates spend less time creating art." The authors really know how to kick someone when they're down. I've been to Grieg's home in Bergen, by the way, so whatever...

And then there is the assertion, "Can America produce an artist?" Apparently, circa 1888, Louis Moreau Gottschalk warranted inclusion to answer this question.













My favorite part about Gottschalk is that he spent the majority of his life working as a virtuoso pianist in Europe until his death in 1869...almost 20 years before the book was published!

Aaron Copland was born 12 years later. So, think what you will.

Oh well, right? I suppose it's what you'd expect from a book put out in 1888. And, lest we forget, this was 2 years after Liszt died, 5 years after Wagner did the same and both Brahms and Tchaikovsky were still alive! So, all criticism aside, it was interesting to see just how temporary some people apparently became in terms of how the Western musical tradition teaches "classical" music. It proved that being a footnote in somebody's curio can be fun.