Puma, Dvorak, Dawson, and Tchaikovsky uses the "N" word.

This is Puma. She is a gift from above. When we said good-bye to Shadow in November, it left a big hole of our hearts...I still miss her so much. But that same month, my son Jack found a stray kitten by his apartment at college. A tiny little creature she was, who came out of nowhere and has become a part of our family. She is Jack's cat, yes, but he brought her home to stay with us over the Christmas holidays. She also comes to visit us when he and his roommates go on road trips for baseball season....Cheryl and I are her cat-sitters. I have absolutely fallen in love with this cat. She has helped to fill the void left by Shadow. It was like she was sent here to do just that....When Puma visits, she gets to listen to a lot of classical music, which I think she really likes. Here she is relaxing to Dvorak's Symphony number 1.

I just completed a Dvorak listening challenge...all 9 of his symphonies in one week in order from 1 to 9. I feel confident in saying that Puma is probably the only cat in the greater Kansas City Metro Area who has accomplished this feat as well.

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In honor of Black History Month, I'd like to share some music with you by William Levi Dawson. My friend Byl led me to Dawson;s music awhile back. (Thank you Byl!).

Anyway, as part of Black History Month, the music of William Levi Dawson should be celebrated. Here is a brief biography from an article I found online about his life.

William Levi Dawson (1899–1990) is remembered chiefly for his masterful choral arrangements of Negro spirituals and for his multi-decade leadership of the Tuskegee Institute Choir. In 1934, however, his career seemed to be headed in a very different direction: Leopold Stokowski programmed Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony on four Philadelphia Orchestra concerts that met with acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The broadcast of one of these concerts on the Columbia Broadcasting System had a particularly powerful impact on the many African Americans in the radio audience. Materials in the William Levi Dawson Collection at Emory University illuminate both the momentousness of the symphony's debut and its provocatively minor impact on the trajectory of its composer's career. This article examines the premiere of the Negro Folk Symphony as a groundbreaking event both public and personal, offers an explanation for the symphony's startlingly rapid descent into obscurity, and argues that this effective and fascinating work merits renewed attention from conductors and scholars today

Classical music has many hundreds of years of history…and sadly, it is not a genre that has been very inclusive of people of color. But it does have more diversity than most people realize..more than I did for sure. And I think we need to celebrate the contributions of great African American composers like William Levi Dawson. Take a listen to his music and share it with others.

On a side note of personal interest to me….Mr. Dawson earned his music degree here in Kansas City, and taught school in the Kansas City Public Schools. My grandfather was a student in KCPS during the time that Dawson taught here…..I would like to dream that they crossed paths, but sadly, that is unlikely because of the segregation of schools. My grandfather later became superintendent of schools in Kansas City in 1956.

Here is a recording of the Negro Folk Symphony (1934). It is just wonderful.

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In April 1891, Pyotr Tchaikovsky was in New York City, where he was received with great fanfare. He conducted some of his own music during the grand opening week of Carnegie Hall. "The enthusiasm is far greater than than anything I have met with, even in Russia. I was recalled over and over again; handkerchiefs were waved, cheers resounded---in fact, it is easy to see that I have taken the Americans by storm." - a diary entry of April 27, 1891.
But during his stay in America, he made another observation in a letter to his brother, Modeste, dated April 15, 1891. "After a bath, I dressed, dined against my inclination, and went for a stroll down Broadway. An extraordinary street. Houses of one and two stories alternate with some nine-storied buildings. Most original. I was struck with the number of nigger faces I saw." And in a letter dated April 12, 1878, Tchaikovsky described an unpleasant train trip:  "...a conversation with a very importunate gentleman, bent on convincing me that the policy of England was the most humane in the world; the crowd of dirty Jews with their accompanying odours; the numbers of young conscripts who traveled in our train, with their farewell scenes with their wives and mothers at every station---all these things spoilt my pleasure in returning to my beloved native land."

Was Tchaikovsky, one of my all-time favorite composers, racist and antisemitic?  From his words above, it sounds like he was indeed. Am I going to stop listening to his music? No way. But I must admit when I read these letters the first time, I was shocked. No one wants to believe that people who create great beauty can also have a dark side, or be horribly flawed. But they can be, and probably are. 

Classics in Film and Commercials

The State of Nebraska has a new commercial to promote tourism. The ad is called "Flyover Country" and the music is from the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/I57Q/nebraska-tourism-commission-flyover-country

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Roma is a fantastic movie that I almost didn't watch. I heard a piece on NPR about how Alfonso Cuaron had a deal with Netflix to make it. But in order for a film to earn a nomination for an Academy Award, it must play in theaters too. Here's that story.

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/07/673661569/with-an-eye-on-oscars-netflix-sent-roma-to-theaters-first

Anyway, my wife and I watched it on Netflix. I knew it was in Spanish with English subtitles, and was filmed in black and white. About twenty minutes into the film, I was not into it. I looked at my watch. I looked at my wife, who gave me that look asking me "do you like it?" (she is not a foreign language film aficionado by any means). I looked back at her with my eyes saying "no". I didn't think I was going to make it through the entire film. But I slowly got sucked in. I crossed over some invisible threshold and became completely immersed and emotionally invested. By the end of the film, I realized that I had just watched something very special. This may be one of the greatest pieces of film making in my lifetime....a Citizen Kane of our time. It just took me awhile to get there. I highly recommend it. And one of the great scenes of the movie uses the music of Hector Berlioz to great effect:

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/roma-scene-alfonso-cuaron-1203094312/

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Tchaikovsky started writing his first symphony in 1866 shortly after he moved to Moscow. It was completed and premiered in 1868. He wrote six symphonies, and 4-6 are generally his best known and most performed...no surprise, because they are incredible. But his First Symphony, known as the "Winter Symphony" is a great start. Here is an interesting take on it:

Throughout his life, Tchaikovsky retained a fondness for the First Symphony. Despite regarding it as an immature first foray into the art of the Symphony, he also felt that it was "in some ways richer than many of his later works."

Bohrer, Isabel A., "A Comparative Analysis of Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s First and Sixth Symphonies" (2018). Honors College. 320. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/320

I want to call your attention to a very unusual passage in the First Movement. It starts at about the 6:10 mark of the video clip. The cellos/basses are alone with a quiet phrase by themselves. Then the French horns enter...

The first horn voices what sounds like an G on my piano....then the second horn comes in and plays a note a half step up from that...an A-flat. It's not just a passing tone, quickly moving by. Tchaikovsky sits on this semitone for a full measure, which is the most dissonant interval known to man! For me, it is pure genius because it stretches the fabric of sound, and reveals a resolution that satisfies one's curiosity and longing. Tchaikovsky is certainly a master of melody, but against a backdrop of dissonance such as this, his melodic beauty is even greater.