Stokowski And The Organ

Leopold Stokowski began his career in England as an organist and choirmaster. This first major study of Stokowski's early years covers his education at the Royal College of Music, his church posts in London, and his three years spent as director of music at New York's prestigious St. Bartholomew's Church. An examination of the programs of his organ recitals (played on the third largest organ in America), a list of his repertoire, facsimiles of his original choral works, an analysis of his Aeolian player organ roll of Bach's Passacaglia, and a detailed study of his famous orchestral transcriptions of Bach's organ works, reveals a new and unique insight into Stokowski's unparalleled career in music.

Johann Sebastian Bach – celebrated pipe organist, court composer and master of sacred music – was also a technical pioneer. Working in Germany in the early eighteenth century, he invented new instruments and carried out experiments in tuning, the effects of which are still with us today. Two hundred years later, a number of extraordinary musicians have utilised the music of Bach to thrilling effect through the art of recording, furthering their own virtuosity and reinventing the composer for our time. In Reinventing Bach, Paul Elie brilliantly blends the stories of modern musicians with a polyphonic account of our most celebrated composer’ s life to create a spellbinding narrative of the changing place of music in our lives. We see the sainted organist Albert Schweitzer playing to a mobile recording unit set up at London’ s Church of All Hallows in order to spread Bach’ s organ works to the world beyond the churches, and Pablo Casals’ s Abbey Road recordings of Bach’ s cello suites transform the middle-class sitting room into a hotbed of existentialism; we watch Leopold Stokowski persuade Walt Disney to feature his own grand orchestrations of Bach in the animated classical-music movie Fantasia – which made Bach the sound of children’ s playtime and Hollywood grandeur alike – and we witness how Glenn Gould’ s Goldberg Variations made Bach the byword for postwar cool. Through the Beatles and Switched-on Bach and Gö del, Escher, Bach – through film, rock music, the Walkman, the CD and up to Yo-Yo Ma and the iPod – Elie shows us how dozens of gifted musicians searched, experimented and collaborated with one another in the service of a composer who emerged as the prototype of the spiritualised, technically savvy artist.

Although supporters and critics of conductor Leopold Stokowski have disagreed over his contribution to symphonic music, a consensus developed that he was a man of paradox and mystery, an extrovert showman reclusively shy about who he was and what he was trying to do in music. This volume attempts to solve the mysteries. Includes an annotated discography.

LEON THEREMIN led a life of flamboyant musical invention laced with daring electronic stealth. A creative genius and prolific inventor, Theremin launched the field of electronic music virtually singlehandedly in 1920 with the musical instrument that bears his name. The theremin -- the only instrument that is played without being touched -- created a sensation worldwide and paved the way for the modern synthesizer. Its otherworldly sound became familiar in sci-fi films and even in rock music. This magical instrument that charmed millions, however, is only the beginning of the story. As a Soviet scientist, Theremin surrendered his life and work to the service of State espionage. On assignment in Depression-era America, he became the toast of New York society and worked the engines of capitalist commerce while passing data on U.S. industrial technology to the Soviet apparat. Following his sudden disappearance from New York in 1938, Theremin was exiled to a Siberian labor camp. He subsequently vanished into the top-secret Soviet intelligence machine and was presumed dead for nearly thirty years. Using the same technology that lay behind the theremin, he designed bugging devices that eavesdropped on U.S. diplomatic offices and stood at the center of a pivotal cold war confrontation. Throughout his life, Theremin developed many other electronic wonders, including one of the earliest televisions and multimedia devices that anticipated performance art and virtual reality by decades. In this first full biography of Leon Theremin, Albert Glinsky depicts the inventor's nearly one-hundred-year life span as a microcosm of the twentieth century. Theremin is seen at the epicenter of most of themajor events of the century: the Russian Revolution, two world wars, America's Great Depression, Stalin's purges, the cold war, and perestroika. His life emerges as no less than a metaphor for the divergence of communism and capitalism. Theremin blends the whimsical and the treacherous into a chronicle that takes in everything from the KGB to Macy's store windows, Alcatraz to the Beach Boys, Hollywood thrillers to the United Nations, Joseph Stalin to Shirley Temple. Theremin's world of espionage and invention is an amazing drama of hidden loyalties, mixed motivations, and an irrepressibly creative spirit.

The Symphonie pour orgue et orchestre, opus 42[bis] has had spectacular moments in its history. In1880, the future king of England, Edward VII, requested that Widor compose a grand work for organand orchestra to be performed in London?s Royal Albert Hall. The American premiere in 1919, withthe Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski and the great Wanamaker organ,attracted an audience of about 12,000 people. Using movements from his second and sixth symphonies for solo organ as the basis for this work,Widor created a masterpiece that launched a renaissance in the organ/orchestra combination. Thispremiere edition is based on Widor?s autograph manuscript as well as copies that he had made andwhich carry emendations and corrections in his own hand. The introduction includes details about theorigin of the Symphonie, manuscript sources, revisions, early performances, and performanceguidelines. Published in full score with separate organ part (and orchestral parts available byrequest), the edition reintroduces this legendary tour de force to the repertory for organ and orchestra.

This essential reader includes Thomson's essays on making a living as a musician; his articles on classic composers; his relation to his contemporaries; his articles on newcomers in the music world, including John Cage and Pierre Boulez; his autobiographical writings and commentary on his own works.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.