Showing posts with label composer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label composer. Show all posts

February 23 - This Land Is Your Land

    Posted on February 23, 2022


This is an update of my post published on February 23, 2011:




Folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie wrote his most famous song on this day in 1940. We know this because, when he died, his daughter went through his files and found the handwritten lyrics on a piece of paper. Some of the words and the title had been crossed out and reworked, and the piece was signed “Woody G.” and dated.

Apparently Guthrie wrote the song in response to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America.” Guthrie was sick of constantly hearing the latter song on the radio, and (according to Wikipedia), he considered the lyrics “unrealistic and complacent.”


Here are the lyrics of "This Land Is Your Land":

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.



And here is a recording of Guthrie singing the song.

Did you know...?

  • Various other countries enjoy different versions of the song. For example, one line in Canada's version says, “From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters...” Irish people sing, “From the hills of Kerry to the streets of Derry...” And the people of the Bahamas sing, “From Grand Bahama down to Inagua, From the Berry Islands, down to Mayaguana...”

  • This song has been parodied many times. A parody is a version that spoofs something, trying for humor or even trying to ridicule an idea.

  • Guthrie sometimes added different verses to his song. For example, this verse makes a statement about private property:
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.



  • Perhaps the verse above explains why Guthrie was “blacklisted” by Senator Joe McCarthy, who was largely responsible for an anti-Communist “witch hunt” in the 1950s. McCarthy destroyed the lives of many people with his reckless accusations and attacks on public figures, but Guthrie just seemed to shrug off the accusation with a joke: "I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life."
  • Guthrie didn't care about copyright, so as soon as he wrote most of his songs, he released them into the public domain. Here is the copyright notice for “This Land Is Your Land”:

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.

Write your own version of the song--or even a full-blown parody. You might want to choose a tune you love and write original lyrics to that song. I have written "good-bye" or birthday songs for friends with personalized lyrics--and it's lots of fun!

Also on this date:































(Last Wednesday of February)








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December 5 - Remembering Mozart

 Posted on December 5, 2021


This is an update of my post published on December 5, 2010:




On this date in 1791, when he was just 35 years old, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died. He had been very ill for several months with what was then termed “severe military fever” (possibly rheumatic fever, but it could be other illnesses or disorders). He had a very simple funeral with few if any mourners and a common (unmarked) grave—but such was the custom in late-eighteenth-century Vienna (which is now in Austria but was then part of the Holy Roman Empire). The public loved his music and attended memorial services and concerts to mourn his loss.


A statue of Mozart in Vienna, where he
lived the last decade of his life and where
he composed many of his "Greatest Hits."

And still, more than two centuries later, Mozart remains one of the most famous and respected composers of all time.



Mozart died early even by the averages of his time, but the world is lucky that he started creating original music very early in life. By age five (living in Salzburg, Holy Roman Empire), he could already play piano and violin—and he was already composing music and playing for royalty.

By age 12 he composed his first choral mass. It was for a 4-part choir, 2 violins, viola, bass, and organ!



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August 25 - Happy Birthday, Leonard Bernstein

Posted on August 25, 2021


This is an update of my post published on August 25, 2010:



Have you ever heard the music for “West Side Story?” Leonard Bernstein wrote it.



This American conductor, composer, pianist, and author was born on this day in Massachusetts, in the U.S., to Ukrainian Jewish parents. He studied music at Harvard University and did some post-grad work at a special music school in Philadelphia. (In his conducting class, Bernstein got the only “A” grade his teacher, Fritz Reiner, ever awarded anyone, any time.)




Bernstein composed music for ballet, opera, musical theater, and film. He created pieces and symphonies simply for their own sake, to be played by orchestras. He created chamber music, choral and vocal music, and piano music. He won several Tony awards and tons of Grammy awards.



Celebrate Bernstein...by composing your own pieces.

If you have a piano, fiddle around until you find a sequence of notes (a musical phrase, as it were) that you really like. Then build on it. Reverse the notes. Play the phrase higher and lower. Add flourishes. Vary into a completely different sequence, and then go back to the original.




If you don't have a piano, try using the virtual piano found here or here. Notice that the first website has different sounds and drum beats available, and the second website has a “record” option with which you can save and replay the tune you are creating. Have fun!


Also on this date:






Anniversary of the liberation of Paris

















 

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