The Lighter Classics in Music by David Ewen

violin and several other instruments with his father; and harmony with Carl Busch. While still a boy he wrote and had published several compositions. He came to New York in 1916, worked for a while as copyist at G. Schirmer, then during World War I served for a year in the United States Army. After the war he spent several years in Paris studying composition with Nadia Boulanger; during this period he was twice the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1926-1927 he received honorable mention for his first symphony, in a contest sponsored by _Musical America_; in 1930 he received two awards from RCA Victor, one for _Sights and Sounds_, an orchestral tone poem, the other for his first successful and widely performed work, the symphony _Abraham Lincoln_. Since then Bennett has worked fruitfully in three distinct areas. As a composer of serious works he has produced several operas (including _Maria Malibran_), symphonies and other significant orchestral compositions. As an orchestrator for the Broadway theater, he has been involved with some of the foremost stage productions of our times including musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Lerner and Loewe, and many others. He has also written compositions of a more popular nature, compositions which, while fully exploiting the resources of serious music, are nevertheless filled with popular or jazz materials. Among the last are his effective symphonic adaptations of music from George Gershwin’s _Porgy and Bess_; _Oklahoma!_ and _South Pacific_ of Rodgers and Hammerstein; and _Kiss Me Kate_ of Cole Porter. In each instance, the main melodies are brilliantly orchestrated and skilfully combined into an integrated synthesis so that each becomes a coherent musical composition. The _March_, for two pianos and orchestra, (1930) makes delightful use of jazz melodies and rhythms. There are here four connected movements, each in march time. The first movement, in a vigorous style, leaps from one brief motive to another without any attempt at development. In the second, a sustained melody, first for solo oboe and later for the piano with full orchestra, is placed against a shifting rhythm. The third is a serious recitative culminating in an episode in which the classic funeral march is given sophisticated treatment. The fourth movement begins with a _marche mignonne_ and concludes with a forceful, at times overpowering, statement of the funeral-march theme of the third movement. While the _Symphony in D_ (1941) is scored for symphony orchestra and has been played by many leading American orchestras, it is music with its tongue in the cheek, and is consistently light and humorous. This symphony was written to honor the Brooklyn Dodger baseball team (that is, when they were still in Brooklyn)—ironically enough an ode to a colorful team by a composer who has been a lifelong rooter of its most bitter rival, the New York Giants (once again, when they were still at the Polo Grounds). There are four brief movements. The first, subtitled “Brooklyn Wins,” “means to picture the ecstatic joy of the town after the home team wins a game,” as the composer has explained. This is followed by a slow (_Andante lamentoso_) movement, appropriately designated as “Brooklyn Loses”—music filled with “gloom and tears, and even fury.” The third movement, a scherzo, is a portrait of the club’s then (1941) president, Larry MacPhail, and his pursuit of a star pitcher. “We hear the horns’ bay call—then we hear him in Cleveland, Ohio, trying to trade for the great pitcher, Bob Feller. He offers Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Bridge as an even trade, but the Cleveland management says ‘No’ in the form of a big E-flat minor chord. After repeated attempts we hear the hunting horns again, as he resumes the hunt in other fields.” The finale is a choral movement, and like that of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, an ode to joy. “It is purely fictitious, this text, but it speaks for itself. The subtitle of this finale is ‘The Giants Come to Town.’” Bennett has written two delightful orchestral compositions derived from the songs of Jerome Kern. One is _Symphonic Study_, a synthesis of some of Kern’s best-loved melodies, and _Variations on a Theme by Jerome Kern_. Both of these compositions are discussed in the section on Kern. Bennett’s symphonic treatment of George Gershwin’s _Porgy and Bess_, entitled _Symphonic Picture_, is commented upon in the Gershwin section, specifically with _Porgy and Bess_; Bennett’s symphonic treatment of the music of Cole Porter’s _Kiss Me Kate_, and of _Oklahoma!_ and _South Pacific_ is spoken of in the sections devoted to Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers, respectively. Bennett has also orchestrated, and adapted into a symphonic suite, the music from Richard Rodgers’ _Victory at Sea_, described in the Richard Rodgers section. Hector Berlioz Hector Berlioz was born in Côte-Saint-André, France on December 11,