“Songs my mother taught me” by Antonin Dvorak . A Czech composer who sailed to these shores
for a creative period in the City that never sleeps, stretches the mind..”Any
intelligent and sensitive artist is always very pleased if he can find at least
one voice to which he can respond: “Yes,
he
understands me.”
II
But where was that
voice? Norbert Weiner, the father
of cybernetics at MIT?
Across Boston’s Charles River at Cambridge? Drew Faust, the
first femme fatal President that presides over Harvard University?
Ucla’s Opera Workshop honcho Jan Popper( Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” (2 Army
Reservists,their wives)?) Professors Woellner “Heaven is on the way to it”,Titus
of Machiavelli’s Prince” Politics:? Graduate manager Bill Ackerman and varsity
tennis coach of ASUCLA’s penthouse?
Sponsor for being a speaker for the U.S Senate’s Public Television Act 1967.
Italian Department for tutoring Rome, Italy home stay, Experiment
for International Living.
Harry Morris of
publications? Colonel Bing of Air Rotc,
Bill Stout, editor in chief, The Daily Bruin?
Ed Pauley, Regent
and oil tycoon, named for Pauley Pavilion. Copaches Wilbur Johns.. John
Wooden whose 7 footer teams “toastred” there. Dorothy Chandler, Regent and founder of the pavilion in her
name, downtown L.A..
Band leader and ophthalmologist, Jules Stein at his Ucla eye institute.
Aarvo Vanalstyne,
of Yale law school, teaching Constitutional Law.
Chairman of cla’s
Theater Arts, Sam Selden, preuiding “Mozaret&Nushrrom Barley”, Macgowan
Theater.
George Lorbeer of Elementary and Secondary
Education, Cal State Northridge, L.A. State College..
General Paul McGuire manning the Reserves ,during
the Russian Cuban crisis..
III
In the now, Mayor Bloomy of the City that never sleeps,
struck pay dirt, naming her Loews Kings of Barbra Striesand’s Flatbush Avenue
reality scene a historic movie palace , where she toiled the greasepaint and
ticket stubs as an usher.(“usherette”?)
“A Radio City Music Hall!. The chandeliers, the
marbled lobby, the frescos on the walls, the
cavern ous orchestra and yawning balcony, hiding an organist...those
long legged Rockettes.on stage.
“Let’s throw the
dice, people’s people.”
IV
To suggest that the composer of “The New World Symphony”
found his home on Flatbush Avenue, down from Erasmus Hall High School, and down
aways from The Dutch Reform Church of
Flatbush” lost his way, while orchestrating his mother’s songs.
“Say it ain’t so, Antonim.”
V
Fritz Kriesler, even Glen
(In the Mood, I got a gal in Kalamazoo zoo zoo” )Major Miller identifying
with the Songs my mother taught me from
the collection of Gypsy Songs for piano and violin.
Didn’t he launch his
summer impressions in the Czech like Iowan village of Spillville. He would nev
er forget in his lifetime, those moments
and movements in his home away from home..
His Norwegian
contemporary Edvard Grieg by two years
Concerto in A Minor for piano and orchestra, had the Flatbush Avenue
Erasmus High teens humming and whistling its sweeping inhale of mountain
air...”its long feverish cadenza seems to speak of towering pines writes David
Dubal.. “The adagio is tender and melancholy, leading to a grand peasant
dance.. The finale is an exhilarating peroration in the grand manner.....”
“The artist is an
optimist. Otherwise he would be no
artist. He believes and hopes in the
triumph of the good and beautiful. He trusts in his lucky star till his last
breath.”
the City that never sleeps, January 26, 2013
