Dr. Music

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Star Trek fans!  What is it about Alexander Courage's famous main theme to the original series that makes it sound otherwordly -- "where no one has gone before?"

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What is it about Mozart's last composition, the Requiem, that places it more in the Romantic Period of Beethoven than his own Classical Period?  We will discover that the line between each of these historical periods is not so cut and dry.

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Schubert's Symphony No. 8 may be the "Unfinished," but the first few pages of the score can teach us a lot about how his genius worked!

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What exactly is pandiatonicism in music? Let's travel to a few countries (including America) and find out!

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Why do musicians have access to only 12  notes in the chromatic scale? Why are there not more or less notes available?  The answer lies in math - and don't worry. This is FUN math!

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In this first episode of Season 3, discover how music is related to the birth of the universe!

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A short addendum to Dr. Music Season 2, including a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois!

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Happy Labor Day! Almost everybody is familiar with the Ode To Joy  theme from the fourth movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - right?  But how many people, other than musicologists, are familiar with exactly how that monumental movement is constructed?  What makes masterpieces of music great is not the melody itself.  The French children's song, Ah! vous dirai-je, maman,  is a very memorable melody...but look what Mozart did with it!  Likewise, Beethoven writes a very memorable theme, set to Schiller's famous poem,  and forges one of the greatest symphonic movements in the entire Western European music tradition.  Once you have listened to this episode, the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will take on a whole new light (and a whole new "Freude," as Beethoven would say)!

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The French composer Jules Massanet (1842-1912) is known mainly for his operas, though general audiences are often familiar with either specific arias or suites from operas. Besides the very popular Meditation from his opera Thaïs ,  the ballet suite from Le Cid contains some  popular Spanish folk pieces. Yet how does one make a simple folk-like melody sound interesting and fresh within a serious orchestral composition?  It takes the hand of a very talented composer like Massanet to breathe new life into what could have been a bland, conventional presentation of a folk melody.  We shall see how Massanet treats two pieces from his ballet suite, the Castillane and the Aragonaise. This episode will show how a singable folk melody can be packed with surprises!

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What does the French word Gymnopédie  mean?  It could mean an ancient Greek dance, but only Erik Satie, the composer of three piano pieces bearing that name, knows the real answer. Being a mysterious man, it is possible he wanted the meaning to remain mysterious. Yet if the title is mysterious, the music itself is a lesson in unadorned beauty.  Gymnopédie No. 1, the most well-known of the three, is the subject of this episode. We will see how Satie rejects the complexity of large scale traditional forms in favor of basking in music's elemental nature -- the simplicity of melody. In addition, we will take a look at Debussy's take on the piece in his very unique orchestral arrangement.