#maynard solomon

[empirearchives]

Beethoven Portraits from the Napoleonic Era

(Plus one of him on his deathbed)

Source: Beethoven by Maynard Solomon

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Happy Birthday to my boy Wolferl, one of the most fundamentally misunderstood composers in the canon of Western classical music. If you want a prime example of why history nerds get mad at movies for giving everyone the wrong impression of real people and events, look no further than the 1984 film Amadeus and how thoroughly it shaped everyone's ideas of Mozart (and Salieri) thereafter. Yes, Mozart had a hell of a sense of humor, but that doesn't mean he was also a complete goofball or a manchild. No, Salieri wasn't secretly plotting Mozart's demise, either professionally or actually. The real tragic tale, the real rivalry in which Mozart was embroiled, was with his own father, Leopold Mozart.

Leopold Mozart was the original Stage Dad: controlling, narcissistic, neurotic, and not at all prepared to deal with his son becoming a separate person with his own needs and desires. Mozart finally got out from under his father's thumb and made a name for himself, by himself, only to be cut down by illness a few years later.

Maynard Solomon's Mozart: A Life is still the biography to read for Mozart. It punctures a lot of the myth and weird objectification of him and explores the dysfunctional family dynamics that shaped him. It's not perfect (one of my uni music professors basically got Solomon to admit in person that he was working out his issues with his own dad when he wrote all of this, so yeah, it leans on some Freudian psychoanalytical takes that may be overreaching a bit) but it's still an important counterbalance to what people think they know about Mozart. I highly recommend it if you want to get closer to the real, historical Wolfgang. It's a thicc-ass book, but it's not strictly chronological, so you can just read one chapter at a time.

[empirearchives]

The historian Solomon explains that Beethoven’s break with Napoleon was due to the outbreak of war. Beethoven lived in Austria and could not afford to be seen taking Revolutionary France’s side.

Source: Beethoven, by Maynard Solomon

[empirearchives]

According to the historian and musicologist Maynard Solomon, Beethoven wrote on the pages of his Piano Concerto No. 5, “Austria rewards Napoleon” (“Östreich löhne Napoleon”). It was later dubbed as the “Emperor” Concerto.

[julio-viernes]

“Illuminations” fue el sexto álbum de Buffy Sainte-Marie con un sonido único, completamente distinto al de anteriores LPs. Partiendo de su voz y guitarra acústica, el productor Maynard Solomon utilizó sintetizadores en él (Buchla entre otros) y fue el primer LP vocal cuadrafónico de la historia.

Peter Schickele arregló "Mary", "Adam" y "The Angel", y Mark Roth produjo "Suffer the Little Children", "With You, Honey", "Guess Who I Saw in Paris" y "He's a Keeper of the Fire" (arriba) temas que la metían de lleno en el rock y que fueron los primeros que no produjo el jefe del sello Vanguard, Solomon.