Then why do I never forget that one of my favorite comedies–Trading Places (1983)–takes place in Philadelphia? We can thank its unforgettable opening flipbook of the city’s icons next to images of ordinary people going to work and the city’s poor not having any. The montage is set to Mozart’s ‘Overture to the Mariage of Figarro,‘ which we’ve heard a million times but never quite like this–as an argument for the artistry of comedy rather than an affirmation of its frivolity. Listening to Mozart does not make you smarter. But in Trading Places, Director John Landis and his composer (the legendary Elmer Bernstein) use Mozart as a shorthand reminder that comedies need not make you dumber either.

The plot of Trading Places has been called a modern update of Mark Twain’s “Prince and the Pauper.” A rich stuffed shirt (Dan Aykroyd) and a street hustler (Eddie Murphy) are made to switch social places by Ackroyd’s conniving uncles who like to conduct social experiments of such things. When the two uncover the uncles’ sneaky plan to game the commodities market, they strike first, beating them at their own scam and getting rich in the process. It being the early 1980s, defeating old, inherited money through fleet footed stock trading was seen as the rebellion of youth, blows against the empire, a victory for tweed over eh, tweed.

Trading Places did great with critics and has endured mostly because its a fantastic silly comedy (SNL veterans Ackroyd and Murphy and a sequence with a horny gorilla made sure of that) that doesn’t scrimp on the fundamentals. The supporting cast bench–Jamie Lee Curtis, Ralph Bellmany, Don Ameche and Denholm Elliott–is embarrassingly deep. The script has nary a wasted line. And hiring Elmer Bernstein to score a summer comedy is like hiring Steve Jobs to oversee the launch of a lemonade stand.

It’s in his choice of Mozart to open the film that we see that Landis is up to more than talent overkill. Once you’ve seen the film (and have a modest knowledge of opera) the choice of ‘Overture’ is a cheap gold star for the viewer. ‘Figarro’ is a comic morality play about a servant outwitting an aristocrat, a nod at Trading Places’s gentle theme of money not equalling intelligence or even refinement. But one level deeper is Landis’s bigger goal: an unsmiling reminder that comedy has as gloried a cultural history as classical music and the grandparents of Trading Places are not pratfall artists and music hall crass but  great cinematic comedians like Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch from a generation before.

Of John Landis’s first 10 films (1977-1988) 6 can fairly be called classics. One (National Lampoon’s Animal House) is in the Library of Congress, an honor also held by his contemporary Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day). Throw in the best work of Ivan Reitman from that time (Stripes, Ghostbusters) and you have a body of comedy movies that not only crack you up but used legendary composers who created memorable themes, made room for 40-year veterans in the supporting cast and had stars that later were nominated for Oscars and had 20-30-year careers ahead of them.

This was broad comedy given the time, care and resources of high art. I’ve no idea if in hindsight we’ll regard contemporary laugh factories like the work of Judd Apatow and the Frat Pack the same. I tend to doubt it.

Musically speaking Trading Places starts big with an iconic Mozart piece. Afterward, Bernstein’s score is restrained and sober. There’s no lining the atmosphere with pop songs that would dominate the later years of the decade and few memorable musical passages beyond the opening. Mozart is what we’re supposed to remember, its inclusion a wink without a smile. Its as though opening a comedy with more than enough fart jokes and gratuitious nudity with the ultimate icon of high culture was a way of saying “Pay attention. What we’re doing here has the same craftmansmenship and dedication as when young Wolfgang sat down at the piano.”

J.S. Bach, image courtesy of Wikipedia

This week’s trivia SMS informed that J.S. Bach was imprisoned in 1717. What could he possibly have done wrong? Oh, he just got a new job, that’s all. His soon-to-be-former employer, the Duke of Weimar wanted nothing of it and tossed Bach in the slammer. Bach made good use of the time, however–he spent the month imprisoned working on Book One of the Well-tempered Clavier.

Here’s a segment of Well-tempered Clavier, Book 1, No. 2 in c minor:

Mozart, image via opera.stanford.edu

This week’s self esteem-busting trivia text message chronicled the fact that Mozart wrote over 30 symphonies between the age of 8 and 19. Crazy talk, right? Right.

Another fun fact. His birth name was super long! Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Yup.

Below is an excerpt from Mozart’s Symphony No. 1, written at the age of 8.

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Image courtesy of www.classical-composers.org

b. January 29, 1862 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England
d. June 10, 1934 Grez-sur-Loing, France

Born to German parents, Frederick Delius was born Fritz Albert Theodore Delius; he anglicized his name in the early 1900s.

Delius spent time apprenticing with his father, a wool distributor, before leaving for the United States to run an orange plantation in Florida. He spent a year-and-a-half there and was endlessly fascinated with the songs of the plantation workers he saw every day. While in Florida, he spent the majority of his time studying music theory and absorbing the local sounds and music. He went on to Virginia to teach music.

Delius later studied at the Leipzig Conservatory before moving to France, where he remained for the rest of his life.

This iconic composer drew his influences from many sources — the African American music he heard in the plantations, Nordic folk songs and Wagner were all included in the mix.

Delius managed to continue composing late into his years of being stricken with syphilis, largely due to the gracious help of young composer Eric Fenby, who agreed to work as a scribe for Delius.

And now for some awesome music by Frederick Delius!

The last movement of Florida Suite. So beautiful.

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

Image courtesy of userserve-ak.last.fm

Do you get seasick? Igor Stravinsky didn’t. He got sea drunk. A big difference, he said! If you’re subscribed to our weekly trivia SMS, you saw his direct quote–”I never am seasick. Never. I am sea drunk.”

We know and love Stravinsky for his ground-breaking and riot-inducing Rite of Spring.

Another bit of trivia — though Russian-born, Stravinsky was a naturalized citizen of the United States *and* France! Are you itching to learn more? The coming week’s trivia SMS involves Stravinsky as well.

Just text SALON97 to 41411 or enter your number in the red box on the right-hand side of this site. It’s easy, fun, and FREE.

image courtesy of last.fm

Franz Peter Schubert, a chamber music extraordinaire and one of the few truly Viennese composers, lived a short but very prolific life. He’s our Composer of the Week and he rocks!

b. January 31, 1797 in Vienna, Austria

d. November 19, 1828

Schubert was the youngest of five out of nine surviving children. He was taught to play the violin by his schoolmaster father and piano by his oldest brother.

It became apparent quite quickly that Schubert was musically talented, and soon after this realization he became a choir boy and was admitted to the Imperial and Royal City College. While at Royal City College he wrote his first compositions and also met the great Antonio Salieri.

At age 17, Schubert set Goethe’s Faust to create “Gretchen am Spinnrade”–his first lieder masterpiece. A year later he wrote symphonies, attempted 4 operas, chamber music and 150 songs. In 1819 he spent a summer in the countryside, which inspired the writing of the famed Trout Quintet.

Schubert was known to be slovenly in appearance–he often slept in his clothes and glasses. Despite this he was always very diligent about composing and wrote every morning. He was his most prolific while on composition retreats and wrote significantly less at times when he was teaching.

Though it is Symphony No. 8 that is referred to as the infamous “Unfinished Symphony” all but one of his symphonic projects were unfinished and Symphony No. 9 “The Great” was the only completed symphony he wrote.

A selection from Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”:

Schubert’s Impromptu in b flat minor:

image courtesy of wikimedia.org

Dmitri Shostakovich was a dynamic composer who delicately balanced performing in his preferred avant-garde fashion, writing commissioned communist-sympathetic works for films, plays and ballets, along with the overall requisite that he show Leninist support. How tiring it must have been! Shostakovich is our dynamo Composer of the Week.

b. September 25, 1906, St Petersburg
d. August 9, 1975, Moscow

Dmitri Shostakovich was regarded as the greatest symphonist of the 20th century and his musical talents were clear early on. Shostakovich had perfect pitch and was also well-acquainted with works by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov by approximately age 10.

The success of his first symphony made him internationally famous. Composed between 1924 and 1925, it was his graduation piece at the Leningrad Conservatory.

Shostakovich’s true calling was to compose in avant-garde forms, however, the need to earn money and support his mother led him to accept contracts to compose for film, ballets and plays in the late 20s. He wrote music for 10 films, 8 plays and 3 ballets, all of which were propagandist works denouncing capitalism.

Additionally in this time, Shostakovich placed a strong emphasis on performing as a pianist. He placed 8th in the Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

His 1934 premiere of the opera Lady Macbeth was incredibly successful and well-regarded, until Stalin and some of his high-ranking officials attended a performance of the work and denounced it as leftist confusion. Shostakovich immediately lost his position of the leader in Soviet music. Throughout his life, Shostakovich endured the hypocracy of showing Leninist support. It is believed that he was only minimally supportive of this regime and instead showed support to avoid the ruin of his career. These difficulties took a toll on Shostakovich.

Though he managed to maintain his artistic voice while singing the praises of Lenin, he was also denounced several time for “formalism,” which means that he was accused of writing music that was too highly structured in lieu of providing simple uplifting music for the masses.

Against his will, Shostakovich was named First Secretary of the Soviet Composers Union and the many prizes he won included an honorary degree from Oxford and, ironically, the Lenin Prize.

A selection from Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite:

The super fabulous Scherzo:

image courtesy of wikimedia.org

b. Oct. 24, 1929 in Charleston, West Virginia

George Crumb, American composer extraordinaire, engaged in quite an extensive musical education — he studied at the Mason College of Music in Charleston, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the Berlin Conservatory. Crumb received a Rockefeller grant in 1964 and was a composer in residence at the Buffalo Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Most of Crumb’s music can be described as eerie and bone-chilling, and he is certainly one of the more avant-garde composers featured in our Composer of the Week segment. His compositions reference art-music, hymns, folk music and non-western music, and they also commonly employ various vocal techniques along with symbolic, mystical and theatrical components.

Crumb taught at the University of Pennsylvania for over 30 years. He was a Fullbright scholar and won the Pulitzer prize for his work “Echoes of Time and the River” in 1968. Crumb is also a 2001 GRAMMY award winner and was the 2004 Musical America “Composer of the Year.”

Ancient Voices of Children:

Vox Balaenae:

image courtesy of last.fm

b. June 29, 1911 in New York, NY
d. December 24, 1975 in Los Angeles, CA

Bernard Herrmann began studying composition and conducting at NYU while still in high school. He went on to Juilliard where he remained for two years, however, he found the school to be too conservative. In 1933, Herrmann formed the New Chamber Orchestra, which was comprised of unemployed musicians. He used this group to practice his conducting abilities as well as test his compositions. In 1934, Herrmann was hired as an assistant to Johnny Green, a conductor and composer with CBS. From 1936-40 he composed incidental music for episodes of “The Columbia Workshop” radio show, “The Mercury Theater on the Air” (directed by Orson Welles), and “The Campbell Playhouse” (also directed by Welles).

This work led to Wells commissioning Bernard Herrmann to write the score for Citizen Kane. Herrmann went on to compose for Fox studios for 12 years, and upon beginning to work with Alfred Hitchcock and MGM, his career became quite successful. He composed the score for Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and also TV’s Rawhide, The Twilight Zone, and The Alfred Hitchcock Half Hour.

Herrmann was one of the few Hollywood composers of his time who orchestrated his own works. He saw this aspect of music as the composer’s musical thumbprint. That said, his orchestration was often unusual. In The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) he used two theremins, an electric violin, bass, guitar, 4 harps, 4 pianos, percussion and brass. In Journey to the Center of the Earth he used 5 organs. Herrmann’s concert and operatic works did not receive nearly as much attention as his film compositions.

Socially, he was known to be egotistical and difficult to get along with. Herrmann would only compose for films in which he was at liberty to write what he wished. As such, when Hitchcock once asked him to write a score with more “pop” sound and did not like Herrmann’s result, Herrmann refused to change the composition and never worked with him again. He won the 1941 Academy Award for The Devil and Daniel Webster. He received a GRAMMY and Oscar nomination for his score to Martin Scorsese’s film, Taxi Driver.

And now for some listening! A couple of Bernard Herrmann’s best known works are below.

The theme from Psycho:

The theme from Vertigo:

image courtesy of bbc.co.uk

Antonin Dvorak was basically a rock star. So much so that some computer keyboards were named after him.

b. September 8, 1841 in Prague

d. May 1, 1904 in Prague

Dvorak was an early musical talent and made quick gains on the violin upon beginning his studies at age 5. He studied at the only organ school in Prague and later became accomplished on the violin and viola. He played in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra until 1871 when he began composing.

In 1871 he wrote the song cycle “Cypress Trees” to woo one of his students, Josefina Cermakova. He ended up marrying her sister Anna instead since Josefina married another man. Dvorak had 9 children.

Dvorak began being recognized as an important composer in the early 1870s. He received an honorary degree from Cambridge and directed the National Conservatory of Music in NY from 1892 to 1895. He wrote Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” in winter and spring of 1893 and returned to Europe in 1895. He later directed the Conservatory in Prague until he died in 1904.

He wrote 9 symphonies, a set of symphonic poems, concerti, several operas and was greatly influenced by composers such as Smetana, Wagner and Brahms, who was the most influential for him. Brahms and Dvorak became friends after Dvorak won a composing competition three years in a row. Brahms was a judge at the competition. After the two became friends, Brahms had tremendous influence on Dvorak’s work. Brahms contacted the European publisher Simrock on behalf of Dvorak, and the following year a few of Dvorak’s works were published and became very successful. These included the Serenade for Strings, 5th Symphony, String Quartet No. 2 and Piano Trio No. 1.

Most of the Dvorak photos I found were either incredibly pixelated, or were of Dvorak keyboards. Composers first, keyboards second. Okay? Additionally I came across some strange images:

Mozart ≠ Dvorak. Just sayin’.

image courtesy of www.chinaoilpainting.com

Czechoslovakia (prior to becoming the Czech Republic) released a Dvorak coin. Way to represent!

image courtesy of www.tady.cz

What???

image courtesy of 3.bp.blogspot.com

A couple great Dvorak pieces to listen to:

New World Symphony, 4th mvt. Who hears Jaws??

Serenade for Strings, tempo di valse: