| Contents |
From the family archives -- On the farm: Wauwatosa, Wisconsin -- Piano lessons, and a "very modern" waltz -- In town: Madison, Wisconsin -- An unconventional German education -- Refugees and Dadaists in Zurich -- Edith Rockefeller McCormick and the Zurich conservatory -- Strauss, Nikisch, Busoni, Joyce -- Zuricher cadenza: mountain climbing -- Chicago in the twenties -- Chicago coda: ethnological conducting -- The Eastman school of music -- Cologne -- Barnstorming in New York -- How to make an American opera -- Frontier music: a university in Arizona -- A new college in Vermont -- The WPA and a chamber orchestra -- Lange festivals, southern barnstorming -- The business of music -- Columbia university -- Compositions and composing -- Scherzo and adagio: gambling and divorce -- Electronic music -- Elba, Roma, Tunisia. |
| Abstract |
Born in Milwaukee in 1900, Otto Luening grew up in the rich musical culture of German immigrants. At the age of five he wrote his first piece of music - a "very modern" waltz. When his father, a conductor and conservatory teacher, heard it he said, "It must be discouraged, an artis'?s life is much too difficult in the United States." In 1912 the Luenings moved to Munich, where Otto studied flute at the Royal Academy. Soon after World War I began, Luening fled to Zurich, where he studied with the legendary Ferruccio Busoni and played in the Tonhalle Orchestra under such conductors as Richard Strauss. In Zurich he found a patron in Edith Rockefeller McCormick. He also acted in James Joyce's theater group and took part in some of the bizarre musical projects of the Dadaists. Back in America in the twenties, he worked as a pit musician in a Chicago movie theater, played vaudeville piano, and organized the American Grand Opera Company. His reputation as a composer, conductor, and performer soon earned him a position at the Eastman School of Music, and from there he went on to teach at the University of Arizona, Bennington College, and Columbia University. Luening has been a vital force in American music for many years. As the composer of Evangeline and as conductor of world premieres of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium and Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's The Mother of Us All, he has fostered the growth of American opera. One of the first to compose electronic music, he has also been tireless in his work as a composer and educator to alert Americans to their musical heritage. Here is the delightful story of one man's adventures in the republic of music, and his excursions to Hollywood, Tunisia, the Cologne studio of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the Acadian towns of Nova Scotia and Louisiana, where he wrote his opera. Here also is the story of his relationships with such different personalities as Martha Graham, Harry Partch, Edgar Varese, and Carl Sandburg. A pioneer, musical roustabout, and faithful servant of his art, Otto Luening affords us through his memoirs a vivid and full picture of twentieth-century musical life. |
