NRR Project: Robert Shaw directs Bach's Mass in B minor (1947)

 

NRR Project: Mass in B-minor

Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach

Performed by Robert Shaw and the Robert Shaw Chorale

Recorded 1947

2 hours, 12 min.

This enormous work is a landmark in Western music, and Robert Shaw’s direction of this recording is rightly regarded as a landmark as well. Shaw’s comprehension of the text and his ability to evoke a vital and energized performance from any given ensemble is unparalleled.

First, read Nick Jones’ excellent essay on this piece at the National Recording Registry here. My comments can only reiterate his observations.

This was the ultimate expression of Bach’s prowess in vocal music, the summation of everything he had learned during his career. Compiled partly from previous compositions, this immense 27-movement piece runs for over two hours (its first use in an actual mass, in 2025, ran over three hours). Oddly for Bach, a staunch Lutheran, this work is in the form of a Catholic Mass.

The composer completed it near the end of his life, in the period 1748-1749, and never heard the piece performed in its entirety. In fact, the first complete performance did not take place until 1859. There were recordings of the Mass before Shaw’s, but his is considered definitive. Shaw studied the score, imposed its original instrumentation (previous incarnations were over-orchestrated) and stuck strictly to an orthodox interpretation of it. The result was issued as a 17-disc 78 r.p.m. record set.

Bach alternates large choral set-pieces with smaller solos, ensembles, and orchestral passages. To those with the time to listen to it in its entirety, it’s an out-of-body experience. Bach distills his religious experience into musical terms, and the soaring vocal lines transport the listener to a heavenly space. It feels like Bach is expressing through his music his view on God, life, reality, and everything.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Bill Monroe performs “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

NRR Project: Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech (March 6, 1946)

 

NRR Project: “Sinews of Peace” (aka “Iron Curtain”) speech

Written and delivered by Winston Churchill

Recorded March 6, 1946

46 min.

This speech marks the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and America and its allies.

World War II was not yet over a year when this speech was made. The United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union had formed a “Grand Alliance” to defeat Hitler’s Germany. Yet almost as soon as peace was declared, the USSR began to expand its sphere of influence, imposing political control on those territories it took over in the final months of fighting. Poland, Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Czechoslovakia were all targeted. Russia had fought the Nazis the longest, and had suffered the most grievous losses, in the war. Now they were looking for security and influence.

Among the Allies, former British prime minister Winston Churchill was the first to observe and comment on this perceived danger. He identified the Soviet Union as the primary threat to peace and security. Therefore, he proposed an American/European alliance that would oppose the Russians. As America was presently the only country with an atomic bomb, he felt that the U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world, and the primary caretaker of freedom. He felt it necessary to urge the U.S. to impose a policy of “containment” of the Soviet threat.

Churchill, a strong anti-Communist, was invited to speak at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, which he did on March 5, 1946. A condition of his making the speech was the presence of U.S. President Harry S. Truman, who attended. In front of a crowd of 1,500, Chruchill made a 45-minute speech that outlined the issue and warned of coming trouble with Russia.

Churchill was blunt, avowing that he would “try to make sure with what strength I have that what has gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind.” He identified what he saw as the two major dangers remaining to the world: “war and tyranny.”

He proposed the creation of a United Nations fighting force to keep the peace. He also proposed the close cooperation of America and England in military matters. He then addressed tyranny, stating, “We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the United States and throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In these States control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police force.” He was referring obliquely to the Soviets and their minions.

While professing to admire and respect the Soviets, Churchill nonetheless made this statement:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

Despite his politic expressions, Churchill clearly named the USSR as the new opponent of the friends of freedom. “Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization.”

Churchill’s proposal was to face the Soviets with military preparedness, admonishing the crowd that the only thing Stalin respected was strength. And so the terms of the future conflict, which lasted 42 years, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, were set.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Robert Shaw leads a performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass.

NRR Project: Harry Partch, “U.S. Highball (A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip)”

 

NRR Project: “U.S. Highball (A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip)”

Composed by Harry Partch

Performed by the Gate 5 Ensemble

Recorded 1946

25:20

Harry Partch changed how I think about music.

When I was 12 or so, I checked out the album The World of Harry Partch from the Denver Public Library. It was in the Classical Music section.

I didn’t understand it. The manic drumming, the unharmonic melodies, the bizarre sounds, the comic lyrics. Finally I heard “Eight Hitchhiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing at Barstow” and fell in love.

Partch is sui generis; there is no one following in his steps. In this he is like other bizarre composers I love, such as Ives, Satie, Moondog, Terry Riley, Frank Zappa, Steve Reich, and John Luther Adams. All iconoclasts, creating strange sound-objects that are hair-raising in their audaciousness and intensity, their just plain weirdness.

Harry Partch (1901-1974) made his own music. Literally. An aspiring composer, he kept rejecting the educational experiences music schools offered to him. He was searching for a sound that reflected the dense, complex, a-harmonic music he heard in the world, coming from machines, nature, and the mouths of those around him. In 1930, he burned all his compositions to date in a pot-bellied stove.

He devised a new scale, with 43 notes to it. He based his compositions on just intonation, a form of notation used in ancient Greece and Medieval times. No instruments of the day could accommodate his method of composing.

So he made his own instruments. The Chromelodeon, the Kithara, the Bloboy, Zymo-Xyl, Quadrangularis Reversum and more were tuned to Partch’s special frequencies.

But Partch was strapped for cash. He traveled as a hobo across the West. He could rarely assemble the instruments, the people, and the sheer time it took to teach his music. He lived on short-term grants and university appearances. Very few believed in his utterly new and confusing music. It featured percussion-grounded bursts of sounds and swooping, meandering melodic lines, clashing chords that sound like mistakes.

But when you pull back, you see that Partch is creating complex sound fields against which his musical gestures play themselves out. His narratives, whether self-written or taken from Chinese poetry, are acerbically voiced. His sound is wild, freewheeling, warm, expansive, open to the sky. His compositions have a tough, lean spirit. It’s hypnotic, engaging.

His “U.S. Highball: (A Musical Account of a Transcontinental Hobo Trip)” is exactly that – taken from his notebooks kept during his transcontinental hobo trip. Wisps of narrative, bits of conversations, the recitation of sign verbiage, pieces of advice, warnings from cops, pepper the music, sung, intoned. Marimbas play, harps strum, the percussion clatters on. We are on a train, plunging through Wyoming (“Stay out of Denver”). Partch captures a vernacular experience in a method uniquely suited to it.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech.

NRR Project: 'Jole Blon' (1946)

 

NRR Project: “Jole Blon”

Performed by Harry Choates

Recorded July 17, 1946

2:45

Again, I must defer to the National Recording Registry for its explanatory essay by Ryan Brasseaux, which you can read here.

This recording represents the breakthrough of Cajun music into the mainstream. Surprisingly popular, it ran high in the sales charts when it was released. It’s a typical love song, sorrowing over a lost woman. The lyrics:

Jolie blon, regardez donc quoi t'as fait

(Pretty blonde, look at what you've done)
Tu m'as quitte pour t'en aller
(You left me to go away)
Pour T'en aller avec un autre, oui, que moi
(To go away with another, instead of me)
Quel espoir et quel avenir, mais, moi, je vais avoir?
(What hope and what future am I going to have?)

Jolie blon, tu m'as laisse, moi tout seul
(Pretty blonde, you've left me all alone)
Pour t'en aller chez ta famille
(To go back to your family)
Si t'aurais pas ecoute tos les conseils de les autres
(If you had not listened to the advice of the others)
Tu serait ici-t-avec moi aujourd 'hui
(You would be here with me today)

Jolie blon, tu croyais il y avait just toi
(Pretty blonde, you thought there was just you)
Il y a pas just toi dans le pays pour moi aimer
(There is not just you in this land to love me)
Je peux trouver just une autre jolie blonde
(I can find another pretty blonde)
Bon Dieu sait, moi, j'ai un tas
(Good God knows, I have a lot)

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Harry Partch’s U.S. Highball.

 

 

NRR Project: 'Folk Songs of the Hills' (1946)

 

NRR Project: “Folk Songs of the Hills”

Performed by Merle Travis

Recorded 1946

34:23

Merle Travis (1917-1983) was the real deal. A songwriter, singer, and expert guitarist, he made his way up through the ranks of country artists and found enduring fame. He wrote “Sixteen Tons” and “Dark as a Dungeon,” both classics. Both can be found on this record.

At the time, Travis had a decent solo career going; additionally, he was a member of the Brown’s Ferry Quartet, a gospel group. He recorded “soundies,” short filmed performances that were played much like a jukebox. His reputation was solid.

Then his label, Capitol, asked him to record an album of folk songs. He came up with “Folk Songs of the Hills,” an eight-song album that featured traditional tunes as well as his own compositions.

His style is simple and straightforward, and he includes little verbal introductions to each of his selections, referring to the listeners as “boys and girls,” which make one think he made this record with children in mind. He performs “Nine Pound Hammer,” “John Henry,” and the gospel song “I Am a Pilgrim.”

The result is a primer on folk and folk-style music. These songs would be covered countless times by others, and would become standards in the American song book.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Harry Choates plays Jole Blon.

NRR Project: The Fred Allen Show (Oct. 7, 1945)

 

NRR Project: The Fred Allen Show

NBC Radio

Broadcast Oct. 7, 1945

30 min.

Fred Allen (1894-1956) was the funniest man in radio.

Jack Benny is the best-remembered of the radio comedians, but he was served by a staff of writers. For nearly 20 years, the dough-faced Fred Allen wrote, edited, and produced a comedy show that was, for a time, the highest-rated comedy program on the air.

Fred Allen was Boston-born, under the name of John F. Sullivan. He grew up hard, coming from an impoverished background and going to work at an early age. His workplace was an ideal springboard – it was a library. There he found a book on juggling, and taught himself how to do it.

Years of work in vaudeville followed. Allen gravitated to comedy, and soon was billing himself as “Freddy James, the World’s Worst Juggler.” Allen’s sharp, incisive wit propelled him onto Broadway, where he worked his way up to starring roles in the comedy revues of the day.

Finally, in 1933 radio came calling. For nine years, Allen created an hour-long comedy show once a week – a monumental task that found him working 12-hour days and 80-hour weeks. Gradually, he built up a cadre of talented voice actors who could handle any verbal challenge.

Beginning in December 1942, Allen created the popular “Allen’s Alley” segment, in which he went from door to door to ask various eccentrics about a topic of the day. Minerva Pious played Mrs. Nussbaum, a Jewish New Yorker; Parker Fennelly played Titus Moody, a dour New Englander. Alan Reed, later the voice of Fred Flintstone, played poet Falstaff Openshaw.

Also in 1942, the sponsors and NBC cut Allen’s show from an hour to a half-hour, to Allen’s dismay despite saving Allen from the undue stress of producing so much material a week. In this new format, the jokes came fast and thick; Allen’s comedic momentum was unrivaled. He hosted celebrity guests and put them through their comedic paces, making fun of hoary old entertainment cliches, other radio programs, and more.

Allen took 1944 off due to hypertension. He returned in the fall of 1945, and experienced his greatest period of success. Not only average listeners but other comedians would tune in to enjoy his work. His gift for improvisation perked up many a show, and sometimes led to his show running long and getting cut off. This and his on-air antipathy towards NBC’s executives got him in hot water time and again.

In the Oct. 7, 1945 broadcast, Fred welcomed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy to the program. They essayed a skit in which Charlie is set to leave Bergen, and he and Fred come up with a corny act with which to break back into vaudeville. They fail spectacularly, and Allen is offered a job -- without Charlie. He dumps him, and Charlie is reduced to begging Bergen for his job back.

The broadcast selected by the National Recording Registry features the debut in Allen’s Alley of Senator Claghorn, voiced by announcer Kenny Delmar. The senator was from the Deep South – “we call people from Alabama Yankees!” he proclaimed. Given to repeating himself and riding over Allen, the brash and daffy politician was a big hit.

In the end, the encroachments of television and the success of radio quiz shows destroyed his ratings. Additionally, his hypertension returned. After 1949, he would no longer hold a position on the radio dial.

Listening to his entire run of preserved shows is a pleasure and an education.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Merle Travis’ Folk Songs of the Hills.

NRR Project: 'On a Note of Triumph' (May 8, 1945)

 

NRR Project: “On a Note of Triumph”

Written, produced, and directed by Norman Corwin

CBS Radio

Broadcast May 8, 1945

57:06

This recording represents two apogees. It denotes the high-water mark of the American century, and it stands as the one of the last great works of famed radio producer, director, and writer Norman Corwin.

The defeat of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945 was an immensely emotional moment. Six years of war had devastated Europe and turned the United States from an isolated, sleeping giant into a world power crusading for democracy. The victory affirmed our values – freedom, inclusion, diversity, tolerance – and set these principles out as our guiding philosophy, our hope for the future of the world.

Corwin was an eloquent recorder of the American experience. In his many broadcasts he articulated contemporary wisdom, as we heard in his landmark “We Hold These Truths,” which you can read about here.

“On a Note of Triumph” is a companion piece. It shouts to the world our glee at finally beating Hitler and his rotten gang of criminals and psychopaths. It articulates our reasons for fighting, describes the good that is to come, and asks questions about the struggle and our victory.

Corwin constructs here a complex tapestry of voices, led by the narration of Martin Gabel. The great Bernard Herrmann, who got his start with radio’s Mercury Theatre, provides a stunning score.

“So they’ve given up! They’re finally done in and the rat is dead in an alley back of the Wilhelmstrasse. Take a bow, G.I.! Take a bow, little guy! The superman of tomorrow lies dead at the feet of you common men of this afternoon! This is it, kid! This is the day! . . . You had what it took and you gave it . . . seems like free men have done it again!”

The show goes on to outline the general rejoicing resounding around the world. The tone is grandiose, bombastic, naïve, evangelical – reflecting the feeling pervasive in the country.

“Somehow the decadent democracies, the bumbling Bolsheviks, the Saxon softies, were tougher in the end than the brown-shirt bully boys. And smarter too, for without whipping a priest, burning a book, or slugging a Jew, without corralling a girl in a brothel or bleeding a child for plasma, far-flung, ordinary men, unspectacular but free, rousing out of their habits and their homes, got up early one morning, flexed their muscles, learned as amateurs the manual of arms, and set across across perilous plains and oceans to whop the bejeepers out of the professionals.”

What follows, exuberantly, is a paean to the victors and a final, scornful analysis of the sins of the enemy. It recites the crimes of the Nazis, and holds up their actions to contempt. Corwin definitively differentiates the principles of the victors from the values of the defeated. Germany is thoroughly mocked for its imperial ambitions and its insensate cruelties.

And it asks questions – “Who did we beat? How much did it cost to beat him? What did we learn? What do we do know now that we didn’t know before? What will we do now? Could it all happen again?”

The broadcast then purports to answer these questions. Given the fact that the Allies were still at war with Japan, the job is seen as unfinished and vigilance and patience is counseled. Isolation is scorned and international cooperation is promoted. The broadcast ends with hope for the future.

America had not yet dropped its problematic atomic bombs on the enemy. For a couple of months, America could see itself as the embodiment of virtue. Corwin’s work celebrates that exuberant belief in the American way, and the dream of universal brotherhood.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Fred Allen Show.