Stravinsky, Morton, 2026

This Week in Classical Music: June 15, 2026.  Stravinsky, Morton. Igor Stravinsky, one of the most important composers of the 20^th century, was born on June 17^th, 1882, in Oranienbaum, a Igor Stravinsky, 1921 town not far from then-Russia’s capital, St. Petersburg. We love Stravinsky and have written about him on many occasions. Like Picasso, Stravinsky went through several creative periods: his early ballets, Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, were highly original and, in the case of The Rite, revolutionary, all the while being influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov. Sttravinsky then became involved with Russian folk music and went through a “Russian period” (L'Histoire du soldat is probably the best-known “Russian” piece, though there are Russian themes in The Rite as well). The Neoclassical period followed; by then, Stravinsky, who had lived in Switzerland since 1914, had permanently moved to France. Neoclassical was his longest phase; it started in 1920 and lasted for about 30 years. Among the significant pieces written during this period were the ballet Apollon musagète, the oratorio Oedipus rex (both from 1927), Symphony of Psalms (1930), and another ballet, Orpheus (1947). What followed was probably Stravinsky’s most contentious Twelve-Tone period; it lasted from about 1950 to 1968. The twelve-tone technique and serialism didn’t come to him naturally: Stravinsky was introduced to it by his young friend the conductor Robert Craft. After some experiments with smaller forms, he wrote Agon (1953-57), a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine. Here it is, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the late Michael Tilson Thomas. We think there’s more of Stravinsky’s whimsical genius in this music than of the sometimes-constricting twelve-tone paradigm.

We find the peregrinations undertaken by many Renaissance composers fascinating. Wars, brigands, famine, lack of roads and transportation notwithstanding, they moved from one country to another. In the middle of the 15^th century, Josquin des Prés traveled from Condé in the County of Hainault (now on the border between France and Belgium) to Paris, then Rome, Milan, back to Rome, Vienna, back to Milan and then Rome, all in a matter of six years. He would later visit Troyes in northern France and stay in Ferrara at the court of Este. Half a century earlier, the English composer John Dunstaple served at the court of John of Lancaster, who commanded British forces during the Hundred Years' War, and moved to France with him. Then, still during the war, he traveled all over northern France, incidentally buying properties here and there. We’ve never written about Robert Morton, another early Renaissance English composer. Morton, born around 1430, made it all the way to the Burgundian court of Philip the Good. Burgundian dukes didn’t have a permanent capital (their main cities were Dijon, Brussels, and Lille) and traveled with their entourage, including musicians, throughout their possessions in northern Europe. Philip’s successor, Charles the Bold, fought many wars and brought his musicians with him. Morton was known to perform in Cambrai (close to where Josquin spent his youth) and lived in ’s-Hertogenbosch, in North Brabant, where Hieronymus Bosch was born.

Even though Morton was broadly lauded during his lifetime, little of his music survives. Here’s a pretty rondeau, a type of chanson, called Le Souvenir De Vous Me Tue, performed by the ensemble Gothic Voices.

Schulhoff, 2026

This Week in Classical Music: June 8, 2026.  Schulhoff, hoaxes, and more.  Robert Schumann was born this week, on June 8^th of 1810. He is, obviously, one of the greatest Romantic composers of the first half of the 19^th century; we love him and have posted many entries dedicated to him. Richard Strauss was born half a century later, at the end of the Romantic period, on June 11^th of 1864. Tomaso Albinoni lived two centuries earlier: he was born in Venice on June 8^th of 1671. In our time, he’s famous undeservedly: the most often performed piece of music, practically invariably attributed to him – the so-called Adagio in G minor – wasn’t written by Albinoni but by one Remo Giazotto, a musicologist and his biographer. It’s one of the most famous musical hoaxes, on par with “Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini,” composed by Vladimir Vavilov, “Sicilienne by Maria Theresia von Paradis,” written by Samuel Dushkin, and some pieces by Fritz Kreisler, who attributed them to numerous known and unknown composers. Surprisingly, the Adagio myth is still perpetuated by many performers, promoters, classical radio stations, and otherwise reputable musical organizations.

The composer we’d like to present today is one of many musicians whose lives were catastrophically affected by the Nazis. Schulhoff was born in Prague, then part of Austria-Hungary, on June 8^th of 1894. Like most Prague Jews of the time, his family was German-speaking (Kafka comes to mind, his friend Max Brod and the novelist Franz Werfel, all integral to German culture). A child prodigy, Schulhoff was noticed by Dvořák, studied with Smetana’s pupil, and went to Vienna to continue with the piano. A couple of years later, he moved to Germany, first to Leipzig, then to Cologne; he studied composition at the local conservatory, graduating in 1914 with prizes. At the beginning of the war, he was conscripted into the Austrian army and served for four years. The war politicized him, and Schulhoff turned to Socialism. In 1919, he moved again to Germany, this time to Dresden, where he had many friends. His early compositions were late-Romantic in style, but he was moving away from it. Two new directions affected Schulhoff: Dadaism, with its references to jazz, industrial noise, and rejection of tonality, and the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg. Two samples from the period give us a sense of how varied Schulhoff’s interests were: the Dada-influenced Ironien Op. 34, composed in 1920 (here), and the Schoenberg-affected Eleven Inventions, op. 36, written a year later (here). The pieces are as different as they are authentic, and we think, really good.

In 1923, Schulhoff returned to Prague and to the Czech musical tradition, changing his style again. He became a professor at the Prague Conservatory, befriended Janáček, and actively participated in the musical life of Czechoslovakia. Musically, he was moving toward neo-classicism, as we can hear in this piece, Concerto for String Quartet and Wind Orchestra from 1930, though the finale echoes his Dada period. Stravinsky was, clearly, a strong influence (here).

The last decade of Schulhoff’s life was sad. He became ever more active in politics, moving further left; he even wrote Das Manifest, a cantata on the text of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. In 1933, he visited the Soviet Union and embraced Stalin’s Socialist Realism. He didn’t compose anything interesting from that point on. And his political activism led to problems with the authorities. Things got much worse in 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. Schulhoff tried to emigrate, either to the West or the Soviet Union, where his petition was approved. He never made it, as, in early 1941, he was arrested. In June of that year, he was deported to a prison in Bavaria. Three months later, he died of tuberculosis.