Tennis in the Second Golden Age of Sports

[Dan Lobb]

Fast forward some 30 years, and the level of talent from the late fifties was still competitive with a later generation of stars, for example,

http://www.windsortennis.co.uk/lew-hoad-the-great-aussie/

It would be interesting to hear Edberg's memories of this encounter with Hoad.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Here is 1956 in review, including the Wimbledon final and the wedding ceremony of Princess Grace of Monaco.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv4ceebHTEE

A full review of British sports in 1956, including the British Open golf championship and Wimbledon, both dominated by Australians,

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/s...n-golf-championship-henle/query/OPEN+AIR+GIRL

In 1956 appeared a great cinematic version of George Orwell's "1984", at a time when Orwell's nightmarish vision of a future totalitarian society, conceived in his 1949 novel, could be seen in reality in East Germany, and would soon be seen in action during the Chinese Great Cultural Revolution, thought control (and "thought police") on a mass scale.

 

[Dan Lobb]

In 1960, Russ Jackson and Ron Lancaster shared the quarterback position for Ottawa in the Grey Cup, Lancaster was knocked unconscious early in the game, and Jackson established his status by winning the game.


In 1966, the same two quarterbacks played, only this time against each other, in the greatest of Grey Cup games ever, two teams peaking at the same time. The two star fullbacks in this game, George Reed and Bo Scott, were much pursued by NFL clubs, Scott would later play five years in the same backfield with Leroy Kelly in Cleveland. Receiver Hugh Campbell, who caught the winning touchdown here, would become head coach of Houston Oilers.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YsR1rDdy8E


A few weeks ago, the surviving members of that 1966 Saskatchewan team gathered together to commemorate the 50 year mark of that famous Grey Cup game, a game which was loaded with more all-star players on both teams than any other Grey Cup game. Nice to see the great George Reed among the survivors.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EQrhhocLT0

Afterwards, the former star players signed autographs and answered questions.

http://regina.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=912864

In the fifties, my family lived in a small wooden house in a street beside this stadium...I looked for that house when my wife and I went to Regina a few years ago, but it had been demolished. The Taylor Field stadium will now be demolished itself, at the end of this season, and replaced with a new facility. Taylor Field has been the venue for Saskatchewan Roughriders football for over one hundred years.

 

[Dan Lobb]

In 1966, the late fifties' veterans of England's World Cup team, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Bobby Wilson, would lead the squad to the greatest ever final win over Beckenbauer and Germany.



The England international soccer team were building strongly in the 1950's when the Munich airplane disaster in 1958 killed Duncan Edwards, Tommy Taylor and others who were central to the team.
Here is a match against Brazil in 1956 which shows Stanley Matthews still in control of play, plus younger players such as Taylor and Edwards adding strength to the team. Bobby Charlton survived the Munich airplane disaster, and would join the England team in 1958.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/f-a-international-england-aka-england-4-v-brazil

Here is the actual broadcast of the 1966 World Cup final, the greatest ever World Cup final.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u3eWpSJJmE

Forty years later, the veteran players of that team reflect on how it was put together.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXb306p1BrM

 

[Dan Lobb]

The advent of television was crucial in the popularization of sports and music.
In 1960, Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein teamed up for a great TV program on how to interpret classical music.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nx09pigZRI
The Gould/Bernstein collaboration culminated in magnificent performances of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and the Brahms First, in 1961 and 1962.

Here is the broadcast of the Brahms, a famous performance due to Gould's insistence on slower tempos, but which yields rich rewards in a detailed exploration of the emotional landscape.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuxPKikM0NI
On September 23 of 1962, Leonard Bernstein officiated at the grand opening night of Lincoln Centre, the new home of the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Opera. How many famous faces can you recognize here? Let's see...Jacqueline Kennedy, Dean Rusk, Nelson Rockefeller, ....

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZRd48lwh4c

This very site had been used previously to film the famous 1961 film of Bernstein's "West Side Story"..small world.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy6wo2wpT2k

 

[Dan Lobb]

1961 marked JFK's first year in office, a year in which Lincoln Centre was constructed, and in which JFK personally intervened in the NFL championship game at the request of Vince Lombardi to give Paul Hornung an exemption from National Guard duty so that he could play in the championship game...Hornung responded with a game MVP performance, the peak of his career.

Television now brought football into American homes and made football a national past-time

And the 1961 Grey Cup, a hard-hitting marathon overtime battle, in which both star quarterbacks were clunked but played through it...Bud Grant knew how to motivate his players. That Hamilton Tigercats team had earlier in the year defeated the soon-to-be AFL champions Buffalo Bills 38 to 21, and Hamilton probably had the better team in this game.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The advent of television was crucial in the popularization of sports and music.
In 1960, Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein teamed up for a great TV program on how to interpret classical music.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nx09pigZRI
The Gould/Bernstein collaboration culminated in magnificent performances of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and the Brahms First, in 1961 and 1962.

Here is the broadcast of the Brahms, a famous performance due to Gould's insistence on slower tempos, but which yields rich rewards in a detailed exploration of the emotional landscape.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuxPKikM0NI

This Golden Age of music in New York from the late fifties/early sixties, sparked by the directorship of Leonard Bernstein and an influx of great pianistic soloists and vocal talent at the Metropolitan Opera, is about to be rejuvenated at long last, sparked by the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, a man who was tapped by Leonard Bernstein himself. Apparently, Bernstein guested once at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, where van Zweden was concertmaster, and Bernstein asked him during rehearsal to show him how he conducted.
Van Zweden replied, "I cannot conduct", and Bernstein said, "Well, you have to conduct, if the conductor gets sick", and van Zweden attempted to conduct the rehearsal. Bernstein assessed the result, "Well, that was pretty bad, but still, there were some good things in it."

Here is van Zweden conducting Beethoven's Seventh with a Dutch radio orchestra.



And at the Metropolitan Opera, the new music director will be the Canadian Jannick Nezet Seguin, who is also conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Orchestre Metropolitain of Montreal...a full plate, indeed.

Seguin has shown himself a master of the great German masterpieces, as well as Ravel and Debussy.


and also Dvorak, with the Berlin Philharmonic, Yah, sehr wunderbar!!



The tandem of Yannick Nezet Seguin and Jaap van Zweden will surely usher in a new Golden Age for Manhattan classical music makers.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Here is 1956 in review, including the Wimbledon final and the wedding ceremony of Princess Grace of Monaco.



A full review of British sports in 1956, including the British Open golf championship and Wimbledon, both dominated by Australians,

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/s...n-golf-championship-henle/query/OPEN+AIR+GIRL

In 1956 appeared a great cinematic version of George Orwell's "1984", at a time when Orwell's nightmarish vision of a future totalitarian society, conceived in his 1949 novel, could be seen in reality in East Germany, and would soon be seen in action during the Chinese Great Cultural Revolution, thought control (and "thought police") on a mass scale.

The year 1956 was memorable in tennis, but the New York football and baseball teams also had reason to celebrate with world championships.

The Giants won the NFL crown, sporting flashing white sneakers to overcome the frozen field,


And the mighty Yankees added another crown,

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtH-Tb8567c

 

[Dan Lobb]

................

 

[pc1]

The year 1956 was memorable in tennis, but the New York football and baseball teams also had reason to celebrate with world championships.

The Giants won the NFL crown, sporting flashing white sneakers to overcome the frozen field,

And the mighty Yankees added another crown,

Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956. Strangely enough, stat analysis has shown that Mantle had a better year the next year in 1957.

I think Frank Gifford was the MVP that year in the NFL.

The Canadians won the Stanley Cup with a team often called the greatest hockey team of all time, well at least the best NHL team. I think in past posts that you have agreed with that Dan. Best NHL team I've seen was the 1976-77 Canadians which lost only 8 games out of 80 played.

And the best tennis player was Pancho Gonzalez. Didn't Hoad almost win the Grand Slam that year?

 

[pc1]

Thanks for the "like", PC1, but I have not got a clear link for that 1956 NFL game. I will keep working on it.

It's an excellent post Dan. I enjoyed reading it.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956. Strangely enough, stat analysis has shown that Mantle had a better year the next year in 1957.

I think Frank Gifford was the MVP that year in the NFL.

The Canadians won the Stanley Cup with a team often called the greatest hockey team of all time, well at least the best NHL team. I think in past posts that you have agreed with that Dan. Best NHL team I've seen was the 1976-77 Canadians which lost only 8 games out of 80 played.

And the best tennis player was Pancho Gonzalez. Didn't Hoad almost win the Grand Slam that year?

I give the 1956-60 Canadiens the edge in offensive skills, and they also had an underrated defensive unit, I think as much or more overall talent than the Scotty Bowman crew.
In an open tennis world, I think Hoad wins at Wimbledon in 1956.

THE NFL link WORKS NOW!

 

[Dan Lobb]

It's an excellent post Dan. I enjoyed reading it.

The NFL link is now ready, showing the heroes of the 1956 New York Giants. New York was definitely sports town that year.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The year 1956 was memorable in tennis, but the New York football and baseball teams also had reason to celebrate with world championships.

The Giants won the NFL crown, sporting flashing white sneakers to overcome the frozen field,



And the mighty Yankees added another crown,

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtH-Tb8567c
New York was the king of baseball and football in 1956....only the 1969 Mets and Jets duplicated this feat.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The 1961 Grey Cup, a hard-hitting marathon overtime battle, in which both star quarterbacks were clunked but played through it...Bud Grant knew how to motivate his players. That Hamilton Tigercats team had earlier in the year defeated the soon-to-be AFL champions Buffalo Bills 38 to 21, and Hamilton probably had the better team in this game.


The final 1953 NFL game coached by the legendary Steve Owen, featuring Frank Gifford scoring a TD.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxXjo7jwChU

The connection between the above? The final regular season game in the Canadian league in 1961 featured a win by the Saskatchewan Roughriders 19-13 over Bud Grant's Winnipeg team....guess who was the Saskatchewan head coach in that game? You guessed it, Steve Owen, who finished his pro coaching career with Saskatchewan in 1961 and 1962, getting this team into the playoffs in 1962, a remarkable feat.

 

[Dan Lobb]

1961 marked JFK's first year in office, a year in which Lincoln Centre was constructed, and in which JFK personally intervened in the NFL championship game at the request of Vince Lombardi to give Paul Hornung an exemption from National Guard duty so that he could play in the championship game...Hornung responded with a game MVP performance, the peak of his career.

Television now brought football into American homes and made football a national past-time.

And the 1961 Grey Cup, a hard-hitting marathon overtime battle, in which both star quarterbacks were clunked but played through it...Bud Grant knew how to motivate his players. That Hamilton Tigercats team had earlier in the year defeated the soon-to-be AFL champions Buffalo Bills 38 to 21, and Hamilton probably had the better team in this game.



Recently, from February this year, we have a classic interview with Bud Grant, which displays Grant's achingly funny dry sense of humour, and details the humourous interchanges between Grant and Vince Lombardi, when both were league champions simultaneously, Grant with Winnipeg, Lombardi with Green Bay, northern teams with competitive battles over northern football players' signing rights.

http://mmqb.si.com//mmqb/2016/01/31...ngs-super-bowl-losses-vince-Lombardi-disklike

 

[Dan Lobb]

The year 1956 was memorable in tennis, but the New York football and baseball teams also had reason to celebrate with world championships.

The Giants won the NFL crown, sporting flashing white sneakers to overcome the frozen field,



And the mighty Yankees added another crown,


New York was the king of baseball and football in 1956....only the 1969 Mets and Jets duplicated this feat.

Notice above the future champion head coaches serving as offensive and defensive co-ordinators of the 1956 New York GIants team, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry...the head coach could relax with those assistants.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Recently, from February this year, we have a classic interview with Bud Grant, which displays Grant's achingly funny dry sense of humour, and details the humourous interchanges between Grant and Vince Lombardi, when both were league champions simultaneously, Grant with Winnipeg, Lombardi with Green Bay, northern teams with competitive battles over northern football players' signing rights.

http://mmqb.si.com//mmqb/2016/01/31...ngs-super-bowl-losses-vince-Lombardi-disklike

Bud Grant related the incident with the great offensive lineman Fuzzy Thurston, which places this incident at 1959, the year after Thurston helped the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the famous 1958 NFL championship game. Lombardi was offensive co-ordinator for that Giant team, and would have seen Thurston in action.
I would infer from Bud Grant's story that Thurston was somehow released from Baltimore prior to the 1959 season, and then failed to catch on with Paul Brown's Cleveland team before going to Winnipeg.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Here is shown highlights of the 1956 Wimbledon final.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/s...n-golf-championship-henle/query/OPEN+AIR+GIRL

Here are highlights of the 1961 Wimbledon final.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR-Kz37xQPY

Considering this year's 2016 Wimbledon final, it appears that tennis has not advanced in terms of shot-making, footspeed around the court, variety of shots, athleticism.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The advent of television was crucial in the popularization of sports and music.
In 1960, Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein teamed up for a great TV program on how to interpret classical music.


The Gould/Bernstein collaboration culminated in magnificent performances of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and the Brahms First, in 1961 and 1962.

Here is the broadcast of the Brahms, a famous performance due to Gould's insistence on slower tempos, but which yields rich rewards in a detailed exploration of the emotional landscape.



Bernstein pioneered the use of national television to promote public understanding of classical music to a large audience, and his Young People's Concerts were perhaps primarily directed at the "young in heart" adults who would like to understand the basic principles of classical music.

Here is an early YPC broadcast from 1958,

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvW6WcZBqMY

 

[NonP]

The advent of television was crucial in the popularization of sports and music.
In 1960, Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernstein teamed up for a great TV program on how to interpret classical music.

The Gould/Bernstein collaboration culminated in magnificent performances of the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and the Brahms First, in 1961 and 1962.

Here is the broadcast of the Brahms, a famous performance due to Gould's insistence on slower tempos, but which yields rich rewards in a detailed exploration of the emotional landscape.

Bernstein pioneered the use of national television to promote public understanding of classical music to a large audience, and his Young People's Concerts were perhaps primarily directed at the "young in heart" adults who would like to understand the basic principles of classical music.

Here is an early YPC broadcast from 1958,

Why do you keep posting the same videos if they're still on the same page? FYI most of us have to wait eons for the page to load if it's got zillions of YouTube links. If you really don't enjoy talking to yourself you may wanna cut down on that.

And speaking of which you really think people here give a damn about the Grey Cup? I mean even as a proud Yank I couldn't care less about the NFL except for the Super Bowl (which as you know is more a cultural event here than anything else), and I'm sure most everyone else feels the same way about you Canucks' own bowl.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Why do you keep posting the same videos if they're still on the same page? FYI most of us have to wait eons for the page to load if it's got zillions of YouTube links. If you really don't enjoy talking to yourself you may wanna cut down on that.

And speaking of which you really think people here give a damn about the Grey Cup? I mean even as a proud Yank I couldn't care less about the NFL except for the Super Bowl (which as you know is more a cultural event here than anything else), and I'm sure most everyone else feels the same way about you Canucks' own bowl.

Thank you for the vote of confidence....the readership numbers tell their own story.
The Super Bowl began in earnest in 1971, which is beyond the purview of the greatest age of sports, and not relevant to my study.
Frankly, and I say this with the greatest of respect, the Canadian game was loaded with talent, more so in the 1950's and 1960's when the salary structure was competitive with the NFL and many college stars opted for the higher salaries in the CFL.

Bud Grant often remarked that many CFL players had talent above the norm for NFL players, and that his halfback in Winnipeg, Leo Lewis, was the most gifted player EVER to play for him in either league.

If you click on the links above for the 1966 and 1961 Grey Cups, you will see a brand of football which is more wide-open and entertaining than the more restricted confines of the smaller NFL field, with quarterbacks who could really run.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Why do you keep posting the same videos if they're still on the same page? FYI most of us have to wait eons for the page to load if it's got zillions of YouTube links. If you really don't enjoy talking to yourself you may wanna cut down on that.

And speaking of which you really think people here give a damn about the Grey Cup? I mean even as a proud Yank I couldn't care less about the NFL except for the Super Bowl (which as you know is more a cultural event here than anything else), and I'm sure most everyone else feels the same way about you Canucks' own bowl.

I see your point about posting too many videos, I have to wait myself for downloading.

 

[NonP]

Thank you for the vote of confidence....the readership numbers tell their own story.
The Super Bowl began in earnest in 1971, which is beyond the purview of the greatest age of sports, and not relevant to my study.
Frankly, and I say this with the greatest of respect, the Canadian game was loaded with talent, more so in the 1950's and 1960's when the salary structure was competitive with the NFL and many college stars opted for the higher salaries in the CFL.

Bud Grant often remarked that many CFL players had talent above the norm for NFL players, and that his halfback in Winnipeg, Leo Lewis, was the most gifted player EVER to play for him in either league.

If you click on the links above for the 1966 and 1961 Grey Cups, you will see a brand of football which is more wide-open and entertaining than the more restricted confines of the smaller NFL field, with quarterbacks who could really run.

Never cared much for any brand of football, be it American, Canadian or non-NA. Basketball is the only team sport I follow regularly, and to a much lesser extent baseball.

I see your point about posting too many videos, I have to wait myself for downloading.

One thing you could do is to include them as hyperlinks, like this. That way you can still link to the videos without embedding them onto the page directly. I try to do that myself unless I particularly like the video or think people would be especially interested in it.

BTW you were dead wrong about Tender Is the Night being Fitzgerald's masterpiece. In fact apart from Nabokov you'd be hard-pressed to find any serious critic who'd rank it above The Great Gatsby among his oeuvre. I plan to post a more thorough riposte sometime, with some magisterial backing from Harold Bloom.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Never cared much for any brand of football, be it American, Canadian or non-NA. Basketball is the only team sport I follow regularly, and to a much lesser extent baseball.



One thing you could do is to include them as hyperlinks, like this. That way you can still link to the videos without embedding them onto the page directly. I try to do that myself unless I particularly like the video or think people would be especially interested in it.

BTW you were dead wrong about Tender Is the Night being Fitzgerald's masterpiece. In fact apart from Nabokov you'd be hard-pressed to find any serious critic who'd rank it above The Great Gatsby among his oeuvre. I plan to post a more thorough riposte sometime, with some magisterial backing from Harold Bloom.

I take your points...I will see what I can do about providing more information on basketball, the sixties were the high point of interest in my estimation.

I rate "Gatsby" very highly...but I consider "Tender is the Night" to be a more developed character study, and a more fully developed central relationship. The film adaptations bear this out, with the "Gatsby" efforts lacking depth in the central character, (what exactly do Alan Ladd and Robert Redford think about?) contrasted with the detailed and complex presentation of Dick Diver in the 1962 film of "Tender", an Oscar nominated performance for Jason Robards. "Tender" is perhaps too uncomfortable and realistic a story line for some people, it really hits home, which is an indication of success. I cannot relate to the "Gatsby" character.
Nabokov was a very perceptive critic.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Never cared much for any brand of football, be it American, Canadian or non-NA. Basketball is the only team sport I follow regularly, and to a much lesser extent baseball.



One thing you could do is to include them as hyperlinks, like this. That way you can still link to the videos without embedding them onto the page directly. I try to do that myself unless I particularly like the video or think people would be especially interested in it.

BTW you were dead wrong about Tender Is the Night being Fitzgerald's masterpiece. In fact apart from Nabokov you'd be hard-pressed to find any serious critic who'd rank it above The Great Gatsby among his oeuvre. I plan to post a more thorough riposte sometime, with some magisterial backing from Harold Bloom.

Hyperlinks are good.
Here is the finest film adaptation of "The Great Gatsby". Again, I must point out the lack of character development for the central character (assuming that is Gatsby, and not Nick or the others). No contest for the 1962 "Tender is the Night" which is a more complex and developed central character in Dick Diver, and a great performance by Jason Robards.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=B86ixiypBeE

 

[Dan Lobb]

Hyperlinks are good.
Here is the finest film adaptation of "The Great Gatsby". Again, I must point out the lack of character development for the central character (assuming that is Gatsby, and not Nick or the others). No contest for the 1962 "Tender is the Night" which is a more complex and developed central character in Dick Diver, and a great performance by Jason Robards.

Just as a footnote, this great 1973 adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" was originally intended to star Natalie Wood as "Daisy" opposite Redford as "Gatsby", but Wood turned down the role. Mia Farrow does fine here.

 

[Dan Lobb]

As great as "Gatsby" was, Fitzgerald surpassed that achievement with his next novel "Tender is the Night", a probing masterpiece into human fallibility.

The definitive adaptation was made by Hollywood in 1962, starring America's greatest stage actor, Jason Robards.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPTulwg26g
Robards' signal achievement was his creation of "Hickey" in Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh", which Robards performed on television in 1960, notice here among the supporting actors the young Robert Redford.



In 1959, Robards recreated the role of Robert Jordan in a 6 hour television production of Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls", with Maria Schell as Maria.
Here is a rehearsal of the "sleeping bag" scene.

http://imgsrc.art.com/img/print/alf...ells-toll_a-g-3780712-4990176.jpg?w=894&h=671

And from the original film in 1943, the same rehearsal scene, with Gary Cooper, for whom Hemingway wrote the character, and Ingrid Bergman. This is Hemingway's most emotional novel.

http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/b18d4f1a3...a-1943-director-sam-wood-making-0f-bb68ec.jpg

Here again is the splendid 1962 film version of "Tender is the NIght". If you can find the time to sit through it, it faithfully translates the Fitzgerald novel into performance-worthy film roles, most notably by Jason Robards.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The late fifties and early sixties saw a summit of achievement in opera performances, including some from the supreme Verdi tenor of the century, the Swede Jussi Bjorling, favourite tenor of Toscanini. Toscanini had worked with Verdi himself, and he recognized Bjorling's ability to construct Verdi's long melodic phrases into coherent structures.

Here is Bjorling with Hilde Gueden, a scene from Verdi's "Rigoletto", performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxcesCNM1OA

 

[Dan Lobb]

The late fifties and early sixties saw a summit of achievement in opera performances, including some from the supreme Verdi tenor of the century, the Swede Jussi Bjorling, favourite tenor of Toscanini. Toscanini had worked with Verdi himself, and he recognized Bjorling's ability to construct Verdi's long melodic phrases into coherent structures.

Here is Bjorling with Hilde Gueden, a scene from Verdi's "Rigoletto", performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957.

Ed Sullivan often stated that the greatest thrill he ever had with his show was this appearance of Bjorling in 1957.

 

[Dan Lobb]

The late fifties and early sixties saw a summit of achievement in opera performances, including some from the supreme Verdi tenor of the century, the Swede Jussi Bjorling, favourite tenor of Toscanini. Toscanini had worked with Verdi himself, and he recognized Bjorling's ability to construct Verdi's long melodic phrases into coherent structures.

Here is Bjorling with Hilde Gueden, a scene from Verdi's "Rigoletto", performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957.

Bjorling made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1938, having become known in the U.S.A. through a national broadcast recital the previous year. He was only 26 years old.
He became an instant star, and was friends with several Hollywood stars, including Ingrid Bergman, a childhood friend of Bjorling's wife, and tenor Mario Lanza.
Bjorling was enormously strong, had been a lumberjack and boxer, and was apparently unbeatable in wrist-wrestling, defeating the world champion in a private encounter.
He also defeated his friend Errol Flynn, perhaps over a beer. Bjorling spent some time in beer establishments.

Bjorling's final recording, in 1960, a few weeks before his fatal heart attack at age 49, was the Verdi Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner. The "Ingemisco" section shows Bjorling's voice still at his prime.
Bjorling's friend Errol Flynn also died at age 49 the previous year, in 1959.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Bjorling made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1938, having become known in the U.S.A. through a national broadcast recital the previous year. He was only 26 years old.
He became an instant star, and was friends with several Hollywood stars, including Ingrid Bergman, a childhood friend of Bjorling's wife, and tenor Mario Lanza.
Bjorling was enormously strong, had been a lumberjack and boxer, and was apparently unbeatable in wrist-wrestling, defeating the world champion in a private encounter.
He also defeated his friend Errol Flynn, perhaps over a beer. Bjorling spent some time in beer establishments.

Bjorling's final recording, in 1960, a few weeks before his fatal heart attack at age 49, was the Verdi Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner. The "Igemisco" section shows Bjorling's voice still at his prime.
Bjorling's friend Errol Flynn also died at age 49 the previous year, in 1959.

Bjorling's influence as a singer and stylist continues to grow. Most of the prominent Canadian tenors in recent years, Ben Heppner, Richard Margison, Michael Schade, have all stated that Bjorling was their model for vocal style and tonal production.
Pavarotti was once asked how he would compare his own voice with Bjorling's voice, and he answered, "Please, I am only a human being." Bjorling's voice had an other-worldly beauty to it.

 

[NonP]

I take your points...I will see what I can do about providing more information on basketball, the sixties were the high point of interest in my estimation.

I rate "Gatsby" very highly...but I consider "Tender is the Night" to be a more developed character study, and a more fully developed central relationship. The film adaptations bear this out, with the "Gatsby" efforts lacking depth in the central character, (what exactly do Alan Ladd and Robert Redford think about?) contrasted with the detailed and complex presentation of Dick Diver in the 1962 film of "Tender", an Oscar nominated performance for Jason Robards. "Tender" is perhaps too uncomfortable and realistic a story line for some people, it really hits home, which is an indication of success. I cannot relate to the "Gatsby" character.

Hyperlinks are good.
Here is the finest film adaptation of "The Great Gatsby". Again, I must point out the lack of character development for the central character (assuming that is Gatsby, and not Nick or the others). No contest for the 1962 "Tender is the Night" which is a more complex and developed central character in Dick Diver, and a great performance by Jason Robards.

Um, that's not a hyperlink. To post one you include the link as part of a text, like this.

Anyway you're obviously not going to come to the right conclusion about Fitzgerald's last two completed novels on your own, and since Gatsby happens to be near the top of my desert-island items I'll provide the best CliffsNotes you'll ever see on this arguably greatest of all American novels.

You've made a complaint about Gatsby that is quite common, namely that it lacks sympathetic main characters, though I'd say the narrator Nick Carraway is one and the stock Jewish criminal Meyer Wolfshiem, while a shady character in more ways than one, has a certain nobility of intention about him when he explains why he refuses to attend his old friend's funeral (in stark contrast to nearly everyone else who had abandoned the book's tragic hero when he became no longer useful). Another common claim you've made is that the novel is an indictment of the Jazz Age and/or the American Dream (which, needless to say, is still very much alive). Both of these claims are wrong on their face given the novel's enduring popularity, but they're still instructive, as they can guide us as to why Gatsby both the book and the character continues to speak to so many readers in America and beyond, and also because they're intricately related to each other despite one concern seeming to be more aesthetic than social and vice versa.

I'm guessing you're already familiar with the plot, so let me briefly touch on one of the great mysteries of the novel that I wasn't able to figure out for years. When Daisy accidentally kills her hubby's mistress Myrtle and Jay waits outside her room while planning to take the rap for her manslaughter, he is discovered by Nick who is disgusted at his former idol's seeming lack of concern for the deceased and sole interest in the well-being of his unattainable object of affection who to his willful obliviousness has already forsaken him. In nearly all cases the reader would readily partake in Nick's disgust at such a twisted obsession, but the sentiment we feel for Gatsby is one less of righteous anger than of forlorn pity. Perhaps that's because we know all his efforts will be for naught, or because of some vague understanding on our part that love can make one do unfathomable things, but I'd found none of the explanations fully satisfactory... until I read Harold Bloom's intro to his Critical Interpretation on the book.

There Bloom makes the most convincing argument I've seen on this conundrum: "Gatsby is in love neither with Daisy nor with love itself, but rather with a moment out of time that he persuades himself he shared with Daisy." This love goes beyond the kind of schoolboy philosophizing about the woman he felt he was in love with as opposed to the actual one, or even some kind of an ideal he thought he was pursuing. Bloom continues:

What moves Carraway about Gatsby is the image of generosity, of having given oneself away to a dream. Fitzgerald makes us suspect that Gatsby, unlike Carraway, is not deceived altogether by his own dreaming. However inarticulate his poetic vision is, Gatsby seems to grasp that Daisy is indeed his fiction [Bloom's italics]. To believe in your own fiction, while knowing it to be a fiction, is the nicer knowledge of belief, according to Wallace Stevens, who was not being ironic. Gatsby also transcends the ironies of his own story and so earns his greatness.

So the "Great" in the novel's title is in fact not at all ironic, as it's commonly claimed, and the titular hero's pursuit of material possessions is for a higher purpose which is simply out of the reach of a genuine materialist like Daisy. When Gatsby finally pays for his refusal to succumb to reality we still feel for him on some instinctive level, as he never loses hope and gives up on his dream of a perfect love or eros that most mortals don't dare aspire to, let alone attain, and because his death serves as an enduring image of the American Dream for Carraway and the rest of us, without which the book would not exist through Nick's narration.

That's why the usual discussion about whether The Great Gatsby is about the withering of the American Dream or a cautionary celebration thereof is in the end a fruitless endeavor, as Fitzgerald was too great an artist not to entertain both and other myriad possibilities. And also why Gatsby will prove more enduring than anything else by the author including Tender Is the Night, as none of his other characters occupy as central a place in American mythology known as the American Dream as its titular hero while transcending it, for as much as he relies on American production for his upward mobility he never lets go of his hope for a perfect union that may or may not be attainable but remains universal in its sublime idealism which again has such a strong impact on Carraway and the rest of us. I've long believed that Gatsby is to the 20th century what Twain's Huckleberry Finn is to the 19th and would hesitate to place one above the other, but if I had to choose one for myself I'd go with Fitzgerald's masterpiece without question. To me it is the pinnacle of American prose fiction, the one book that will likely outlive all others produced in this country. I revisit it every year or so and it never fails to feel fresh and contemporary. Few works of art continue to speak to me as much as Gatsby.

As for its screen adaptations... the very first one is considered lost forever and the second one from 1949 hard to find, so you're talking out of your behind as usual when you nominate the infamous Coppola-scripted Clayton film as the best available. But even limiting our choices to those after '49 I much prefer the recent 2013 version starring DiCaprio as you-know-who. There are lots of things to take issue with in the film, be they director Baz Luhrmann's trademark excesses (its Rhapsody in Blue that introduces Gatsby to the viewer for the first time has gotta be the most bombastic, in-your-face version of the Gershwin classic ever to appear on the screen), Leo's sometimes equally over-the-top acting and eye-rolling accent, or the miscasting of Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, and no doubt it's these issues that prompted the majority of critics to give it a thumbs-down, but I thought this was the first Gatsby film adaptation I'd seen that made Fitzgerald's magnum opus come alive as a tale of High Romantic poetry it is, with its titular protagonist as the doomed tragic hero. Compare the clip from the '74 film linked above with this:

It's probably the most crucial passage in all of Fitzgerald's novel, the one that all but seals the hero's fate when it describes his reunited lover as clutching and crying with erotic joy while she buries her head in his designer shirts rather than himself. But the '74 film treats this grand theater as if it were a leisurely walk in the park, while Luhrmann's penchant for bombast actually works in his favor for once and aptly turns this scene into a piece of high melodrama, with Lana Del Rey's enchanting "Young and Beautiful" accompanying the young couple. You actually care what happens to Gatsby in the Luhrmann adaptation, unlike in the Clayton version which infamously left most viewers cold even with the dashing Redford in the title role.

You should give the '13 version a chance. If nothing else it'll provide 2 1/2 hours of ravishing designs and scenery.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Um, that's not a hyperlink. To post one you include the link as part of a text, like this.

Anyway you're obviously not going to come to the right conclusion about Fitzgerald's last two completed novels on your own, and since Gatsby happens to be near the top of my desert-island items I'll provide the best CliffsNotes you'll ever see on this arguably greatest of all American novels.

You've made a complaint about Gatsby that is quite common, namely that it lacks sympathetic main characters, though I'd say the narrator Nick Carraway is one and the stock Jewish criminal Meyer Wolfshiem, while a shady character in more ways than one, has a certain nobility of intention about him when he explains why he refuses to attend his old friend's funeral (in stark contrast to nearly everyone else who had abandoned the book's tragic hero when he became no longer useful). Another common claim you've made is that the novel is an indictment of the Jazz Age and/or the American Dream (which, needless to say, is still very much alive). Both of these claims are wrong on their face given the novel's enduring popularity, but they're still instructive, as they can guide us as to why Gatsby both the book and the character continues to speak to so many readers in America and beyond, and also because they're intricately related to each other despite one concern seeming to be more aesthetic than social and vice versa.

I'm guessing you're already familiar with the plot, so let me briefly touch on one of the great mysteries of the novel that I wasn't able to figure out for years. When Daisy accidentally kills her hubby's mistress Myrtle and Jay waits outside her room while planning to take the rap for her manslaughter, he is discovered by Nick who is disgusted at his former idol's seeming lack of concern for the deceased and sole interest in the well-being of his unattainable object of affection who to his willful obliviousness has already forsaken him. In nearly all cases the reader would readily partake in Nick's disgust at such a twisted obsession, but the sentiment we feel for Gatsby is one less of righteous anger than of forlorn pity. Perhaps that's because we know all his efforts will be for naught, or because of some vague understanding on our part that love can make one do unfathomable things, but I'd found none of the explanations fully satisfactory... until I read Harold Bloom's intro to his Critical Interpretation on the book.

There Bloom makes the most convincing argument I've seen on this conundrum: "Gatsby is in love neither with Daisy nor with love itself, but rather with a moment out of time that he persuades himself he shared with Daisy." This love goes beyond the kind of schoolboy philosophizing about the woman he felt he was in love with as opposed to the actual one, or even some kind of an ideal he thought he was pursuing. Bloom continues:



So the "Great" in the novel's title is in fact not at all ironic, as it's commonly claimed, and the titular hero's pursuit of material possessions is for a higher purpose which is simply out of the reach of a genuine materialist like Daisy. When Gatsby finally pays for his refusal to succumb to reality we still feel for him on some instinctive level, as he never loses hope and gives up on his dream of a perfect love or eros that most mortals don't dare aspire to, let alone attain, and because his death serves as an enduring image of the American Dream for Carraway and the rest of us, without which the book would not exist through Nick's narration.

That's why the usual discussion about whether The Great Gatsby is about the withering of the American Dream or a cautionary celebration thereof is in the end a fruitless endeavor, as Fitzgerald was too great an artist not to entertain both and other myriad possibilities. And also why Gatsby will prove more enduring than anything else by the author including Tender Is the Night, as none of his other characters occupy as central a place in American mythology known as the American Dream as its titular hero while transcending it, for as much as he relies on American production for his upward mobility he never lets go of his hope for a perfect union that may or may not be attainable but remains universal in its sublime idealism which again has such a strong impact on Carraway and the rest of us. I've long believed that Gatsby is to the 20th century what Twain's Huckleberry Finn is to the 19th and would hesitate to place one above the other, but if I had to choose one for myself I'd go with Fitzgerald's masterpiece without question. To me it is the pinnacle of American prose fiction, the one book that will likely outlive all others produced in this country. I revisit it every year or so and it never fails to feel fresh and contemporary. Few works of art continue to speak to me as much as Gatsby.

As for its screen adaptations... the very first one is considered lost forever and the second one from 1949 hard to find, so you're talking out of your behind as usual when you nominate the infamous Coppola-scripted Clayton film as the best available. But even limiting our choices to those after '49 I much prefer the recent 2013 version starring DiCaprio as you-know-who. There are lots of things to take issue with in the film, be they director Baz Luhrmann's trademark excesses (its Rhapsody in Blue that introduces Gatsby to the viewer for the first time has gotta be the most bombastic, in-your-face version of the Gershwin classic ever to appear on the screen), Leo's sometimes equally over-the-top acting and eye-rolling accent, or the miscasting of Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, and no doubt it's these issues that prompted the majority of critics to give it a thumbs-down, but I thought this was the first Gatsby film adaptation I'd seen that made Fitzgerald's magnum opus come alive as a tale of High Romantic poetry it is, with its titular protagonist as the doomed tragic hero. Compare the clip from the '74 film linked above with this:



It's probably the most crucial passage in all of Fitzgerald's novel, the one that all but seals the hero's fate when it describes his reunited lover as clutching and crying with erotic joy while she buries her head in his designer shirts rather than himself. But the '74 film treats this grand theater as if it were a leisurely walk in the park, while Luhrmann's penchant for bombast actually works in his favor for once and aptly turns this scene into a piece of high melodrama, with Lana Del Rey's enchanting "Young and Beautiful" accompanying the young couple. You actually care what happens to Gatsby in the Luhrmann adaptation, unlike in the Clayton version which infamously left most viewers cold even with the dashing Redford in the title role.

You should give the '13 version a chance. If nothing else it'll provide 2 1/2 hours of ravishing designs and scenery.

Thank you, NonP, for this explanation of Gatsby, and, Yes, I have read and studied both Gatsby and Tender is the Night cover to cover...I cannot say the same for the novels of Hemingway, Faulkner, only two of Steinbeck's novels and the late O'Neill plays.

I accept the plausibility of your analysis, and yet, the main point I made above, that I could not identify or relate to Jay Gatsby, especially in view of his basic flaws, his implausible life story, etc. compared to Dick Diver, who was a more real down-to-earth married guy, who was actually in love with a flesh-and-blood woman, and struggled to help her, all of which I can understand in relation to the realities of life. Gatsby's obsession with a dream may correspond to something in our life, but ultimately we have to find ourselves in the practicalities of existence and the need to sacrifice ourselves to benefit our loved ones.

I agree with the lack of fibre in the central character of the Redford realization, but I think you would find Jason Robard's Dick Diver a portrayal of marital realities you might recognize from real life.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Here again is the splendid 1962 adaptation of Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night", great production values, jazz music and all, a great cast, and a realistic, sometimes disturbing story line which makes connection with everyday human marital problems. These characters have no room to get caught up in dreams, they must struggle with life in its fullness. This is art which helps us transcend and gain perspective on our lives.

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOPTulwg26g

 

[urban]

I agree that Gatsby is a deeply romantic character. I am surprised that an American novel has created such a hero, who seeks pure love above all. In Europe, we have a tradition of love as a concept of self-perfection (often combined with the background of social advancement) since the Trobadors, the German Minnesang or Petrarca, which runs deep into the 19 th century, from the Romantics to Wagner and Thomas Mann.

 

[NonP]

Thank you, NonP, for this explanation of Gatsby, and, Yes, I have read and studied both Gatsby and Tender is the Night cover to cover...I cannot say the same for the novels of Hemingway, Faulkner, only two of Steinbeck's novels and the late O'Neill plays.

I accept the plausibility of your analysis, and yet, the main point I made above, that I could not identify or relate to Jay Gatsby, especially in view of his basic flaws, his implausible life story, etc. compared to Dick Diver, who was a more real down-to-earth married guy, who was actually in love with a flesh-and-blood woman, and struggled to help her, all of which I can understand in relation to the realities of life. Gatsby's obsession with a dream may correspond to something in our life, but ultimately we have to find ourselves in the practicalities of existence and the need to sacrifice ourselves to benefit our loved ones.

I agree with the lack of fibre in the central character of the Redford realization, but I think you would find Jason Robard's Dick Diver a portrayal of marital realities you might recognize from real life.

You should direct most of your thanks towards Bloom instead. I love how he as is his wont cuts through the ideological BS and focuses on the self to unravel Gatsby's enduring appeal. I've spent a small fortune acquiring the rest of his Modern Critical Interpretations series but it's been money well spent. You learn more from his brief intros here than you do from most of the book-length studies out there. He's quite possibly the greatest literary critic since Empson if not of the entire 20th century, and it's unlikely there has ever been a more perceptive reader. The world has been lucky to have him.

Also you're treating Gatsby's "dream" far too literally. A defining characteristic of Romanticism is its exaltation of the senses or emotions over reason and intellect, or that of a higher purpose over the flesh and blood of our species. And Fitzgerald to his bitter end was nothing if not a Romanticist, which is to say he succeeded in his purpose in Gatsby but not fully in any other works of his including Tender Is the Night. Your reaction to the two works is a testament to that.

I haven't seen the Tender adaptation but will check it out sometime. Doubt I'll like it more than the latest Gatsby film, though. Here's a little addendum about the recent adaptation:

One thing I forgot to add: Mulligan's Daisy never utters the words "such beautiful shirts" in the crucial scene, which I'd long felt was an egregious omission as the shirts as erotic objects for Daisy forebode the unbridgeable gulf between her and Gatsby, but after reflection I now think that caesura was a masterstroke. Withholding that ominous phrase enhances the sexual ambiguity of Daisy and in turn that of Gatsby himself, which hovers over the entire film even after the titular hero meets his tragic end. Now there's reason to doubt that this was an intentional omission on Luhrmann's part, given his general lack of restraint, but we know art has a way of expressing itself without the full cognizance of the creator, and if this was one such instance, so be it when we're all left better off.

It's still not quite a masterpiece and we should be wary of grand predictions by anyone, but I expect time will judge this Gatsby adaptation much more favorably. Easily Baz's best movie (with the only possible exception of Australia, which I've yet to see).

I agree that Gatsby is a deeply romantic character. I am surprised that an American novel has created such a hero, who seeks pure love above all. In Europe, we have a tradition of love as a concept of self-perfection (often combined with the background of social advancement) since the Trobadors, the German Minnesang or Petrarca, which runs deep into the 19 th century, from the Romantics to Wagner and Thomas Mann.

Yes, in that Gatsby study Bloom makes several insightful comparisons between crucial passages in the novel and select prosody by Keats, that High Romantic poet par excellence. This is the passage from the latter's celebrated "The Eve of St. Agnes" that Bloom compares the shirt-throwing scene to:

Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
A table, and, half anguish'd, threw thereon
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:—
O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!
The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet,
Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:—
The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone.

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd,
While he forth from the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.

These delicates he heap'd with glowing hand
On golden dishes and in baskets bright
Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
In the retired quiet of the night,
Filling the chilly room with perfume light.—
"And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite:
Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake,
Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache."

Here Bloom argues that while the lover Porphryo's dainties and delicates have been replaced by Gatsby's multicolored shirts one can clearly see "Fitzgerald's exquisitely displaced allusion," and that the American turns the shirt-throwing scene into high art with Daisy's "storm of tears" as she clutches the shirts almost as erotic objects. That's just one of about half a dozen examples Bloom fits in under a dozen pages.

 

[Dan Lobb]

I agree that Gatsby is a deeply romantic character. I am surprised that an American novel has created such a hero, who seeks pure love above all. In Europe, we have a tradition of love as a concept of self-perfection (often combined with the background of social advancement) since the Trobadors, the German Minnesang or Petrarca, which runs deep into the 19 th century, from the Romantics to Wagner and Thomas Mann.

And Fitzgerald was well aware of this, having studied the mediaeval ethos and cultural context. Fitzgerald had planned to write a mediaeval novel, I believe, but died too soon.

 

[Dan Lobb]

You should direct most of your thanks towards Bloom instead. I love how he as is his wont cuts through the ideological BS and focuses on the self to unravel Gatsby's enduring appeal. I've spent a small fortune acquiring the rest of his Modern Critical Interpretations series but it's been money well spent. You learn more from his brief intros here than you do from most of the book-length studies out there. He's quite possibly the greatest literary critic since Empson if not of the entire 20th century, and it's unlikely there has ever been a more perceptive reader. The world has been lucky to have him.

Also you're treating Gatsby's "dream" far too literally. A defining characteristic of Romanticism is its exaltation of the senses or emotions over reason and intellect, or that of a higher purpose over the flesh and blood of our species. And Fitzgerald to his bitter end was nothing if not a Romanticist, which is to say he succeeded in his purpose in Gatsby but not fully in any other works of his including Tender Is the Night. Your reaction to the two works is a testament to that.

I haven't seen the Tender adaptation but will check it out sometime. Doubt I'll like it more than the latest Gatsby film, though. Here's a little addendum about the recent adaptation:





Yes, in that Gatsby study Bloom makes several insightful comparisons between crucial passages in the novel and select prosody by Keats, that High Romantic poet par excellence. This is the passage from the latter's celebrated "The Eve of St. Agnes" that Bloom compares the shirt-throwing scene to:



Here Bloom argues that while the lover Porphryo's dainties and delicates have been replaced by Gatsby's multicolored shirts one can clearly see "Fitzgerald's exquisitely displaced allusion," and that the American turns the shirt-throwing scene into high art with Daisy's "storm of tears" as she clutches the shirts almost as erotic objects. That's just one of about half a dozen examples Bloom fits in under a dozen pages.

Fitzgerald actually found the title "Tender is the Night" from a poem by Keats...yet in this work, "Tender is the NIght" is the most complete and full novel by Fitzgerald ("Gatsby" was actually a novella, or short novel) we see a turn towards realism, perhaps influenced by Fitzgerald's friend Hemingway.
Fitzgerald himself regarded "Tender is the Night" as his greatest work, and critical opinion has gradually come around to upgrade this novel, which is the most ambitious and large-scale achievement of its author.

 

[Dan Lobb]

"The Great Gatsby" has been accepted as the embodiment in prose of the ethos of the American Jazz Age culture of the 1920's, and was published in 1925.
That same year saw the premiere of another young American's jazz age creation, which used genuine jazz melodies in a classical musical structure, Gershwin's "Concerto in F".

There are some obvious career parallels between Fitzgerald and Gershwin, both dying at about age 40 (Gershwin in 1937 age 39, Fitzgerald in 1940 age 44), the relative obscurity of their greatest works until the postwar era (here I mean Gershwin's Concerto in F and the opera Porgy and Bess, Fitzgerald's Gatsby and Tender is the Night), both creative artists seeming now to embody the Jazz Age of American culture.
Both men experienced a rejuvenated personal relationship at the end of their life, Fitzgerald with Sheila Graham, a Hollywood columnist and broadcaster, Gershwin with actress Paulette Goddard, and both died before these relationships could culminate in marriage.

Leonard Bernstein in 1958 gave us an incisive overview of American musical culture and its roots, and a preview of his recording with the New York Philharmonic of Gershwin's "American in Paris".

https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif69sxhfNs

 

[urban]

Thanks for the information. I didn't now, that Fitzgerald made references to medieval or romantic literature. Certainly of the Parisian boheme of the 20s, Ezra Pound and Joyce knew the medieval tradition very well. Interesting would be the comparison with another short novel, that of Thomas Mann "Death in Venice" (so the German title). In the Nietzsche tradition, Thomas Mann describes two forms of love and aesthetic principles, the Apollinian concept of purity and clearity, and the Dionysian principle of orgiastic passion and decadence. Both principles i could see also in the Gatsby novel. For music and film lovers, the Visconti picture with Dirk Bogarde could be interesting. It transfers the poet Aschenbach into a music composer, and uses as soundtrack the Mahler music (i think symphony Nr. 5).

 

[Dan Lobb]

Thanks for the information. I didn't now, that Fitzgerald made references to medieval or romantic literature. Certainly of the Parisian boheme of the 20s, Ezra Pound and Joyce knew the medieval tradition very well. Interesting would be the comparison with another short novel, that of Thomas Mann "Death in Venice" (so the German title). In the Nietzsche tradition, Thomas Mann describes two forms of love and aesthetic principles, the Apollinian concept of purity and clearity, and the Dionysian principle of orgiastic passion and decadence. Both principles i could see also in the Gatsby novel. For music and film lovers, the Visconti picture with Dirk Bogarde could be interesting. It transfers the poet Aschenbach into a music composer, and uses as soundtrack the Mahler music (i think symphony Nr. 5).

Fitzgerald was a devoted mediaevalist and included Arthurian themes in The Great Gatsby. In 1934, Fitzgerald attempted to compose a novel known as "The Castle" incorporating some short stories of mediaeval French knights which he had already published. "The Castle" was left incomplete, a mediaeval artifact.

 

[NonP]

Fitzgerald actually found the title "Tender is the Night" from a poem by Keats...yet in this work, "Tender is the NIght" is the most complete and full novel by Fitzgerald ("Gatsby" was actually a novella, or short novel) we see a turn towards realism, perhaps influenced by Fitzgerald's friend Hemingway.
Fitzgerald himself regarded "Tender is the Night" as his greatest work, and critical opinion has gradually come around to upgrade this novel, which is the most ambitious and large-scale achievement of its author.

And Milton considered Paradise Regained his magnum opus over its justly better-received prequel. It's almost a truism that the artist isn't always the best judge of his works. (Here I must add Blake's wonderful quip: "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." It's generally agreed that of all characters in Paradise Lost Satan is the one who has the best lines.)

As for the Keats connection... why do you think Bloom uses the Romantic icon's works as points of reference in his masterful intro on Gatsby and Fitzgerald? Of course I knew F. Scott held his soulmate in high esteem. And he's one of Keats' few worthy successors. I've no doubt The Great Gatsby will live on as long as the Englishman's great odes.

There are some obvious career parallels between Fitzgerald and Gershwin, both dying at about age 40 (Gershwin in 1937 age 39, Fitzgerald in 1940 age 44), the relative obscurity of their greatest works until the postwar era (here I mean Gershwin's Concerto in F and the opera Porgy and Bess, Fitzgerald's Gatsby and Tender is the Night), both creative artists seeming now to embody the Jazz Age of American culture.

Relatively speaking Gershwin is no equal of Fitzgerald's. The American wordsmith despite his notoriously poor spelling can be favorably compared to his great Continental and Russian peers, the same can't be said of his tunesmith compatriot. That's generally true of American literature in general, with Whitman, Dickinson, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Stevens, O'Connor, Ellison, McCarthy and Pynchon providing an exceptionally strong bulwark against the invasion of the Old World. The likes of Gershwin, Copland, Ives, Barber, Porter, Armstrong and Ellington, as great as they are, simply fail to measure up to the very greatest exponents of their craft across the Atlantic.

Thanks for the information. I didn't now, that Fitzgerald made references to medieval or romantic literature. Certainly of the Parisian boheme of the 20s, Ezra Pound and Joyce knew the medieval tradition very well. Interesting would be the comparison with another short novel, that of Thomas Mann "Death in Venice" (so the German title). In the Nietzsche tradition, Thomas Mann describes two forms of love and aesthetic principles, the Apollinian concept of purity and clearity, and the Dionysian principle of orgiastic passion and decadence. Both principles i could see also in the Gatsby novel. For music and film lovers, the Visconti picture with Dirk Bogarde could be interesting. It transfers the poet Aschenbach into a music composer, and uses as soundtrack the Mahler music (i think symphony Nr. 5).

It may be my preference for Schopenhauer to Nietzsche (in fact "preference" is a strong understatement as I generally can't stand Nietzsche), but I've never cared much for Mann's rather inartful incorporation of the latter's philosophy. And yes, Joyce and especially Pound were well steeped in medieval literature and make numerous references to it in their works. I'm sure you already know how often Joyce is compared to Chaucer for their embrace of the high and the low and everything in between, and of course for their dazzling wordplay.

The Damned is one of the few Visconti films I've yet to see, but speaking of Dirk Bogarde I recently saw him in a riveting performance in the sociologically groundbreaking Victim (directed by Basil Dearden). As a lifelong closet homosexual he must've been very proud of his role, and rightly so.

 

[Dan Lobb]

And Milton considered Paradise Regained his magnum opus over its justly better-received prequel. It's almost a truism that the artist isn't always the best judge of his works. (Here I must add Blake's wonderful quip: "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." It's generally agreed that of all characters in Paradise Lost Satan is the one who has the best lines.)

As for the Keats connection... why do you think Bloom uses the Romantic icon's works as points of reference in his masterful intro on Gatsby and Fitzgerald? Of course I knew F. Scott held his soulmate in high esteem. And he's one of Keats' few worthy successors. I've no doubt The Great Gatsby will live on as long as the Englishman's great odes.



Relatively speaking Gershwin is no equal of Fitzgerald's. The American wordsmith despite his notoriously poor spelling can be favorably compared to his great Continental and Russian peers, the same can't be said of his tunesmith compatriot. That's generally true of American literature in general, with Whitman, Dickinson, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Stevens, O'Connor, Ellison, McCarthy and Pynchon providing an exceptionally strong bulwark against the invasion of the Old World. The likes of Gershwin, Copland, Ives, Barber, Porter, Armstrong and Ellington, as great as they are, simply fail to measure up to the very greatest exponents of their craft across the Atlantic.



It may be my preference for Schopenhauer to Nietzsche (in fact "preference" is a strong understatement as I generally can't stand Nietzsche), but I've never cared much for Mann's rather inartful incorporation of the latter's philosophy. And yes, Joyce and especially Pound were well steeped in medieval literature and make numerous references to it in their works. I'm sure you already know how often Joyce is compared to Chaucer for their embrace of the high and the low and everything in between, and of course for their dazzling wordplay.

The Damned is one of the few Visconti films I've yet to see, but speaking of Dirk Bogarde I recently saw him in a riveting performance in the sociologically groundbreaking Victim (directed by Basil Dearden). As a lifelong closet homosexual he must've been very proud of his role, and rightly so.

Satan may get the best, or at least, the most often-quoted lines in "Paradise Lost", but he gets the wrong end of the stick. Not unusual for the heavy to get the best lines, example, Humphrey Bogart in "Petrified Forest".
I think that Fitzgerald looked upon "Tender is the Night" as his most personal statement of reality, and the only mature full-scale novel he completed in his prime. It made a fine film also, hope you get a chance to view it.

Do not under-rate American composers. I agree that Gershwin, Copland, Ives, Barber and the jazz masters may have lacked the formal compositional equipment of their contemporary European composers, and, dare I say it, their Canadian contemporaries (more about that later).
But the sheer power and expressive potential of the basic materials they created and used have kept the best of the American works within the current standard repertoire of international performances, not an easy accomplishment. The underachievers, in my view, are the conservatory and university grads with full technical training who churn out endless reams of aleatoric and serial compositions which are essentially stillborn and unable to gain a wide hearing...deservedly so.

Until recently, I served on a four-person executive committee of a regional, but fully professional, symphony orchestra, and was responsible for initiating and finding funding for two new composition commissions.
The first was a clarinet concerto, debuted in 2010, and has had several performances by Canadian and U.S. symphony orchestras, and been enthusiastically received.
The second was a double concerto for oboe and French horn, which debuted in 2013, and is now being recorded.
Both works are decidedly tonal, in the general tradition of Copland, Bartok, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, Barber with long sensuous melodies for the clarinet and oboe soloists.
There is still much to be found and mined in these neo-classical ore deposits.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Here from March this year, we have a classic interview with the wise Bud Grant, and his wonderfully chosen words, "if winning or losing is going to define you, you're on a rough road."

http://mmqb.si.com//mmqb/2016/01/31...ngs-super-bowl-losses-vince-Lombardi-disklike

This is somewhat reminiscent of a line from one of Rudyard Kipling's poems, "If", which is inscribed over the player's entrance at Wimbledon centre court.
"If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same."

 

[Phoenix1983]

This is somewhat reminiscent of a line from one of Rudyard Kipling's poems, "If", which is inscribed over the player's entrance at Wimbledon.
"If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same."

"If" is a great poem, but I do somewhat cynically wonder: how many of the great champions have truly treated triumph and disaster the same? I'm pretty sure they all enjoyed winning and hated losing.

 

[hoodjem]

I've often wondered why they are "impostors"?

Is "triumph" pretending to be something else? What is "disaster" pretending to be? Is this comparing them to real life, to suggest that they don't really matter. That triumph in sports is not true triumph in life?

 

[NonP]

Satan may get the best, or at least, the most often-quoted lines in "Paradise Lost", but he gets the wrong end of the stick. Not unusual for the heavy to get the best lines, example, Humphrey Bogart in "Petrified Forest".
I think that Fitzgerald looked upon "Tender is the Night" as his most personal statement of reality, and the only mature full-scale novel he completed in his prime. It made a fine film also, hope you get a chance to view it.

Gatsby himself "gets the wrong end of the stick" but that doesn't mean he's not the central character of the story or for that matter his creator's oeuvre. I'm not exactly committing critical heresy when I say Satan is the "hero" of Paradise Lost. That's pretty much accepted among Milton scholars by now.

Again I'll check out the Tender film sometime. And the book again too, though I doubt that'll make me revise my opinion of Fitzgerald's two major novels. Shortly after I posted my CliffsNotes on Gatsby the other day I took a break from everything and reread its best passages for the zillionth time. Few books have given me as much enlightened pleasure as Gatsby, and I can say with certainty its relevance will grow in the coming decades. Gatsby, more than any other character in American literature including possibly even Huckleberry Finn, is the hero of American mythology known as the American Dream who somehow also transcends it, and as long as we keep that dream of ours alive Fitzgerald's greatest creation will continue to speak to and for us.

Do not under-rate American composers. I agree that Gershwin, Copland, Ives, Barber and the jazz masters may have lacked the formal compositional equipment of their contemporary European composers, and, dare I say it, their Canadian contemporaries (more about that later).
But the sheer power and expressive potential of the basic materials they created and used have kept the best of the American works within the current standard repertoire of international performances, not an easy accomplishment. The underachievers, in my view, are the conservatory and university grads with full technical training who churn out endless reams of aleatoric and serial compositions which are essentially stillborn and unable to gain a wide hearing...deservedly so.

For the record I wasn't just talking about their formal or theoretical aptitude. Ives was a composer far ahead of his time, while Schumann apart from his piano music was not, but I know which guy I'd take with me to that desert island. And while I love Gershwin's and Porter's sophisticated musicals myself (I actually saw a splendid production of the latter's masterpiece Kiss Me, Kate by the Shakespeare Theatre Company earlier this year) I love Handel's and Verdi's operas even more. That's not necessarily an objective verdict on their works, as the Yanks routinely were allowed better scripts than the Europeans. But I do feel the latter made more out of the materials at their disposal, and to me that's not just because of their superior training.

Until recently, I served on a four-person executive committee of a regional, but fully professional, symphony orchestra, and was responsible for initiating and finding funding for two new composition commissions.
The first was a clarinet concerto, debuted in 2010, and has had several performances by Canadian and U.S. symphony orchestras, and been enthusiastically received.
The second was a double concerto for oboe and French horn, which debuted in 2013, and is now being recorded.
Both works are decidedly tonal, in the general tradition of Copland, Bartok, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, Barber with long sensuous melodies for the clarinet and oboe soloists.
There is still much to be found and mined in these neo-classical ore deposits.

I recently heard a fine contemporary work myself called Abstractions by Anna Clyne that was quite tonal and which I felt would be perfect for an arthouse or horror film set in a barren or desolate landscape (I don't say that disparagingly), so you needn't tell me there's still gold to be "mined" in the "neo-classical ore deposits." But such works are exceptions, be they tonal, serial, whatever. In another recent performance I heard a violin concerto by Mason Bates, and while Anne Akiko Meyers was her usual able self and Bates did seem like a nice fellow at the post-concert Q&A (also attended by Meyers and guest conductor Hugh Wolff, who seemed to go way back) I just couldn't help but feel his stylistic diversity barely helps conceal his lack of original themes or ideas. Based on this concert I'd much rather listen to Webern than anything by Bates.

Mason is the Kennedy Center's new composer-in-residence now and I'm sure I'll get to hear more from him, but let's just say I'm not very looking forward to it. Sadly concert music is not where most of the top musical talent congregates these days.

"If" is a great poem, but I do somewhat cynically wonder: how many of the great champions have truly treated triumph and disaster the same? I'm pretty sure they all enjoyed winning and hated losing.

"If" is far from a great poem and Kipling himself wrote better ones. (I'd go ahead and name a few but can't really be bothered as I've always considered him a much better short-story writer than a poet.) It remains popular because its simple didacticism appeals to many who like their text free of all but the barest figurative language that invites the least amount of irony and ambiguity. Of course they happen to be the same readers who still take Frost's "The Road Not Taken" rather literally.

 

[Phoenix1983]

"If" is far from a great poem and Kipling himself wrote better ones. (I'd go ahead and name a few but can't really be bothered as I've always considered him a much better short-story writer than a poet.) It remains popular because its simple didacticism appeals to many who like their text free of all but the barest figurative language that invites the least amount of irony and ambiguity. Of course they happen to be the same readers who still take Frost's "The Road Not Taken" rather literally.

No idea what you're on about, to be honest. I enjoy the poem, despite it being 'populist' and 'simplistic' to someone like yourself, who appears to be some kind of intellectual/cultural snob.

 

[Dan Lobb]

Gatsby himself "gets the wrong end of the stick" but that doesn't mean he's not the central character of the story or for that matter his creator's oeuvre. I'm not exactly committing critical heresy when I say Satan is the "hero" of Paradise Lost. That's pretty much accepted among Milton scholars by now.

Again I'll check out the Tender film sometime. And the book again too, though I doubt that'll make me revise my opinion of Fitzgerald's two major novels. Shortly after I posted my CliffsNotes on Gatsby the other day I took a break from everything and reread its best passages for the zillionth time. Few books have given me as much enlightened pleasure as Gatsby, and I can say with certainty its relevance will grow in the coming decades. Gatsby, more than any other character in American literature including possibly even Huckleberry Finn, is the hero of American mythology known as the American Dream who somehow also transcends it, and as long as we keep that dream of ours alive Fitzgerald's greatest creation will continue to speak to and for us.



For the record I wasn't just talking about their formal or theoretical aptitude. Ives was a composer far ahead of his time, while Schumann apart from his piano music was not, but I know which guy I'd take with me to that desert island. And while I love Gershwin's and Porter's sophisticated musicals myself (I actually saw a splendid production of the latter's masterpiece Kiss Me, Kate by the Shakespeare Theatre Company earlier this year) I love Handel's and Verdi's operas even more. That's not necessarily an objective verdict on their works, as the Yanks routinely were allowed better scripts than the Europeans. But I do feel the latter made more out of the materials at their disposal, and to me that's not just because of their superior training.



I recently heard a fine contemporary work myself called Abstractions by Anna Clyne that was quite tonal and which I felt would be perfect for an arthouse or horror film set in a barren or desolate landscape (I don't say that disparagingly), so you needn't tell me there's still gold to be "mined" in the "neo-classical ore deposits." But such works are exceptions, be they tonal, serial, whatever. In another recent performance I heard a violin concerto by Mason Bates, and while Anne Akiko Meyers was her usual able self and Bates did seem like a nice fellow at the post-concert Q&A (also attended by Meyers and guest conductor Hugh Wolff, who seemed to go way back) I just couldn't help but feel his stylistic diversity barely helps conceal his lack of original themes or ideas. Based on this concert I'd much rather listen to Webern than anything by Bates.

Mason is the Kennedy Center's new composer-in-residence now and I'm sure I'll get to hear more from him, but let's just say I'm not very looking forward to it. Sadly concert music is not where most of the top musical talent congregates these days.



"If" is far from a great poem and Kipling himself wrote better ones. (I'd go ahead and name a few but can't really be bothered as I've always considered him a much better short-story writer than a poet.) It remains popular because its simple didacticism appeals to many who like their text free of all but the barest figurative language that invites the least amount of irony and ambiguity. Of course they happen to be the same readers who still take Frost's "The Road Not Taken" rather literally.

Interesting comment about the institution of symphony orchestral "composer-in-residence", and I am forced to agree with you. They seem to be a sort of clique of university/conservatory composers who help each other secure the best appointments for jobs and positions. I prefer the group of composers who supply music for films or other more popular forms of presentation, and are reliant upon supplying expressive music which relates to an actual audience of people.