Joshua Alexander "Joe" Loss LVO OBE (22 June 1909 – 6 June 1990) was a British musician popular during the British dance band era, and was founder of the Joe Loss Orchestra.

Life[link]

Loss was born in Spitalfields, London, the youngest of four children. His parents, Israel and Ada Loss, were Russian Jews and first cousins. His father was a cabinet-maker who had an office furnishing business. Loss was educated at Jews' Free School, Trinity College of Music and the London College of Music. He started violin lessons at the age of seven and later played violin at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool and also with Oscar Rabin. Loss started band leading in the early 1930s, working at the Astoria Ballroom and soon breaking into variety at the Kit-Cat Club. In 1934 he topped the bill at the Holborn Empire but in the same year moved back to the Astoria Ballroom where he led a twelve piece band. With broadcasting, recording and annual tours in addition to the resident work the band became highly popular over the next few years.^[1]In the 1950s Loss was resident band leader at the Hammersmith Palais and was remembered by a trainee nurse at Hammersmith Hospital as being as kind and gentlemanly when she attended him in hospital as in his public persona. His band's signature tune "In the Mood" would often be requested three or more times a night.^[2]

Loss's daughter Jennifer was the wife of British coach-builder Robert Jankel.

Loss died on 6 June 1990 and is buried at Bushey Jewish Cemetery in Hertfordshire.^[3]

Joe Loss Orchestra[link]

The Joe Loss Orchestra was one of the most successful acts of the big band era in the 1940s, with hits including "In the Mood". In 1961 they had a hit with "Wheels Cha Cha Cha", a version of The String-A-Longs' hit "Wheels". Other hits included David Rose's "The Stripper" in 1958 and "March of the Mods (The Finnjenka Dance)" of 1964.

In April 1951 Elizabeth Batey, vocalist with Joe Loss, fell and broke her jaw. Joe was badly in need of a replacement and remembered hearing Rose Brennan on radio during a visit to Ireland. Within days he had located her and, before a week was out, she was in Manchester rehearsing with the band. She stayed with Loss for fifteen years, before giving up show-business in the mid 1960s. She wrote many of the songs she recorded with Joe Loss under the name Marella, and co-wrote songs with John Harris. Her co-vocalist with the orchestra from 1955 was Ross MacManus (father of Elvis Costello).^[4]

The Joe Loss Orchestra carries on under the musical direction of Todd Miller, who was a vocalist with the band for 19 years before Loss's death. In 1989 Joe Loss became too ill to travel and in 1990 he entrusted the leadership solely to Todd. The orchestra has been in constant operation since 1930 and in 2010 it celebrated its 80th anniversary.

References[link]

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

External links[link]

• Official website of the Joe Loss Orchestra
• "Internet Archive Search: Joe Loss - archive.org (multimedia content in the public domain)". http://archive.org/search.php?query=%22joe%20loss%22. Retrieved 29 April 2012. 
• "British Pathé Search: Joe Loss - britishpathe.com". http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/joe+loss. Retrieved 2 May 2012. 
• Bio at 45rpm.org.uk
• Information about the Joe Loss Orchestra performance at Wakefield Theatre Royal

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Cole Porter
Cole Porter, composer and songwriter
Born	(1891-06-09)June 9, 1891 Peru, Indiana, U.S.
Died	October 15, 1964(1964-10-15) (aged 73) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Spouse	Linda Lee Thomas (m. 1919–1954) «start: (1919)–end+1: (1955)»"Marriage: Linda Lee Thomas to Cole Porter" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Cole_Porter)(her death)

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.

After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate.

Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Can-Can, and his numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms.

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Farmhouse at Westleigh Farms

Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, the only child of a wealthy Baptist family.^[1] His father, Samuel Fenwick Porter, was a druggist by trade;^[2] his mother, Kate, was the indulged daughter of James Omar "J. O." Cole, "the richest man in Indiana", a coal and timber speculator who dominated the family.^[3] J.O. built the couple a home at his Peru-area property, known as Westleigh Farms.^[4] After high school, Porter returned to the property only for occasional visits.^[5] Kate started Porter in musical training at an early age. He learned the violin at age six, the piano at eight and wrote his first operetta (with help from his mother) at 10. She falsified his recorded birth year, changing it from 1891 to 1893 to make him appear more precocious.^[3] His father, who was a shy and unassertive man, played a lesser role in Porter’s upbringing, although as an amateur poet he may have influenced his son’s gifts for rhyme and meter.^[2]

Porter as a Yale College student

J. O. Cole wanted his grandson to become a lawyer,^[3] and with that career in mind, he sent him to Worcester Academy in 1905. He became class valedictorian^[3] and was rewarded by his grandfather with a tour of France, Switzerland and Germany.^[6] After this he attended Yale University beginning in 1909, where he was a member of Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon (Phi chapter) and sang both in the Yale Glee Club, of which he was elected president his senior year, and as an original member of the Whiffenpoofs. While at Yale, he wrote a number of student songs, including the football fight songs "Bulldog Bulldog" and "Bingo Eli Yale" (aka "Bingo, That's The Lingo!") that are still played at Yale today.^[7] Porter wrote 300 songs while at Yale.^[3] After graduating from Yale, Porter studied at Harvard Law School in 1913 (where he roomed with Dean Acheson).^[3] He soon felt that he was not destined to be a lawyer, and, at the suggestion of the dean of the law school, Porter switched to Harvard's music faculty, where he studied harmony and counterpoint with Pietro Yon.^[2] Kate Porter did not object to this move, but it was kept secret from J. O. Cole.^[3]

In 1915, Porter's first song on Broadway, "Esmeralda", appeared in the revue Hands Up. The quick success was immediately followed by failure: his first Broadway production, in 1916, See America First, a "patriotic comic opera" modeled on Gilbert and Sullivan, with a book by T. Lawrason Riggs, was a flop, closing after two weeks.^[8]

Paris and marriage[link]

In 1917, the year in which the U.S. entered World War I, Porter moved to Paris. He distributed relief supplies for three months, but the extent of his other war work is unclear. Some writers have been skeptical about Porter's claim to have served in the French Foreign Legion,^[3][8] although the Legion itself lists Porter as one of its soldiers^[9] and displays his portrait at its museum in Aubagne.^[10] By some accounts, he served in North Africa and was transferred to the French Officers School at Fontainebleau, teaching gunnery to American soldiers.^[11] An obituary notice in The New York Times said that, while in the Legion, "he had a specially constructed portable piano made for him so that he could carry it on his back and entertain the troops in their bivouacs."^[12] Another account, given by Porter, is that he joined the recruiting department of the American Aviation Headquarters, but, according to his biographer Stephen Citron, there is no record of his joining this or any other branch of the forces.^[13]

Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with "much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians, and a large surplus of recreational drugs".^[3] In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a rich, Louisville, Kentucky-born divorcée eight years his senior,^[1] whom he married the following year. She was in no doubt about Porter's homosexuality,^[14] but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry: for Linda it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband; for Porter it brought a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality was not publicly acknowledged. They were, moreover, genuinely devoted to each other and remained married from December 19, 1919 until Linda's death in 1954.^[3] Linda remained protective of her social position, and believing that classical music might be a more prestigious outlet than Broadway for her husband's talents, she tried to use her connections to find him suitable teachers, including Igor Stravinsky, but was unsuccessful. Finally, Porter enrolled at the Schola Cantorum in Paris where he studied orchestration and counterpoint with Vincent d'Indy.^[2] Meanwhile, Porter's first big hit was the song "Old-Fashioned Garden" from the revue Hitchy-Koo in 1919.^[1] In 1920, he contributed the music of several songs to the musical A Night Out.^[15]

Ca' Rezzonico in Venice, leased by Porter in the 1920s

Marriage did not diminish Porter's taste for extravagant luxury. The Porter home on the rue Monsieur near Les Invalides was a palatial house with platinum wallpaper and chairs upholstered in zebra skin.^[12] In 1923, Porter came into an inheritance from his grandfather, and the Porters began living in rented palaces in Venice. He once hired the entire Ballets Russes to entertain his house guests, and for a party at Ca' Rezzonico, which he rented for $4,000 a month ($55,000 in current value), he hired 50 gondoliers to act as footmen and had a troupe of tight-rope walkers perform in a blaze of lights.^[12]

Porter received few commissions for songs in the years immediately after his marriage. He had the occasional number interpolated into other writers' revues in England and the U.S. For a C. B. Cochran show in 1921, he had two successes with the comedy numbers "The Blue Boy Blues" and "Olga, Come Back to the Volga".^[16] In 1923, in collaboration with Gerald Murphy, he composed a short ballet, originally titled Landed and then Within the Quota, satirically depicting the adventures of an immigrant to America who becomes a film star.^[17] The work, written for the Swedish Ballet company, lasts about 16 minutes. It was orchestrated by Charles Koechlin and shared the same opening night as Milhaud's La création du monde.^[18] Porter's work was one of the earliest symphonic jazz-based compositions, predating George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue by four months, and well received by both French and American reviewers after its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in October 1923.^[18][19] After a successful New York performance the following month, the Swedish Ballet company toured the work in the U.S., performing it 69 times. A year later the company disbanded, and the score was lost until it was reconstructed from Porter's and Koechlin's manuscripts between 1966 and 1990, with help from Milhaud among others.^[20] Porter had less success with his work on Greenwich Village Follies (1924). He wrote most of the original score, but his songs were gradually dropped during the Broadway run, and by the time of the post-Broadway tour in 1925, all his numbers had been deleted.^[21]

Broadway success[link]

Irène Bordoni, star of Porter's Paris

At the age of 36, Porter reintroduced himself to Broadway in 1928 with the musical Paris. It was commissioned at the instigation of its star, Irène Bordoni. She had wanted Rodgers and Hart to write the songs, but they were unavailable, and Porter's agent persuaded Bordoni's impresario husband to hire Porter instead.^[22] His work on the show was interrupted by the death of his father at the age of 69 in August 1928; Porter hurried back to Indiana to comfort his mother, before returning to work on the songs for the show. These included "Let's Misbehave" and one of his best-known list songs, "Let's Do It", which was introduced by Bordoni and Arthur Margetson.^[23] The show opened on Broadway on October 8, 1928. The Porters did not attend the first night because Porter was in Paris supervising another show for which he had been commissioned, La Revue at the Ambassadeurs nightclub.^[24] Both shows were successes, and, in Citron's phrase, Porter was finally "accepted into the upper echelon of Broadway songwriters".^[25] After this, Cochran wanted more from Porter than isolated extra songs; he planned a West End extravaganza similar to Ziegfeld's shows, with a Porter score and a large international cast led by Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale and Tilly Losch. The show, Wake Up and Dream ran for 263 performances in London, after which Cochran transferred it to New York. There, business was badly affected by the 1929 Wall Street crash,^[26] and the show ran for only 136 performances. From Porter's point of view it was nonetheless a success, as his song "What is This Thing Called Love?" became immensely popular independently of the show.^[27]

Porter's new fame brought him offers from Hollywood, but as his score for Paramount's The Battle of Paris was undistinguished, and its star, Gertrude Lawrence, was miscast, the film was not a success.^[28] Citron expresses the view that Porter was not interested in cinema and "noticeably wrote down for the movies."^[29] Still on a Gallic theme, Porter's last Broadway show of the 1920s was Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), for which he wrote 28 numbers, including "You Do Something to Me", "You've Got That Thing" and "The Tale of the Oyster".^[30] The show received mixed notices. One critic wrote, "the lyrics alone are enough to drive anyone but P.G. Wodehouse into retirement", but others dismissed the songs as "pleasant" and "not an outstanding hit song in the show". As it was a lavish and expensive production, nothing less than full houses would suffice, and after only three weeks the producers announced that they would close it. Irving Berlin, who was an admirer and champion of Porter, took out a paid press advertisement calling the show "The best musical comedy I've heard in years.... One of the best collections of song numbers I have ever listened to". This saved the show, which ran for 254 performances, considered a successful run at the time.^[31]

1930s[link]

Ray Goetz, producer of Paris and Fifty Million Frenchmen, whose success had kept him solvent when other producers were bankrupted by the post-crash slump in Broadway business, invited Porter to write a musical show about the other city that he knew and loved: New York. Goetz offered the team with whom Porter had last worked, Herbert Fields writing the book and Porter's old friend Monty Woolley directing.^[32] The New Yorkers (1930) acquired instant notoriety for including a song about a streetwalker, "Love for Sale". Originally performed by Kathryn Crawford in a street setting, critical disapproval led Goetz to reassign the number to Elizabeth Welch in a nightclub scene. The lyric was considered too explicit for radio at the time, though it was recorded and aired as an instrumental and rapidly became a standard.^[33] Porter often referred to it as his favorite of his songs.^[34] The New Yorkers also included the hit "I Happen to Like New York".^[35]

Elisabeth Welch starred in Porter's The New Yorkers and Nymph Errant

Next came Fred Astaire's last stage show, Gay Divorce (1932). It featured a hit that became Porter's best-known song, "Night and Day".^[36] Despite mixed press (some critics were reluctant to accept Astaire without his previous partner, his sister Adele), the show ran for a profitable 248 performances, and the film rights were sold to RKO Pictures.^[37] Porter followed this with a West End show for Gertrude Lawrence, Nymph Errant (1933), presented by Cochran at the Adelphi Theatre, where it ran for 154 performances. Among the hit songs Porter composed for the show were "Experiment" and "The Physician" for Lawrence, and "Solomon" for Elizabeth Welch.^[38]

In 1934, producer Vinton Freedley came up with a new approach to producing musicals. Instead of commissioning book, music and lyrics and then casting the show, Freedley sought to create an ideal musical with stars and writers all engaged from the outset.^[39] The stars he wanted were Ethel Merman, William Gaxton and comedian Victor Moore. He planned a story around a shipwreck and a desert island, and for the book he turned to P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. For the songs, he decided on Porter. By dint of telling each of these that he had already signed the others, Freedley gathered his ideal team together.^[40] A drastic last-minute rewrite was necessitated by a major shipping accident, which dominated the news and made Bolton and Wodehouse's book seem tasteless.^[41] Nevertheless, the show, Anything Goes, was an immediate hit. Porter wrote what is thought by many to be his greatest score of this period. The New Yorker magazine said, "Mr. Porter is in class by himself",^[42] and Porter himself subsequently called it one of his two perfect shows, along with the later Kiss Me, Kate.^[42] Its songs include "I Get a Kick out of You", "All Through the Night", "You're the Top" (one of his best-known list songs), and "Blow, Gabriel, Blow", as well as the title number.^[43] The show ran for 420 performances in New York (a particularly long run in the 1930s) and 261 in London.^[44] Porter, despite his lessons in orchestration from d'Indy, did not orchestrate his musicals. Anything Goes was orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett and Hans Spialek.^[45] Now at the height of his success, Porter was able to enjoy the opening night of his musicals; he would make a grand entrance and sit in front, apparently relishing the show as much as any audience member. Russel Crouse commented, "Cole's opening-night behaviour is as indecent as that of a bridegroom who has a good time at his own wedding."^[42]

Anything Goes was the first of five Porter shows featuring Merman. He loved her loud, brassy voice and wrote many numbers that featured her strengths.^[46] Jubilee (1935), written with Moss Hart while on a cruise around the world, was not a major hit, running for only 169 performances, but it featured two songs that have since become standards, "Begin the Beguine" and "Just One of Those Things".^[47] Red Hot And Blue (1936), featuring Merman, Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope, ran for 183 performances and introduced "It's De-Lovely", "Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor)", and "Ridin' High".^[48] The relative failure of these shows convinced Porter that his songs did not appeal to a broad enough audience. In an interview he said, "Sophisticated allusions are good for about six weeks ... more fun, but only for myself and about eighteen other people, all of whom are first-nighters anyway. Polished, urbane and adult playwriting in the musical field is strictly a creative luxury."^[49]

Porter also wrote for Hollywood in the mid-1930s. His scores include those for Born to Dance (1936), featuring "You'd Be So Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin", and Rosalie (1937), featuring "In the Still of the Night". In addition, he composed the cowboy song "Don't Fence Me In" for an unproduced movie in the 1930s, but it did not become a hit until Roy Rogers and Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, as well as other artists, introduced it to the public in the 1940s. The Porters took up residence in Hollywood in December 1935, but Linda did not like the movie environment, and Porter's homosexual peccadillos, formerly very discreet, became less so, and so she retreated to their Paris house.^[50] When his film assignment was finished, Porter hastened to Paris to make his peace with Linda, but she remained cool. They were shortly brought back together by a terrible accident suffered by Porter.^[51]

On October 24, 1937, Porter was riding with Countess Edith di Zoppola and Duke Fulco di Verdura at Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, when his horse rolled on him and crushed his legs, leaving him substantially crippled and in constant pain for the rest of his life. Though doctors told Porter's wife and mother that his right leg would have to be amputated, and possibly the left one as well, he refused to have the procedure. Linda rushed from Paris to be with him, and supported him in his refusal of amputation.^[52] He remained in the hospital for seven months and was then allowed to go home to his apartment at the Waldorf Towers.^[53] He resumed work as soon as he could, finding it took his mind off his perpetual pain.^[54]

Porter's first show after his accident was not a success. You Never Know (1938), starring Clifton Webb, Lupe Vélez and Libby Holman, ran for only 78 performances.^[55] The score included the songs, "From Alpha to Omega" and "At Long Last Love".^[56] He returned to success with Leave It to Me! (1938); the show introduced Mary Martin, singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", and other numbers included "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love" and "From Now On".^[57] Porter's last show of the 1930s was DuBarry Was a Lady (1939), a particularly risqué show, starring Merman and Bert Lahr.^[58] After a pre-Broadway tour, during which it ran into trouble with the Boston censors,^[59] it ran for 408 performances, beginning at the 46th Street Theatre.^[60] The score included "But in the Morning, No" (which was banned from the airwaves), "Do I Love You?", "Well, Did You Evah!", "Katie Went to Haiti" and another of Porter's up-tempo list songs, "Friendship".^[61] At the end of 1939, Porter contributed six songs to the film Broadway Melody of 1940 for Fred Astaire, George Murphy and Eleanor Powell.^[62]

1940s and postwar[link]

Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich

Panama Hattie (1940) was Porter's longest-running hit so far, running in New York for 501 performances, despite the absence of any enduring Porter songs.^[63] It starred Merman, with Arthur Treacher and Betty Hutton. Let's Face It! (1941), starring Danny Kaye, had an even better run, with 547 performances in New York.^[64] This, too, lacked any numbers that became standards, and Porter always counted it among his lesser efforts.^[65] Something for the Boys (1943), starring Merman, ran for 422 performances, and Mexican Hayride (1944), starring Bobby Clark, with June Havoc, ran for 481 performances.^[66] These shows, too, are short of Porter standards. The critics did not pull their punches; they complained about the lack of hit tunes and the generally low standard of Porter's scores.^[67] After two flops, Seven Lively Arts (1944) (which featured the standard "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye") and Around the World (1946), many thought that Porter's best period was over.^[68]

In between his Broadway shows of the 1940s, Porter again wrote for Hollywood. His film scores of this period were You'll Never Get Rich (1941) with Astaire and Rita Hayworth, Something to Shout About (1943) with Don Ameche, Janet Blair and William Gaxton, and Mississippi Belle (1943–44), which was abandoned before filming began.^[69] He also cooperated in the making of the film Night and Day (1946), a largely fictional biography of Porter, with Cary Grant implausibly cast in the lead. The critics scoffed, but the film was a huge success, chiefly because of the wealth of vintage Porter numbers in it.^[70] The success of the biopic contrasted severely with the failure of Vincente Minnelli's film The Pirate, in 1948, in which five new Porter songs received little attention.^[71]

From this low spot, Porter made a conspicuous comeback, in 1948, with Kiss Me, Kate. It was by far his most successful show, running for 1,077 performances in New York and 400 in London.^[72] The production won the Tony Award for best musical (the first Tony awarded in that category), and Porter won for best composer and lyricist. The score includes "Another Op'nin', Another Show", "Wunderbar", "So In Love", "We Open in Venice", "Tom, Dick or Harry", "I've Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua", "Too Darn Hot", "Always True to You (in My Fashion)", and "Brush Up Your Shakespeare".^[73]

Porter began the 1950s with Out Of This World (1950), which had some good numbers but too much camp and vulgarity,^[74] and was not greatly successful. His next show, Can-Can (1952), featuring "C'est Magnifique" and "It's All Right with Me", was another hit, running for 892 performances.^[75] Porter's last original Broadway production, Silk Stockings (1955), featuring "All of You", was also successful, with a run of 477 performances.^[76] The film High Society (1956), starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly, had Porter's last major hit song, "True Love".^[1] The film was later adapted as a stage musical of the same name. Porter wrote numbers for the film Les Girls (1957) with Gene Kelly. His final score was for a CBS television color special, Aladdin (1958).^[77]

Last years[link]

Porter's mother died in 1952, and his wife died from emphysema in 1954.^[78] By 1958, Porter's injuries caused a series of ulcers on his right leg. After 34 operations, it had to be amputated and replaced with an artificial limb.^[79] His friend Noël Coward visited him in the hospital and wrote in his diary, "The lines of ceaseless pain have been wiped from his face.... I am convinced that his whole life will cheer up and that his work will profit accordingly."^[80] In fact, Porter never wrote another song after the amputation and spent the remaining six years of his life in relative seclusion, seeing only intimate friends.^[79] He continued to live in the Waldorf Towers in New York in his memorabilia-filled apartment. On weekends he often visited an estate in the Berkshires, and he stayed in California during the summers.^[12]

Porter died of kidney failure on October 15, 1964, at the age of 73 in Santa Monica, California. He is interred in Mount Hope Cemetery in his native Peru, Indiana, between his wife and father, even though Porter was not close to his father.^[81]

Tributes and legacy[link]

Porter family gravesite in Peru, Indiana

Many artists have recorded Porter songs, and dozens have released entire albums of his songs.^[82] In 1956, the album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook was released by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. She followed this in 1972 with another Porter collection, Ella Loves Cole. Among the many album collections of Porter songs are the following: Oscar Peterson Plays the Cole Porter Songbook (1959); Anita O'Day Swings Cole Porter with Billy May (1959); All Through the Night: Julie London Sings the Choicest of Cole Porter (1965); Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Cole Porter (1982); and Anything Goes: Stephane Grappelli & Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter (1989).^[82] In 1990 Dionne Warwick released an album called Dionne Sings Cole Porter. In that same year Red Hot + Blue was released featuring 20 Cole Porter songs recorded by artists such as U2, Annie Lennox and Shane MacGowan as a benefit CD for AIDS research. Another collection is Frank Sinatra Sings the Select Cole Porter (1996). John Barrowman, who played "Jack" in the 2004 film De-Lovely released a collection of Cole Porter songs, "John Barrowman Swings Cole Porter," in October 2004.

Judy Garland performed a medley of Porter's songs at the 37th Academy Awards, the first Oscars ceremony held following Porter's death. In contrast with the highly embroidered and sanitized screen biography in Night and Day, his life was chronicled more realistically in De-Lovely, a 2004 Irwin Winkler film starring Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as Linda.^[83] In 1980, Porter's music was used for the score of Happy New Year, based on the Philip Barry play Holiday. The Cole Porter Festival is held every year during the second weekend of June in his hometown of Peru, Indiana. The festival fosters music and art appreciation by celebrating Porter's life and music. In December 2010, his portrait was added to the Hoosier Heritage Gallery in the office of the Governor of Indiana.^[84] Porter appears as a character in Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris.^[85]

Singers who have paid tribute to Porter in their work include the Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider, which recorded a song called Flickan i en Cole Porter-sång (That girl from the Cole Porter song) in 1982. In country singer Jo Dee Messina's song "These Are the Days", the protagonist reveals that she sings old Cole Porter songs. He is referenced in the song "The Call of the Wild" (Merengue) by David Byrne on his 1989 album Rei Momo. He is also mentioned in the song "Tonite It Shows" by Mercury Rev on their 1998 album Deserter's Songs. Many events commemorated the centenary of Porter's birth, for example the halftime show of the 1991 Orange Bowl.^[86][87]

Porter was a Steinway artist, performing exclusively on Steinway pianos. His own Steinway piano is currently in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.^[88][89]

Notable songs[link]

Shows listed are stage musicals unless otherwise noted. Where the show was later made into a film, the year refers to the stage version. A complete list of Porter's works is in the Library of Congress (see also the Cole Porter Collection).^[90]

A far more comprehensive list of Cole Porter songs, along with their date of composition and original show, is available online at the "Cole Porter Songlist Page".^[91]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Citron, Stephen (2005). Noel & Cole: the Sophisticates. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0-634-09302. 
• Coward, Noël; Graham Payne and Sheridan Morley (eds.) (1982). The Noël Coward Diaries (1941–1969). London: Methuen. ISBN 0-297-78142-1. 
• Kimball, Robert (ed.) (1984). The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-394-72764-9. 
• Kimball, Robert (2001). Cole Porter: Overtures and Ballet Music, Liner note to EMI CD CDC 7 54300 2. London: EMI Records. 
• Schwartz, Charles (1977). Cole Porter: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN ISBN 0-306-80097-7. 

External links[link]

• Cole Porter
• Cole Porter discography at Discogs
• Cole Porter at the Internet Broadway Database
• Cole Porter at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Cole Porter at the Internet Movie Database
• Cole Porter Birthplace & Museum
• Cole Porter Online Archive
• Gay Greats—Cole Porter
• Cole Porter Festival
• The Cole Porter Collection at Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University

The Five
Mily Balakirev César Cui Modest Mussorgsky Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Alexander Borodin
v t e

The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, or The Mighty Coterie (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka), refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. The group had the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music, rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalist movement in Russia, sharing similar artistic goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival.

History[link]

Name[link]

Vladimir Stasov
(1824–1906)

In May 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert, on a concert given for visiting Slav delegations to the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[1] The article ended with the following statement:

God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today's concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.^[2]

—Vladimir Stasov, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, 1867

The expression "mighty handful" (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka, "Mighty Bunch" or "Group"), was mocked by enemies of Balakirev and Stasov: Aleksandr Serov, academic circles of the conservatory, the Russian Musical Society, and their press supporters. The group responded by defiantly adopting the name.^[2] This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name "Mighty Handful", or sometimes "The Five". Gerald Abraham stated flatly in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "they never called themselves, nor were they ever called in Russia, 'The Five'"^[3] (although today the Russian equivalent "Пятерка" ("Pyatyorka") is occasionally used to refer to this group).^[4] In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov routinely refers to the group as "Balakirev's circle", and occasionally uses "The Mighty Handful", usually with an ironic tone. He also makes the following reference to "The Five":

If we leave out of account Lodyzhensky, who accomplished nothing, and Lyadov, who appeared later, Balakirev's circle consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and me (the French have retained the denomination of "Les Cinq" for us to this day).^[5]

—Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Chronicle of My Musical Life, 1909

The Russian word kuchka also spawned the terms "kuchkism" and "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of The Mighty Handful.

The name of Les Six, an even looser collection of French-speaking composers, emulates that of "The Five".

Formation[link]

The formation of the group began in 1856, with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui. Modest Mussorgsky joined them in 1857, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1861, and Alexander Borodin in 1862. All the composers in The Five were young men in 1862. Balakirev was 25, Cui 27, Mussorgsky 23, Borodin the eldest at 28, and Rimsky-Korsakov just 18. They were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry. Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer (he wrote his First Symphony on a three-year naval voyage circumnavigating the globe). Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service before taking up music; even at the height of his career in the 1870s he was forced by the expense of his drinking habit to hold down a full-time job in the State Forestry Department.^[6]

In contrast to the élite status and court connections of Conservatory composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Five were mainly from the minor gentry of the provinces. To some degree their esprit de corps depended on the myth, which they themselves created, of a movement that was more "authentically Russian," in the sense that it was closer to the native soil, than the classic academy.^[7]

Before them, Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music, writing operas on Russian subjects, but The Mighty Handful represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music, with Stasov as their artistic adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak. The circle began to fall apart during the 1870s, no doubt partially due to the fact that Balakirev withdrew from musical life early in the decade for a period of time. All of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

Musical language[link]

Stylization[link]

The musical language The Five developed set them far apart from the Conservatoire. This self-conscious Russian styling was based on two elements:

• They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and the tolling of church bells (to the point where the bell tolling became a cliché). The Five's music became filled with imitative sounds of Russian life. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and melismatic peasant song, what Glinka had once called "the soul of Russian music." Balakirev made this possible by his study of songs from the Volga in the 1860s. More than any previous anthology, his transcriptions artfully preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music:
  • Tonal mutability

  A tune seems to shift naturally from one tonal center to another, often ending up in a different key than the one in which the song began. This can produce a feeling of elusiveness, a lack of definition or of logical progression in the harmony. Even when stylized by The Five, this quality can make Russian music sound very different from the tonal structures of the West.

  • Heterophony

  A melody is simultaneously rendered by two or more performers in different variations. This is improvised by the singers until the end, when the song reverts to a single melodic line.

  • Parallel fifths, fourths and thirds

  The effect lends Russian music a raw sonority missing entirely from the comparatively polished harmonies of Western music.

• The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to create a distinct "Russian" style and color different from Western music. This "exotic" styling of "Russia" was not just self-conscious but entirely invented. None of these devices was actually used in Russian folk or church music:
  • Whole tone scale

  Although Glinka did not invent this scale, his application of it in the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) — most recognizable at the end of the festive overture — provided a characteristic harmonic and melodic device. This scale in "Russian" works often suggests evil or ominous personages or situations. It was used by all the major composers from Tchaikovsky (the appearance of the Countess's ghost in The Queen of Spades) to Rimsky-Korsakov (in all his magic-story operas—Sadko, Kashchey the Deathless and The Invisible City of Kitezh). Claude Debussy also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians. Later it became a standard device in horror-movie scores.

  • The Russian submediant^[8]

  Also linked to Glinka's Ruslan, this is a harmonic pattern (in major mode) in which one upper part proceeds from the dominant pitch chromatically to the submediant while the other harmony parts remain constant. The most basic form of this pattern can be shown as follows (beginning with typical tonic): root-position tonic triad --> root-position augmented tonic triad -> 1st inversion submediant minor triad. A famous example of the Russian submediant occurs in the very opening bars of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

  • Diminished or octatonic scale

  Rimsky-Korsakov first used this in his symphonic poem Sadko in 1867. This scale became a sort of Russian calling-card — a leitmotif of magic and menace used not just by Rimsky-Korsakov but all of his followers, above all Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (mode 2).

  • Modular rotation in sequences of thirds

  The Five made this device of Franz Liszt their own to base a loose symphonic-poem type of structure. This way, they could avoid the rigid Western laws of modulation in sonata form, allowing the form of a musical composition to be shaped entirely by the "content" of the music (its programmatic statements and visual descriptions) rather than by formal laws of symmetry. This loose structure became especially important for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that may have done more than any other to define the Russian style.^[9]

  • Pentatonic scale

  This stylistic aspect became used by every Russian nationalist composer.^[10] Its distinctive feature is to have only five notes in the octave, rather than the seven of the heptatonic scales (e.g., major and minor). The pentatonic scale is one of the ways of suggesting a "primitive" folk-melodic style as well as the "Eastern" element (Middle East, Asia). A melodic example of the "major-mode" pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A) can be heard at the entrance of the chorus at the beginning of Borodin's Prince Igor.

Orientalism[link]

One hallmark of "The Five" was its reliance on orientalism.^[10] Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's Islamey, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.^[10] Orientalism, in fact, became widely considered in the West both one of the best-known aspects of Russian music and a trait of Russian national character.^[11] As leader of "The Five," Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and other Western-oriented composers.^[10] Because Rimsky-Korsakov used Russian folk and oriental melodies in his First Symphony, Stasov and the other nationalists dubbed it the "First Russian Symphony," even though Rubinstein had written his Ocean Symphony a dozen years before it.^[10] These were themes Balakirev had transcribed in the Caucasus.^[10] "The symphony is good," Cui wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863, while the latter was out on naval deployment. "We played it a few days ago at Balakirev's—to the great pleasure of Stassov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness."^[12]

Orientalism was not confined to using authentic Eastern melodies.^[13] What became more important than the melodies themselves were the musical conventions added to them.^[13] These conventions allowed orientalism to become an avenue for writing music on subjects considered unmentionable otherwise, such as political themes and erotic fantasies.^[11] It also became a means of expressing Russian supremacy as the empire expanded under Alexander II.^[11] This was often reinforced through misogynist symbolism—the rational, active and moral Western man versus the irrational, passive and immoral Eastern woman.^[11]

Two major works entirely dominated by orientalism are Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Antar and Balakirev's symphonic poem Tamara.^[13] Antar, set in Arabia, uses two different styles of music, Western (Russian) and Eastern (Arabian).^[13] The first theme, Antar's, is masculine and Russian in character.^[13] The second theme, feminine and oriental in melodic contour, belongs to the queen, Gul Nazar.^[13] Rimsky-Korsakov was able to soften the implicit misogyny to some extent.^[13] However, female sensuality does exert a paralyzing, ultimately destructive influence.^[13] With Gul Nazar extinguishing Antar's life in a final embrace, the woman overcomes the man.^[13]

Balakirev gives a more overtly misogynistic view of oriental women in Tamara.^[13] He had originally planned to write a Caucasan dance called a lezginka, modeled on Glinka, for this work.^[14] However, he discovered a poem by Mikhail Lermontov about the beautiful Tamara, who lived in a tower alongside the gorge of Daryal.^[14] She lured travelers and allowed them to enjoy a night of sensual delights, only to kill them and throw their bodies into the River Terek.^[14] Balakirev uses two specific codes endemic to orientalism in writing Tamara. The first code, based on obsessive rhythms, note repetitions, climactic effects and accelerated tempi, represents Dionysian intoxication.^[13] The second code, consisting of unpredictable rhythms, irregular phrasing and based on long passages with many repeat notes, augmented and diminished intervals and extended melismas, depict sensual longing.^[13] Not only did Balakirev use these codes extensively, but he also attempted to supercharge them further when he revised the orchestration of Tamara in 1898.^[14]

A direct result of such orientalism was the big influence that this circle left on the formation of classical traditions in other nations of the east and south of Russia. For instance, one of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous students, Alexander Spendiaryan went on to become the founder of Armenian classical music, carrying on the traditions and aesthetics of the Mighty Handful to the Caucasus.

Quotations[link]

Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following picture of "The Mighty Handful" in his memoirs, Chronicle of My Musical Life (translated by J. A. Joffe):

Tastes[link]

"The tastes of the circle leaned towards Glinka, Schumann, and Beethoven's last quartets ... they had little respect for Mendelssohn ... Mozart and Haydn were considered out of date and naive ... J. S. Bach was held to be petrified ... Chopin was likened by Balakirev to a nervous society lady ... Berlioz was highly esteemed ...Liszt was comparatively unknown ... Little was said of Wagner ... They respected Dargomyzhsky for the recitative portions of Rusalka ... [but] he was not credited with any considerable talent and was treated with a shade of derision. ...Rubinstein had a reputation as a pianist, but was thought to have neither talent nor taste as a composer."

Balakirev[link]

"Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in harmony and counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary ... An excellent pianist, a superior sight reader of music, a splendid improviser, endowed by nature with the sense of correct harmony and part-writing, he possessed a technique partly native and partly acquired through a vast musical erudition, with the help of an extraordinary memory, keen and retentive, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature ... He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once. Whenever I or other young men, later on, played him our essays at composition, he instantly caught all the defects of form, modulation, and so on, and forthwith seating himself at the piano, he would improvise and show how the composition in question should be changed exactly as he indicated, and frequently entire passages in other people's compositions became his and not their putative authors' at all. He was obeyed absolutely, for the spell of his personality was tremendous. ... His influence over those around him was boundless, and resembled some magnetic or mesmeric force. ... he despotically demanded that the tastes of his pupils should exactly coincide with his own. The slightest deviation from his taste was severely censured by him. By means of raillery, a parody or caricature played by him, whatever did not suit him at the moment was belittled — and the pupil blushed with shame for his expressed opinion and recanted...."

Abilities[link]

"Balakirev considered me a symphony specialist ... in the sixties, Balakirev and Cui, though very intimate with Mussorgsky and sincerely fond of him, treated him like a lesser light, and of little promise at that, in spite of his undoubted talent. It seemed to them that there was something missing in him and, in their eyes, he was in need of advice and criticism. Balakirev often said that Mussorgsky had "no head" or that his "brains were weak." ... Balakirev thought that Cui understood little in symphony and musical forms and nothing in orchestration, but was a past master in vocal and operatic music; Cui, in turn, thought Balakirev a master in symphony, form, and orchestration, but with little liking for operatic composition and vocal music in general. Thus they complemented each other, but each, in his own way, felt mature and grown up. Borodin, Mussorgsky, and I, however — we were immature and juvenile. Obviously, towards Balakirev and Cui we were in somewhat subordinate relations; their opinions were listened to unconditionally...."

Influence[link]

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. They also influenced the two french symbolist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy through their radical tonal language.

Timeline[link]

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 id:Cui                value:rgb(1,0.6,0.5)
 id:Balakirev          value:lightorange
 id:Mussorgsky         value:gray(0.8)
 id:Rimsky-Korsakov    value:coral
 id:Tsar               value:white
   

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 from: 1830 till: 1855 color: orange text: Nicholas I       
 from: 1855 till: 1881 color: yellow text: Alexander II
 from: 1881 till: 1894 color: orange text: Alexander III
 from: 1894 till: 1917 color: yellow text: Nicholas II
 bar:Borodin color:Borodin
 from: 1833 till: 1887  
 bar:Cui color:Cui
 from: 1835 till: 1918 
 bar:Balakirev color:Balakirev
 from: 1837 till: 1910  
 bar:Mussorgsky color:Mussorgsky
 from: 1839 till: 1881  
 bar:Rimsky-Korsakov color:Rimsky-Korsakov
 from: 1844 till: 1908  

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  at:1881 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1894 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1917 color:black width:0.5 layer:back

</timeline>

See also[link]

• List of Russian composers
• Tchaikovsky and the Five
• Les Six, French composers
• Armenian Mighty Handful
• Group of Eight (music), Spanish composers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Encyclopædia Britannica article about "The Five" [1]
• The Article about The Five in "1000 years of Russian Music" [2]
• Turgenev and Russian Music: The Mighty Handful (with music samples)
• Russian musical influences of The Five on works of Claude Debussy [3]