A Mosaic of Lectures: Temianka's Contemporaries
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Temianka used them to bestow music knowledge upon the minds of general audiences around the U.S.
However, Temianka was far from the only musician to infuse commentary with performance. A handful of fellow 20th-century performers applied similar concepts to their works.
Leonard Bernstein and Young People's Concerts
Perhaps best known for his work on West Side Story, conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein was also responsible for the televised CBS series Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, which aired from 1958 to 1972. In the show, Bernstein would conduct and provide commentary for performances by the New York Philharmonic, surrounded by an audience of families.Many of Bernstein's commentaries have similarities to Temianka's performance lectures, taking shape during the 1950s.
In many episodes, Bernstein would demonstrate musical techniques by playing them out in segments, providing descriptions of the tone or themes present in a piece.
Just as Bernstein ventured to take the formerly analog Young People's Concerts program into television, Temianka was similarly a proponent of using the latest technology to understand music for the masses.
In the manuscript for Music Appreciation, for example, Temianka laid out his plan for recording the book onto cassette tapes to make music education more accessible and portable.
Still, several distinct differences exist between Bernstein's Young People's Concerts and Temianka's performance lectures.
While Bernstein's lectures focused mainly on music genres, forms, and techniques, Temianka's commentaries had a much greater emphasis on stories and history.
Most notably, Young People's Concerts were expressly marketed toward families and younger children. Temianka himself facilitated a Symphonies for Youth program, but he also provided commentary at shows that were more broadly geared toward concertgoers.
Walter Damrosch and "Music Appreciation Hour"
By the time Temianka regularly provided commentaries both onstage and over the airwaves, radio had captured the nation's intrigue, with over 82% of Americans listening to the radio in 1947.German-born musician Walter Damrosch was at the forefront of a radio program called Music Appreciation Hour, a broadcast from 1928 to 1942 on NBC Radio. Like Temianka with Sunday Evening Concert, he saw promise in the radio world and its potential to spread musical awareness among the American population through lectures and performance snippets.
Similar to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, Damrosch's show was explicitly geared toward students and youths.
Damrosch's commentary accompanied musical performances conducted during the program, created with the intent to "supplement rather than supplant local instruction in the appreciation of music."
This purpose is where Damrosch's lecture style differs most notably from Temianka's.
Because Music Appreciation Hour was designed to supplement a school curriculum, each commentary addressed a specific aspect of music. One program for 3rd and 4th graders, for instance, focused mainly on instruments and the human voice.
In contrast, Temianka's lectures were not attempting to mimic a classroom setting, meaning that he could lend more holistic insights into a particular movement or piece. He had the freedom to discuss an artist's childhood just as he could address their musical style.
However, Temianka and Damrosch both had an understanding that their lectures and commentaries could not serve as a substitute for formal music classes altogether. Instead, the two found ways to popularize musical insights that may not be the focus of typical music education.
Other Contemporaries
Beyond television and radio, some of Temianka's peers provided a form of live commentary at performances called "lecture-recitals." Typically, a lecture-recitalist verbally annotates the music performed at a concert by providing some technical or historical background on each piece.However, approaches to the format varied. Aaron Copland, a contemporary of Temianka's, was an avid lecturer by the 1920s. Many of these lectures were given separately from any musical performances.
Even vocalists like German American singer Elisabeth Schumann provided verbal introductions to their performances. In the early 1950s, Schumann gave a series of lecture-recitals that described factors behind a vocal performance, like how to breathe properly during a concert.
Together, Temianka and his contemporaries created a mosaic of musical commentaries, with each performer's style remaining distinct while still contributing to the greater popularization of music education and live performance commentary.