"Hi, Phil. I'm really glad to be here!"
"Well, Hope, for $1575 since that's the amount you'll pay for a remedial music history class, which of the following Austro-German musicians stayed in Germany throughout World War II? Was it:
- a) Richard Strauss
- b) Kurt Weill
- c) Paul Hindemith
- or d) Arthur Schoenberg?"
"Well, Phil, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera was so poorly received by the Nazis that he left for New York with his wife, Lotte Lenya, in order to launch a second career as a musical theatre composer. Schoenberg was writing atonal music in 1908, and at some point in his life, he taught at the University of California, so I would guess that he had to be in the US by that point or he'd be really old by the time he taught in Cali. That leaves Hindemith and Strauss. Hmm...."
"The clock's a ticking! What's your answer?"
"Well, Hindemith taught at Yale as well as in Berlin, so maybe he was already in the US at that point. I don't remember reading anything about Strauss being the US at all....I'm going with Strauss, Phil!"
"Ooo, I'm sorry, but the answer is c) Paul Hindemith. You forgot that he wrote Mathis der Maler, Matthias the Painter, about an artist struggling under persecution. He was expressing his own frustrations with being persecuted by the Nazis, which means it was he who stayed in Germany. I guess you'll be forking over that $1575 after all! Sorry, Hope. Better luck tomorrow on the music theory and listening exams!"
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Yes, I just finished the exam. The essay was fortunately on a choice of composer pairs which you could contrast. I picked Verdi and Wagner, and I think it went okay. The multiple choice, on the other hand....well, it's a bit of a toss up right now. No clue how it went. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better, especially that listening exam. Off to study more!!
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