Name: Robert Greenberg
Age: 60
City: Oakland
Position: Composer, pianist, music educator
J.:
In your lectures you always emphasize the context of a composer’s time and place. Why?
Robert Greenberg: The first question I ask is, why did this person write this piece? Why these notes? Context tells us about a time and place, and it humanizes a composer. All the music we hear is by people just like us. Whether rock ’n’ roll or Mozart, all music serves the same purpose, and that is to calm the raging heart we live with in our everyday lives.
J.: You’ve composed more than 50 works, lectured for prestigious musical and art organizations and received many awards and commissions. Yet you also teach music history to lay people in the classroom and online. How did you get started doing online music courses?
RG: The Teaching Company asked me to create a course in 1992. Now there are 29 [music] courses in the Great Courses catalog, about 400 hours of lectures. When you teach 12 grad students in a classroom, you impact 12 people. When I write one of these courses, I know tens of thousands of people will hear it. It will be in libraries across the English-speaking world.
J.: You have courses such as the 23 greatest solo piano works or 30 greatest orchestral pieces. Why rank them?
RG: We shouldn’t, and it’s folly. We live in a culture where everything is ranked, and that is an American fetish. I was asked to consider doing something like this, and we settled on the understanding that I spend the first course lecture demolishing the title.
J.: You have decried the state of music education in America. Even old-fashioned music appreciation seems to have disappeared from public schools.
RG: Unless you really want to teach music in context with other subjects, music appreciation for most kids was a ridiculous exercise. When you teach history, you should teach a bit about the music. When you teach math, teach the overtone series, and when you teach English, look at the art songs. But we should keep band programs. It’s important to give kids who play an instrument an opportunity to play with other kids.
J.: What was your Jewish upbringing in southern New Jersey?
RG: I went to Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah, but I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve never been a powerfully religious person, but I feel very powerfully my Jewish ethnicity. My grandparents and parents spoke Yiddish, but they were Yankees, with opportunities they never would have had back in Belorussia. My grandmother was one of 13 children, and every one of them went to college.
J.: Has Judaism impacted your music?
RG: Jewish music has been a major part of my compositional career. I’ve written at least four or five song cycles using Yiddish texts translated into English. These are poems written by immigrants reacting to this amazing new culture. It’s just over-the-top magnificent poetry. Last summer I wrote a piece for cello and piano that adapted Jewish folk songs. This is how I honor our heritage.
J.: How is it that so many Jews have made their mark on the world of music?
RG: Why was it that immigrant first-generation Jewish American songwriters such as George Gershwin were writing imitation ragtime? Like African Americans, these immigrant Jews had few options. The entertainment industry was one. Why were they so comfortable with black-inflected music? There’s a short distance, musically and emotionally, from cantorial chant to the blues. Both feature microtonal melodies, both use major-minor inflections and polyrhythms. Jews stuck to this because it was close to what they were already hearing, and as an oppressed underclass they identified with the music of another. Why is it that white teenage boys buy gangsta rap? They think of themselves as an oppressed underclass.
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