- Home
- /
- Playlist
- /
- Weekly Schedule
- /
- Weather & News
- /
- Hosts
- /
- Programs
- Artists in Residence™
- Carnegie Hall Live
- Choral Music
- Classical Live™
- Composer's Datebook®
- Flicks in Five™
- Friday Favorites
- From the Top
- Learning to Listen
- The Metropolitan Opera
- Minnesota Orchestra
- Minnesota Varsity
- Music with Minnesotans®
- New Classical Tracks™
- Performance Today®
- Pipedreams®
- Play it Forward
- A Prairie Home Companion®
- Roll Credits™
- Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
- SymphonyCast™
- Top Score®
- /
- Stations
On Now
Listen to the Stream 
You can now listen to Classical and Choral Music on your iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) or Android device.
Blog Archive
| August 2012 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
Master Archive
Recent Entries
- On the Air This Week
- Beethoven for iPad or iPhone
- Classical Music and Video Game Music
- On the Air This Week
- On the Air This Week
- Showering with Beethoven, Headstands with Stravinsky
- Piano Music from South America
- Valery Gergiev, the Toothpick Maestro
- Watching The Rite of Spring
- Deanna Durbin, Opera Star?
Categories
- Artists in Residence
- Awards & Accomplishments
- Choral Music
- Claude Debussy
- Composers
- Concerts
- Events
- Frederic Chopin
- Fun finds
- In the media
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Musical philosophy
- Musician stories
- New Classical Tracks
- On the air
- Parker Quartet
- Piano eComp
- Programs
- Roll Credits
- Rose Ensemble Audio Postcards
- The blog
- The Short Version
Contact Us
- Questions about the playlist?
Contact MPR's Member Benefits Team.
Purchase the Music
- Buy the music you've heard on-air! Your purchase helps support our classical service.
ArkivMusic
Services
Classical Notes: August 21, 2012 Archive
Phyllis Diller: Composer and Harpsichord(!)
Posted at 8:49 AM on August 21, 2012
by John Birge
(0 Comments)
Props to my colleauges Lynne Warfel and Tom Crann for pointing out that before the late comedienne Phyllis Diller ever considered a career in comedy, she wanted to be a classical musician. She played piano as a girl, and after graduating from high school in Lima Ohio, Phyllis Diller went to Chicago to study piano at Sherwood Music Conservatory of Columbia College. She still played in her private life, and owned a custom-made harpsichord, which once appeared on Liberace's variety show:
She was a pretty good composer, too!
On the Air This Week
Posted at 10:39 AM on August 21, 2012
by Rex Levang
(0 Comments)
Filed under: On the air
Highlights from August 21 to 28
Tuesday, 8 pm: Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande.
Thursday, 3 pm hour: Regional Spotlight: Alumni of the St. Olaf Cantorei.
Friday, 8 pm: The Mozart Festival, Part 4.
Sunday, 6 am: Pipedreams: Northern Lights.
Sunday, noon: From the Top.
Sunday, 1 pm: SymphonyCast: From this year's BBC Proms: the BBC Philharmonic, in a program including Mahler's Seventh.
Monday, 7 pm: Roll Credits.
Postcards from Debussy: Day 3
Posted at 9:41 PM on August 21, 2012
by John Birge
(0 Comments)
Inspired by Debussy's 150th birthday anniversary this week, every morning at 8:30 we'll play a composition by Debussy inspired by some specific place. Today it's his piano piece, "Pagodas." And what do Pagodas and the Eiffel Tower have in common? This:
The Eiffel Tower was the symbol of the 1889 Paris World Exhibition, where Claude Debussy experienced the revelation of the amazing music of the Javanese Gamelan. It's a story well-told in detail here, but hear the results in this performance of "Pagodas."
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock