This 78 set comes to us courtesy of my great pal Ernie (of the Ernie Not Bert blog). Ernie collects all kinds of music, although he only presents Christmas music on his own site. The set presents what must be one of the few symphonies ever written in honor of a capitalist organization - there are far more communist hymns of praise to collective farms and the like. It is an "IBM Symphony," commissioned by that company from the talented if hopelessly unfashionable neo-Romantic composer Vittorio Giannini in 1937.
The occasion was the opening of the IBM Building in New York. The composer conducted the Columbia Broadcasting System's orchestra, and this set is a memento. It opens with a spoken introduction that oddly starts in the middle of a thought - apparently it is an excerpt of an address at the opening ceremony, or such is my supposition.
The symphony, which is fairly brief, makes use of an IBM song called "Ever Onward," and as notes for the symphony suggest, this is intended to identify "the spirit of IBM with the world movement for international understanding" - or "World Peace Through World Trade," as it says on the record label.
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| Hailing IBM in 1939: Vittorio Giannini, critic Olin Downes, Eugene Ormandy, Thomas Watson |
The download includes excerpts from both "Ever Onward" and "Hail to the IBM," both from the IBM website archive. The excerpt of the latter hymn ends before it gets to this embarrassing panegyric about IBM founder Thomas Watson:
Our voices swell in admiration;
Of T. J. Watson proudly sing;
He'll ever be our inspiration,
To him our voices loudly ring;
The I.B.M. will sing the praises,
Of him who brought us world acclaim,
As the volume of our chorus raises,
Hail to his honored name.
You can learn more about Giannini here. Thanks again to Ernie for this fine transfer of a fascinating footnote to both musical and business history.
