Tom teacher

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Tom Teacher (1960)

Thomas "Tom" Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928 in New York ) is an American singer-songwriter , satirist and mathematician . His published musical work comprises around 50 titles and is considered culturally and intellectually significant. It is mostly assigned to the genre of the novelty song .

Life

Teacher grew up in a Jewish family in Manhattan , New York , but later became an agnostic . He began studying mathematics at Harvard University at the age of 15, graduated with a BA at 18 and an MA one year later . In 1946 he was accepted as an undergraduate in the academic association Phi-Beta-Kappa .

He never completed a doctorate. Teacher worked as a researcher in Los Alamos , New Mexico, and from 1955 to 1957 with the National Security Agency and the US Army. According to his own statements, he invented the alcoholic dessert Jell-O-Shot at this time in order to circumvent alcohol restrictions. He has taught mathematics at various universities in the United States, including Harvard, Wellesley College, and MIT . Most recently, he taught from 1972 to 2001 at UC Santa Cruz , where he also held courses in musical theater .

Teacher lives in Santa Cruz and Cambridge, Massachusetts .

Musical career

In 1953 his first record, Songs by Tom Lehrer , appeared, on which his most important stylistic devices are already clearly recognizable: the parody of popular song forms, biting sarcasm and the daring rhyme . In the song The Elements , for example, all the elements of the periodic table are enumerated in less than a minute and a half , to the melody of the Major General's Song from the opera The Pirates of Penzance .

Later, Lehrer turned to more political or current affairs, especially in the songs he wrote for the American version of the satirical British television show That Was The Week That Was (TW3). Teacher now focused on set theory in elementary mathematics lessons ( New Math ), the Second Vatican Council with its modernization efforts ( The Vatican Rag ), the efforts to promote minorities ( National Brotherhood Week ), environmental pollution ( Pollution ), the role of USA as a world policeman ( Send the Marines ), the nuclear war fears ( So Long, Mom; We will all go together when we go and MLF Lullaby ) and the increasing spread of nuclear weapons ( Who's Next? ).

In the early 1960s, teachers dedicated an admiring mockery song Alma to the historical diva Alma Mahler-Werfel , in which he celebrated the potential jealousy of all women for their unrivaled success in “fishing” famous men.

Lehrer's sarcasm didn't quite agree with demands for political correctness :

“To the shores of Tripoli / but not to Mississippoli / What do we do? / We send the Marines ”

“To the coasts of Tripoli / But not to Mississippoli / What are we doing? / We're sending the marines "

- (Parody of the US Marines anthem )

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun ”

"Once the missiles are up, who cares where they come down? / Doesn't belong in my department, says Wernher von Braun "

"If you feel dissatisfaction, / Strum your frustrations away / Some people may prefer action, / But give me a folk song any old day."

"If you are dissatisfied / Klimper your frustrations away / Some would rather see action / But I prefer to play folk music ."

“Remember the war against Franco? / That's the kind where each of us belongs. / Though he may have won all the battles, / We had all the good songs! "

"Think back to the war against Franco / We all belong there / He won the battles / But we had the best songs!"

He ended his musical career at the time when a broad counterculture emerged with the 1968 movement . He justified this retrospectively with the small effect of musical satire and quoted Peter Cook , according to which the cabaret in Berlin in the thirties had contributed so much to the prevention of Hitler's rise and the Second World War ( “I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War ” ). In 1986, the composer and cabaret artist Felix Janosa brought out the album Tauben Poisoning with self-translated songs by Lehrers in German .

reception

Lehrer's performances and records were practically only advertised by himself and word of mouth got around. It owes its breakthrough in Great Britain to its mention when Princess Margaret was awarded an honorary doctorate in music from the University of London on December 4, 1957 , whose musical taste the laudator Professor JR Sutherland described as "universal (literally ambiguous catholic ) from Mozart ... to Tom Lehrer" :

"[...] the Princess is a connoisseur of music and a performer of skill and distinction, her taste being catholic, ranging from Mozart to the calypso and from opera to the songs of Miss Beatrice Lillie and Tom Lehrer."

"[...] the princess is a music connoisseur and an actress of skill and refinement, her taste encompassing, from Mozart to Calypso and from opera to the songs of Miss Beatrice Lillie and Tom Lehrer."

After that, Teacher became famous in Great Britain. The BBC was also happy to play his songs, which was rarely the case in the US.

In the early 1970s, Tom Lehrer only appeared sporadically. According to a popular joke, this was due to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger , as political satire had become obsolete . Teacher himself contradicted this representation in an interview in 2000 and stated that he had largely stopped his musical cabaret performances years earlier. He just doesn't feel like singing the same thing over and over again. He also contradicted the rumor that he had been sued for payment of royalties by Wernher von Braun's heirs and was therefore no longer appearing.

Some of his songs probably inspired Georg Kreisler to write his own compositions, for example Poisoning Pigeons in the Park - pigeons poison in the park . Kreisler, who himself was temporarily in the USA, denied this. Teacher himself said in an interview: “Kreisler is a Viennese who stole two of my songs”, but he didn't care.

He said about his musical career:

"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."

"If, after listening to my songs, even one person feels compelled to say something ugly to a friend or to give one to a loved one, then it will have been worth all the effort."

Discography

  • 1953: Songs by Tom Lehrer
  • 1959: More Songs by Tom Lehrer
  • 1959: Tom Lehrer Revisited
  • 1959: An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer
  • 1965: That Was the Year That Was (US: goldgold)
  • 1995: In Concert (UK:silversilver)
  • 2000: The Remains of Tom Lehrer (3-CD set with all his recordings)
  • 2010: The Tom Lehrer Collection (CD with 26 recordings and a DVD ( RC1 ) with videos)

literature

  • Florian Werner: Take us to your songs. In: Titanic 04/2008, pp. 30-32.

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Jack Boulware: That Was the Wit That Was. In: Weekly News. San Francisco Weekly, April 19, 2000, accessed August 12, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Stephen Thompson: Interview: Tom Lehrer. In: AV Club. May 24, 2000, accessed August 12, 2016 .
  3. ^ East Africa and Rhodesia . Africana, 1957, p. 493 . The Kansas City Times from Kansas City, Missouri · Page 4 ( AP ), Thursday, December 5, 1957 The British Pathé newsreel , however, quoted in abbreviated form “from Mozart to calypso” youtube.com
  4. ↑ "Tom Lehrer and Georg Kreisler" on The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel ( Memento from August 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Liner notes, "Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer," Rhino Records, 1997.
  6. ↑ Music Sales Awards: US UK
personal data
SURNAME Teacher, tom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Teacher, Thomas Andrew
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , USA