Talk:Leopold Stokowski

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Stokowski was born in England, his father Polish, his mother British. Naturalized American in 1915. Also known for his colourful orchestrations of several Bach organ works (the best-known of which is probably the Toccata and Fugue in D minor). His orchestration of Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition'- best known in the Ravel orchestration - sometimes gets an airing and he also compiled a Symphonic Synthesis on Wagner's 'Tristan and Isolde'.

So why is there nothing on the page about his huge amount of transcriptions? His accompliments in them are surely worthjy of inclusion, as they are still today reguarded highly as being some of the best (Pictures not withstanding...) Melodia Chaconne 11:36, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Although I am possibly non-current on my information about Stokowski's transcriptions, I believe that there is a controversy about how much he is responsible for them during the Philadelphia years and how much Lucien Caillet is. The present article is overly simplistic in its presentation, limiting the controversy to the sole case of Pictures At An Exhibition and stating baldly that the work IS by Caillet. My sources indicate that Caillet later claimed credit for ALL the Stokowski transcriptions of the Philadelphia era and later produced his own transcription of Pictures for Eugene Ormandy, an orchestration which is inferior, according to many critics, to the earlier "Mussorgsky-Stokowski" version. Caillet was given credit during the Stokowski era as the orchestral arranger for the Philadelphia. Stokowski continued to produce transcriptions well past the Philadelphia days and used other orchestral arrangers as collaborators. His method appears to have been to give a detailed markup of a piece to the arranger, who would then realize a complete score based on Stokowski's markup. Caillet believed his contribution was much more substantial than simply realizing Stokowski's wishes. While this may indeed be true in some senses, the later Stokowski transcriptions form a cohesive oeuvre together with the Philadelphia ones, and Caillet's later arrangements, both for Ormandy and for his own work in motion pictures, have an orchestral sound and texture much different from the disputed Stokowski arrangements. I believe that the article should be revised to include an account of the controversy along these lines, utilizing the latest research. Gregoriusu 10:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Evangeline Johnson-Stokowskis time in New York 1932 2 Year of Birth 3 Night on Bald Mountain 4 Stokes 5 "Popular culture"

[edit] Evangeline Johnson-Stokowskis time in New York 1932

Salzburg, 01. 11. 2003

Research Erika Giovanna Klien and Evangeline Stokowski

For a long while I am searching private dates of Evangeline Johnson Stokowski. Speacially I would like to know exactly dates of the time, when Evangeline had an appartment in New York. She was in contact with an Austrian artist, Erika Giovanna Klien (1900 - 1957), who lived at this time in New York. It would be very interesting for me, if someone could answer my questions. Who knows persons alive, who can tell me more about this time (1932) and the circle of artists, who know very well the family-history of Leopold Stokowski and Evangeline Johnson. I am also searching Oliver Daniel, the author of "A counterpoint of view" , published 1982, Dodd Mead Company, New York ISBN 0-396-07936-9.

The person who can help me, please write (if possible in german?) to: johanna.puehringer@sbg.at

Best greetings

Johanna Pühringer

[edit] Year of Birth

Hi, his year of birth is discussed already in the article in "Early Life". The online sources I find all cite 1882.

[edit] Night on Bald Mountain

As I recall, Mussorgsky "didn't finish" this one something like four times, and they're all pretty different from one another. So it's not really good enough to say that Stoky didn't use the Rimsky-Korsakov version in favor of his own, because he may well have been working from one of the other abortive versions. Same with Pictures (which I'm pretty sure Cailliet did for him): he/they worked from a better, more reliable MS than did Ravel but a lot of people get mad at Stoky for "ignoring" Mussorgsky's instructions when it's really Ravel (though inadvertently) who did so. Wspencer11 17:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Out the supposedly four versions by Mussurgsky the first one (for piano and orchestra) was already lost when Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrated it. The third and fourth are the same (for choir and orchestra), differ only in lyrics. RK based his on the fourth, and so did Stokowski. The second version is quite different and with a totally different form. AdamChapman 11:01, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stokes

Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 110 (ISBN 0-671-77104-3) reports (second-hand, as an anecdote) that when he worked as an organist in NYC he went by the name Leo Stokes, and that he only took the name Stokowski because he knew that Mrs. Taft would prefer a more "European" conductor. I tend to trust Levant on things he says from personal knowledge, but in this case it's just "I met a concert manager who told me an interesting story", so I'm not sure if we should credit it any more than if a concert manager told us an interesting story. Still, someone might want to look for documentary evidence that he worked under the name Leo Stokes. - Jmabel | Talk 21:19, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Documentary evidence that Stokowski ever "worked under the name Leo Stokes" will be impossible to come by for the very simple reason that none exists! The "Stokes" canard first materialised in the early 1930s, presumably put about by detractors jealous of his world-wide success. The ludicrous Levant story referred to above is totally disproved and discredited in Dr. Rollin Smith's "Stokowski and the Organ" (Pendragon Press, Hillsdale, New York: 270 pages, published 2004). Thoroughly researched in "The Complete Organ" Series, it goes into lavish detail about Stokowski's time at St. Bartholomew's in New York City to the extent of reproducing many of the original programmes of Stokowski's organ recitals at the church. These commenced on Sunday, November 19th, 1905, when at 5:15 pm Leopold Stokowski played music by Meyerbeer, Saint-Saens and Wagner. The only concession to a name change was the replacing of the "w" in Stokowski with a "v" so that people would pronounce it correctly. This didn't last long and he soon reverted to the correct spelling of his family name (ie: that which can be seen on his Birth Certificate, readily available to any researcher from the Family Records Centre in London). It is to be hoped that not only Dr. Smith's book, but also the 1000-page Oliver Daniel biography "Stokowski: A Counterpoint of View" (Dodd Mead & Company, New York: published 1982), which goes into Stokowski's early family history, will lay the "Stokes" legend to rest once and for all. - Philipson55 14:27, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Popular culture"

popular culture section is just another phrase for trivia, as evidenced by the simple interchangeable name. it is unencyclopaedic, and as described in the tag, should integrated into the article or removed. --emerson7 | Talk 23:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree; "In popular culture" is just a commonly-used disguise around here (in Wikipedia in general) for the piling-on of trivia. +ILike2BeAnonymous 00:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This is the guy Bugs Bunny was portraying on that one Looney Tunes episode, right? Jared (t)  19:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep, he's the one. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 14:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)