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Lecturer Offers Imaginative Perspective on Music, Musicians

Here’s a subject that’s been popular since time immemorial: how to meet a mate.

Here’s how Anne Marie and Jeffrey Engel met: at a music lecture that he was giving. And though Engel is now 70, the marriage is a recent one.

“I was single for a long, long time. I got married when I was 69,” he says.

Anne Marie met Jeffrey Engel because she and her late husband had attended his lectures.

So marriage is off the table, but there is still ample opportunity to hear Engel, who lectures widely on music and musicians, speak. He will be at the Essex Library on Wednesday, May 16, talking about one of the giants of 20th century music, Leonard Bernstein, the centenary of whose birth is 2018.

Engel has spoken at the Essex Library six times already.

“He is out go-to guy for music,” says librarian Ann Thompson, who plans adult programs.

“Bernstein was multi-talented. He wrote symphony, opera, chamber music, Broadway shows,” Engel says.

Engel, classically trained as a cellist, has created his own niche as a music lecturer in Connecticut. In addition to talks at libraries and senior centers, he has taught college classes on classical music both to undergraduates and non-matriculated students in enrichment programs. His long list of available lectures is divided into three categories: the serious, the not-so-serious, and lectures about opera.

The hallmark of his presentations is the imaginative perspective his brings to his subject, with lectures on topics like “I know That Tune: Plagiarism in Film Music”; “Wine, Champagne…and More Wine; Festive Drinking in Opera”; and “Classical Composers with Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”

According to Engel, there are only 59 classical composers with stars. Some are well-known names like soprano Maria Callas, conductors Arturo Toscanini, and yes, Leonard Bernstein, but some, Engel points out, have been almost completely forgotten, like Blanche Thebom, William Primrose and Gladys Swarthout. For the record, Thebom was a mezzo-soprano who sang at the Metropolitan Opera; Primrose was violinist; and Swarthout also a mezzo-soprano who performed in opera and films.

Engel’s previous appearances at Essex have included talks on Berlioz, Bach, Dvorak, Mendelsohn, and Mozart. He often likes to start a lecture series with the latter two because both were child prodigies.

“Mendelsohn was not as gifted a composer as Mozart, but he was incredibly talented as an organist, a violinist. He wrote a masterpiece at the age of 16,” Engel says, referring to Mendelsohn’s String Octet in E-Flat major.

Engel does his research from his own music library. He speaks from memory without any notes.

“It makes it more like a conversation with the audience,” he explains, and he illustrates the musical points he makes with recordings on a small, portable stereo.

“I am always thinking about lectures in my mind, always preparing. It’s a long process,” he says, noting that his talks include placing the music of each composer in the social and political context of the time.

For himself, Engel prefers 19th century music, particularly the works of one French composer.

“I don’t like to say I have a favorite, but I do, Berlioz. He was the most literate and intelligent of composers. He belongs to a great generation [of composers], Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner,” Engel says.

Coming closer to the present and to a completely different kind of music, Engel loves 1960s and ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll, particularly the Beach Boys. According to Engel, their 1963 hit, “Surfer Girl,” was relatively unsophisticated, but by three years later in 1966, their music had evolved into the complex harmonies and instrumentation of their landmark single, “Good Vibrations.”

“Those were the golden years, phenomenal,” Engel says.

Engel keeps up a full schedule of lectures throughout the state.

“I’m 70 now; I am running myself ragged. People my age are retired, but I love the contact with people and I love what I am doing,” he says.

Jeffrey Engel’s lecture on Leonard Bernstein:

Wednesday, May 16 at 1:30 p.m. at the

Essex Library

33 West Avenue

860-767-156

Free and open to the public.