Tom Lehrer is 95
Daily Comfort ZoneWe feel a little more alive today to know that the mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer is still with us.
He lit up my teens with anti-war and anti-establishment routines.
One of my daughters sang his songs on the way to kindergarten.
Time for the next generation to chime in.
I once invited him to give a course on satire at Dartington summer school but reply came there none.
Here’s a perfect opener for Easter sunday:
So many great songs that it’s hard to pick a favourite. During my own academic career, this instruction was often front of mind.
Plagiarise!
Let no-one else’s work evade your eyes.
Such a brilliant man. I’d love to hear his takes on the current state of society with its unparalleled idiocies.
As I’ve mentioned before….Tom Lehrer is BEYOND brilliant…!
My favourite is ‘Alma’ – with its outrageous rhymes!
During his tenure in Baltimore David Zinman sang “Alma” to the audience before leading the orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Sixth. What an introduction!
As a Mahler buff, I would have very much enjoyed hearing that.
A propos satire, he is reputed to have given up writing satirical songs after Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That was an act of satire leagues ahead of anything that he could hope to create.
Norman, TL is a great man, and Vatican Rag is hilarious, but… I just question if you would be quite so keen to make an equivalent reference (it is Easter Sunday)… if we were talking about Eid or Yom Kippur…?
No way, I suspect. I mean, you’re not dumb!
If there’s a funnier couplet than:
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department,” says Wernher Von Braun
I’d like to hear about it!
My most favourite couplet has always been from “Alma”….
“But Walter worked late at The Bauhaus, and only came home now and then…
She said: ‘What am I running….a CHOW HOUSE…?
Time to change partners again….’ “
So pleased to hear he’s still with us. He lit up my teens too (in the 1960s, when chaos reigned).
Many years ago, an erstwhile boyfriend asked me to picnic with him. As we laid out the spread, he began singing, “Have some Madeira, my dear…” and brought out a bottle of Madeira, of course.
Which would be quite amusing if we were talking about Flanders & Swann……
His best songs have stood the test of time and will go on for ever. I perform close harmony arrangements of them regularly and they never fail. His musical career was extraordinarily short – a handful of performances and far too few songs over a few years, then decades ago he just stopped, saying he didn’t need the adulation and fame. Lucky maths students who enjoyed his teaching thereafter.
Such a prodigious talent, in math, teaching, satire, humor, piano, singing and composing is rare indeed. I hope he responds to my fan letter, but I’m not expecting it.
My hero since 5th grade – when my father banned his LP from our home because of the Vatican Rag!!
And I still love to shoot pigeons in the park…
And he has released all of his brilliant work into the public domain. https://tomlehrersongs.com/
Brings back memories. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s I was lucky to have heard him perform live. Also on LP’s we were all devotees of Flanders & Swan. Those were the cultural humour highlights of my youth.