Geoffrey Dean
Summer Song: The Ashland (WI) Grand Opera House
I discovered the Ashland Grand Opera House on a recent trip to the Chequamegon Bay area on the southern shores of Lake Superior. A city...
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Geoffrey Dean
- 6 days ago
- 4 min
Carl Schroeder's Sondershausen: Travel Log, Part 3
Read Part 1 Read Part 2 Exactly three years ago, as Petros and I circled the central streets of Sondershausen in search of a free...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jul 25
- 4 min
Signature Suites: My Latest Creative Obsession
To those of you who know me as a sometime arranger of cello music, usually from original Bulgarian works for other instruments or...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jun 18
- 3 min
That Fellow With the Cello: Mello-Cello Strikes Again
I’m starting out this post to the somewhat unlikely soundtrack of “Mello Cello,” a meditative instrumental piece by Steven Halpern and...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jun 15
- 1 min
Happy 167th Birthday, Alwin!
In honor of Alwin Schroeder's 167th birthday, here are the Sarabande and Gigue from the Suite in E minor by Julius Klengel, his Leipzig...
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Geoffrey Dean
- May 28
- 10 min
Tale of Two Cellists: Alwin Schroeder and Julius Klengel
Klengel dedicated his Op. 2 cello pieces to Schroeder. Listen to the opening Berceuse. During the 1880s, two outstanding cellists...
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Geoffrey Dean
- May 15
- 5 min
Violoncello Without a Master: Alwin the Auto-Didact
Alwin Schroeder’s status as a self-taught cellist gained widespread notoriety from at least as early as 1885. That year the Leipzig...
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Geoffrey Dean
- May 1
- 6 min
Have Cello, Will Travel: Alwin's Toothbrushes
In the late 1890s, Alwin Schroeder and his family spent their summers in the Rangeley Lakes region of Maine. In her book The Islanders,...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Apr 10
- 5 min
Telo-melo Cello: Step-Child of Gasparo?
My recent post on cello poetry brought to mind the writings of Robert Haven Schauffler, who studied cello with Alwin Schroeder at...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Mar 23
- 7 min
Alwin Schroeder's Bach Cello Suites Edition
Alwin Schroeder's 1888 edition of the Bach Cello Suites is often overlooked in the literature on the suites. I believe it deserves...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Mar 5
- 2 min
Bulgarian Rhythms: Lyubomir Pipkov's Spring Caprices
Listen to Five Spring Caprices by Pipkov, arranged for cello and piano by G. Dean In Bulgaria, the month of March is named after Baba...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Feb 5
- 3 min
More Cello Verses: Sonnets and Songs
As on most days, today I was answering the ever-present question of “who WAS that cellist?” when my query results led me off in another...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jan 31
- 7 min
19th Century Cellists in the US: Frederick Bergner
Listen to my performance of Bergner's Reverie Best known as the first cellist of the New Philharmonic Society for 47 seasons, Frederick...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jan 16
- 6 min
19th-century Cellists in the US: Theodore Ahrend
Born in Germany in 1829 or 1830, cellist Theodore Ahrend studied in Brussels, where he may have worked with Francois Servais./1/ In 1849...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Jan 8
- 2 min
The UNC Greensboro Cello Collections, in Four Haikus
Before the winter break I spent a few days among the Cello Collections at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Although I have...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Dec 4, 2021
- 6 min
US Cello Performances, 1891-2: An Annotated Timeline, Part 2
See Part 1 here January 1892 9 Liederkrantz Hall, NY Anton Hekking among the solo performers on Liederkrantz 45th...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Nov 24, 2021
- 5 min
US Cello Performances, 1891-2 Season: An Annotated Timeline, part 1
The 1891-2 season, Alwin Schroeder's first in the US, saw an extraordinary convergence of musical talent in this country, and the...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Nov 14, 2021
- 1 min
Hugo Becker's Love Scenes, Op. 7
Liebesleben (Love Scenes), a "little suite" for cello and piano, was published in Liepzig by Max Brockhaus in 1894. I discovered it in...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Oct 30, 2021
- 6 min
Bel Canto Cellists: Cesare A. Casella pere et fils
Listen to my performance of Chanson Napolitaine by C. A. Casella fils A second-generation member of an Italian cello-playing family,...
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Geoffrey Dean
- Oct 23, 2021
- 1 min
"Soak 'em": Thomas Edison's Advice To A Cellist
The following anecdote in an item from the Lewisburg (PA) Chronicle (Oct. 15, 1891, p. 3) concerns an Edison engineer who was also a fine...
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