08-17: Jean Barraqué Roger Woodward - Wild Bill Davis - Bach Musical Offering Kuijken - Carlos Salzedo Christmas Carols in Hi Fi

Ordered chronologically. Tagged image here.
1730 – Mauritius Vogt (German composer, music theorist & lexicographer)
1731 – Johann Augustin Kobelius (German composer & Kapellmeister at Fürstenhaus, Weißenfels)
1777 – Giuseppe Scarlatti (Italian composer, relative of Alessandro & Domenico)
1786 – Frederick the Great (Prussian monarch, flutist & composer)
1792 – Jan Jáchym Kopřiva (Czech composer & teacher)
1838 – Lorenzo Da Ponte (Italian librettist, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Nozze di Figaro & Così fan tutte)
1865 – Johann Nepomuk Freiherr von Poißl (German composer & opera theater manager)
1870 – Perucho Figueredo (Cuban poet, musician & freedom fighter, Cuban National Anthem)
1880 – Ole Bull (Norwegian violinist & composer)
1887 – Franz Commer (German musicologist, music editor & composer)
1889 – Ernst Franck (German conductor & composer, friend of Brahms)
1898 – Carl Zeller (Austrian operetta composer)
1901 – Edmond Audran (French composer)
1909 – Richard Hoffman (English-born American pianist & composer)
1936 – Pierre-Octave Ferroud (French composer & biographer of Florent Schmitt)
1945 – Gino Marinuzzi (Italian conductor & composer)
1954 – Billy Murray (American pop recording artist)
1958 – Florent Schmitt (French composer & music critic)
1959 – Pedro Humberto Allende Sarón (Chilean composer)
1961 – Carlos Salzedo (French-born virtuoso harpist, composer, pianist & conductor)
1973 – Jean Barraqué (French composer & music journalist)
1973 – Paul Williams (American R&B baritone, The Temptations)
1981 – Robert Russell Bennett (American Broadway & Hollywood arranger, composer & conductor)
1983 – Ira Gershwin (American popular lyricist)
1987 – Gary Chester [Cesario Gurciullo] (Italian studio drummer)
1990 – Pearl Bailey (American pop & jazz singer & actress)
1995 – Wild Bill Davis (American jazz organist, pianist & arranger)
2004 – Gérard Souzay (French operatic & art song baritone)


Here's an interesting little wrinkle for August 17th. Florent Schmitt, although he isn't quite a household name these days, was a very well-known French composer and music critic in the early 20th century, and had a number of pupils and disciples. One of them, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, wrote a biography of Schmitt, which was published in 1927. In 1936, Ferroud died suddenly, in an auto accident in Hungary. Francis Poulenc, for one, had been friends with Ferroud and was quite distressed about his death. Schmitt, who was 30 years older than his biographer, was to live for a further 31 years after Ferroud's book appeared. But get this: The day Schmitt died (at age 87) was August 17th, 1958, the 22nd anniversary of the day Ferroud was killed!

And I guess I should mention that while lyricists and librettists aren't normally within the purview of this blog, we occasionally do remember people who weren't musicians (or whose significance didn't rest on being one) but who made an important contribution to how music was made, desseminated, or received. So when you're a Lorenzo Da Ponte, who wrote the libretti for three of Mozart's greatest operas (that's to say, three of the greatest operas ever written), or when you're an Ira Gershwin, who wrote the lyrics to most of his brother George's best popular songs (that's to say, some of the best popular songs ever written), then we'll make an exception for you!

King Frederick II of Prussia wasn't known so much for being a musician either. He was known mostly for... well, conquering a heckuva lot of Poland, mainly. This allowed him to consolidate his realm by connecting the Duchy of Prussia with the Margravate of Brandenburg. But he was very interested in the arts, especially music, and was a fine amateur player of the flute. Really, he wasn't interested in those huge... tracks of land at all, he just wanted to SING. In fact, at the age of 18, when he was still Crown Prince, he tried to escape from his authoritarian father, King Frederick William, by fleeing to Great Britain with his gay lover, 26-year-old Hans Hermann von Katte, a Lieutenant in the Prussian army. But the two were apprehended before their escape could be made, and as punishment for his desertion, the king ordered von Katte to be beheaded, and forced his son to watch the execution of his boyfriend.

But... it gets better? By the time he ascended to the throne in 1740, Frederick had already begun to hire some of the finest musicians in Europe to be in his royal orchestra, which included harpsichordist Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, violinist Franz Benda, flutist Johann Joachim Quantz, and singer Carl Heinrich Graun, whom he appointed Kapellmeister. All four of these musicians, as well as others, also composed much music for Frederick's court - operas, symphonies, chamber music, serenades and divertissements for entertaining, and of course, LOTS of flute music for Frederick himself to play. One summer, in 1747, when Frederick was at Sanssouci, his summer residence in Potsdam, his keyboard player's dad dropped by for a visit. Frederick wanted to meet the elder Bach, who was a pretty legendary musician by this point. Bach checked out the place, played some of Frederick's instruments - Fred even had the latest thing, a few of Silbermann's fortepianos, and Bach thought they were pretty darned cool. Then they got down to business. The king wanted to see if Johann Sebastian was as great an improviser as everybody said he was. So he went to a harpsichord and played a theme - a dour little minor-key thing that has a chromatic descent in it...


... and asked Bach if he could play a 3-voice fugue with that theme as its subject. Bach did, right there on the spot, and Frederick was very impressed. Then he asked Bach if he could improvise a 6-voice fugue on it. Well, the public in attendance thought the king was joking, or else wanted to humiliate the old man, but Bach answered that he would need to work out the score and send it to the king later. And that is how The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, which along with The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080, represents the very pinnacle of Bach's achievement as a contrapuntist, came to be. In it, the Thema Regium - the Royal Theme - is the basis of not only a 3-voice fugue, and a 6-voice fugue, but of 10 canons, each one treating the theme imitatively in a different way: in contrary motion, in inversion, in augmentation and diminution, and so forth. Two of the canons are in perpetual motion, meaning they wrap back around upon themselves so that they could be played endlessly; in one of those, the music quite ingeniously keeps modulating up a whole step, so that by the time you're done you're exactly an octave higher than you began. Then to cap off the work there's a trio sonata, for violin, basso continuo (usually realized by harpsichord plus cello or viola da gamba), and of course, flute, for the king to play.

It's not known how well Frederick the Great received this masterpiece. He may not have appreciated its complexity. Some of the canons are written as "riddles" - only one melodic line is given, and you have to figure out from instructions in Latin how the parts go together. That's actually what "canon" means, by the way. It originally referred to a rule or law (as it does in the sense of an ecclesiastical code) that tells you how to put a piece of music together, rather than to the piece itself. At least maybe he got something out of the the trio sonata, which is written pretty straightforwardly. The Royal Theme appears in it, too, but only every now and then.

The Basque-born Carlos Salzedo was a pioneer of the harp, much like Wanda Landowska, from yesterday's edition, was of the harpsichord. The difference is that Landowska was reviving an instrument that had long fallen into disuse, whereas Salzedo was exploring the possibilities of an instrument - the double-action pedal concert harp - whose construction was only just being perfected by the time of his birth in 1885. Aside from the sundry playing techniques that are a part of most harpists' repertoire, Salzedo invented many of his own extended techniques, which he gave exotic names such as "falling hail effects," "thunder effects," the "xyloflux," "xylharmonic sounds," "xylophonic sounds," "timpanic sounds," "fluidic sounds," "esoteric sounds," etc....


08-16: Loyset Compère Orlando Consort - Bach Goldberg Variations Landowska - Elvis Presley Vegas 1974 - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party - Max Roach +4 Newport 1958

Aside from Mr. Presley, ordered chronologically clockwise from top left. Tagged image is here.

1518 – Loyset Compère (Franco-Flemish composer)
1748 – Pier Giuseppe Sandoni (Italian composer, harpsichordist & organist)
1786 – Henri-Jacques de Croes (Belgian composer & violinist)
1799 – Vincenzo Manfredini (Italian composer, harpsichordist & music theorist)
1831 – Eduard Brendler (German-born Swedish composer)
1870 – Edmund Passy (Swedish pianist, composer & organist)
1910 – Charles Lenepveu (French composer & teacher, winner Grand Prize, 1866 Prix de Rome)
1929 – Frank Van der Stucken (American composer & conductor, founder of Cincinnati Symphony)
1938 – Robert Johnson (American blues singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1944 – Roman Padlewski (Polish composer, pianist, musicologist & music critic)
1945 – Nico Richter (Dutch composer, perished at Dachau)
1959 – Wanda Landowska (Polish-born French harpsichordist)
1965 – Vasily Petrovich Shirinsky (Russian composer)
1972 – John Barnes Chance (American composer & percussionist)
1977 – Elvis Presley (American rock, country & gospel singer, actor & guitarist)
1984 – György Kósa (Hungarian composer)
1988 – Milton Adolphus (American pianist & composer)
1992 – Mark Heard (American folk-rock singer-songwriter, guitarist/mandolinist & producer)
1995 – Bobby Debarge (American R&B singer & songwriter, Switch)
1997 – Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistani Sufi Qawwali singer)
2005 – Vassar Clements (American jazz & bluegrass violinist)
2005 – Vicky Moscholiou (Greek pop & entechno singer)
2007 – Max Roach (American jazz drummer & composer)
2008 – Ronnie Drew (Irish folk singer & guitarist, The Dubliners)
2008 – Dorival Caymmi (Brazilian singer, songwriter, actor & poet)


Yes, I know, I KNOW. I'm a whole day late now. Been busy a lot with insurance companies and doctors the past few days. Damned pill-pushers. And speaking of pills, Elvis. Another thing that hasn't helped me get this post done faster is that The King picked a day that's the death anniversary of several other musical luminaries on which to poop. HAHA, get it... "poop"? You know, 'cause of how they found him? Heehee... heh... hurr........ hyoooo....

Too soon?

But the good thing about people like Elvis Presley and Robert Johnson being on the list, is that they're so famous, I don't have to spend a lot of time telling you things about them. Actually, since I'm running so late, I'm not going to tell you anything about them. In fact, I've already told you too much about them by telling you I'm not telling you anything about them! But there are a few other interesting figures I'd like to tell you something about. See you on the other side of the crossroads...

08-15: Marin Marais Gamba - Brahms Szigeti Ormandy Schnabel Szell - Big Bill Broonzy One Beer One Blues - Dusty Springfield in Memphis

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a tagged image.
1576 – Bálint Bakfark (Hungarian composer & lutenist)
1728 – Marin Marais (French composer & gambist)
1798 – Felice Alessandri (Italian composer & harpsichordist)
1848 – Timothy Olmstead (American composer, psalmodist & Revolutionary War fifer)
1853 – Giovanni Battista Polledro (Italian violinist & composer)
1907 – Joseph Joachim (Austro-Hungarian violinist, conductor & composer)
1918 – Peter Gast (German writer & composer, friend & colleague of Nietzsche)
1935 – Gerard von Brucken Fock (Dutch composer & painter)
1936 – Stanisław Niewiadomski (Polish composer, conductor & music critic)
1951 – Artur Schnabel (Austrian pianist & composer)
1958 – Big Bill Broonzy (American blues singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1968 – Edward Kilenyi, Sr. (Hungarian-born American film composer & violinist, teacher of Gershwin)
1972 – Alf Thorbald Hurum (Norwegian composer)
1978 – Harrison Kerr (American composer & music editor, co-founder of American Music Center)
1985 – Richard Yardumian (American composer)
1995 – Erbie Bowser (American blues pianist)
1995 – Jesse "Babyface" Thomas (American blues guitarist & singer)
2003 – Gösta Sundqvist (Finnish rock singer, songwriter & guitarist & radio personality)
2004 – Semiha Berksoy (Turkish soprano & painter, early Turkish opera singer)
2007 – Richard Bradshaw (English opera conductor, active in Canada)
2008 – Jerry Wexler (American studio producer & journalist, coined term "rhythm and blues")


Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. Gerard von Brucken Fock and Bálint Bakfark. I have nothing to say about these guys, I just think saying their names is fun.

Well, it was a blue day (not a Blue Monday, though - it was a Tuesday) in Texas on August 15th, 1995 when Dallas guitarist Jesse "Babyface" Thomas and Austin pianist Erbie Bowser passed away within hours of one another. Hm, maybe I got that wrong. They were bluesmen, right? So if they died, maybe Texas got less blue that day. The complementary color of blue is orange. Maybe that day was really an orange day in Texas. That's it. It was an Orange Tuesday in Texas. Hook 'em Horns, or whatever. However, August 15th is really a lot more orange than that, because Babyface & Erbie in fact passed away on the 37th anniversary of the day one of the true all-time legends of blues pooped. That was Big Bill Broonzy. But that didn't happen on a Tuesday. August 15th fell on a Friday in 1958, so I guess that day was an Orange Friday in Chicago. I think Babyface & Ernie would both have been pleased to know they went to the Lord on the same day Big Bill did. Unfortunately, they didn't live to see it. More about Big Bill after the jump across the open grave...

08-14: Strauss Zarathustra Böhm - Hawkwind Windsor Free Festival 1973 - Drowning Pool Sinner

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a somewhat tagged image.
1587 – Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (Italian patron of Palestrina & de Wert)
1727 – William Croft (English composer, organist & singer)
1763 – Giovanni Battista Somis (Italian violinist & composer)
1834 – Friedrich Christian Ruppe (German composer, pianist & violinist)
1867 – Niccola Benvenuti (Italian composer)
1904 – Arnold Krug (German composer & music teacher)
1938 – Landon Ronald (English conductor, composer, pianist & singing teacher)
1961 – Guido Alberto Fano (Italian composer, conductor & pianist)
1964 – Johnny Burnette (American rockabilly singer & guitarist)
1970 – Vano Muradeli (Georgian composer)
1981 – Karl Böhm (Austrian conductor)
1984 – Peter Wishart (English composer)
1987 – Vincent Persichetti (American composer, teacher & pianist)
1988 – Roy Buchanan (American blues & rock guitarist)
1988 – Robert Calvert (South African rock singer & poet, Hawkwind)
1992 – Tony Williams (American R&B & doo-wop singer, The Platters)
2002 – Dave Williams (American alt-metal singer, Drowning Pool)
2007 – Tikhon Khrennikov (Russian composer & pianist)


The wealthy and powerful Gonzaga family ruled the Lombard duchy of Mantua (Màntova) between 1328 and 1708. During the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, their famed patronage of the arts made Mantua one of the prime cultural destinations in Northern Italy. Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat from 1550 to 1587, was an especially noted patron of sacred vocal music. He built a large new church in Mantua, the Basilica of Santa Barbara, and devoted much attention to developing a unique musical repertory for it, commissioning numerous masses and motets by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giaches de Wert, and others. The letters he exchanged with Palestrina, stipulating his requirements for the works he commissioned, are considered priceless by music historians, as they include the only epistolary texts from Palestrina which have survived. They consider Duke Bill Gonzaga to be pretty priceless too, since there are a number of magnificent Palestrina masses we would not have if it hadn't been for him.

In his day, Arnold Krug was known mainly for his choral works, although he also wrote symphonies, operas, chamber music, and piano works. But today he is remembered most for a single work of chamber music for strings, his Preis-Sextett in D major, Op.68, so-called because in 1896 it won a prize given out by instrument builder Alfred Stelzner for the best chamber music work employing two instruments Stelzner had invented. You see, an ordinary string sextet (not that it's all that ordinary an instrumental combination) consists of 2 violins, 2 violas, and 2 cellos. The best-known examples of its use are all gorgeous and rich-sounding works:  the Opp. 18 & 36 of Brahms, Tchaikovsky's late Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, and Arnold Schoenberg's early masterpiece Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.

But Krug's sextet used only one each of the viola and cello, and also one each of Stelzner's inventions - the violotta and cellone - which are tuned, respectively, one octave below and two octaves below the violin. Thus, the violotta is intermediate in pitch between the viola and the cello, and the cellone is intermediate in pitch between the cello and the double bass. Stelzner's venture enjoyed some success at first, receiving endorsements from famous string players such as Joseph Joachim, Eugène Ysaÿe, David Popper, and August Wilhelmj. Stelzner was convinced these inventions would cause a revolution in string-writing. But he was wrong. His business failed in 1900, and six years later he killed himself. We'll be hearing about him again next July! As for Krug's Preis-Sextett, when it is played today (which is almost never), it's done using an arrangement for conventional string sextet made by Krug's publisher. Very few of Stelzner's originals survive, and the ones from his personal collection were destroyed in 1945 - as luck would have it, he lived in Dresden! But it appears there has been some renewed interest in his work.


08-13: Massenet Werther Plasson - King Curtis Blues At Montreux - Cage / Tudor Indeterminacy - Dissection Maha Kali

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a somewhat tagged image.
1808 – Henri Hardouin (French composer, organist & choirmaster, Reims Cathedral)
1841 – Bernhard Romberg (German cellist & composer)
1886 – Adolph von Doss (German Jesuit priest & composer)
1908 – Ira D. Sankey (American gospel singer & hymn composer)
1912 – Jules Massenet (French composer)
1916 – Fritz Steinbach (German conductor & composer, Brahms specialist)
1924 – Julián Aguirre (Argentine composer)
1928 – Fernand de La Tombelle (French composer, organist, actor & photographer)
1933 – Paul Hillemacher (French composer & pianist)
1946 – Valery Zhelobinsky (Russian composer & pianist)
1947 – Tobias Norlind (Swedish musicologist, ethnologist & music museum curator)
1953 – Dimitri Arakishvili (Georgian composer & ethnomusicologist)
1954 – Hermann von Waltershausen (German musicologist, composer & conductor)
1970 – Viktor Trambitsky (Belarusian composer)
1971 – King Curtis (American R&B, soul jazz & rock saxophonist)
1982 – Joe Tex American soul & funk singer & songwriter)
1996 – David Tudor (American pianist & experimental composer)
1998 – Nino Ferrer (Italian-born French singer, actor & jazz musician)
2000 – Nazia Hassan (Pakistani pop singer)
2003 – Ed Townsend (American attorney, songwriter & producer)
2006 – Jon Nödtveidt (Swedish black metal singer & guitarist, Dissection)
2011 – Topi Sorsakoski (Finnish popular singer)


Well, yesterday's "launch" sorta wiped me out. I'm gonna try to keep it shorter and sweeter from now on... but don't worry, I'll still be turning you on to interminable symphonies chock-full of sour dissonances.

Google gave me a bit of a surprise when I did an image search on "Henri Hardouin" because it was sure what I meant to type was "Henri Bardouin." So, I got images of a brand of Pastis, the anise-flavored liqueur the French drink on hot summer days. Funny, I was only just learning about this aperitif a few weeks ago from my French friend Steve on Facebook. Pastis is the traditional drink of Provence, in southeastern France, but M. Hardouin played the organ in the north of France, at Reims Cathedral, the traditional site where the kings of France were crowned. The region Reims is in - Champagne-Ardenne - has a traditional libation of its own, doesn't it? I'm thinking that's probably why they held the coronations there.

Ira D. Sankey was a singer, an early figure in Southern gospel music, and a writer of many hymns. He was associated with the Methodist evangelist minister Dwight L. Moody, and the two traveled throughout much of the United States, preaching and singing the gospel. On the evening of October 8th, 1871, they were holding a revival in Chicago when - well, I suppose what happened is that Mrs. O'Leary's cow was so overcome by the spirit, she kicked over a lantern right there in the hay-barn. Sankey and Moody barely escaped the ensuing conflagration with their lives, and watched most of Chicago burn to the ground from a rowboat in Lake Michigan.

Fernand de La Tombelle was one of those sickening people you just wanna slap - a Renaissance man living many decades after the concepts of "specialization" and "division of labor" had become pretty much standard for most of us mere mortals. Not only gifted as an organist and composer, he also did some work in the theater, wrote poetry, worked in the plastic arts, was an amateur astronomer, and, as you can see, also did some photography. That's kind of an interesting picture, isn't it? A photographer is photographing La Tombelle photographing something else. Maybe that something else is another photographer photographing the original photographer who's photographing La Tombelle. Nah... that'd be stupid.

Paul Joseph Guillaume Hillemacher was a composer who wrote more than a dozen operas in collaboration with his brother, Lucien Joseph Edouard Hillemacher. Lucien Joseph Edouard Hillemacher was not a librettist, though - he was also a composer. They wrote the music of their operas together, to librettos by others. The Hillemacher brothers composed these works under the name "P.L. Hillemacher."

I couldn't find an image of Viktor Trambitsky, so I just used one of a Russian edition of the play The Storm (1859) by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The Storm has been an extremely popular play in most of Eastern Europe, and the subject of many musical and film adaptations. Tchaikovsky wrote a concert overture based on it. And Viktor Trambitsky wrote an opera based on it, which was produced in 1941. It's a bit of a coincidence, since we just remembered Leoš Janáček yesterday. He wrote his own opera based on The Storm in 1921: It was called Katya Kabanova. And now for yesterday's featured poopers: