10-06: Amália Rodrigues Best of Fado - И́горь Талько́в Grand Collection - Rosemary Clooney Solves the Swingin' Riddle 1961 - Véronique Gens / Christophe Rousset : Tragédiennes 2




1651 – Heinrich Albert (German composer & poet)
1762 – Francesco Manfredini (Italian composer, violinist & church musician)
1786 – Antonio Sacchini (Italian opera composer)
1837 – Jean-François Le Sueur (French composer & conductor, teacher of Berlioz, Gounod & A. Thomas)
1860 – Stephen Elvey (English organist & composer)
1868 – Léon Kreutzer (French composer & pianist, nephew of Rodolphe)
1874 – Thomas Tellefsen (Norwegian pianist & composer)

1909 – Dudley Buck (American composer, organist, writer & teacher)
1933 – Zakaria Paliashvili [ზაქარია ფალიაშვილი
] (Georgian composer, conductor, hornist & folk song collector)
1935 – Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen (Jamaican-born English pianist, conductor & composer)
1940 – Ferdinando Liuzzi (Italian musicologist & composer, specialist in the Italian Trecento)
1947 – Leevi Madetoja (Finnish composer)
1954 – Hakon Børresen (Danish composer)

1973 – Arnold Walter (Czech-born Canadian musicologist, teacher, composer, pianist & writer)
1985 – Nelson Riddle (American arranger, composer, bandleader, orchestrator & trombonist)

1991 – Igor Talkov [И́горь Талько́в] (Russian rock singer, songwriter & guitarist )
1995 – Walter "Crash" Morgan (Canadian reggae & rock drummer, Messenjah, Big Sugar)
1999 – Amália Rodrigues (Portuguese fado singer, player of the Portuguese guitar & actress)

2004 – Marvin Santiago (Puerto Rican salsa singer & comedian)
2010 – Antonie Kamerling (Dutch actor & pop singer)

2010 – Colette Renard (French actress & pop singer)

They call Amália Rodrigues "Rainha do Fado" - the Queen of Fado, because it is she who did most to popularize this genre of music in the 20th century. And what is fado? It's a kind of Portuguese traditional music (one cannot call it "folk" music, because in some ways it is more a type of classical music) that originated almost 200 years ago, but has roots that go back much further. It is music with a solo singer, usually accompanied by the Portuguese guitar, an instrument very different from the usual guitar, with a rounded body and 12 strings, strung in double courses. There are two types of Portuguese guitar, as there are two types of fado - Lisboa and Coimbra, in both cases (I believe that's a Lisboa guitar Rodrigues is playing above).

As the guitars are shaped, tuned, and played in slightly different ways, likewise there are differences in the two types of fado. It is from Coimbra that fado gets its "academic" traditions, for Coimbra, in inland northwestern Portugal, has been a university town since the middle ages. Coimbra fado is usually performed only by men, who wear a particular kind of traditional black academic uniform, in a fairly formal setting. So, when you have a female singer of fado, like Amália Rodrigues, it's a pretty good bet you're listening to the Lisboa type! Also, in Coimbra fado, there is a peculiar way the audience has of expressing its approval - rather than applauding with the hands (which is what's done in Lisboa fado), they cough, or clear the throat. I'm all for this tradition being picked up by classical audiences, because it might cut down on all the coughing during the performances! And it is from Lisboa that fado gets its "marine" traditions, since Lisbon is of course on the coast, and has been an important port city since ancient times. The lyrics of fado traditionally deal with the life of the sea and sailors, and the life of the common poor people. But fado can have other kinds of lyrics, and it can also use many different kinds of instrumental accompaniment, such as a string quartet, or even a full orchestra.

Fado is a melancholy music. It is as hard to describe as it is to explain the Portuguese word with which it's most associated - saudade. Saudade is a word that can't be translated into any other language, at least not with a single word. It means the dreamlike feeling of longing one has for someone or something that has gone away, and left an emptiness that can't be filled by anyone or anything else. At the same time, it expresses the hope, often against all odds, that that for which one feels the saudades will return one day and make life whole again. Yet further, it expresses the fantasies about this fulfillment brought on by these hopeful feelings.

So you see, saudade is very hard to explain with the tongue, but very easy to understand with the heart. And it's the same with fado! So, let the beautiful music of Amália Rodrigues come into your ear and from there it will be transported to your heart, and you'll understand it all!

Be sure to follow the links in the list and read up on Nelson Riddle, one of the greatest arrangers in 20th-century music, who's most associated with the mid-career recordings of Frank Sinatra; and Igor Talkov, the Russian rock singer who took political risks in the Soviet era and became so beloved in his country; and Georgian composer Zakaria Paliashvili, who's considered to be the father of a truly national classical music in his home country.

Before I leave you, I'd like you to look at that page of 14th-century Italian black mensural notation that's on the right in the collage, and is in the spot where a photo of Ferdinando Liuzzi ought to be. Now, if you don't read music, that page might not be any more inscrutable than the page that's at the top left, from more than 300 years later, which is actually in modern notation, despite a few orthographic differences. If you do read music, the comparison will perhaps make you appreciate that reading music was a much more difficult task in the middle ages than it is today.

That page is from the Rossi Codex, once thought to be the earliest source of secular music from the Italian Trecento (that's the Italian term for the 14th century). When German scholars, such as Heinrich Besseler, first studied the Rossi in the 1920s, they assumed the manuscript was from Florence, like most of the surviving trecento sources. But a little later, Ferdinando Liuzzi, along with Ugo Sesini, and Ettore Li Gotti, having the advantage of being, you know, ITALIAN, noted that linguistic evidence in the texts points to the Veneto, in northern Italy, as its place of origin. Much later, in his publication of a facsimile of the Rossi Codex, Nino Pirrotta was to assert based on other evidence that the provenance of the manuscript could be narrowed down even further, to the city of Verona.

I did actually find a photo of Ferdinando Liuzzi. He's down there, along with ten other musicologists, at a conference in 1939, the year before he died of a heart attack. Liuzzi is the one standing just in front of the sconce (thanks, Mom!) on the right.

Standing L-R: Harold Spivacke, Otto Kinkeldey, Otto Gombosi, Knud Jeppesen, Fernando Liuzzi, Gustave Reese
Seated L-R: Edward J. Dent, Carleton Sprague Smith, Curt Sachs, Alfred Einstein, Dayton C. Miller

The names in the caption probably won't mean anything to you, unless you're someone like me who attempted a professional degree in historical musicology. To me, most of them are legendary figures. Well, anyway... this has been your music theory jock/musicology geek moment for the week...

10-05: Revueltas Centennial Anthology - Evile Enter the Grave 2007 - Bert Jansch 1965 - Offenbach Romantique 2007




1564 – Pierre de Manchicourt (Franco-Flemish composer, active in Spain at the court of Philip II)
1707 – Daniel Speer (German composer & author)
1813 – Etienne Ozi (French bassoonist & composer)
1867 – Thomas Täglichsbeck (German violinist & composer)
1880 – Jacques Offenbach (German-born French composer, cellist & impresario)

1911 – Charles Théodore Malherbe (French musicologist & composer)
1915 – José María Usandizaga (Spanish composer & pianist, pupil of d'Indy in Paris)

1915 – Otto Malling (Danish composer, organist & teacher, pupil of Gade, director of Royal Danish Academy of Music)
1924 – Joseph Vézina (Canadian conductor, composer, organist & teacher)
1940 – Silvestre Revueltas (Mexican composer, violinist & conductor)
1943 – Leon Roppolo (American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist & guitarist, New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
1954 – Flor Alpaerts (Belgian conductor, teacher & composer, co-director of Royal Flemish Opera)
1965 – Gustaf Bengtsson (Swedish composer)
1981 – Jud Strunk (American country & pop singer, songwriter, banjoist & comedian, Laugh-In)
1992 – Eddie Kendricks (American R&B singer & songwriter, The Temptations)
1992 – Paul Acket (Dutch entrepreneur, founder of Musiek Express magazine & organizer of North Sea Jazz Festival)

1995 – Dick Jurgens (American jazz bandleader & trumpeter)
2009 – Mike Alexander (English thrash metal bass guitarist & songwriter, Evile)

2010 – Steve Lee (Swiss rock singer, songwriter, drummer & harmonica player, Gotthard)
2011 – Bert Jansch (Scottish folk singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2011 – Steve Jobs (American computer entrepreneur & innovator, co-founder & CEO of Apple Inc.)

Well, as you should know by now, this blog does occasionally feature folks who weren't necessarily musicians, but who played an important role in the world of music in one way or another. That's true of businessman Paul Acket, and boy, is it certainly true of the fellow who occupies the bottom row of the collage. Chances are, he's had more of an effect on the way you consume and listen to music than just about any other individual human being who's been alive in the past 10 years. And yes, I'm including Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Kevin Bacon in that.

See, now, that's all I have to say today. Nothing about how unique and influential Jacques Offenbach or Bert Jansch were. No inane remarks about how low-pitched instruments such as the cello, trombone, bassoon, and electric bass seem to be dominant within the October 5th cavalcade of poopery. I opined, and yet I was pithy, as my idol Bill O'Reilly might say. Yes, that was a joke. I hope you don't find my silence on these and the others to be too terribly revuelting...


10-04a: Schoenberg Erwartung | Pierrot Lunaire | Lied der Waldtaube / Boulez | Martin | Minton | Norman 1977-79

Arnold Schoenberg: Vision (Satire) - Oil on cardboard (undated).
As I promised earlier today, here's an extra post dedicated to the memory of Marie Gutheil-Schoder, the soprano who created the solitary role in the original production of Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1924. She was known in her day as not just a great opera singer, but as a great operatic actress. Gustav Mahler called her a musical genius. That's something that should certainly make you sit up and notice! Unfortunately, Gutheil-Schoder left behind only a very few recordings: a couple excerpts from Carmen, an aria from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and some duets from Tales of Hoffmann, all recorded in 1902. But her legacy did live on in the form of the great mezzo Risë Stevens, who was one of her students.

So, it's a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. You're feeling a great emptiness in your life... a vast, gaping hole, one that only post-Romantic Expressionist atonality can fill. You've come to the right place! (Read more below...)

10-04: Gorgoroth Under the Sign of Hell 1997 - Glenn Gould : Beethoven Symphony 5 / Liszt | Bach Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981 Remaster - Art Farmer & Benny Golson Meet the Jazztet 1960 - Janis Joplin Live 1967 - Mercedes Sosa 30 Años



1713 – Valentin Molitor (Swiss composer, organist, priest & music director, St. Gall Abbey)
1838 – Sophia Maria Westenholz (German composer, pianist, singer & teacher)
1848 – Louis Massonneau (German violinist, composer & conductor of French ancestry)
1907 – Alfredo Keil (Portuguese composer, painter & poet, Portuguese national anthem "A Portuguesa")

1935 – Marie Gutheil-Schoder (German operatic soprano, premiered Schoenberg's Erwartung)
1949 – Edmund Eysler (Austrian operetta composer & pianist)
1969 – Natalino Otto (Italian jazz singer & actor)

1970 – Janis Joplin (American rock singer, songwriter, painter, dancer & music arranger)
1970 – George Frederick McKay (American composer, author & teacher)
1975 – Alexander Gray (American pop singer, actor & television host, This is Music)
1979 – Christina Spierenburg (Dutch singer)
1982 – Glenn Gould (Canadian pianist, composer, radio broadcaster, writer, conductor & singer)

1990 – Alyn Ainsworth (English pop singer, guitarist, dance band leader & television host)
1991 – J. Frank Wilson (American rock & R&B singer, The Cavaliers)
1992 – Laurie Anders (American pop singer & actress)
1994 – Bill Challis (American jazz arranger & pianist)
1994 – Danny Gatton (American blues, rock & country guitarist)

1999 – Grim [Erik Brødreskift] (Norwegian black metal drummer, Immortal, Borknagar & Gorgoroth)
1999 – Art Farmer (American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist & flumpeter)

2009 – Mercedes Sosa (Argentine folk singer, drummer & leftist political activist)
2010 – Sir Norman Wisdom (English comedian, singer-songwriter & actor)

Write-up and SUPPLEMENTAL POST (how could I forget about Erwartung?) in several more hours...

Oh, and...

Përshëndetje, Shqipëri!
  
[5 hours later]

Okay, I'm back now. That last thing I wrote there was "Greetings, Albania!" in Albanian. I noticed we had our first reader from that lovely Balkan paradise just as I was signing off. Several other new countries have been added to our readership in the past couple of weeks, including Thailand, Italy, and South Korea. Welcome and greetings to you all, in your respective languages! I KNOW YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND ME, BUT IF I SHOUT, WILL IT HELP?

Okay, look... I've made a decision. I'm going to have to scale way back on the write-ups. There are already several posts out there that are as yet write-upless, and I still need to go back and do something with those. But I'm sensing the main thing you folks are here for is the "Read more..." bit anyway, and of course to look at the pretty pictures (I don't know if any of you appreciate how much time I spend putting those collages together; just finding all the images I need is time-consuming in and of itself). So, I'm going to be doing like I've been doing a lot recently, which is to put a lot of links in the list, so you can do your own research about any of the musicians who really interest you. That's not to say I won't be writing anything at all any more about some of them, just that I'll only be doing so when I really feel compelled to - when I really feel like there's something I need to say about one or more of them.

Today, there's only one musician I feel like I really need to say something about, and I'm sorry if all you hippies out there are disappointed it's not Janis Joplin, and if all you black metal fiends out there are sorry it's not Grim. If it makes you evil little bastards feel any better, I did put the Gorgoroth album he played on at the head of the post title, and in doing so have probably succeeded in frightening off what little readership this blog had to begin with. Ah, well... it's all for you, Damian, it's all for you...


No, the one I'm going to talk about is Glenn Gould. Glenn Gould is one of those musicians who's totally indispensable, and totally controversial, somebody you can't help but love, or hate, or love-hate. And those are the best kind. (Come to think, Janis Joplin is sort of in that category as well, isn't she? Okay, so I said something about her now. Are you hippies satisfied?) For in the arts - or really, in any field that puts one in the public eye - it is wonderful to be loved, but it is still okay to be hated! The only true curse and horror is to be not cared about at all.

I'm one of those you can put in the love-hate category as far as Glenn Gould goes. For I could listen to his piano-playing all day long. The problem is that recordings of JUST his piano-playing do not exist. The only recordings he left for us are those of his singing and humming, with the sounds of his pianoforte mixed faintly into the background. And honestly, Glenn Gould was a terrible singer. I mean, sometimes whatever note his voice was on wasn't even part of the harmony, much less the melody, that the composer was on at a given moment. Worse yet, Gould's bad habit (which it was, honestly, notwithstanding his own repeated claims that it was an essential part of how he made music) has rubbed off on later pianists, who've taken it as carte blanche to vocalize as loudly as they please throughout the entire classical repertoire. Emanuel Ax comes to mind. Among the younger generation of virtuosi, Fazil Say is particularly bad about it. Just listen to the samples of his Haydn on Amazon, and you'll see what I mean. Mind you, his Haydn (that's to say, the Haydn as produced by his fingers depressing keys, and his feet depressing pedals) is spectacular.

There were other somewhat rather maddening things about Gould. I once heard a radio interview with him from the late 60s in which he claimed that Petula Clark was superior to the Beatles. Something to do with her connection to tradition, or some horseshit like that. I think Gould enjoyed being a contrarian, someone whom you could expect to give you the unexpected, or at least something you couldn't quite get from anybody else. That philosophy was most apparent in some of his interpretive choices, especially as concerns tempo. There are many examples of pieces he took either much faster or much slower than anybody else did. And there are pieces he recorded more than once where his tempo is much faster or slower on the later recording than on the first.

But above all with Gould, of course, is that touch. That articulation, that phrasing, the smallest details of a piece, along with its grand sweep. I heard the great pianist Leon Fleisher in an interview talking about how piano teachers almost always teach their students to approach the keyboard with curved fingers, so that one plays on the fingertips. But he noted that if you look at the two greatest piano virtuosi of the mid-20th century - Glenn Gould and Vladimir Horowitz - both of them played with flat fingers, with the fat of the finger touching the keys. And they were able to get remarkable, almost superhuman results out of it.

But with Gould, it seems almost like there's something else there. It's not just a matter of flat fingers, or anything to do purely with the technical mechanism of it. There was some kind of connection between his brain, and his spinal column, and his arms, and his hands, and his fingers, and the piano's keys, and its action, and its hammers, and its strings. And then when those strings vibrated, it made some kind of crazy biofeedback loop that went through his ears and back into his brain again. Certainly it's what happens with all musicians, with all performing artists, but with him it was somehow more on the surface than usual, you could almost see and hear the cogwheels of his mind turning and churning in their madness. And those beatific expressions he would get on his face, while it all was happening, like he'd been transported to some time and place completely apart of ordinary existence...

... and then that bloody singing would chime in and ruin it all. (Read more below...)

10-03: Skip James 1930 Complete - 2Pac All Eyez On Me 2004 Remaster - Nielsen 4 + 5 : Ole Schmidt 1974 - Woody Guthrie Asch Recordings 4 CDs - Seán Ó Riada : Pléaráca an Riadaigh - Beethoven Concerto 2 + 3 : Schnabel / Sargent - Bax Tintagel etc / Boult









Oh, no... don't think you're getting off that easy. There's also:




1646 – Virgilio Mazzocchi (Italian composer of sacred works for papal chapels)
1685 – Fidel Molitor (German church composer & music director)
1750 – Georg Matthias Monn (Austrian composer, organist & teacher)
1820 – Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith (Bohemian hornist, composer & infamous adaptor of Mozart operas, active in France)
1828 – Josephus Andreas Fodor (Dutch violinist & composer)
1853 – Georges Onslow (Anglo-French composer & pianist)
1889 – Karel Miry (Belgian composer of operas & the national anthem of Flanders, "De Vlaamse Leeuw")

1903 – Benedetto Junck (Alsatian-Italian composer)
1907 – Alfred Reisenauer (German pianist, composer & teacher)
1912 – Guido Papini (Italian violinist, teacher & composer)

1919 – Daniel Brink Towner (American hymn composer)
1931 – Carl Nielsen (Danish composer, conductor & violinist)
1941 – Wilhelm Kienzl (Austria composer, conductor, pianist & violinist)
1953 – Sir Arnold Bax (English composer, pianist & poet ["Dermot O’Byrne"])
1967 – Walter Müller von Kulm (Swiss composer, conductor & teacher)
1967 – Sir Malcolm Sargent (English conductor, organist & composer)
1967 – Woody Guthrie (American folk singer, songwriter, guitarist, mandolinist, harmonic player, fiddler & writer)
1969 – Skip James (American blues singer, guitarist, pianist, songwriter & preacher)
1971 – Seán Ó Riada (Irish composer & folk musician, Ceoltóirí Chualann)

1990 – Eleanor Steber (American operatic soprano)
2000 – Benjamin Orr (American rock bass guitarist & singer, The Cars)
2008 – Johnny "J" (Mexican-born American hip hop & R&B record producer & songwriter)


Well, I lied. I'm feeling a little too overwhelmed to say anything of substance about Carl Nielsen, Arnold Bax, Malcolm Sargent, Woody Guthrie, Skip James, Seán Ó Riada, Eleanor Steber, Ben Orr, or Johnny "J". Maybe you're better off wondering what I would have said about them. Like: "Would he have drawn attention to both Woody Guthrie and Skip James as major icons of American 'roots' music?" Or: "Would he have used Arnold Bax's affinity for both Celtic and Nordic themes to segue into Seán Ó Riada's pivotal role in the revival of ancient Irish performance practice, and Carl Nielsen's status as the greatest composer the nation of Denmark has yet produced?" Or yet again: "Who's gonna drive you home tonight?" Good questions, all. I guess you'll never know for sure what the answers would have been...