01-16a: Toscanini Wax Windfall !! : Beethoven Bizet Brahms Dukas Dvorak Gershwin Mozart Prokofiev Schubert Schumann Tchaikovsky & Wagner !!

1957 – Arturo Toscanini (Italian conductor)

That wasn't too clever of me, was it? Twelve albums by the greatest Italian conductor of the 20th century, and I somehow managed to not include a single Italian composer.

01-01a: Memphis Slim & Alexis Korner : Rock Me Baby 1960 - J C Bach | C F Abel : Chamber Music / Il Gardellino 2010 - Beethoven Violin Sonata 7 | Rondo in G / Yehudi & Hephzibah Menuhin 1938

1732 – Nicolini [Nicolo Grimaldi] (Italian castrato mezzo-soprano, creator of title roles in Handel's Rinaldo & Amadigi)
1782 – Johann Christian Bach (German composer & organist, youngest son of Johann Sebastian, active in England)
1953 – Hank Williams, Sr. (American country singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1967 – Moon Mullican (American country, rock & blues singer, songwriter & pianist)
1972 – Maurice Chevalier (French actor & singer)
1980 – Adolph Deutsch (American film & musical theater composer, conductor & arranger)
1981 – Hephzibah Menuhin (American, later Australian, pianist & human rights activist, sister & accompanist of Yehudi)
1984 – Alexis Korner (French-born British blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist & radio broadcaster)
1991 – Buck Ram (American pop songwriter, producer, arranger & A&R executive, The Platters)

We finally got finished with 2011, didn't we? It's a day I thought would never come. And so, a belated Happy New Year to all of you from all of us here at YiDM!

Another two-parter today, with the youngest of the Bach sons and some greats from the worlds of blues and country music. I hope none of you have your hearts set on Maurice Chevalier. Or Moon Mullican. Or Hank Williams, Sr. I mean, everybody already has plenty of Hank Senior, don't they? Well, they should if they don't, and if they don't... I guess they'd better look somewhere else...

12-15: Beethoven 3 Eroica : Munch 1957 | Wand 1990 - Stan Getz & Bob Brookmeyer Recorded Fall 1961 - Fats Waller 1922-1926

Not shown: Manuel Jerónimo Romero de Ávila, Gordon Frederic Norton, Orest Alexandrovich Evlahkov & Hans de Jong

1779 – Manuel Jerónimo Romero de Ávila (Spanish composer)
1792 – Joseph Martin Kraus (German composer, active in Sweden, "the Swedish Mozart")
1816 – Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian von Lobkowitz [Lobkowicz] (Czech nobleman, musician & patron of Haydn & Beethoven)
1861 – Gualtiero Sanelli (Italian composer)
1892 – Charles Balmer (German-born American composer, organist & music publisher)
1901 – Elias Álvares Lobo (Brazilian composer, first Brazilian to write an opera in Portuguese, A Noite de São João)
1909 – Francisco Tárrega y Eixea (Spanish composer & guitarist)
1937 – Vilhelm Herold (Danish operatic tenor, teacher & theatrical director)
1940 – Blanche Marchesi (French mezzo-soprano & teacher of Italian & German descent)
1943 – Fats Waller (American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer & comedian)
1944 – Glenn Miller (American jazz trombonist, arranger, composer & bandleader)
1945 – Tobias Matthay (British pianist, teacher & composer)
1946 – Gordon Frederic Norton (composer)
1949 – Ludwig Ermold (German bass)
1950 – Robert Müller-Hartmann (German composer, teacher, music critic & author)
1953 – Kishio Hirao (Japanese composer)
1967 – Valeria Barsova [Валерия Барсова] (Russian soprano)
1972 – Herbert Eimert (German music theorist, musicologist, music critic, editor, radio producer & composer)
1973 – Orest Alexandrovich Evlahkov (composer)
1974 – Karin Branzell (Swedish mezzo-soprano)
1974 – Erich Walter Sternberg (German-born Israeli composer, co-founder of Israel Philharmonic)
1975 – Muxtor Ashrafiy [Мухтар Ашрафи] (Uzbek composer & conductor)
1984 – Jan Peerce (American tenor)
1994 – Hans de Jong (Dutch choral conductor, Amsterdams Vrouwenkoor)
1996 – Tristan Keuris (Dutch composer)
2004 – Sidonie Goossens (British harpist, sister of Sir Eugene)
2001 – Rufus Thomas (American R&B, funk & soul singer, comedian, TV host & DJ)
2011 – Bob Brookmeyer (American jazz valve trombonist, slide trombonist, pianist, composer & arranger)

I'm thinking I might go back and start trying to fix some of these links that are no longer any good, because I'm sure you've all been having trouble with a lot of them. I'd fix 'em a few posts at a time, starting with the most recent ones and working backwards. Then I'd put up a new post with the new links for you, so you'll know when I've fixed what. We'll see.

I found a link for something by Herbert Eimert, but it's at Filesonic, and as some of you may have discovered, you have to actually try to start the download over there for them to tell you that the file isn't available. Which the Eimert isn't any more. Sneaky bastards.

So anyway, you get two Eroica Symphonies, which isn't much of a substitute for Eimert, but whatever. The Eroica was premiered at the home of Prince Lobkowitz, who's on our list. The prince also became the dedicatee of the symphony after Beethoven changed his mind about dedicating it to Napoleon. Everybody's heard that story, right? Napoleon puts the crown on his own head, the Bee hears about it, gets mad and scratches his name off the title page, bla bla bla. Well, anyway... whatever.

11-30a: Furtwängler : Beethoven 9 1954 | Bruckner 9 1944 | Schubert 9 1951 - Modern Jazz Quartet Fontessa 1956 - Gibbons | Tomkins | Weelkes : Deller Consort 1970s

1580 – Richard Farrant (English composer, choirmaster, playwright & theatrical producer)
1626 – Thomas Weelkes (English composer & organist)
1703 – Nicolas de Grigny (French organist & composer)
1764 – Dieudonné Raick (Flemish organist & composer)
1777 – Jean-Marie Leclair le cadet (French composer)
1798 – Friedrich Fleischmann (German composer)
1813 – Friedrich August Baumbach (German composer, conductor, author, singer, pianist, mandolinist & freemason)
1824 – Johann Georg Christoph Schetky (German cellist & composer)
1904 – Aldine Silliman Kieffer (American music teacher, publisher & proponent of shape-note notation)
1931 – John Hyatt Brewer (American organist & composer)
1931 – Marc Delmas (French composer)
1940 – Fritz Volbach (German organist, pianist, conductor, composer & musicologist)
1948 – Franco Vittadini (Italian composer & conductor)
1954 – Wilhelm Furtwängler (German conductor & composer)
1955 – Josip Štolcer-Slavenski (Croatian composer, musicologist, music theorist & teacher)
1957 – Beniamino Gigli (Italian operatic tenor)
1964 – Don Redman (American jazz multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, arranger & composer)
1972 – Hans Erich Apostel (German-born Austrian composer, pianist & teacher)
1993 – David Houston (American country singer & songwriter)
1994 – Connie Kay (American jazz drummer, Modern Jazz Quartet)
1995 – Stretch [Randy Walker] (American rapper, actor & producer)
1996 – Tiny Tim [Herbert Khaury] (American singer, ukelelist & guitarist)
2000 – Scott Smith (Canadian rock bass guitarist, Loverboy)
2008 – Munetaka Higuchi [樋口 宗孝] (Japanese metal drummer & producer, Loudness)
2010 – Peter Hofmann (Czech-born German heldentenor & pop singer)

Speaks for itself.

11-15: Brahms 3 & 4 : Reiner 1958 / 1962 - Strauss Don Quixote : Reiner / Piatigorsky 1941 - Gluck Orfeo & Euridice : Jacobs 2001

1634 – Johann Staden (German organist & composer)
1787 – Christoph Willibald Gluck (German opera composer, active in Vienna & Paris)
1788 – Peregrinus Pögl (German priest & composer)
1815 – Johann Lukas Schubaur (German doctor & composer)
1831 – Vincenc Mašek (Czech composer)
1842 – Joseph Rastrelli (German composer of Italian ancestry)
1907 – Horatio Richmond Palmer (American composer, hymnbook editor & music theorist)
1963 – Fritz Reiner (Hungarian-born American conductor)
1986 – Alexandre Tansman (Polish-born French composer & pianist)
1997 – Saul Chaplin (American composer, arranger & musical director for stage & screen)
2003 – Speedy West (American country pedal steel guitarist & record producer)

10-26: Mahler 10 Cooke version / Noseda 2008 - Hoyt Axton Joy to the World 1971 - Gieseking : Bach Inventions 1950 | Beethoven Piano Concerto 4 1939

1607 - Philipp Nicolai (German pastor, poet & composer)
26/10/1678 - John Jenkins (English composer, lutenist & lyra violist)
1706 - Andreas Werckmeister (German music theorist, organist & composer, early developer of well-tempered tuning)
1733 - Antonio Veracini (Italian composer & violinist, taught violin to his nephew Francesco Maria)
1749 - Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (French organist, harpsichordist & composer)
1756 - Johann Theodor Roemhildt [Römhild] (German composer)
1823 - Josef Preindl (Austrian organist & composer, pupil of Albrechtsberger)
1858 - Isaac Baker Woodbury (American composer & publisher of church music)
1867 - John Fawcett (English organist, choir director, composer & shoemaker)
1874 - Peter Cornelius (German composer, writer about music, poet & translator)
1903 - Sir Herbert Stanley Oakeley (English composer & organist, active in Scotland)
1903 - Victorin de Joncières [Félix-Ludger Rossignol] (French composer & music critic)
1952 – Hattie McDaniel (American singer & actress, Gone with the Wind)
1955 - Arne Eggen (Norwegian organist & composer)
1956 – Walter Gieseking (French-born German pianist & composer)
1966 – Alma Cogan (English popular singer)
1976 - Deryck Cooke (English composer, musicologist & broadcaster, prepared first complete performing edition of Mahler 10th Symphony)
1984 - John Woods Duke (American composer & pianist)
1994 – Wilbert Harrison (American R&B singer, pianist, guitarist & harmonica player)
1995 – Gorni Kramer (Italian jazz bandleader, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist)
1999 – Hoyt Axton, American actor and country music singer-songwriter (b. 1938)
2006 – Tillman Franks, American songwriter (b. 1920)
2009 – George Na'ope, American musician (b. 1928)

It is only with great effort that I post this, being presently in extreme discomfort after having just completed my celebration of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Please pardon me if my explications are a bit more on the aphoristic side than usual. The presence of Deryck Cooke on our list allows Mahlerstodfest 2011 to continue, with Cooke's performing edition of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. And remember that a well-tempered tuning is not the same thing as an equal-tempered one. I don't know nothin' 'bout tunin' no Claviers, Miss Scarlet. That is all. Ugh. Where did I put that Alka Seltzer...

10-10a: Brahms | Schubert | Mendelssohn : Istomin / Stern / Rose - Beethoven Symphony 6 Pastoral / Paray 1934 - Catherine Collard : Haydn Piano Sonatas | Franck Violin Sonata

1676 – Sebastian Knüpfer (German composer, cantor & music director, Leipzig)
1727 – Alphonse d' Eve (Flemish composer & choirmaster)
1745 – Jacobus Nozeman (Dutch composer & organist)
1789 – Pierre-Louis Couperin (French organist, Église Saint-Gervais, Paris, great-grandnephew of Louis, 1st cousin twice removed of François)
1806 – Prince Louis Ferdinand (Prussian monarch, soldier, pianist & composer)
1836 – Jacob-Joseph-Balthasar Martinn (French composer, violist & teacher)
1843 – Karl Theodor Toeschi (German court composer & violinist, Mannheim)
1856 – Michał Wielhorski (Polish composer)
1867 – Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński (Polish pianist & composer)
1889 – Adolf von Henselt (German composer & pianist)
1964 – Eddie Cantor (American singer, comedian, dancer, actor, songwriter & humanitarian)
1964 – Russ Case (American studio trumpeter & pop, jazz & soundtrack composer, arranger & conductor)
1964 – Heinrich Neuhaus (Soviet pianist & teacher of German ancestry, teacher of Sviatoslav Richter & Emil Gilels)
1964 – František Pícha (Czech composer)
1965 – Georgy Mikhaylovich Rimsky-Korsakov [Георгий Михайлович Римский-Корсаков] (Russian composer, nephew of Nikolai)
1967 – Ervin Major (Hungarian musicologist & composer)
1976 – Silvana Armenulić (Yugoslavian folk & sevdalinka singer & actress)
1976 – Connee Boswell (American pop & jazz singer, the Boswell Sisters)
1978 – Ralph Marterie (Italian-born American jazz trumpeter & bandleader)
1979 – Paul Paray (French conductor, organist & composer)
1993 – Catherine Collard (French pianist)
1994 – Nikolai Karetnikov [Николáй Карéтников] (Soviet underground composer & pianist)
2002 – Teresa Graves (American actress & pop singer, Laugh-In, Vampira, Get Christie Love!)
2003 – Eugene Istomin (American pianist)

Okay, this edition is turning out to be a real ball-buster. I employed the progressive aspect there because I'm not even done yet! The edition will be in TWO parts, thanks to the passing on October 10 of last year of a very famous opera singer. And thus we will be having another opera a little later! Haven't had one in a while. As you might imagine, operas eat up a lot in terms of the labels, because of the names of all the damned singers. There will be some other offerings for Part Deux as well, so if you're not fond of opera there may be some other items that will be of interest to you.

As far as this post goes, even it is not quite be finished, because I'm planning on doing something special for Eddie Cantor and Connee Boswell, but it will take some more time for me to complete that task. When I do, they'll be added to the post for "10-10b," even though Connee & Eddie's images appear in this post's collage. Does that make sense? I know it probably doesn't, but just humor me. I'm a crazy person, remember.

Sorry I can't say any more right now. I'll try to add a little more to this write-up later. I know, you've heard that one before...

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...

STOKOWSKI SPECIAL !! | 36 tracks, 222 minutes! | Acoustic, Electric & Stereo recordings 1917-1975



"Leo-pold !!"

 I'm really only posting this because I'm hoping it will keep me from running out of label space for the next post! But I hope you enjoy this sampler of the remarkable and sometimes controversial but never boring and very creative Leopold Stokowski. It is the work of... many hands, shall we say? It's going up now...! In it, you'll hear him conducting:

The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra
The RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra
The Hollywood Bowl* Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra
The New Philharmonia Orchestra
The Symphony of the Air
and The All-American Symphony Orchestra

* the venue in which he's depicted above, in Warner Bros.' Long-Haired Hare (1948):

playing works by... those among The Dead and Dying... including Emmanuel Chabrier (who is also on the list with Leopold), and

~~~~~~~  ROMÂN  ~~~~~~~

compozitor George Enescu! And others I still didn't have room for in just this post's labels... such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and Camille Saint-Saëns, and Alexander Glazunov, and Antonín Dvořák, and and Mikhail Mikhailovich Ippolitov-Ivanov.  Crap, that last guy's practically your whole label limit right there.

09-08: More Moondog 1956 | Story of Moondog 1957 - Gesualdo Madrigals / Christie - Alex North Spartacus 1960 - Beethoven Missa Solemnis Toscanini 1940 - Strauss Elektra Kleiber 1971

1613 – Don Carlo Gesualdo (Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer & murderer of his wife & her lover)
1637 – Robert Fludd (English mystic & doctor, debater with Johannes Kepler over harmonic theory of universe)
1706 – Romanus Weichlein (Austrian monk & composer)
1819 – Franz Stanislaus Spindler (German singer & composer)
1831 – John Aitken (Scottish-born American music publisher, silversmith, goldsmith & jeweler)
1838 – Pietro Rovelli (Italian violinist & composer)
1871 – Étienne-Joseph Soubre (Belgian composer)
1879 – Nikolai Zaremba (Russian music theorist & composer, teacher of Tchaikovsky)
1894 – Hermann von Helmholtz (German physician, physicist, psychologist & acoustician)
1899 – Václav Hugo Zavrtal (Czech conductor, composer & collector of Mozartiana)
1916 – Friedrich Baumfelder (German composer, conductor & pianist)
1917 – Charles-Édouard Lefebvre (French composer, pupil of Gounod, son of painter Charles Lefebvre)
1944 – Jan van Gilse (Dutch composer, conductor, pianist & organizer on behalf of Dutch composers)
1949 – Richard Strauss (German composer & conductor)
1960 – Jussi Björling (Swedish tenor)
1974 – Wolfgang Windgassen (German operatic Heldentenor)
1976 – Assen Karastoyanov (Bulgarian composer, conductor, teacher & writer on music)
1976 – Joaquín Zamacois i Soler (Chilean-born Spanish composer, teacher & writer on music)
1977 – Zero Mostel (American actor of stage, screen & musical theater)
1978 – Pancho Vladigerov (Bulgarian composer, teacher & pianist)
1984 – René Bernier (Belgian composer & teacher)
1991 – Jo Budie (Dutch Schlager orchestra leader)
1991 – Alex North (American soundtrack & stage composer)
1995 – Erich Kunz (Austrian operatic bass-baritone)
1997 – Derek Taylor (English journalist, writer, publicist & press officer for The Beatles)
1999 – Moondog [Louis Thomas Hardin] (American composer, street musician, poet & instrument inventor)

Well... I'm really sorry. I'm now 8 days behind. I really would need at least 2 or 3 other people working on this blog with me to be able to keep up with it the way I want to. Perhaps that will happen one day, but in the meantime, I'll have to make some changes around here. In the future, I'm going to be limiting my lists to just the most prominent figures on any given day - I hate to set an exact limit, but it will probably be in the area of 12 to 18 persons at the very most. It's kind of a shame, because I think some of the more obscure figures often have the most interesting stories surrounding them, but it really can't be helped. Further, the number of downloads will be curtailed a bit as well, to probably no more than 3 or 4 per day.

There's also something else. I'm going to be going out of town for about a week, so this blog will be on hiatus for about 8 or 9 days. When I return, probably on September 27th, I'll be doing a roundup of all the days up to that point that haven't been covered, i.e., Sep. 9th thru 26th - a period of 18 days! I'll be choosing just the very most famous musicians from each day - no more than 2 or 3 for any given day - it'll be a big post, possibly in several parts. Either tomorrow or the day after I'll be devoting a post specifically to an announcement of the hiatus...

So anyway... some very important musicians for September 8th. Two notable Bulgarian composers, curiously enough... perhaps the passings of Мистър Karastoyanov and Мистър Vladigerov had something to do with the a little overindulgence on September 6th, Unification Day, which marks the ceding of Eastern Rumelia to Bulgaria in 1885? In any case, among the truly famous musicians on our list is Moondog, the Viking of 6th Avenue, an eccentric street musician and an icon in the world of "outsider music," a kindred spirit, in a way, to both Harry Partch and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, also building his own instruments as they did - and doing so blind, as Kirk did - who managed to get married, land a record deal on Prestige, and become a famous musician with an impressive cult following, all while he was intentionally living as a homeless man on the streets of New York City. He's a legend who continues to inspire to this very day... (Read more below)

Then there's Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, a composer of many madrigals and a fair amount of sacred music, who employed very daring chromaticism in his later works (which has attracted the interest of many 20th-century musicians, especially Igor Stravinsky), and who was also the most infamous murderer in music history (unless you count Charles Manson as a musician). Gesualdo suspected his first wife of infidelity, and managed to catch her and the Duke of Andria in the act, after having pretended to go away on a journey. With the help of his servants, he stabbed them both numerous times with both knives and swords, and shot the Duke in the head. Afterward, he displayed their mutilated bodies outside his palace, with the Duke given the further humiliation of being dressed in Signora Gesualdo's nightgown. Gesualdo, being a nobleman, was immune from prosecution for his crimes, but he kept a crew of bodyguards around him for the remainder of his life to protect him from any revenge the families of his victims might seek. Interesting... Cecil Gray and Philip Heseltine (a.k.a Peter Warlock) wrote a book in 1926 called Carlo Gesualdo Prince of Venosa, in which they detailed the police reports from the time, which make for gruesome reading even today. And guess what, Cecil Gray's deathday is just one day after Gesualdo's, on September 9th... (Read more below) ... see you on the other side of the crime scene ribbon...

08-27: Terrorizer : World Downfall 1989 - Josquin L'homme armé Masses : Tallis Scholars - Ella Fitzgerald Whisper Not 1967 - Beethoven Choral Fantasy : Serkin / Bernstein 1962

To represent Joan Cererols, I used the Basilica of Montserrat, his place of burial. Tagged image here.

1521 – Josquin des Prez (Franco-Flemish composer)
1680 – Joan Cererols (Spanish composer & Benedictine monk)
1746 – Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (German composer & keyboardist)
1841 – Ignaz von Seyfried (Austrian conductor & composer, pupil of Mozart, friend of Beethoven)
1846 – Frantiszek Ścigalski (Polish composer, violinist & conductor)
1846 – Gottfried Wilhelm Fink (German theologian, poet, composer, writer & lecturer on music & music editor)
1855 – Francisco Eduardo da Costa (Portuguese pianist & composer)
1865 – Józef Nowakowski (Polish composer, pianist & teacher, friend of Chopin)
1867 – Karol Kątski (Polish violinist & composer)
1868 – Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee (Swiss composer, pianist, conductor & writer on music)
1883 – August Friedrich Pott (German violinist & composer)
1887 – Wilhelm Volkmar (German organist & composer)
1922 – Carl Fuchs (German cellist, composer, teacher & writer on music)
1948 – Oscar Lorenzo Fernández (Brazilian composer, violinist, pianist, cellist & academician)
1948 – Oley Speaks (American songwriter & baritone singer)
1953 – Nicolai Berezowsky (Russian-born American violinist, composer & conductor)
1958 – Nina Garelli (Italian operatic soprano)
1962 – Carlos Lavín (Chilean composer & musicologist)
1964 – Aleksey Zhivotov (Russian composer)
1965 – Otto Reinhold (German composer)
1967 – Brian Epstein (English music entrepreneur & manager of The Beatles)
1976 – Mukesh (Indian Bollywood playback singer)
1979 – Bolesław Szabelski (Polish composer)
1981 – Joan Edwards (American jazz singer & philanthropist)
1990 – Stevie Ray Vaughan (American blues guitarist & singer)
1991 – Vince Taylor (English rock singer & songwriter, The Playboys, "Brand New Cadillac")
1994 – El Polaco [Roberto Goyeneche] (Argentine tango singer)
1994 – Thomas Hayward (American operatic tenor & teacher)
1995 – Marty Paich (American jazz arranger, pianist, composer & conductor)
1997 – Sotiria Bellou (Greek rebetiko singer)
2005 – Giorgos Mouzakis (Greek songwriter, trumpeter & composer of light music)
2006 – Jesse Pintado (Mexican-born American metal guitarist, Napalm Death)

On August 27th we remember one of history's greatest composers, Josquin; the greatest Spanish composer of Josquin's century, Victoria (who may have died on the 20th, not the 27th - I opted for the earlier date to remember him, considering how full-up the 27th is - I mean, just LOOK at that list); Beatles manager Brian Epstein; Bollywood playback singer Mukesh; Texas blues great Stevie Ray Vaughan; jazz arranger Marty Paich; grindcore guitar pioneer Jesse Pintado of Napalm Death; and a whole lot of other tuneful stiffs...

Such as Gottfried Wilhelm Fink. Fink was, among many other things, both a poet and a composer. Thus, many of his compositions are Lieder for which he set his own poems to music. I have no idea if they're any good. But, it is kind of interesting, and something you don't see every day in a 19th-century composer. Of course, much earlier, you had your medieval poet-composers: your troubadours, your trouvères, your Minnesänger. But eventually a division of labor between writing of lyrics and music became pretty standard, at least for professional songwriters.

Now, for folk musicians - itinerant minstrels, jongleurs, country blues singers and the like - it's always been a little different. But even up until the mid-20th century, lyrics and music of published songs were usually written by separate persons. Songwriters who did both, like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and (sometimes) Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael were definitely exceptions to the rule. And that's for pop songwriting. In the classical world, such exceptions are still almost unheard-of, which is why Fink is quite remarkable. Rotten about his surname. With a name like Fink you don't get very far in the English-speaking world. Although in German, it merely means "finch," which is quite lovely. Seriously, take a look at these guys and tell me they aren't the most delightful creatures you've ever seen:

As you can see, some of them are more colorful than others.

Oscar Lorenzo Fernández was a Brazilian composer of Spanish descent. His nationalistic opera Malazarte (1931–33) is considered the first successful Brazilian opera of this type. Its Portuguese libretto by Graça Aranha was for some reason translated into Italian for its 1941 premiere at the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro. In 1936, Fernández founded the Conservatório Brasiliero de Música in Rio, which he directed until you-know-what happened.

Nicolai Berezowsky recalled in his memoire Duet with Nicky that as a young chorister in the Imperial Capella in St. Petersburg, the choir sometimes sang for the family of Tsar Nicholas and Rasputin. He says the choirboys would tear pages from their hymnals to make spit-balls which they would aim at Rasputin. After settling in New York, Berezowsky attended Juilliard and played in the 1st Violin section of the New York Philharmonic. He was a protégé of Serge Koussevitzky, who premiered his symphonies to great acclaim. In his lifetime, he was apparently a better-known composer than Aaron Copland.

Do you know who wrote the music to "On the Road to Mandalay," with words by Rudyard Kipling, that Frank Sinatra recorded for his 1958 album Come Fly With Me? - Oley Speaks. - That's nice, but what was the name of the composer? - Oley Speaks. - Okay, fine. You don't want to tell me his name. But could you at least tell me what this guy Oley is saying? - He's not saying anything. He's been dead for 63 years....