12-02a: Dinu Lipatti Chopin Waltzes 1950 - Copland Symphony 3 | Billy the Kid : Copland 1958 - Copland Clarinet Concerto : Goodman / Copland 1950 - Ravel Concerto in G | D'Indy Symphony : Henriot-Schweitzer / Munch 1959

David Stockman is not pictured above, because I was not able to find a photo of him. Imagine that, an opera singer without photos!

1774 – Johann Friedrich Agricola (German composer, organist, singer, teacher, and music theorist, pupil of J.S. Bach)
1831 – Max Eberwein (German composer & conductor)
1845 – Simon Mayr (German composer & choirmaster, teacher of Donizetti)
1880 – Josephine Lang (German composer, pianist & teacher)
1888 – Franz Xaver Witt (German priest, church musician & composer)
1904 – Victor Roger (French theatrical composer & music critic)
1915 – Jan Malát (Czech composer & teacher)
1916 – Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti (Italian-born British song composer & teacher)
1923 – Tomás Bretón y Hernandez (Spanish composer & conductor)
1924 – Emmy Achté (Finnish mezzo-soprano)
1925 – Juli Garreta i Arboix (Spanish composer, known especially for his sardanes)
1931 – Vincent d'Indy (French composer, teacher & co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris)
1941 – Ester Osborne (Swedish-born American soprano)
1942 – Wilhelm Grüning (German tenor)
1950 – Dinu Lipatti (Romanian pianist & composer)
1951 – David Stockman (Swedish tenor)
1959 – Antonio Savasta (Italian composer & teacher)
1974 – Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté [Софи Кармен Экхардт-Граматте] (Russian-born Canadian composer, pianist & violinist)
1979 – Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi [Василий Соловьёв-Седой] (Russian composer)
1980 – Roza Eskenazi [Ρόζα Εσκενάζυ] (Turkish-born Greek folk & rebetiko singer of Sephardic ancestry)
1981 – Hershy Kay (American composer & arranger, New York City Ballet, Leonard Bernstein)
1985 – Philip Larkin (English poet, novelist, librarian & jazz critic)
1986 – Desi Arnaz (Cuban-born America actor, singer, bandleader & television producer)
1988 – Tata Giacobetti (Italian popular singer, lyricist & actor, Quartetto Cetra)
1990 – Aaron Copland (American composer, conductor & pianist)

None of you guys went for these Chopin waltzes the last time (when were were remembering Chopin), so here they are again. It's Dinu Lipatti! You know, the brilliant Romanian pianist who died of Hodgkin's Disease at only 33. His Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Liszt, Enescu... really, anything he recorded... is to be treasured. The vinyl rip isn't the best in the world, but it's definitely above-par for whence it came, the European Archive, which is renowned for its sloppy work. I took the trouble to fully tag the files for you, and included the artwork in the folder, so that makes it an improvement.

Actually, it's mostly vinyl transfers today... and it's a lot of Copland, conducted by Copland! Both in his well-known "Americana" idiom (Billy the Kid, the jazzy clarinet concerto with Benny Goodman as soloist, and "Fanfare for the Common Man," which figures into his Third Symphony), and in his more modernist vein (the piano quartet - although, of course, he isn't conducting that).

And here you'll also find the most popular work composed by Vincent d'Indy - his Symphony on a French Mountain Air, also sometimes called the Symphonie cévenole, since it was in the Cévennes mountains that the composer heard the folk song on which the symphony is based. You know, I've often thought that the music of Vincent d'Indy and Irving Fine would make a wonderful pairing for a concert programme. If I could only come up with some clever name for the programme...

12-02b: Michael Hedges Aerial Boundaries 1984 - Shocking Blue At Home 1969 - Stan Getz / Charlie Byrd : Jazz Samba 1962 - Odetta Sings Dylan 1965

1997 – Michael Hedges (American folk, jazz & new age guitarist & composer)
1999 – Charlie Byrd (American jazz guitarist & composer)
2006 – Mariska Veres (Dutch rock singer, Shocking Blue)
2008 – Odetta (American blues & folk singer & guitarist)
2009 – Eric Woolfson (Scottish songwriter, singer, pianist & producer, Alan Parsons Project)
2010 – Helen Boatwright (American soprano & teacher)

12-02b now, 12-02a later, m'kay? Meanwhile, here are a few 4-1/2 to 5-star albums for you to enjoy, if you aren't enjoying them already...

12-01: Magic Sam : Black Magic 1968 - Black Sabbath w/ Ray Gillen San Antonio 1986 - Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli : Nuages 1934-1941 - E J Moeran Symphony | Rhapsody : Fingerhut / Handley 2004

1635 – Melchior Teschner (German pastor, cantor & composer)
1651 – Diego Cristóbal de Isla (Spanish composer)
1707 – Jeremiah Clarke (English composer & organist)
1727 – Johann Heinrich Buttstett (German organist, composer & music theorist)
1729 – Christian Ludwig Boxberg (German composer, organist & author)
1755 – Maurice Greene (English composer & organist)
1808 – Anton Fischer (German opera composer)
1813 – Ferdinando Bertoni (Italian composer & organist)
1817 – Justin Heinrich Knecht (German composer, organist & music theorist)
1893 – Eduard Franck (German pianist, composer & teacher)
1925 – Vicente Arregui y Garay (Spanish composer)
1926 – Hans Heinrich XIV Bolko von Hochberg (German prince & composer)
1932 – Amadeu Vives i Roig (Spanish zarzuela composer)
1935 –  Richard Mayr (Austrian operatic bass-baritone)
1939 – Max Fiedler (German conductor & composer)
1945 – Harvey Bartlett Gaul (American composer, organist, choirmaster, lecturer, music critic & author)
1950 – E. J. Moeran (English composer of Irish descent, active also in Ireland)
1951 – Felix Petyrek (Czech-born Austrian composer, pianist & musicologist)
1954 – Fred Rose (American pop & country songwriter & music publishing executive)
1960 – Ion Vasilescu (Romanian composer)
1965 – Ersilde Cervi Caroli (Italian operatic soprano)
1968 – Nicolae Bretan (Romanian operatic composer, baritone, conductor & music critic)
1968 – Darío Moreno (Turkish singer, songwriter, guitarist & actor of Sephardic Jewish ancestry)
1969 – Magic Sam (American blues guitarist & singer)
1982 – Dorothy James (American composer & teacher)
1986 – Lee Dorsey (American R&B singer)
1986 – Horace Heidt (American jazz & pop pianist, bandleader & radio & TV personality)
1993 – Ray Gillen (American rock singer, Badlands, Black Sabbath, Phenomena)
1997 – Stéphane Grappelli (French jazz violinist)
2008 – Mikel Laboa (Basque singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2009 – Gustavo Adolfo Palma (Guatemalan singer & actor)

Well, I'm sorry. This is Black Sabbath with... not exactly their most famous singer. In fact, it's Black Sabbath with not even their most famous dead singer. In fact, it's Black Sabbath with not even the more famous of their two singers whose surnames are homophones of one another (the more famous in that case being Deep Purple's Ian Gillan).

To hear Black Sabbath with their most famous dead singer, you'll have to wait until whenever I get around to May 16th... which, at the rate things are going around here, might be sometime in July. To hear Black Sabbath with their most famous singer, you'll have to wait until someone in their current lineup (that's to say, their original lineup) poops. And honestly, that could happen either tomorrow, or decades after I've stopped doing this blog. Either way, you nasty little children of the grave are looking at a minimum wait of one month and four days, and a maximum wait of forever. Maybe you'd better try looking somewhere else!

11-30b: Leoncavallo Pagliacci : Gigli / Pacetti / Basiola / Nessi / Paci / Ghione 1934

1957 – Beniamino Gigli (Italian operatic tenor)

Horrible movie, magnificent singer.

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.

11-29: Beatles Paris 1965 - Monteverdi Arie e Lamenti : Figueras / Koopman 1991 - Puccini Messa di Gloria : Carreras / Prey / Scimone 1994 - Barber | Korngold | Walton Violin Concertos : Ehnes 2008

I was unable to find a photo of Cary Scott Lowenstein.

1643 – Claudio Monteverdi (Italian composer, gambist & singer)
1775 – Lorenzo Somis (Italian violinist, composer & painter)
1843 – Marco Santucci (Italian composer & teacher)
1872 – Giovanni Tadolini (Italian composer, conductor & singing teacher)
1921 – Ivan Caryll (Belgian composer of operettas & musicals)
1924 – Giacomo Puccini (Italian composer)
1925 – Karl Flodin (Finnish composer & music critic)
1954 – Dink Johnson (American jazz pianist, clarinetist & drummer)
1957 – Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Austrian composer for concert, screen & stage, one of the founders of film music)
1959 – Fritz Brun (Swiss conductor & composer)
1963 – Ernesto Lecuona (Cuban composer & pianist, "Malagueña")
1970 – Robert Ruthenfranz (German composer & founder of Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival)
1971 – Heinz Tiessen (German composer & teacher)
1972 – Carl Stalling (American composer & arranger, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies)
1989 – Ann Burton [Johanna Rafalowicz] (Dutch jazz singer)
1992 – Cary Scott Lowenstein (American musical theater dancer, singer & actor)
1994 – Soulima Stravinsky (Swiss-born American pianist, composer & musicologist of Russian & Ukrainian descent, son of Igor)
2001 – George Harrison (English rock singer, songwriter & guitarist, The Beatles)
2001 – Mic Christopher (American-born Irish singer-songwriter & guitarist)
2007 – Tom Terrell (American jazz, rock & hip-hop journalist & promoter)

Well, I did it again. I missed a very important musician, who just died recently. On November 23rd, Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras passed away after a year-long battle with cancer. Figueras made many superb recordings of Renaissance and early Baroque music, especially that from the Iberian peninsula, along with her husband, Jordi Savall, with whom she formed the early-music groups Hespèrion XX (now Hespèrion XXI), La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Le Concert des Nations.

Jordi Savall & Montserrat Figueras

She will be greatly missed. We wish comfort to Sr. Savall and their two children, Arianna and Ferran, with whom the couple performed regularly. We hope to hear beautiful music from the three of them for many more years.

And so today we remember Montserrat and Monteverdi, together, and it seems like such a perfect fit... even if it only happened this way because my sources are not so good! And we remember Puccini, too... another great innovator of Italian opera. Korngold and Stalling, two very different innovators from the world of film music. All these, and George Harrison on the same day! It's a lot to take in.

11-28: Steppenwolf Fillmore West 1968 - Lennie Tristano Toronto 1952 - Havergal Brian Symphony 1 Gothic / Lenard 1989 - Haydn Symphony 93 94 Surprise 95 / Bernstein 1971-1972

1585 – Hernando Franco (Spanish composer, active in Guatemala & Mexico)
1695 – Giovanni Paolo Colonna (Italian organist & composer)
1815 – Johann Peter Salomon (German violinist, impresario, composer & conductor, active in London, associate of Haydn)
1860 – Ludwig Rellstab (German poet & music critic)
1861 – Robert Führer (Czech composer)
1878 – Marco Aurelio Zani de Ferranti (Italian guitarist & composer)
1907 – Ricardo Castro Herrera (Mexican pianist & composer)
1918 – Alexis Contant (Canadian composer, organist, pianist & teacher)
1935 – Erich von Hornbostel (Austrian ethnomusicologist, musical psychologist & co-author of Sachs-Hornbostel system)
1966 – Vittorio Giannini (American composer & violinist)
1972 – Havergal Brian (English composer of 32 symphonies, including the largest-scale ever performed)
1972 – Gustave Frederic Soderlund (Swedish composer, music theorist, author & teacher)
1976 – Robert Fleming (Canadian composer, pianist, organist, choirmaster & teacher)
1987 – Paul Arma [Amrusz Pál] (Hungarian-born French pianist, composer & ethnomusicologist)
1989 – Jo Vincent (Dutch soprano)
1993 – Jerry Edmonton (Canadian rock drummer, Steppenwolf)
1994 – Al Levitt (American jazz drummer, active also in France & the Canary Islands)
1996 – Anna Pollak (Austrian-born British mezzo-soprano)
2002 – Dave "Snaker" Ray (American blues singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2007 – Gudrun Wagner (German co-director of Bayreuth Festival along with husband Wolfgang, grandson of Richard)

Today, we get two very different looks at that most elevated instrumental genre of them all - the symphony!

First, thanks to Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who brought Franz Joseph Haydn to London between 1791 and 1795 to regale the English public with what would turn out to be his last twelve symphonic statements - we have works which represent, along with the last few of Mozart, the ones that are definitive of the genre during the Classical period (at least until Beethoven got to it and transformed what it meant for all time). These symphonies of Haydn (nos. 93 thru 104), usually called his "London Symphonies," are sometimes instead called the "Salomon Symphonies" in honor of the man without whom they likely would never have been written.

Then, we have a very different product - what the symphony had grown into by a century or more later. No longer is it merely the vehicle for the composer's loftiest philosophical ideas. After Berlioz, and Liszt, and Bruckner, it's become something of a monstrosity, a paean to the cult of the gigantic, at least among late-Romantic composers with "progressive" or "modernist" tendencies. And in Havergal Brian's Symphony No. 1, "The Gothic" (completed in 1927), we find the sine qua non of this development, a work that surpasses even Gustav Mahler's largest creations (his 2nd, 3rd, and 8th symphonies) in its length (close to 2 hours) and in the performing forces it requires (nearly 200 instrumentalists, plus several hundred singers).

Brian's "Gothic" has even won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "largest-scale symphony" ever written. However, some claim that the Symphony No. 3 by Kaikhosru Sorabji is even longer - a believable claim, if you know anything about Sorabji. However, that symphony (like many of Sorabji's more humungous creations) has yet to be performed by anyone, so it's difficult to say. 

Oh, symphony... how far you've come, since the early 18th century when you were just a multi-sectional overture to an opera or oratorio! Baby symphony done all growed up and ever'thang.