01-15b: Harry Nilsson : Pandemonium Shadow Show 1967 - Junior Wells : Come On In This House 1996 - Rossini : Barber of Seville / Bruscantini | de los Angeles | Gui 1962 - Liszt Piano Concertos / Cziffra | Vandernoot 1958 1961 - Les Baxter : Ritual of the Savage 1951

1994 – Philippe Brun (French jazz trumpeter & violinist, active also in Switzerland)
1994 – Georges Cziffra [Cziffra György)] (Hungarian-born French pianist)
1994 – Harry Nilsson (American rock & pop singer, songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist & harmonica player)
1995 – Sollie McElroy (American R&B singer, The Flamingos)
1996 – Les Baxter (American film & exotica pianist, percussionist & composer)
1998 – Junior Wells (American blues singer, songwriter & harmonica player)
2003 – Doris Fisher (American jazz & pop singer & songwriter)
2005 – Victoria de los Ángeles (Spanish soprano)

01-14b: New York Dolls Kansas City 1974 - Muslimgauze : Lo-Fi India Abuse 1999 - Broadcast : Haha Sound 2003 - Windir : Arntor 1998 - Handel : Water Music / Gibson 1985

1991 – Jerry Nolan (American rock drummer, New York Dolls)
1995 – Sir Alexander Gibson (Scottish conductor)
1996 – Pamelo Mounk'a (Congolese soukous & reggae musician)
1999 – Bryn Jones (British electronic & experimental musician, Muslimgauze)
2000 – Lina Aimaro (Italian soprano)
2004 – Joaquín Nin-Culmell (German-born composer, pianist & conductor of Spanish & Cuban descent, active in the U.S.)
2004 – Valfar [Terje Bakken] (Norwegian black metal singer & songwriter, Windir)
2011 – Trish Keenan (English alternative & electronica singer & guitarist, Broadcast)

01-14a: Joaquin Turina Orchestral Music / Batiz 1983 - Jeanette MacDonald 1929-1934 - Francesco Cavalli : Artemisia / La Venexiana 2011 - Stephen Heller Late Piano Works / Meyer-Hermann 1998

Not shown: Michael Arne & Francesco D'Arcais

1676 – Francesco Cavalli (Italian composer & organist))
1761 – Denis-François Tribou (French haute-contre (tenor) who sang in premieres of several Rameau operas)
1786 – Michael Arne (English composer, harpsichordist, organist, singer & actor, son of Thomas Arne & Cecilia Young)
1817 – Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (French opera composer & violinist)
1888 – Stephen Heller [Heller István] (Hungarian composer & pianist)
1889 – Ilma de Murska [Ema Pukšec] (Croatian coloratura soprano)
1890 – Francesco D'Arcais (Italian composer & music critic)
1935 – Heinrich Schenker (Ukrainian-born Austrian music theorist & musicologist, inventor of Schenkerian analysis)
1943 – Adolf Sandberger (German musicologist & composer, 16th-century specialist)
1945 – Vándor Sándor (Hungarian composer & conductor, perished at Sopron)
1949 – Joaquín Turina (Spanish composer, teacher & music critic)
1952 – Artur Kapp (Estonian composer & organist)
1961 – Henry Geehl (English pianist, composer & conductor)
1965 – Jeanette MacDonald (American actress & singer)
1967 – Renato Lunelli (Italian organist, composer, musicologist & organ builder)
1971 – Ethel Glenn Hier (American composer & pianist)
1978 – Robert Heger (German conductor & composer)
1984 – Paul Ben-Haim [פאול בן חיים] (German-born Israeli composer & conductor)
1986 – Daniel Balavoine (French pop & world music singer, songwriter, guitarist & keyboardist)

Heinrich Schenker is probably the most misunderstood music theorist who ever lived. An example of the analytical technique which he developed (although I don't believe this analysis is actually by him) is shown below. In the example, the bottom system shows the first 16 measures of the aria "Leise, Leise, fromme Weise" from Weber's opera Der Freischütz. In Schenkerian terms, this is what would be called the "foreground" in the musical analysis. Just above that is what would be called a "shallow middleground" analysis of this music, and finally at the top is a "deep middleground" analytical sketch:

It would take many pages for me to explain all that is going on here. I'll just say that the misunderstandings about what Schenker was up to probably stem largely from the fact that he uses many of the symbols of familiar musical notation in his analyses (along with other symbols of his own invention). It has led many to incorrectly believe that Schenker's technique is about showing you which notes are "more important" than others. That it's about "getting rid of notes." That it's saying that a piece of music is "really" something much simpler than what it appears to be on the surface. Schenkerian analysis isn't any of those things.

What it is is a theory of organic form and of a longer-range way of listening. It shows how foreground structures can be construed as elaborations of simpler and simpler structures as one proceeds through various stages of middleground, until one finally reaches the simplest and least adorned structure in the background. This background structure in no way "replaces" the piece. It merely shows how the large-scale form of the piece is unified, in its harmony and voice-leading. It is elaborations upon elaborations of these simplest of harmonic and voice-leading structures that finally result in the foreground structures of the piece itself.

It's okay if none of that made any sense to you. Aside from professional music theorists, almost nobody gets it very well. The first time he ever saw a Schenkerian sketch, as brilliant a mind as Arnold Schoenberg said "All my favorite parts are missing."

01-13a: Donny Hathaway : Everything Is Everything 1970 - Tchaikovsky 4 / Szell 1962 - Andre Kostelanetz : Lure of Paradise 1959 - Ferdinand Ries Septet & Octet / Linos-Ensemble 2005 - Henri Tomasi : Wind Quintet / Rampal et al 1952

Not shown: Leonhard Trautsch, François-Joseph Krafft & Valentín de Zubiaurre y Unionbarrenechea

1762 – Leonhard Trautsch (German composer)
1795 – François-Joseph Krafft (Belgian organist, conductor & composer)
1828 – Alexandre-Auguste Robineau (French abbot & composer)
1838 – Ferdinand Ries (German composer & pianist, friend & pupil of Beethoven)
1864 – Stephen Foster (American popular songwriter, "The Father of American Music")
1892 – Charles Albert White (American composer & co-founder of music publishing firm White, Smith & Company)
1893 – Melitta Otto-Alvsleben (German operatic soprano)
1894 – Nadezhda von Meck [Надежда фон Мекк] (Russian businesswoman & patroness of Tchaikovsky)
1901 – Carlo Angeloni (Italian composer, organist & teacher whose pupils included Puccini)
1914 – Valentín de Zubiaurre y Unionbarrenechea (Spanish composer)
1917 – Albert Niemann (German operatic tenor)
1954 – Roland Diggle (English organist & composer, active in the U.S.)
1971 – Robert Still (English composer, teacher, conductor & amateur tennis player)
1971 – Henri Tomasi (French composer, conductor & pianist of Corsican descent)
1974 – Raoul Jobin (Canadian operatic tenor)
1979 – Donny Hathaway (American soul singer, songwriter & keyboardist)
1979 – Marjorie Lawrence (Australian operatic soprano)
1980 – André Kostelanetz [Андрей Костеланец] (Russian-born American pop & easy listening conductor & arranger)

Tchaikovsky dedicated his Symphony No. 4 in F minor to his wealthy patroness, Nadezhda Filaretnova von Meck. Von Meck also financially supported other composers, including the young Claude Debussy. But the relationship between her and Tchaikovsky is one of the most intriguing stories in music history, one worth reading about. So do! 

Just before Tchaikovsky died, he was actually cursing Nadezhda von Meck's name. Tchaikovsky's death is usually thought of as a suicide, but there are a few lingering doubts. When he drank that unboiled water at the height of a cholera epidemic, was it mere carelessness, or did he wish to make it appear like carelessness so that he could kill himself honorably? Or is the truth even stranger, that what appeared to be carelessness was his possession by some sort of death wish that compelled him to engage in such risky behavior unconsciously? We'll never know.

Even more mystery surrounds the suicide death of Donny Hathaway. At his final recording session, he appeared to have had a psychotic break, saying that white people were out to kill him and steal his musical ideas via a machine they'd connected to his brain. Hathaway was later found to have fallen from the window of his 15th-floor hotel room. Since there were no signs of struggle in the room, and the glass of the window had been removed neatly, investigators ruled his death a suicide. So, was he paranoid, or were they really out to get him? I mean, if whitey can read your mind through a machine, how much trouble is it for him to remove signs of struggle?

Boy, did I pick the wrong week to get let out of the looney bin.

01-13b: Lost Sounds : Black Wave 2001 - Teddy Pendergrass 1977 - Ruby Starr & Grey Ghost 1975 - Mccoy Tyner & Michael Brecker : Infinity 1995 - Fairuz : Ma'akoum (Avec Vous) Live 1999

1993 – Camargo Guarnieri (Brazilian composer & conductor)
1994 – Frederick William Sternfeld (American musicologist & author)
1995 – Ruby Starr (American rock singer, Black Oak Arkansas, Grey Ghost, Grey-Star)
2001 – Michael Cuccione (Canadian actor, singer, dancer, author & cancer research activist)
2005 – Nell Rankin (American mezzo-soprano)
2007 – Michael Brecker (American jazz saxophonist, EWI player & composer)
2008 – Sergej Larin [Sergejus Larinas, Сергей Ларин] (Lithuanian tenor)
2009 – Mansour Rahbani [منصور الرحباني] (Lebanese composer, musician, poet  & producer)
2010 – Teddy Pendergrass (American R&B, soul & gospel singer, songwriter, pianist, guitarist & drummer)
2010 – Jay Reatard (American punk & alt-rock singer, songwriter, guitarist & keyboardist)The Reatards, Lost Sounds)

It's been a few days since I last posted, and you should expect posts to be less frequent from now on. That's because the doctors have just declared me cured and released me from the Funny Farm. That means I'm able to do things other than sitting around and blogging, which honestly isn't so much fun now that readership is significantly down, what with the most recent Great Purging killing many of the older links. Pretty soon I hope to be gainfully employed, which means posts will be even less frequent. But rest assured that when posts do show up they'll be the same low quality you've come to expect from YiDM. Many thanks to the 17 of you out there who are continuing to read and, of course, post your wordy and witty comments!

For today, it's some legendary personages from soul, rock, jazz, and world music, including one-half each of two different famous pairs of musical brothers. The Rahbani Brothers - Ziad and Mansour - were writers of popular songs and operettas whose work is most associated with that of the lovely and prolific singer Fairuz. The Brecker Brothers - saxophonist Michael and trumpeter Randy - have figured prominently in the recent decades of jazz history. Michael is considered in some quarters to have been the most influential tenor sax player since John Coltrane. His life was cut short by myelodysplastic syndrome, an early form of leukemia which also claimed the life of fellow jazzer Paul Motian. Other famous MDS patients have included Susan Sontag, Roald Dahl, and Carl Sagan.

MDS and Hodgkin's lymphoma are both diseases whose sufferers often require bone marrow transplants. Michael Cuccione passed away just after his 16th birthday, due to respiratory problems caused in part by the radiation treatments he'd received for Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was just 9 years old. In 1997, he founded the Michael Cuccione Foundation For Cancer Research, which raises funds for childhood cancer research and awareness. Give generously!

01-12b: Traffic Vienna 1973 - Bee Gees Bern 1968 - Alice Coltrane : Universal Consciousness 1971 | Lord Of Lords 1972 - Luiz Bonfa : Solo in Rio 1959

1983 – Reebop Kwaku Baah (Ghanaian rock & jazz percussionist, Can, Traffic, et al.)
1988 – Marcel Poot (Belgian composer, organist & teacher)
1990 – Paul Pisk (Austrian-born American composer & musicologist, student of G. Adler, F. Schreker & A. Schoenberg)
2001 – Luiz Bonfá (Brazilian jazz & bossa nova guitarist & composer, Black Orpheus)
2001 – Kyra Vayne (Russian-born British soprano)
2003 – Maurice Gibb (British-born Australian singer, songwriter, keyboardist, bass guitarist, guitarist & producer,  Bee Gees)
2004 – Randy VanWarmer (American rock, pop & country songwriter, singer & guitarist)
2007 – Alice Coltrane (American jazz harpist, pianist, organist & composer, spouse of John)

01-12a: Szymanowski Violin Concertos : Zehetmair / Rattle 1996 - Wagner Parsifal : Windgassen / Knappertsbusch Bayreuth 1951 - Stravinsky Chamber Works - Carissimi Oratorios / Roland Wilson 2003

Not shown: John Eccles, Michael Gottard Fischer, Koos van de Griend & Hervey Alan

1674 – Giacomo Carissimi (Italian composer & priest)
1735 – John Eccles (English composer)
1765 – Johann Melchior Molter (German composer & violinist)
1829 – Michael Gottard Fischer (German organist & composer)
1893 – Karl Hill (German baritone, creator of Alberich in the Ring cycle & Klingsor in Parsifal)
1921 – Gervase Elwes (English tenor)
1933 – Václav Suk [Вячеслав Сук] (Czech violinist, conductor & composer, active in Poland, Ukraine & Russia)
1934 – Paul Kochanski [Paweł Kochański] (Russian-born Polish violinist, composer & arranger, active also in the U.K. & U.S.)
1950 – Koos van de Griend (Dutch composer)
1953 – Simeón Roncal (Bolivian composer)
1958 – Arthur Shepherd (American composer & conductor)
1962 – Richard de Guide (Belgian composer)
1982 – Hervey Alan (English bass-baritone, creator of Mr. Redburn in Britten's Billy Budd)

The presence of the Szymanowski disc is thanks to his close friend Paweł Kochański, who performed the composer's works for violin and piano with him many times, collaborated with him on the violin parts of both his concertos, and was the dedicatee of those works and several others Szymanowski wrote for him.

The link above will take you to a scholarly article detailing Kochański's various collaborative efforts with composers. These efforts also produced works such as Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, and violin sonatas by Arnold Bax and Ernest Bloch. Works dedicated to Kochański also include the violin/piano version of Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, which consists of material from Pulcinella, Stravinsky's 1920 ballet based on music (at the time thought to have been written) by Giovanni Pergolesi.

When Kochański was helping Szymanowski with his Second Concerto, he was already sick with the cancer that would cut his life short at the age of 47. Still, he forged ahead and gave the premiere of the work. Szymanowski's score, published after his friend's death, contained a moving dedication to him. The pall-bearers at Kochański's funeral, held at the Juilliard School, included Arturo Toscanini, Frank and Walter Damrosch, Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, Serge Koussevitzky, Efrem Zimbalist, Sr., and Leopold Stokowski.

No less affecting was the passing of the great concert and recital tenor Gervase Elwes, who perished hours after a horrific accident at a railway station in Boston when he leaned over too far as he attempted to return to the conductor an overcoat which had fallen off a train. His death was mourned all over Britain, and concerts in his memory took place across the nation. Edward Elgar wrote "my personal loss is greater than I can bear to think upon, but this is nothing - or I must call it so - compared to the general artistic loss - a gap impossible to fill - in the musical world."