11-18: Sir Douglas Quintet Mendocino 1969 - Neil Young & Crazy Horse Cincinnati 1970 - Alois Hába Mother / Jirouš 1994 - Junior Parker Love Ain't Nothin But A Business Goin On 1971

1678 – Giovanni Maria Bononcini (Italian violinist, composer, music theorist & patriarch of musical dynasty)
1844 – August Ferdinand Häser (German conductor, choirmaster, teacher & composer)
1887 – Heinrich Panofka (German violinist, composer & singing teacher, active in London)
1951 – Václav Kalík (Czech composer & conductor)
1966 – Béla Tardos (Hungarian composer)
1969 – Ted Heath (English jazz trombonist, bandleader & composer)
1971 – Junior Parker (American blues & gospel singer & harmonica player)
1972 – Danny Whitten (American rock guitarist, singer & songwriter, Crazy Horse)
1973 – Alois Hába (Czech composer, music theorist & teacher, known for microtonal works)
1992 – Dorothy Kirsten (American operatic soprano)
1994 – Cab Calloway (American jazz singer & bandleader)
1999 – Doug Sahm (American rock & country multi-instrumentalist, Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornadoes)
2003 – Michael Kamen (American film composer, songwriter, arranger, conductor, oboist & pianist)
2004 – Cy Coleman (American composer, songwriter & jazz pianist)

Well, what a day. Cab Calloway, that great nattily-dressed showman of the swing era (and very handsome as a young man, as you can see)... Doug Sahm, a legend of South Texas music (and of course I just had put his Sir Douglas Quintet as our headliners, since that's the region I'm blogging from)... Crazy Horse's guitarist Danny Whitten (another rock great taken from us much too young)... fine film composer Michael Kamen (a real talent, he was)...

... and radical Czech composer Alois Hába... yes, it's MORE icky microtonal opera for you tonight... muahahaha!! But you're lucky. This opera is only in quarter tones... some of Hába's works are in fifth tones, sixth tones... even eighth and twelfth tones! Can you imagine? It's difficult enough just playing in semitones, isn't it? For that matter, it's difficult enough composing in them, just organizing the pitch material into some kind of coherent whole. Even merely the notation of microtonal music poses a problem that has resulted in various solutions. Here's how a chromatic scale in quarter tones is usually notated today:

And of course the complications compound when even smaller intervals are used. It leaves one in awe not just of composers like Hába, and those who can perform their music well, but of any person who can just sing a simple melody and have it sound in tune!

And that's because musical pitch-space (as we nasty little theoreticians call it) does not really consist of 12 discreet objects within however many octaves. It's an infinite continuum; between any two pitches - no matter how close together they are - there are an endless multitude of intervening pitches! This is the Hubble Deep Field of music we're talking about here. Heavy stuff!

11-17b: Can : Tago Mago 1971 40th Anniversary Remaster - Leonid Kogan : Shostakovich Concerto 1960 | Vainberg Concerto 1961 - A Proper Introduction to Ruth Brown 2004

1982 – Leonid Kogan [Леонід Коган] (Ukrainian violinist)
1990 – Peter Schilperoort (Dutch jazz multi-instrumentalist, Dutch Swing College Band)
1995 – Alan Hull (English folk-rock singer, songwriter & guitarist, Lindisfarne)
2001 – Michael Karoli (German avant-garde rock guitarist, violinist & composer, Can)
2003 – Arthur Conley (American soul singer)
2003 – Don Gibson (American country singer & guitarist)
2006 – Ruth Brown (American blues & R&B singer)
2006 – Flo Sandon's (Italian pop singer)

We hit 5,000 page views sometime in the evening yesterday. Way to go, YiDM readers! Many thanks to all of you who've taken an interest in this blog. Keep clicking those mouses... tell your friends about us, put us in your blogroll if you have a blog of your own (I'll return the favor, of course), and let's see how fast we can get to 10,000!

11-17a: Jethro Tull Pasadena 1977 - James P. Johnson King of Stride Piano 1918-1944 - Villa-Lobos : Symphony 2 / Villa-Lobos 1944 - Concertos for Guitar Saxophone & Bassoon / Bessler 1992

1648 – Thomas Ford (English composer, lutenist, gambist & poet)
1770 – Gian Francesco de Majo (Italian composer)
1862 – Alexey Verstovsky [Алексéй Верстóвский] (Russian composer, musical bureaucrat & rival of Mikhail Glinka)
1936 – Ernestine Schumann-Heink (Austrian operatic contralto)
1955 – James P. Johnson (American jazz pianist & composer)
1959 – Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazilian composer)
1979 – John Glascock (English bass guitarist & singer, Jethro Tull, Carmen)
1981 – Bob Eberly (American jazz singer, Jimmy Dorsey Band)
1982 – Eduard Tubin (Estonian composer & conductor)

11-16: DJ Screw Chapter 70 : Endonesia 1997 - Quicksilver Messenger Service Fillmore West 1971 - Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus 1956 - Richard Strauss Vier letzte Lieder : Popp / Tilson Thomas 1993

1628 – Paolo Quagliati (Italian composer & organist)
1667 – Nathaniel Schnittelbach (German composer & violinist)
1775 – Marian Paradeiser (Austrian composer)
1924 – Alexander Arkhangelsky [Алекса́ндр Арха́нгельский] (Russian composer & conductor)
1935 – Kurt Schindler (German-born American composer & conductor)
1984 – Vic Dickenson (American jazz trombonist)
1987 – Zubir Said (Indonesian-born Singaporean composer)
1993 – Lucia Popp (Slovakian soprano)
1994 – Dino Valente [Chet Powers] (American rock singer, songwriter & guitarist, Quicksilver Messenger Service)
2000 – Ahmet Kaya (Kurdish singer, Bağlama player, composer & poet)
2000 – DJ Screw (American hiphop DJ, "The Originator" of Chopped and Screwed technique)
2000 – Joe C. [Joseph Calleja] (American rapper, associate of Kid Rock)
2001 – Tommy Flanagan (American jazz pianist)
2007 – Grethe Kausland (Norwegian actress & singer)

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)

11-14: Mingus Changes One & Two 1975 - Falla : El sombrero de tres picos | El Amor brujo / Dutoit 1981 - Joseph Allard 78s 1920s-30s

1692 – Christoph Bernhard (German composer & music theorist)
1831 – Ignaz Pleyel (Austrian-born French composer, music publisher & piano manufacturer)
1915 – Theodor Leschetizky (Polish pianist, teacher & composer)
1922 – Carl Michael Ziehrer (Austrian composer)
1925 – Agnes Zimmermann (German pianist & composer, active in England)
1944 – Carl Flesch (Hungarian violinist & teacher)
1946 – Manuel de Falla (Spanish composer)
1947 – Joseph Allard (Canadian folk fiddler & composer)
1977 – Richard Addinsell (English film composer, Warsaw Concerto from Dangerous Moonlight)
1982 – Joachim Stutschewsky [יהויכין סטוצ'בסקי‎] (Ukrainian-born Israeli cellist, composer & musicologist)
1992 – George Adams (American jazz tenor saxophonist, flutist, bass clarinettist & singer)
2002 – Elena Nikolaidi (Turkish-born American operatic mezzo-soprano & teacher of Greek ancestry)
2004 – Michel Colombier (French film composer, songwriter, arranger & conductor)

I'm going to assume that you all know plenty about Manuel de Falla, the great Andalusian master of Spanish music; and that the name of Ignaz Pleyel may ring a bell, if not for his fame as a piano manufacturer, then for the name of the Parisian concert hall named after him, the Salle Pleyel, which serves as the residence for the Orchestre de Paris.

Christoph Bernhard was a figure whose figures we learned about in my graduate studies in music theory. These are contained in the Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (c. 1660), one of a few treatises Bernhard wrote, which were unpublished but circulated widely through manuscripts during his lifetime. These figures illustrate, in a clear and concise form, the differences in the concurrent compositional styles of the 17th century in terms of how it was acceptable to treat dissonances in these styles, which Bernhard labeled stylus gravis, stylus luxurians communis, and stylus theatralis.

The conservative stylus gravis is the 16th-century polyphonic vocal style, represented most iconically by the sacred music of Palestrina - the style which Monteverdi referred to as the prima pratica. In this strict style, the only dissonances allowed are passing and neighboring tones, both unaccented and accented, as well as certain very specific kinds of suspensions, both tied and rearticulated. Of course, by Bernhard's time, the stylus gravis was considered old-fashioned and had largely fallen out of use, but it remained at the very least as a standard against which the more modern styles could be compared.

The stylus luxurians communis is a more progressive style, one which covers a wide variety of both sacred and secular composition, and represents the most common style in Bernhard's day for general compositional use, both vocal and instrumental. In this style, a greater variety of types of suspensions is allowed, and the style accommodates devices such as large melodic leaps, and dissonances such as anticipations and incomplete neighbor tones.

Stylus theatralis is the term Bernhard uses for what Monteverdi had called the seconda pratica. It's the style in which the music becomes subservient to the text, a reversal of the roles assumed in the stylus gravis. For the purpose of illustrating the emotional content of a word or phrase, many more compositional devices are allowed, including extreme chromaticism, the prolongation of a dissonance, the alteration or even omission of a dissonance's resolution, and the use of normally-avoided melodic intervals such as the augmented 2nd.

Well, I realize some of the above might as well have been in Taushiro for those of you not conversant in musictheoryese. Let me just make this point: In the past, there were rules even for how one broke the rules. That's not a familiar concept to us children of the 20th century. We've come to assume that an artist can do pretty much whatever he or she wants, and that the sky's the limit as far as creativity is concerned. Really, that's only been the case for about 100 years, if that long. And it's only been in the most recent decades that advances in technology have made such a concept of artistic freedom truly possible in a practical sense. File under "things we take for granted"!

11-13b: Psychic TV : N.Y. Scum 1984 - Orff : Carmina Burana / Dorati 1976 - Bill Doggett Honky Tonk Organ 1967 - Maurice Ohana : Trois Contes de L'Honorable Fleur 1979

1988 – Antal Doráti (Hungarian-born American conductor & composer)
1992 – Maurice Ohana (Morrocan-born Anglo-French composer & pianist of Sephardic ancestry)
1992 – Bobby McClure (American soul singer)
1996 – Bill Doggett (American jazz & R&B pianist & organist)
1997 – André Boucourechliev (Bulgarian-born French composer)
1999 – Donald Mills (American jazz & pop singer & guitarist, Mills Brothers)
2004 – John Balance (English experimental musician & artist, Coil, Psychic TV)
2004 – Ol' Dirty Bastard (American rapper & producer, Wu-Tang Clan)

More weird, avant-garde opera... this time with microtonality! Also, some weird, avant-garde, experimental rock. And for those of you who don't quite appreciate all this weirdness, there's also some good soul jazz, and a very fine Carmina Burana.

11-13a: Bruno Maderna : Satyricon / Gorli 1992 - Rossini Stabat Mater : Pavarotti / Kertész 1971 - Medtner Piano Concerto 1 & Piano Quintet / Alexeev 1994

1868 – Gioachino Rossini (Italian composer)
1951 – Nikolai Medtner [Никола́й Ме́тнер] (Russian composer & pianist)
1951 – Hugo Leichtentritt (German musicologist & composer, active in United States)
1967 – Harriet Cohen (English pianist)
1973 – Bruno Maderna (Italian conductor & composer)
1985 – G. Robert Vincent (American sound recording & archiving pioneer)
1986 – Rudolf Schock (German tenor)
1988 – Jaromír Vejvoda (Czech composer, "Beer Barrel Polka")

Well... we have Rossini; but we do not have Rossini opera! However, we do have opera! Dissonant, atonal, horrifying, avant-garde opera... mmmmmm...

11-12: Chic : Risqué 1979 - Jimi Hendrix Experience Copenhagen 1968-1970 - Górecki : Kleines Requiem & Lerchenmusik / de Leeuw 1993

1948 – Umberto Giordano (Italian opera composer, Andrea Chénier)
1966 – Quincy Porter (American composer)
1972 – Rudolf Friml (Czech operetta & song composer & pianist)
1987 – Cornelis Vreeswijk (Dutch folk singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet & actor, active in Sweden)
1996 – Gwen Catley (English coloratura soprano)
1997 – Carlos Surinach (Spanish-born American composer & conductor)
2000 – Franck Pourcel (French easy listening conductor & violinist)
2001 – Albert Hague (German-born American actor, songwriter & composer, Fame, How the Grinch Stole Christmas)
2003 – Tony Thompson (American R&B, disco & rock drummer, Chic, Power Station)
2008 – Mitch Mitchell (English rock drummer, Jimi Hendrix Experience)
2010 – Henryk Górecki, Polish composer (b. 1933)

Pretty exciting to have two of the finest drummers in rock and pop music in the past few decades on the list today, with the bands they were most known for playing in, Chic and the Experience, representing the cream of the crop of their respective genres - 70s-era funk/disco, and the late-60s hard-rock power-trio-with-guitar-god.

There's another person on our list who I was intrigued to learn something about. You will probably recognize Albert Hague by how he's depicted in our collage, as the demanding but avuncular music teacher Mr. Shorofsky from the 80s motion picture and television series Fame. What you may not know is that Hague really was a very talented musician, and composed a fair amount of music for television and film. His most recognizable contribution in this area was the music for the original Dr. Seuss cartoon How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). You're a versatile one, Mr. Hague! Well, you were. Until you pooped.