12-06: Pavlos Sidiropoulos & Spiridoula : Flou 1978 - Wagner Die Walküre : King / Crespin / Frick / Nilsson / Hotter / Ludwig / Fassbaender / Watts / Solti 1965 - The Definitive Leadbelly 3 Discs

1716 – Benedictus Buns (Dutch Carmelite priest & composer)
1746 – Lady Grisel Baillie (Scottish songwriter)
1785 – Kitty Clive (English actress & soprano)
1865 – Sebastián Iradier Salaberri (Basque composer of habaneras "La Paloma" & "El Arreglito," the latter used by Bizet in Carmen)
1867 – Giovanni Pacini (Italian opera composer)
1903 – Frederic Grant Gleason (American composer)
1920 – Karel Kovařovic (Czech composer, conductor, harpist, clarinetist & pianist)
1933 – Auguste Chapuis (French composer, organist, choirmaster & teacher)
1939 – Charles Dalmorès (French operatic tenor)
1943 – Hermann Löhr (British composer of Austrian ancestry, active also in Australia)
1946 – Maximilian Steinberg [Максимилиан Штейнберг] (Russian composer, pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, peer of Stravinsky, teacher of Shostakovich)
1949 – Lead Belly [Huddie Ledbetter] (American blues & folk singer, guitarist, accordionist, pianist, violinist & songwriter)
1951 – Léon Rothier (French operatic bass & violinist)
1957 – Evan Gorga (Italian lyric tenor, creator of Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème in 1896)
1958 – Erwin Bodky (German-born American pianist, harpsichordist, clavichordist, composer & author)
1966 – Hermann Heiß (German composer, pupil of J.M. Hauer)
1971 – Hugo Godron (Dutch composer, violinist & teacher)
1973 – Justus Hermann Wetzel (German composer, author & teacher)
1983 – Lucienne Boyer (French diseuse & cabaret singer, "Parlez-moi d'amour")
1988 – Bill Harris (American R&B guitarist, The Clovers)
1988 – Roy Orbison (American rock & country singer, guitarist & songwriter)
1989 – Sammy Fain (American pop song composer & pianist, "I'll Be Seeing You")
1990 – Pavlos Sidiropoulos [Παύλος Σιδηρόπουλος] (Greek rock singer, songwriter & guitarist)
1995 – Claire Polin (American composer, musicologist & flutist)
1997 – Eliot Daniel (American popular composer, "I Love Lucy", "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)")
2000 – Aziz Mian Qawwal [عزیز میاں قوال] (Pakistani quawwali singer, songwriter, harmonium player, poet, author & philosopher)
2003 – Hans Hotter (German bass-baritone)
2005 – Danny Williams (South African pop singer)

I'd been wanting to get through an entire Ring cycle before this blog has run its course. (No, we won't be here forever!) We've already had a fine Das Rheingold, and now Hans Hotter's moving and authoritative Wotan provides us with our next opportunity, in the superbly sung and recorded Die Walküre we have for you tonight. I mean, just look at that cast. And with Solti reining them all in... this particular installment of his studio Ring cycle is a sonic and performative landmark.

And Lead Belly. King of the 12-string. I guess with Wagnerian opera coming before, you could say he serves as the foil. This particular compilation is supposed to be the best, unless you want to have every song the man ever recorded.

Now about our headliner. Pavlos Sidiropoulos is considered perhaps the greatest singer in the history of Greek rock music. In the 70s, when almost all Greek rock musicians were still singing in English, he went against the grain and insisted on singing in Greek. He had substance abuse issues, and died young - but he's still one of the most popular rock singers in Greece, more than 20 years later. His 1978 album Φλου (Flou), recorded with the group Spiridoula, is one of his very best, and still gets a lot of airplay in Greece. I downloaded it, and listened to it, and of course I didn't understand a word... but I can understand how this music is loved and appreciated, and I hope to listen to it a lot more, and get it under my skin. You should too! Expand your minds, open your hearts. It's a big world out there, and maybe we no speak-a the same language, but music is universal.

10-14b: Hate Eternal : King Of All Kings 2002 - Mahler 1 2 3 & 10 Adagio / Bernstein 1987 - Freddy Fender Greatist Hits 2 CDs

1990 – Leonard Bernstein (American composer, conductor & pianist)
1994 – Gioconda de Vito (Italian-born British violinist)
1998 – Frankie Yankovic (American Slovenian-style polka accordionist)
2002 – Norbert Schultze (German film composer & songwriter, "Lili Marleen")
2004 – Vlassis Bonatsos [Βλάσσης Μπονάτσος] (Greek singer, actor & entertainer)
2006 – Freddy Fender (American country, Tejano & rock singer, songwriter & guitarist)
2006 – Jared Anderson (American death metal bassist & singer, Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel)
2007 – Big Moe (American rapper & soul singer)

Being from South Texas myself, it's hard for me to say what people elsewhere think of Freddy Fender, or even if they think of him at all. He does have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, but then again so do Kenny G, Rip Taylor, and Woody Woodpecker. Of course, none of the three of them have attained virtual sainthood anywhere like Freddy has 'round these parts. But perhaps I speak too soon; any residents of Fire Island, please let us know in the comments how well Rip's reputation is holding up. Wait a tick... Rip isn't R.I.P. yet, is he? I was certain he was, but he apparently is still with us, along with Abe Vigoda, Richard Dawson, Jim Nabors, and Rick Perry's presidential aspirations. See, now, belonging to the When You Die I'll Be Surprised Because I Thought You Were Dead Already Club probably qualifies one for a certain level of sainthood all on its own.

Well, that was one of my more tangential tangents in recent memory. And I didn't even mention how Fender took country music, old-time rock 'n' roll, Tejano and Cajun music, and fused them into a style all his own. And while we're on the subject of things I must not forget to mention, no, Frankie Yankovic was not the father, or the uncle, or whatever, of "Weird" Al, at least as far as I know. But like Freddy Fender, he could sure play a mean polka!

I'm going to resist saying anything about Leonard Bernstein. If I get started, I'll never be able to stop. Podium histrionics. Whoops... I let something slip out... see how dangerous this is? Bernstein was only the most famous orchestra conductor the U.S. ever produced; in fact, he may be the most famous conductor in world history, possibly even more famous than Herbert von Karry-On Luggage. Yes, I have taken my medication today. No, I don't feel like being not-silly, just because I'm talking about one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Maybe, one day I'll say something relevant about him, or anybody. But for now, you're getting exactly what you paid for. Oh, just go to the damned supplemental reading, already...

09-17: Mahler DLvdE Klemperer 1967 - Jimmy Yancey 1940 - Mozart Requiem Messner 1950 - Hildegard von Bingen Sponsa Regis 2009 - Kabeláč Symphony 8 Neumann - Prokofiev Concerto 2 Francescatti 1952

1179 – Hildegard von Bingen (German abbess, composer & author)
1762 – Francesco Geminiani (Italian violinist, composer & music theorist)
1803 – Franz Xaver Süssmayr (Austrian composer, Mozart's copyist & friend, completed Requiem K.626)
1884 – Louis Schubert (German violinist, teacher & composer)
1907 – Ignaz Brüll (Austrian pianist & composer)
1951 – Jimmy Yancey (American blues & jazz pianist, composer & lyricist)
1960 – José [Josep] Sancho Marraco (Spanish composer & church musician)
1966 – Fritz Wunderlich (German lyric tenor)
1973 – Hugo Winterhalter (American easy listening arranger, composer & conductor)
1979 – Miloslav Kabeláč (Czech composer, conductor & pianist)
1982 – Manos Loïzos (Egyptian-born Greek composer & guitarist of Cypriot descent)
1988 – Hilde Gueden [Güden] (Austrian lyric soprano)
1991 – Zino Francescatti (French violinist)
1992 – Roger Wagner (American choral conductor & teacher)
1994 – John Delafose (American zydeco accordionist, composer, fiddler & bandleader)
1996 – Jessie Hill (American blues & R&B singer & songwriter, "Ooh Poo Pah Doo")
1999 – Frankie Vaughan (English pop & easy listening singer)
2005 – Alfred Reed (American composer & conductor)

Write-up pending... the goods are below, though :>

08-23: Skinny Puppy Bochum Germany 1986 - Verdi Requiem Giulini 1964 - Maynard Ferguson Birdland Dream Band 1956 - David Rose The Stripper

Ordered chronologically. Tagged image here.

1723 – Antoine Moucqué (Belgian composer & church musician)
1777 – Giuseppe Sellitto (Italian composer)
1802 – Corona Schröter (German singer, composer, actress, pianist, guitarist & artist)
1825 – Amos Bull (American church choirmaster & hymntune composer)
1839 – Charles Philippe Lafont (French violinist & composer)
1878 – Adolf Fredrik Lindblad (Swedish composer)
1898 – Joseph Robinson (Irish composer, conductor & singer)
1902 – Teresa Stolz (Bohemian dramatic soprano, active in Italy & possible mistress of Verdi)
1924 – Heinrich Berté (Austro-Hungarian operetta composer)
1937 – Albert Roussel (French composer)
1943 – Paul Zilcher (German composer)
1944 – Nikolai Roslavets (Russian composer)
1960 – Oscar Hammerstein II (American Broadway librettist)
1962 – Irving Fine (American composer, pianist & conductor)
1963 – Glen Gray (American jazz saxophonist & bandleader, Casa Loma Orchestra)
1971 – Gisela Hernández (Cuban composer & teacher)
1972 – Balys Dvarionas (Lithuanian composer, pianist, conductor & teacher)
1986 – Marcos Cubas (Cuban-born tenor, active in Argentina & the Canary Islands)
1987 – Siegfried Borris (German composer, musicologist & teacher)
1990 – David Rose (English-born American songwriter, composer, arranger, pianist & conductor, "The Stripper")
1994 – Fisher Tull (American composer, teacher & trumpeter)
1995 – Dwayne Goettel (Canadian industrial & electronic musician, keyboards & samplers for Skinny Puppy)
1996 – Jurriaan Andriessen (Dutch composer)
2006 – Maynard Ferguson (Canadian jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist & bandleader)

Still catching up, and still need to do write-ups for some previous posts, but I'll go ahead and finalize this one, just because... I dunno, I feel like I'm in the groove! I'll post links back to the unfinished posts as I finish them, m'kay?

Orthography. Don't really think about it much, do we? Well, unless you're a nut like me. See, we take how words are written and spelled for granted, but prior to the 18th century, when things like dictionaries started to be widely published, spellings for words weren't so standardized as they are now... there were just one or more common ways of spelling them. Shakespeare will spell the same word more than one way, even in the same play! And peoples' names are no exception. Take the first cat on our list, Antoine Moucqué. I had a hard time locating anything about the guy at first, because the name I was searching on was "Mouque." Turns out, there are at least four different ways of spelling that name. This is a problem I'm having all the time with early musicians, especially the lesser-known ones.

Now, take another guy who comes near the end of our list: Siegfried Borris. Siegfried Borris was a German composer and musicologist who died on August 23rd, 1987. But there was another German musician (a violinist, who was concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic in the 30s) named Siegfried Borries, who died on August 12th, 1980. So, there was a little confusion at first. But here's the problem: Siegfried Borries didn't make it onto my list for August 12th (the day I started this blog), because I didn't know about him! My... "sources"... didn't mention him. And on that same day, I got something else wrong: I should have had Les Paul a day later, on August 13th! So, you see, I'm getting things wrong around here now and again because of inaccuracies or discrepancies in my information, so I hope you can appreciate that, and , you know, cut me some slack...

Charles Philippe Lafont was apparently an amazing violinist. He received his first lessons from his mother, and later studied with both Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Rode (who wrote all those Etudes every violinist has to play while training). Kreutzer and Rode taught him the classical French technique of the Viotti school, which he made even more brilliant. In 1816, he had a little cutting contest with Niccolò Paganini, by reputation the greatest violinist who ever lived. It's said that neither violinist really won, but since the contest was held at La Scala in Milan, the audience was naturally more sympathetic to Paganini.

Adolf Fredrik Lindblad was a Swedish composer of more than 200 songs, an opera, and some instrumental music. At one point Lindblad was mentoring soprano Jenny Lind, who would later become world-famous as the "Swedish Nightingale." His great affection for Lind was so obvious that his wife, Sophie, offered to divorce him so that he could marry the singer. He did not. I tell you, that Sophie Lindblad... helluva woman, there! You made a wise decision, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad.

Nikolai Roslavets. He was a committed Modernist in the Soviet Union, who was greatly influenced by the Russian Futurist artists and the late works of Alexander Scriabin, and developed a compositional technique similiar to Schoenberg's 12-tone system, which he called a "new system of sound organisation" that was based on "synthetic chords." Well naturally, Roslavets was officially censured by the Soviet government from the 1930s onward. Past a certain point, he could obtain no official job. Then he had a stroke and lived the last few years of his life in poverty as an invalid. But his forward-looking and original works have started to enjoy a revival of interest in recent years. See you on the other side of the Iron Curtain...