11-23: Tallis Lamentations of Jeremiah / Hilliard Ensemble 1987 - Roy Acuff King of Country Music 1953-1958 - Judee Sill Live in London 1972-1973 - Don Byron Do the Boomerang The Music of Junior Walker 2006

1585 – Thomas Tallis (English composer)
1750 – Giuseppe Sammartini (Italian composer & oboist, older brother of Giovanni Battista)
1787 – Anton Schweitzer (German composer)
1853 – Francisco Andrevi y Castellar (Spanish priest, composer & organist)
1853 – Friedrich Schneider (German composer & conductor)
1916 – Eduard Francevič Nápravník [Эдуард Францевич Направник] (Czech conductor & composer, active in Russia)
1931 – Evert Cornelis (Dutch conductor & organist)
1932 – Percy Pitt (English organist, conductor, choirmaster & composer)
1937 – Louis Victor Saar (Dutch composer, pianist & teacher)
1940 – Catharina van Rennes (Dutch composer)
1948 – Uzeyir Hajibeyov [Üzeyir Hacıbəyov] (Azerbaijani composer, conductor, publicist, playwright, teacher & translator)
1952 – Albert van Raalte (Dutch conductor)
1974 – Páll Isólfsson (Icelandic composer)
1979 – Judee Sill (American folk & pop singer, songwriter, guitarist & pianist)
1992 – Roy Acuff (American country & gospel singer, songwriter, fiddler & promoter, "King of Country Music")
1993 – Tatiana Nikolayeva [Татьяна Николаева] (Russian pianist, composer & teacher)
1994 – Tommy Boyce (American songwriter, Boyce & Hart, wrote for The Monkees)
1995 – Junior Walker (American R&B, soul & disco singer & saxophonist)
1996 – Art Porter, Jr. (American jazz saxophonist & composer)
2001 – O.C. Smith (American R&B & jazz singer & pastor)
2006 – Anita O'Day (American jazz singer)
2010 – James Tyler (American lutenist, banjoist, guitarist, composer, musicologist & author)

There is in fact no authentic portrait extant of the great 16th-century English master Thomas Tallis. The one I've used here was made about 150 years after Tallis's death. Whether it was based on a now-lost portrait contemporary to Tallis is unknown. Today, Tallis is known as much for the sublime Vaughan Williams fantasia based on one of his melodies as he is for his own superb and distinctive sacred choral music.

And the composer who pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva was addressing above would be Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich. Nikolayeva was most famed for her interpretations of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 were inspired not only by the 48 preludes and fugues of Bach's mammoth Well-Tempered Clavier, but also by Nikolayeva's playing of them.

The story goes that in 1950, Shostakovich was allowed by the Soviet government to travel to Leipzig to sit as a judge for the first-ever International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition, part of a festival held to mark the bicentennial of Bach's death, in that city in which Bach spent the last 27 years of his life, and composed many of his greatest works.

Although the rules of the competition did not require it, Tatiana Nikolayeva came to it prepared to play any one of Bach's 48 preludes and fugues from the WTC upon request. As it happened, Nikolayeva won the gold medal in the competition. Shostakovich began composing his Op. 87 several weeks later, after his return to the Soviet Union, and finished the work in February of the following year. He dedicated it to Nikolayeva, and she gave its premiere in Leningrad exactly 59 years ago to the day, on December 23rd, 1952.

See, sometimes it pays to be a month behind!

10-24a: Music for Henry VII & VIII / Hilliard Ensemble 2008 - Alessandro Scarlatti Il Primo Omicidio / Jacobs 1997 - Dittersdorf Viola & Double-Bass Concertos / Vajnar 1998

1521 – Robert Fayrfax (English court composer)
1725 – Alessandro Scarlatti (Italian composer, father of Domenico)
1785 – Jean-Jacques Robson (Belgian composer)
1789 – Joaquín de Oxinaga (Spanish composer & organist)
1799 – Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (Austrian composer, violinist & silvologist)
1901 – Paul Henrion (French composer of popular songs)
1902 – Vladislav Zaremba [Владислав Заремба] (Ukrainian composer of Polish ancestry)
1912 – Mykola Lysenko [Микола Лисенко] (Ukrainian composer, pianist, conductor & ethnomusicologist)
1918 – Charles Lecocq (French composer of comic operas & operettas)

Well, we've already read about some musicians today who had other notable musicians in the family, and now we have Alessandro Scarlatti, who is not to be confused with his famous son Domenico, or the three other lesser-known guys from the same family who were also composers.

The name of Scarlatti always makes me think of a line in John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces that I find very funny. It's where the protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, proclaims that the greatest composer in history is obviously Scarlatti. That's funny for two reasons. First, because it's an opinion so contrary (as Ignatius J. Reilly generally is) to conventional wisdom - I mean, most people would probably say Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven, or maybe Handel... but Scarlatti? The other reason it's funny is because he doesn't even say which Scarlatti he's talking about, and anyone who knows something about classical music knows that Alessandro is virtually as famous as Domenico. It's not like when you say "Bach" and it's assumed that Johann Sebastian is the one you mean.

Well, now look what you've gone and done... got me off onto an A Confederacy of Dunces tangent. Damn all of you! Did you know that this hilarious and wonderful novel has to be somewhere near the top of the list of books EVERYONE wishes would be made into a major motion picture, but still hasn't been? First they were going to make it with John Belushi playing Ignatius J. Reilly. Then John Waters was going to make it with Divine. Then John Candy was going to play the role (I think he would have been really great in it). Then Chris Farley was going to do it. And guess what? That's right... THEY ALL POOPED, before their respective projects could even get off the ground! The last actor who was planning on playing the role was Will Ferrell... kind of an odd choice, I think. He's tall enough (which Belushi wasn't). I suppose Will was planning on gaining a few or putting on a fat suit. The project was moving forward. A screen adaptation was made by Steven Soderbergh and Scott Kramer, the entire cast was chosen (with Lily Tomlin as Ignatius's mother), and the director was slated to be David Gordon Green. This was in 2005. The movie was to be filmed on location in the city where the story takes place, NEW ORLEANS. So, there you have it. Dead musicians, dead actors, dead movie projects, dead residents of a drowned city, a dead author who killed himself 12 years before his great novel won him the Pulitzer Prize. Pretty sad.

So anyway, Scarlatti. Also, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. That guy was all about Ditters.