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| Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a somewhat tagged image. |
1727 – William Croft (English composer, organist & singer)
1763 – Giovanni Battista Somis (Italian violinist & composer)
1834 – Friedrich Christian Ruppe (German composer, pianist & violinist)
1867 – Niccola Benvenuti (Italian composer)
1904 – Arnold Krug (German composer & music teacher)
1938 – Landon Ronald (English conductor, composer, pianist & singing teacher)
1961 – Guido Alberto Fano (Italian composer, conductor & pianist)
1964 – Johnny Burnette (American rockabilly singer & guitarist)
1970 – Vano Muradeli (Georgian composer)
1981 – Karl Böhm (Austrian conductor)
1984 – Peter Wishart (English composer)
1987 – Vincent Persichetti (American composer, teacher & pianist)
1988 – Roy Buchanan (American blues & rock guitarist)
1988 – Robert Calvert (South African rock singer & poet, Hawkwind)
1992 – Tony Williams (American R&B & doo-wop singer, The Platters)
2002 – Dave Williams (American alt-metal singer, Drowning Pool)
2007 – Tikhon Khrennikov (Russian composer & pianist)
The wealthy and powerful Gonzaga family ruled the Lombard duchy of Mantua (Màntova) between 1328 and 1708. During the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, their famed patronage of the arts made Mantua one of the prime cultural destinations in Northern Italy. Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat from 1550 to 1587, was an especially noted patron of sacred vocal music. He built a large new church in Mantua, the Basilica of Santa Barbara, and devoted much attention to developing a unique musical repertory for it, commissioning numerous masses and motets by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Giaches de Wert, and others. The letters he exchanged with Palestrina, stipulating his requirements for the works he commissioned, are considered priceless by music historians, as they include the only epistolary texts from Palestrina which have survived. They consider Duke Bill Gonzaga to be pretty priceless too, since there are a number of magnificent Palestrina masses we would not have if it hadn't been for him.
In his day, Arnold Krug was known mainly for his choral works, although he also wrote symphonies, operas, chamber music, and piano works. But today he is remembered most for a single work of chamber music for strings, his Preis-Sextett in D major, Op.68, so-called because in 1896 it won a prize given out by instrument builder Alfred Stelzner for the best chamber music work employing two instruments Stelzner had invented. You see, an ordinary string sextet (not that it's all that ordinary an instrumental combination) consists of 2 violins, 2 violas, and 2 cellos. The best-known examples of its use are all gorgeous and rich-sounding works: the Opp. 18 & 36 of Brahms, Tchaikovsky's late Souvenir de Florence, Op. 70, and Arnold Schoenberg's early masterpiece Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4.
But Krug's sextet used only one each of the viola and cello, and also one each of Stelzner's inventions - the violotta and cellone - which are tuned, respectively, one octave below and two octaves below the violin. Thus, the violotta is intermediate in pitch between the viola and the cello, and the cellone is intermediate in pitch between the cello and the double bass. Stelzner's venture enjoyed some success at first, receiving endorsements from famous string players such as Joseph Joachim, Eugène Ysaÿe, David Popper, and August Wilhelmj. Stelzner was convinced these inventions would cause a revolution in string-writing. But he was wrong. His business failed in 1900, and six years later he killed himself. We'll be hearing about him again next July! As for Krug's Preis-Sextett, when it is played today (which is almost never), it's done using an arrangement for conventional string sextet made by Krug's publisher. Very few of Stelzner's originals survive, and the ones from his personal collection were destroyed in 1945 - as luck would have it, he lived in Dresden! But it appears there has been some renewed interest in his work.
