12-24: John Dunstaple ( Dunstable ) / Orlando Consort 1995 - Bernard Hermann Film Music / Salonen 1996 - Alban Berg Chamber Concerto Boulez / Barenboim 1967 | Violin Concerto Boulez / Zukerman 1984 - Alec Wilder : Hansel & Gretel / Barbara Cook | Rudy Vallee 1958

Not shown: Friedrich Klose, Francisco Pujol & Alan Fluck

1453 – John Dunstaple [Dunstable] (English composer, astronomer, astrologer & mathematician)
1823 – Philipp Christoph Kayser (German pianist, composer & poet, friend of Goethe)
1862 – Joseph Funk (American music publisher, composer & teacher)
1898 – Eugeniusz Pankiewicz (Polish composer & pianist, brother of Józef)
1908 – François-Auguste Gevaert (Belgian composer & organist)
1930 – Oskar Nedbal (Czech violist, composer & conductor)
1932 – Eyvind Alnæs (Norwegian composer, pianist, organist & choirmaster)
1935 – Alban Berg (Austrian composer)
1941 – Siegfried Alkan (German composer)
1942 – Friedrich Klose (German composer)
1944 – Joseph Gustav Mraczek (Czech-born German composer & conductor)
1945 – Francisco Pujol (Spanish choirmaster, musicologist & composer)
1961 – Guy de Lioncourt (French composer)
1966 – Gaspar Cassadó i Moreu (Spanish cellist & composer)
1972 – César Geoffray (French composer, violinist & conductor)
1975 – Bernard Herrmann (American film & concert composer & conductor, associated in particular with the films of Alfred Hitchcock)
1980 – Alec Wilder (American multi-genre composer)
1980 – Siggie Nordstrom (American model, actress, socialite & lead singer of The Nordstrom Sisters)
1987 – Betty Noyes (American actress & singer, dubbed singing voice of Debbie Reynolds in Singin' in the Rain)
1992 – Bobby LaKind (American conga player, backup drummer, singer & songwriter, The Doobie Brothers)
1994 – Rossano Brazzi (Italian actor & singer, Three Coins in the Fountain, South Pacific)
1997 – Alan Fluck (English music teacher, Farnham Grammar School, pupils included Jeffrey Tate)
1997 – Anthea Joseph (English manager of London folk music venue The Troubadour & co-producer at Witchseason Productions)
2000 – Nick Massi (American bass singer & bass guitarist, The Four Seasons)
2002 – Luciano Chailly (Italian composer & music administrator in radio & television, father of Riccardo & Cecilia)
2002 – Jake Thackray (English folk singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet & journalist)
2006 – Braguinha aka João de Barro [Carlos Alberto Ferreira Braga] (Brazilian composer & singer of sambas & marchinhas)
2006 – Kenneth Sivertsen (Norwegian multi-genre composer, singer, guitarist, poet & comedian)
2010 – Eino Tamberg (Estonian composer)
2011 – Johannes Heesters (Dutch actor & singer)

Here we have some notable composers who worked in multiple genres... one of the all-time great film composers... and two important figures in the British folk-music renaissance of the 60s & 70s. But most prominently, we have the earliest truly great English composer; and the composer who more than any other represents the point of continuation between the Austro-German Romantic tradition that ended with Mahler and Strauss and the atonal modernism of the 20th century.

Both Dunstaple and Berg can be thought of as transitional composers. With Berg, it's easy to hear why. Berg's highly expressive 12-tone music recalls the overripe Romanticism of the late music of Mahler to a greater extent than does that of Schoenberg, and to a far greater extent than does that of Webern - those other two main representatives of the Second Viennese School.

With Dunstaple, one has to put on 14th- and 15-century ears to appreciate how his late-Medieval music anticipates an important feature of Renaissance music. In medieval Britain, musical practice had developed in a more independent fashion than it had on the continent, one salient result of this being that the interval of a 3rd is far more prevalent in it, lending it a greater sweetness than is found in French and Italian music of the period.

Starting in the late 14th century, that sweet sound of 3rds starts to catch on outside of England. As the decades wear on - and thanks in no small measure to the popularity of Dunstaple and other English composers of his day - we find more and more that those 3rds start being treated as stable sonorities. It's when the 3rd starts finally being admitted all over Europe as a true consonance alongside the perfect 5th and octave that we can say the transition from Medieval harmony to Renaissance harmony is complete. Or something like that.

10-04a: Schoenberg Erwartung | Pierrot Lunaire | Lied der Waldtaube / Boulez | Martin | Minton | Norman 1977-79

Arnold Schoenberg: Vision (Satire) - Oil on cardboard (undated).

As I promised earlier today, here's an extra post dedicated to the memory of Marie Gutheil-Schoder, the soprano who created the solitary role in the original production of Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1924. She was known in her day as not just a great opera singer, but as a great operatic actress. Gustav Mahler called her a musical genius. That's something that should certainly make you sit up and notice! Unfortunately, Gutheil-Schoder left behind only a very few recordings: a couple excerpts from Carmen, an aria from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and some duets from Tales of Hoffmann, all recorded in 1902. But her legacy did live on in the form of the great mezzo Risë Stevens, who was one of her students.

So, it's a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. You're feeling a great emptiness in your life... a vast, gaping hole, one that only post-Romantic Expressionist atonality can fill. You've come to the right place! (Read more below...)

09-26: Bartók Miraculous Mandarin | Music for Strings etc / Boulez - Baden Powell Solitude 1971 - The Audience With Betty Carter 1980 - Jonas Hellborg / Shawn Lane Zenhouse 1999 - Bessie Smith Empress of the Blues 1923-1933

1788 – François Bainville (French organist & composer)
1800 – William Billings (American choral composer & tanner)
1808 – Pavel Vranický [Paul Wranitzky] (Moravian composer & conductor, active in Austria)
1871 – Cipriani Potter (English composer, pianist & teacher)
1937 – Bessie Smith (American blues singer)
1944 – Ernst Isler (Swiss organist, pianist, composer & music critic)
1945 – Béla Bartók (Hungarian composer, pianist & folksong collector)
1968 – Władysław Kędra (Polish pianist)
1979 – Seymour Shifrin (American composer)
1983 – Tino Rossi (Corsican-born French cabaret singer & actor)
1989 – Hemanta Kumar Mukhopadhyay [হেমন্ত কুমার মুখোপাধ্যায়] (Indian singer & film composer, director & producer)
1991 – Billy Vaughn (American country, R&B & pop singer, multi-instrumentalist, orchestra leader, & A&R man for Dot Records)
1998 – Betty Carter (American jazz singer & songwriter)
2000 – Baden Powell [de Aquino] (Brazilian jazz & classical guitarist, composer & singer)
2003 – Shawn Lane (American rock & jazz guitarist & pianist, Black Oak Arkansas, Jonas Hellborg)
2003 – Robert Palmer (English rock, pop & R&B singer, songwriter & multi-instrumentalist)
2008 – Marc Moulin (Belgian jazz pianist, composer, journalist, humorist, economist, animator & radio producer)

Wow... what a bunch for today! A couple of amazing guitarists, a couple of amazing African-American women of song, a legendary Bengali singer & composer, a Corsican cabaret singer who made all the ladies swoon, a very talented Wallonian touche-à-tout, one of the great composers in early American history... and the greatest Hungarian composer of the 20th century!

Don't get any funny ideas, though... this is NOT a write-up. Like I said last time, it's gonna be boom-boom-boom for a few. And then some write-ups. "Boom-boom-boom"... do you know what that means? Of course you don't, all you readers from... everywhere in the world, including our first readers from Africa (the Sudan, to be specific - مرحبا! ترحيب !), who just showed up this past week. This is just a placeholder. One day, there will be an actual write-up here, and what you're reading now will be GONE... forever! Doesn't that make you feel sad? Tough shit. Oh, my. Did I use potty-mouth? Are you offended that I haven't classified this as an "adult" blog because of my foul language? Too fucking bad.

08-22: Ashford & Simpson Very Best of / Is It Still Good To Ya 1978 - The Knack Live in New York 1981 - Luc Ferrari Cycle Des Souvenirs - Ravel / Boulez Daphnis et Chloé ; La Valse

Pretty much chronological. Tagged image here.

1599 – Luca Marenzio (Italian madrigal composer)
1831 – John Joseph White (English composer)
1879 – Friedrich August Kummer (German cellist, oboist, teacher & composer)
1893 – Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (German sovereign & composer)
1901 – Gunnar Wennerberg Swedish poet, composer & politician)
1922 – Sofia Scalchi (Italian operatic alto/mezzo-soprano)
1942 – Henry Eichheim (American composer, conductor, violinist, organologist & ethnomusicologist)
1942 – Michel Fokine (Russian choreographer & dancer, Ballets Russes)
1951 – Georg Maikl (Austrian operatic tenor)
1966 – Apolinary Szeluto (Polish composer, pianist & lawyer)
1967 – Paola Novikova (Russian-born American soprano, taught Helen Donath & Nicolai Gedda)
1970 – Richard Frank Donovan (American organist & composer)
1976 – Gina Bachauer (Greek pianist)
1984 – Charles Whittenberg (American composer & teacher)
2000 – Rina Gigli (Italian operatic soprano)
2002 – Ernst-Theo Richter (German actor, director & baritone)
2003 – Imperio Argentina (Argentinian-born Spanish singer and actress)
2004 – Al Dvorin (American bandleader & talent agent, "Elvis has left the building.")
2005 – Luc Ferrari (French electroacoustic composer & pianist)
2006 – Bruce Gary (American rock drummer, The Knack)
2011 – Jerry Leiber (American lyricist, Leiber & Stoller, "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock", "Kansas City")
2011 – Nick Ashford (American R&B singer, songwriter & producer, Ashford & Simpson)

Still in ketchup mode. Check back next week for the full write-up. Since Nick Ashford just passed away, we'll be paying particular attention to Ashford & Simpson. Jerry Leiber also just passed - as you see above, that makes two noted Elvis associates now who've passed away within less than a week of the King's death anniversary.