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)

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.

10-01: Buffalo Springfield Huntington Beach 1967 - John Blow Venus & Adonis Jacobs 1999 - Booker T & the MG's Greatist Hits 1970 - Roy Harris Symphony 3 : Koussevitsky 1939 | Hanson 1955 + Hanson Symphony 4

1602 – Hernando de Cabezón (Spanish organist & composer)
1609 – Giammatteo [Gian Matteo] Asola (Italian composer, priest & music director)
1708 – John Blow (English composer, organist & choirmaster
1770 – Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (French composer & violinist)
1876 – Henri Jérôme Bertini (English-born French composer & pianist)
1912 – Mary Frances Allitsen (English composer)
1920 – Vladimir Rebikov [Влади́мир Ре́биков] (Russian composer & pianist)
1927 – Wilhelm Harteveld (Swedish composer & musicologist)
1964 – Ernst Toch (Austrian concert & film composer & author, active in France, England & the United States)
1970 – Petar Konjović [Петар Коњовић] (Serbian composer & conductor)
1970 – Hans Poser (German composer, pianist & teacher)
1975 – Al Jackson, Jr. (American R&B & funk drummer, producer & songwriter, Booker T. & the MG's)
1979 – Roy Harris (American composer)
1994 – Scott Dunbar (American blues singer & guitarist)
1996 – Joonas Kokkonen (Finnish composer)
1998 – Pauline Julien (Canadian pop singer, songwriter, actress, feminist activist & Quebec sovereigntist)
1999 – Lena Zavaroni (Scottish singer, child star & television host)
2000 – Robert Allen (American pop pianist & songwriter)
2004 – Bruce Palmer (Canadian rock bass guitarist, Buffalo Springfield)
2007 – Ronnie Hazlehurst (English television theme-song composer & conductor)
2008 – Nick Reynolds (American folk singer, tenor guitarist, drummer & songwriter, The Kingston Trio)

Well... I was wondering if I would ever get through the month of September. But here we are, finally, at October... now that November is just around the corner! I wonder if any of you out there truly appreciate what a burden I've imposed on myself with this montrosity of a weblog. But, it's a labor of love... so I can't complain... (he says while complaining...)

There are two quite-obscure musicians by the name of Scott Dunbar. One of them, pictured below, is still alive. He's a 20-something (or perhaps 30-something - it's not so easy to tell with that layer of dirt covering him) busker from Canada, who lives and works on the streets of Montreal. Yes, a busker... a street musician.

He bills himself as a "one-man band," but he isn't quite the elaborately instrument-encumbered, perambulating specimen that term generally evokes.

However, he does sing and play some pretty mean accordion, guitar, broiler pan, and suitcase kick-drum.

The other Scott Dunbar was a fisherman, tour guide, and country blues singer and guitarist, who was born in Mississippi in 1904. That's him in the collage, between Roy Harris and Joonas Kokkonen. I just want to be sure you Quebecers out there realize that "one-man-band" Scott Dunbar is still alive and still out there, waiting for your loonies and toonies... so give generously... give 'til it hurts! So, maybe this guy can get a hot meal... and maybe even a bar of soap. Et tandis que j'ai l'attention de vous Québécoises, mes condoléances au sujet de Pauline Julien aussi bien.

There are just too many of these musicians to talk about today. Some fascinating Brits... John Blow, who wrote what's considered the first opera in English (although he called it a "masque"), Venus & Adonis... a fine 19th- and early 20th-century composer by the name of Mary Frances Allitsen... Scottish child star Lena Zavaroni, whose life was cut short by the terrible affliction of anorexia nervosa... and Ronnie Hazlehurst, who wrote the theme and incidental music for such television comedies as Are You Being Served?, The Last of the Summer Wine, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, To The Manor Born, and Yes Minister. I'd never seen a photo of Ronnie Hazlehurst before, and somehow he looks exactly like his music made me imagine he would.

I've already mentioned Joonas Kokkonen and Roy Harris. Kokkonen is certainly one of the very most important Finnish composers after Jean Sibelius. Interestingly enough, Sibelius is a meaningful point of departure for Harris, as well. This is because Harris's most famous work, his 3rd Symphony (1939), is in a single continuous multi-sectional movement, just as Sibelius's 7th and final symphony (1924) had been.

The 1st Symphony (1936) of another great American composer, Samuel Barber, had similarly taken the one-movement plan of the Sibelius 7th as its formal model. But with his 3rd, Harris hit upon something so potent and powerful, many people soon began referring to it as "The Great American Symphony" (just as the world of literature had its contenders for "The Great American Novel.")

Some explanation is in order. In the first two decades of the 20th century, American composers (with the exception of a few isolated geniuses, most notably Charles Ives) were still basically mimicking their European counterparts. Many of them were writing good, solid music, but most of it didn't sound particularly "American," and in fact most people weren't exactly sure what "sounding American" would or should mean. Then, after the Great War ended, things began to change. A new generation of American composers was coming of age, and its members would be the first to truly put homegrown American concert music on the map, to answer the question of what "American" sounded like, and to inform the world that America too had great, original composers who were the equal of the best that Europe had to offer.

Ironically, it was through studying in Europe that many of these young Americans began to make their mark. A major catalyst in the movement was Nadia Boulanger, who was appointed in 1921 to the faculty of the Conservatoire Américain, a summer school at Fontainebleau Palace in Paris. Beginning with Aaron Copland, a long string of American composers went to Paris to study counterpoint, harmony, and composition with Boulanger. The many other Americans who studied with Boulanger at Fontainebleu over the years included Walter Piston, Louise Talma, Quincy Jones, Donald Byrd, Joe Raposo, Ned Rorem, David Diamond, Marc Blitzstein, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, Donald Grantham, Virgil Thomson (whom we remembered only just yesterday), and yes, Roy Harris. Thomson once quipped that every town in America had a five-and-dime and a Boulanger pupil.

Under Boulanger, an emphasis was placed on the study of Renaissance and Baroque music, while at the same time the various rhythmic and harmonic innovations of Igor Stravinsky, in particular, were presented as examples of the best that new music had to offer. Boulanger also encouraged her American students to find inspiration in the emerging jazz and blues of their own country. Composers, above all, were encouraged to discover and explore their own personal artistic voice.

Where I'm headed with this is that the writing, in particular, of symphonies by American composers was a phenomenon peculiar to the 1930s and 40s, one that was associated largely with Boulanger's students, and their students. In the Europe of the time, the writing of symphonies had fallen somewhat out of fashion: Europeans had been writing symphonies for almost 200 years, and after the mammoth and definitive statements by Bruckner and Mahler, many composers considered it to be somewhat of a worn-out genre. But for Americans, it was on the contrary quite natural that through the writing of the symphony - which had been associated since at least as early as 1800 with the very most serious and weighty statements a composer could make using the orchestra as medium - that they would announce that they were here, and that they had finally come into their own on the world stage.

And so finally that brings us to Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3, composed in 1938 and '39. When it appeared, critics recognized it almost immediately as one of the definitive statements in the genre yet by an American, one that packed an extraordinary emotional punch and rigourous heft into its 20-minute duration. More than anything else, this was music that sounded quintessentially American... one could not possibly mistake it for the work of a composer from any other nation. Harris's very personal and frankly virile style (a style whose influence can be clearly heard in the music of his student, William Schuman) encapsulated perfectly the so-called "rugged individualism" of American life, and the hardship and wide-open spaces of the prairie. Moreover, it did so while avoiding almost all of the jejune jazziness and cornball cowboyisms to which Copland's music of this same period is sometimes prone. Instead, what one found were lushly textured harmonies, long, rough-hewn melodic lines, powerful orchestration, and an arresting sense of the dramatic.

And so, why the Sibelius 7th? Why did that particular work inspire not only the Harris 3rd, but the Barber 1st as well, during this period when American composers were asserting their relevance? Well, in the context of what I've already told you, that should be plain. With his 7th and last symphony, Sibelius officially brought the great Romantic symphonic tradition to a close - that symphony, really and truly, is where it ends. By taking it as their formal starting place, Barber and Harris were saying, "WE now claim this tradition. WE pick up where it left off. The European symphonic tradition - now a global symphonic tradition - continues."

Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 is in five continuous sections, marked Tragic, Lyrical, Pastoral, Fugue - Dramatic, and Dramatic-Tragic. The symphony was premiered in 1939 by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who made its premier recording for Victor that same year.

Read more...

09-16: T. Rex Chicago 1972 - Tosca Callas Bergonzi 1964 - Victor Jara Pongo... 1969 - Rose Royce Car Wash 1976 - Arias for Farinelli : Genaux / Jacobs 2008

1696 – Lambert Pietkin (Belgian composer & organist, Liège Cathedral)
1782 – Farinelli (Italian castrato)
1896 – Antônio Carlos Gomes (Brazilian composer, 1st from Americas to be widely played in Europe)
1945 – John McCormack (Irish tenor)
1965 – Ahn Eak-tai (Korean composer & conductor)
1973 – Víctor Jara (Chilean teacher, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter, guitarist & political activist)
1977 – Marc Bolan (English rock & folk singer-songwriter, guitarist & poet, T. Rex)
1977 – Maria Callas (Greek-American operatic soprano sfogato)
1993 – František Jílek (Czech conductor)
2005 – Harry Freedman [Henryk Frydmann] (Polish-born Canadian composer, English hornist & teacher)
2008 – Norman Whitfield (American R&B songwriter & producer, Motown Records)
2009 – Ernst Märzendorfer (Austrian conductor)
2009 – Mary Travers (American folk singer, Peter, Paul and Mary)


Wikipedia:

[Víctor] Jara was deeply influenced by the folklore of Chile and other Latin American countries; he was particularly influenced by artists like Violeta Parra, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and the poet Pablo Neruda. Jara began his foray into folklore in the mid-1950s when he began singing with the group Cuncumen. He moved more decisively into music in the 1960s getting the opportunity to sing at Santiago's La Peña de Los Parra, owned by Ángel Parra. Through them Jara became greatly involved in the Nueva Canción movement of Latin American folk music. He published his first recording in 1966 and, by 1970, had left his theater work in favor of a career in music. His songs were drawn from a combination of traditional folk music and left-wing political activism. From this period, some of his most renowned songs are Plegaria a un Labrador ("Prayer to a Worker") and Te Recuerdo Amanda ("I Remember You Amanda"). He supported the Unidad Popular ("Popular Unity") coalition candidate Salvador Allende for the presidency of Chile, taking part in campaigning, volunteer political work, and playing free concerts.

Allende's campaign was successful and, in 1970, he was elected president of Chile. However, the Chilean right wing, who opposed Allende's socialist politics, staged a coup with the help of the Chilean military on September 11, 1973, in the course of which Allende was killed (See Death of Salvador Allende). At the moment of the coup, Jara was on the way to the Technical University (today Universidad de Santiago), where he was a teacher. That night he slept at the university along with other teachers and students, and sang to raise morale.

On the morning of September 12, Jara was taken, along with thousands of others, as a prisoner to the Chile Stadium (renamed the Estadio Víctor Jara in September 2003). In the hours and days that followed, many of those detained in the stadium were tortured and killed there by the military forces. Jara was repeatedly beaten and tortured; the bones in his hands were broken as were his ribs. Fellow political prisoners have testified that his captors mockingly suggested that he play guitar for them as he lay on the ground with broken hands. Defiantly, he sang part of "Venceremos" (We Will Win), a song supporting the Popular Unity coalition. After further beatings, he was machine-gunned on September 16, his body dumped on a road on the outskirts of Santiago and then taken to a city morgue where they found 44 bullet shots on his body.

File under the "That could never happen here" category.