11-27a: RODZINSKI / REEDER ROUNDUP! Mussorgsky | Tchaikovsky | Sibelius | Richard Strauss | Shostakovich AND MORE...

The main post for 11-27 will follow, but first here are a bunch of transfers of Columbia 78s featuring the work of Artur Rodziński (d. Nov. 27, 1958), all made by the trusty F. Reeder over at the Internet Archive. A few of these I believe we've seen already, but at least a couple dozen we haven't, and I found it too difficult to choose from them... so I'll leave that up to you!

Rodziński is most famous for his legendary decade with the Cleveland Orchestra, from 1933 to 1943. Much of the credit usually given to the tyrannical George Szell for transforming that orchestra into the world-class organization it is today should really be reserved for Rodziński; for without the prior groundwork he laid the Clevelanders would not have been up to Szell's exacting demands. Rodziński also had four great seasons in New York with the Philharmonic, and as guest conductor for Toscanini's NBC Symphony, which Rodziński had helped to organize in 1936–37.

Rodziński's later years, first in New York, and then in an abortive stint at the Chicago Symphony in 1947–48, were characterized by a lot of personal wrangling with orchestra management. His reputation as a conductor was such that his resignation from the New York Philharmonic was actually a cover story for Time magazine in February 1947:

After Chicago, Rodziński had no further long-term positions in his career; he did do quite a bit of freelance work, especially in the opera pit, both in the United States and in Europe. And it's perhaps because of this somewhat sour end to his professional life that he isn't remembered as well as some of his contemporaries, even though he was certainly at least their equal as a musician.

He was tall; he used a big baton; he preferred brisk tempi; he was renowned wherever he mounted the podium for his muscular yet refined interpretations. Enjoy these recordings by this too-little-lauded master of the orchestra!

11-16: DJ Screw Chapter 70 : Endonesia 1997 - Quicksilver Messenger Service Fillmore West 1971 - Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus 1956 - Richard Strauss Vier letzte Lieder : Popp / Tilson Thomas 1993

1628 – Paolo Quagliati (Italian composer & organist)
1667 – Nathaniel Schnittelbach (German composer & violinist)
1775 – Marian Paradeiser (Austrian composer)
1924 – Alexander Arkhangelsky [Алекса́ндр Арха́нгельский] (Russian composer & conductor)
1935 – Kurt Schindler (German-born American composer & conductor)
1984 – Vic Dickenson (American jazz trombonist)
1987 – Zubir Said (Indonesian-born Singaporean composer)
1993 – Lucia Popp (Slovakian soprano)
1994 – Dino Valente [Chet Powers] (American rock singer, songwriter & guitarist, Quicksilver Messenger Service)
2000 – Ahmet Kaya (Kurdish singer, Bağlama player, composer & poet)
2000 – DJ Screw (American hiphop DJ, "The Originator" of Chopped and Screwed technique)
2000 – Joe C. [Joseph Calleja] (American rapper, associate of Kid Rock)
2001 – Tommy Flanagan (American jazz pianist)
2007 – Grethe Kausland (Norwegian actress & singer)

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)

11-02b: Mahler 6 "Tragic" Mitropoulos 1959 - Decapitated : Winds of Creation 2000 - Mississippi John Hurt 1928 - Berlioz Romeo & Juiliette | Debussy La Mer | Strauss Dance of 7 Veils / Mitropolous

1960 – Dimitri Mitropoulos (Greek conductor and composer)
1962 – Felice Lattuada (Italian composer)
1966 – Mississippi John Hurt (American blues singer & guitarist)
1968 – Ernst Hess (Swiss composer)
1991 – Fran Stevens (American singer & actress)
1994 – Pete Pitterson (Jamaican-born British jazz trumpeter)
1996 – Eva Cassidy (American roots-music singer & pianist)
2007 – Vitek Kiełtyka (Polish death metal drummer, Decapitated)
2011 – Sickan Carlsson (Swedish actress & singer)

No, cause of death does not generally figure into our lists around here. Vitek Kiełtyka was killed in a car accident, but he was not decapitated. That was the name of the band he drummed for. When Decapitated recorded their first album, Vitek was just 15 years old.

Somebody once said that Beethoven's symphonies are all different from each other, while Mahler's symphonies are different from all others. Well, what a crock of crap. It makes it sound like all Mahler's symphonies are similar to each other, as compared to Beethoven's symphonies. That's an evaluation that might fit a symphonist like Bruckner, but not Mahler. Mahler's symphonies are in some ways radically different from one another. It's hard to imagine, for instance, that two symphonies more different from one another than his 3rd and 4th could come from the pen of the same composer.

And so, Mahlerstodfest 1911–2011 continues. We've heard all now but symphonies nos. 7, 9, and today's offering, 6. So, what makes the 6th so special, as compared, say, to the 5th and the 7th? Well, the comparison is quite apposite, in fact. Mahler's 5th and 7th are both progressive, rhapsodic, "modernistic" works, and both are in five movements. Both begin and end in keys that are relatively remote from one another, given what one expects from a symphony. And both represent the transition from darkness to light whose symphonic expression was first and most famously manifest in Beethoven's 5th Symphony. And in fact they're in some ways the two Mahler symphonies that are most similar to one another.

The 6th is not like those at all. It seems, viewed from a distance, like a "normal," "conventional" symphony. It both begins and ends in the same key, A minor. It's in the traditional four movements. Only, the movements are massive. And they're played by a massive orchestra, the largest Mahler was ever to use for one of his purely instrumental symphonies. There are about 20 each of woodwind and brass instruments (as compared to only 14 of each for the 5th), and a very large percussion section that includes an infamous large non-metallic hammer which strikes two or three blows (depending on the conductor's preference - Mitropoulos does three, and makes the third the loudest) during the finale. The exact implement used for this is not specified by Mahler, and is generally improvised for any given performance; however, something like this is what one often finds:

What is Mahler's 6th symphony "about," then? Well, from its subtitle, "Tragic," we know from the outset that this symphony is going to be a huge downer. And it is! Quite devastatingly so! It's the apotheosis of tragedy itself - a grandiose orchestral catharsis that leaves one drained and pale, 80 minutes later, from a roller-coaster ride of emotions that culminate in the merciless, inexorable destiny of a final and irreversible defeat. Enjoy!

(Oh, and don't miss out on Mississippi John - the sweetest damned country-folk blues you ever did hear!)

10-27a: Ginette Neveu : Debussy, Ravel, Richard Strauss, Chausson, Suk et al 1938-1948 - Johann Gottlieb Graun Concertos / Haselböck 2005

1771 – Johann Gottlieb Graun (German composer & violinist)
1781 – Herman-François Delange (Belgian violinist & composer)
1796 – Anton Stamitz [Antonín Stamic] (German-Czech composer & violinist, brother of Carl [Karel])
1822 – Christian Frederich Gottlieb Schwencke (German composer, pianist, organist, music editor & church musician)
1833 – Ferdinand Fränzl (German violinist, composer, conductor & opera director)
1848 – Alexander Egorovich Varlamov [Александр Егорович Варламов] (Russian composer)
1864 – Andreas Randel (Swedish composer & violinist)
1925 – Wilhelm Gericke (Austrian conductor & composer, active in Vienna & Boston, Mass.)
1933 – Julius Klengel (German cellist & composer)
1940 – Fini Valdemar Henriques (Danish composer & violinist)
1943 – Béla Reinitz (Hungarian composer & music critic)
1949 – Ginette Neveu (French violinist)
1949 – Jean-Paul Neveu (French pianist)

Well, it looks like it's Le Jour du Violon here at Yestermonth. I can't recall having seen so many prominent fiddlers on the list (this is only half of it, of course - yes, it's another two-fer today), and there's a cellist to boot. And so that violinist we think of the most on October 27th–28th is in very good company, if that expression can be used for something as heartbreaking as the loss of a great and promising young artist.

Ginette Neveu might well be remembered as one of the supreme players of the violin in the past century, had her life not been cut so cruelly short, at the age of 30, when her plane went down in the Azores in 1949, as she embarked on a tour of the Americas. And as if that were not terrible enough, the tragedy went double for the Neveu family, since Ginette's accompanist Jean-Paul, who was also her brother, was on board the aircraft as well.

And perhaps we can find some symbolic significance in the location of the air disaster, in that very part of the ocean where the legendary continent of Atlantis has traditionally been said to have lain (if one takes Plato's account of it literally). For with the stuff of legends, we naturally touch on questions of what was, and what might have been, and what still could be today, had so-and-so occurred or not occurred. A little food for thought, especially for any of you Americans out there who didn't get quite enough to eat during yesterday's Thanksgiving pig-out feast...

10-16a: Sweelinck: Keyboard Music Koopman 1981 - Bantock The Cyprian Goddess etc. Handley 1995 - Benny Goodman Together Again! 1963 - Puccini Manon Lescaut : Tebaldi / Del Monaco 1954 - Strauss Till Eulenspiegel Gui 1947

1621 – Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (Dutch composer, teacher & organist, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam)
1655 – Joseph Solomon Delmedigo [ישר מקנדיא] (Crete-born Italian rabbi, author, physician, mathematician & music theorist, active in Europe & North Africa)
1750 – Sylvius Leopold Weiss (German composer & lutenist)
1814 – Juan José Landaeta (Venezuelan composer)
1893 – Carlo Pedrotti (Italian conductor & composer)
1920 – Alberto Nepomuceno (Brazilian composer, pianist, organist & conductor)
1946 – Sir Granville Bantock (English composer & conductor)
1949 – Hale Ascher VanderCook (American composer, conductor, cornettist & teacher, founder of VanderCook College of Music)
1959 – Minor Hall (American jazz drummer)
1973 – Gene Krupa (American jazz drummer & composer)
1975 – Vittorio Gui (Italian conductor)
1982 – Mario Del Monaco (Italian dramatic tenor)

October 16th wasn't a very good day for jazz drummers, was it? We just said goodbye to Art Blakely in edition 10-16b, and here in 10-16a we have Minor Hall, a major (heh) New Orleans drummer, who played with Kid Ory, among others, and Gene Krupa, almost surely the greatest drummer of the Big Band/Swing era, who's most famous for his work in the Benny Goodman orchestra, and his highly energetic, almost frenetic style of playing.

We also have Sweelinck, one of the most important keyboard composers active around 1600; Mario Del Monaco, one of the greatest operatic dramatic tenors of the 20th century; a couple of quite notable South American composers; Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, who sounds like a very interesting figure I must get to know better; and Granville Bantock, who provides an interesting comparison with Kaikhosru Sorabji, whom we only just remembered on the 10-15 edition.

For both composers were British and had a spiritual and aesthetic affinity with the East, but Sorabji also had ethnic roots there, while Bantock did not. For him, the legends of those exotic lands, which he toured briefly as a young man while conducting a musical comedy troupe, simply held a special fascination that stuck with him his entire life, and which permeates many of his works, most famously his epic choral work Omar Khayyám, based on the Rubaiyat of that 11th-century Persian poet.

Okay, so there's your write-up. Happy? Oh, I also moved the Follow & Subscribe gadgets to a more convenient place on the page. I think I may monetize the blog soon, so expect to see the place plastered with Donate buttons. I spend a lot of time working on this place, you know.

09-08: More Moondog 1956 | Story of Moondog 1957 - Gesualdo Madrigals / Christie - Alex North Spartacus 1960 - Beethoven Missa Solemnis Toscanini 1940 - Strauss Elektra Kleiber 1971

1613 – Don Carlo Gesualdo (Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer & murderer of his wife & her lover)
1637 – Robert Fludd (English mystic & doctor, debater with Johannes Kepler over harmonic theory of universe)
1706 – Romanus Weichlein (Austrian monk & composer)
1819 – Franz Stanislaus Spindler (German singer & composer)
1831 – John Aitken (Scottish-born American music publisher, silversmith, goldsmith & jeweler)
1838 – Pietro Rovelli (Italian violinist & composer)
1871 – Étienne-Joseph Soubre (Belgian composer)
1879 – Nikolai Zaremba (Russian music theorist & composer, teacher of Tchaikovsky)
1894 – Hermann von Helmholtz (German physician, physicist, psychologist & acoustician)
1899 – Václav Hugo Zavrtal (Czech conductor, composer & collector of Mozartiana)
1916 – Friedrich Baumfelder (German composer, conductor & pianist)
1917 – Charles-Édouard Lefebvre (French composer, pupil of Gounod, son of painter Charles Lefebvre)
1944 – Jan van Gilse (Dutch composer, conductor, pianist & organizer on behalf of Dutch composers)
1949 – Richard Strauss (German composer & conductor)
1960 – Jussi Björling (Swedish tenor)
1974 – Wolfgang Windgassen (German operatic Heldentenor)
1976 – Assen Karastoyanov (Bulgarian composer, conductor, teacher & writer on music)
1976 – Joaquín Zamacois i Soler (Chilean-born Spanish composer, teacher & writer on music)
1977 – Zero Mostel (American actor of stage, screen & musical theater)
1978 – Pancho Vladigerov (Bulgarian composer, teacher & pianist)
1984 – René Bernier (Belgian composer & teacher)
1991 – Jo Budie (Dutch Schlager orchestra leader)
1991 – Alex North (American soundtrack & stage composer)
1995 – Erich Kunz (Austrian operatic bass-baritone)
1997 – Derek Taylor (English journalist, writer, publicist & press officer for The Beatles)
1999 – Moondog [Louis Thomas Hardin] (American composer, street musician, poet & instrument inventor)

Well... I'm really sorry. I'm now 8 days behind. I really would need at least 2 or 3 other people working on this blog with me to be able to keep up with it the way I want to. Perhaps that will happen one day, but in the meantime, I'll have to make some changes around here. In the future, I'm going to be limiting my lists to just the most prominent figures on any given day - I hate to set an exact limit, but it will probably be in the area of 12 to 18 persons at the very most. It's kind of a shame, because I think some of the more obscure figures often have the most interesting stories surrounding them, but it really can't be helped. Further, the number of downloads will be curtailed a bit as well, to probably no more than 3 or 4 per day.

There's also something else. I'm going to be going out of town for about a week, so this blog will be on hiatus for about 8 or 9 days. When I return, probably on September 27th, I'll be doing a roundup of all the days up to that point that haven't been covered, i.e., Sep. 9th thru 26th - a period of 18 days! I'll be choosing just the very most famous musicians from each day - no more than 2 or 3 for any given day - it'll be a big post, possibly in several parts. Either tomorrow or the day after I'll be devoting a post specifically to an announcement of the hiatus...

So anyway... some very important musicians for September 8th. Two notable Bulgarian composers, curiously enough... perhaps the passings of Мистър Karastoyanov and Мистър Vladigerov had something to do with the a little overindulgence on September 6th, Unification Day, which marks the ceding of Eastern Rumelia to Bulgaria in 1885? In any case, among the truly famous musicians on our list is Moondog, the Viking of 6th Avenue, an eccentric street musician and an icon in the world of "outsider music," a kindred spirit, in a way, to both Harry Partch and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, also building his own instruments as they did - and doing so blind, as Kirk did - who managed to get married, land a record deal on Prestige, and become a famous musician with an impressive cult following, all while he was intentionally living as a homeless man on the streets of New York City. He's a legend who continues to inspire to this very day... (Read more below)

Then there's Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, a composer of many madrigals and a fair amount of sacred music, who employed very daring chromaticism in his later works (which has attracted the interest of many 20th-century musicians, especially Igor Stravinsky), and who was also the most infamous murderer in music history (unless you count Charles Manson as a musician). Gesualdo suspected his first wife of infidelity, and managed to catch her and the Duke of Andria in the act, after having pretended to go away on a journey. With the help of his servants, he stabbed them both numerous times with both knives and swords, and shot the Duke in the head. Afterward, he displayed their mutilated bodies outside his palace, with the Duke given the further humiliation of being dressed in Signora Gesualdo's nightgown. Gesualdo, being a nobleman, was immune from prosecution for his crimes, but he kept a crew of bodyguards around him for the remainder of his life to protect him from any revenge the families of his victims might seek. Interesting... Cecil Gray and Philip Heseltine (a.k.a Peter Warlock) wrote a book in 1926 called Carlo Gesualdo Prince of Venosa, in which they detailed the police reports from the time, which make for gruesome reading even today. And guess what, Cecil Gray's deathday is just one day after Gesualdo's, on September 9th... (Read more below) ... see you on the other side of the crime scene ribbon...

08-14: Strauss Zarathustra Böhm - Hawkwind Windsor Free Festival 1973 - Drowning Pool Sinner

Ordered chronologically. Trouble identifying them? Click here for a somewhat tagged image.

1587 – Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (Italian patron of Palestrina & de Wert)
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.