01-08a: Carter Family 1927-1929 - Corelli 12 Concerti Grossi Op 6 / Sardelli 1999 - Puccini : Tosca / Tebaldi | Tucker | Warren | Mitropoulos 1956 - Bohemian Wind Music : Smetana | Krommer | Triebensee / Deutschen Kammerphilharmonie 2001

Not shown: Jacobus Vaet, Giovanni Battista Gagliano, Michaël de Ronghe & Christian Gottlob Saupe

1567 – Jacobus Vaet (Franco-Flemish composer)
1651 – Giovanni Battista Gagliano (Italian composer)
1696 – Michaël de Ronghe (Flemish composer)
1713 – Arcangelo Corelli (Italian composer & violinist)
1819 – Christian Gottlob Saupe (German composer)
1831 – Franz Krommer [František Kramář] (Czech composer, violinist & organist)
1864 – Victor-Charles-Paul Dourlen (French composer & teacher, winner of 1805 Prix de Rome)
1890 – Giorgio Ronconi (Italian operatic baritone, created roles in seven Donizetti operas)
1891 – Fredrik Pacius (German composer & conductor, active in Finland)
1921 – Luis Villalba Muñoz ["Mauricio"] (Spanish Augustian friar, composer & author)
1926 – Émile Paladilhe (French composer & pianist, winner of 1860 Prix de Rome)
1928 – Dumitru Kiriac-Georgescu (Romanian composer, conductor & teacher)
1937 – Felix Körling (Swedish composer, organist, choirmaster & teacher)
1942 – Catharinus Elling (Norwegian organist, folk music collector, composer & teacher)
1942 – Arvo Hannikainen (Finnish violinist & composer)
1948 – Richard Tauber (Austrian tenor)
1953 – Heinrich Kaspar Schmid (German composer)
1965 – Aloÿs Fornerod (Swiss composer, pupil of Vincent d'Indy)
1970 – Georges Guibourg [Georgius, Theodore Crapulet] (French singer, songwriter, novelist, playwright & actor)
1971 – Adriano Lualdi (Italian composer & conductor)
1975 – Richard Tucker (American tenor)
1979 – Sara Carter (American country, folk & gospel singer & autoharpist, the Carter Family)

I should have had Émile Paladilhe on January the 6th, but here he is anyway. Paladilhe, at 16 (which looks to be how old he was when the above portrait was made), was the youngest composer ever to win the Prix de Rome, and he was for a time the lover of mezzo Célestine Galli-Marié (creator of the title role in Carmen), so it seemed unthinkable to omit him.

Some famous opera singers are on the list too, including two of the greatest tenors of the 20th century. And there's a famous singer from the early history of country music, Sara Carter, whose style influenced a whole slew of artists from Kitty Wells to Loretta Lynn. But the big-wig for the day is Arcangelo Corelli, whose unbelievably tidy corpus of 72 works (48 trio sonatas, 12 sonatas for violin and continuo, and 12 concerti grossi, all falling into 6 opus numbers of 12 works each) had a greater influence on the instrumental music of the late Baroque than that of any other composer. Throw in a few Nordic notables, and it's another full half-day around here! How soon do you think it will be before we're three months behind?

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!)

09-17: Mahler DLvdE Klemperer 1967 - Jimmy Yancey 1940 - Mozart Requiem Messner 1950 - Hildegard von Bingen Sponsa Regis 2009 - Kabeláč Symphony 8 Neumann - Prokofiev Concerto 2 Francescatti 1952

1179 – Hildegard von Bingen (German abbess, composer & author)
1762 – Francesco Geminiani (Italian violinist, composer & music theorist)
1803 – Franz Xaver Süssmayr (Austrian composer, Mozart's copyist & friend, completed Requiem K.626)
1884 – Louis Schubert (German violinist, teacher & composer)
1907 – Ignaz Brüll (Austrian pianist & composer)
1951 – Jimmy Yancey (American blues & jazz pianist, composer & lyricist)
1960 – José [Josep] Sancho Marraco (Spanish composer & church musician)
1966 – Fritz Wunderlich (German lyric tenor)
1973 – Hugo Winterhalter (American easy listening arranger, composer & conductor)
1979 – Miloslav Kabeláč (Czech composer, conductor & pianist)
1982 – Manos Loïzos (Egyptian-born Greek composer & guitarist of Cypriot descent)
1988 – Hilde Gueden [Güden] (Austrian lyric soprano)
1991 – Zino Francescatti (French violinist)
1992 – Roger Wagner (American choral conductor & teacher)
1994 – John Delafose (American zydeco accordionist, composer, fiddler & bandleader)
1996 – Jessie Hill (American blues & R&B singer & songwriter, "Ooh Poo Pah Doo")
1999 – Frankie Vaughan (English pop & easy listening singer)
2005 – Alfred Reed (American composer & conductor)

Write-up pending... the goods are below, though :>

BACH / STOKOWSKI BONUS ! Orchestral Transcriptions (plus more space for The Dead and Dying)

The fine transfer work of F. Reeder at the Internet Archive. Half of these 10 tracks are Stokowski transcriptions, performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The remainder are the work of Frederick Stock & Fritz Reiner with Chicago, Dimitri Mitropoulos with Minneapolis, and Pierre Monteux with San Francisco:

J. S. Bach: Transcriptions for Orchestra

If you've reached this post looking for Felix Mendelssohn, Camille Saint-Saëns, Alexander Glazunov, Antonín Dvořák, or Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, I have some bad news for you: they're dead! But you can find some of their music here:

Stokowski Sampler