01-14a: Joaquin Turina Orchestral Music / Batiz 1983 - Jeanette MacDonald 1929-1934 - Francesco Cavalli : Artemisia / La Venexiana 2011 - Stephen Heller Late Piano Works / Meyer-Hermann 1998

Not shown: Michael Arne & Francesco D'Arcais

1676 – Francesco Cavalli (Italian composer & organist))
1761 – Denis-François Tribou (French haute-contre (tenor) who sang in premieres of several Rameau operas)
1786 – Michael Arne (English composer, harpsichordist, organist, singer & actor, son of Thomas Arne & Cecilia Young)
1817 – Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (French opera composer & violinist)
1888 – Stephen Heller [Heller István] (Hungarian composer & pianist)
1889 – Ilma de Murska [Ema Pukšec] (Croatian coloratura soprano)
1890 – Francesco D'Arcais (Italian composer & music critic)
1935 – Heinrich Schenker (Ukrainian-born Austrian music theorist & musicologist, inventor of Schenkerian analysis)
1943 – Adolf Sandberger (German musicologist & composer, 16th-century specialist)
1945 – Vándor Sándor (Hungarian composer & conductor, perished at Sopron)
1949 – Joaquín Turina (Spanish composer, teacher & music critic)
1952 – Artur Kapp (Estonian composer & organist)
1961 – Henry Geehl (English pianist, composer & conductor)
1965 – Jeanette MacDonald (American actress & singer)
1967 – Renato Lunelli (Italian organist, composer, musicologist & organ builder)
1971 – Ethel Glenn Hier (American composer & pianist)
1978 – Robert Heger (German conductor & composer)
1984 – Paul Ben-Haim [פאול בן חיים] (German-born Israeli composer & conductor)
1986 – Daniel Balavoine (French pop & world music singer, songwriter, guitarist & keyboardist)

Heinrich Schenker is probably the most misunderstood music theorist who ever lived. An example of the analytical technique which he developed (although I don't believe this analysis is actually by him) is shown below. In the example, the bottom system shows the first 16 measures of the aria "Leise, Leise, fromme Weise" from Weber's opera Der Freischütz. In Schenkerian terms, this is what would be called the "foreground" in the musical analysis. Just above that is what would be called a "shallow middleground" analysis of this music, and finally at the top is a "deep middleground" analytical sketch:

It would take many pages for me to explain all that is going on here. I'll just say that the misunderstandings about what Schenker was up to probably stem largely from the fact that he uses many of the symbols of familiar musical notation in his analyses (along with other symbols of his own invention). It has led many to incorrectly believe that Schenker's technique is about showing you which notes are "more important" than others. That it's about "getting rid of notes." That it's saying that a piece of music is "really" something much simpler than what it appears to be on the surface. Schenkerian analysis isn't any of those things.

What it is is a theory of organic form and of a longer-range way of listening. It shows how foreground structures can be construed as elaborations of simpler and simpler structures as one proceeds through various stages of middleground, until one finally reaches the simplest and least adorned structure in the background. This background structure in no way "replaces" the piece. It merely shows how the large-scale form of the piece is unified, in its harmony and voice-leading. It is elaborations upon elaborations of these simplest of harmonic and voice-leading structures that finally result in the foreground structures of the piece itself.

It's okay if none of that made any sense to you. Aside from professional music theorists, almost nobody gets it very well. The first time he ever saw a Schenkerian sketch, as brilliant a mind as Arnold Schoenberg said "All my favorite parts are missing."

08-18: New Orleans Rhythm Kings 1922-1923 - Elmer Bernstein The Magnificent Seven 1960 - Monteverdi Fifth Book of Madrigals La Venexiana

Ordered chronologically. Tagged image here.

1613 – Giovanni Artusi (Italian music theorist, writer, polemicist & composer)
1811 – Johann Heinrich Zang (German cantor, organist, mosaic painter, composer & writer)
1853 – Peter Lichtenthal (Austrian musician, lexicographer & biographer of Niccolò Paganini)
1894 – William Charles Levey (Irish conductor, composer & pianist)
1896 – Frederick Crouch (English composer & cellist)
1942 – Erwin Schulhoff (Czech composer & pianist, perished at Wülzburg concentration camp)
1949 – Paul Mares (American jazz cornetist, trumpeter & bandleader, New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
1957 – Wawrzyniec Żuławski (Polish mountaineer, teacher, composer, music critic & musicologist)
1968 – Cy Walter (American jazz & café society pianist)
1969 – Laci Boldemann (Swedish composer, conductor & pianist)
1980 – Norman Cazden (American pianist, composer, teacher & folk musicologist)
1990 – Grethe Ingmann (Danish pop singer)
1992 – Gerard Sonder (Dutch radio host, Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep)
1994 – Gottlob Frick (German operatic bass)
2004 – Elmer Bernstein (American film score composer & conductor)
2006 – Fernand Gignac (Canadian singer, actor & comedian)

Our most prominent deathdays for August 18th include Giovanni Artusi, who's known for his arguments with the Monteverdis; Paul Mares, who led the New Orleans Rhythm Kings; pianist Cy Walter, Mabel Mercer's accompanist on many occasions, and Elmer Bernstein, one of the all-time great movie soundtrack composers.

First, a little about some of the others who caught my eye. Like Johann Heinrich Zang did with his artwork. Zang's profession was that of a church musician, but he was more famous as a creator of Musivbilder. Musivbildung, or mosaic painting, is a genre of German folk art dating back to the Middle Ages, that consists of employing everyday natural materials such as paper, sand, minerals, and even dried weeds and wildflowers to create a collage of a landscape, or a figurative or topographical scene. Zang's Musivbild pictured above (go here for a better look) is The Month of May, one of a cycle of 12 Musivbilder Zang made for each month of the year; the only two other paintings from the cycle known to survive are those for October and December. One account claims that Zang’s production of Musivbilder in the 1790s had earned him such a reputation that he even came to the attention of Czar Paul I of Russia (reigned 1796–1801), who asked Zang to send him several examples of his work. Zang produced six pieces for the Czar, including a representation of the Russian imperial coat of arms made out of seeds, grains, and butterfly wings. The Czar was so pleased with Zang’s gift that he sent not only a letter of praise but also a gold watch inlaid with 454 diamonds and 24 pearls. Unfortunately, no trace of this object exists. Probably at a pawn shop in Baltimore.

Irish conductor and composer William Charles Levey first won recognition in Paris and was subsequently conductor at the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters in London. He was the son of violinist and composer R. M. Levey, whose original family name was O'Shaughnessy. He adopted his mother's Hebraic maiden name on the advice of an enrollment official at one of his early London engagements, on the grounds that it was easier to pronounce, and thus would expedite his career. Well, isn't that typical? You know how it is in the Biz... if your name sounds too Irish, your agent will tell you to change it to something more Jewish-sounding. R. M. Levey is best known for co-founding the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and for his many arrangements of Irish folk tunes for violin with piano accompaniment. His son R. M. Levey II, the elder brother of William Charles Levey, was a renowned violinist who won distinction at concerts in Paris, and later in London, where he was known as "Paganini Redivus" ("Paganini Revived"). Quite a coincidence, considering that in this edition we're also remembering the man who wrote the very first biography of Niccolò Paganini, Peter Lichtenthal.

Erwin Schulhoff, a Czech composer of German ancestry, is among those quirky figures in music history who make for interesting discoveries. His early works were heavily influenced by Impressionism, and his later ones by neoclassicism and jazz, and finally by the social realism favored by Soviet composers in the 1930s and 40s. But Schulhoff also went through a Dadaist phase in the late 10s and early 20s, during which he composed a number of pieces with absurdist elements, including "In futurum" from his Fünf Pittoresken for piano, which is a completely silent piece, anticipating John Cage's 4′33″ by more than three decades. The piece, despite being composed entirely with rests, is notated in great detail durationally, employing bizarre time signatures and rhythmic patterns of considerable intricacy. Actually, Cage's 4′33″ was planned out very carefully durationally as well. It's just that he didn't write any of that down for the piece... invisible notation, to go with silent music...