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?

12-19b: Jimmy Rogers : Hard Working Man - Puccini : Il Trittico / Tebaldi / Del Monaco / Merrill / Gardelli 1962

As promised, here's your Renata and your Rogers. I lied about the big-ass opera, though. Does three little-ass operas work for you?

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.

La Commedia è finita!

If you've reached this post, it could be because I ran out of room for all the labels I needed for the last post! And it really is those operas that get you. Get one with a really big cast... and by "big" I mean... I mean really BIG... you know..? you know what I mean, really, really... BIG? We're talking BIG here... and that could be your whole 200-per-post character limit right there! Anyway, this other post is the one you want to read if you're interested in the labels for this post.  :B