Born today

[San Antone]

Guillaume Dufay (5 August, ca. 1397 – 27 November 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as the leading composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.

[San Antone]

Barbara Strozzi (also called Barbara Valle; baptised 6 August 1619  – 11 November 1677) was an Italian Baroque singer and composer.

Okay, we don't always know the birth date (no birth certificates) but baptism records were scrupulously preserved.  And I thought it was worthwhile to feature a female Baroque composer, not something you hear about everyday.

[San Antone]

Karel Husa (born August 7, 1921 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Music and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. In 1954 he went to the United States and became an American citizen in 1959.

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Big Band

https://www.youtube.com/v/sH1f81qPH_0

[San Antone]

Alexander Goehr - born today, 1932

https://www.youtube.com/v/egIfaIsbKQA

[San Antone]

Krzysztof Meyer (born 11 August 1943) is a Polish composer, pianist and music scholar, formerly Dean of the Department of Music Theory (1972–1975) at the State College of Music (now Academy of Music in Kraków), and president of the Union of Polish Composers (1985–1989). Meyer served as professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne from 1987 to 2008, prior to retirement.

https://www.youtube.com/v/W-vOrDRHvgA

[San Antone]

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (born Leon Dudley Sorabji; 14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988)

[Karl Henning]

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (born Leon Dudley Sorabji; 14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988)

On 10 March 1936, the pianist John Tobin gave a performance of Pars prima from Opus clavicembalisticum. This performance was highly inadequate, as it lasted twice as long as it should have. Sorabji left before it finished, and later denied having attended it.

Love it!  Poor Jn Tobin, though.

[San Antone]

Love it!  Poor Jn Tobin, though.

Sorabji has got to be one of the most interesting composers of the 20th century.

[torut]

Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928 - 5 December 2007)


(I just happened to know his birthday while browsing Kairos website.)

[ritter]

Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928 - 5 December 2007)


(I just happened to know his birthday while browsing Kairos website.)

...and 66 years earlier (to the day), this other great composer was born:



Claude-Achille Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918)

[Mirror Image]

Claude-Achille Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918)

One of the most brilliant musical minds of the 20th Century or any century for that matter. Long live, Debussy!

[San Antone]

Fantastic posts!

[San Antone]

Today I sing of Othmar Schoeck (1 September 1886 – 8 March 1957)



Two of his song cycles stand out, Elegie op. 36 for baritone and chamber orchestra was developed between 1921 and 1923 and was Schoeck's first song cycle, summarizing 24 poems of Nikolaus Lenau and Joseph von Echiendorff. 

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Notturno, op. 47, his 45-minute work for low voice and string quartet or string orchestra.   Schoeck set to music poems of mourning, loneliness and despair by Nikolaus Lenau, as well as a fragment by Gottfried Keller. Schoeck chose the title Notturno for a reason: it matches the dark underlying character of the music which, with or without vocal parts (the first, extended movement has a long instrumental part), expresses the pain, the lamentation and the resignation of the narrator in a late-romantic style.

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[San Antone]

John Zorn : happy birthday



I first came to know John Zorn's music from his band Masada, a jazz quartet recalling Ornette Coleman, at least to my ears.  He made a series of ten recordings, all named using the first ten letters/numbers of the Hebrew alef-bet (Alef, Bet, Gimel, etc.).  He also released several live dates with this same line-up: Zorn (alto saxophone), Dave Douglas (trumpet),Greg Cohen (double bass), and Joey Baron (drum set). On occasion, different drummers filled in for Baron – most regularly Kenny Wollesen.  These recordings were all released on Zorn's record label Tzadik.

Zorn's breakthrough recording was 1985's widely acclaimed The Big Gundown: John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone, where Zorn offered radical arrangements of themes from The Big Gundown (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), A Fistful of Dynamite (1971), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984), that incorporated elements of traditional Japanese music, soul jazz, and other diverse musical genres.

[San Antone]

What do Bill Monroe and Arnold Schoenberg have in common?

Well, for one thing they were both born on today's date: Schoenberg in 1874 and Monroe in 1911. But, besides this accident of birth, both Schoenberg and Monroe changed music history.  Arnold Schoenberg's Composition with Twelve Notes altered the course of music of the 20th century just as Bill Monroe's invention of Bluegrass.  The style that Monroe played with his band, The Bluegrass Boys, influenced the musicians of his period and created a style that is still vibrant today.

RTRH

[San Antone]

Nadia Boulanger : teacher of the century



Nadia Boulanger,  (born Sept. 16, 1887, Paris, France—died Oct. 22, 1979, Paris), conductor, organist, and one of the most influential teachers of musical composition of the 20th century.  In addition to Aaron Copland, Boulanger's pupils included the composers Lennox Berkeley, Easley Blackwood, Marc Blitzstein, Elliott Carter, Jean Françaix, Roy Harris, Walter Piston, and Virgil Thomson.

[San Antone]

Charles Griffes - American Impressionist (September 17, 1884 – April 8, 1920)

In about 1911 Griffes began to abandon the German style. The works written from then until about 1917 are highly coloured, free in form, and generally reflect many other elements of musical Impressionism. The piano pieces, for example, are pictorial and employ descriptive titles and/or poetic texts (e.g. Three Tone-Pictures and Roman Sketches). But as often as not Griffes added the texts and titles after he had completed the works. Impressionistic moods are established by gliding parallel chords, whole-tone scales, augmented triads, ostinato figures across the bar-line, and other devices. Of the songs from this period, the Tone-Images and Four Impressions most clearly reflect Griffes's brand of Impressionism. The Three Poems op.9, on the other hand, are extremely dissonant, tonally obscure, and stylistically experimental.

The Pleasure Dome of Charles Tomlinson Griffes

https://www.youtube.com/v/Vfl0N1tzoG0

[Mirror Image]

Love Griffes, David. Wish he could have lived at least 15-20 years longer.

[jochanaan]

Love Griffes, David. Wish he could have lived at least 15-20 years longer.

Yes, his Poem for Flute and Orchestra is one of my favorite pieces.

[San Antone]

Haflidi Hallgrímsson : 9/18/41

One of the most important figures in this flowering of Icelandic music is Haflidi Hallgrímsson, born in 1941 in the small town of Akureyri on the north coast of Iceland. He began playing the cello at the age of ten and studied in Reykjavik and at the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome. On returning from Rome, he continued his studies in London with Derek Simpson at the Royal Academy of Music and was awarded the coveted Madame Suggia Prize in 1966. The following year he began compositional studies with Dr Alan Bush and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. On leaving the Academy, he remained in Britain, eventually making his home in Scotland on being appointed Principal Cellist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Although he admits to some major influences, Hallgrímsson's musical style is entirely original, showing a sensitivity to line and colour, shape and texture, not surprising from a composer who in 1969 performed one of his earliest compositions,Solitaire for solo cello, surrounded by an exhibition of his own drawings and paintings. Such involvement with the visual arts remains a key influence on Hallgrimsson's musical style and in 1996 he was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to write Still Life, in conjunction with a specially commissioned painting by Craigie Aitchison. Aitchison's work is also an influence behind Hallgrimsson's Symphony No.1 (Crucifixion) (1997), commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Maxwell Davies Millennium Programme of commissions.

https://www.youtube.com/v/PMb_8YwKqHI