. 1904 ~ Enrico Caruso signed his first contract with Victor Records. He had debuted at the Metropolitan Opera just two months before.
. 1927 ~ Ronnie Scott (Schatt), Jazz musician: tenor sax, bandleader, jazz club owner in London
. 1927 ~ Twenty years before the famous record by Art Mooney was recorded, Jean Goldkette and his dancing orchestra recorded, I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover. Though the name of the bandleader may not be so famous, two of his sidemen on this Victor recording session certainly were: Big band fans know Bix Beiderbecke and Joe Venuti.
. 1940 ~ “Beat the Band” made its debut on NBC radio. The band was that of Ted Weems and his 14-piece orchestra, who were joined by Elmo ‘The Whistling Troubadour’ Tanner, Harry Soskind and Country Washington. One other star of the show was a barber from Pittsburgh, PA (nearby Canonsburg, actually), who would record many hits for RCA Victor from 1943 right through the dawn of the 1970s. His name was Perry Como. Beat the Band was a funky show where listeners’ questions were selected in the hopes of stumping the band. If a listener’s question was chosen, he or she received $10. The questions were posed as riddles: What song title tells you what Cinderella might have said if she awoke one morning and found that her foot had grown too large for her glass slipper? If the band played the correct musical answer, Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?, the listener lost.
. 1943 ~ Dick Taylor, Bass, guitar with The Pretty Things
. 1944 ~ John Tavener, British avant-garde composer More information about Tavener
. 1944 ~ Brian Keenan, Drummer with groups Manfred Mann and The Chambers Brothers
. 1956 ~ Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national television. No, he didn’t appear on some teenage dance show; but rather, “The Dorsey Brothers Show”, starring Tommy and Jimmy. Elvis sang Blue Suede Shoes and Heartbreak Hotel. He was backed by the instruments of the Dorsey band.
. 1968 ~ Sarah McLauchlan, Singer
. 1985 ~ 45 of the world’s top recording artists were invited to an all-night recording session at the A&M studios in Los Angeles. As each of the artists walked through the studio door, they were greeted by a hand-lettered sign — put there by Lionel Richie. It simply said, “Check your ego at the door.” The session started at 10 p.m. with producer Quincy Jones conducting. At 8 o’clock the following morning, the project, “USA for Africa”, spearheaded by promoter, Ken Kragen, was recorded and mixed. The resulting song, We Are the World, featuring Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Sting, Harry Belafonte, Diana Ross, Paul Simon and many others became the top song in the U.S. on April 13, 1985.
. 2002 ~ Michael Hammond, who became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts just a week earlier, died apparently of natural causes. He was 69. A native of Kenosha, Wis., the conductor and composer had been dean of the School of Music at Rice University in Houston when President Bush nominated him to lead the federal agency that decides grants for the arts. After being confirmed by the Senate on Dec. 20, 2001, Hammond had assumed the post-Jan. 22, 2002, and was still in the process of moving to Washington. A student of music and medicine, Hammond’s interests included music from Southeast Asia, the Renaissance and medieval times and the intersection between music and neuroscience. He received a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy, psychology and physiology at Oxford University. He also studied Indian philosophy and music at Dehli University in India. In 1968, he left his post as director of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee to become the founding dean of music at the State University of New York at Purchase. He later served as president of the school, until he left for Rice’s Shepherd School of Music in 1986. All the while, he retained his interest in medicine, teaching neuroanatomy and physiology at Marquette Medical School and at the University of Wisconsin. Hammond also served as the founding rector of the Prague Mozart Academy in the Czech Republic, now the European Mozart Academy was on the board of the Houston Symphony, and was vice chairman of the board of Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
. 2002 ~ Steve Caldwell, who sang and played saxophone for the Swingin’ Medallions at the time of the band’s 1966 hit Double Shot (of My Baby’s Love), died of pancreatic cancer. He was 55. Caldwell was with the group from 1963 to 1969. After getting his master’s degree in chemistry at the University of South Carolina, he returned to his native Atlanta and ran the Norell temporary staffing agency until starting his own company in 1976. His wife, Lynn Caldwell, said he raised $1 million for charity through World Methodist Evangelism.
Giuseppe Tartini was born in Pirano, Italy and lived from 1692 until 1770. He was a violinist and composer, who also had studied law and divinity at Padua, and was an accomplished fencer. He secretly married a proteg?e of the Archbishop of Padua, for which he was arrested. He fled to Assisi but, after attracting the archbishop’s attention by his violin playing, he was invited back to his wife. Perhaps one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was also an eminent composer. His best-known work is the Trillo del Diavolo (c.1735, Devil’s Trill).
Tavener, John
John Taverner lived from about 1490 until 1545. He was employed as master of the choristers at Cardinal College (Christ Church), Oxford, in its early heyday, retiring, on Cardinal Wolsey’s fall from power, to Boston, where he was held in considerable regard until his death in 1545. The popular, if mistaken, account of his life is the subject of the opera by Peter Maxwell Davies, Taverner.
Taverner wrote Latin Mass settings, Magnificat settings and motets. Of the first of these the Western Wynde Mass, using the melody of a popular song of that name, is among the better known. From his Mass Gloria tibi Trinitas came the fragment of a theme that served later generations as the basis of an English genre of consort music, the In nomine.
Taverner himself began the tradition of the In nomine, an instrumental arrangement of part of the Benedictus of his Mass Gloria tibi Trinitas.
Taverner, John Keith
John Kenneth Tavener, born in 1944 in London, England is a composer. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and has been professor of music at Trinity College of Music since 1969. He was still at college when he won the prestigious Prince Rainier of Monaco Prize in 1965 with his cantata, Cain and Abel. His music is predominantly religious, and includes the cantata The Whale (1966), Ultimos ritos (1972, Last Rites) for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, and a sacred opera Therese (1979). He was converted to the Russian Orthodox faith in 1976.
His work, Eternity’s Sunrise, won a Grammy Award. His sacred work, Song for Athene, was sung at the funeral ceremony of Princes Diana.
Tchaikovsky
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky lived between 1840 and 1893. He is considered to be a romantic composer. He was a Russian composer who was a master of melancholy moods, emotional outbursts and dramatic climaxes in his music.
“Worthless, vulgar, derivative, unplayable” were a few of the adjectives that pianist and conductor Nicholas Rubinstein used to describe Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in b-flat minor, when he first heard it on Christmas Eve, 1874. Ironically, Tchaikovsky had arranged the piece as a gift for Rubinstein, to whom he intended to dedicate it. Furious, Tchaikovsky re-dedicated the piece to pianist Hans von Bülow, who was the first to perform it.
Within a few yers, Rubinstein’s distaste for the concerto mellowed and he became one of its principal interpreters.
Tchaikovsky read Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in the 1860’s and set its melancholy poem “None but the Lonely Heart” to music.
Tchaikovsky found one of his greatest successes with his lovely waltz from the “Serenade for Strings” which he composed in 1880. He was also composing the 1812 Overture at the same time. He conducted several early performances of the Serenade himself, but he had no formal conducting training and became so nervous that he sometimes lost the place in his own music.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet inspired the melancholy Tchaikovsky to write his own version, using musical themes to suggest various themes from the play.
On his way to New York in 1891 to participate in the opening of Carnegie Hall, Tchaikovsky stopped in Paris and discovered the celesta, The celesta is a small keyboard with tiny silver bars which sound like bells when struck. He ordered one to be sent to Moscow in strict secrecy so that he could be the first to use it. His ballet The Nutcracker included the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” which has several wonderfully shimmering phrases for the celesta.
Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia.
The first performance of the Sixth Symphony was only a mild success. By the time of the next performance a few weeks later – which was a tremendous success – Tchaikovsky was dead of cholera. It’s title Pathétique – is characteristic of the composer, who always was afraid that his creativity would suddenly stop.
Teagarden
Weldon Leo ‘Jack’ Teagarden was a Jazz musician, born in Vernon, Texas and he lived from 1905 until 1964. He came from a musical family with his mother, Helen, playing piano and his father,Charles, trumpet. His two brothers, Charlie (trumpet) and Clois (drums) were also talented musicians as was his sister Norma (piano). Jack started on piano at the age of five and two years later learned to play the baritone horn, bought for him by his father. By the age of ten Jack was playing trombone.
The family moved from Vernon to Chappell, Nebraska in 1918 and Jack was soon playing in local theatres accompanied by his mother on piano. From here his travels become a little blurred but we know that he lived for a while in 1919 in Oklahoma City then with his uncle in San Angelo and started playing with local bands. He then played with a quartet at the Horn Palace Inn, San Antonio led by drummer Cotton Bailey,from late 1920 until September 1921 except for a summer season in Shreveport.
It was from Cotton Bailey that the young Weldon received his nickname, “Jack”. From then until the spring of 1923 he played with the legendary Peck Kelly’s Bad Boys. Dropped out of music in Wichita Falls in the summer of ’23 then joined Marin’s Southern Serenaders before rejoining Peck Kelly.
His recording debut came with Johnny Johnson and his Statler Pennsylvanians in early December 1927 when they cut two sides for Victor, “Thou Swell”/”My One and Only”. Jack was twenty-two years old. Two months with the Tommy Gott Orchestra then a major move to Ben Pollack where he remained from June 1928 until May 1933. This period with Pollack was extremely productive in recording terms as he led his own recording groups as well as playing as a sideman with Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Red Nichols, Eddie Condon, and many other famous musicians of the day.
He took part in the first ‘mixed’ recording session with Louis which produced the majestic blues “Knockin’ a Jug”. In October 1928 Jack cut “Makin’ Friends” with Eddie Condon and made history by using a water glass as a substitute for a mute, removing the bell of the trombone and holding the glass over the open end of the tubing producing a unique sound.
In December 1933 he made his big move to join Paul Whiteman. He stayed with Whiteman’s star-studded aggregation until December 1938. His stay with Whiteman brought him financial security but we will never know if this residency was a good move or a bad one. Opinions differ strongly. It has been surmised that Benny Goodman would have offered Jack the trombone chair in his new orchestra as featured soloist.
After leaving Whiteman, Jack started up his own big band which he led until from February 1939 until November 1946. Musically the band was a success but financially a disaster. When the band was finally broken up, Jack gigged around, recorded as a freelance and played at the ‘Esquire’ jazz concert in January 1944 at the Metropolitan Opera House with Armstrong, Eldridge, Tatum, Hawkins. He led his own sextet until joining Louis Armstrong’s All Stars where he stayed from July 1947 until August 1951.
When he left Louis he formed his own All Stars and toured with them until he disbanded in 1956 when he played with Ben Pollack for a few months. He co-led another all-star group with Earl Hines which visited Britain and Europe in the fall of 1957 which was raptuorously received. Jack led another group on a State Department sponsored tour of Asia from September 1958 until January 1959.
Jack was a mainstay of late 1920s New York Jazz scene, a trombonist and singer whose relaxed, melodic instrumental style was highly influential. He was also one of the best White Jazz singers, particularly when he sang the Blues on songs like Makin’ Friends.
He continued playing and leading a group until his death on January 15, 1964. He played his last engagement at The Dream Room in New Orleans while suffering from bronchial pneumonia, returned to the Prince Conti Motor Hotel, just three blocks from Basin Street, after the gig and was found by the room-maid the next afternoon, dead on the floor clad in his dress shirt and shorts. He was 58 years old. The New Orleans “Times-Picayune” published his obituary on January 16, 1964. Jack was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, Plot # 7281. The headstone reads “Where there is Hatred, Let Me Sow Love”
Tebaldi
Renata Tebaldi is an Operatic soprano, born in Pesaro, Italy in 1922. She studied at Parma Conservatory, made her debut at Rovigo in 1944, and was invited by Toscanini to appear at the re~opening of La Scala, Milan, in 1946, where she sang until 1954. She then sang in many opera houses, including several seasons at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, and made many recordings. Tebaldi had one of the most beautiful Italian voices of the century. Although her rivalry with Maria Callas attracted much attention, it was her singing that captivated her fans.
Her breakthrough came in 1946 when she auditioned in Milan for the great conductor Toscanini and from then until the late 1970s she performed across Europe and the United States.
When she made her debut at the city’s La Scala opera house in late 1946, the maestro dubbed her “The Voice of an Angel.”
Singing the soprano part in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Te Deum,” the concert marked the reopening of the theater after the end of World War II. It also branded Tebaldi in Italian minds as part of the country’s post-war renaissance.
She went on to perform at London’s Covent Garden, the San Francisco Opera and appeared regularly at the Metropolitan Opera (news – web sites) in New York taking the lead roles in “La Boheme,” “Madam Butterfly,” “Tosca” and “La Traviata.”
“I started my career at 22 and finished it at 54. 32 years of success, satisfaction and sacrifices. Singing was my life’s scope to the point that I could never have a family,” she wrote in a preface to her official Web site.
Tebaldi was born in the Italian seaside town of Pesaro on Feb. 1, 1922. Stricken with polio at the age of 3, she was unable to partake in strenuous activities and instead became interested in music.
In her early teens, she began studying music at the Conservatory of Parma.
“I started singing when I was a young girl but my family wanted me to study piano but my overwhelming need to express myself with my voice made me choose the art of singing,” she once told her fans.
Tebaldi has left a huge legacy of complete operas on disc with other famous singers including Mario del Monaco, Giulietta Simionato, and Carlo Bergonzi.
Her recordings include Verdi’s “Otello” and “Aida” and Puccini’s “La Boheme” and “Madama Butterfly.”
She last performed on the opera stage in 1973, and her last concert took place in 1976.
Tebaldi was a Knight Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and had received a Commander, Order of Arts and Letters from France.
Te Kanawa
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, born in 1944 in Gisborne, New Zealandin, is an Operatic soprano. After winning many awards in New Zealand and Australia she came to London, where she made her debut with the Royal Opera Company in 1970. She has since taken a wide range of leading roles, and in 1981 sang at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales. She was made a dame in 1982 and has produced many non-classical recordings. In 1989 she published Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths and Legends.
Teleman
Georg Philipp Telemann, born in 1681 in Magdeburg, Germany, was a very prolific late Baroque era composer, composing 600 overtures in the Italian style, 44 Passions, 40 operas, innumerable trio sonatas, suites and flute quartets. He was a self-taught composer and organist. When he died in 1767, his organist post in Leipzig went to Johann Sebastian Bach.
Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, the Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, and the Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. He is currently Artistic Director of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, which he and Leonard Bernstein inaugurated in 1990. Born in Los Angeles, he is the third generation of his family to follow an artistic career. At age nineteen he was named Music Director of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra where he worked with Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen and Copland on premieres of their compositions. He was also Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival. Noted for his commitment to music education, Michael Tilson Thomas founded the New World Symphony in 1988, to be a national orchestra for the most gifted graduates of America’s music conservatories. In addition to their regular season in Miami, they have toured France, Great Britain, South America, Japan, Israel and the United States, and in 1998 celebrated their 10th anniversary with concerts in New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna.
Tilson Thomas has recently completed a very successful tour of Europe with the San Francisco Symphony and back at home in June 1999, they present a festival of Stravinsky’s music, some of which they have recently recorded together.
With the London Symphony Orchestra, Tilson Thomas has toured in Israel, Japan, the USA, as well as in Europe including an appearance at the Salzburg Festival. In London, he and the orchestra have mounted major festivals focusing on the music of Brahms, Mahler, Rimsky-Korsakov, Gershwin, Reich and Takemitsu.
Tilson Thomas’ recordings have received many awards and cover a wide range of repertoire including Bach, Beethoven, Mahler and Prokofiev as well as his pioneering work with the music of Ives, Ruggles, Reich, Cage and Gershwin. In 1994 Michael Tilson Thomas received the Ditson Award for contributions to American Music, was named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year and received five Grammy nominations and two Gramophone awards for his recordings. He has been an exclusive BMG Classics/RCA Victor Red Seal recording artist since 1995 and his most recent releases include the disc “New World Jazz” with the New World Symphony Orchestra.
Tilson Thomas has also worked extensively for television including educational broadcasts with the New York Philharmonic, a BBC series with the London Symphony Orchestra including programmes on Strauss, Sibelius and Beethoven, and other television productions celebrating works by Gershwin and Bernstein.
Von Tilzer, Albert
Albert Von Tilzer (Albert Gumm) (1878 – 1956) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on Mar. 29, 1878. He was the younger brother of Harry Von Tilzer. He was a vaudeville performer and composer and wrote many hit tunes. Some of them were: Carrie (Carrie Marry Harry), Give Me the Moonlight, Give Me the Girl, I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time, Put Your Arms Around Me Honey and Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Overview Composer Albert Von Tilzer was an important songwriter most active from the early 1900’s into the 1920’s. He was the younger brother of composer Harry Von Tilzer.
Albert went to work in his father’s Indianapolis shoe store after graduating from high school. He learned to play the piano by ear and did have some lessons in harmony before he joined a vaudeville troupe.
In 1899, he went to Chicago, and worked briefly for his older brother’s music publishing firm, Shapiro, Bernstein and Von Tilzer. Albert then traveled to New York City, and found work as a shoe salesman in a large Department store.
In 1900, he published his first song “The Absent Minded Beggar Waltz”, a piano instrumental. In 1903 he wrote “That’s What the Daisy Said”, with his own lyric. This was published by his brother’s firm.
In 1903, he formed York Music Company, his own publishing house, which would thereafter publish all of his own music.
All the while Albert was composing and publishing, he was also working as a vaudeville performer. He was a headliner on the Orpheum circuit. In 1930, he settled in Hollywood and worked in a few motion pictures. He was elected to the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Albert Von Tilzer died in L.A., in 1956, at age 78.
Von Tilzer, Harry
Harry Von Tilzer (Harry Gummbinsky -the family later shortened the name to “Gumm”.) lived from 1872 until 1946. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and was the older brother of Albert Von Tilzer. He was an entertainer and common laborer who turned to music composition and formed the Harry Von Tilzer Music Company in 1902. He wrote many hit tunes. Some of them are: (She was only a) Bird in a Gilded Cage; I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad); I’d Leave My Happy Home for You; Take Me Back to New York Town; Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines Nellie; When My Baby Smiles at Me and Why Do They Always Pick on Me?
Harry, one of six children, was to find a career in music as did his younger brother Albert. (Apparently, two of the children, a boy and an girl, perished in childhood.) When Harry was still a child, his family moved to Indianapolis, IN, where he father acquired a shoe store. A theatrical company gave performances in the loft above the store, and that’s where Harry learned to love show business.
His career really started in 1886 when, at age 14, he ran away from home and joined the Cole Brothers Circus. By 1887, he was playing piano, composing songs, and acting in a traveling repertory company. He changed his name at that time. His mother’s maiden name was Tilzer, and he ‘gussied’ it up by adding the ‘Von’. Thereafter he would be called Harry Von Tilzer, and later his younger brother would adopt the name also, Albert Von Tilzer.
Harry met Lottie Gilson when the burlesque troupe with which he was working reached Chicago. The popular vaudevillian took an interest, and induced him to go to New York. In 1892, Harry, working as a groom on a trainload of horses, arrived in New York, with just $1.65 in his pocket. He rented a room near the Brooklyn Bridge and became a $15.00 per week saloon pianist. He left New York briefly to work in a traveling medicine show, but returned to again work in saloons and later as a vaudevillian in a ‘Dutch’ act with George Sidney.
At this time, Harry was writing songs, literally hundreds of songs that were never published. He would sell them outright to other entertainers for $2.00 each. Even Tony Pastor sang a few of his songs in his theater. But the tide was about to turn for Harry.
One of his songs was published, “My Old New Hampshire Home”, lyric by Andrew B. Sterling. William C. Dunn, owner of a small print shop, purchased it outright for $15.00, and issued it in 1898. It was a hit that sold more than 2 million copies.
There is an interesting historical note connected with Harry Von Tilzer. In the Early 1900’s, Von Tilzer kept an upright piano in his publishing firm. Harry kept pieces of paper stuffed between the strings of the piano’s harp. It gave the piano a tinny sort of sound to which Von Tilzer was partial. One day, the lyricist and newspaper journalist Monroe Rosenfeld was in Harry’s office and heard him playing the tinny sounding piano. The sound suggested a title for a piece he was writing, – Tin Pan Alley.
Harry’s last years were spent in retirement, while living in the Hotel Woodward, in New York City. He died in 1946, at age 74.
Tippett
Sir Michael (Kemp) Tippett is a Composer, born in London, England, UK in 1905. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London, and became director of music at Morley College from 1940 until 1951. His oratorio, A Child of Our Time (1941), reflecting the problems of the 1930s and 1940s, won him wide recognition. A convinced pacifist, he was imprisoned for three months as a conscientious objector during World War 2. He scored a considerable success with his operas The Midsummer Marriage (1952) and King Priam (1961), and among his other works are four symphonies, a piano concerto, and string quartets. He was knighted in 1966, and received the Order of Merit in 1983.
Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini, 1867 to 1957, was a conductor who born in Parma, Italy. He was a cellist before the night in 1886 when he took over the baton from an indisposed conductor in Rio de Janeiro and stayed on the podium for the rest of his career. After years of journeyman work in Italian opera houses, he became conductor of Milan’s La Scala in 1898. In 1909 he came to the USA to lead the Metropolitan Opera orchestra; his subsequent career took him to positions in Europe, England, and the USA, including the podium of the New York Philharmonic from 1928 to 1936. In 1937 the NBC Symphony, primarily a broadcasting and recording orchestra, was created for Toscanini; he led it until 1954, cementing his reputation as one of the most revered conductors in the world. He helped pioneer a new performance tradition that proclaimed an end to Romantic interpretive excesses and substituted absolute fidelity to the score; in practice, that made for clean, sinewy performances, achieved partly by his legendary tantrums in rehearsals. He was equally admired for his performances of Beethoven and other 19th-century classics and of modern composers including Stravinsky, Debussy, and Richard Strauss.
Townshend
Born Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend on May 19, 1945, as a member of The Who, he wrote nearly all of the songs and sang “The Acid Queen” and “Sensation”. for the double album Tommy. Tommy is a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who becomes a Messiah and later is forsaken by his followers. Tommy is based, in part, on the spiritual teachings of Indian mystic Meher Baba, of whom Townshend had become a devotee. Read the rest of this biography at http://www.petetownshend.net
Tucker
There is a statue of Richard Tucker, an opera singer, in New York.
Lorin Maazel performed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair when he was only 9. He conducted two major symphonies before he was 13 and went on to a successful career as an adult conductor.
MacDowell
Edward MacDowell lived from 1860 until 1908. He was an American pianist and composer and was one of the first American composers to achieve any degree of international fame. He studied in Paris, eventually at the Conservatoire, before moving to study the piano with Carl Heymann at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he had composition lessons with Joachim Raff. There was encouragement from Liszt and further years spent in Europe until his return to the United States in 1888. There he succeeded in establishing himself as a teacher, pianist and composer, with appointment as the first Professor of Music at Columbia,a position he held until 1904. His last years were clouded by mental illness.
Piano music by MacDowell is effective if not innovative. It includes two piano concertos, four sonatas, the Tragica, Eroica, Norse and Keltic, studies and a quantity of genre pieces.
Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut was born sometime around 1300 in Rheims(?), France and died: April 13, 1377. Rheims, France He was a French poet and musician as well as a composer of monophonic and polyphonic music. He is also known as the leading representative of the Ars nova tradition.
Machaut lived his life in the higher ranks of service, first as secretary to John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and then as a canon (a church official) at the Cathedral of Rheims. Like many in the fourteenth century, Machaut’s life and works reflect an equal measure of the sacred and secular. Most of his works were either secular (such as his many chansons) or a mix of sacred and ceremonial (including many of his motets and his hocket David, which was probably written for the coronation service of King Charles V in 1364). At the same time, he wrote what is probably the first full setting of the Mass Ordinary by a single composer (the Messe de Nostre Dame). He was a man of the cloth, having taken minor orders at an early age. Yet toward the end of his life he maintained a romantic/literary affair with a young woman named Perrone.
Much of Machaut’s polyphonic music reflects the interest that composers had in building complex structures based on the repetition and manipulation of borrowed melodies (a technique called isorhythm). In some of his works, these techniques are applied to all the voices. The harmonies found in Machaut’s pieces are built around the fifth and the octave, the primary consonances of the period. His secular music carries on the musical and textual traditions of the troubadours and trouv?res. Most are written in the fixed forms such as the virelei, rondeau and ballade.
Marchaut’s works include: Sacred/ceremonial music, including Messe de Nostre Dame, 23 motets, hocket “David” Secular music, including 42 ballades, 22 rondeaux, 33 virelais, 19 lais, 1 complainte, 1 chanson royale
Mahler
Gustav Mahler lived from 1860 until 1911. Like so many other musicians, Mahler started early, learning the piano at six and giving his first recital at the age of ten.
In 1909, he became conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler, a Bohemian composer, used huge orchestras, the largest for his “Symphony for a Thousand”. He also completed nine symphonies and several song-cycles notably “Das Lied von der Erde.” Mahler’s music was used in the 1971 movie, Death in Venice.
Mancini
Henry Mancini (Enrico Nicola Mancini) lived from 1924 until 1994. He was an Academy Award-winning composer of movies such as Moon River in 1961, Days of Wine and Roses in 1962, Breakfast at Tiffany’s score in 1961, Victor/Victoria score in 1982. He also composed themes for The Pink Panther, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, Charade, NBC Mystery Movie, NBC Nightly News, Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet and received 20 Grammy Awards.
Marriner
Sir Neville Marriner, born in 1924, is a British violinist and conductor. He was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, EC England, UK and he studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatory. He first played violin with the London Philharmonia and the London Symphony Orchestra, then turned to conducting. He has held posts with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra from 1968 until 1977, the Minnesota Orchestra from 1979 until 1986, and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra 1984 until 1989. Since 1956 he has been founder-director of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields chamber ensemble. He was knighted in 1985.
Marsalis
The Marsalis clan of New Orleans is a large one. Ellis, the head of the family, plays piano, Jason plays drums. Wynton plays trumpet and Branford plays saxophone. Together and individually, this family has done quite a lot to inspire young musicians.
Massanet
Jules Emile Frederick Massenet lived from 1842 until 1912. He was a composer who was born in Montaud, France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was professor from 1878 until 1896. He made his name with the comic opera Don Caesar de Bazan. Other operas followed, including Manon (1884), considered by many to be his masterpiece, Le Cid (1885), and Werther (1892). Among his other works are oratorios, orchestral suites, music for piano, and songs.
McCartney
Sir (James) Paul McCartney was born in 1942. He is a musician, songwriter, and composer who was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, NW England, UK. He was the Beatles’ bass guitarist, vocalist, and member of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he made his debut as a soloist with the album McCartney (1970), heralding the break-up of the group. In 1971 he formed the band Wings (disbanded in 1981) with his wife Linda (1942–98). “Mull of Kintyre’ (1977) became the biggest-selling UK single (2.5 million). In 1979 he was declared the most successful composer of all time: by 1978 he had written or co-written 43 songs that sold over a million copies each.
His Liverpool Oratorio (written in association with Carl Davis) was performed by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at Liverpool Cathedral in 1991, and he has since continued to develop his interests as a classical composer, notably in Standing Stone (1997). He collaborated with Harrison and Starr in the retrospective Beatles’ anthology in 1995.
He wrote the books All You Need Is Love (1968) and Paul McCartney In His Own Words (1976), and wrote, produced, and composed the music for a successful animated film, Rupert and the Frog Song in 1984.
He won a Grammy Award in 1990 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 1999. He was knighted in 1997.
McPartland
Marian Turner McPartland was born in Windsor, England in 1920. She is a versatile pianist and jazz musician. She moved to America in 1945 and led a trio from 1951 and founded Halcyon Records. In 1973 she began an adjunct career as the host of jazz radio programs and National Public Radio show – Marian McPartand?s Piano Jazz.
Melba
Nellie Melba, whose birth name was Helen Porter Mitchell, was an Australian singer born in Melbourne, Australia in 1861. She was taught to sing by mother, educated at Presbyterian Ladies’ College, married 1881 and decided to sing professionally. She visited London and Paris in 1886 and debuted in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” in 1887.
First diva of the century as Nellie Melba (from her home town), she demanded a pound more than Caruso at his peak for her three-octave voice. Upset that Escoffier named a dessert Peach Melba without paying royalties, she patented her name in the US. For WWI fundraising concerts she was made a Dame Commander of the Order for the British Empire in 1918. Her career took her to London’s Covent Garden and New York’s Metropolitan opera houses. She gave her name to Melba Toast, Peach Melba and Melba Sauce. Melba died 1931 from and infection following an unsuccessful face lift.
Melchoir
Lauritz Lebrecht Hommel Melchior was a tenor who born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1890. He died in 1973. Beginning as a baritone in 1913, he went on to become arguably the foremost Wagnerian tenor of the century. He sang in Bayreuth from 1924 until 1931 and regularly at the Metropolitan Opera from 1926 until 1950). In the late 1940s and early 1950s he appeared in several Hollywood movies.
Melchior was sometimes called ‘The Heroic Tenor’ or ‘The Premier Heldentenor of the 20th Century’.
Mendelssohn
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn lived between 1809 and 1847. He is considered to be a romantic composer and pianist best known for his symphonies and concert overtures. Mendelssohn played the piano in public by the age of nine, so he was often compared to Mozart.
He composed works for solo instruments and orchestra, and German songs. Some of his better known works are the “Wedding March”, “Elijah” and “Fingal’s Cave”. Felix Mendelssohn, along with Hector Berlioz was one of the first conductors of a large orchestra.
Mendelssohn harmonized the works of other composers, including Johann Cruger.
Menotti
Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” was the first opera ever written for television and is the most frequently performed opera in the United States. He won a Pulitzer prize for his opera, The Consul, in 1950.
Menuhin
Yehudi Menuhin made his violin debut as a child prodigy by appearing with the San Francisco Orchestra at the age of 7 in 1923. He was wearing short pants, which were then fashionable for boys his age. He later became a music statesman by promoting music as a univeral peacemaker and as a means to realize greater global understanding. He was born in New York City in 1916 but became a British citizen in 1985.
Messiaen
Olivier (Eugène Prosper Charles) Messiaen lived from 1908 until 1992. He was a composer and organist, born in Avignon, France. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Paul Dukas.
His 20/21 earned him a Grammy
Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer lived from 1791 until 1864. He was a German Grand opera composer. His most famous works are “Les Huguenots” and “L’Africaine”. His Hellish Waltz from Robert du Diable, transcribed by Liszt probably caused more public commotion than any other piano piece in history.
Midori
Midori (Mi Dori Goto) is a Japanese violin virtuoso who began lessons at age four.
Milhaud
arius Milhaud, 1892 to 1974, was born in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. Darius Milhaud was trained at the Paris Conservatoire, originally as a violinist, before turning to composition. He enjoyed a close association with the diplomat-poet Paul Claudel, whom he accompanied to Brazil as secretary, after Claudel’s appointment as Minister at the French delegation in Rio de Janeiro. On his return to Paris in 1918, after two years abroad, Milhaud was for a time in the circle of Jean Cocteau and a member of the diverse group of French composers known as Les Six. Extremely prolific as a composer in many genres, Milhaud spent the years of the 1939 war in the United States, where he taught, combining this position with a similar post at the Paris Conservatoire after 1947.
Two works in particular have proved attractive additions to repertoire. The first, Saudades do Brasil, a suite for piano, is based on music heard in Brazil during the composer’s stay there between 1916 and 1918. Scaramouche, arranged for two pianos from incidental music for Moli?re’s Le M?decin Volant, is a lively jeu d’esprit, in the spirit of the commedia dell’arte character of the title.
Darius Milhaud wrote a considerable amount of music for the theatre, operas, ballets and incidental music, as well as film and radio scores. Collaboration with Claudel brought the opera Christophe Colombe and a number of compositions of incidental music for plays ranging from those of Shakespeare to the work of contemporaries such as Brecht, Supervielle, Giraudoux and Anouilh. With Cocteau he wrote the ballets Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof) and the jazz La Cr?ation du Monde, for the Ballets n?gres. These represent only a small fraction of his dramatic work.
Milhaud was equally prolific as a composer of orchestral music of all kinds, including twelve symphonies and a variety of concertos, some of which reflect the influence of his native Provence.
Milhaud contributed widely also to the repertoire of French song both in choral settings and in songs for solo voice and piano, with texts chosen from a great variety of sources from Rabindranath Tagore and Andre Gide to the words of Pope John XXIII, the last in a choral symphony Pacem in terris.
In addition to eighteen string quartets and useful additions to duo sonata repertoire, not least for viola, an instrument used for the Quatre Visages of 1943, representations in music of four different kinds of girls, Milhaud provided for wind quintet the charming suite La cheminée du roi René and the attractive Pastorale of 1935 for oboe, clarinet and bassoon. He shows here, as elsewhere, a characteristically French adroitness in writing for woodwind instruments.
Miller
(Alton) Glenn Miller, lived from 1904 until 1944 and was born in Clarinda, Iowa. He was a trombonist who he attended the University of Colorado before joining Ben Pollack’s orchestra in Chicago in 1924. He moved to New York in 1928, where he free-lanced for the next nine years as a studio musician and worked as a sideman with a succession of bandleaders, including Red Nichols, the Dorsey Brothers, and Ray Noble. After his first band failed in 1937, he put together a second orchestra in 1938. For the next four years, with hits such as “Moonlight Serenade” and “In the Mood,” it was the most successful dance band of the period. In 1942, he joined the U.S. Air Force, for which he organized the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band to entertain the troops. While stationed in Europe, he died on a flight from England to France in a plane that disappeared over the English Channel.
Minelli
Liza May Minnelli was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California. She is a singer, dancer, stage and screen actress. Her parents are actress Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli and her half-sister is singer-actress Lorna Luft.
Minnelli was less than 3 years old when she made her screen debut in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which co-starred her mother. She became the youngest-ever actress to win a Tony Award, for Flora, the Red Menace (1965), at age nineteen. She is the only singer in history to sell out Carnegie Hall for three weeks straight.
Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi lived from 1567 until 1643 and was considered to be a baroque composer. He was the first great composer of opera.
Monteverdi introduced the orchestral prelude, enlarged the orchestra, and improved its role by recognizing instrumental differences. His first opera “Orfeo” was performed in 1607.
Moog
Robert Moog was born in 1934. He invented the first music synthesizer in 1964.
Morley
Morton
Jelly Roll Morton, born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe in 1885, was one of the most influential composers of the jazz era, bridging an important gap between ragtime, blues, and jazz. In a sense, he was the first great jazz composer.
His career began in New Orleans, where he began to experiment with a unique blend of blues, ragtime, Creole, and Spanish music in bordellows as a piano player. Along with being a musician, he also worked as a gambler, pool shark, vaudeville comedian, and was known for his flamboyant personality and diamond front tooth.
Morton became successful when he started making what would be some of the first jazz recordings in 1923 with “the New Orleans Rhythm Kings”. Whether he played on the West Coast, New Orleans, or in Chicago, his recordings were always very popular. He joined the group “the Red Hot Peppers” in 1924 and made several classic albums with the Victor label.
Nothing but success came to him until 1930, when “Hot Jazz” began to die out, and big bands began to take over. Morton died in 1941, claiming that a voodoo spell was the cause of his demise.
Moscheles
Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso.
Mouret
Jean Joseph Mouret’s Rondeau was the theme for many years of TV’s Masterpiece Theater Mouret wrote his music in Paris in the early 1700’s
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Theophilus Mozart lived between 1756 and 1791. He is considered to be a classical composer. Mozart, born in Salzburg, Austria, began composing before most children go to kindergarten. By the time he was six he had played the piano and violin in public.
A Wunderkind, a prodigy of the first rank before the age of five, Mozart astounded the musical world with compositions of unsurpassed brilliance. His father Leopold had recognized his talent at the age of three and immediately set out to teach him to play the harpsichord, violin, and organ. Mozart and his sister made their debut in Munich when he was just six and traveled about Europe together, performing at courts and before royalty, always with success. While still a little child Mozart was inventing symphonies, sonatas, and his first opera. Legends abound about how Mozart could hear an entire work in his head and write everything down without making even one change.
As a child performer he was often treated as a freak. People would cover his hands as he played the piano, make him compose tunes on the spot and perform all sorts of other musical tricks.
In 1787 Mozart became court composer to Joseph II. He played for royalty, received commissions from aristocrats and in his short lifetime composed nearly a thousand masterpieces, including symphonies, operas, serenades, sonatas, concertos, masses, vocal works, and church works.
Mozart was a prolific composer writing masterpieces using every form of music, including his operas “The Marriage of Figaro” (based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais), “Don Giovanni”, “Cosi fan tutte” and “The Magic Flute”. His mastery of instrumental and vocal forms, from symphony to concerto and opera, was unrivalled in his own time and perhaps in any other.
Composing the Requiem Mass commissioned for Count Walsegg, he felt he was writing his own requiem and he died before it was finished.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, died in Vienna Austria at the age of 35, penniless, on December 5th, 1791, of malignant typhus. Mozart, the precocious child prodigy, composed several pieces that are deemed central to the classical era. Though he ranked as one of the greatest musical genius, he did not live a life of affluence as none of his compositions earned him a decent commission but the world is forever enriched by such works as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the Symphonies No. 38 through 41 and the Coronation Mass. In the year 2000, there have been some new discoveries about Mozart’s death.
Munch
Charles Munch was a French composer who lived from 1891 until 1968. He was born in Strasbourg, France. After a long career as a violinist, he made his conducting debut in Paris in 1932 and three years later organized his own orchestra there. He became conductor of the Boston Symphony in 1949 and stayed until 1962. In the latter year he organized the Orchestre de Paris; he died on tour with that group in Virginia. Munch was known for allowing his players room to express themselves, producing warm and musical performances.
Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky lived from 1839 until 1881. This Russian composer, born in Karevo, Russia, was educated for the army, but resigned his commission in 1858 and began the serious study of music under Balakirev.
He is most known for his dramatic opera Boris Godunov, first performed in St Petersburg in 1874. In this opera, he emphasized that speech is made more poignant by the accompanying music.
His piano suite Pictures from an Exhibition (1874) has also kept a firm place in the concert repertoire. Other operas and large-scale works remained uncompleted as the composer sank into the chronic alcoholism which hastened his early death. His friend Rimsky-Korsakov undertook the task of musical executor, arranged or completed many of his unfinished works, and rearranged some of the finished ones.
Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was featured in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia.
Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter’s remarkable career began at the age of 13 when she appeared as soloist with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Since then she has been in demand as both a soloist and chamber music partner in major music centers throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Her long list of honors for recordings includes the Grand Prix du Disque, the Grammy Award in the United States, and Holland’s Edison Award. Her most recent releases have been “The Berlin Recital” with pianist Lambert Orkis and live recordings of Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Schumann’s “Fantasy” with the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur. Her recording of Penderecki’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer (coupled with Bartok’s Violin Sonata No. 2) was released in early 1998. All of Beethoven’s sonatas will be recorded live during her worldwide tour and released by the autumn of 1998.
An ardent champion of contemporary music, Miss Mutter has given premiere performances of several works written especially for her by composers such as Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm and Sebastian Currier. Over the next few years she will participate in premiere performances of works by contemporary composers whom she especially admires.
In 1987 Miss Mutter established the Rudolf Eberle Endowment which supports talented young string musicians throughout Europe. This endowment was recently incorporated into the Munich-based Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation and Friends Circle which share the same objective.
Miss Mutter has a strong commitment to social and health problems of our time. She supports work in these fields through regular benefit concerts. The proceeds from one of her three Beethoven evenings in Munich will go to the Christiane-Herzog-Stiftung for sufferers of cystic fibrosis. In the same year she will perform a benefit concert for the German Red Cross with the proceeds going to an orphanage in Romania. In Philadelphia a concert for Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music will take place.
She is a holder of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
National Polka Dot Day celebrates polka dots, and since 2016 has also been used to celebrate Minnie Mouse, who is known for often wearing the dots. She usually is seen wearing a red dress with white polka dots, and often has a matching bow. Celebrants of the holiday don polka dots to celebrate the dot and Minnie Mouse.
In the nineteenth century, garments with dots began becoming popular. Dotted-Swiss was one such type of garment. In Germany, dots on garments were called Thalertupfen. Dotted clothing could be seen in some famous paintings of the time, such as Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass and Bazille’s Family Reunion.
In the middle of that century, polka dancing became popular in Europe. The name for the dot comes from the dance, although there doesn’t seem to be any real connection between the two. “Polka” is a Polish word for “Polish woman,” and the term polka dot was first printed in 1857, in an American women’s magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book.
The popularity of polka dots increased in the 1920s and ’30s. Miss America wore a polka dot swimsuit in 1926 and Minnie appeared with polka dots in 1928. Polka dot dresses were common during the 1930s. Following World War II, Dior began putting out dresses with polka dots, and polka dot clothing was worn by stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. In the 1960s, Yayoi Kusama began using polka dots in her paintings. Some men have worn polka dots, such as Bob Dylan, and Marvel Comics even created Polka-Dot Man. Today, polka dots are often worn nostalgically and have gained in popularity with the revival of vintage wear from the 1950s and ’60s.
Because Minnie Mouse is often seen wearing polka dots, the day has been closely tied to her. Although she appeared with Mickey in Plane Crazy on May 15, 1928, this did not have a wide release, and it is Steamboat Willie, which was released on November 18, 1928, which is widely known as Minnie Mouse’s debut. Independent, feminine, and cheerful, she is known for bringing happiness to others and helping them with troubles they may be having. Walt Disney was the first voice of Minnie, just for a short while, and many people have voiced her since. Russi Taylor began voicing her in 1986 and did so for decades afterward.
After Minnie’s debut in 1928, she appeared in many more short films throughout the 1930s. Mickey and Minnie were redesigned in the late 1930s, but Minnie was used less starting in the 1940s. It was not until the 1980s when she once again began being used more prominently in cartoons. She was in Mickey’s Christmas Carol in 1983 and had her first starring role in a television special with Totally Minnie in 1988. She has since appeared in films such as Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, and in television shows such as Mickey Mouse Works, House of Mouse, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Mickey Mouse, and Mickey and the Roadster Racers.
Minnie has been featured in comics, video games, and has been a staple at Disney parks such as Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World, where events have been held on the day. In 2016, an art and fashion show called “Rock the Dots” was held on Polka Dot Day in Los Angeles; it was followed by an exhibit that was open to the public. Disney began encouraging people to wear polka dots and use the hashtag #RocktheDots. Minnie received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on National Polka Dot Day in 2018, during her 90th anniversary year.
How to Observe National Polka Dot Day
Celebrate the day by wearing polka dots. D23: The Official Disney Fan Club and Shop Disney have polka dotted Minnie Mouse clothes and accessories available. Let people know you are wearing polka dots by using the hashtag #RocktheDots. The day could be spent watching films starring Minnie Mouse, such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie. Minnie was not wearing polka dots in those first films, but she was wearing a polka dot dress in their opening title sequences. You could also do some Minnie Mouse crafts, or plan a trip to Disneyland Resort or Walt Disney World.
. 1886 ~ John J. Becker, American composer
. 1889 ~ The Columbia Phonograph Company was formed in Washington, DC.
. 1901 ~ Hans Erich Apostel, German-born Austrian composer
. 1904 ~ George Balanchine (Georgi Balanchivadze), Choreographer of Apollo, Orpheus, Firebird, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker. He founded School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet. He was married to Tanaquil Le Clercq.
. 1907 ~ The Richard Strauss opera, “Salome”, was featured with the Dance of the Seven Veils. It was copied by vaudeville performers. Soon, performances of the opera were banned at the Metropolitan Opera House.
. 1916 ~ Henri Dutilleux, French composer
. 1920 ~ William Warfield, singer (Show Boat)
. 1924 ~ James Louis “J.J.” Johnson, Trombonist, composer and bandleader. He was one of first to use the trombone in modern jazz
. 1931 ~ Clyde McCoy and his orchestra recorded Sugar Blues. The tune became McCoy’s theme song, thanks to its popularity on Columbia Records, and later on Decca, selling over a million copies.
. 1935 ~ Sam Cooke, American rhythm-and-blues singer
. 1949 ~ Steve Perry, Drummer with Radio Stars
. 1953 ~ Myung-Whun Chung, Seoul South Korea, pianist/conductor (Chung Trio)
. 2002 ~ Pete Bardens, a keyboardist who played alongside such pop stars as Mick Fleetwood, Ray Davies, Rod Stewart and Van Morrison, died of lung cancer. He was 57. He was known for his progressive and New Age rock style on synthesizer, electric piano and organ. In the 1960s, the London-born Bardens played in the Blues Messengers with Davies, who later went on to form The Kinks; Shotgun Express with Stewart; Them with Morrison; and the group Cheynes with Fleetwood and Peter Green, who went on to form Fleetwood Mac. In 1972, Bardens formed the progressive rock band Camel and stayed with it through the late 1970s. In 1978, he began a successful solo career, releasing several well-received records, including “Speed of Light”, and also played on Morrison’s album “Wavelength” and accompanied him on a world tour. Barden continued to compose, produce and perform music through the 1990s, appearing in Europe with his group Mirage.
. 2004 ~ Milt Bernhart, a big band trombonist known for his solo on Frank Sinatra’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin, died. He was 77. During his three-decade career, Bernhart played in bands led by Benny Goodman, Henry Mancini and others. He was performing in Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars when Marlon Brando arranged for the band to play in the 1954 film The Wild One. Bernhart then became an in-studio musician for Columbia and other film and television studios, and in 1956 added a memorable solo to Sinatra’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin. Born in Valparaiso, Ind., Bernhart was drafted into the Army and was to be sent overseas during World War II before he was transferred to the service’s band. After his music career wound down in 1973, he bought Kelly Travel Service in Los Angeles. He created the Big Band Academy of America in 1986 and planned to retire as the organization’s founding president in March.
. 2004 ~ Ann Miller, a childhood dance prodigy who fast-tapped her way to movie stardom that peaked in 1940s musicals like “On the Town”, “Easter Parade” and“Kiss Me Kate”, died of lung cancer. She was 81. Miller’s film career peaked at MGM in the late 1940s and early ’50s, but she honed her chops into her 60s, earning millions for “Sugar Babies”, a razzmatazz tribute to the era of burlesque featuring Mickey Rooney. Miller’s legs, pretty face and fast tapping (she claimed the record of 500 taps a minute) earned her jobs in vaudeville and nightclubs when she first came to Hollywood. Her early film career included working as a child extra in films and as a chorus girl in a minor musical, “The Devil on Horseback”. An appearance at the popular Bal Tabarin in San Francisco won a contract at RKO studio, where her name was shortened to Ann. Her first film at RKO, “New Faces of 1937”, featured her dancing. She next played an acting hopeful in “Stage Door”, with Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball and Eve Arden.
When Cyd Charisse broke a leg before starting “Easter Parade” at MGM with Fred Astaire, Miller replaced her. That led to an MGM contract and her most enduring work. She was teamed with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in “On the Town”, Red Skelton in “Watch the Birdie”, and Bob Fosse in “Kiss Me Kate“. Other MGM films included: “Texas Carnival”, “Lovely to Look At”, “Small Town Girl”, “Deep in My Heart”, “Hit the Deck” and “The Opposite Sex.” The popularity of musicals declined in the 1950s, and her film career ended in 1956. Miller remained active in television and the theater, dancing and belting songs on Broadway in “Hello, Dolly” and “Mame”. In later years, she astounded audiences in New York, Las Vegas and on the road with her dynamic tapping in “Sugar Babies.” The show opened on Broadway in 1979 and toured for years. In 1990, she commented that “Sugar Babies” had made her financially independent. While her career in Hollywood prospered, Miller became a regular figure in the town’s nightlife, and she caught the eye of Louis B. Mayer, all-powerful head of MGM. After dating, she declined to marry him because her mother would not allow it. She later married and divorced steel heir Reese Milner and oilmen William Moss and Arthur Cameron.
. 2004 ~ Dick Rodgers, an insurance salesman known as the “Polka King” when he hosted a regional television show from the 1950s to the 1970s, died. He was 76. Rodgers’ television show was on the air from 1955-78, starting on WMBV in Marinette, which later moved to Green Bay and became WLUK-TV. The program was shown on 17 Midwestern stations at its height. Rodgers’ accomplishments included membership in the International Polka Music Hall of Fame (1976) and in the World Concertina Congress Hall of Fame (1996). He also was named Orchestra Leader of the Year by the Wisconsin Orchestra Leaders Association in 1967.
. 1626 ~ John Dowland, English composer (In Darkness We Dwell), died at the age of 62
. 1899 ~ Alexander Tcherepnin, pianist and composer
. 1903 ~ First performance of “The Wizard of Oz” as a Broadway musical
. 1917 ~ Billy Maxted, Pianist, songwriter, arranger and bandleader
. 1927 ~ The first opera to be broadcast over a national radio network was presented in Chicago, IL. Listeners heard selections from “Faust” by Charles Gounod.
. 1932 ~ Annunzio Paolo Mantovani gave a memorable concert at Queen’s Hall in England to ‘glowing notices’. This was the beginning of the musician’s successful recording career that provided beautiful music to radio stations for nearly five decades. Better known as just Mantovani, his music still entertains us with hits like Red Sails in the Sunset, Serenade in the Night, Song from Moulin Rouge and Charmaine.
. 1939 ~ Wolfman Jack (Robert Smith), Disc jockey, icon of ’60s radio, broadcasting from XERF, then XERB in Mexico and heard throughout a major part of the U.S.; TV announcer: The Midnight Special; actor: American Graffiti; author: Have Mercy! Confessions of the Original Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal
. 1942 ~ Mac (Scott) Davis, Singer, actor, host of The Mac Davis Show, songwriter, ACM Entertainer of the Year in 1975
. 1942 ~ Nostalgia buffs will want to grab the greatest hits CD of Count Basie (on Verve) and crank up One O’Clock Jump. Just one of the many signature tunes by Bill Basie; the tune was originally recorded on Okeh Records this day.
. 1948 ~ Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Italian composer and teacher
. 1950 ~ Billy Ocean, Grammy Award-winning R&B Male Vocal in 1984
. 1957 ~ Singer Patsy Cline appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s nighttime TV show. She sang the classic, Walking After Midnight, which quickly launched her career.
. 1959 ~ The Kingston Trio (Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard) received a gold record for Tom Dooley. The Kingston Trio recorded many hits, including Greenback Dollar, M.T.A., Reverend Mr. Black, Tijuana Jail, and the war protest song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?.
. 1966 ~ George Harrison of The Beatles married Patricia (Patty) Anne Boyd in Surrey, England. The two met on the set of the movie, “A Hard Day’s Night”.
. 1970 ~ ABC-TV presented “The Johnny Cash Show” in prime time. Previously, the show had been a summer replacement. The regular season series was a big boost for country music. Johnny wore black in the all-color show, however, like he still does today.
. 1978 ~ The soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever” reached #1 on the album charts — a position it held for the next six months.
. 1987 ~ Thirty years after its release, Jackie Wilson’s single, Reet Petite (written by Motown founder Berry Gordy), ended a month at the top of England’s music charts. Three years earlier, on this same date, Jackie Wilson died after being in a coma (following a heart attack) for eight and a half years.
. 2002 ~ Peggy Lee, the singer-composer whose smoky voice in such songs as Is That All There Is? and Fever made her a jazz and pop legend, died of a heart attack. She was 81. Lee battled injury and ill health, including heart trouble, throughout a spectacular career that brought her a Grammy, an Oscar nomination and sold- out houses worldwide. In more than 50 years in show business, which began during a troubled childhood and endured through four broken marriages, Lee recorded hit songs with the Benny Goodman band, wrote songs for a Disney movie and starred on Broadway in a short-lived autobiographical show, Peg. A string of hits, notably Why Don’t You Do Right?, made her a star. Then she fell in love with Goodman’s guitarist, Dave Barbour, and withdrew from the music world to be his wife and raise their daughter, Nicki. She returned to singing when the marriage fell apart. Lee’s other notable recordings included Why Don’t You Do Right?I’m a Woman,Lover,Pass Me By,Where or When,The Way You Look Tonight,I’m Gonna Go Fishin‘ and Big Spender. The hit Is That All There Is? won her a Grammy for best contemporary female vocal performance in 1969. She collaborated with Sonny Burke on the songs for Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp, and was the voice for the wayward canine who sang He’s a Tramp (But I Love Him).
. 2022 ~ Marvin Lee Aday (Meatloaf), died at age 74. He was a singer who appeared in several television shows and films, including the cult classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Fight Club” and “Wayne’s World.”
Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu (“Adam the Hunchback’) lived from around 1237 to around 1286. He was a poet and composer, born in Arras, France. He was court poet and musician to Robert II of Artois, and followed him to Naples in 1283. He was the originator of French comic opera, with Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, and the partly autobiographical composition Jeu de la fuelle (Play of the Greensward). He also wrote poems in mediaeval verse forms.
Hamlisch
Marvin Hamlisch, American pianist, composer and arranger of popular music. He helped revitalize Ragtime with his musical arrangements in the movie, The Sting.
Hammerstein
1895 – Oscar (Greeley Clendenning) Hammerstein II lived from 1895 until 1960. He was a lyricist and songwriter with Richard Rodgers. Some of their best known musicals are Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song and Sound of Music.
Handel
George Frederick Handel lived between 1685 and 1759. He is considered to be an important baroque composer. Handel had a lot in common with Bach. They were both born in Germany, the same year and both were organists and composers. Handel moved to England and spent 40 years there. While he was there he began writing music for the British royal family and he directed and composed operas as director of the Academy of Music.
“Largo” is a musical term for “very slow” and it is also the title of Handel’s most famous single melody. Largo is from an opera called Xerxes about a Persian king with that name and had it’s premiere in London in 1738.
Handel’s nickname was “The Thunderbolt”, given to him by Mozart because he composed so much music.
One of Handel’s most popular works is The Sarabande from Suite Number 11 since it was made popular in the 1975 Stanley Kubrick movie Barry Lyndon, based on the novel by Thackery. This sarabande is part of a dance suite. Suites such as this were very popular with amateur players during Handel’s day.
He is most famous for the Messiah. This oratorio, composed in 1742, brought the entire baroque tradition to its climax. Handel’s enormous work included over 40 operas, about 20 oratorios, cantatas, sacred music, and orchestral, instrumental, and vocal works.
Handy
W. C. Handy was known as the Father of the Blues. His compositions “Memphis Blues” (1912) and “St. Louis Blues” (1914) made the blues popular in the United States.
Hanson, Howard
Howard Hanson lived from 1896 until 1981. He was a composer, conductor, educator; born in Wahoo, Nebraska. He studied and taught in the U.S.A. before winning the Rome Prize in 1921. He returned from Italy in 1924 to become director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., remaining there until retirement in 1964. His compositions, including seven symphonies and the opera Merry Mount (1934), typically reflect both his Swedish family background and a conservative, Romantic spirit. He was also an important conductor and promoter of American composers, both conservative and innovative.
Hanson, Raymond
Raymond Hanson lived from 1913 until 1976. He was a composer and teacher, born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He studied at the New South Wales Conservatory, to which he returned to lecture from 1948 until his death. His Trumpet Concerto is well known, and was one of the first Australian recordings to be released internationally. Other works include operas, a ballet, a symphony, four concertos, chamber music, and film scores.
Hanson-Dyer, Louise Berta Mosson
Louise Berta Mosson Hanson-Dyer lived from 1884 until 1962. She was a music publisher and patron, born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She studied in Edinburgh and at the Royal College of Music, London, and became the centre of Melbourne’s musical life, helping establish the British Music Society there in 1921. She established Editions du Oiseau-Lyre, a music-publishing business in Paris in 1927, which set a new standard of music printing, and she became a leader in the revival of early music. Later resident in France, she maintained her links with Australia, and published the works of leading Australian composers. Her considerable Australian estate was left to Melbourne University for music research.
Hart
Lorenz Hart was born in New York City and lived from 1895 until 1943. He was a lyricist;. He studied journalism and wrote poetry at Columbia University and translated plays for the Shuberts before meeting composer Richard Rodgers in 1918. They collaborated on four songs for Poor Little Ritz Girl (1920) and did their first complete score for The Garrick Gaities (1925).
During the next 18 years they collaborated on a string of successful Broadway and Hollywood musicals–among them On Your Toes (1936), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey (1940). Although they created many popular songs, including “With a Song in My Heart” (1929), “Blue Moon” (1934), and “My Funny Valentine” (1937), Hart’s show lyrics were distinguished by their clever wordplay, intricate internal rhymes, and often sardonic attitude.
Haydn
Joseph Haydn lived between 1732 and 1809 and was born in Austria. He is considered to be a classical composer. Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria and is often called the father of the modern symphony. Most of his career was spent conducting an orchestra and composing music for a rich Hungarian family, the Esterházys, who not only maintained a magnificent palace in Eisenstadt, but kept a string quartet and an entire opera company in residence.
Haydn created the form of the classical symphony and string quartet as we know them today. He became one of the most important figures in the development of Classical music during the eighteenth century.
Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, more than 40 piano sonatas, over 20 operas, many string quartets, trios, masses and songs.
The Creation is one of his oratorios and has been compared to Handel’sMessiah.
Henderson
Roy Henderson was a baritone famed for his performances of Frederick Delius’ works and a teacher of Kathleen Ferrier. When he died Thursday March 11, 2000, he was 100.
Henderson learned to sing while serving with the Artists Rifles during World War I.
He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and got his first major break in 1925 in a performance of Delius’ “Mass of Life,” which he sang at short notice at a Royal Philharmonic concert.
From then on, Henderson was regarded as the ideal Delius baritone. He sang on the first recording of Delius’ “Sea Drift” and in the premiere of “Idyll.”
He also performed all the Elgar oratorios and choral works, and sang Count Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro” at the 1934 opening night of the Glyndebourne summer opera festival.
Henderson’s last singing performance was on March 29, 1952 in the role of Christus in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” at Southwark Cathedral, the Anglican cathedral on the south bank of the Thames in London.
Henderson met Ferrier in 1942,and she later asked Henderson to teach her. She went on to become one of Britain’s renowned voices of the century.
Hill
Mildred Hill, born in 1859, American organist and pianist, composer of “Happy Birthday”. When it was granted a copywrite in 1893, it’s original title was “Goodmorning to All”.
Hindemith
Paul Hindemith lived from 1895 until 1963. He was a German composer who used many techniques of composition from the 1700’s therefore, bringing a neoclassical element to contemporary music.
Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst, English Composer, was born in Cheltenham, England in 1874 and died in London in 1934. He was of the same era as Elgar, but, like Pachelbel, is really only famous for one piece, his Planets’ Suite. This is a series of seven “movements”, one for each of the non~Earth planets known in Holst’s day (i.e., all of the planets but Earth and Pluto). The music reflects the character of the Greco-Roman divinity associated with each planet, with the opening Mars, Bringer of War, being a ferocious, menacing portrait indeed.
One of the themes to Jupiter was subsequently used as the basis for rather a patriotic hymn (I vow to thee my country), in much the same way as one of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches was turned into Land of Hope and Glory.
Horowitz
Destined to become one of the world’s greatest pianists, Vladimir Horowitz was born in 1903 in Kiev, Russia. While most young children were playing games, Vladimir was playing with the ivories. His time was well spent as he was fully capable of performing publicly by the time he was sixteen.
Within four years, the young piano virtuoso was entertaining audiences at recitals throughout Leningrad – 23 performances in one year, where he played over 200 different works of music, never repeating a composition. After Leningrad, Horowitz played in concerts in Berlin, Hamburg and Paris.
In 1928, the Russian pianist traveled to the United States to play with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Arturo Toscanini chose Horowitz to perform his first solo with the New York Philharmonic. It was there that Horowitz met his bride-to-be, Toscanini?s daughter, Wanda. The two were wed in Milan in 1933. New York became Horowitz? permanent home in 1940. He became a U.S. citizen a few years later, devoting the rest of his career to benefit performances, and helping young, aspiring artists.
His return to the concert stage in May of 1965 was a triumphant success, as was his television recital, Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall.
Just three years before his death, Vladimir Horowitz returned to his homeland to perform once again for the Russian people on April 20, 1986. They felt he had been away far too long … close to sixty years.
Horn
Paul Horn was born in 1930. He is a composer, jazz musician, playing reeds. SOme of his most famous works are: Green Jelly Beans, Dancing Children, Inside [recorded in Taj Mahal]. His TV documentary was The Story of a Jazz Musician.
Hovhaness
Alan Hovhaness, (1911 until 2000) was a a prolific composer who melded Western and Asian musical styles.
Hovhaness wrote more than 400 pieces, including at least nine operas, two ballets, more than 60 symphonies, and more than 100 chamber pieces.
His works include “Lousadzak” (1944), for piano and orchestra; “Wind Drum” (1962), a music-dance drama; “And God Created the Great Whales” (1970); and “The Way of Jesus” (1974), a folk mass.
His early compositions were thoroughly Western. But the influences of Eastern musical styles became more evident after he attended Bohuslav Martinu’s master class in composition in 1942 at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.
Hovhaness was the first Western composer asked to write music for an orchestra comprised entirely of Indian instruments. He served for six months as composer-in-residence at the University of Hawaii and became a composer-in-residence with the Seattle Symphony in 1966.
Howe
Julia Ward Howe was a U.S. author and lecturer best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1843 she married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston, reformer and teacher of the blind. The “Battle Hymn”, composed to the rhythm of the folksong “John Brown’s Body”, was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862.
Huang
Dr. Hao Huang was a Leonard Bernstein Music scholarship recipient at Harvard University (AB cum laude), a piano scholarship Master’s student at the Juilliard School (MM in piano performance), and a Graduate Council Fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (DMA). He has studied with Seymour Bernstein, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, Beveridge Webster and Gilbert Kalish. He is currently a piano professor at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate School, and has taught at the Hochschule fur Musik “Franz Liszt” in Weimar and the School of Music at Converse College.
. 1864 ~ Anton Schindler, German violinist and Beethoven’s biographer, died at the age of 68
. 1875 ~ First American performance of Johannes Brahms’“Hungarian Dances”
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1886 ~ Death of Italian opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli, in Milan. He was 51.
. 1891 ~ French Composer Leo Delibes died at the age of 54
. 1905 ~ Ernesto Halffter, Spanish composer and conductor
. 1908 ~ Ethel Merman (Zimmerman), American singer of popular music, Tony Award-winning actress (musical), Musical Theater Hall of Fame. She is most famous for Call Me Madam in 1951, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, There’s No Business Like Show Business and Alexander’s Ragtime Band
. 1929 ~ Marilyn Horne, American mezzo-soprano
. 1929 ~ G.T. (Granville) Hogan, Jazz drummer who played with Elmo Hope, Earl Bostic
. 1934 ~ Bob Bogle (Robert Lenard Bogle), Guitarist, bass with The Ventures
. 1938 ~ Béla Bartók and his wife, Ditta performed their first public concert featuring his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
. 1938 ~ Benny Goodman and his band, plus a quartet, brought the sound of jazz to Carnegie Hall in New York City. When asked how long an intermission he wanted, he quipped, “I don’t know. How much does Toscanini get?”
. 1942 ~ Bill Francis, Keyboard, singer with Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
. 1942 ~ Kay Kyser and the band recorded A Zoot Suit for Columbia Records. The tune is about the problems associated with wearing this garish, exaggerated ‘hep’ fashion.
. 1946 ~ Katia Ricciarelli, Italian soprano
. 1946 ~ Ronnie Milsap, Grammy Award-winning singer in 1976, CMA Male Vocalist of the Year (1974, 1976, 1977), CMA Entertainer of the Year (1977), blind since birth, he learned to play several instruments by age 12
. 1957 ~ Conductor Arturo Toscanini died in New York at the age of 89.
. 1957 ~ The Cavern Club opened for business in Liverpool, England. The rock club was just a hangout for commoners. Then, things changed — big time. It all started in the early 1960s when four kids from the neighborhood popped in to jam. They, of course, turned out to be The Beatles.
. 1962 ~ Paul Webb, Bass with Talk Talk
. 1964 ~ “Hello Dolly!” opened at the St. James Theatre in New York City. Carol Channing starred in the role of Mrs. Dolly Levi. The musical was an adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s play, “The Matchmaker”. The show, with an unforgettable title song, was hailed by critics as the “…possible hit of the season.” It was possible, all right. “Hello Dolly!” played for 2,844 performances. And, it returned to Broadway in the 1990s, again starring Carol Channing.
. 1972 ~ David Seville died on this day in Beverly Hills, CA. Born Ross Bagdasarian, the musician was the force, and artist, behind the Alvin and the Chipmunks novelty songs of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
. 1973 ~ Clara Ward passed away. Ward was an American gospel artist who achieved great artistic and commercial success in the 1940s and 1950s.
. 1975 ~ “Mandy” is Barry Manilow’s first #1 pop hit
. 1976 ~ The album, “Frampton Comes Alive”, was released by Herb Alpert’s A&M Records. The double LP soon reached the top spot of the album charts and stayed perched there for 17 weeks. It sold 19 million copies in its first year.
. 1980 ~ Lin Manuel Miranda, American actor, composer, lyricist (Hamilton)
. 1984 ~ Michael Jackson received eight awards at the 11th annual American Music Awards this night.
. 2001 ~ Eleanor Lawrence, a flutist who played often in chamber music performances and with several orchestras in New York City, died of brain cancer at the age of 64. She is credited with transforming a simple newsletter into an important source for flutists. Lawrence studied the flute at the New England Conservatory with the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Pappoutsakis. She later studied with flutists from the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. She joined the American Symphony Orchestra and the Brooklyn Philharmonic after moving to New York in the 1960s. She played periodically with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. Besides performing, Lawrence taught at the Manhattan School of Music. She served three times as the president of the New York Flute Club. She edited The National Flute Association Newsletter, now The Flutist Quarterly, from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, expanding it from a brief information sheet to a publication with regular interviews.
. 1929 ~ Billy Walker, Singer, known as the ‘masked singer’
. 1931 ~ Caterina Valente, Singer
. 1936 ~ Harriet Hilliard, vocalist and wife of bandleader Ozzie Nelson, sang Get Thee Behind Me Satan, for the movie “Follow the Fleet.” The song was originally written by Irving Berlin and was previously intended for Ginger Rogers to sing in the movie “Top Hat.”
. 1938 ~ Jack Jones (John Allan Jones), Singer, son of Allan Jones and wife, actress, Irene Hervey.
. 1939 ~ The program, “Honolulu Bound”, was heard on CBS radio. Phil Baker and The Andrews Sisters were featured on the program.
. 1949 ~ Joaquín Turina, Spanish pianist/conductor/composer (Rima), died at the age of 66
. 1956 ~ Rock ‘n’ roller, Little Richard, was singing the newly released Tutti-Frutti. The Pat Boone version became even more popular as a cover record.
. 1964 ~ A hootenanny was held for the first time at the White House, as the NewChristy Minstrels entertained President and Lady Bird Johnson, as well as Italy’s President.
. 1965 ~ Jeanette (Anna) MacDonald passed away. She was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy
. 1968 ~ LL Cool J (James Todd Smith), Rap singer
. 1970 ~ Diana Ross and the Supremes perform their final concert
. 1995 ~ Alexander Gibson, British conductor and founder of the Scottish Opera, died at the age of 68
.2024 – Peter Schickele died at the age of 88. He was best known as P.D.Q. Bach and wrote a biography under that name titled Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach. There’s a copy in the music studio if anyone wants to borrow it.
Peter Schickele, a virtuoso of versatility and a maestro of musical mirth, embarked on his final cadence in his home in Bearsville, N.Y. His daughter, Karla Schickele, confirmed his passing, marking the end of a vibrant era. Schickele’s health had waned following a series of infections last fall, but his legacy resonates with a crescendo of creativity and humor.
A composer of serious concert music, Schickele’s symphonic, choral, solo instrumental, and chamber works numbered over 100, enchanting audiences since the 1950s. His compositions, which graced the repertoires of the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Lark Quartet, the Minnesota Opera, and other prestigious ensembles, reflected his deep musical prowess. His talents also shone in the realms of film scores and Broadway musicals, showcasing his versatility and profound understanding of diverse musical genres.
Yet, it was under the guise of his riotously comedic alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach, that Schickele achieved iconic status. In this whimsical persona, he masterfully blended the gravitas of classical music with the lightheartedness of parody. For over fifty years, he delighted and surprised audiences with performances that were a fantastical fusion of Mozart, the Marx Brothers, and Rube Goldberg. His prizewinning recordings and even a book-length biography of P.D.Q. Bach playfully punctured the oftentimes solemn bubble of classical-music culture, bringing a refreshing irreverence to the concert hall.
Peter Schickele’s life was a symphony of serious music and satirical comedy, leaving behind a legacy that dances between the profound and the playful, reminding us that at the heart of great art lies the joy of creation.
. 1715 ~ Jacques Duphly, French harpsichordist and composer.
.1782 ~ On this day Mozart wrote a letter to his father about Muzio Clementi. He said: “Clementi plays well, as far as execution with the right-hand goes. His greatest strength lies in his passages in 3rds. Apart from that, he has not a kreuzer’s worth of taste or feeling – in short he is a mere mechanicus.”
. 1876 ~ Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Italian Opera Composer
. 1905 ~ Tex (Woodward Maurice) Ritter, Country singer, actor, John Ritter’s father
. 1921 ~ The opening of Town Hall in New York City, an important new concert hall
. 1926 ~ Ray Price, Singer
. 1926 ~ Morton Feldman, American composer, born in NYC, New York
. 1928 ~ Vladimir Horowitz debuted as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It was the very same night that Sir Thomas Beecham gave his first public performance in the United States.
. 1930 ~ Glenn Yarbrough, Singer with The Limeliters
. 1933 ~ Václav Suk, Czech-born Russian composer and violinist, died at the age of 71
. 1939 ~ William Lee Golden, Singer with The Oak Ridge Boys
. 1939 ~ The Ink Spots gained national attention after five years together, as they recorded If I Didn’t Care. Many other standards by the group soon followed.
. 1940 ~The Shep Fields Orchestra went to the top of Billboard’s Pop Chart with their song “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way).”
. 1946 ~ Cynthia Robinson, Singer, trumpeter with Sly and the Family Stone
. 1949 – Arthur Godfrey and His Friends was first seen on CBS-TV this day. The program stayed on the network for seven years.
. 1959 ~ Per Gessle, Guitarist, singer with Roxette
. 1963 ~ Songwriter Bob Dylan sang Blowin’ In the Wind on the BBC radio presentation of “The Madhouse on Castle Street”. The song soon became one of the classics of the 1960s protest movement.
. 1985 ~ After a record 24 weeks as the #1 album in the nation, Prince (now known as The Artist Previously Known as Prince) slipped to the #2 spot with Purple Rain. Replacing Prince at the top spot: ‘The Boss’ Bruce Springsteen’s Born In the USA, which spent 24 weeks waiting for Purple Rain to fall.
. 1995 ~ Laurel McGoff, American singer
. 2001 ~ Luis Floriano Bonfa, the master guitarist and composer who helped found Bossa Nova music, died of cancer at the age of 78. Bonfa, who was born in Rio de Janeiro in Oct. 17, 1922, began composing in the 1940s and launched his career as a solo artist in 1952. Better known abroad than at home, Bonfa became internationally famous for his contributions to the soundtrack of Marcel Camus’ 1959 classic film “Black Orpheus.” The film introduced an international audience to Bossa Nova – a more sophisticated and less percussive samba style – and made Bonfa and fellow composer Antonio Carlos Jobim stars. “Bonfa plays the guitar like no other, in a very personal, charismatic style. His guitar is a little orchestra,” the late composer Jobim once said. His reputation grew further when he was a featured performer at the Bossa Nova festival at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1962. He was even more famous for his more than 500 compositions especially Manha de Carnaval andSamba de Orpheu. Placido Domingo, Julio Iglesias, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley recorded songs written by Bonfa. In recent years, his productivity slowed. His last major label release “The Bonfa Magic,” was recorded in 1991.
. 2001 ~ Opera singer Kyra Vayne, a star of the 1940s and 1950s whose talents were rediscovered in the 1990s, died at age 84. The Russian-born soprano was born in St. Petersburg. Vayne fled the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution with her family and was eight years old when her family settled in London. She began a successful opera career in the 1940s, and sang for allied troops during World War II. She later joined the Russian Opera Company, then based at London’s Savoy Theater. Her career collapsed in 1957 when her agent, Eugene Iskoldoff, committed suicide, and for the next 35 years she worked as a secretary for the British Broadcasting Corp.
In the early 1990s, a music company released four recordings of her voice, leading the U.S. music magazine “Fanfare” to ask, “How is it possible that such a singer has not come down to us as one of the century’s most celebrated sopranos?” Soon afterward, Arcadia Books published her autobiography, “A Voice Reborn,” which tenor Placido Domingo described as having “all the elements of an opera.” At the end of 1999, nearly 80 years after she fled Russia, Vayne was invited to perform at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater to mark the new millennium – her first public performance in 40 years. “For me to sing at the Bolshoi is beyond any fairy tale,” she said at the time. “I am not worried about singing in public again after so long, but I am fearful of the emotional impact.” Vayne never married and had no children.
. 2003 ~ Maurice Gibb, a member of the famed disco band the Bee Gees, died at a Miami Beach hospital. He was 53. Gibb, joined with his older brother and his twin to harmonize their way to becoming one of the best selling musical groups ever. Gibb played bass and keyboard for the group, whose name is short for the Brothers Gibb. In a 1978 interview with TG Magazine, Gibb lamented the perception that the Bee Gees were only a disco band. “People accuse us of being nothing more than a disco band now,” Gibb said. “But they don’t know what they’re talking about. If you listen to our records, you’ll find that there’s dance music. But there are also ballads like More Than A Woman. And there are some very beautiful, undanceable songs, too.” The Bee Gees – twins Maurice and Robin, and their older brother Barry – have lived in South Florida since the late 1970s. Their younger brother, Andy, who had a successful solo career, died in 1988 at age 30 from a heart ailment. Chris Hutchins, a writer and former press agent for the Bee Gees, said Maurice was “very much a tormented soul.” “He was not the star (of the Bee Gees), and he knew it, he felt it,” Hutchins told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. Known for their close harmonies and original sound, the Bee Gees are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and their 1977 contributions to the “Saturday Night Fever” album made it the best selling movie soundtrack ever with more than 40 million copies sold. Among their disco hits on that album are Stayin’ Alive, More Than a Woman and How Deep Is Your Love and Night Fever. The group won seven Grammy Awards. The Bee Gees last album was in 2001, entitled “This Is Where I Came In.” The family emigrated from England to Australia in 1958, and the brothers soon gained fame as a teen pop group. They returned to England in the 1960s, and their first four albums contained hits such as 1941 New York Mining Disaster, To Love Somebody and their first U.S. number one song, 1971’s How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.
The Bee Gees followed “Saturday Night Fever” with the 1978 album “Spirits Having Flown” which sold 20 million copies. The brothers wrote and produced songs for Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Dionne Warwick in the 1980s. They also wrote the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton hit Islands in the Stream. The Bee Gees released three studio albums and went on a world tour in the 1990s. The live album from the tour “One Night Only,” sold more than 1 million albums in the United States. The Bee Gees run a music production company in Miami called Middle Ear Studios. Gibb’s first wife was British singer Lulu. He and his second wife, Yvonne, were married for more than 20 years and had two children.
Grammy winner
MaryO'Studio 