10 People who died at the age of 65

Bach by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, Public domain; Milton source unknoown;  Hardy National Portrait Gallery, CC0,
(via Wikimedia Commons)

1. Cotton Mather
2. Justin Martyr
3. Clement of Alexandria
4. John Milton
5. J S Bach
6. Walt Disney
7. Miles Davis
8. Lewis Carroll
9. Oliver Hardy
10. Carl Perkins

10 People Born Low in the Birth Order

1. Philip Doddridge preacher and teacher - twentieth child
2. Charles Wesley evangelist and hymn writer - eighteenth child
3. Johann Christian Bach musician - eighteenth child
4. Marie Antoinette royal consort - fifteenth child
5. Benjamin Franklin scientist and diplomat - fifteenth child (two mothers)
6. Stephen Crane author - fourteenth child
7. Mary Wood author - thirteenth child
8. Sophia, Electress of Hanover scholar - twelfth child
9. Eliza Lynn Linton novelist and journalist - twelfth child
10. Zig Ziglar motivational speaker - tenth child
(Lydia Pinkham medicine seller - tenth child, Mark Wahlberg actor - ninth child)

Day off week 36 2019

It was a very full day the latest day off, which is good. I had to visit the dentist first thing - all well there - and make a trip to collect something from the doctor's. Before and after that I did some emails and blogging before heading out with my son to St Giles, Cripplegate, near the Barbican. I had been reading recently about how Milton and Fox are buried there, etc. There's not much to see, as I expected but just to know such people once walked those streets is something. We had lunch in a  Wrap it up! which was knew to us - a nice wrap each (mine Mexican, his Portuguese). We then walked to Aldersgate Street where Wesley's heart was strangely warmed and had a quick look at Postman's Park. I not ice that this is where City Presbyterian Church now is. I had not realised that. Anyway, we were home fairly early and there was time to begin reading the latest Private Eye and I almost finished a lovely book on Bach by Horatio Clare. I did that listening to Focus 3 which is still an absolutely amazing album. After an evening meal I watched some TV - talking head documentaries on the Rise of the Nazis and on Harvey Weinstein. Interestingly, people have so low view of women that they assumed they were willing to give sexual favours to get parts. Also, Weinstein was not in trouble until he lost his power. Meanwhile I tried to follow the news of the day - strange times. Glad to see I managed to get over the 10,000 steps mark today.

Links: St Giles, Wrap it up!, Postman's Park, City Presbyterian, Rise of the Nazis, Untouchable

10 lots of siblings in history

1. Henry and William James

2. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë

3. Orville and Wilbur Wright

4. Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm

5. George and Ira Gershwin

6. Groucho, Chico, Zeppo and Gummo Marx

7. John, Robert and Edward Kennedy

8. Frank and Jessie James

9. Fernand, Louis and Marcel Renault

10. Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian Bach

10 Rocked up takes on Cantata 147 by Bach

1. Ekseption 'Jesu, Joy' cantata from choral BWV 147
2. Herb Alpert 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'
3. Wendy Carlos 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'
4. Apollo 100 Joy
5. Jigsaw 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'
6. Moody Blues The quiet of Christmas morning (Bach 147)
7. The Byrds She don't care about time
8. Margo Guryan Someone I Know
9. The Beach Boys Lady Lynda
10. Bob Dylan Sad eyed lady of the lowlands

10 Cataloguers of Classical Music

1. Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV)

Schmieder, Wolfgang (1950).

Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV). Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. BWV (The designation BWV, an abbreviation of Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, which Schmieder created, is more usual for Bach's works, but S numbers are found in some older references; subsequent 2nd and 3rd editions are mostly reprints).

2. Béla Bartók (BB, DD or Sz)

Somfai, László (1996).

Béla Bartók: composition, concepts, and autograph sources. Ernest Bloch lectures. 9. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08485-3.

BB

Dille, Denijs (1974).

Thematisches Verzeichnis der Jugendwerke Béla Bartóks: 1890-1904. Kassel: Bärenreiter. ISBN 978-3-7618-0437-7.

DD

Szőllősy, András (1948).

Bartók Béla válogatott zenei írásai. Zenetörténet kézikönyvei. 3. Budapest: Mágyar Kórus.

Sz 

(Bartók's works have been designated by numbering systems developed by three different catalogers. Szőllősy's chronological index is the most frequently used. It includes Bartók's musicological writings as well as his compositions.)

3. Ludwig van Beethoven (Hess, WoO or Bia)

Hess, Willy (1957). Verzeichnis der nicht in der Gesamtausgabe veröffentlichten Werke Ludwig van Beethovens. Zusammengestellt für die Ergänzung der Beethoven-Gesamtausgabe. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel.

Hess

Kinsky, George; Halm, Hans (1955).

Das Werk Beethovens; thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis seiner sämtlichen vollendeten Kompositionen. München: G. Henle Verlag.

WoO

Biamonti, Giovanni (1968). Catalogo cronologico e tematico delle opere di Beethoven, comprese quelle inedite e gli abbozzi non utilizzati. Torino: ILTE.

Bia

(The Biamonti Catalogue sought to incorporate all works listed in other places, including the Beethoven Gesamtausgabe, the Kinsky-Helm catalogue (WoO numbers) and the Hess catalogue). 4. Johannes Brahms (WoO)

McCorkle, Margit L. (1984).

Johannes Brahms: thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis. München: G. Henle. ISBN 3-87328-041-8.

WoO

5. Claude Debussy (L)

Lesure, François (1977).

Catalogue de l'œuvre de Claude Debussy. Centre de documentation Claude Debussy Publications. 3. Genève: Minkoff. ISBN 2-8266-0657-3.

L

6. Antonín Dvořák (H, B, S or T)

Herbert, Peter J. F. (1988).

Antonín Dvořák, Complete Catalogue of Works. [Great Britain]: Dvořák Society for Czech Music. OCLC 315534955.

H

Burghauser, Jarmil; Clapham, John (1996). Antonín Dvořák: thematický katalog [thematic catalogue]. Prague: Bärenreiter Edition Suprahon. ISBN 978-80-7058-410-1.

B

Šourek, Otakar (1917). Dvořákś Werke ... ein vollständiges Verzeichnis in chronologischer thematischer und systematischer Anordnung. Berlin: N. Simrock. OCLC 7629267.

S

Trufitt, Ian T. (1974).

Antonín Dvořák, Complete Catalogue of Works. Great Britain: Dvořák Society of Great Britain. OCLC 11677657.

T

7. Joseph Haydn (Hob)

Hoboken, Anthony van (1978) [1957].

Joseph Haydn; thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis. Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne. ISBN 978-3-7957-0003-4.

Hob.

(The Hoboken-Verzeichnis was created in 1957. Haydn's string quartets are still generally referred to by their opus numbers.)

8. Felix Mendelssohn (MWV or S)

Wehner, Ralf (2009).

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke (MWV). Leipziger Ausgabe der Werke von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Serie 13, Werkverzeichnis. Band 1 A. Wiesbaden. ISBN 978-3-7651-0317-9.

MWV

Seiffert, Max (1908). Ausgewählte Werke. Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern. 17, 9. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel.

S

9. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K, also WSF)

Köchel, Ludwig van Ritter (1964).

Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amadé Mozarts; nebst Angabe der verlorengegangenen, angefangenen, von fremder Hand bearbeiteten, zweifelhaften und unterschobenen Kompositionen (6. Auflage, bearbeitung von Franz Giegling, Alexander Weinmann, Gerd Sievers ed.). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel.

K

(Mozart's opus numbers are particularly scattered and useless and are no longer used at all (for instance, there are two sets of violin sonatas both called Op. 1). Köchel's Chronologisch-thematisches Verzeichnis sämmtlicher Tonwerke W. A. Mozarts was published in 1862 and has been substantially revised four times since then. KV numbers (short for Köchel-Verzeichnis) are often used for Mozart's works in Europe.

Wyzewa, Teodor de; Saint-Foix, Georges de (1912).

W.-A. Mozart, sa vie musicale et son œuvre de l'enfance à la pleine maturité (1756-1777): Essai de biographie critique, suivi d'un nouveau catalogue chronologique de l'œuvre complète du maitre. Paris: Perrin et Cie.

WSF

10. Antonio Vivaldi (F.  M, P, RN or RV)

Fanna, Antonio (1986).

Opere strumentali di Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): catalogo numerico-tematico (2a edizione riveduta e ampliata ed.). Milano: Ricordi. ISBN 88-7592-022-2.

F

Malipiero, Gian Francisco (1968). Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Catalogo numerico-tematico delle opere strumentali. Milano: Ricordi.

M

Pincherle, Marc (1948). Antonio Vivaldi et la musique instrumentale. Paris: Floury.

P

Rinaldi, Mario (1944). Catalogo numerico tematico delle composizioni di Antonio Vivaldi, con la definizione delle tonalità, l'indicazione dei movimenti e varie tabelle illustrative. Roma: Editrice Cultura moderna.

RN Ryom, Peter (1973).

Antonio Vivaldi: thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis seiner Werke (RV). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. ISBN 978-3-7651-0372-8.

RV

(Bonus:

Richard Wagner (WWV)

Deathridge, John; Geck, Martin; Voss, Egon (1986). Wagner Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV): Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen erarbeitet im Rahmen der Richard Wagner-Gesamtausgabe. Mainz: Schott. ISBN 978-3-7957-2201-2.

WWV

[Also includes Wagner's literary works])

10 Composers beginning with B

1. Bach, Johann Sebastian
2. Beethoven, Ludwig van
3. Berlioz, Hector
4. Bizet, Georges
5. Brahms, Johannes
6. Bruckner, Anton
7. Boccherini, Luigi
8. Borodin, Alexander
9. Bartok, Bela
10. Bruch, Max
This is a repeat performance I see. Check here.

10 Baroque composers

1. BACH, Johann Sebastian 1685 - 1750 German composer and organist. The greatest of the Baroque composers. Yet during his lifetime he was better known as an organist than as a composer.

2. CORELLI, Arcangelo 1653 - 1713 Italian late baroque composer. Has been called:- "Father of the Concerto Grosso" - "Founder of Modern Violin Technique" - "The World's Greatest Violinist"

3. HANDEL, George Frideric 1685 - 1759 Born in Germany the same year and region as Bach. He later moved to England, his adopted country. He is best known for his grand oratorio 'Messiah', his Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks.

4. LULLY, Jean-Baptiste 1632 - 1687 Italian born French composer. He was the musical director of the court of Louis XIV, "The Sun King".

5. MONTEVERDI, Claudio 1567 - 1643 Important Italian composer considered to be the 'Father of Opera'.His first opera was "Orfeo", performed in Mantua in 1607.

6. PACHELBEL, Johann 1653 - 1706 German composer, teacher and organist. Unfairly labelled a 'one hit wonder' he is nevertheless best known for his Canon in D.

7. PERGOLESI, Giovanni Battista 1710 - 1736 Italian composer recognised as the 'Father of Comic opera'. Tragically died at only 26, yet his works had an enormous influence on European music.

8. PURCELL, Henry 1659 - 1695 He was the first English composer of comparable stature to the European composers. Yet another composer to die too young, at 36 years old.

9. VIVALDI, Antonio 1678 - 1741 'The Red Priest', Italian composer, violinist, teacher, priest, opera impresario. His Four Seasons is the most played piece of classical music in the world.

10. TELEMANN, Georg Philip 1681-1767 German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes

Masaaki Suzuki in London

My esteemed father-in-law took us to a lovely concert last Saturday in the Barbican. The Bach specialist Masaaki Suzuki was conducting the Bach Collegium Japan. We began with suite number 3 and the double violin concerto and in the second half they did the magnificat, a fairly short choral piece. I am one of those odd people who prefers instrumental work to choral but I very much enjoyed the second half. This was only one segment of a very full series of events over a 26 hour period. It was good to have at least tasted this bit. A bonus was bumping into a number of people we knew. Part of the attraction to Suzuki is that he appears to be an evangelical believer and a Calvinist to boot. See this theologically ill-informed Spectator article about Suzuki here. It is headed Does the great Bach conductor Masaaki Suzuki think his audience will burn in hell? It quotes Suzuki ‘With the help of His disciples, God left us the Bible. Into the hands of Bach He delivered the cantata. That is why it is our mission to keep performing them: we must pass on God’s message through these works, and sing them to express the Glory of God.’ The article ends with the correct observation that The lady in the fifth row may smile at the felicities of Bach’s counterpoint; but one day she will either join the company of the saints or, in the words of Cantata 115, ‘be covered in the sleep of eternal death’.

Bach and Charles Hodge

I'm reading the Banner's biography of Charles Hodge by his son. Great quote on page 183. While in Germany in 1828 Hodge kept a diary. It confirms Bach's obscurity until rediscovered by Simon Cowell Felix Mendelssohn. In one place Hodge says

"They sang, also, one piece from an old German composer, Bach, whose works have long been neglected,but which they say are equal to almost any of the best German compositions."

Home Schooled

One of the things to come out in the obituaries for Malcolm McLaren was that he was home schooled to the age of 10 by his grandmother. That set me thinking about famous home schooled people. There is a little room for argument over what home schooled means but I think the following lists are interesting adn hopefully accurate.

1. Ten famous Christians

John Owen
Matthew Henry

Jonathan Edwards

John (and Charles) Wesley
John Newton
John Witherspoon

William Carey
Dwight L Moody
Hudson Taylor

C S Lewis

2. Ten Authors

Hans Christian Anderson

William Blake

Robert Browning

Pearl S Buck
Agatha Christie

Charles Dickens

Sean O'Casey

George Bernard Shaw

Mark Twain
Phyllis Wheatley

3. Ten composers and artists

J S Bach

Anton Bruckner
Felix Mendelssohn
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Francis Poulenc

William Blake

John Singleton Copley
Evelyn de Morgan
Claude Monet
Andrew (and Jamie) Wyeth

CM 03 Bach

I hadn't forgotten. This is the first movement of J S Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto - as intended I believe and performed by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. It's hard to imagine what western music would be like without Bach's contribution.

Father Bach

Another of my youtube videos

Van Leer Flute

From the concert last night

Alan Davey, etc

My old friend Alan Davey breezed through here the other night asking questions. See his blog here. I got a brilliant find on the Utsira question thanks to someone on the island itself. The wonders of the internet. (Talking of which I could also find the Norwegian for many thanks [tusen takk] at the flick of a key. See here. Looking for a pic of Alan I also discovered that there's an Alan Davey in the rock band Hawkwind [Do you wanna ride in my silver machine, See yourself going by in a silver machine?] which I'd not known).

Anyway, the point of this post is that Alan (who clearly has a poor taste in music as he also took exception to Ekseption - official site here) asked about the phrase 'bang to rights' and I can't find anything about it on the net, beyond the fact it's criminal/police slang, which I might have surmised. Anyway can anyone out there help us?

Peace Planet

I should have passed on this edited (1:54) version of Peace Planet (based on Bach) from Ekseption when we were looking at concept albums. The set features the late great Rick Van Der Linden. This is from 1971. Excuse the hair.

JA the classical element 1

The word ‘classical’ has many meanings. Here we use it to refer to older and more traditional musical styles as opposed to more contemporary and popular ones. I am not a great fan of classical music, though I have very many classical CDs. Much of my classical education has been via men like Jan Akkerman.
Akkerman’s most famous period was with Focus in the 1970s. He remarkably finished the At the Rainbow concert by coming on stage and performing a Dowland piece on solo lute. See here. He had become interested in the instrument through seeing Julian Bream in concert. It seems that the live act often included a Menuett from J S Bach (1685-1750) and the fourth movement of the Concerto for Orchestra by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945), among other things classical, that were never released. Akkerman expressed particular appreciation for Bach and for Bartok's Concerto and Third Piano Concerto. In an interview from the period he neatly sums up the difference between the two. Bach, he says, sought to make earthly music and made heavenly, while Bartok sought to make heavenly music and made beautiful earthly music.

Even without such comments journalists at the time were not slow to spot the classical influence on the music. Relistening to the recorded corpus this is not immediately obvious. The careful listener, however, soon spots the influence as far back as the coda to Anonymus (In and out) through to the Hamburger Concerto album and beyond. It is sometimes in the background as with Anonymus, Eruption (Moving Waves) or P’s March and Spake the Lord Creator (Ship of Memories) or there are parodies such as with the opera singing on Hamburger Concerto or the harpsichord intro to Birth (Hamburger Concerto). Then there are tracks in a classical style such as Le Clochard (Moving Waves) on guitar or Elspeth of Nottingham (Focus 3) on lute.
It was apparently intended that Eruption should include adaptations from Bartok but his family refused permission. At least one listener has spotted a lift from the opera Orpheus and Euridice by Monteverdi (1567-1643) and believes there is also a quotation from the opera of the same name by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787).

As for direct lifts from classical composers, however, there appear only to be some three tracks of this sort. They are Delitae Musicae and the Starter from the title track of Hamburger Concerto and Father Bach (Mother Focus). The first is credited to good old Anonymous. The story goes that Akkerman found a manuscript by an old Belgian composer from Antwerp in a London music shop. It was then arranged for lute and recorder with Van Leer. It has been suggested that the piece is the work of a J Hove whose lute arrangement of a motet appeared in 1612 as Delitiae Musicae Cantiones. Starter uses the theme best known as The St Anthony Chorale. It was written by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) as a trumpet serenade and later taken up by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) in his Variations on a theme by Haydn (Op 56a), completed in 1873. The third piece is based on part of Bach’s St Matthew Passion of 1729.
Turning to Akkerman’s solo output we remind ourselves that his very first release, aged 15, was a rocked up version of Melody in F (but played in 'A') by American classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982). We can make similar divisions to those above. The albums vary in classical content from some (eg Tabernakel) that are full of it to others (eg CU) that appear to have none at all.
Guitar for Sale, the debut album, gives only a slight hint of classicism with the Jewish traditional Hineimatov. The next two albums have several classical themes. Profile (1972) is very diverse and shows plenty of evidence of Akkerman’s classical training on the second side where four of seven tracks are in a classical style for solo guitar or lute. First, the anonymous Kemp’s jig, on lute. William Kemp was apparently a Shakespearian actor who came to fame with his nine days wonder - a morris dance performed from London to Norwich in the days of Elizabeth I. Then comes an etude by Matteo Carcassi (1792-1853), a leading 19th Century guitarist-composer. Born in Florence he began as a pianist but changed to guitar, beginning a concert career in Germany in 1810. He moved from place to place but was eventually based in Paris where he died. His fame there rivalled that of Carulli, though the two differed greatly in technique and style. Carcassi left almost a hundred works for guitar, all of romantic taste, brilliant and technically demanding. His Method (Op 59) is still considered among the best didactic works of 19th Century guitar masters and his etudes (Op 60) are popular. Track four is by Austrian composer Antonio Diabelli (1781-1858). Andante Sostenuto, as its title suggests, is slow and sustained. It is from a Guitar Sonata (Op 29 No 3) and is described by one aficionado as ‘almost too beautiful to be true’. The sixth track is a short lute composition of Akkerman’s own - Minstrel/Farmers dance.
To be continued