Birthdays of the Great

[Ventilhorn]

we notice that Ginette Neveu also died in an Air France Lockheed Constellation (still clutching her Stradivarius)

Not only Ginette Neveu but also that brilliant young conductor Guido Cantelli.

Who can tell what he might have achieved had he lived to a mature age?

A tragic double loss for music lovers; but let us not forget that many others perished on that day and were equally mourned by their friends and loved ones. Requiescat in Pace.

VH

[mercia]

A tragic double loss for music lovers; but let us not forget that many others perished on that day and were equally mourned by their friends and loved ones. Requiescat in Pace.

Indeed. I wasn't meaning to make light of the event.

[salymap]

I'll never forget how Ginette Neveu's recording of the Brahms VC seemed to be played on all the BBC radio stations for several days after her tragic death. I always remember how it transcended the usual news bulletins somehow. And yes, just as tragic that the unknown passengers died. RIP

[Sydney Grew]

One of the most illustrious composers to have resided here in Britain was Michele Esposito, born in fact at a little place just outside Naples exactly a hundred and fifty-six years ago to-day, namely in 1855.

While still in his twenties he was appointed professor of piano-forte at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and grew to become the leading composer, teacher and concert-giver of Dublin. He founded for instance a small symphony orchestra which gave Sunday afternoon concerts at a low admission price in the Antient Concert Rooms. Is that not an excellent plan? He established also the Dublin Orchestral Society, which he conducted with much success until 1914; an attempt to revive the orchestra in 1927 failed. (We know how he must have felt.) So in the following year the enthusiastic Esposito disappointed with Britain and its fickle public returned at long last to Italy, where in 1922 he had been given the title "Commendatore."

His compositions - of which there exist over seventy - include a fine cantata, "Deirdre," first performed at Dublin in 1897, and subsequently at the Queen's Hall; also "The Post-Bag," a light opera, produced by the Irish Literary Society at the St. George's Hall, London, in 1902; and "The Tinker and the Fairy," opus 53, first performed at London in 1910.

Among Esposito's purely instrumental works are two Symphonies, and two Concertos for piano-forte and orchestra. There is a String Quartette in D opus 33 (performed at Leipsic in 1899), and a second String Quartette, in C minor, opus 60 (performed at London in 1914). And we might among much else also mention the Sonata in D for violoncello and piano-forte, opus 43, again brought on at Leipsic in 1899.

The best known among his pupils is the familiar Harty, likewise a symphonist.

[mercia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX5fAUsQC9o

can you tell us any more about Deirdre? does a certain Ken Barlow figure in the plot?
I see from wikipedia that Esposito conducted the LSO in Northern Ireland. I hadn't appreciated that they would make such a trip at that time.

and happy birthday Horatio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqpPISS2cYA

[Ariosto]

I wonder what the string-quart-ettes are like?

[Tony Halstead]

I hear that there is an Esposito Quint-ette for piano-forte and string quart-ette, first performed in Leipsic (sic)
-

[Nick Armstrong]

I share a birthday with:

Corelli
Vieuxtemps
Ron Goodwin
Karl Jenkins

[Roslynmuse]

Perhaps a Quart-ette is pint-sized?

[mercia]

happy birthday C V Stanford

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJcad_kowuI

and David Oistrakh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5zy3oUZXGk

Magic Flute premiered 30 September 1791

[Sydney Grew]

happy birthday C V Stanford

. . . Quite so Member Mercia:

To-day a second Dublin man: one hundred and fifty-nine years ago precisely there there came into being that master of mellifluousness Villiers Stanford.

As composer he first came into prominence when he was chosen by Tennyson to write the music to "Queen Mary" for the Lyceum Theatre in 1875. His published and produced works are exceedingly numerous; many more - even symphonies - remain to this day unperformed and unpublished. Particularly noteworthy must be the concerto for clarionet and orchestra, first performed at Bournemouth early in 1903. One of his symphonies, the Elegiac, of 1883, is based upon In Memoriam, and is therefore bound to have an interesting homo-sexualistic infusion. And all those operas with their wild and fantastic beauty!

He, whose soul was flooded with absolute music, once challenged the roughness of modern works by writing in 1908 an "Ode to Discord - A Chimerical Bombination in Four Bursts," in which he satirized present-day uglinesses, as certain modern effects are called; but the young modernists found that this "Ode" was, for them, the best work he had ever written, and the satirical effort would seem to have defeated itself.

Nevertheless, through his contact with two vast energies - sixteenth-century music and the folk-song - Stanford was enabled to elude the clogging influence of the prevailing Teutonical sentimentality.

His understanding of the rhythm of the English language was impeccable. His delicate sense went beyond "accent" and "quantity" and encompassed all the refinements and complexities of prosody in general. It is that that makes his music so easy to sing.

Yet he did himself a considerable disservice in 1884 by setting in his "Elegiac Ode" Whitman's "Memories of President Lincoln" - a kind of ridiculous politician you know, who had an absurdly over-sized motor named after him! There are some who look on Whitman as a poet of genius, while others regard him as little better than a lunatic - the Stockhausen of nineteenth-century literature we might say. Seldom have we met with anything more eccentric than the words Dr. Stanford selected for treatment in this Ode. They are not so much poetry as incoherent maundering or at best banshee shrieks. But - there again in that choice the wild and fantastic tinge shows itself does it not.

In 1878 he married Jennie, fourth daughter of Champion Wetton, of Joldwynds, Surrey; they resided together at 50, Holland Street, Kensington. Stanford's clubs were the Athenæum and the Savile.

[mercia]

an interesting homo-sexualistic infusion

not unlike camomile tea in fact

[Simon]

others regard him as little better than a lunatic - the Stockhausen of nineteenth-century literature we might say.

Priceless!

[Sydney Grew]

To-day is the two hundred and fortieth anniversary of the birth at Passy of the violin-player Pierre Baillot.

After the loss of his father in 1783, the youth was taken up by Mons. de Boucheporn, a high Government official, with whom he lived for the next five years, acting as his private secretary, and devoting but little time to his violin.

But there is an end to all things, and in 1791 he now twenty came to Paris, determined to rely for the future upon his musical talent. In this endeavour, following an interval with the army, he after 1795 splendidly succeeded.

He strongly disapproved of the Italian Paganini with his silly harmonics, his silly left-hand pluckings, and his silly staccatos. And how right he was! Such unlovely abhorrencies have nothing to do with music as such; they belong in a circus.

Accordingly, Baillot was greatly respected for his pure and elevated style. In particular he became unrivalled as an executor of chamber music; and indeed it was primarily he who introduced all Mozart's and Beethoven's quartettes to the French.

[mercia]

happy birthday Paul Dukas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5lnf9sPBGU&feature=related

(is one allowed to contribute to this thread or is it a solo affair?)