by Daniel Hathaway
INTERESTING READS:
Writing in The New Yorker, Alex Ross notes that “At ninety, Arvo Pärt and Terry Riley still sound vital. Both composers remain intriguing outliers, notable for the stubbornness with which they have held to their youthful convictions.”
And in The Guardian, Emma Thompson speaks of her ‘intense irritation’ with AI. “The actor and screenwriter told late night talkshow host Stephen Colbert that she took issue with Microsoft’s Copilot offering to rewrite her scripts for her.” Although this article is about words, the issue affects all the arts.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
German organist and composer Samuel Scheidt was baptized on this date in 1587 in Halle, where he spent his whole career after studying in Amsterdam with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. Click here to hear Hespèrion XX play his Ludi Musici under Jordi Savall, and here to watch a performance by Paolo Crivellaro of Scheidt’s Cantio Sacra: Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz on the organ of the Jakobikirche in Lübeck.
Italian bel canto opera composer Vincenzo Bellini was born on November 3, 1801, in Catania, Sicily. There’s a film about the composer’s brief life (he died at 33) that takes its name from one of Bellini’s most famous arias — from Norma. Click here to watch Carmine Gallone’s romanticized 1954 film Casta Diva, unfortunately only available in Italian. For the aria itself, an obvious choice is a performance by Maria Callas, but for visual as well as aural splendor, you probably can’t beat Renée Fleming singing it in the Palaces of the Czars in Saint Petersburg.
And on this date in 1939, the body of French organist and composer Charles Tournemire was discovered in a bog in Arachon — he went out for a walk and never returned. A student of César Franck, Tournemire succeeded his mentor at the organ of the Basilica of St-Clotilde in Paris, and in addition to a eight symphonies, four operas, piano works and chamber music, wrote L’Orgue Mystique, a set of 51 suites for each Sunday of the Ecclesiastical year.
Oberlin alumnus Nicholas Capozzoli recorded the suite for the feast of the Epiphany live at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York in January, 2013, and the famous Belgian organist Flor Peeters appears in a unique video made at Sint Rombouts Cathedral in Mechelen performing the suite for the Octave of the Ascension — which the composer dedicated to him.
