by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7 at Blossom, songwriter and bandleader Jon Batiste joins conductor Jonathan Taylor Rush and The Cleveland Orchestra in a mix of originals and classics from his Grammy Award-winning albums.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Tomas Luis de Victoria — the most well-known composer in Spain during the 1500s, and considered one of the greatest composers of the 16th century as a whole — died between August 20 and 27, 1611 in Madrid.
There’s been a revival of interest in Victoria’s work over the past hundred years, and his name is no stranger to the program booklets — and YouTube channels — of Northeast Ohio’s ensembles.
His Christmas motet O magnum mysterium is quite popular: check out this live performance from Quire Cleveland at Trinity Cathedral in 2009, or this duo version from Mignarda’s 2016 album of Advent and Christmas music for lute and voice.
The Requiem Mass Officium Defunctorum is considered by many to be Victoria’s masterpiece. Hear Contrapunctus Early Music sing the “Taedet animam meam” movement from that work during a live performance at Cleveland’s Mary Queen of Peace church in 2015.
On this date in 1958, American composer, pianist, and multi-faceted musician Jean Hasse was born in Cleveland. After graduating from the Oberlin Conservatory in 1981 and pursuing graduate studies at Cleveland State University, she embarked on a career that seems emblematic of entrepreneurial 21st-century artists. In addition to composing for films, silent films, videos and special events, and new concert music pieces, she has managed and served as representative for music publishing houses and formed her own company, Visible Music, in 1987. She moved to England in 1994.
Hasse’s career and accomplishments can’t be summed up in a few sentences. Read her own account here, and click here to listen to a 2013 performance from the University of Bristol (where she has taught film composition and scoring) of her new score for the 1928 silent short The Fall of the House of Usher, based on Poe’s classic story.
And click here to hear how Hasse reacted musically to Ernst Servaes’ 1912 film Artheme Swallows his Clarinet (when a piano lands on his head), premiered at the Luton Library Theater in 2017.
