by Daniel Hathaway
INTERESTING READ:
Their Forefather Was a Grocer. And Mozart’s Librettist.
“Generations on, Lorenzo Da Ponte’s family keeps alive the memory of this poet and libertine, who ended up in the middle of Pennsylvania after being booted from Venice and Vienna.” Read the New York Times story here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Du Fay was presumably born on this date in 1397. Associated on and off throughout his career with Cambrai Cathedral, where he was buried, he became the most celebrated composer in Europe while working at different times for the Papal Chapel, noble Italian families, and the Duke of Burgundy, among others.
Du Fay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores, written in 1436 for the consecration of Brunelleschi’s dome for the Cathedral of Florence, reflects the composer’s rich contrapuntal gifts. Listen here to a September, 2014 performance by Quire Cleveland led by Ross W. Duffin, whose program notes reveal the elaborate symbolism behind Du Fay’s musical construction.
Other local performances of Du Fay’s works include his Gloria, sung by Contrapunctus Early Music in March, 2015 at St. John’s Cathedral, directed by David Acres.
And here’s an unusual entry: On this date in 1978, Parowan, Utah, named a local mountain Mt. Messiaen to honor the composer of Des canyons aux etoiles (‘From the canyons to the stars’) commissioned in 1971 by Alice Tully to celebrate the American bicentennial in 1976.
Olivier Messiaen was inspired by the natural beauty of Bryce Canyon, and this seems like an important time to revisit one of the country’s remarkable natural landscapes.
Follow along with the score here to the 90-minute work for mixed ensemble in a performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung with soloists Roger Muraro, piano, and Jean-Jacques Justafré, horn. Or click here to listen without the score.
