'A bon viveur of the best kind'

I do not like to write about the newly departed two days in a row. We do not want to become the Obituary Web Log. (Although that would have a neat acronym, OWL.)

But I learned of the passing of the great Haydn and Mozart scholar H.C. Robbins Landon and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That is H.C. Robbins Landon up above. I learned of his death from the critic Norman Lebrecht's Web log. Norman Lebrecht is now my Facebook friend, to my delight and astonishment! But that is a whole other story.

I paid tribute to H.C. Robbins Landon a while back on the other Web log. Wow, that was over a year ago. I guess I was ahead of the curve.

"He was a bon viveur of the best kind." That is what my new friend Norman Lebrecht wrote to me on Twitter.

That is a wonderful thing to say about someone!

I grew up reading H. C. Robbins Landon's books but I only learned recently what an entertaining character he was. As I wrote on the other Web log, I loved reading interviews with him. He attacked his scholarly pursuits with such gritty humor and passion.

When he was telling of releasing the first recording of Haydn's "The Creation," he recalls seeing: "hard-bitten New York s.o.b.'s with tears streaming down their faces."

He also talked about how he found Haydn manuscripts. He said you would see bats flying out of these old castles in Dracula country and those would be the places that had Haydn manuscripts in the attic.

I think about that whenever I think about bats. Which is often because my husband is refurbishing this old house across from Buffalo's City Hall, a house we call Big Blue...


... and very often we see bats orbiting it. So when you think about it, I think about H.C. Robbins Landon quite a bit.

Norman Lebrecht always has the dirt, which I love, and I had not realized what he writes on his Web log, that H.C. Robbins Landon supposedly used to frolic naked in his pool with research assistants and guests. How sensational! When I was in California with Leonard Pennario we were in the hot tub together but we were not naked.

Anyway, I never met H.C. Robbins Landon but I am going to miss him.

You have to believe that right now Haydn is shaking his hand.

Goodbye, gospel man

It is funny, the people who cross your path. During the months I was out in California with Leonard Pennario, we went to Steinway Day, a gathering of Steinway dealers and artists. We sat at this table that included another pianist. His name was Larry.

I could not remember Larry's last name and I had never heard of him. But everything turns out to be written down somewhere and just this morning I was working on this one chapter of my book that deals with this Steinway Day event, which was quite the experience. And I found an old account of it I had typed up when I was back in California. And there was Larry's last name, Dalton.

Hmmm, I thought. I should call him sometime. He was sitting next to me at that dinner and I remembered how nice he had been, also that he respected Pennario so much. And this was a memorable evening we had shared. It might be interesting to get in touch with him and see what he remembered of it, see what his impressions were of Pennario, this great pianist who was then in his last days.

So I got on the Internet and I looked up Larry Dalton.

And I find Larry Dalton is dead!

I could not believe it. He was not that old! The obituary gave his age as 63. I thought he was younger than that, even, but 63 is not old.

It happened earlier this year and I guess it was sudden. Someone wrote that he was in excellent shape and his death came with absolutely no notice.

Dalton lived in Tulsa, Okla. I remember that from the dinner. Larry and I did a lot of gabbing while Pennario sat there disapprovingly. Pennario wanted me to focus on him. Well, he knew I loved him.

At one point we had a situation because Dalton asked Pennario for an autograph and there was a mix-up. I got mixed up and told Pennario that Dalton's first name was Jerry. In any case the autograph was made out to Jerry and there was a Jerry across the table who pocketed it. And when I tried to get Pennario to write out another autograph to Larry, not Jerry, he got all snarky about it. Well, the story did end happily with Dalton getting an autograph. I wonder where it is now.

Googling Larry Dalton just now I still wrote "Jerry," not "Larry." I could not believe that. I will never learn!

Larry Dalton was a gospel pianist and he was renowned in his field. His Web site puts it that he is a pianist "whose roots go back to revival meetings in Big Stone Gap, Virginia." I have never heard of Big Stone Gap, Va., but if you are that kind of a pianist that sounds like a good place to be from, I will say that. By the way it is strange how people's Web sites go on forever. Larry Dalton was probably the only person who could get in to edit his Web site so he will live on there forever, always in the present tense.

There are all kinds of tributes, mostly on Christian music sites. Here is a memorial someone put up on YouTube to Larry Dalton. It is kind of touching. I am a trad Catholic and my personal tastes run more to Mozart and Gregorian Chant. But I respect our American gospel tradition. There is nothing else in the world like it.

Here is Dalton rocking out to "Summertime."

And there I was at Steinway Day, sitting between these two dead pianists.

Life is short, you know?

No angel

Wow, I had not realized Max Reger was such a baddie! Yesterday our good friend Prof. G wrote in his own inimitable way:

He was a wild man who ate, drank, did drugs, and composed, all at a tornadic rate. His excesses killed him at 43. He also fought with everybody and wrote some very scatalogical letters. You might have cringed from him if you had encountered him. He pilloried critics in his violin sonata, Op. 72 by composing motifs using the notes AFFE (ape in German) and SC (E flat), H (B natural), AFFE (sheep in German). I mention all this because his life makes zippy reading and his behavior reflects pre Great War German neurotic hysteria.

Ay yi yi!

Well, one thing I can say for Max Reger, he would have liked me.

I just know it!

Even if I have never met that type, I know that type.

As far as whether Max Reger was a devout Catholic, now I will have to double check that. It was one of those zillions of things I read somewhere, or thought I read somewhere. So thank you, Professor, for calling me on that.

We have covered interesting ground this week! Uncovering the dirt on first Carl Maria von Weber and now Max Reger.

I just looked up Max Reger on the site Instant Encore. Poor Max Reger! He did not have one fan! So I signed up as his fan.

I also found the Max Reger Foundation of America. The president of the group has a marvelous name, Inky Song. And two of the directors are Gunther Schuller and Milton Babbitt. Milton Babbitt a biggie in the Max Reger Foundation, I do not know why that surprises me but it does.

The Max Reger Foundation has a link to Max Reger High School in Amberg, Germany. How about that?

Continuing to wander the Internet, I found Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jorg Demus performing a beautiful little Christmas song, under two minutes long, by Max Reger. What a lovely slide show, with a translation and everything.

What gentle, softly rocking rhythm on the piano.

And that last line: "Ganz sanft im Schlaf behueten." The roses protect that Baby Jesus in his sleep. I love the last three notes the singer sings.

Hmmm. Maybe Max Reger was devout after all! It would be strange to think that someone who was not could write such heartfelt sacred music.

Oh, look! Under the comments on the video, the person who created the video says the same thing.

She writes: "Changed my mind about Max Reger."

One song can do that.

The Max factor

Max Reger is a polarizing composer. You either love him or you hate him and there is nothing in between.

The other day I was talking with a co-worker and we realized we were on opposite sides of the Max Reger chasm. Guess what side I was on?

You're right! I am a Reger lover!

That is a picture of Max Reger up above. Here is another picture of him.


They look exactly alike! It is not like Mozart where no two pictures look alike. You would know Max Reger if you ran into him on the other end of the world, that is for sure. All the pictures of him look exactly alike.

I am not sure why people do not like Reger but I can guess at a few things. He wrote for the organ, a not-hot instrument. He was a devout Catholic, big yawn to everybody but me. He was, face it, not good-looking. And his tastes can be, shall we say it, overblown.

But I love him!

One piece by Reger I love is his set of variations on Mozart's A Major Piano Sonata. His tastes are just so far afield from Mozart's! By the end, the thing is all billowing and overblown but I am sorry, I love it. There is just something sincere about it that calls to me. Here is a bit of it played exquisitely on two pianos. Wow, that sounds like fun! Anyone want to play that with me?

The other day I was listening to Max Reger's Maria Wiegenlied, or Mary's Cradle Song. It is perfect for Christmas. Here it is in a solo version but I just heard it on a new CD from Oxford, the Magdalen College. They sing the song all in unison and it is haunting. I love the twists and turns the key takes. And I love its simplicity. It is hard to write something simple. That is true in writing, too. I always have to remind myself that just because it is simple does not mean it is not good.

I just think that is first rate. What a beautiful song. Here it is sung by Renee Fleming in the Mainz Cathedral.

Max Reger uses that German carol "Joseph, lieber Joseph Mein" that Brahms uses in his "Geistliches Wiegenlied," or sacred lullaby, for mezzo soprano, viola and piano.

It is interesting how that song's gently rocking melody inspired both Brahms and Reger.

Both masters, I say.

Lift every voice and kvetch

There are all these music popularity contests these days and here is a dandy. NPR has been announcing a contest for the 50 Greatest Voices of the Century.

Their graphics are great even if they are kind of a pain to navigate. They throw the nominated singers' pictures at you and when you move the cursor over them, they jump out at you, along with their names. Then you click on them and hear their voices!

But you know what, these popularity contests, you can always see where they are headed. Right away, alarm bells go off in my mind because the greatest singer of the last century, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, has not even been nominated.

Which, I could nominate him, but then I do not want to subject him to voting and defeat by someone like John Lennon, you know? I have not checked to see if John Lennon is on the list but he probably is. I mean, the audience for this contest is just not such that it would vote in Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf is on the list. That is something anyway. She is on there only as "Elisabeth" but once you click on her you see it is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. And you hear a little of her singing Schubert's "An Die Musik."

But what about Richard Tauber?

Nope, not there.

Among living singers I would nominate Thomas Hampson but he is not there either. Booooo.

The W's are particularly discouraging. Not only is there no Fritz Wunderlich ...


... which, just listen to the first note of that link I just posted, and ask how you could exclude him, but there is no Dinah Washington. No Muddy Waters. No Howlin' Wolf! That is a picture of Howlin Wolf at the top of this post. I am sorry but he deserves to be on this list.

Rage, rage.

Popularity contests never wind up going the way I want them to.

The truth about Carl Maria von Weber

Since yesterday we have become the official clearinghouse for all things Carl Maria von Weber. Up above is a picture of a statue of Weber on the Theaterplatz in Dresden.

Yesterday our friend Prof. G wrote:

Apparently Weber, like JoAnn Falletta, played the guitar, along with being a superb conductor and pianist. He was also a good linguist. I imagine you know the story of how Beethoven once played host to Weber in a generous way...even though Weber was sometimes critical of Beethoven's music. It's interesting to hear the foreshadowing of Wagner's sound world in Weber's music, seeing as Weber died before Beethoven and Schubert.

He adds:

I wonder how many of the fashionable set who looked down on him and his profession ever did anything worth remembering. Hoch und Prosit to bohemians!

To which we say, Jawohl!

One day we will all go together to Ulrich's and toast Carl Maria von Weber. Ulrich's is a Buffalo tavern that goes back almost to Weber's time.

Our friend who calls himself Paladino writes:

Weber's father used some money loaned to Carl Maria to settle his own debts. Unfortunately, the money had been loaned to C.M. but the Duke of that province for the purchase of horses, and once the caper was discovered C.M. ended up borrowing more money and got in too deep. He was briefly imprisoned (at some Inn), after which the police showed up early one morning and escorted the entire family to the frontier with an order of banishment. C.M. eventually unloaded his errant father elsewhere and went on to greater things -- eventually. I read another accounting of this somewhere, which I will try to unearth in days ahead.

You do that, Paladino!

We would like that unearthed!

I unearthed an Internet profile of Weber that yielded several goodies.

This sentence for one thing:

Court life at Stuttgart was uncongenial to him, though he yielded to its temptations.

All kinds of images come to mind!

The profile also explains how Weber was related to Mozart's wife, Constanze Weber. They were first cousins! Weber's father, Franz Anton, was the brother of Fridolin Weber. He was Constanze's father. Also the father of Josepha, Aloysia and Sophie. Anyone who has ever read a book about Mozart knows who Fridolin Weber was.

So that is explained.

You know what I think is funny? When you are researching someone like Carl Maria von Weber and Google throws these sites at you saying:

"Carl Maria von Weber News. Carl Maria von Weber Updates. Carl Maria von Weber photos. Latest scoop on Carl Maria von Weber."

Ha, ha! They think they are the source of 19th century gossip. But they are not.

We are!

Here is a picture of Weber looking like quite the dandy.


And here is music from "Oberon" played on the banjo. There is a tremendous introduction:

Playing legitimate "Classical" music on the banjo was in vogue in the 1890's, and my great-grandfather Hezekiah Urastus Anderton was not immune to its influence. He was friendly with the composer's grandson, Zebulon Von Weber, who supplanted his income by making moonshine. Hezekiah was so grateful for this steady source of rotgut that he dedicated this film short to him.

Isn't that classic?

That guy was having his little joke, but I will say this, making moonshine does sound like a Weber thing to do.

Your source for 19th century gossip

It is great when you hear something about a musician that has not been written down. This week I am thinking of doing some name dropping and sharing some juicy tidbits I have picked up.

To start with it is not every day you get fresh gossip about the composer Carl Maria von Weber.

This happened last year or something. There is this orchestra at my church called the Camerata di Sant' Antonio. And its conductor is a young-ish gentleman named Christopher Weber.

I called Chris Weber, whom I did not know, to do a little interview with him for The Buffalo News. And because my church and the orchestra are so Italian, I joked with him about his German name.

And it turned out he was a relative of Carl Maria von Weber!

I liked him for not bringing that up right away. He did not mention it until it came up. And I liked him even more for telling me a little story.

He said that family stories had it that Carl Maria was kind of the black sheep. Being a musician was considered kind of disreputable and bohemian back then.

And when Carl Maria would come visit, a joke would go around the family. They would say to each other, "Carl Maria is coming into town. Someone go get him some clothes."

Haahahahahaaa!!

That is a picture above of Carl Maria von Weber, no doubt wearing clothes his family lent him when he was in town.

Fresh gossip about Carl Maria von Weber.

You heard it here!