| Today in Music History A Daily Look at Music History For Violin Students A Look at What Happened on Today's Date Long, Long Ago . . . Or Maybe Just Last Year |
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| TODAY IS February 18 |
| Can You Guess? Roy Orbison's famous love song was released on this date (Some sources say February 1) in 1989 in which he told his lady . . . Anything you want_____ Anything you need_____ Anything at all______ Can You Guess what 3 words fill in each blank? Look at the Bottom of the Page for the Answer. |
| What Else Happened Today? |
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| 1655 - Pietro Giovanni Guarneri, violin maker, was born in Cremona. the elder son of Andrea Guarneri, His violins are considered better than his father's and are rarer because he was both a musician and violin maker. 1743 - Premiere of Handel's oratorio Samson, in London. the same concert may have featured the premiere of his Organ Concerto Op. 7, no. 2. 1864 - Gustave Schirmer, Jr., US music publisher, was born in New York City. He was the son of German-born music publisher Gustave Schirmer, Sr. 1874 - Premiere of N. Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphony No. 3. 1895 - Premiere of Charles Martin Loeffler's quintet for three violins, viola and cello, at Boston's Union Hall by the Kneisel Quartet and violinist William Kraft 1952 - Premiere of S. Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 125 "Cello Concerto" No. 2 with Sviatoslav Richter conducting and Mstislav Rostropovich the soloist. 1961 - Calendar Girl, by Neil Sedaka, was released. 1967 - Baby I Need Your Lovin', by Johnny Rivers, was released. 1987 - Death of Russian composer Dimtri Kabalevsky at age 82, in Moscow. Violin Concerto Sheet Music Here. |
| Hector Berlioz 1803 - 1869 |
| Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto D Minor Jascha Heifetz at Amazon |
| A Fiddler and a Rogue |
| All Product Descriptions and Quotes Regarding Products are taken from the Web Sites of the Suppliers. |
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| February 18, 1893 was the first performance of Hector Berlioz's opera La Damnation de Faust in Monte Carlo. This is notable because Berlioz died 24 years earlier in 1869! Berlioz wrote the work as an oratorio, and conducted the oratorio at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on December 6, 1846. Hector Berlioz was born December 11, 1803. His father, a doctor, educated him at home and centered his studies around Latin classics and elementary medical training, believing Hector would also become a doctor. As a boy, Berlioz studied guitar and flute. |
| AIn 1844, he wrote his Treatise of Instrumentation and Orchestration. This book became the "dictionary of orchestration" until well into the 20th century.
Due to his classical education when he was young, literature had a major impact on his writing. Harold in Italy, initially intended to be played by Niccolo Pananini, was inspired by George Gordon Byron's Childe Harold. May 9, 1863 marked the first US performance of Hector Berlioz's Harold in Italy. Although it is a symphony, not a concerto, there are major solo passages for the viola. As a composer, Berlioz chose to write using the musical genres of overture, symphony, and opera. He is very well known for developing symphonic program music and the "idee fixe" where a melody or theme is used over and over to represent a person or a programmatic idea throughout an entire musical composition. (Especially noticable in his Symphonie Fantastique.) Hector Berlioz died in Paris, France, March 8, 1869. |
| Berlioz is especially remembered for his imaginative use of the orchestra in his works. He often enlarged the orchestra, even planning a work for an orchestra with 465 performers. |
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| When he was 18, Berlioz went to Paris to study medicine, but spent most of his time at the Opera and in the library of the Conservatoire of Music rather than attending his medical classes. He finally entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1826 to study composition. with two teachers: Jean-François Lesuer, an elderly composer with a great admiration for opera, and Anton Reicha, a theorist and composer of chamber music who was a friend of Beethoven. Berlioz remained a student, and competed several times for the Grand Prix de Rome, finally winning the competition in 1830. |
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| A Good Intro to Berlioz for Kids! |
| Roy Orbison You Got It? |
| Did You Guess? Orbison must have really liked the lady because Anything you want, you got it! Anything you need, you got it! Anything at all, you got it! Did you see the color clues? |
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