Monday, May 8, 2017

Today's Birthdays

Carl Philipp Stamitz (1745-1801)
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869)
Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981)
Heather Harper (1930)
Carlo Cossutta (1932-2000)
Keith Jarrett (1945)
Felicity Lott (1947)

and

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
Edmund Wilson (1895-1972)
Gary Snyder (1930)
Thomas Pynchon (1937)
Roddy Doyle (1958)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1874, the American premiere of J.S. Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" took place at the Music Hall in Boston by the Handel and Haydn Society with Carl Zerrahn conducting. The performing forces included a chorus of 600, and orchestra of 90, and a 60-voice boy's choir. For this performance, the first 12 numbers of Part II were omitted. The complete Passion was not performed by the Society until 1879. About half of Bach's Passion was given its New York City premiere at St. George's Church on March 17, 1880, by the New York Oratorio Society under Leopold Damrosch. Theodore Thomas conducted the next documented performance in Cincinnati on May 17, 1882, during that city's May Festival.

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