First record to sell a million copies

So Elvis Presley wasn't the first to sell a million copies of a record!!

In 1907 the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso recorded on the Victrola label "Vesti la giubba" from "Pagliacci" by Leoncavallo.

The video below is of the actual record being played.

The photo (courtesy Wikipedia) is of Caruso playing a "Victrola" phonograph.

Read more at 52composers.com

Great Composers - 16 month calendar

It's calendar time again.

My first one this year is 'Great Composers'. It is a sixteen month calendar with a start date of September 2010 so it is ready for the academic year.

Composers included are:

Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Debussy, Dvorak, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Stravinsky, Wagner, Prokofiev, Mahler, Haydn, Holst, Bizet, Donizetti and Puccini.

Also included are the birth and death anniversaries of composers relative to each month.

It is available from zazzle

Schubert's Bicentenary

8 June is Robert Schumann's 200th birthday.
Happy Birthday Robert. I bet they will be having a great party up there!
What a pity he died so early at the age of 46.

Yesterday, Sunday, was Schumann Day on BBC Radio 3. There was a series of programmes throughout the day. You can listen to them for another 6 days on BBC iplayer. Here is the programme.

June anniversaries of classical composers

• 1/06/1804 Glinka born
• 2/06/1857 Elgar born
• 3/06/1875 Bizet died
• 3/06/1899 Strauss J. died
• 6/06/1903 Khachaturian born
• 8/06/1810 Schumann bicentenary
• 21/06/1908 Rimsky Korsakov died
• 10/06/1934 Delius died
• 11/06/1864 Strauss R. born
• 15/06/1843 Grieg born
• 17/06/1818 Gounod born
• 17/06/1882 Stravinsky born
• 20/06/1819 Offenbach born

You can see a comprehensive listing of composer anniversaries at the Classical Composer Database

Happy Birthday Elgar - Goodbye Elgar banknote

Today is Elgar's 153rd birthday.
I see that the £20 banknote featuring the portrait of Elgar and Worcester cathedral will no longer be legal tender from the end of this month. See BBC report here.
The banknote was introduced in 1999.
It was controversially discontinued in 2007 - the year of his 150th anniversary.
Bad timing.
Elgar's image was replaced by that of Adam Smith, the Scottish economist.
Could it be because our Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time was Gordon Brown - a Scotsman.
I can't see the Scots putting the portrait of an English economist on their banknotes.

Happy Birthday Brahms and Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky is 170 today.
Google did a special Google logo featuring Swan Lake (see above).
Excellent

Also today is Brahms's 177th birthday.
Happy Birthday Johannes

May anniversaries of classical composers

Wow, where did April go? Here in London we had such a wonderful spring April which was appreciated all the more after such a long and miserable winter.

So May has arrived - should be interesting - with a new government.
It is certainly an interesting month for composer anniversaries:

1/05/1904 Dvorak died
1/05/1978 Khachaturian died
7/05/1833 Brahms born
7/05/1840 Tchaikovsky born
12/05/1884 Smetana died
15/05/1567 Monteverdi born
17/05/1866 Satie born
18/05/1909 Albeniz died
18/05/1911 Mahler died
22/05/1813 Wagner born
25/05/1934 Holst died
29/05/1860 Albeniz born
31/05/1809 Haydn died

For a very complete list of May anniversaries I recommend you take a look at the Classical Composers Database