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I should feel quite guilty, with such a blatantly bad pun as tonight's Top Comments title, but I feel no shame at all. (Well, I must be feeling some if I'm mentioning the fact, but it can't be much if the title remains unchanged.) Tonight's diary is not only brief, it's using as its springboard the subject of dead composers.
The classical music world is big on celebrating major anniversaries of the birth or death of a composer, or of a particular masterwork. 2009 was the 250th anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel, and his works were programmed out the wazoo. Last year was the 400th anniversary of the creation of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Virgine, aka the 1610 Vespers. Most major cities had at least one Vespers performance, and some had more than one over the course of the year. There was even a sing-along version in New York, rather like the Messiah sings that are ubiquitous every year in mid-December.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, the Spanish composer of Renaissance polyphony. I've heard two concerts of his music in the past couple of weeks, both of which featured his six-voice Requiem; I'll be hearing at least one more before spring is over. It's gorgeous music: Victoria is arguably the best Spanish Renaissance composer, and in the top five at the end of the Renaissance. (Others include Byrd, Palestrina, and Lassus.) If I end up at still more concerts of his music, I'll be a happy camper.
While Victoria died 400 years ago in 1611, it wasn't 400 years ago today: the actual day was August 20. I was surprised to see some very familiar, if more recent, names of composers who died on April 3, if no one at all from the Renaissance or Baroque periods: Johannes Brahms, in 1897, and Kurt Weill, in 1950. There was also another important figure in the history of music, or at least in light opera, which was pivotal in the development of musical theater: Richard D'Oyly Carte (1901), who presented the Savoy operas written by Gilbert and Sullivan. I owe all three gentlemen a great debt, as they've had a definite influence on my life.
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I also owe a debt to those people who took the time to submit comments that deserved recognition to Top Comments mailbox in time for the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline. The address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains:
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Anyone can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit.
From liz dexic (second-half writeup by sardonyx):
In LaFeminista's diary Women Cant Be Trusted, wherein she sums up the current climate about women quite eloquently using the now-banned word in Florida, "uterus," mrsgoo rants with the best of them: the sentence starting I swear is a thing of beauty.
From carolita:
In this comment and two downthread (starting here), cuphalffull gives some great insights on the cause of bullying and how to deal with it at the political level in Verbalpaintball's diary Our Culture of Meanness.
From alizard:
In BFSkinner's diary about the Family Research Council, OHdog talks about the underlying role of FRC and similar organizations in recruiting "useful idiots" to support extreme right wing positions, especially for the multi-billionaires.
From asimbagirl:
This comment by potatohead was so freaking spot on for me that I just had to send it in. It's from BFSkinner's diary, Hating gays does not make us a hate group.
From sardonyx (your discomposed Sunday diarist):
In Muskegon Critic's diary Making 2/3 Less Than He Made A Decade Ago, johnnygunn says that the Democrats need to focus on pocketbook issues like a laser beam.
When The Beatles win it all in BKSkinner's long-running battle of the bands, Thutmose V says that if anything, the Beatles are underrated.
Please add your own comment finds below!
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A reminder: Top mojo will return once we figure out how to strongarm convince Comment Search to give us exactly what we need in a form that we can use. Which is more difficult and requires more hand-editing than it should be (or used to be).