45-rpm single of The Doors Light My Fire, recorded in August 1966 and released in January 1967

This post – Music History Monday – would not be possible without the internet. In a matter of seconds, I – or any one of us – can access a seemingly innumerable number of sites that will afford us all sorts of date-related info: what happened and to whom on any particular date. I rely on a number of such music-related sites for gathering possible subject matter for Music History Monday, and nine-out-of-ten times (nineteen-out-of-twenty? whatever, most of the time) I find a date-related topic about which I can comfortably write between 1500 and 2000 words. 

I’ve been writing this post for a bit over three years now (for those inclined towards masochism, all of these posts – going back to August 2016 – can be found here). Early on, on the rare occasion that I could not find something to write about, I “borrowed” an event from the day before or the day after. Sometime during the first year I decided that that was cheating and that I had to be cleverer than just borrowing stuff. So I began to use those occasional “dead” dates to editorialize: to bloviate on topics of personal musical interest. And while I deeply appreciate your forbearance – my dear, wonderful readers – I am so accustomed to hearing myself rant and rave and opine that at this point doing so bores me to the point of tears.

So over the course of the last year or so, I’ve attempted to gut my way through the occasional dry date – of which today is obviously one (I wouldn’t be wasting all this space ruminating on the problem if it weren’t) – by either writing about relatively obscure births and deaths (though such events were by no means obscure to those people whose births and deaths they represent) or figuring a way to shoe horn some musical commentary into a non-musical event. 

So that you might understand what I mean by “obscure”, here are the more outstanding musical events that occurred on this day. September 2 saw the births of the composers Georg Böhm (1661); Johann Trier (1716); Pehr Frigel (1750); Felix Wolfes (1892); Rene Amengual (1911); Dai-Keong Lee (1915); Hans Joachim Koellreutter (1915); Tzvi Avni (1927); Miloslav Istvan (1928); Andrey Petrov (1930) (you are getting sleepy!); David Leonard Blake (1939) and John Zorn (1953). With the exception of the first and last of these folks – Georg Böhm and John Zorn – the music of these lovely people has, sadly, been flushed down the toilet of time (as I expect mine will be as well). 

Keanu Reeves, born September 2, 1964, in 1999

(For our information, Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon on this date in 1964, but I am hard put to come up with any pertinent musical connection to The One.)

The deaths on this date – with the exception of Rudolf Bing, who died in 1997 after a storied career as the manager of the Metropolitan Opera – are equally meagre. 

However, when it comes to major world events, September 2nd is indeed a big day. I would offer up a few for purely pedagogic purposes:

On September 2, 44 BCE, the great Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tulius Cicero launched the first of would be 14 oratorical attacks on the lumpish Roman politician and general Marc Antony. (I will happily admit to having become a Cicero fan-boy after reading Robert Harris’ superb historical trilogy, set in the dying days of the Roman Republic, Imperium, Conspirata, and Dictator. I would be so bold as to suggest that by recommending these novels this post has now offered something of value!)

Other September 2 events.