Józef Hofmann (1876-1967)

January 20 is indeed an interesting day in music history, particularly notable for anniversaries of births and deaths. Among those born on this day was the outstanding Polish/American pianist Józef Hofmann, born in 1876 (and died in 1967; my grandmother took some lessons with Hofmann at the New York Institute of Musical Art between 1914 and 1916, after which he went on to became the director of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, from 1927-1938); also born on this date in 1888 was the 12-string blues guitarist Huddie William Ledbetter (a.k.a. “Leadbelly”; he died in 1949); the Russian/American violinist Mischa Elman was born on January 20, 1891 (and died 1967); the American composer Walter Piston was born on this date in 1894 (he died in 1976 and was featured in my Dr. Bob Prescribes post on March 19, 2019); and Yvonne Loriod, an exceptional French pianist and wife of the composer Olivier Messiaen, was born on this date in 1924 (and died in 2010). 

Bettina Brentano (1785-1859) circa 1805

Notable deaths on this date include the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado, who died at the age of 80 in 2014, and the composer, publisher, writer, singer, visual artist, illustrator, patron of young talent, and social activist (wow) Bettina Brentano, the Countess of Arnim, who died on this date in 1859 at the age of 73.

(Elisabeth “Bettina” Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano more than deserves a post of her own. She was a polymath who numbered among her best friends both Beethoven and Goethe. She personally knew and her work was admired by Robert and Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms among many others. She was the sister of the German writer Clemens Brentano and the wife of the writer Achim von Arnim. Together with her brother Clemens and her husband Achim, she helped gather up and edit the folk poems that were published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”), which were set to music by scores of composers (pun intended), most notably Gustav Mahler.

Antonie Brentano (born Birkenstock, 1780-1869)

Bettina met Beethoven in May of 1810 when she was 25 years old. An extroverted beauty, she charmed the composer to his cockles – the location of which we will not presently discuss – and for many years had been a leading candidate for the “Immortal Beloved”, the otherwise unnamed woman with whom Beethoven had a torrid love affair in 1812. However, today the identity of the “Immortal Beloved” is generally understood to be Bettina’s sister-in-law Antonie Brentano, who Bettina introduced to Beethoven in 1810.)

Birthdays and death days: causes for, respectively, celebration and grief; days of seminal importance to the individuals involved. But I would point out that birth and death, except in the most tragic cases of the latter, are not issues of willful, conscious choice. Rather, they are natural events over which we have no control. It is not our births (or deaths) that make us who and what we are, that change our lives and the lives of those around us, but rather, the choices we make while we are abroad in this vale of tears.

Choice. What a shockingly loaded word. Really, is there any such thing as free will – choice – or are we (as Dmitri Shostakovich was wont to say) nothing more than marionettes, dancing through our miserable and meaningless lives in a manner directed/predetermined by higher (or lower) forces? 

We will presently resist a lengthy and speculative philosophical discussion on whether or not there is truly such a thing as “choice”, just as we will avoid – for now – grappling with other such weighty questions as “Certs: breath mint of candy mint?” or, like, “does anyone really know what time it is”? Rather,