30 Birds

New Lifers: 30 Composers

It struck me not long ago that one can life list other things besides birds: countries, parks, monuments, friends, and much more. Even composers -- in the sense that you had never previously enountered this name, or never heard a piece of the composer's music, or both. Here are 30 Composers new to me, a life list I have recently started as a sort of parallel to my 30 Birds. See below for who got me started on this.

Here are the 30, five in each row:
Akutagawa-1955 Alnaes-1930 Arensky-1895 Atterberg-1930 Bowen-1912

Bridge-1920 Farrar-1917 Fibich-1880 Finzi-1936 Francaix-1947

Gurney-1915 Herbert-1887 Ivanov-1900 Kalinnikov-1895 Kurka-1957

Larsson-1959 Liadov-1900 Luigini-1880 Melartin-1910 Moeran-1945

Riegger-1920 Roussel-1929 Sculthorpe-1959 Shchedrin-1980 Siegmeister-1947

Taylor-1954 Thompson-1970 Turina-1933 Tveitt-1935 Warlock-1920

Note: In cases where I was able to choose which image to present, I inclined against the standard image of the great composer and favored youth and the not-so-often-seen. In some cases the date provided is accurate, but in many cases it is simply my guess at what seems likely, given the composer's appearence in the picture.     Caveat emptor.

Imagine going to a single national park, after you've been birding for a long time, and adding 30 birds to your lifelist while there. The source for these 30 composers is something like that: the classical music station in Los Angeles, KUSC, and in particular "The Evening Program with Jim Svejda." This unique program streams evenings at KUSC.org. UPDATE: Alas, Jim has just retired, after 43 years. He's unique, will be greatly missed.

One of the great things about Svejda's program was that in addition to a full measure of the traditional greats, he regularly included little-known composers, indeed unknown to people like me, even though I have listened to a lot of classical music over the years, all over this country. Life list material! Another great thing about his show was the fascinating information, sometimes amusing, sometimes monumental, sometimes salacious, he provides about the composer's life -- or the conductor's, or the soloist's. Neither was he shy with his opinions, and that added a lot to the interest.