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Today is the big one. America is celebrating Thanksgiving, and we are all remembering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. And in the musical world not only is today the nameday of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. It is also the day when Jacob Obrecht was born in 1450, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach in 1710, Joaquin Rodrigo in 1901, and Benjamin Britten in 1913. Follow the links for related articles.
Now playing - Gerald Finzi's For St. Cecilia on the 1979 Argo LP ZRG 896 seen above. Finzi's Ode for tenor, chorus and orchestra also has a birthday today. It was first performed exactly sixty years ago, on November 22, 1947, by René Soames, the Luton Choral Society and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Another fine choral work that deserves to be heard more often.
Do you mind if I leave you now with these birthday links? You see, I'm off to celebrate my own birthday.
Header image (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
The comment below was posted on a recent article. It deserves to be run as a separate post, and I've added the photo and some links to paths that are well worth following.

Pliable, I would love to see the BBC Proms program Paul Creston's (above) Symphony No.2, which is IMO the greatest American Symphony. Just by a hair though, because there are so many that are great! Peter Mennin's 7th also comes to mind as does Nicolas Flagello's 1st. The above along with Aaron Copland's 3rd would be my leading choices for any symphony based American program. Then maybe Walter Piston no.6, George Frederick McKay's Symphony for Seattle, and a whole bunch more. I'm sure Garth and I could go on all day like this.While they're at it, why not call me to do them? I've wanted to do a Prom since like forever! - John McLaughlin Williams
If you want to hear music by the composers mentioned above John's discography includes several CDs of music by Nicolas Flagello and George Frederick McKay.
Photo credit Paul Creston Collection UKMC. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk