April 5th

On this day... birth of German violinist Louis Spohr, 1784. I chose this entry not for any outstandingly interesting tidbit about the man himself (though he made Faust into an opera and painted a mean self-portrait - see picture), but about the unbelievable volume of members of his profession throughout history. I don't believe a there's been a day of Catcomeback research (a grueling process, requiring several hours hard meditation on a mountaintop followed by a ninja battle) that I didn't encounter at least one famous violinist being born, or dying, or occasionally doing something really noteworthy in between. But then, there are plenty of repeated professions. Take actors and actresses - a dime a dozen, or more like a penny. It may be I focus on violinists because they're my favorite sort of musicians. First, because they play my favorite instrument. There's something about the way a violin sounds almost like a woman's voice that's just spine-tingling. Second, because they were the rock stars of Classical music. Yes, Beethoven was deaf and it was awesome, but women rarely went into hysterical fits during his performances, as they were said to do for Paganini. They had a love of the dramatic (Paganini liked to encourage stories that he was the devil by travelling everywhere in a black coach pulled by black horses). You just don't see that kind of thing nowadays - The Devil Went Down to Georgia doesn't even begin to make up for our dire lack of awesome fiddlers. In fact, the story from that song was cribbed from 18th century violinist Guiseppe Tartini. Tartini claimed that one night he dreamt the devil came into his bedroom in an attempt to bargain for his soul. G.T. challenged him to a violin duel, but the sonata the devil played was so incredible that, upon hearing it, G.T. called the whole thing off. After he woke up, he attempted to reproduce the bizarre sound - he came up with The Devil's Trill, which sounds less demonic than you would think, given the circumstances. I guess standards were different in the 1700s. You can listen to a little of it here. If you're unimpressed, I guess you'll just have to make your own deal for musical fame...