{"id":5270,"date":"2021-12-29T18:00:03","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T22:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=5270"},"modified":"2021-12-29T18:00:03","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T22:00:03","slug":"reading-bakers-biographical-dictionary-of-musicians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2021\/12\/29\/reading-bakers-biographical-dictionary-of-musicians.html","title":{"rendered":"Reading Baker\u2019s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tI am leafing through pages from\u00a0<em>Baker\u2019s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Fifth Edition with 1971 Supplement<\/em>. This is inspired by a book I just discarded (I left it at a thrift shop having read about 2 pages) in which the author read the <em>Oxford English Dictionary<\/em>\u00a0and commented on the pursuit by filling a book with\u00a0comments and observations on the words he encountered during\u00a0this journey through over 21,000 pages. I will randomly look through pages of <em>Baker&#8217;s<\/em> and see what I will\u00a0learn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Franz Xaver Gruber. 1787-1863.<\/strong> As far as I can tell he wrote one piece of music,\u00a0that being none other than the immortal song\u00a0<em>Silent night, Holy Night<\/em>. That is certainly a beautiful song for which to be remembered but seeing his name in Baker\u2019s prompted me to look around and see if Gruber composed anything else. I cannot find even a reference to anything else he might have written, though folklore-like stories of the famous song\u2019s creation abound. There is actually a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stillenachtarnsdorf.at\/index.php?id=2&amp;Color=&amp;L=1\">Silent Night Museum<\/a> in Austria. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) the original melody differs somewhat from what is sung today. Find audio of the original melody\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stillenacht.info\/en\/silent-night\/sheet-music.asp\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am leafing through pages from\u00a0Baker\u2019s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Fifth Edition with 1971 Supplement. This is inspired by a book I just discarded (I left it at a thrift shop having read about 2 pages) in which the author read the Oxford English Dictionary\u00a0and commented on the pursuit by filling a book with\u00a0comments and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-1n0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31302,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions\/31302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}