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My favorite musician died today. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the great German baritone, was ten days short of his eighty-seventh birthday.

Fischer-Dieskau was probably the greatest singer of the twentieth century. He was certainly the greatest singer of Lieder the world has ever known. Seldom is any one person so important and influential that he becomes universally acknowledged as the best in his field. Who is the best pitcher ever? The best film director? The best painter? The best guitarist? Many people will argue about those in any number of ways. But if you ask anyone anywhere who’s the best interpreter of Schubert, for example, Fischer-Dieskau will invariably be the answer. You might ask, “what’s the best recording of Winterreise?” The answer is, one of Fischer-Dieskau’s. Indeed, the second- and third-best recordings may also be Fischer-Dieskau’s. He recorded the cycle at least a half dozen times over a career of some forty years.

Indeed, an unparalleled body of recorded works may be Fischer-Dieskau’s greatest professional legacy. He is perhaps the single most recorded singer of all time. He sang thousands of songs, and an enormous number of roles in oratorios and operas, in German, French, Italian, English, Russian, Hungarian, Spanish, and on and on. My personal collection contains more Fischer-Dieskau recordings than I can count (hundreds of discs, at least), and yet I have barely scratched the surface.

My first exposure to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau came in the form of his recording of Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe with pianist Alfred Brendel. To this day, it remains among my favorite compact discs. [Note: in a future post, I will review several different recordings of Dichterliebe, including several sung by Fischer-Dieskau.] In the process of acquiring recordings of vocal repertoire, it became inevitable that I would find a great deal of Fischer-Dieskau in my collection, since he was so versatile and prolific. After a while I had grown so fond of his voice and style, I began actively seeking out his recordings. Some are easy to find, others presented challenges. A years-long quest to obtain a deluxe twenty-one-disc set of material new to compact disc was successfully concluded a couple years ago. Likewise, his recording of Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler was nearly impossible to find until last year. My collecting continues, and probably always will.

[UPDATE: The PBS Newshour had a nice feature on Fischer-Dieskau last night. You can watch the video below.]

 

 

Though no short remembrance on this or any other webpage could do justice to a career as important as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s, I would be remiss if I did not post a few short clips of the singer’s miraculous voice. These selections are not intended to be broadly representative of anything; they are merely recordings I like and have ready access to at the moment. The first is an early recording of “Auf dem Hügel sitz ich spähend” from Beethoven’s song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte:

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Fischer-Dieskau recorded the major song cycles of Schubert several times over. Here is “Der Atlas” from a 1962 performance of Schwanengesang:

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Fischer-Dieskau owned Winterreise. Early versions from the LP era with pianists Jörg Demus and Gerald Moore are considered classics. But even in the mid-1980s, Fischer-Dieskau’s was still beautiful, as you’ll hear in this performance of “Der Lindenbaum”:

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Finally, among my favorite recordings is a 1968 Des Knaben Wunderhorn conducted by George Szell. From the moment I first heard it, I loved how Fischer-Dieskau sings “Wir hat dies Liedlein erdacht?”:

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It is not possible for me to post here clips from all my treasured Fischer-Dieskau recordings. Instead, as time goes on I will post reviews of these discs and sets individually. It cannot be overstated how important an artist Fischer-Dieskau was, and still is, to me.

Years ago, I wrote to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in Berlin, at an address supplied to me by Monika Wolf. I did not really expect a reply. I wanted only to tell the master how much I appreciated his work. A few weeks later I opened my mail box to find a small envelope, on the back of which was written, “Fischer-Dieskau”. Inside was an autographed photo. Looking at the envelope even today, I am still struck by the idea that this great musician—a man who, a hundred years from now, will be spoken of with reverence—put pen to paper and wrote down my name.

Farewell, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. And thank you.

Filed under: Current Events, Music on May 18th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Allow me to offer some free, unbiased financial advice. Do not buy stock in Facebook. Actually, allow me to qualify my statement, and offer some explanation. If you can buy Facebook stock on Friday when it goes public, go ahead. If you can buy enough of it you will make a fortune. But if you cannot get it when it goes on sale, forget it.

For the record, I use Facebook. I find it a convenient way to stay in touch with a small group friends and family, some of whom live in far away places. I may see most of these people in person on a regular basis, but some I cannot, and Facebook makes staying in touch much easier. I have frequently noted that I graduated high school just before the internet became the ubiquitous entity it is today, and, in spite of my best intentions, within a year or two of graduation, I found it impossible to keep tabs on the many friends whose company I enjoyed, but who had moved away to attend college or see the world. I wasn’t able to exchange email addresses with my classmates, and none of them knew at the time what their telephone numbers would be for the next six months, let alone six years. (Remember, too, that, at that time, almost no one had a mobile phone, and even those who did had to get a new number each time they moved.) Facebook, for better or for worse, has made it possible to keep up with the lives of the people you care about, even if you cannot be near them.

Facebook reportedly has nearly a billion active users worldwide, with revenue, mostly from advertising, at over $3 billion per year. When its stock goes public on Friday—at an initial price of nearly $40 per share—it is expected to bring in more than $100 billion, and make its CEO one of the richest men on earth.

But let us put this in perspective. The Coca-Cola Company, in business since 1892, sells well over a billion drinks every day. It earns tens of billions of dollars each year in revenue and employs well over a hundred thousand people. There is a Coke bottling plant in my town. The Ford Motor Company, in business since 1903, is the world’s fifth largest auto maker, selling millions of vehicles each year in the United States alone. Its net profit in 2011 was over $6.5 billion. Ford employs over two hundred thousand people not including the many thousands who work at Ford dealerships across the country, selling and servicing the vehicles. As I write this, Ford stock is trading at $10.28 per share; Coke is trading at $62.46 per share.

By the end of trading on Friday, who knows where Facebook’s stock will be trading? Maybe $75 per share. Perhaps $100. It will certainly be trading higher than Ford, but may trade higher than Coca-Cola, or even McDonald’s. It will be trading higher than Microsoft, the company that makes the software that a vast majority of Facebook users use to access the site. This defies reason. Facebook may have millions of users; it may be hugely popular; it may be open in your internet browser right now, but Facebook is not worth more than Ford, or Coke, or McDonald’s.

I am not saying Facebook is not a valuable brand. Obviously, with so many users, the potential for ad revenue is substantial. But the internet is an entity even more mysterious than the stock market, and history has shown us that investor enthusiasm for internet companies has a tremendously costly downside. America Online was once the most-used internet service provider in the United States. Its name was practically synonymous with “internet”. It became so large that it was able to buy Time Warner, the company that owns half of the entertainment you consume each year. A decade after the AOL/Time Warner merger, AOL had a net revenue of -$700 million per year.

I don’t know if I believe that Facebook will someday crash as spectacularly as AOL did, but I don’t believe it will be the final social networking site on the internet, and I don’t believe it will worth much ten years from now. Amazon.com is one of the few websites that survived the dot com bubble of the early 2000s and came out stronger. But Amazon actually sells things. Lots of things. So does Ford. So does Coke. Facebook doesn’t. In fact, if Facebook tried to sell its service, tens of millions of people would immediately stop using it. Likewise, the advertising that supports the site can only become so pervasive before users resent it and flee to some other, perhaps yet-to-be-developed service. This may already be happening. Ask yourself how Facebook, whose revenue is dependent on advertising, could become worth more than the Time Warner Company (trading today at $35 per share), which owns Time Warner Cable, and at least ten cable television channels, all of which are bursting with advertising. It doesn’t make sense. And when you consider how readily users abandoned Friendster and MySpace, the future doesn’t look bright for Facebook.

So, consider my warning: Unless you can buy Facebook stock when it goes on sale on Friday—and quickly dump it—don’t buy it at all, because I don’t see any way that, ten years from now, Facebook’s stock price will be anywhere near where it closes on Friday afternoon. And however popular it is today, no serious person could believe that Facebook will be around as long as Ford or Coke.

Filed under: Current Events, Technology on May 15th, 2012 | 5 Comments »

A legendary baseball park turned one hundred years old today. Truly one of the cathedrals of the game, it witnessed some of the sport’s greatest moments—many World Series and All-Star Games—and hosted legendary players like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Lou Gehrig. From its earliest days, it was the city’s pride. Tiger Stadium opened 20 April 1912.

Unlike another ball park that opened the same day, however, Tiger Stadium is only a memory now. Its demise is one of the most unfortunate in the history of baseball, and, in a city that is a pale shadow of its former glory, it is surely missed. Its destruction must count as another shameful example of the short-sightedness, iconoclasm, and willful disrespect for tradition that has severely hurt baseball, and has seen too many great old parks fall victim to the wrecking ball. Consider this: after Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, the next oldest parks in Major League Baseball are Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Oakland Coliseum, and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Tropicana Field is the eighth oldest ball park in the Majors. Now, Dodger Stadium is, in my opinion, a modernist masterpiece, and I appreciate Kauffman Stadium, too, but the destruction of Comiskey Park, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and Yankee Stadium ought to be considered scandalous given the banality of their replacements.

Surely, few people miss Jack Murphy Stadium, the Metrodome, or Three Rivers Stadium. And even if I personally have fond memories of Fulton County Stadium, and even if the Astrodome was a modern marvel, they had their flaws. So did Candlestick Park (which still stands) and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. In any event, Camden Yards and PNC Park are each striking in their own way. Rangers Ballpark is one of my favorite designs, and the view from the new Busch Stadium is vastly superior to the old, closed-in design that obstructed views of St. Louis’ most iconic landmark.

Of all cities, New York—where memories of Ebbets Field seem to send old Brooklyn fans into fits of reverie—should have been more appreciative of the majesty of Yankee Stadium, if not the style of Shea. Alas, greed proved more potent than pride and tradition, and the House that Ruth Built is lost. Ages hence, a white-haired Billy Crystal will look into some documentarian’s camera and lament the loss of his childhood.

What difference does it make, so long as the crowds want to come? Nostalgia is my answer. Red Sox fans who attended games at Fenway with their fathers, who attended games with their fathers, can give those same memories to their own sons. When I visited Wrigley Field in 2008, I could tell my wife how it looked exactly the same as it did when I saw it on television with my grandfather almost a quarter century before. And, though he never saw a game there in person, had he gone there as a boy it would have looked the same. That means something.

Fenway Park turned one hundred years old today, and tens of thousands of Bostonians turned out to wish her a happy birthday, with best wishes for another hundred years. Alas, Detroit lost that chance when Tiger Stadium disappeared in 2009. However appealing construction of Comerica Park may have seemed at the end of the last century, the new stadium will not live to see its one hundredth birthday; I’d bet money on it. But I wouldn’t bet my memories, and that’s what makes me and the iconoclasts different.

 

Filed under: Current Events, Nostalgia, Sports on April 20th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I am working diligently to complete my non-thesis project, so writing for pleasure has had to take a back seat to writing for displeasure. But a few things merit mention.

First,spring is here officially, and so is Daylight Saving Time, which I love. I’ve been going in to work at half past five in the morning this week, and yesterday I was in class until after six o’clock at night. Still, though I had dinner out last night, I still made it home before dark. That makes me happy. The azaleas are just fading, but the jasmine is getting ready.

What also makes me happy is that we had the warmest winter I can ever remember. It was genuinely cold only a handful of days this year, and we barely ran the heater at home. Our electric bills were lower than ever.

We are in a Golden Age of University of Florida baseball. Last night was their first loss in something like nineteen games, and UF is the number one team in the country right now. But, sadly, it won’t last. Many of the team’s best players are seniors, or juniors who will be tempted to go pro. Next year’s team will look a lot different. Meanwhile, I have been doing my best to get to the ballpark for every game, but school work has made me miss a couple now.

I am looking forward to putting this writing project behind me so I can get back to the things I really care about.

Filed under: Current Events, Meteorology, School, Sports on March 23rd, 2012 | No Comments »

Yesterday I wrote about the fire at Satchel’s that wrecked the kitchen there and forced a shut-down for some time. Yesterday was also the day Satchel started an online fundraiser to help pay his employees until the restaurant can reopen. He hoped to raise $20,000 in two weeks. He raised that much money in twenty-four hours. That’s how much Gainesville loves Satchel’s. He posted on Facebook tonight that he feels like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

Filed under: Current Events, Film, Gainesville on March 3rd, 2012 | No Comments »