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:

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

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”:

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?”:

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.

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.

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.

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.

On Tuesday night Satchel’s caught fire. Fortunately, no one seems to have been injured, and the structure was not a complete loss, as was the case with Napolitano’s some years back. But the kitchen was pretty well trashed, and the restaurant will likely be closed for weeks while they get it back in order. These will be a long few weeks, then, for a lot of people who love Satchel’s.

Edgar Villchur, who was ninety-four years old, gave the world the acoustic suspension loudspeaker. The AR-1, made by his company, Acoustic Research, changed the way speakers were produced. Unlike many of the existing speakers at the time, his speakers were fully enclosed, and virtually airtight. The vacuum inside would cause the drivers to “spring” back to their proper position automatically, whereas other speakers at the time used actual mechanical springs, and the cabinets that enclosed them were enormous. With Villchur’s technology, people could finally have loudspeakers that were unobtrusive in the home. My AR-3as are actually quite handsome, with walnut cabinets and grill cloths of Irish linen. Stereophile and The Absolute Sound will tell you that the 3a is at or near the top of the most important loudspeakers ever created.

For me, though, it isn’t the innovative technology or the appearance of my AR loudspeakers that makes me love them. It’s the sound. These speakers have changed the way I hear music. My enjoyment has been increased in ways I cannot fully articulate. Considering how important music is to me, I can, without hyperbole, tell you that they have made my life better. For that I am extremely grateful to Edgar Villchur.

I know many people who use an Apple product of some sort or another. Mrs. Hill uses an iPhone, and many of my friends and classmates have iPods and iMacs. Some of these people, like Miriam, find their Apple product useful, and appreciate whatever convenience it offers, but have not succumbed to the Cult of Apple. Others, however, are obsessed. Sadly, many journalists are in the latter group. I get why. They have iPads and iPhones and apps and all that, and since it’s cool to them they suppose it’s cool to everybody. And I admit, I have seen some iPhone apps that I have thought interesting and even amazing. But the coverage Jobs’ death has received seems somewhat out-of-proportion, as do the accolades some have gone out of their way to heap upon him.

Is the iPhone cool? Sure. But it wasn’t a radically new idea. The iPad is just a bigger iPhone, or, more accurately, a smaller, less-capable notebook computer. And the iPod, while ubiquitous (indeed, you cannot cross a college campus or ride any public transit system without seeing legions of them), is just a small Walkman. People have had it for decades. I don’t even think the iPod was the first portable MP3 player. None of these products was really shockingly new or revolutionary. Steve Jobs was no Johannes Gutenberg or Thomas Edison. I don’t mean this as a criticism of Mr. Jobs, and, to the best of my knowledge, he never compared himself to those great inventors. My point is merely that some in the media have treated him that way.

Was Steve Jobs a great businessman? Given the apparent success of Apple, I’d say undoubtedly. But far more than technological innovation, I think Jobs’ success with Apple was due to clever and aggressive marketing. And when I say aggressive I mean extremely aggressive. Apple commercials have been, and continue to be, omnipresent. Television commercials, print ads, and billboards for Apple products are everywhere, and these ads have been perfectly crafted to appeal to a certain type of consumer. In one type of commercial, Apple uses a catchy, sing-along-type song that viewers cannot forget. This is a tactic that many companies have used, but Apple did it with remarkably effective simplicity. In another commercial campaign–and one that I hated–Apple took two guys, one representing a Mac, the other representing a Windows-based PC, and made the actor representing the PC appear foolish or stupid. Again, the hipster-quotient was excessively high in these ads. The last campaign I will mention is one I think truly insidious. The “If you don’t have an iPhone…” commercials, which feature shots of the iPhone, while a narrator tells you that, “if you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPhone”. Obviously. But what the commercial is trying to say is that if you don’t have an iPhone you are not cool; you are not relevant; you are not a good person. That campaign appeals to the basest acquisitive consumer impulses. It’s the ugliest sort of advertising: buy this or you’re nobody. The folks at Conan did a pretty accurate parody of an Apple commercial last April:

The title of one of the many op-eds that appeared following Steve Jobs’ death this week hit on something that reminded me of this comedy bit. “Steve Jobs, Enemy of Nostalgia“—which appeared in the New York Times, a newspaper published in the heart of Apple-country—is about the Apple CEO’s lack of reverence for any technology. “One of the keys to Apple’s success under his leadership”, writes Mike Daisey, “was his ability to see technology with an unsentimental eye and keen scalpel, ready to cut loose whatever might not be essential”. Apple customers who found their iPhones or iPads suddenly usurped by a newer, more-expensive model, must understand the drawback of such an “unsentimental” business model.

Granted, a key requirement for success in business is making people buy something new when they already have something old. Light bulbs burn out, cars break down, and clothes go out of style. But Apple fanatics seem have had to endure this to an absurd degree. And if, as Mike Daisey argues, Steve Jobs was an “enemy of nostalgia”, all the focus on buy-and-replace makes sense. Apple users, then, are not meant to experience long-lasting relationships with any single technology, because the future success of Apple requires that these users embrace a new technology. That may be a smart business strategy in the short term, but what will it mean in years to come?

Whether or not any aged hipster will one day write a “Long May You Run”-style ballad about his old MacAir is probably not important. But the anti-nostalgic mind is capricious and is always searching for the new thing. Apple may have seemingly-faithful users today, but if they are as unnostalgic as Steve Jobs, they will only stay if Apple appears to be the newest. If their products are not unique, and their marketing style is easily imitable, what will happen when someone comes along and out Apples Apple?