On Friday 08 February 2008 21:18:29 James McCarty wrote:
 
> What drives me nuts is the inconsistency in pronouncing composers' names,
> especially Bach and Mozart....

JMcC's dyspeptic sputterings pleased me enormously. This is just the sort 
of thing that drives me crazy too, and my whole family jump to turn off 
the radio whenever I walk into a room. It's like those ancient Radio Free 
Europe TV commercials, where the pasty-faced vaguely Eastern European
family are huddled furtively around the ancient cabinet set, one bare 
bulb illuminating the dreary scene, Pa in his threadbare suit, shirt buttoned,
no necktie, Ma in her babushka, and at least one of the kiddies with a sinister
informer's look on his pierogi-pale and pierogi-soft countenance. They're 
clearly expecting the Knock On The Door any minute. A lot like American 
suburbia nowadays, actually, what with the RIAA and all.

Anyway, JMcC goes on: 
 
> The Johann they get right, and the Bach is a reasonable facsimile, although
> the "ch" is usually too hard. The abomination is the mangling of his middle
> name...
> Mozart's first name almost invariably is Anglicized also. 

Now this is what drives *me* crazy. The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, 
by Johann Sebastian Bach. Oh, THAT Bach! Who knew! Those damn 
Brandenburgs -- any one of the dozens of Bachs might have written 
'em. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. You know, the one from Stratford. 
Messiah, by Georg(e) Frederick Handel -- not the well-known other 
Messiah, by Georg Wilhelm Haendel. Whence this fatuous pedantry, 
this footnotey persnicketeyness in the citations? Did these people 
never recover from writing high-school term papers? 

Got ya beat, Jay. This one post alone is about 3,000 curmudgeon 
points, and every one well-earned.