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I concur heartily!

The film, by the way, is staggeringly good, certainly one of the most inspired cinematic versions of Shakespeare, taking full advantage of the medium. Kozintsev made a film of King Lear as well, which I haven't been lucky enough to see yet.

Paul B., you have opened a multiple topic.
Now I limit myself to scientists, admitting I have to recur to semi modern or moderrn composers.
Johannes Kepler: protagonist of the opera "Die Harmonie der Welt" by Paul Hindemith (as the opera is rather unsung, much less is the Symphony which is a by-product: I have heard in actual concert twice, there are recordings by Blomstedt, Mravinsky, Furtwangler....)
Nicolaus Copernicus: Symphony n.2 Copernicana by M.Gorecki, using Copernicus text s (Naxos recording).

The first complete recording of Die Harmonie der Welt, led by Marek Jankowski (Wergo), blew me away; I have always been a Hindemith fan, but even I wasn't prepared for the singular greatness of this opera. Highly recommended for anyone who hasn't heard it.

Does anyone have reliable information on how the composer pronounced his surname? Richard Rhodes's recently published Hedy's Folly asserts (without documentation) that he pronounced it "ANT-hile," but this seems to me very unlikely, as such a pronunciation, besides being laborious and unnatural, agrees with neither the German pronunciation (phonetically ['antăɪl], or, approximated in English phonics, "AHN-tile") nor the one that would be in accord with English orthoepy, "AN-thile."

I have always pronounced it in the way that Rhodes suggests, and I feel I must have a reason for that, but I can't recall whether it is because someone once pointed that out to me as the correct pronunciation.

Name pronunciation questions can be very interesting; for example, the last name of the British novelist Anthony Powell, well-known for his 12-volume roman fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time, is pronounced PO-uhl, a fact that few seem to know (and that makes one feel very insider-ish to be aware of).

Oh, absolutely, that's why I put scare quotes around the word rival.

This web-page is interesting, particularly in its discussion of how Hauer rejected the concept of self-expression in composition - a rather more radical idea than the twelve-tone system itself, which as Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern practiced it is perfectly compatible with the Romantic conception of the composer as heroically self-expressive. I wonder whether Sengstschmid and Steinbauer, who are in the line of Hauer's pedagogy, shared this attitude of his?

http://www.ibiblio.org/johncovach/hauerbio.htm

Schoenberg held Hauer's ideas in high regard in the early and mid 1920s, and Hauer's music--including op. 19--was performed in the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen.  The two composers for a time discussed the idea of jointly authoring a book, and even of opening a school for twelve-tone composition.  Hauer's new ideas about the role of the composer, however, differed markedly from those of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, who held to the traditional role of the composer as expressive artist.  Hauer continued to argue that the composer's role was to suppress any will to personal expression in music and to work only at expressing the spiritual truth inherent in the twelve notes themselves; he eventually went so far as to reject the title of composer, thinking of himself instead as an "interpreter of the twelve tones."

Hauer's Wikipedia page interestingly mentions that he and Theodor Adorno did not get along, although it is not clear from the reference whether the disagreement was more theoretical or personal.

I need to resist asking if the books they like include certain mystery novels that often involve cats and sometimes classical music... (some of which I enjoyed particularly were a pair of cats in a series whose author died at a goodly age last year. ... anyway.)

Well, I don't have any of those particular books, but whatever I am reading, they seem to be interested in!

My Library Thing profile has some information about my reading habits and cultural interests:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/PatrickMurtha

I like that Hauer Orchestersuite Nr. 7, which probably dates from around 1925. Hauer shows up in all the history books as Schoenberg's "rival" in the development of the twelve-tone method.

I'm new here - I live and teach in Mexico. Of my two one-year-old sister cats, Remedios (named after the Mexican painter Remedios Varo), likes classical CDs of all kinds and positions herself near the speakers to listen. Frida (named after Frida Kahlo) is less musically inclined, but likes to watch movies with me, and looks straight at the screen - I wonder what exactly she sees. Both cats seem fond of books, which is not too unusual for felines. They are very companionable pets.