Ball Martin Facilitating

The Mass in E flat was most likely composed for the 1804 Marienfest in Eisenstadt, an annual event celebrated with great pomp and splendor to honor the Fürstin Maria's name day, usually on the weekend following the Mariä Geburt observance (September 8). For the Marienfest, the Fürst usually hosted a banquet, a ball, and a concert, in addition to a military parade and fireworks. He also commissioned a new Mass each year (the late masses of Haydn and the Mass in C of Beethoven owe their existence to the Marienfest).

Enjoying great success in music, film, television, and the stage, Dean Martin was less an entertainer than an icon, the eternal essence of cool. A member of the legendary Rat Pack, he lived and died the high life of booze, broads and bright lights, always projecting a sense of utter detachment and serenity; along with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the other chosen few who breathed the same rarefied air, Martin – highball and cigarette always firmly in hand – embodied the glorious excess of a world long gone, a world without rules or consequences. Throughout it all, he remained just outside the radar of understanding, the most distant star in the firmament.

Some people believe that Eric Clapton introduced the acoustic guitar to pop and rock music with his 'Unplugged' album in 1992. Others think it was MTV who started their legendary concert series of the same name in 1989. The truth is the acoustic guitar, beyond baroque and classical music, has always been there. But in the 1960s the instrument gained an enormous boost in popularity as the instrument of choice favoured by folk legends such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan to accompany their songs. The decade would see more and more pure instrumentalists placing the acoustic guitar completely at the centre of their music. When the makers of the WDR Rockpalast decided to give this a forum in 1979, they could rely on four great musicians from their own country Germany who had made fingerstyle guitar enormously popular.