A Composer by Any Other Name Is Still Just as Forgotten

This blog is about the following piece:

It's amazing how little a name means as little as fifty years in the future. Jack Glogau. Al Piantadosi. Who they are are is just names now, attached to forgotten pieces of sheet music. For Dietrich and Wright, faces and surnames, and not enough information to know to which face the surname belongs.

I suppose this hit home when the only information I could find on Jack Glogau was a paragraph telling me about how no one knows anything about him. It was a bizarre feeling. A feeling that I suppose I would best characterize as ironic, although not quite.

For something as old as this sheet music, it shouldn't be surprising that the internet is, in fact, my least useful resource. Books written before the advent of the web, and old newspaper articles are where I find most of my information. I was surprised to find the above link via search engines, when there are composers like Harry Von Tilzer with very little more out there.

As for the other, Al Piantadosi, there is a brief paragraph in my history books. The gist: A publisher, composer, and a pianist. A list of songs. Fini.

When these men wrote, I wonder if they thought it was to make their names last forever. Was it for love of music, or fame? Or the combination of the two? There names now, are just printed letters on tattered covers of music remembered by a dying generation.

So, I must rather depressingly ask, what good is a name, when it is just a name?