These January red letter days – the birthdaysof ten composers, five poets, and two greatsongs, and the deaths of two composers andnine poets – represent as random a selectionof unlikely bedfellows as only chance canselect. The secret of any anthology, however,is to make the progression of information, inthis case music, pleasing enough to appearlogical, even inevitable, and for the whole tobe more than the sum of its many parts.