Today's the Day

[greenilex]

Once chatted with a Maggini member on Eurostar, but have still never managed to hear them live.

[edashtav]

I must search out those Maggini recordings, ed (and the Dantes on Dutton, for that matter); by coincidence, I was listening to the Sterling's recordings of #s 2 and 4 yesterday, following with the scores - and, whilst the Second has many fine features, the Fourth struck me as rather aimlessly going over the same old ground. I suspect that the performances had much to do with this impression: in many ways they are impressive - ensemble and intonation are precise, recording balance is quite good (the Viola sometimes gets a little lost in the mix) ... but there's a staidness to their performances; an over-carefulness that creates a frigid dullness to Music that should glow (as in the better performances of the Symphonies). Mind and spirit here kept becoming aware that there were better things they could be attending to.

Many listeners find the second quartet to be Rubbra's most successful, I feel , ferney ( and that group often say the same of Tippett and Britten's second efforts). Some of Edmund's final period works do seem to be in the late Darius Milhaud mode of facile fecundity whereas Rubbra's more engaging works depend on resolution following contrapuntal struggle. I worry, sometimes, when listening to late Rubbra that his bass lines fail to aid progression: they meander, creating a mood of stasis. Having said that, the arc of 1,3 and 4 on the Naxis CD: from intellectual toil and strife to 'pipe and slippers' reflections, suited a late-night listener whose concentration started to waver.

[Padraig]

I'll go with 'the day that's in it' - the innocence of it. Do you remember a time when it mattered to you? Here's a song that might fit the sentiment.

Ma bhionn tu liom, bi liom
A stoirin mo chroi
If you'll be mine, be mine
Oh treasure of my heart.
If you'll be mine, be mine
Before the whole world.
If you'll be mine, be mine
Every inch of your heart.
Alas that you're not
My wife this Sunday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_OGwpczFWM

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Do you remember a time when it mattered to you?

Oh, yes. And, in a very different way, it still does.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 15th

Liberation Day in Afghanistan (celebrating the Soviet withdrawal on this date in 1989) and International Duties Day in Russia (commemorating soldiers from the former Soviet Union who died in that same invasion of Afghanistan); the Feast Days of St Sigfrid of Sweden (an English-born 11th Century missionary who baptised the first King if Sweden) and of Faustinus and Jovina, 2nd Century Christian evangelists, tortured and beheaded by Emperor Hadrian, in one of his extra-mural activities.

In 1923, Greece adopts the Gregorian Calendar (the last country in Europe to do so); Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis is premiered in Chicago by Willard MacGregor; Korngold's Violin Concerto is premiered by Heifetz in St Louis (1947); Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten is premiered in Cologne, on the same day that Canada replaces the Canadian Red Ensign flag with the Maple Leaf design (1965); the UK converts to decimal coinage (1971); the first "installment" of the complete version of the Human Genome is published in Nature magazine (2001); the largest Peace demonstration in history (c 300 million people) takes place in protest against the Iraq invasion (2003); and ten years later, the Chelyabinsk meteor explodes in the air over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk: the light created is brighter than the sun, and the explosion is around 30 times greater than the nuclear bomb detonated over Hiroshima. Nobidy was killed, but nearly 1500 people needed medical attention for injuries, including primary school teacher Yulia Karbysheva, who saved her class of 40 children from injury by moving them away from windows, and getting them to take cover under desks - she stood watch over them, and suffered severe lascerations from flying glass shards. (At least 20 children at other schools in the city were not so well-protected, and needed hospital care.)

Birthdays include: Alfonso Fontanelli (1557); Galileo Galilei (1564); Michael Praetorius (1571); Paul de Chamedey (founder of Montreal, 16120; Jeremy Bentham (1748); Henry E Steinway (1797); Charles Louis Tiffany (1812); Susan B Anthony (1820); Robert Fuchs (1847); Sophie Bryant (1850); Alfred North Whitehead (1861); Ernest Shackleton (1874); Sax Rohmer (1883); Georges Auric (1899); Cesar Romero (1907); Yelena Bonner (b1923); Graham Hill (1929); Claire Bloom (1931); Douglas Hofstadter (1945); Clare Short (1946); John Adams (1947); Christopher Rouse (1949); and Matt Groening (1954).

Final days for Michael Praetorius (another of those "died on their birthdays" figures - 1621); Gotthold Effraim Lessing (1781); Mikhail Glinka (1857); Lionel Monckton (1924); Herbert Henry Asquith (1928); Pat Sullivan (1933); Nat King Cole (1965); Kurt Atterberg (1974); Karl Richter (1981); Ethel Merman (1984); Richard Feynman (1988); William Schuman (1992); and Martha Gelhorn (1998).

On Radio 3, the morning schedules for Thursday, 15th February, 1979 were:

Overture: gramophone recordings with a "Winter" theme - Vivaldi, Leopold Mozart, Schubert, and Fucik.
Morning Concert: gramophone recordings with a "Spring" theme: Vivaldi, Pasquini, Delius, and Copland.
This Week's Composer: Chopin
Wigmore Hall Recital: Piano Trios by Haydn, Schumann, and Mendelssohn
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra: works by Handel, Mozart, and Hindemith (with an interval talk by Elaine Feinstein)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 16th

The Day of the Shining Star in North Korea, commemorating the birthday of late dictator, Kim-Jong-il, and Restoration of National Independence Day in Lithuania. It's also St Juliana's Feast Day, celebrating the 4th Century martyr, who was particularly popular in the Middle Ages (Bede was an admirer) as she was reputed to be effective at healing the illnesses of petitioners - and it may be significant that on this day in 600, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that "God Bless You" is the appropriate response to someone sneezing.

Also on this date: the final battle of the English Civil War is fought at Great Torrington in Devon, with a victory for the Parliamentarians, helped by their opponents blowing up their own stronghold by mistake (1646); Thomas Grey's Elegy in a Country Churchyard is first published (1751); Charles Messier published the first edition of his catalogue of astronomical objects (1771 with initially 48 such objects - exactly six years to the day later, the catalogue had reached 53 objects); Liszt's Symphonic Poem Orpheus is premiered in Weimar (1854); the French Government passes a law to standardise pitch at A = 435hz; Massenet's Werther is premiered in Vienna (both 1892); Sibelius' En Saga is premiered in Helsinki (1893); the first synagogue in 425 years opens in Madrid (1917); Howard Carter reaches the sarcophagus of Tutenkamun (1923); Prohibition comes to an end in the United States (1933); Wallace Carothers receives a patent for his invention of nylon (1937); Churchill falls ill with pneumonia (1943); Morton Gould's 3rd Symphony is premiered (1947); Fidel Castro becomes Prime Minister of Cuba (1959); Darius Milhaud's 12th Symphony, the Rural, is premiered in Paris (1962); Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev goes on general release in Moscow (1969); Hezbollah is founded (1985); Mario Soares is elected the first civilian President of Portugal (1986); in 1992, the remains of Emperor Haile Selassie are found (under the private lavatory of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had deposed him in 1974); and the Kyoko Protocol intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions comes into force (2005).

Birthdays today include: Charles Avison (1709); Francis Galton (1822); Selim Palmgren (18778); John Schlesinger (1926); June Brown (1927); Sonny Bono (1935); John Corigliano (1938); Richard Ford (1944); Iain Banks (1954); John McEnroe (1959); and Christopher Eccleston (1964).

Final days for: Richard Mead (1754); Jan Vaclav Punto (1803); Francois-Joseph Gossec (1829); Josef Hofmann (1957); Angela Carter (1992); and William Masters (2001).


And on Thursday, 16th February, 1989, the Radio 3 morning schedules were:

Morning Concert: works by Mozart, Bridge, Hertel, Handel, Rameau, Liszt, and Ravel
Composer of the Week: Mendelssohn
Music Group of London playing Piano Trios by Haydn and Schubert
Mozart Through the Looking Glass: Busoni's Duettino concertante (after Mozart); Grieg's "Sonata after Mozart"; Alkan's Variations - fantaisie sur deux motifs de Don Juan
BBCSSO: Dvorak's Piano Concerto; Mahler's Blumine; Beethoven 2nd Symph

[Lat-Literal]

The Day of the Shining Star in North Korea, commemorating the birthday of late dictator, Kim-Jong-il, and Restoration of National Independence Day in Lithuania. It's also St Juliana's Feast Day, celebrating the 4th Century martyr, who was particularly popular in the Middle Ages (Bede was an admirer) as she was reputed to be effective at healing the illnesses of petitioners - and it may be significant that on this day in 600, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that "God Bless You" is the appropriate response to someone sneezing.

Also on this date: the final battle of the English Civil War is fought at Great Torrington in Devon, with a victory for the Parliamentarians, helped by their opponents blowing up their own stronghold by mistake (1646); Thomas Grey's Elegy in a Country Churchyard is first published (1751); Charles Messier published the first edition of his catalogue of astronomical objects (1771 with initially 48 such objects - exactly six years to the day later, the catalogue had reached 53 objects); Liszt's Symphonic Poem Orpheus is premiered in Weimar (1854); the French Government passes a law to standardise pitch at A = 435hz; Massenet's Werther is premiered in Vienna (both 1892); Sibelius' En Saga is premiered in Helsinki (1893); the first synagogue in 425 years opens in Madrid (1917); Howard Carter reaches the sarcophagus of Tutenkamun (1923); Prohibition comes to an end in the United States (1933); Wallace Carothers receives a patent for his invention of nylon (1937); Churchill falls ill with pneumonia (1943); Morton Gould's 3rd Symphony is premiered (1947); Fidel Castro becomes Prime Minister of Cuba (1959); Darius Milhaud's 12th Symphony, the Rural, is premiered in Paris (1962); Andrei Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev goes on general release in Moscow (1969); Hezbollah is founded (1985); Mario Soares is elected the first civilian President of Portugal (1986); in 1992, the remains of Emperor Haile Selassie are found (under the private lavatory of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who had deposed him in 1974); and the Kyoko Protocol intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions comes into force (2005).

Birthdays today include: Charles Avison (1709); Francis Galton (1822); Selim Palmgren (18778); John Schlesinger (1926); June Brown (1927); Sonny Bono (1935); John Corigliano (1938); Richard Ford (1944); Iain Banks (1954); John McEnroe (1959); and Christopher Eccleston (1964).

Final days for: Richard Mead (1754); Jan Vaclav Punto (1803); Francois-Joseph Gossec (1829); Josef Hofmann (1957); Angela Carter (1992); and William Masters (2001).


And on Thursday, 16th February, 1989, the Radio 3 morning schedules were:

Morning Concert: works by Mozart, Bridge, Hertel, Handel, Rameau, Liszt, and Ravel
Composer of the Week: Mendelssohn
Music Group of London playing Piano Trios by Haydn and Schubert
Mozart Through the Looking Glass: Busoni's Duettino concertante (after Mozart); Grieg's "Sonata after Mozart"; Alkan's Variations - fantaisie sur deux motifs de Don Juan
BBCSSO: Dvorak's Piano Concerto; Mahler's Blumine; Beethoven 2nd Symph

I doubt that I know Gould's 3rd symphony. It is the 4th which is the West Point. My headmaster was the cousin of John Schlesinger. I recall we had a season of Schlesinger films at school in the mid 1970s. June Brown - Dot Cotton - used to live nearby, close to where the swimmer Duncan Goodhew had a restaurant in the 1980s. Sadly, the Acts of Saint Juliana used by Bede in his "Martyrologium" are purely legendary. The alleged translation caused the martyred Juliana, honoured in Nicomedia, to be identified with St. Juliana of Cumae, although they are quite distinct persons. It is often said that the Beatles had their first number one single on this day in 1963 with "Please, Please, Me". However, this is not officially the case. While it was No 1 in the New Musical Express and Melody Maker charts, it only reached No 2 in the Record Retailer chart, which subsequently evolved into the UK Singles Chart.

In which country was John McEnroe, 60, born? This has long been one of my favourite sports quiz questions. The answer is West Germany. And exactly one hundred years ago the silent film "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch" was released. Now in the Library of Congress, it was based on a novel by Alice Hegan Rice. It was one of the most popular films of the year but then there had been an earlier version just five years earlier. One wonders whether any other work had been the subject of a film not once but twice before the onset of the 1920s?

[edashtav]

Of a CD that included Milhaud's 12th Symphony, dedicated to a New Concert Hall that was being opened at a Californian College that had staeted life as an Agricultural Institute, David Nice wrote:
Enormous quantity need not equal enormous quality, and Darius Milhaud remained a craftsman of distinction to the last. Yet it’s hard not to feel that much of his 441-opus output is little more than highly accomplished doodling to order
One might add 'nor mean enormous length' for DM's rural 12th is scarcely longer than Havergal Brian's equivalent.

I feel sorry for composers like Milhaud who start so brilliantly like shooting stars but decline so rapidly into repetition and sterility.

[cloughie]

Of a CD that included Milhaud's 12th Symphony, dedicated to a New Concert Hall that was being opened at a Californian College that had staeted life as an Agricultural Institute, David Nice wrote:
Enormous quantity need not equal enormous quality, and Darius Milhaud remained a craftsman of distinction to the last. Yet it’s hard not to feel that much of his 441-opus output is little more than highly accomplished doodling to order
One might add 'nor mean enormous length' for DM's rural 12th is scarcely longer than Havergal Brian's equivalent.

I feel sorry for composers like Milhaud who start so brilliantly like shooting stars but decline so rapidly into repetition and sterility.

...but oh to be able to doodle like Darius!

[greenilex]

I have a feeling the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005 will be celebrated in a big way in future years...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I have a feeling the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005 will be celebrated in a big way in future years...

Well, I hope so - but that rather depends on whether the articles of the Protocol are seriously respected in present years.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 17th

Feast Days for the 6th Century Irish Saints, Fintan of Cloneagh, and Lonman of Trim. Revolution Day in Libya (marking the beginning of the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011) and Independence Day in Kosovo.

Also on this date, in 1461, Lancastrian forces defeat Yorkists at the Battle of St Albans, and take Henry VI prisoner; the Battle of Hemminstedt (1500), in which an army of peasants repels the forces of the joint Dukes of Schleswig and Holstein; Boris Godunov becomes Tsar (1598); Giordano Bruno is burnt at the stake by the Inquisition (1600); Sweden adopts the Gregorian calendar (1753); the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published (1776); following a tie in the US election, the House of Representatives choose Thomas Jefferson as 3rd President; his opponent, Aaron Burr, named as vice-president (1801); Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun takes out a patent for the earliest invention of a type of bicycle (1818); Liszt's 1st Piano Concerto is premiered in Weimar, with the composer as soloist and Berlioz conducting (1855); Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera is premiered in Rome (1859); the USS Housatonic becomes the first ship to be sunk by a torpedo fired from a submarine (1864); the first tin of sardines goes on sale in the US (1876); Franck's Symphony in d minor is premiered in Paris; Mahler's Klagende Lied is premiered in Vienna (1901); government troops open fire on strikers in Barcelona, killing 40 (1902); Madame Butterfly is premiered at La Scala, Milan (1904); the first Minimum Wage Law comes into force in Oregon, and the Armory Show introduces artworks by Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp and other Modernists to the US (both 1913); Honegger's Pastorale d'Ete is premiered in Paris (1921); the first issue of Newsweek is published (1933); The Phantom (the world's first comic super-hero) first appears (1936); Churches in Holland protest to Reichkommissar of the Occupied Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart about the persecution of Jews (1943); exactly four years later, Dutch RC bishops publish a manifesto against "Godless Communism" (1947); Chaim Weizman is elected the first President of Israel (1949); the world's first weather satellite, Vanguard 2 (?"2"?*), is launched by the US Navy (1959); the Beatles' Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane double A-side single is released (1967); Golda Meir becomes Israels' first (only) woman PPrime Minister (1969); the British Parliament votes to join the Common Market, and President Nixon leaves for his visit to China (both 1972); China invades Vietnam, starting the Sino-Vietnam War (1979); Garry Kasparov defeats computer Deep Blue (1996); and in 2016, scientists at the Max Planck Institute find evidence of human-neanderthal interbreeding.

Birthdays today include: Arcangelo Corelli (1653); Rene Laennec (1781); Henri Vieuxtemps (1820); Edward German (1862); Andre Maginot (1877); Leevi Madetoja (1887); Richard Englander (1889); Rene Leibowitz (1913); Ron Goodwin (1925); Friederich Cerha (1926); Ruth Rendell (1930); Alan Bates and Barry Humphries (both 1934); Gene Pitney (1940); Brenda Fricker (1945); Fred Frith is 70 today, and Patricia Routledge is 90 today.

Last Days for: Gregorio Allegri (1652); Moliere (1673); Heinrich Heine (1856); Geronimo (1909); Bruno Walter (1962); Alfred Newman (1970); Thelonius Monk and Lee Strasberg (both 1982); and Richard Briers (2013).

And the Radio 3 morning schedules for Monday, 17th February were:

Overture (gramophone records)
Morning Concert (BBC Concert Orchestra/Marcus Dodds)
This Week's Composers: Purcell and Britten
The Master Pianists: Schnabel
Talking About Music (Antony Hopkins)
Music Making: Wind Quintet, Piano Duet, Lieder
Midday Concert (Peter Katin/RLPO/Groves)

* - aha! Vanguard 1 was a satellite, but not Weather-focussed (it was the satellite that led to the discovery that planet Earth is not a perfect sphere, but pear-like; elevated at the North Pole, flatter at the South).

[edashtav]

Beelioz never repaid the musical debt he owed to Franz Liszt. The latter often programmed works by Berlioz in his Weimar concerts.

Hector did intend to schedule Liszt's first piano concerto on his return to Paris but pianists were intimidated by it, as this letter by HB to FL shows:
"I wanted to ask you for your concerto for my concert on 7 April at the Opéra Comique, but on further enquiry it seems that Fumagalli, whom I had in mind, is such a weak musician that he would need two months to learn it. I have therefore abandoned this idea which I found very attractive, for fear of an incomplete performance of your magnificent work, so energetic, so new, so brilliant, so fresh and incandescent."

It was Liszt and his position in Weimar that stiffened Berlioz's resolve to write his epic Opera The Trojans. In fact, Liszt offered to stage it at Weimar but by the time HB had finished his grand piece, Liszt was no longer able to organise a performance. However, he had heralded it by scheduling its Septet. Liszt and Berlioz's friendship was one of the most important in 19th century music although it was wrecked by the rise of Richard Wagner.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 18th

Colman of Lindesfarne is commemorated on this date - the Irish monk who was Bishop of Lindisfarne when he "lost" the argument about the dating of Easter, and who died back in Ireland on this date in 675.

Also on this date: George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, is executed (reputedly by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey) in 1478; Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is first published (1678); Flora, a ballad opera performed in Charleston, South Carolina becomes the first opera performed in America (1735); Bonnie Prince Charlie's troops take control of Inverness on the very day that Handel's oratorio Samson is premiered in London (1745); a three-week mutiny by the slave "cargo" of the Meermin begins (1766); Joseph II (he of the "too many notes" story) bans all children under the age of 8 from working (1788); Victor Emmanuel II does indeed become "Re d'Italia" (1861); Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem is premiered in Leipzig (1869); Bulgarian freedom-fighter, Vasil Levski is executed by hanging by the country's Ottomon rulers ("whoever is killed in the cause of freedom never dies" - 1873); Russian police confiscate all copies of Leo Tolstoy's What I Believe In (1884); Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is first published (1885); Vincent d'Indy's Symphonic Triptych, Jour D'été à La Montagne is premiered in Paris (1906); Germany begins a blockade of Britain (1915); a strike in the Putilov Factory in Petrograd signals the start of the 1917 Revolutions; British troops occupy Dublin (1920); Clyde Tombough, studying photographs he'd taken in January, discovers Pluto (1930); Goebbels demands total dedication to the War effort from all Germans in his Sportpalast speech, in which he first indicates that the War is not going well for Germany (1943); Menotti's The Telephone is premiered in New York (1947); the Church of Scientology is founded (1954); Kenyan freedom-fighter, Dedan Kimathi is executed by hanging by the country's British rulers (1957); Britain begins a trial period of all-year-long BST (1968); the Chicago 7 trial verdicts are delivered (1970; all convictions are overturned two years later); snow falls in the Sahara Desert (1979); the IRA explodes two bombs in London's Victoria and Paddington stations (1991); Terry Pratchett is knighted (2009); and the first WikiLeaks classified documents are published (2010).

Birthdays today include: Mary I (1516); Alessandro Volta (1745); Ernst Mach (1838); Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848); Enzo Ferrari (1898); Phyllis Calvert and Marcel Landowski (both 1915); Wallace Berman (1926); Toni Morrison (1931); Milos Forman (1932); Yoko Ono (1933); Graeme Garden (1943); Michael Buerk (1946); Sinead Cusack (1948); John Travolta (1954); and Len Deighton is 90 today.

Last Days for: Kublai Khan (1294); Fra Angelico (1455); Martin Luther (1546); Michelangelo (1564); Charles Lewis Tiffany (1902 - on his son's 54th birthday); John Batterson Stetson (several of the hats removed in respect having been made by his company - 1906); Gustave Charpentier (1956); J Robert Oppenheimer (1967); Wallace Berman (1976 - on his 50th birthday, as he was reported to have predicted as a child); Ngaio Marsh (1982); Jacqueline Hill (1993); Kevin Ayers (2013); and, six months before her 100th birthday, the last surviving von Trapp sibling, Maria Franziska ("Louise" in the film, presumably to pre-empt any problems audiences might have had with two Marias - 2014).

And the Sunday morning schedules for Radio 3 on this date, 1979 were:

Bach and Handel: continuing a series of programmes of the "48" and the Op6 Concerti Grossi
Your Concert Choice: Mozart "Haffner Serenade" (Zuckerman/ECO); Warlock "Curlew" (Partridge/Music Group of London)
Music Weekly: Articles on Ernest Read; Robin Leggate; and Ernst Eulenburg, of the publishing firm, whose 100th birthday was approaching (he would live for more than another three years).
From the Proms 1978: the John Alldis Choir performing works by Schubert, Gesualdo, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Bruckner ... and Brian Ferneyhough's Missa Brevis.

[edashtav]

Ah, Fra Angelico: his work has inspired a number of musical pieces. Which is your favourite one, I wonder?