Today's the Day

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So - what's it all about?

D'yer know; I deleted those exact words from Thomas Becket's prayer ...

[greenilex]

I remember the Grace Kelly wedding very vividly - must have been just the right age to respond to the celeb fairytale thing.

[gurnemanz]

The story "behind" Liszt's Mazeppa makes for interesting reading-between-the-lines: the eponymous Ivan Mazeppa seduces a Polish noblewoman, but is caught and overpowered by her relatives and tied naked to a wild horse that carries him to Ukraine. I can't help feeling that that's just the story he told everyone when he turned up naked and tied to a horse.

Can't resist mentioning Carl Loewe's thrilling piano tone poem Mazeppa (marked allegro feroce) which I got to know on this recommendable disc. Linda Nicholson plays a Collard and Collard keyboard from 1850.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 20th

The Feast Day of St Beuno, the 7th Century Welsh Saint (whose name apparently derives from a Celtic word meaning "knowing cattle" - one presumes in the vetinarian/agricultural meaning) born in present-day Montgomeryshire and distantly descended from King Vortigern. He established a monastery at Clynnog Fawr on the Llyn Peninsula, and had the reputation of raising people from the dead - many of them his own relations. Eleven churches throughout Wales - and one in Culbone, Somerset. He is the patron saint of sick children (and, indeed, I remember fondly the comfort I got as a small child reading copies of The Beuno when I was ill) and sick cattle.
It's also the United Nations' Chinese Language Day, one of six official language days celebrated to promote multiculturalism. The date coincides with the festival of Guyu - which celebrates the mythical figure of Cangjie, who was said to have invented the Chinese characters, which so upset the gods and spirits that they wept, and millet rained from the skies ("guyu" means "rain of millet"). So, time to brush up on our Mandarin, Cantonese, Guan, Gan, Wu, Yue, Min, Hakka, and/or Xiang. (I'd previously thought that Sichuanese was one of the Chinese languages, but it seems that it's a variant of Mandarin )

Also on this Date: Jacques Cartier sets sail on his first journey to discover a western passage to Asia, during which he will become the first European to sight Canada (1534); Sun Dog effects above Stockholm, depicted in the first colour painting of the city by painter Urban the Painter (1535 - the painting is so popular that it is frequently copied - which is fortunate for us, as the original was lost years ago); occultist and physician Simon Forman sees a production of Shakespeare' s MacBeth - one of the earliest records of a Shakespeare play (1610); displeased with the Rump Parliament's slowness in enacting his will, Oliver Cromwell orders his soldiers to clear the Chamber after hurling insults at various members (1653); Handel is buried in Westminster Abbey (1759); the decade-long French Revolutionary Wars begin when France declares war on Prussia and Austria to prevent foreign monarchs from attacking the new republic (1792); Wallenstein's Death, the last play in Schiller's Wallenstein Trilogy is premiered in the Court Theatre, Weimar, directed by Goethe (1799); Napoleon's forces defeat the Austrian army at the Battle of Abensberg (1809); Venuzuela declares Independence from Spain (1810); Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard disprove the theory of Spontaneous Generation (1862); Bulgarian nationalists begin an insurrection against Ottoman rule. Ottoman reaction is brutal, and violently supresses the uprising (1876); in an attempt to wrest back control he feels is being lost in an increasingly secular Europe, Pope Leo XIII publishes the Humanum Genus ["The Human Being"], blaming everything on the Je ... oh! No; it's the Freemasons' turn this time (1884); workijng in their dilapidated wooden shed in the grounds of the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in paris, Marie and Curie successfully separates out a tenth of a gram of Radium Chloride from several tons of uranium ore (1902); Jeanne Leleu & Genevieve Durony give the first public performance of Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye at the inagural concert of the Société Musicale Indépendante in Paris (1910); the National Guard and thugs hired by John D Rockefeller open fire with machine guns at a tented colony of coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado who were striking against conditions in Rockefeller's mine; at least 21 people [including members of the workers' families] are killed (1914); Hitler makes his last visit above ground to present medals to members of the Hitler Youth (1945 - on the same day, 20 Jewish children, who had been used for medical experiments are murdered, together with their adult Jewish carers, and six Red Army Prisoners-of-War, by the Nazis in the basement of Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg - later in the evening, a further 24 Soviet POWs, who had also been used in the experiments, are also murdered); Villa-Lobos' Twelfth Symphony is premiered in Washington by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Howard Mitchell (1958); the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba dribbles to an undignified end for the surrendering invaders after just three days (1961); at a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham, the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Enoch Powell delivers his infamous "I see the River Tiber foaming with much blood" speech - he is sacked by Tory leader Edward Heath the following day (against the advice of shadow Education Secretary, Margerat Thatcher), and The Times declares it "an evil speech" (1968); Woody Allen's Annie Hall is released (1977); Schnittke's Concerto Grosso #3 is premiered in Moscow (1985); Vladimir Horowitz gives a recital in Moscow - the first performance in his home country since he left 61 years previously (1986); 12 students and one teacher are killed and 24 others are injured by two 18-year-old students armed with guns and bombs at Columbine High School in Colorado. The murderers, who wished to emulate the Oklahoma City bombing of four years earlier, commit suicide before they can be caught (1999); the Deepwater Horizon, an ultra-deepwater oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, leased to BP, suffers an uncontrollable oil blowout which causes an explosion which kills eleven crewmen, creates a fireball visible from miles away - two days later, the rig sinks, with the blowout still pumping oil into the sea, which carries on until the leak is capped three months later - more than 1.75billion gallons of the stuff (2010); a French national, with a prison record for an earlier attempt to murder policemen, shoots four people [three police officers and a German tourist] on the Champs Elysées - one of the officers is killed before police shoot the perpetrator dead (2017); and, this time last year, King Mswati III offically changes the name of his country from Swaziland to Eswatini.

Birthdays Today include: Charles Plumier (1646); Philippe Pinel (1745); Napoleon III (1808); Dinah Craike (1826); Alexander Dianin (1851); Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (1881); Albert Jean Amateau and Adolf Hitler (both 1889); Harold Lloyd and Joan Miro (both 1893); Lionel Hampton (1908); Frances Ames (1920); Irene Lieblich and Tito Puente (both 1923); Antony Jay (1930); Xiang Jin (1935); Christopher Robinson (1936); Peter Snow (1938); John Eliot Gariner (1943); Sebastian Faulkes (1953); Nicholas Lyndhurst (1961); Rachel Whiteread (1963); Andy Serkis (1964); ... and Leslie Philips is 95 today.

Final Days for: Caedwalla (689); Pontiac (1769); John Abernethy (1831); Carl Loewe (1869); Bram Stoker (1912); Enrique Simonet (1927); Don Siegel and Steve Marriott (both 1991); Benny Hill (1992); Cantinflas (1993); Guiseppe Sinopoli (2001); Bert Weedon (2012); and Victoria Wood (2016).

And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Thursday, 20th April, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Bantock Pierrot of the Minute; Telemann Concerto for 2 Trumpets; Rossini La cambiale di matrimonio Ovt; Chopin Nocturne in c minor; Dvorak Symph#5 (every last, glorious semiquaver of it).
Composer of the Week: Bach (Overture from BWV194; WTC Bk1, P&Fs 17-20; Sonata in A BWV1055 and the Concerto based on this Sonata)
BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Jiri Starek, Sibelius En Saga, Dvorak Othello
A Guitar recital by David Russell (Aguado Introduction and Rondo, Op 2 #3; Bach, arr Russell Sonata in A minor (BWV 1013); Grieg, arr Arne Brattland Lyric Pieces [from Books 1&2])
English Reed Trio: Martinu Quatre madrigaux
BBCWSO conducted by Tadaaki Otaka (Weber Freischutz Ovt; Elgar 'cello Conc [with Alexander Baillie]; Interval Reading; Beethoven Eroica

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Can't resist mentioning Carl Loewe's thrilling piano tone poem Mazeppa (marked allegro feroce) which I got to know on this recommendable disc. Linda Nicholson plays a Collard and Collard keyboard from 1850.

Thanks, gurne - the track is also available to sample on youTube - and, as it's the 150th anniversary of Loewe's death, let's commemorate him here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86pTFpaCsR0

[Padraig]

Ah, I see you too were a Beuno reader, ferney. I liked the D'Indy as well.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[greenilex]

Am I dreaming, or did they re-enact Handel’s funeral? And if not, why not?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Am I dreaming, or did they re-enact Handel’s funeral? And if not, why not?

I don't understand this.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 21st

It's National Tea Day in the UK. Which is like having a National Day Day. To celebrate the drinking of tea, which is so undervalued in this country as opposed to, say, in Germany. In Kenya, it's National Tree Planting Day; in Russia it's Local Self-Government Day (never let it be said that they don't have a sense of humour), and in Mexico Heroic Defence of Veracruz Day - but here, it's National Tea Day.

Also on this Date: Romulus founds Rome (the year unknown, but the date coinciding with the Festival of Pales, the godess of shepherds); Amadeus, eldest son of the Count of Savoy, and a knight in the service of Edward II in England, relieves Rhuddlan Castle, beseiged by the Welsh (1282); Henry VIII becomes King (1509); the Mughal Empire is established, following the victory of Babur over Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the Battle of Panipat (1526); the Assembly of the Maryland Colony pass the Maryland Toleration Act, which allows freedom of worship to all Christians, except those who deny the Divinity of Christ - they are to be condemned to death (1649 - the Act is revoked five years later by the British comissioner); Catherine the Graet issues the Charter of the Nobility, setting out "for the benefit of the Russian Nobility" the powers and privileges of the Russian ruling class (1785); Tiradentes, one of the leaders of the Brazilian Independence movement is hanged, drawn and quartered on the orders of the Portuguese Governor (1792 - he had been betrayed by one of his colleagues in exchange for the cancellation of a Tax debt: Tiradentes is a National Hero in Brazil - the date of his execution is a day of celebration in Brazil); Imam Abdul Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud leads an attack by 12000 Wahhabis puritan Muslims on the Iraqi city Kabala, killing 3000 inhabitants and sacking the city (1802); Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted delivers a lecture, during which he notices that when an electric current was switched on and off from a battery, the needle of a compass was deflected from pointing North - the phenomenon leads him to several months of research in which he identifies electromagnetism (1820); the Battle of San Jacinto, in which General Sam Houston's forces defeat the army of Mexican General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, in a battle that lasts just 18 minutes (which is about the amount of time it takes to say the Mexican general's name - 1836); Lortzing's Undine is premiered at the National Theatre in Magdeburg (1845); Puccini's Edgar is premiered at La Scala, Milan (1889); George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man premieres at the Avenue Theatre, London (1894); the Spanish-American War begins with a blockade by the US Navy of the Cuban ports (1898 - the Americans don't declare War until four days later - which is something the Japanese might have noticed); a German U-Boat puts Knight of the Realm and Irish Nationalist Roger Casement ashore in Ireland ahead of the planned Easter Uprising, but illness [a recurrence of Malaria] disorients him, and British troops arrest him at McKenna's Fort [an Iron-age hill fort, now called Casement's Fort] and charge him with High Treason (1916 - at around the same time, the British Navy intercepts the German ship SS Libau, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles intended for the Uprising - the Captain scuttles the ship as he and his crew is arrested); Prokofiev conducts the premiere of his Classical Symphony in Petrograd (1918); Wahhabi Muslims destroy the Al-Baqi Cemetry in Medina, sacred to Shi'a Muslims (1926); Carl Dreyer's film The Passion of Joan of Arc premieres at the Palads Teatret in Copenhagen (1928); Lewis Milestone's film of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front is nreleased in the United States (1930); the Daily Mail publishes the "Surgeon's Photograph" purporting to show the Loch Ness Monster (1934 - it is, in fact, a toy submarine, owned by the son of a disgruntled Daily Mail employee, who had previously been ridiculed by his editor for producing a photo of Nessie's footprint) Messaien's Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine is premiered in Paris, conducted by Roger Desomiere (1945 - on the same day, Soviet troops attack the Headquarters of German High Command in Berlin); RVW's Sixth Symphony is premiered in the Royal Albert Hall by the BBCSO conducted by Boult (1948 - on the same day, United nations Security Council Resolution 47 is adopted, with the aim of resolving the Kashmir Conflict. The Symphony has had the more successful history - 18months later the Resolution was declared a failure. Exactly 64 years later to the day, the UN adopts Security Council Resolution 2043, sending a Supervision Mission to oversee Kofi Annan's peace plan for the Syrian Civil War [2012] - two months later, the Mission is withdrawn, as the situation in Syria becomes worse and more dangerous); Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra is premiered by the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Robert Whitney (1956); Brasilia is formally adopted as the Capital of Brazil (1960); the Seattle World's Fair opens (1962); a US satellite fails to reach orbit - as it returns to Earth, its Plutonium power source is scattered in the atmosphere (1964); 100,000 Rastafarians gather at Palisadoes Airport, Jamaica to greet Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (1966 - an event afterwards celebrated as Grounation Day amongst Rastafari); Colonel George Papadopoulos leads a Military coup in Greece the day before a General Election (1967 - he appoints Konstantinos Kollias as Prime Minister, but replaces him [with himslef] eight months later: the military hold power in Greece for the next seven years); the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland is founded (1970); the Codex Regius ("King's Book") - a collection dating from the 13th Century of over thirty ancient Norse poems - is returned to Iceland after over 300 years in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (1971); the £1 coin is introduced in the United Kingdom (1983 - £1 notes remain legal tender for just under another five years; the new coins were called, by some, "Maggies" because they were thick, brassy and thought they were a sovereign); police violence against Chinese Students leads to a surge of support from others; 100,000 of them defy a ban and congregate in Tiananmen Square for the State Funeral of reformer Hu Yaobang (1989); Father Ted premieres in Channel 4 (1995); and the first funeral in space takes place, when the ashes of 24 space enthusiasts [including Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary] are launched on a rocket from an aircraft (1997).


Birthdays Today include: Ludovico Carracci (1555); Antonin Kammel (1730); Humphry Repton (1752); Charlotte Bronte (1816); John Muir (1838); Max Weber (1864); Alfred Henry Maurer (1868); Leo Blech (1871); Efram Zimbalist [snr] (1889); Randall Thompson (1899); Eve Arnold (1912); Norman Parkinson (1913); Anthony Quinn (1915); Bruno Maderna (1920); Alistair MacLean (1922); John Mortimer (1923); the Queen (1926); Easley Blackwood (1933); Lionel Rogg (1936); John McCabe (1939); Mark Wainberg (1945); Iggy Pop (1947); Robert Smith (1959); Toby Stephens (1969); Michael Layne Turner (1971).

Final Days for: Liuvigild, King of the Visigoths (586); Peter Abelard (1142); Henry VII (1509); Petrus Apianus (1552); Cosimo I de Medici (1574); Jean Racine (1699); Temistocle Solera (1878 - oh yes, you have! He wrote the libretti for Verdi's Nabucco, Oberto, I Lombardi, Giovanna d'Pizzicato, and Attila); Mark Twain (1910); Manfred von Richthofen (1918); Robert Bridges (1930); John Maynard Keynes (1946); Aldo Leopold (1948); Sandy Denny (1978); Willi Boskovsky (1991); Jean-Francois Lyotard (1998); Nina Simone (2003); Prince (2016); and, this time last year, Nabi Tajima (aged 117 years and 260 days).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Monday, 21st April, 1969 were:

Overture; gramophone records
Morning Concert: a repeat of an evening concert given by Harry Blech and the London Mozart Players, originally broadcast in June, 1965.
This Week's Composers: Musorgsky & Janacek (no details of what works were broadcast, but from the artists involved, it was the Glagolitic Mass).
Orchestral Concert (gramophone records)
Talking About Music (with Antony Hopkins)
Music making: chamber Music for solo woodwind instruments & piano
BBCNSO conducted by Horenstein (a concert recorded in King George's Hall, Blackburn)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

April 22nd

Earth Day (inaugurated in 1970 and originally a once-a-decade festival - it became an annual event in 1990), and International Mother Earth Day (inaugurated in 2009) - both celebrating the Earth and its ecosystems, recognising "the interdependence that exists among human beings, other living species and the planet we all inhabit". The date was chosen as it was regarded as the best day for as many people to get involved with activities (as it didn't coincide with Exams, or holidays or religious festivals such as Easter - which it didn't in 1970) - the first Earth Day (22nd April, 1970, coincided with the centenary of the birth of Lenin, which gave some- such as J Edgar Hoover - the excuse to dismiss the event as "a commie trick", and a "Daughter of the American Revolution" was quoted as warning fellow Americans that "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them"; fiendish swine these environmentalists, conspiring to brainwash kids with a healthy lifestye.

Also on this Date: the US Congress passes the Coinage Act, in which it is decided that the words "In God We Trust" must appear on all coins from the US mint (1864 - they decided to miss out the remaining "everyone else has to pledge their house as collateral", as it would make the coins too big); Dvorak conducts the world premiere of his Seventh Symphony in St James Hall, London (1885 - five weeks after he had completed the score); the Oklahoma Land Rush begins at noon, with around 50,000 people racing to stake their claim in the 5000 sq miles of land previously occupied by native American Tribes (1889); the Intercalated Games begin in Athens - semi-regarded as the Second International Olympic Games, the IOC does not recognise the medals awarded at these events (1906); the Second Battle of Ypres begins when the German Army release 170 tons of chlorine gas at French troops (1915); Roger Sessions' First Symphony is premiered by The Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Koussevitsky (1927); 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac extermination camp in Croatia attempt an uprising against their captors - 516 are killed (1945); Israeli paramilitaries capture the port of Haifa from Arab forces in the build-up to the Arab-Israeli War of 1948; the Battle of Kapyong/Jiaping begins in the Korean War, when the Chinese People's Voluntary Army attack Commonwealth UN troops in South Korea (1951); Eugene Ionescu's The Chairs premieres at the Théâtre Lancry in Paris, directed by Sylvain Dhomme (1952 - the Theatre shuts down a year later); television coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings demonstrate the unreliabilty of Joseph McCarthy's testimony to US viewers (1954); Bernadette Devlin [on the day before her 23rd birthday - she is then the youngest woman ever to be elected to the House of Commons] gives her maiden speech in Westminster, denouncing social injustice in Northern Ireland (1969. Jeremy Thorpe is called upon to reply to her speech, which he comments, "There is one quality—and there are many others—which she showed during her by-election campaign and in the course of her speech. That is the quality of courage, a quality which we in this House, wherever we may sit, respect." - Robin Knox-Johnson completes the first solo circumnavigation of the world on this same day); Turin becomes the first city to use fibre optic telephone cable (1977); German news magazine Die Stern releases a press statement that Adolf Hitler's diaires have been discovered and that they shall be serialising the sixty volumes in the forthcoming issues (1983 - they have paid DM9.3million - which today is worth about £8million - to their "owner" Konrad Kujau, who has forged them over the previous six years); up to 1000 people are killed, and 15000 left homeless after a series of ten explosions in the sewer system of the Mexican city of Guadalajara (1992); Steven Lawrence is murdered by a gang of racist thugs (1993); 93 people are murdered in the Algerian village of Haouch Mokhfi Khemisti by the Armed Islamic Group during the Algerian Civil War (1997); US Federal Troops seize Elián González, a six-year-old Cuban boy, from relatives in Miami who are trying to prevent him from being returned to his father in Cuba (2000); and the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emissions is signed (2016 - fifteen months later, President Trump announces that he's withdrawing the US from the agreement).

Birthdays Today include: Isabella I of Castile (1451); Giuseppe Torelli (1658); Henry Fielding (1707); Paul Anton, Prince Esterhazy (1711); Immanuel Kant (1724); Emily Davies (1830); Lenin (1870); Otto Rank (1884); Harold Jeffreys (1891); Vladimir Nabokov (1899); Robert Oppenheimer (1904); Eric Fenby (1906); Kathleen Ferrier (1912); Yehudi Menuhin (1916); Sidney Nolan (1917); Charles Mingus (1922); Aaron Spelling (1923); Isao Tomita (1932); Paul Chambers (1935); Glen Campbell (1936); Jack Nicholson (1937); Janet Evanovich and Louise Gluck (both 1943); Joshua Rifkin (1944); Paul Davies (1946); and Donald Tusk (1957).

Final Days for: Miguel de Cervantes (1616); Johann Adolph Scheibe (1776); Richard Trevithick (1833); Edouard Lalo (1892); André Caplet (1925); Henry Royce (1933); Earl Hines (1983); Ansel Adams (1984); Richard Nixon (1994); and Donna Williams (2017).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Sunday, 22nd April, 1979 were:

Mozart Piano Concertos: #s 3 & 4, together with Music by Johannes Fux.
Your Concert Choice: Ippolitov-Ivanov Procession of the Sardar; Scriabin Piano Concerto; Canteloube Songs of the Auvergne; Laszlo Lajtha Symphony No 4. Op 52 ("Spring")
Music Weekly with Michael Oliver; features on Dvorak's early years, Moritz Moscheles, and a conversation with Igor Markevich
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georg Solti: Carter Variations for Orchestra; Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

[Padraig]

The coincidence of Earth Day and International Mother Earth Day sharing the same date, 22 April, as the signing of The Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, 2016, must have augered well for environmentalists; and was the perfect target for the President of the United States of America in his wisdom to withdraw support.

[cloughie]

I will be celebrating the life and achievements of the great man on Trevithick Day in Camborne next Saturday. Does anyone know if the 87 year old Tomita is still weaving his magic on other's masterpieces.

[vinteuil]

Immanuel Kant (1724)... ]

.
"On this occasion, whilst illustrating Kant’s notions of the animal economy, it may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he never would wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute, which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a watch-pocket, but occupying pretty nearly the same situation as a watch-pocket on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking. As might be expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system of the heavens, to occasional derangements; however, by good luck, I was able to apply an easy remedy to these disorders which sometimes threatened to disturb the comfort, and even the serenity, of the great man."

“The Last Days of Kant” by Thomas De Quincey

.

[edashtav]

"Dvorak conducts the world premiere of his Seventh Symphony in St James Hall, London (1885 - five weeks after he had completed the score);."

A Yorkshire Paper excitedly reported that Antonin preferred to be addressed as 'Mr' to ' Herr' and told that the composer had heard a London Choral Society performing a cantata by Frederick Cowen. When a nearby train whistle added to the din, Mr. Dvorak leaned towards his neighbour and said in a stage whisper, "What fearful orchestration".