Today's the Day

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

10th May

The Feast Day of 6th Century Irish Saint Comgall, born in Dál nAraidi (now in County Antrim) - founder of the Monastry in Bangor (the Irish one), and possible mentor of St Colymba; and the Feast Day of 7th Century Irish Saint Catald, who became Archbishop of the Southern Italian city of Taranto after getting shipwrecked on his journey home from a pilgrimage to Rome. Most of his life was spent in Taranto, and he is buried there, but, it is claimed, with a Celtic Cross made of gold, and a staff made from carved Irish oak. He is evoked as protection against Plague, drought, and storms.

Also on this Date: the Massacre at St George's Fields, in which soldiers open fire on unarmed demonstrators protesting against the imprisonment of radical MP John Wilkes killing seven of them (1768); the 1773 Tea Act receives Royal Assent - one part of the Act is intended to destroy the smuggling of cheap (and tax-free) tea from Holland to the American colonies, and the Act's unpopularity eventually leads to the Boston Tea Party; Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become King and Queen of France (1774); the National Gallery in London opens to the public (1824 - for the first ten years of its existence, the contents are kept in 100, Pall Mall); the Panic of 1837 begins in the United States when Banks announce that they will suspend redeeming bank notes at their full face value, sparking a seven-year period of economic depression; a quarrel between rival actors errupts into violence between their fans at Astor Opera House in Manhattan (1849 - up to 31 rioters are killed, and more than 120 injured; more than just artistic allegiences are at work - one of the ators, Edwin Forrest is a native American, the other, William McReady is English, and simmering resentment between "natives" and "incomers" comes to the boil); the eighteen-month long First War of Indian Independence (at the time called "the Indian Mutiny") begins when Sepoys turn against their officers in the city of Meerut (1857); the Treaty of Frankfurt is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War (1871); Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to be nominated for President of the United States (1872 - her nominated Vice-President is former slave, Frederick Douglass); the Centennial Exposition - the first World's Fair to be held in the United States - opens in Philadelphia (1876); Strauss' opera Guntram is premiered at the Grand Duke's Theatre in Weimar, conducted by the composer, with Pauine de Ahna the principal soprano (1894 - Strauss and de Ahne were married seven months later); Dukas' opera Ariane et Barbe-bleu is premiered ar the Opera-Comique, Paris (1907); Dr Cluny Macpherson presents his design of a more efficient gas mask to the War Office Anti-Gas Department (1915 - it goes into production quickly afterwards); Ernest Shackleton arrives in South Georgia, seeking help to rescue his abandoned attempt to cross the Antarctic (he, and five companions have taken 16 days to travel 800 miles in lifeboat James Caird, leaving 21 awaiting rescue on Elephant Island (1916); Ivy Williams becomes the first woman called to the bar (1922); J Edgar Hoover is appointed the FBI's first director (1924 - he stays in office until his death 48 years later); the first public mass burning of books seized by the Nazi German Students' Union takes place in the public square outside the State Opera House (1933); the Luftwaffe bomb the city of Freiberg, believing it to be the French city of Dijon (1940 - 57 citizens are killed; on the same day, Churchill becomes Prime Minister; German raids on British ports and military installations begins; German troops invade Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg; and Britain invades Iceland); the Luftwaffe [holding their maps the right way up] bomb the House of Commons (1941 - on the same day, Deputy Furher Rudolf Hess flies from Germany to Scotland to try to negotiate a secret peace deal between Britain and Germany; so "secret" that even Hitler doesn't know about it); the first issue of Marvel comics' The Incredible Hulk is published (1962); the Battle of Hamburger Hill begins in the Vietnam War (1969); Sony's Betamax VCR goes on sale in Japan (1975 - sixteen months ahead before rival company JVC launch VHS); Francois Mitterand becomes the first Socialist President of France (1981); Panama President Manuel Noriega annuls the results of the General Election of three days earlier - which he had lost (1989); Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as the first black President of South africa (1994); the Qayen Earthquake kills 1567 people, injures over 2300 others, and leaves 50000 homeless in North-Eastern Iran (1997); car bombs detonated by suicide bombers in Damascus kill 55 people and injure 400 others (2012); the current "Tallest Building in the World", the One World Trade Center, is completed (2013 - 1,793 feet high); and, this time last year, Mahathir bin Mohamad is elected Prime Minister of Malaysia - two months before his 93rd birthday.



Birthdays Today include: Jean-Marie Leclair (1607); Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760); Gustav Stresemann (1878); Charles Macpherson (1870); Max Steiner (1888); Dimitri Tiomkin (1894); Fred Astaire (1899); Cecilia Payne (1900); John Desmond Bernal and Hildrus Poindexter (both 1901); David O Selznick (1902); Milton Babbitt (1916); Burt Weedon (1920); Maxim Shostakovich (1938); Donovan and Dave Mason (both 1946);

Final Days for: Christoph Gaupner (1760); Charles Avison (1770); Paul Revere (1818); Stonewall Jackson (1863); Fritz von Bose (1945); Joan Crawford (1977); Peter Weiss (1982); Woody Shaw (1989); Richard Sprang (2000); and, this time last year, David Goodall, at the age of 104, whilst listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Thursday, 10th May, 1979 were:

Overture: Shield Rosina Ovt; Mendelssohn 'cello Sonata in Bb; Sibelius King Christian II Suite.

Morning Concert: Dittersdorf Sinfonia Concertante in D, for Viola, Double-bass and Orchestra; Debussy La plus que lente; Saint-Saens Piano Concerto #5.
This Week's Composer: Brahms (the entire programme dedicated to the 2nd Piano Concerto [Gilels/BPO/Jochum]).
Music of Mexico City Cathedral: Morales Cum natus esset; Guerrero Salve Regina; Francisco Peraza Medio registro alto; Castillo Tiento de segundo tono por gesolreut; Hernando Franco Magnificat on the seventh tone; Two Nahuati hymns; Cabezun Diferencias sol-re la Pavana italiana; Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz Hachas; Mudarra Tiento Fantasia for harp; Three Christmas Villancicos; Juan Gutierrez de Padilla A siolo flasiquiyo; Juan Hidalgo Al dichoso nacer de mi nino; Fabian Ximeno Ay ay galcquifios; Padilla Exultate iusti in Domino.
Peter Mountain & Angela Dale: Mozart Vln Son K304; Seiber Sonata (1960).

[Padraig]

The Feast Day of 6th Century Irish Saint Comgall, born in Dál nAraidi (now in County Antrim) -

Where are the Irish Saints when we need them?

The Kingdom of Dalriada had parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland as a unit - now there's another idea!

Dalriada School, Ballymoney, County Antrim, is an interesting reminder of the Kingdom.

[cloughie]

A lovely fantasy music team in the birthday section - Bert Weedon playing an arrangement of the Marseillaise by Dimitri Tiomkin for Fred Astaire to dance to, looked on by Donovan and David Mason dressed in a suitable psychedelic yellow sporting dodgy footwear!
It’s also Graham Gouldman of 10cc, and writer of many songs birthday, also 1946!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... meanwhile, in a bar on another street, just Milton and me, chatting about beer, Brahms, and puns.

[cloughie]

... meanwhile, in a bar on another street, just Milton and me, chatting about beer, Brahms, and puns.

A pint of Paradise, shortly to be lost?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

May 11th

The Feast Day of Saint Marmetus, the Fifth Century bishop of Vienne (now part of modern-day Lyon). After a pack of wolves had plagued villages near his diocese, he introduced new, special Litanies and fasting to celebrate Ascension Day and to prevent earthquakes and other disasters. He is the first of the three "Ice Saints", so named because their feast days fall in the period in Spring often noted in central and eastern Europe [by Galileo for one] for late night frosts, and cold weather.

Also on this Date: Byzantium is renamed by the Roman Emperor, Constantine I, who makes it the centre of the Roman Empire and calls it "New Rome" (330 - everybody else refers to it as "Constantinople"); a copy of the Buddhist text, the Diamond Sutra, bears this date (868 - the oldest-known [and surviving] printed book); 54 members of the Knights Templar are burnt at the stake on the orders of French King Philip IV (1310 - two years later, the entire Order is dissolved by the Pope, under threat of military invasion by Philip if he doesn't); Christopher Columbus sets sail on his fourth and last voyage to try and find a Western route to India (1502); British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval is shot dead by John Bellingham in the Lobby of the House of Commons (1812 - Bellingham felt he was due compensation for an prison sentence he'd been given in Russia - a claim he'd followed unsuccessfully for three years; upon applying for help to the Foreign Office, a Civil Servant tells him to take "whatever measures" he thinks appropriate - so he goes out and buys a gun); a day after the start of the First War of Indian Independence, rebels seize control of Dehli, killing many Europeans as they do so (1857); heir apparent to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Nicholas is attacked on a state visit to Japan by one of his police guards, who slashes his face with a sabre, leaving a four-inch scar on his forehead for the rest of his life (1891); the US Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana (1910); Busoni[remember him, frenchie?]'s Arlecchino and his Turandot are both premiered in a double bill at the Statstheater, Zurich, conducted by the Composer (1917); Robert Frost is awarded the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes for his collection New Hampshire (1924); the Academy of Motion Picture Arts is established in Beverley Hills (1927); Fritz Lang's first sound film, M, starring Peter Lorre is released in Germany (1931); Szymanowski's ballet Harnasie is premiered in Prague (1935); the first recorded performance of Charles Ives' Central Park in the Dark is given by students from the Juilliard School of Music, conducted by Theodore Bloomfield at Columbia University (1946 - Ives remembered an earlier attempt at the work from forty years earlier which went rather awry); Thailand officially [and permanently] changes its name from Siam (1949); Eugene Ionesco's first play, La Cantatrice Chauve, is premiered at the Theatre des Noctambules in Paris (1950); Mossad agents, acting on information provided to them by Simon Wiesenthal kidnap War Criminal Adolf Eichmann off the streets of Buenos Aires where has been hiding for ten years (1960); the charges against Daniel Ellsberg for passing the Pentagon Papers [classified information about US government involvement in Vietnam] to the New York Times are dismissed, on the grounds that revealing government misconduct is in the public interest (1973); the Bradford City football stadium fire causes the deaths of 56 spectators, and injures more than 265 others (1985); former SS functionary, Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon for War Crimes (1987 - he had been hiding in Bolivia after the US Army Intelligence Corps had helped him to settle there; the trial lasts two months, and he is found guilty and sentenced to Life Imprisonment); more than 170 countries sign an extension of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, indefinitely and unconditionally (1995); Deep Blue becomes the first computer to defeat a chess world champion when it beats Garry Kasparov (1997); Chechen separatist militants ambush a Russian Interior Ministry convoy in the village of Galashki in Ingushetia (2000 - it is reported that 3 trucks and 2 armoured vehicles were blown up, and "not less than 40" Russian soldiers killed); five days after the General Election, Gordon Brown resigns as Prime Minister, and David Cameron replaces him, forming a coalition Government with the Liberal-Democrats (2010); ISIL terrorists enact a series of truck and suicide bombings throughout the day targetting Shiite citizens in Baghdad and neighbouring towns and villages (2016 - more than 110 people are killed, and more than 165 injured).

Birthdays Today include: Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach (1715); Baron Munchausen (1720); Petrus Camper (1722); Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752); Jan Václav Voříšek (1791); Chang and Eng Bunker (1811); Joseph Marx (1882); Irving Berlin (1888); Paul Nash (1889); Margaret Rutherford (1892); Martha Graham (1894); William Grant Still (1895); Salvador Dali (1904); Herbert Murrill (1909); Phil Silvers (1911); Richard Feynman (1918); Gordon Langford (1930); Eric Burden (1941); Jeremy Paxton (1950); ... and the Master of the Queen's Music is 65 today.

Final Days for: Jean de la Bruyère (1696); Jean Galbert de Campistron (1723); William Pitt [the elder] (1778); Otto Nicolai (1849); John Cadbury (1889); Max Reger (1916); Juan Gris (1927); Ture Rangström (1947); Bob Marley (1981); Chester Gould (1985); Kim Philby (1988); Douglas Adams (2001); and Noel Redding (2003).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the Morning of Thursday, 11th May, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Mozart Der Schauspieldirektor Ovt; Strauss Es gibt ein Reich ("Ariadne auf Naxos"); Locatelli Concerto grosso ("II pianto d'Arianna"); Brahms Tragic Overture; Havergal Brian Symphonic Variations on "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?"; Purcell The Rival Sisters Incidental music; Schreker Prelude to a Drama.
Composers of the Week: "Mozart's Rivals" (Cimarosa II pittor parigino Sinfonia; Mozart Vado, ma dove? K 583 [insertion aria for Soler's 'II burbero di buon cuore']; Vanhal Violin Concerto in G; Soler Consola Ie pene mia vita (from "Una cosa rara"); Salieri Flute Concerto in C.
Hanson String Quartet: Schubert S4tet in Bb (D112); Britten Three Divertimenti.
Spanish Fantasy "Orchestral music in the Spanish idiom by Walton and Berners"
Guitar Recital by Vladimir Mikulka [Brouwer Elogio de la danza; Albeniz Leyenda; Koshkin The Porcelain Tower (Variations on a Theme of Rak)]
BBC Welsh SO conducted by Tadaaki Otaka: Beethoven Fidelio Ovt; Violin Concerto (with Takayoshi Wanami); Brahms Symphony No 1

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

12th May

International Nurses' Day - celebrating the work of Nurses throughout the world, and commemorated on this day (Florence Nightingale's Birthday) each year since 1965. It would have started being commemorated twelve years earlier, but US President Eisenhower, to whom the idea was proposed, did not approve (as there's already National Hospital Day during this week) so the International Council of Nurses took up the initiative themselves, Each year focusses on a different theme: "Mental Health", "Healthy Aging", "Patient Safety" etc - this year's theme might seem a bit generic: "Health for All", but given Health Budget Cuts, and the reduction of mental health counselling for the poorest members of society, such basic provision needs highlighting.

Not that the Nurses themselves will be resting - they may well be helping people with myalgic encephalomyelitis to cope with everyday needs. (It's also International Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Day - it shares the Florence Nightingale Birthday date, because it is possible that she had the neuroimmune disease herself.)

Also on this Date: the National University of San Marcos [the oldest University in the Americas] is founded in Lima, Peru (1551); Thomas Kyd [author of The Spanish Tragedie, is imprisoned and tortured for possessing heretical books - he claims that they belong to his roommate, Christopher Marlowe (1593 - Kyd dies at the age of 35 less tha n two years later); the Treaty of Paris comes into effect, ending the American Revolutionary War, defining Britain's territories in North America, and acknowledging the United States as a free, sovereign (?!) federal constitutional republic (1783); William Wiberforce delivers a searing Abolitionist speech to the House of Commons, describing slavery as "irredeemable in its wickedness ... A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might,—let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition." (1789); Venetian Doge, Ludovico Manin surrenders to Napoleon, ending the 1,100 year-old Venetian Republic (1797); Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore is premiered at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan (1832); a wagon train of over 90 people set off from Missouri, bound for California (1846 - the journey normally takes 4 - 6 months; but, as they are testing a new, supposedly quicker, route, theirs takes over a year, during which they become stranded in snow, and are reduced to cannibalism; only 48 survive to reach their intended destination); the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House begins in the American Civil War (1864 - over the next fortnight, 4,500 Union and Confederate soldiers are killed, and 19,000 are injured); Bartok's The Wooden Prince is premiered at the Budapest Opera, conducted by Egisto Tango (1917); Roal Amundsen leads a multinational expedition in Italian-built, American-sponsored airship, The Norwegian, the first craft to fly over the North Pole (1926 - Amundsen, whose relationship with Italian pilot Umberto Nobile - who designed the craft - had already been strained in the cold, cramped conditions of the airship, is incensed when he sees that of the three flags dropped from the craft to the polar surface, the Italian is much bigger than that of Norway. Later that same day, Shostakovich's 1st Symphony is premiered by the Leningrad PO condicted by Nicolai Malko - and the General Strike in the UK comes to an end [although the miners continue their action]); the body of the 20-month old infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh is discovered off the side of a road just a few miles away from his home, ten weeks after he had been kidnapped (1932); Vaughan Williams' opera The Poisoned Kiss is premiered in Cambridge, conducted by Cyril Rootham (1936); Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher is premiered in Basel, conducted by Paul Sacher (1938); Konrad Zuse demonstrates the first programmable and fully-automated digital computer, the Z-3 to his fellow scientists (1941 - the German military cannot see any use for it, so it isn't used in the War effort); German submarine U-507 sails up the mouth of the Mississippi river and destroys the 10,000 ton US tanker SS Virginia, killing 26 of the crew (1942); the eleven-month blocade of Berlin by the Soviet Union is lifted (1949); three days after launch, the retrorockets on the unmanned Soviet spaceship Luna 5 [which was intended to make the first ever soft landing on the Moon] fail, and the craft crashes onto the Moon's surface (1965); Quentin Tarentino's Pulp Fiction is premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (1994); Indonesian soldiers open fire on unnarmed students at Trisakti University in Jakarta, who were demonstrating to demand the removal of the President - four were killed, and many others injured (1998 - the incident sparks public outrage and a spate of riots in which the Chinese-Indonesian community is targetted; more than 1200 of them are killed, some whilst trapped in buildings that the rioters have set alight - the riots stop only when the President resigns later in the month); Jimmy Carter visits Fidel Castro in Havana, (2002 - becoming the first [ex-]President to to visit Cuba in over 43 years); bombings carried out by al-Qaeda on residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia result in the deaths of 39 people - more than 160 others are injured (2003); the WannaCry ransomware cryptoworm attacks computers throughout the world, and brings chaos to the computer systems of the NHS (2017 - the immediate threat is halted by British security software consultant, Macus Hutchins - who, three months later, is arrested for wire fraud and creating, using, and selling devices that intercept electronic communications).

Birthdays Today include: Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739); Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754); Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755); Edward Lear (1812); Florence Nightingale (1820); Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828); Jules Massenet (1842); Gabriel Fauré (1845); Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury (1863); Charles Holden (1875); Helene Weigel (1900); Lennox Berkeley and Wilfrid Hyde-White (both 1903); Leslie Charteris and Katherine Hepburn (both 1907); Dorothy Hodgkin (1910); Joseph Beuys (1921); Alexander Esenin-Volpin and Tony Hancock (both 1924); Andrei Voznesensky (1933); Frank Stella (1936); Susan Hampshire and Miriam Stoppard (both 1937); Ian Dury (1942); Ian McLagan (1945); Daniel Libeskind (1946); Steve Winwood (1948); Gabriel Byrne (1950); ... and Burt Bacharach is 91 today.

Final Days for: George Chapman (1634); John Dryden (1700); Thomas Lowndes (1748); Daniel Auber (1871); Bedřich Smetana (1884); Ferdinand Hiller (1885); Amy Lowell (1925); Eugène Ysaÿe (1931); Arthur Quiller-Couch (1944); Erich von Stroheim (1957); Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1960); John Masefield (1967); Nelly Sachs (1970); Humphrey Searle (1982); Erik Erikson (1994); Perry Como (2001); Robert Rauschenberg (2008); Peter Gay (2015).

And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Monday, 12th May, 1969 were:

Overture (Gramophone records)
Morning Concert: BBC Concert Orchestra/Marcus Dodds
This Week's Composer: Mendelssohn (MSND Ovt & Incidental Music)
BBC Beethoven Competition for duos and trios, held at Dartington Hall (third in a weekly series)
Talking About Music with Antony Hopkins
Music Making: Brass 5tets played by the Hallé Brass Consort, and Piano Music played by Jonathan Dunsby

[Padraig]

International Nurses' Day - celebrating the work of Nurses throughout the world, and commemorated on this day (Florence Nightingale's Birthday) each year since 1965.

The friend and colleague of Florence Nightingale, Agnes Jones, is buried in St. Mura's graveyard in Fahan, County Donegal, just across the border from Derry. Fahan also claims yet another 7th Century Irish Saint in Mura. A beautiful location for visitors to the grave, Fahan is situated on the shore of Lough Swilly.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

13th May

Abbotsbury Garland Day - the last surviving of the Garland customs which used to be widespread in villages along the Chesil Coast. School children, given the day off attach flowers and greenery to frames made of wire or wood, whch are then mounted on poles and, after a blessing at the church, carried around the village, displayed to the residents who answer the door, in return for a small coin gift - the rest of the day would be spent playing on the beach. Originally the custom was performed only by the families of fishermen, and some of the garlands would be taken out to sea and thrown overboard. The fishing industry faded out after World War II, and the tradition had begun to stop in other villages after the First World War, but it continued in Abbotsbury, simply because the local people want it to, come what may. The greatest threat came with the closing of the village primary school in 1981, which brought an end to the extra day's holiday, so the garlands had to be made away from school, usually by adults, and fewer in number, the shortened parade taking place after the children have come home from whichever schools they have to be bussed to - and in 2005, only eight children in all took part.

Also on this Date: Pope Bonniface IV reconsecretes the Pantheon in Rome as the Church of St Mary and the Martyrs (609); in the Battle of Grantham, Oliver Cromwell gains his first victory as an independent cavalry commander, over Royalist forces (1643); Mozart's first opera Apollo et Hyacinthus is premiered at the Benedictine University in Salzburg (1767 - the composer is 11 years old); a fleet of eleven ships leaves Portsmouth for Botany Bay (1787 - six of the ships carry the first consignment of over 1000 convicts, sentenced to Transportation to Australia); Mendelssohn conducts the premiere of his Italian Symphony at a concert organised by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London (1833 - the composer remains dissatisfied by the work, revises it the following years, and intends rewriting a lot of the work for the rest of his life, so it is never published in his lifetime); Maamme, the Finnish National Anthem is sung for the first time (1848); Queen Victoria issues the Proclamation of Neutrality, stating that the Government and people of Great Britain would remain formally neutral about the American Civil War (1861 - the "neutrality" included acknowledging the Confederate Staets' right to fight the Union - and the Proclamation does not immediately prevent British manufacturers and Industrialists from doing business with the Confederate states - on the same day, amateur astronomer John Tebbutt becomes the first person to see the Great Comet that was clearly visible for three years (1861- is it called "Tebbutt's Comet"? No - he was an amateur, and an Australian; can't have that - the comet is given the catchy, Romantic name "C/1861/J1" ["See Slash" to its mates]) Confederate gunship USS Planter is sailed through Confederate lines and delivered to the Union forces by Robert Smalls, an escapee slave (1862 - Smalls later becomes the first black captain in the US) the final battle of the American Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas, comes to an end with a victory for the Confederate side (1865); Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto #2 in g minor is premiered in Paris, with the composer as soloist, and Anton Rubinstein conducting (1868); Cesar Franck's Symphonic Poem, Les Éolides is premiered in the Salle Erard in Paris, conducted by Edouard Colonne (1877); the first Giro d'Italia [the Italian equivalent of the Tour de Yorkshire] begins in Milan (1909 ); the Royal Air Corps, part of the British Army, is founded (1912); MS St Louis leaves Hamburg taking 937 passengers to Cuba, most of them Jewish refugees escaping Nazi persecution (1939 - the ship is refused entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada; it finally docks in Antwerp, but the passengers are not allowed to disembark; the hero of this shameful episode is the German captain of the ship, Gustav Schröder, who ensures trhat his passengers are treated with courtesy and dignity throughout the trip, and who personally negotiates with political officials to ensure that he does not have to return the refugees to Germany); Winston Churchill gives his first speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister, offering nothing but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" (1940 - on the same day, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands flees to Britain, following the fall of her country to the Nazis; her daughter, Juliana flees to Canada with her children); Arab soldiers and citizens kill 129 Jewish residents of the kibbutz settlement of Kfar Etzion, about 19 of them after they had surrendered, after a two-day battle in retaliation for the Jewish massacre of 120 Palestinian citizens in the village of Deir Yassin, five weeks earlier (1948); the Upper House of the Indian Parliament holds its first sitting (1952); Adler & Ross' The Pajama Game is premiered at the St James Theatre on Broadway (1954); French right-wing army officers seize control of Algiers in a coup-d'etat, calling for a Committee of Public Safety to be led by Charles de Gaulle (1958 - de Gaulle had been out of power since 1946 - the putsch leads to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and the return of de Gaulle to lead the Fifth - on the same day, Australian engineer Ben Carlin completes the first [and, so far, only] circumnavigation of the globe by amphibious vehicle - an amphibious Jeep that Carlin has himself adapted and which the couple name "Half-Safe" - it has taken him ten years, and the vehicle has travelled 11,050 miles by sea, and 38,987 miles over land - the journey has cost him $35,000 - about £2,250,000 today); Michael Lindsay-Hogg's documantary film Let it Be premieres in New York (1970); over 800 Hindus, travelling to India to avoid getting caught up in the Bangladesh War of Independence, are slaughtered by members of the occupying Pakistan Army in villages in Bangladesh (1971) Feldman & Beckett's monodrama/anti-opera Neither is premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, with Martha Hanneman the soloist, and Marcello Panni conducting (1977); Turkish far-right assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca shoots Pope John Paul II four times in St Peter's Square, seriously wounding him (1981); two days before an official visit to China by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, students in Tiananmen Square begin a mass hunger strike (1989); severe weather and tornadoes kill 600 people in Bangladesh (1996); more than a thousand people are killed in Race Riots in Indonesia - the targetted community is ethnic Chinese, but the majority of deaths are Javanese Indonesian looters caught up in fires that they have started (1998); Silvio Berlusconi wins the Italian General Election, regaining the post of Prime minister (2001); at least 49 people, and possibly many more, are murdered by members of a drugs cartel in Mexico (2012); an explosion at Eynez Coal Mine in Turkey causes a fire which kills 301 workers (2014);

Birthdays Today include: Maria Theresa (1717); Arthur Sullivan (1842); Kate Marsden (1859); Georges Braque (1882); Georgios Papanikolaou (1883); Oskar Rosenfeld (1884); Lorna Hodgkinson (1887); Daphne Du Maurier (1907); Gil Evans (1912); Joe Louis (1914); Gareth Morris (1920); Bea Arthur (1922); Trevor Baylis (1937); Harvey Keitel (1939); Bruce Chatwin (1940); Joe Brown and Ritchie Valens (both 1941); Tim Pigott-Smith (1946); Jane Glover (1949); Stevie Wonder (1950); Rosie Boycott (1951); Frances Barber, Mark Heap, and David Hill (all 1957); Tasmin Little (1965); Samantha Morton (1977).

Final Days for: Georges Cuvier (1832); John Nash (1835); Gary Cooper (1961); Franz Kline (1962); Richard Ellmann (1985); Chet Baker (1988); and, this time last year, Margot Kidder.


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Sunday, 13th May, 1979 were:

Mozart Piano Concertos: Serenade in D, K239; S4tet in F, K168; Concerto for 3 Pianos in F, K242.
Your Concert Choice: Bizet Patrie Ovt; Chopin Introduction and Polonaise brillante, Op3; Gounod Ballad and Jewel Song (Faust); Tchaikovsky Romance, Op 5; Ravel Introduction and Allegro; Rodrigo Concierto Pastoral.
Music Weekly presented by Michael Oliver (features on Schubert & the Theatre, by William Mann; and Nora Pyron talks of her discoveries in the 'cello's repertory. I'm pretty sure there were more "articles", but these are the only ones listed.)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Suppé Light Cavalry Ovt; Shostakovich Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings Op 35[with Victoria Postikova]; Ives Symphony #4 [with Henry Mazer, assistant conductor]) with an interval talk by Derek Robinson on Squash playing techniques!

[greenilex]

Have been looking at some of Braque’s early works, when he was influenced by Cezanne...a bright colour palette, quite unlike the muted tones of his Cubist works.

I particularly like “The House behind the Trees” from 1906.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[greenilex]

Thanks, ferney!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

May 14th

Pag-rag Day. One of those "key dates in the farm worker's calendar" when they could decide whether to stay with their current employer, or try their luck elsewhere. A Lincolnshire report from 1908 says:

Bank Holidays pass almost unnoticed, but May 14th, or Pag-rag Day, is a great event, when the single farm servants, male and females, leave their places, or at least take a week's holiday, and spend the time visiting friends and going round to different markets. The married men decide whether they will stay wit their mastes at Candlemas; they have the privilege of attending what is called the labourer's market soon after that date, when they hire themselves again and leave their old places April 6th.

Also on this Date: the Battle of Lewes, in which Simon de Montfort defeats Henry II, and wrests so much authority from him that he becomes in effect ruler of England (1264 - de Montfort gets his come-uppance at the replay Battle of Evesham, 15 months later); Jamestown, the first permanent English Settlement in the Americas, is founded in the Colony of Virginia (1607); the Protestant Union, a coalition of German protestant states, is formed (1608); 9-year-old Louis XIII becomes King of France after the assassination of his father, Henry IV (1610 - exactly 33 years to the day later, Louis XIII himself dies and is succeeded by his 4-year-old son, Louis XIV); 8-year-old James Phipps becomes the first person to be vaccinated against Smallpox, when Edward Jenner uses him as a human guinea pig (1796); Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture is premiered in London, conducted by Thomas Attwood (1832); the first edition of the Illustrated London News is published (1842 - main story: Queen Victoria attends her first Masquerade Ball); the last ever trial for witchcraft in the United States [so far] begins in Salem, Massachusetts, nearly 200 years after the infamous Salem Withcraft trials of the 17th Century (1878 - the Judge dismisses the case three days later); the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has to be renamed the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1889 - 65 years after the founding of the RSPCA); Blackpool Tower opens to the public for the first time (1894); the Rockefella Foundation is established (1913); the Remembrance Day two-minute silence is first observed - in Cape Town, South Africa, a year before Edward George Honey writes to the Press to suggest a similar idea (1918 - the War is still being fought, and the silence is a daily event for a year; the beginning marked by the firing of the noon gun as thanksgiving fo those still alive, the ending by a second firing, to mourn those who had died); Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is first published (1925); Swedish troops open fire on unarmed workers striking against pay deductions, and kill five of them (1931); 5-year-old Peruvian Lina Medina becomes the youngest confirmed mother in world history when she gives birth to a baby boy (1938 - her father is arrested, but released because of lack of evidence, and the biological father is never identified - Lina is still alive, having outlived her son who died in 1979); the Luftwaffe bombs Rotterdam (1940); Albert Stevens is given the largest dose of Plutonium ever administered to a human (1945 - Stevens has a stomach ulcer, but his doctor, Joseph G. Hamilton, believes that he has terminal stomach cancer, and that this experimental injection will save his life; nonetheless, Hamilton doesn't seek his patient's consent. Stevens lives for more than another 20 years to the age of 79 - which is more than can be said for Hamilton, who has been rather "free" handling radioactive substances, and who dies from radiation poisoning twelve years later at the age of 49); Hindemith's Requiem For Those We Love, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is premiered in New York, conducted by Robert Shaw (1946); David Ben-Guiron proclaims the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, announcing the independent State of Israel (1948 - many of the new nation's Arab nation immediately join the celebrations by declaring War on it; marking the beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War); the running of the Tallyn Railway, from Tywyn to Nant Gwerol [a seven-mile track in Gwynedd, Wales] is taken over by volunteer enthusiasts and amateurs after it was threatened with closure (1951 - the first Railway company run entirely by volunteers); the Warsaw Pact is established (1955); Virgil Thomson's Missa pro Defunctis is premiered in New York (1960); the Ku Klux Klan firebombs a Greyhound bus carrying Civil Rights activists from non-segregated states into the segregated Southern States - other locals [including police officers] then violently attack the passengers as they escape (1961); Lennon & McCartney announce the founding of their Apple Corps business to a press conference (1968); Andreas Baader, imprisoned for his part in firebombing a department store in Frankfurt [to protest against German public indifference to genocide in Vietnam] is rescued by colleagues Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Esslin (1970 - they shoot a 64-year-old librarian, who is hit in the liver, during their escape); US Space Station Skylab is launched (1973); between 300-600 Salvadorean refugees fleeing the Civil War are killed by Salvadorean soldiers after Honduran Border Guards deny them sanctuary in Honduras (1980); and, this time last year, 69-year-old Chinese mountaineer Xia Boyu, who had had both legs amputated in 1996, reaches the peak of Mount Everest on his fifth attempt to climb the mountain.

Birthdays Today include: Francesco Rasi (1574); Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652); Thomas Gainsborough (1727); Robert Owen and Thomas Wedgewood (both 1771); Magnus Hirschfeld (1868); Otto Klemperer (1885); Sidney Bechet and Ed Rickets (both 1897); Charlotte Auerbach (1899);Cai Chang (1900); Antonio Berni (1905); Lou Harrison (1917); Tristram Cary (1925); Eric Morecambe (1926); Herbert Franke (1927); Henry Mcgee (1929); Alvin Lucier (1931); Siân Phillips (1933); Jack Bruce (1943); George Lucas (1944); Francesca Annis (1945); David Byrne (1952); Alec Dankworth (1960); Tim Roth (1961); Eoin Colfer (1965); Sofia Coppola (1971); ... Cate Blancett is 50 today, Marc Zuckerberg, 35, and David Kelly would have been 75.

Final Days for: Fanny Mendelssohn (1847); Mary Seacole (1881); August Strindberg (1912); Henry J Heinz (1919); David Belasco (1931); Magnus Hirschfeld (1935 - on his 67th birthday); Emma Goldman (1940); Joan Malleson (1956); Sidney Bechet (1959 - on his 62nd birthday); Jean Rhys (1979); Rita Hayworth (1987); Frank Sinatra (1998); Wendy Hiller and Robert Stack (both 2003); BB King (2015); and, this time last year, Tom Wolfe.


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Sunday, 14th May, 1989 were:

Mornings at 7: Vaughan Williams Sea-Songs, "March", and Old King Cole Suite
Music Group of London: Haydn "Gypsy Rondo" Pno 3o; Schubert Pno 3o in Bb (D 898)
Your Concert Choice: Wagner/ Liszt Tannhauser Ovt; Glazunov Violin Concerto; Elgar My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land; Mozart Concertone in C (K190); Czerny Variations on 'My Lodging Is on the Cold Ground', Op 552; Bizet "Rome" Symphony.
Music Weekly introduced by Michael Oliver (features on Liszt & the Lied; Boris Christoff at 75; Schumann & the 'cello; and "On Being a Music Critic").
BBCSSO conducted by George Hurst: Dvorak Carnival Ovt; Mozart Piano Concerto in d minor K 466 (with Ronan O'Hora); Schumann "Rhenish" Symphony

[Padraig]

Final Days for: ; Sidney Bechet (1959 - on his 62nd birthday)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdJQps9fTY

Le Jazz Hot.