Today's the Day

[Edgy 2]

June 27th
John Entwistle features in the ‘last days’ column, surely an equally legendary bass guitarist (arguably the best ever) deserves a mention.

Christopher Russell Edward Squire (Of Yes), 27/06/2015

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 27th
John Entwistle features in the ‘last days’ column, surely an equally legendary bass guitarist (arguably the best ever) deserves a mention.

Christopher Russell Edward Squire (Of Yes), 27/06/2015

Look again, Edgey!

[Edgy 2]

Look again, Edgey!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 29th

The joint Feast Day of St Peter & St Paul - and the occasion of Bawming the Thorn in the Cheshire village of Appleton, "bawming" being an obscure and otherwise extinct dialect word for "decorating" (a corruption of "adorning", I wonder) - in the middle of the village there is a Hawthorn tree, surrounded by railings, which the primary school children decoratewith ribbons, flags, and garlands and then dance around, singing

Up with fresh garlands this midsummer morn
Up with the ribbons on Appleton thorn
Come lasses & lads to the Thorn Tree today
To bawm it and shout as you bawm it "Hooray".

(I sometimes think that McGonagall is unfairly singled out.)

Up in Cumbria, meanwhile, five villages hold Rush-bearing ceremonies, the most famous being that of Warcop, where

The girls of the village, wearing their best dresses, are crowned with garlands made of rushes, ferns, mosses, and flowers and the boys carry symbolic crosses made of rushes bound with red ribbon. To the sound of the Brass Band, all the villagers, young and old, walk from village to church where a special service is held to bless the rushes.

(The church, St Columba's, is also richly decorated with flowers.)

Also on this Date: a misfiring cannon sets fire to the scenery of the Globe Theatre during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, destroying the theatre (1611 - no one was hurt, but a man's trousers caught fire and had to be put out by a bottle of ale); Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah is proclaimed Mahdi by his disciples (1881); Wagner's first opera Die Feen is premiered at the Royal National Theatre in Munich (1888 - over five years after the composer's death - on the same day in London, the earliest recording of a piece by Handel - "Moses and the Children of Israel" from Israel in Egypt - is recorded for Edison Phonograph in the Crystal palace, with a choir of "several thousand singers" and orchestra conducted by August Manns); several smaller townships around Chicago vote in an election to be annexed by the larger city [because of superior utilities and emergency services] creating the largest US city at the time (1889); Roger Casement [knighted five years earlier for his reports into Belgian Human Rights Abuses] has his knighthood revoked for his attempts to secure German assistance for the Easter Uprising (1916); following Mussolini's disbanding of the Catholic Youth and the Italian Catholic Action organizations Pope Pius XI issues the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno ["We don't need no fascist thought control"] (1931); British troops round up suspected Zionist terrorists in palestine (1946 - called Operation Agatha by the British authorities, it is known as Black Sabbath in Israel, because the arrests occured on a Saturday); President Eisenhower signs the Federal Highway Act, authorizing $25billion [about £185billion in today's values] to be spent on the construction of 41,000 miles of Interstarte Highway (1956); a four-year moritorium on the death penalty begins when the US Supreme Court rules that inconsistencies in the application of such sentences violate the 8th Amendment (1972); Mikhail Baryshnikov defects to the West whilst on a tour in Canada with the Kirov Ballet (1974); the Seychelles become independent from the UK (1976); US space shuttle Atlantis docks with Russian space station Mir (1995 - on the same day, the Shampoong department store - hastily constructed seven years earlier as a showcase for the Seoul Olympics - collapses, killing 502 people, and injuring over a thousand others: the largest non-military disaster in South Korea); the US Supreme Court rules that President Bush II's wish to try Guantanamo Bay prisoners by Military Tribunals breaks US and International laws (2006); the first generation i-Phone goes on sale (2007); transgender man Thomas Beattie becomes the first man to give birth (2008); an 18-hour-long derecho reaching speeds of over 90mph causes devastation across 800 miles of midwestern United States, killing 22 people, and causing nearly $3billion [£2.25billion]-worth of damage (2012 - hailstones measuring nearly 3 inches are recorded).

Birthdays Today include: Giacomo Leopardi (1798); Angelo Secchi (1818); Curt Sachs (1881); Aarre Merikanto (1893); Nelson Eddy (1901); Alan Blumlein (1903); Leroy Anderson (1908); Frank Loesser (1910); Bernard Herrmann (1911); Rafael Kubelik (1914); Slim Pickens (1919); Ray Harryhausen (1920); Chou Wen-chung (1923); Pierre Perrault (1927); Ian Bannen (1928); Terry Wyatt (1957); Amanda Donohoe (1962); Anne-Sophie Mutter (1963); Katherine Jenkins (1980);

Final Days for: Óláfr Guðrøðarson (1153); Margaret Beaufort (1509); John Mundy (1630); André Campra (1744); Thomas Addison (1860); Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1861); Thomas Henry Huxley (1895); Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (1933); Paul Klee (1940); Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1941); Eric Dolphy (1964); Jayne mansfield (1967); Tim Buckley (1975); Kurt Eichhorn (1994); Lana Turner (1995); Rosemary Clooney (2002); Katherine Hepburn (2003) ... and, this time last year, Steve Ditko (probably).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Friday, 29th June, 1979 were:

Overture: Barsanti Concerto Grosso in D, Op 3 #10; Telemann Oboe Sonata in Bb; Frescobaldi Partita sopra l'aria la Monicha; Purcell Welcome to all the Pleasures (Ode for St Cecilia's Day, 1683) [complete!]; Benjamin Cotillon Suite; Grainger A Lincolnshire Posy; Britten Suite on English Folk Tunes, 'A time there was"; trad 4 Sea Shanties.
This Week's Composer: Tippett (Fanfare for Brass; & Symph #3)
Young Artists' Recital: Belgian Wind Quintet (Ibert Trois Pieces Breves; Pousseur [transc Monk] Troisieme Vue sur les Jardins Interdits; Westerlinck Luchtige étuden voor een Zomerwerk; Farkas Three Ancient Hungarian Dances; Pool Kleine Feestmars; Monk Lasagne da Caccia; Reicha Quintet in C Op 88 #3.
BBCNIO conducted by Bernard Keefe (Mozart Divertimento K251; Martinu Sinfonietta (La Jolla).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think that this was illustrated on the BaL last week? (More unfathomable negligence! )

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/excerpt-from-handels-israel-in-egypt-1888/

... well, they say it's Handel, recorded in 1888, but it could be anything!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

June 30th

International Asteroid Day, commited to raising public awareness of the dangers of an asteroid collision with the Earth, with a view to improving preparations for and defences against such an event. Astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May has said

The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time; Asteroid Day and the 100X Declaration are ways for the public to contribute to an awareness of the Earth’s vulnerability and the realization that Asteroids hit Earth all the time, as first noticed by Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo Figaro

Also on this Date: the Seven Bishops who had been on trial for Seditious Libel for publicly opposing James II's attempts to restore rights to his [fellow] Catholics are acquited (1688 - on the same day, seven noblemen send an invitation to William of Orange [who had been preparing an Invasion] to lead an uprising against James); tightrope walker, Charles Blondin, makes the first crossing of the Niagara Gorge (1859); 7 months after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, Oxford University holds adebate on evolution, led by Bishop Samule Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley (1860); President Lincoln signs a Bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant Sequoia trees to the State of California, "for public use, resort, and recreation ... inalienab[ly] for all time" (1864 - the first time that any government had set aside an area of land to protect them and enable public enjoyment in perpetuity); the first transCanadian railway journey sets off from Montreal (1886 - it arrives in Port Moody BC five days later); the Prince of Wales [later Edward VII] officially opens Tower Bridge in London (1894); a meteor explodes in mid-air near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river in Siberia, flattening 770 sq miles of forestry and devastating the flora and fauna of the region (1908 - no humans are known to have been harmed, even though this is the largest recorded Impact Event in human history, and it is this event that is marked in International Asteroid Day); the deadliest cyclone in Canadian history devastates the city of Regina in Saskatchewan, killing 28 people (1912); the Night of the Long Knives, in which Hitler has his former political allies, now his chief rivals, murdered (1934); Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With the Wind is first published (1936); the world's first Emergency Telephone Number [999] is introduced in London (1937); the Battle of Cherbourg - begun on 6th June - comes to an end with victory for Allied troops overpowering Nazi occupiers (1944); the first Chevrolet Corvette goes on sale, enabling American teenagers to drive to the Levy, even when the Levy is dry (1953); the National Ortganization for Women is formed in the United States (1966); the crew of Soyuz 11, fresh from the first successful docking with Space Station Salyut 1 on 7th June, are all discovered dead by the recovery team sent to retrieve them after their return to Earth (1971 - a ventilation valve had been knocked out of place when the descent module had detached from the orbital module, and they had suffocated); the first Leap Second is added to Universal Coordinated Time (1972 - in the intervening 47 years, a further 27 Leap Seconds have been added); the US Supreme Court rules that the US Constitution does not confer "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy" and upholds the State of Georgia's right to criminalise such engagements (1986 - one of the Chief Justices, Warren Burger, cites homosexuality as an "infamous crime against nature ... worse than rape ... a crime not fit to be named"); East and West Germany merge their economies (1990); exactly a year to the day after he had been elected Egyptian President, protests begin against Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Party (2013); Rolf Harris is found Guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault against underage girls (2014); ... and, 20 years ago today, the UK transfers sovereignty of Hong Kong to China; and, this time last year, two British citizens are taken to Salisbury District Hospital, suffering from Novichok nerve agent poisoning - one of them, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess, later dies.

Birthdays Today include: John Gay (1685); Jiří Antonín Benda (1722); Felix Savart (1791); Stanley Spencer (1891); Winston Graham (1908); Czesław Miłosz (1911); Lena Horne (1917); Andrew Hill (1931); Barry Hines (1939); Giles Swayne (1946); Stephen Barlow (1954); Esa-Pekka Salonen (1958); Rupert Graves (1963); Katherine Ryan (1983); ... and Tony Hatch will be 80 today.

Final Days for: Antonio Rosetti (1792); Margery Allingham (1966); Nancy Mitford (1973); Lillian Hellman (1984); Federico Mompou (1987); Gale Gordon (1995); Chet Atkins (2001); Simone Veil and Barry Norman (2017).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Friday, 30th June, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Copland Danzo Cubano; Rachmaninov Vocalise; Debussy orch Ravel Sarabande & Dance; Handel Il Pastor Fido Ballet Music; Corelli Trio Sonata in f# minor, Op2 #9; Mozart Horn Concerto in D, K412; Dvorak The Hero's Song.
Composer of the Week: Tippett Corelli Fantasia; Pno Son #4
A Musical Menagerie: Kodaly Peacock Variations; Haydn "Bird" S4tet; Britten Rejoice in the Lamb; Haydn "Bear" Symphony; Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals; + misc works by Bach, Schubert, Liszt, Poulenc, & RVW.
BBCSSO conducted by George Hurst: Britten Sea Interludes; Hugh Wood Laurie Lee Songs (with Jane Manning - and not "Hugh Laurie, Lee Songs" as listed in the genome)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 1st

The (traditional) joint Feast Day of Saints Julius & Aaron. With St Alban, the only named martyrs from pre-English Britain, Very little is k nown about them, other than that they were martyred - for reasons unknown (possibly as part of the Diocletian Persecution), possibly in Caerleon (near what is now Newport in Wales) - or mebbe Chester, or Leicester, or even York - possibly around 304. Anyway, their names features in Gildas, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth (who makes them associates of King Arthur), Gerald of Wales, and John Leland.

And it's International Tartan Day, so get out your family kilt. (Doesn't matter if you don't have one - most of them have been invented in the last 200 years, anyway.)

Also on this Date: Johann Esch & Heinrich Voes become the first Protetstants to be burnt at the stake for their religious beliefs by the Catholic Church (1523); the Trial (and verdict, and sentencing) of Thomas More for treason (1535); William of Orange's forces defeat the army of deposed king James II at the Battle of the Boyne (1690); following the Births and Deaths Registration Act of the previous year, civil registration of Births and Deaths is introduced in England & Wales (1837); Darwin's Wallace's papers on Evolution are read at the Linnean Society in London (1858); the three-day-long Battle of Gettysburg begins (1863 - by the end of the fighting, at least 46,000 soldiers from both sides of the Civil War will have been killed); British colonies in Northern America join in confederacy to create modern Canada (1867 - today is celebrated as Canada Day); the first commercially successful typewriter goes on sale in the United States, marketed by Remington (1874); the first issue of The Watchtower is published (1879); just over 5 years after Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call, the first International Telephone Call is made between Canada and the US (1881); the Congo Free State is created after Leopold II of Belgium convinces other European states that he, personally - and not the Belgian government of which he is constitutional monarch - is the best figure to deliver humanitarian & philanthropic work to the people of the Congo (1885 - the irony of this announcement is sickening); the very first Tour de France bicycle race begins (1903 - the competition is created to bolster falling sales of the magazine sponsoring the event); the first Olympic Games held in the USA opens in St Louis (1904 - the games continue until November!); "SOS" is adopted as the International Distress Signal (1908); the five-month-long Battle of the Somme begins (1916 - there are nearly 60,000 British & French casualties [including over 20,000 deaths] on this first day alone); Bartok's first Piano Concerto is premiered at the 5th ISCM festival in Frankfurt, with the composer as soloist, and Furtwangler conducting (1927); Strauss' opera Arabella is premiered at the Dresden Semperoper, conducted by Clemens Krauss (1933); the First Battle of El Alamain begins (1942 - it will end in a stalemate four weeks later); the International Geophysical Year - a scientific project at the height of the Cold War involving scientists from the East and West - begins (1957 - it lasts 18 months); Britten's Cantata Acdemica is premiered at the University of Basel, conducted by Paul Sacher (1960 - on the same day [and 425 years after More's trial] Robert Bolt's stage adaptation of his radio play A Man for All Seasons is premiered at the Gielgud Theatre [then the Globe Theatre] on Shaftesbury Avenue, London; Paul Scofield and Leo McKern head the cast); Zone Improvement Plan codes are introduced by the US postal agency (1963 - on the same day, Kim Philby is confirmed to be the "Third Man" by the British Government, who also admit that he had escaped to the Soviet Union six months earlier); the European Common Market, the European Coal & Steel Community, and the European Atomic Agency merge to create the European Community (1967); the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is signed by 62 countries (1968); the Investiture Ceremony of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle (1969); the UK's first Gay Pride march takes place in London (1972); the first SONY Walkmans go on sale (1979); the Warsaw Pact is formally dissolved at a meeting in Prague (1991); Britain hands over sovereignty of Hong Kong to China (1997); legislative powers are officially transferred from London to the Scottish Parliament (1999); the International Criminal Court begins functioning (2002); the Cassini space probe enters Saturn's orbit and begins sending back images from the planet and its system (2004); smoking in all indoor public spaces is banned in England (2007); Croatia joins the European Union (2013).

Birthdays Today include: Claudio Saracini (1586); Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646); George Sand (1804); Louis Bleriot (1872); James M Cain (1892); Charles Laughton (1899); Amy Johnson (1903); Olivia de Haviland (1915); Hans Werner Henze (1926); Carol Chomsky (1930); Leslie Caron (1931); Jean Marsh & Sydney Pollack (both 1934); David Prowse (1935); Debbie Harry (1945); Mick Aston (1946); Trevor Eve (1951); Dan Ackroyd (1952); Nikolai Demidenko (1955); Princess Diana (1961); ... and Joseph G Williams will be 99 today.

Final Days for: Isaac Casaubon (1614); WF Bach (1784); Allan Pinkerton (1884); Harriet Beecher Stowe (1896); Erik Satie (1925); Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1950); Pierre Monyeux (1964);Buckminster Fuller (1983); Robert Mitchum (1997); Forrest Mars (1999); Walter Matthau (2000); Marlon Brando (2004); Fred Trueman (2006); Mollie Sugden (2009); John Paynter (2010); Evelyn Lear (2012); Val Doonican & Nicholas Winton (2015 - the latter aged 106).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 1st July, 1969 were:

Overture: "gramophone records"
Rossini & Verdi: Overtures to The Thieving Magpie and The Sicilian Vespers; Ballet Music and Arias from William Tell and MacBeth.
This Week's Composer: Mozart (Adagio & Fugue in c minor, K546; S4tet in Eb, K428)
Concerto: [unspecified] played by Masuko Ushioda (violin) and the BBCWSO conducted by Norman Del Mar.

(then over 6 hrs of the flanneled fools)

[Richard Tarleton]

George Sand (1804)

She really was a piece of work. Reading Alan Walker's marvellous recent biog of Chopin, one can only feel desperately sorry for him.

Their disastrous sojourn on Mallorca lasted a mere 59 days – I’d always imagined it to be longer. As she always did, at the time and after they’d returned to France, Sand – whose idea it had been in the first place – blamed everyone except herself for the debacle. Their physical relationship lasted barely a year. After their return to Nohant, Sand, doubtless to Chopin’s chagrin, decided that their relationship would be a platonic one (perhaps because she did not enjoy his coughing during sex).

On top of everything else, she was a rubbish ornithologist. She describes how, on Mallorca (where I have enjoyed some marvellous birding trips), when the downpour ceased, a thick mist sometimes rolled down the mountainside, enveloping the monastery in a wintry shroud. Under its cover the eagles and vultures that circled overhead would swoop down and snatch the sparrows perched on the branches of the pomegranate tree just outside her window. Obviously, Sand lacked binoculars and a good field guide. Mallorca has a small resident population of black vultures, which eat carrion, and (in winter – the island’s booted eagles, Aguila calzada in Spanish, are summer visitors) Bonelli's eagle - known in Spanish as the partridge eagle (Aguila perdicera). As it happens, these are currently being reintroduced to the island. But, snatching sparrows - those would have been sparrowhawks.

[Petrushka]

(then over 6 hrs of the flanneled fools)

Well, yes, but the irony is that this is how I came to Radio 3. Whenever Test Match Special was interrupted by rain or finished early R3 used to revert to music, usually on records and that was the way I heard my first Mahler symphony (LSO/Solti) along with much more. This would have been in somewhere around 1969.

My father was a keen 'flanneled fool' but I soon lost interest in the sport and have never felt the urge to try it again.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 2nd

We've passed the mid-point of the year by now - this is the 183rd day of the year; there's only 182 left.

The Feast of the Visitation, in which Mary, pregnant with Jesus, went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist - the occasion on which she sang the Magnificat.

Also the Feast Day of St Euddogwy ("Oudoceus" for those who prefer Latin to Brythonic), the 7th Century Bishop mof Llandeilo Fawr in Carmarthenshire ("Sir Gaerfyrddin" for those who prefer Brythonic to Latin), South Wales. The legend goes that a stag, pursued by the Hounds of Einion, King of Glewsygg, reached the saint's cloak, where he had placed it as he wirked in the field - the hounds could not touch the stag whilst he was there, thus saving its life.

Also on this Date: the Siege of Roche-au-Moine ends in ignominious defeat for King John, who had been attempting to retrieve French territory he had lost earlier (1214); Parliamentarian forces decisively defeat the Royalist army of Prince Rupert at the Battle of Marston Moor in Yorkshire (1644 - 300 Parliamentarians are killed, as opposed to 4,000 Royalists; exactly a year later to the day, the Royalists defeat the Scottish Covenanters at the Battle of Alford in Aberdeenshire); Thomas Savery patents his steam pump - the first commercially successful steam engine (1698); Bach's Cantata BWV 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, is premiered in Leipzig (1723); the French frigate Medusa is wrecked off the coast of North Africa, forcing the passengers to take to the launches - as there are not enough of these to carry all 400 of them, 150 men and 1 woman are forced to cling to a makeshift raft [Le machine], pulled along by the other boats, but this is impractical, and the Raft of the Medusa is left drifting in the open sea with no means of navigation (1810 - when the raft is recued 13 days later, only 15 of the men are still alive); Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, sets up his court in Rome, having captured it from the Papal States (1871); President Garfield is fatally shot by a disgruntled lawyer who believed that Garfield owed him a consulship for his work in securing the presidency (1881); Gugliemo Marconi receives a patent for radio (1897); Sibelius' Finlandia is premiered in Helsinky by the Helsinki Philharmonic Society Orchestra, conducted by Robert Kajanus (1900 - on the same date, the first Zeppelin airship, LZ-1, makes its first flight, crossing Lake Constance on the German/Austrian/Swiss border); the Representation of the People [Equal Franchise] Act, lowering the voting age of women to match that of men, receives Royal Assent (1928); SA chief Ernst Röhm becomes the last victim of the Night of the Long Knives (1934); the last message is received from Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan as they attempt the first equatorial circumnavigation of the world (1937); a German U-boat torpedos and sinks British passenger ship SS Arandora Star, used in the War to transport refugees and troops - on this journey, it is carrying 734 Italian and 565 German PoWs [together with 374 crew] to prison camps in Canada; 865 of them are killed (1940); Elvis Presley records his cover of Lieber & Stoller's Hound Dog (1956) the Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, comes into force in the United Staes (1964); the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam is declared (1976); Chilean military personnel loyal to dictator Pinochet wrap protestors Carmen Gloria Quintana and Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri in blankets which they douse with petrol and set light to - dumping the bodies in a ditch in a remote village (1986 - they do not realize that Quintana has survived and will live to testify); the Thai government float the Baht currency, triggering the Asian Financial Crisis (1997); Steve Fossett becomes the first person to circumnavigate the world non-stop in a balloon (2002); the Live 8 benefit concert takes place (2005 - timed to coincide with the G8 Conference being held in Gleneagles Hotel, Auchterarder); the International Astronomical Union names the 4th & 5th moons of Pluto (2013 - Kerberos & Styx); a total eclipse of the Sun will be observable in the Southern Hemisphere (2019 - best seen from New Zealand & Argentina).

Birthdays Today include: Thomas Cranmer (1489); Theodoor Rombouts (1597); Christophe Willibald von Gluck (1714); Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724); William Henry Bragg (1862); Lily Braun (1865); Hermann Hesse (1877); Hans Bethe (1906); Frederick Fennell (1914); Lee Allen (1927); Tom Springfield (1934); Gilbert Kalish (1935); Larry David (1947);

Final Days for: Swithun (862); Nostradamus (1566); Vincenzo Gallilei (1592); Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778 - four days after his 66th birthday); Ernest Hemingway (1961); Betty Grable (1973); James Robertson Justice (1975); Vladimir Nabokov (1977); Lee Remick (1991); Fred Gwynne (1993); James Stewart (1997); Mario Puzo (1999); Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur & Earle Brown (both 2002); Beverly Sills (2007); Beryl Bainbridge (2010); Caroline Aherne & Elie Wiesel (both 2016).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Monday, 2nd July, 1979 were:

Overture: BBCSSO; conducted by Rickenbacher - Falla 3-Cornered Hat (excerpts); Mozart Pno Conc in A, K488 (with Zsusanna Sirokat). Conducted by Nello Santi - Rossini Turco in Italia Ovt; Bizet l'Arlesienne Suite #2; Respighi Feste Romane
This Week's Composer: Mendelssohn (S4tet in a, Op 13; Capriccio Op 33 #1; Variations sérieuses, Op 54
Antony Hopkins Talking About Music
Now & Then ("A series of programmes of music of all periods, but always containing something broadcast for the first time"): Handel Trio-Sonata #5, in G; Christopher Bochmann Chamber Etude #1; Michelangelo Jerace Trio-Sonata #11, in d; David Matthews Toccatas and Pastorals [performed by The Sheba Sound]
Bach: Partita #2 in c; P&F in Ab, [W-TC Book2]
BBCNSO conducted by Raymond Leppard: Schönberg 5 Orch Pieces; Haydn Symph #70; Strauss Don Juan.

[johncorrigan]

Final Days Nostradamus (1566);.

Never saw that one coming!

Final Days Fred Gwynne (1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N6YgivIqjI

[Richard Tarleton]

Judith Durham (1943)

...Pet have you spotted this?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

July 3rd

The start of the Dog Days - so-called because of the appearance of Sirius (the brightest star in the sky apart from the sun, of course) on the Eastern horizon at dawn (the rest of the year, it is only observable at night). Associated in the Ancient world with drought, heat, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck; the period goes on until 11th August, when Sirius once again becomes a night star - although different countires/historic periods have different timings: the Anglo-Saxons took them into September, but they also started a little later. (This is partly, but not wholly explained by the change of Calendar.)

And the Feast Day of St Germanus of Man, the 5th Century Celtic bishop, who studied with - and may have been the nephew of - St Patrick in Ireland, continued his studies at Cor Tewdws, the divinity school in Llanillud Fawr in Glamorgan (where St David also studied in the next century), and, after returning to Patrick was ordained and became the first Bishop of the Isle of Man. And the Feast Day of the Apostle Thomas, the twin - "Doubting Thomas" (if you believe such things).

Also on this Date: William the Bastard becomes Duke of Normandy (1035); the city of Quebec is founded, 73 years after it was first settled by Jacques Cartier (1608); British Army Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington leads his first campaign at the Battle of Fort Necessity (1754 - he surrenders the Fort after a few hours' heavy fighting, when his men disobey his orders and break open the liquor barrels - he and his [hungover?] men depart the Fort the next day. Twenty-one years later to the day, Washington assumes the leadership of the Continental Army - the Revolutionary Army fighting for Independence from Britain); American colonialists loyal to the British crown, together with indigenous American Indian fighters defeat Nationalist frontiersmen at the Battle of Wyoming, killing over 300 frontier settlers (1778); the last pair of Great Auks - which had been incubating an egg - is killed (1844 - the birds were so rare that mueums had been paying large prices for undamaged corpses to stuff and put on display, thus ensuring extinction; this final pair is captured and strangled - the egg crushed underfoot); French troops enter Rome, seize power from the Republican government, and restore Papal rule (1849); the Battle of Gettysburg comes to an end with victory for the Union forces after the decisive Pickett's Charge (1863 - 50 years later, veterans re-enact the Charge, ending not with the gunfire of the original, but with both sides running towards each other to shake hands. 75 years after the Battle, President FD Roosevelt dedicates the Eternal Light Peace Monument by lighting the natural gas flame - this is extinguished in 1974 and replaced with an electric light); on the same day as the Battle of Gettysburg, Little Crow, Chief of the Mdewakantonwan Dakota people is shot and killed by two white settlers, who then scalp him and take his corpse to Minnesota, where the people mutilate it (1863); the Battle of Koniggratz results in a decisive victory for the Prussian Army against Austria, part of Bismarck's Unification of Germany [under Prussian dominance] (1866); John Logie Baird gives the first public demonstration of colour television transmission (1928); LNER locomotive Mallard sets a still unsurpassed world speed record for a steam train - 126mph (1938); to prevent the Germans from acquiring battleships, British forces destroy the French fleet in the Algierian port of Mers-el-Kébir, killing 1300 French sailors (1940 - the brutality of the act impresses much public opinion in the United States); Billy Wilder's film Double Indemnity is released (1944); the first ITN News at Ten is broadcast (1967); the largest explosion in the history of space exploration occurs when Soviet rocket N-1 crashes back to its launch pad seconds after lift-off, destroying not just the rocket, but also the entire launch site (1969); the three-day-long Falls Curfew begins when British soldiers begin a raid on Catholic houses in Belfast, searching for IRA weapons (1970 - the soldiers are themselves attacked by residents, and the riot escalates into cross-fire; 3 men are killed on this first day); the first film in Robert Zemickis' Back to the Future series is released (1985); the United States navy shoots down an Iranian civilian passenger aircraft flying over Iranian territorial waters, killing all 290 on board, 66 of them children (1988); a military coup d'etat removes the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt and deposes President Mohamed Morsi (2013).

Birthdays Today include: Edward Young (1683); Leos Janacek (1854); William Wallace (1860); W. H. Davies (1871); George M Cohan (1878); Carl Schuricht (1880); Franz Kafka (1883); Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901); George Sanders (1906); Ken Russell (1927); Carlos Kleiber (1930); Tom Stoppard (1937); Brigitte Fassbaender (1938); Judith Durham (1943); Polly Styrene (1957); Charlie Higson & Sian Lloyd (both 1958); Tom Cruise (1962); Yeardley Smith (1964); Julian Assange (1971);

Final Days for: Francis Willughby (1672); William Jones (1749 - a pie rather than a cake?); Theodor Herzl (1904); Joel Chandler Harris (1908); Andre Citroen (1935); Jacob Schick (1938); Reginald Marsh (1954); Brian Jones (1969); Jim Morrison (1971); Louis Durey (1979); Rudy Vallee (1986); Jim Backus (1989); George Lloyd (1998); Snoo Wilson (2013).


And the Radio 3 Schedules for the morning of Monday, 3rd July, 1989 were:

Morning Concert: Smetana Bartered Bride Ovt; Schubert Fantasia in f, D940; Chabrier Gwendoline Ovt; Grainger Rosenkavalier Fantasy; Dvorak String Serenade.
Composers of the Week: the Strauss Family (a variety of pieces by father & all 3 sons)
Lieder & Duets: a title which seems to include Schubert's Rosamund Ovt, & Dvorak's "Dumky" 3o, as well as lieder and vocal & instrumental duos.
BBC Concert Orch conducted by Jiri Starek play Dvorak's Czech Suite.

(That's quite a lot of Dvorak on Janacek's birthday!)

[Richard Tarleton]

Judith Durham (1943)

Pet, have you spotted this?

Here they are, with their magnificent version of Stenka Razin....

Her interesting Wiki entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Durham

[cloughie]

50 years since Brian Jones’ demise - probably he brought the ‘blues’ roots to the Stones sound, what a sad sad waste of a talented man!