Today's the Day

[greenilex]

Also would like to wish UCL a quick Happy Birthday.

[cloughie]

Would love to hear RR reading On a Grecian Urn...

There is a CD on Amazon full of RR reading Keats. £4.99 plus p&p.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 12th

Darwin Day - commemorating the great scientist's birthday (210 years ago today), celebrating his work, and promoting Science generally throughout the world.
Lincoln's Birthday (also 210 years ago today) - celebrated as a public holiday in some US states (others wait until the Third Monday in February, when it is combined with Washington's Birthday, and called Presidents' Day. Georgia has its own celebrations today - it's Georgia Day, commemorating its founding in 1733.

Also on this date: the Battle of the Herrings (1420, where English forces (led by Sir John Fastolf) soundly defeated combined forces from France and Scotland during the Siege of Orleans (the English were guarding supplies of arms and provisions, including carts of eponymous fish when the battle began, and used the carts as cover). 400 French and Scots soldiers were reportedly killed during the battle (casualties were even greater for the fish) and the low morale this defeat caused the French - whose leader was regarded as behaving cowardly (he blamed the indiscipline of the Scots) - was raised only with the arrival of Joan of Arc, later in the year. Lady Jane Grey is beheaded (1554); Offenbach's La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein is premiered in Paris (1867); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded (1909); Qu Yi, the last Emperor of China abdicates (1912); the Foundation Stone of the Lincoln Memorial is laid (1915); Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is premiered in New York (1924); Christian Dior reveals hi "New Look" line - except that he himself called the two main styles "Corolle" and "Huit" (1947); Nobel Laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is exiled from the Soviet Union (1974); one of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" paintings is stolen from the National Gallery of Norway (1994); and San Francisco first issues marriage license to same-sex couples (2004).

Birthdays today include: Thomas Campion (1567); Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760); Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln (both 1809); George Meredith (1828); Charles Wilfrid de Beriot (1833); Lou Salome (1861); Marie Lloyd (1870); Louis Renault (1877); Anna Pavlova (1881); Roy Harris (1898); RF Delderfield (1912); Franco Zeffirelli (1923) ... and Annette Crosbie is 85 today (I don't belieeeve it!)

Last days for: Immanuel Kant (1804); Hans von Bulow (1894); Ambroise Thomas (1896); Emile Waldteufel (1915); Lillie Langtry (1929); Henri Duparc (1933); Auguste Escoffier (1935); Grant Wood (1942); George Antheil (1959); Benjamin Frankel (1973); Jean Renoir (1979); Eubie Blake (1983); and Charles M Schulz (2000).


And the morning schedules for Sunday, 12th February, 1989 were:

A Bach Organ recital by Peter Hurford
The first programme in a series devoted to Yevgeni Mravinsky
Your Concert Choice (Vivaldi trans Bach; a Cantata by Alessandro Melani; Mozart Pno Conv #11; Brahms S5tet in G; and Saint-Saens' Requiem)
Music Weekly (articles on Opera 80; the Brass Band tradition; and a conversation with Michael Thompson)
A Concert of Music by Mozart and Richard Strauss given by the BBCSO, conducted by John Pritchard

[edashtav]

Gosh!
Did Benjamin Frankel die almost half a century ago?
I have gained much enjoyment from his symphonies and feel that his Violin Concerto is one of the finest concertos to come out of GB in the 20th century.
Do fellow boarders agree with me that Frankel's works deserve fresh performances?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

February 13th

UNESCO's eighth annual World Radio Day - with this year's theme being "Dialogue, Tolerence, and Peace": https://www.diamundialradio.org/

Also on this date: the tower of Ely Cathedral collapses (1322); Catherine Howard is beheaded for adultery; she is eighteen, had married Henry VIII two years earlier and was queen for just sixteen months (1542); Galileo arrives in Rome to await his inquisition by The Inquisition (1633); William and Mary are declared joint rulers of England, Ireland, and Scotland (1689) - allegiences to the deposed Catholic King James II/VII resulted in the first Jacobite Rising later that year, and to the Glenroe massacre (in which "around 30" members of the MacDonald clan were killed by government soldiers billeted with them) on this day in 1692; Handel's Rodelinde is premiered in London (1725); the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is established in New York (1914); the Dresden Bombing campaign begins (1945); black students in Nashville begin the first restaurant sit-in to protest against racial segregation (1960); the lost "Madrid Codices" of Leonardo da Vinci are discovered in the National Library of Spain (1967); Konstantin Chernenko begins his thirteen-month leadership of the Soviet Union (1984); Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, makes an official apology to indigenous Australians for the "stolen generations" of children, forcibly removed by the government from their families between 1905-67 (2008); and two years ago, Kim Jong-nam (older brother of North Korean president Kim Jong-un) was murdered at Kuala Lumpar Airport.

Birthdays include: Leopold Godowski (1870); Feodor Chaliapin (1873); Eleanor Farjeon (1881); Kate Roberts and Grant Wood (both 1891); Georges Simenon (1903); Gerald Strang (1908); Jean Muir (1911); Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919); Eileen Farrell (1920); Jeanne Demessieux (1921); Francis Pym (19222); Oliver Reed (1938); Peter Tork (1942); Jerry Springer (1944); Simon Schama (1945); Colin Matthews (1946); Peter Gabriel (1950); and Joyce DiDonato is fifty today.

Last Days for:Benvenuto Cellini (1571); William Wotten (1727); Johann Joseph Fux (1741); Pierre-Claude Foucquet (1772); Johann Friedrich Burgmuller (1874); Richard Wagner (1883); Josephine Tey (1952); Christabel Pankhurst (1958); Yoshisuke Aikawa (1967); Ildebrando Pizzetti (1968); Lili Pons (1976); and John McCabe (2015).


And the Radio 3 schedules for the morning of Tuesday, 13th February, 1979:

Overture: Bach "Brandenburg #1"(ECO/Britten) & Mendelssohn Italian (NPO/Muti)
Morning Concert: Music by Sammartini; Martini; Martinu; and Martin
This Week's Composer: Chopin (incl the complete 2nd Pno Concerto)
Harpsichord Music: Sonatas by Cimarosa; Manuel Blasco de Nebra; Soler; and Galuppi (Alan Cuckston)
Concert Club: Violin Sonatas by Tartini, Brahms, Debussy, and Prokofiev, and Ravel's Tzigane (Dong Suk-Kang/Shuku Iwasaki)

[edashtav]

The Morning Concert's subtitle may have been "Shaken, not stirred": an early prototype for "Sponsorship on Three"?

"Play it again, Sam Martini."

[edashtav]

51 years since Ildebrando Pizzetti died, the only composer, I fear, who has set a joke about amorous porpoises to music ( Epithalamium).

[Serial_Apologist]

Gosh!
Did Benjamin Frankel die almost half a century ago?
I have gained much enjoyment from his symphonies and feel that his Violin Concerto is one of the finest concertos to come out of GB in the 20th century.
Do fellow boarders agree with me that Frankel's works deserve fresh performances?

This tune, so redolent of the 1950s - formica, TVs, street lights like inverted cups with saucers on top, hats, wide skirts, reinforced bras, the Austin Devon, Dixon of Dock Green, Edmundo Ros, one and a half to High Street Ken please, church every Sunday morning - with its wan concluding on the second subject - was my comfort blanket when I first went to Prep school:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUEzU8G-FCU

I only found out much later that its composer also composed advanced 12-tone music!

[Lat-Literal]

Re UNESCO World Music Day which Max Reinhardt has just mentioned, I wonder to what extent it has an impact at street level globally for want of a better phrase? I like the idea of it and have a look at the websites most years but do find it all a bit nebulous. I'm guessing that there are many places where it is greeted as very big news but I can't picture those places.

[subcontrabass]

Morning Concert: Music by Sammartini; Martini; Martinu; and Martin

Possibly someone having fun for St Martinian's day.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Today is St ... well, spare a thought for Saints Manchan, and Cyril and Methodius; the former going around 5th - 6th Century Ireland founding churches until he starved to death during a famine; the latter two 9th Century Byzantine brothers (literally) who are co-Patron Saints of Europe, and who are reputed to have devised the Glagolitc Alphabet (so useful for Janacek).

But it's the 3rd Century Roman, martyred in 269, who is almost exclusively associated with today's date: although the romantic associations with the faest day seem only to date from the Middle Ages, with the first records appearing in Chaucer's Parlement of the Foules, Gower's Cinkante Ballades, and The Cuckoo and the Nightingale - all written in the late 14th Century, when Feb 14th was also regared as the first day of Spring (hence the "young men's fancy" aspect). The earliest surviving Valentine's message in English is John Lydgate's A Valentine to Her that Excelleth All:

Saint Valentine, of custom year by year
Men have a usaunce in this region
To look and search Cupid's calendar
And chose their choice by great affection
Such as been prick'd by Cupid's motion
Taking their choice as their sort doth fall
But I love one which excelleth all.

By the 17th Century, Valentine's Day was the excuse for partner-swapping party games, in which names were put into a hat, and chosen at random (yeah, right) - with the resulting couples pretending (of course, darling) to be sweethearts for the rest of the day. (Samuel Pepys was probably not the only player to take advantage of the "game".)

The popularity of the Day was fading in England by the last decade of the 19th Century - possibly the result of some cruel "anti-Valentine" traditions that had emerged, in which anonymous senders of messages either teased the recipients (think Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd, or positively insulted them. But it remained popular in the United States, and after the Second World War, older traditions picked up again - with not a little encouragement from Greetings Card and chocolate manufacturers. One cutom not retained was the early 19th Century tradition of rewarding, with sweets and/or money the first child to say "Good morrow, Valentine" in the morning. (Another "lost" Valentine's Day tradition, at least chez ferney, is the annual baking [and subsequent eating] of a Moussaka.)

For the past year, in parts of India, the Christian feast day has been replaced by "Parents' Worship Day".

Ironically, little love shown in many historical events associated with this date: in 1349, hundreds of Jews are burnt alive in the Massacre of Strasbourg - all surviving Jews are expelled from the city; Richard II dies, probably starved to death on the orders of his usurper cousin, Henry IV (1400); the flag of the United States is "recognised" for the first time by a foreign power when French admiral de la Motte gives it a nine-gun salute (1778); Captain Cook is killed by indigenous Hawaiians (1779); John Knox Polk becomes the first President of the USA to have his photograph taken (1849); Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital opens (1852); Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both submit patent applications for the invention of the telephone (1876); the Soviet Union adopts the Gregorian Calendar (1918 - on what, if they hadn't, would have been Feb 1st); Al Capone orders the St Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago (1929); firebombs continue to be dropped on Dresden (1945); the Bank of England is Nationalised (1946); the Israeli Parliament convenes for the first time (1949); Carl Orff's Trionfo di Afrodite is premiered in Milan (1953); Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Photoptosis is premiered in Gelsenkirchen, Germany (1969); Ayatollah Khomeni issues the fatwa against Salman Rushdie (1989); the space probe Voyager 1, about to leave the Solar System, turns and takes a photograph - the Earth is seen (just - it's less than a pixel) from nearly 4 billion miles away (1990); Hezbollah assassinates 22 people (including former Prime Minister of Lebabnon ) in Beirut, and 7 people are killed and 157 injured by al-Quaeda bombings in the Philippines (all in 2005); YouTube is launched (also 2005); five students at the University of Northern Illinois are shot dead and 21 others are injured by Steven Kazmierczak, who is also killed by police (2008); and, this time last year, 17 staff and students are shot dead and 17 others injured at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

Birthdays today include: Domenico Ferrabosco (1513); Francesco Cavalli (1602); Fernando Sor (1778); Michael Costa (1808); Alexander Sergeivich Dargomyzhsky (1813); GWG Ferris jnr (he of the eponymous Wheel, 1859); John Barryman and Ignaz Friedmann (both 1882); Jack Benny (1894); Lovro von Matacic (1899); Jimmy Hoffa (1913); Masaki Kobayashi (1916); Lois Maxwell (1927); Carl Bernstein and Alan Parker (both 1944); Kevin Keegan (1951); Steven Mackey (1956); Simon Pegg (1970); and Rene Fleming is 60 today.

Last days for: Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, the painter known as Il Sodomo (1549); David Hilbert (1943); PG Wodehouse (1975); Edmund Rubbra (1986); Dmitri Kabelevsky (1987); Frederick Loewe (1988); James Bond (the ornithologist whose name Ian Fleming nicked, 1989); Bob Paisley (1996); Gareth Morris (2007); Dick Francis (2010); George Shearing (2011); Dory Previn (2012); Louis Jordan (2015); Steven Stucky (2016); and a year ago today, Morgan Tsvangirai.


And fifty years ago today, the Friday morning schedules were:

Overture (gramophone records)
Morning Concert (BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Marcus Dodds)
This Week's Composer: Mozart
British Concertos (Gervase De Peyer/RPO/Berthold Goldschmidt)
Music making (Yehudi Menuhiin, Cecil Aronowitz, Derek Simpson, Varda Nishry; and the Juilliard S4tet

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Possibly someone having fun for St Martinian's day.

[Lat-Literal]

It was good to see Jeanne Demessieux mentioned yesterday. A bit underrated in my humble opinion as a composer of organ music if not quite on the level of Jehan Alain. Both were taught by Marcel Dupre and he also taught Jehan's sister Marie-Claire who was such an excellent interpreter of his compositions. Basic students of astrology will want to learn more - or less - on hearing that Simon Schama and Jerry Springer were born on the same day. As for today, it was a good excuse for Tanita Tikaram to dig out her wonderful if basic poetry and combine it with a Glass like accompaniment to very powerful effect. Meanwhile, what was to become our dear Lord Bragg of Burton Bradstock was no more upbeat in his thinking:

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

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

[edashtav]

In the early hours, I listened to the Maggini Quartet's fine recording of three of Edmund Rubbra's quartets on Naxos, little realising that Rubbra had died on this day a third of a century ago. Satisfying music both intellectually and spiritually.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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