May 1 Dateline

Birthdays

1850 - Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (Arthur William Patrick Albert), the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He served as the Governor General of Canada, the tenth since Canadian Confederation and the only British prince to do so. In 1910 he was appointed Grand Prior of the Order of St John and held this position until 1939. 

1854 - William Percy French, Irish songwriter and painter, one of Ireland's foremost songwriters and entertainers in his day. In more recent times, he has become recognised for his watercolour paintings. French was renowned for composing and singing comic songs and gained distinction with songs as Phil the Fluther's Ball, Slattery's Mounted Foot, and The Mountains of Mourne (this last was one of several written with his friend and and fellow composer, Houston Collisson). French also wrote many sketches and amusing parodies, the most famous of which is The Queen's After-Dinner Speech, written on the occasion of Queen Victoria's visit to Dublin in 1900. Many of his poems are on the theme of emigration, some he called "poems of pathos". (Mountains of Mourne, lyrics by P. French, sung by Don McLean - beautiful version with captions. YouTube, uploaded by Discover Ulster. Accessed May 1, 2017.)

1872 - Hugo Emil Alfven, Swedish composer, violinist, and choral conductor. Alfvén became known as one of Sweden's principal composers of his time, together with his contemporary Wilhelm Stenhammar. His music is in a late-Romantic idiom. His orchestration is skillful and colorful, reminiscent of that of Richard Strauss. Like Strauss, Alfvén wrote a considerable amount of program music. Some of Alfvén's music evokes the landscape of Sweden. Among his works are a large number of pieces for male voice choir, five symphonies and three orchestral "Swedish Rhapsodies." The first of these rhapsodies, Midsommarvaka is his best known piece.

 
1881 - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, French Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, paleontologist and idealist philosopher. He trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He also conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point, and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of noosphere, the sphere of human thought.

1913 - Jan Walter Susskind, Czech-born British conductor, teacher and pianist. He began his career in his native Prague, and fled to Britain when Germany invaded the city in 1939. He worked for substantial periods in Australia, Canada and the United States, as a conductor and teacher. 

1923 - Joseph Heller, American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. He briefly worked for Time Inc., before taking a job as a copywriter at a small advertising agency, where he worked alongside future novelist Mary Higgins Clark. At home, Heller wrote. He was first published in 1948, when The Atlantic ran one of his short stories. The story nearly won the "Atlantic First".
 

1937 - Bo Nilsson, Swedish composer and lyricist. He first drew notice as a composer at the age of 18 when his Zwei Stücke (Two Pieces) for flute, bass clarinet, percussion, and piano were performed in a 1956 West German Radio (WDR) “Musik der Zeit” concert in Cologne. His early style owes much to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but it also displays a number of personal features: the use of bright percussion sounds behind finely wrought vocal or flute (usually alto flute) lines, a “nervous” fluttering of tonal nuances, and a feeling for miniature, calculated forms. He attracted considerable attention in Germany with a succession of small chamber-music compositions characterised by their refined and unusual instrumentation. The best-known of these is Frequensen (German: Frequenzen, 1957) for piccolo, flute, vibraphone, xylophone, electric guitar, double bass, and percussion.

1939 -  Judith "Judy" Marjorie Collins, American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning nearly seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, country, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll and standards), and for the clarity of her voice. Her discography consists of 36 studio albums, nine live albums, numerous compilation albums, four holiday albums, and 21 singles.

 

1944 - Rita Coolidge, American recording artist. During the 1970s and 1980s, her songs were on Billboard magazine's pop, country, adult contemporary, and jazz charts. She won two Grammy Awards with fellow musician and then-husband Kris Kristofferson. Her recordings include "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," "We're All Alone", "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love" and the theme song for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy: "All Time High".

1946 - Joanna Lamond Lumley, OBE FRGS, British actress, presenter, former model, author, TV producer, and activist. She won two BAFTA TV Awards for her role as Patsy Stone in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and was nominated for the 2011 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in the Broadway revival of La Bête. In 2013 she received the Special Recognition Award at the National TV Awards, and in 2017 she was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship award. Her other TV credits include The New Avengers, Sapphire & Steel, and Jam & Jerusalem, among others. Her film appearances include On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Trail of the Pink Panther, Shirley Valentine, and Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, etc. Lumley supports charities and animal welfare groups. 

Leftie:
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn

More birthdays and historical events today, 1 May - On This Day. 

 

Historical Events

1707 - Scotland and England are united by an Act of Parliament - England, Wales, and Scotland are united to form Great Britain. The first article of the act describes the Union flag as a combination of the cross of St. Andrew and the cross of St. George. the final design will  also incorporate the cross of St. Patrick of Ireland. It is often called the "Union Jack" as British ships fly the flag on the jackstaff. Otherwise, it is simply called "Union flag."

1761 - Joseph Haydn joins the service of Prince Esterhazy as Kapellmeister, in Eisenstadt, Austria. His association lasts some thirty years.

1772 -  In the Archbishop's Palace in Salzburg, on May 1, 1772, although not in its entirety, Wolfgang A. Mozart renders a private performance of his Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126, a dramatic serenade  in one act (azione teatrale), to Pietro Metastasio's libretto (which has been set to music several times), based on the book Somnium Scipionis by Cicero. Mozart had originally composed the work at the age of 15 for his patron, Prince-Archbishop Sigismund von Schrattenbach. After the bishop's death before it could be performed, Mozart dedicated it to Schrattenbach's successor, Count Colloredo. Only one aria, the final chorus and the recitative dedicating it to the new Prince-Archbishop were performed. It is highly unlikely that it was ever performed in its entirety in Mozart's lifetime.

 
1786 - The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), K. 492, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart premieres in Vienna, Austria. It is an opera buffa in four acts, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

April 30 Dateline

Birthdays

1662 - Queen Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland, co-reigning with her husband, King William III & II, from 1689 until her death from smallpox at the age of 32. Although their father James, Duke of York, was Roman Catholic, Mary and her younger sister, Anne, were raised as Anglicans at the behest of their uncle, King Charles II. Charles lacked legitimate children, making Mary second in the line of succession. She married her Protestant first cousin, William of Orange, in 1677. 

1777 - Carl Friedrich Gauss,  German mthematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and sciences.

1870 - Franz Lehar, Austro-Hungarian composer of operettas. He is mainly known for his operettas, of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe). He composed a number of waltzes (the most popular being Gold und Silber, composed for Princess Pauline von Metternich's "Gold and Silver" Ball, January 1902).  Individual songs from some of the operettas have become standards, notably "Vilja" from The Merry Widow and "You Are My Heart's Delight" ("Dein ist mein ganzes Herz") from The Land of Smiles (Das Land des Lächelns). His most ambitious work, Giuditta in 1934 is closer to opera than to operetta. It contains the ever popular "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß" ("On my lips every kiss is like wine").

1877 - Alice B. Toklas (Alice Babette Toklas), American-born writer and life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein, member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.

1909 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (born Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina), Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in April 1980, in favour of her daughter Beatrix. Due to Wilhelmina's failing health, Juliana took over royal duties briefly in 1947 and 1948. In September 1948 Wilhelmina abdicated and Juliana ascended to the Dutch throne. Her reign saw the decolonization and independence of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and Suriname. Despite a series of controversies involving the royal family, Juliana remained a popular figure among the Dutch. Upon her death in 2004 at the age of 94, she was the longest-lived former reigning monarch in the world. 

1933 - Willie Nelson, American musician, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie, combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust, made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana. (Willie Nelson - Stardust. YouTube, uploaded by gringotroller. Accessed April 30, 2012.)

1943 - Bobby Vee (born Robert Thomas Velline), American singer, songwriter and musician who was a teen idol in the early 1960s and also appeared in films. According to Billboard magazine, he had thirty-eight Hot 100 chart hits, ten of which reached the Top 20. He had six gold singles in his career. He was famous for "Take Good Care of my Baby" (1961). (YouTube, uploaded by boopkid. Accessed April 30, 2015.) 

1954 - Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion, DNZM, New Zealand screenwriter, film director and producer, famous for the movie "The Piano". She is the second of seven women ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the first and only female filmmaker to receive the Palme d'Or, which she received for the acclaimed film The Piano (1993), for which she also won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Among her other directed films An Angel at My Table and Bright Star are the most highly regarded.

 

 
Lefties:
None known
 

More birthdays and historical events today, 30 April - On This Day.

 

 

Feature:

 

Below is a video of  Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, (Act III, Scene 4). Sir Simon Rattle, conductor · Berliner Philharmoniker · Gerald Finley, bass baritone (Golaud) · Elias Mädler, boy soprano [soloist of the Tölzer Knabenchor] (Yniold) · Peter Sellars, staging / Recorded at the Berlin Philharmonie, 20 December 2015. Accessed April 30, 2018.)  Brilliant boy soprano Elias!

Historical Events

1483 - Pluto moves inside Neptune's orbit, making it the furthest planet from the sun until mid-1503.

1803 - Louisiana is sold by France to the U.S. for U.S. $15 million.