May 8 Dateline

Birthdays

1745 - Carl (Karl) Philipp Stamitz, German Composer, is baptized in Mannheim,  partial Czech ancestry. He was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical period. 

 
1846 - Oscar Hammerstein I, German-born businessman, playwright and theatre impressario, and composer in New York City. He's grandfather of the famous American librettist Oscar Hammerstein II, of the Rodgers and Hammerstein duo in the musical world. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America. He was the father of theater manager William Hammerstein and American producer Arthur Hammerstein.

1884 - Harry S. Truman, 33rd U.S. President, serving from 1945 to 1953, succeeding upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt after serving as the 34th vice president. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain communist expansion. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the Conservative Coalition that dominated Congress.

1895 - Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen), American Bishop (later Archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and his work on television and radio. As a renowned theologian, he earned the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923. He taught theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America and as acting as a parish priest before being appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951 until 1966, when he was made the Bishop of Rochester. He resigned in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached, and was made the Archbishop of the Titular see of Newport, Wales.

1906 - Roberto Gastone Zeffiro Rossellini, Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema. Truffaut noted in his 1963 essay, Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life that Rossellini's influence in France particularly among the directors who became part of the nouvelle vague was so great that he was in every sense "the father of the French New Wave." His posthumous ex-son-in-law Martin Scorsese has acknowledged his seminal influence in his documentary My Voyage to Italy (the title itself a take on Rossellini's Voyage to Italy). Also, Scorsese's selection of Italian films from a select group of directors, Rossellini's films form at least half of the films discussed and analyzed, highlighting Rossellini's monumental role in Italian and world cinema.
 

1940 - Peter Bradford Benchley, American author, screenwriter, and ocean activist. He is known as the author of the bestselling novel Jaws and co-wrote its film adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both cinema and television, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.  Later in life, Benchley regretted writing such sensationalist literature about sharks, which he felt encouraged excessive fear of such an important predator in ocean ecosystems, and he became an advocate for marine conservation.

1964 - Melissa Ellen Gilbert, American actress, television director, producer, politician and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gilbert began her career as a child actress. She's famous as Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second oldest daughter of Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) on the NBC series Little House on the Prairie. During the run of Little House, Gilbert appeared in several popular TV films. As an adult, she continued her career mainly in TV films. In 2009, her autobiography Prairie Tale: A Memoir, was released. She also wrote a short story for children, called Daisy and Josephine as well as My Prairie Cookbook: Memories and Frontier Food from My Little House to Yours. In 2016, Gilbert ran for U.S. Congress as a Democrat in Michigan's 8th congressional district and she won the Democratic primary but later dropped because of health issues.

Lefties:
Author Peter Benchley
Former President Harry S. Truman

More birthdays and historical events today, May 8 - On This Day.

 

Featuring: Composer Carl Philipp Stamitz.   

Carl Philipp Stamitz, born in Mannheim, was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry, a prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. He was the eldest son of Johann Stamitz, a violinist and composer of the early classical period. He received lessons from his father and Christian Cannabich, his father's successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra.

Stamitz was employed as a violinist in the court orchestra at Mannheim in his youth. In 1770, he began travelling as a virtuoso, accepting short-term engagements, but never managing to gain a permanent position. He visited a number of European cities, living for a time in Strasbourg and London. In 1794, he moved with his family to Jena in central Germany, but his circumstances deteriorated and he descended into debt and poverty, dying in 1801. Papers on alchemy were found after his death. Stylistically, his music resembles that of Mozart and is characterized by appealing melodies. The opening movements of his orchestral works, in sonata form, are generally followed by expressive and lyrical middle movements, and final movements, in rondo form.

Historical Events

1660 - The late Charles I's son is proclaimed King of England, ending 11 years of civil war.

1924 - Arthur Honegger's symphonic movement Pacific 231 is first performed in Paris, Koussevitzky conducting.  

May 7 Dateline

Birthdays

1812 - Robert Browning, English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax. In 1846, Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, and went to live in Italy. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today rests largely on the poetry he wrote in this middle period. (Robert Browning - My Last Duchess. Poetry Lecture and Analysis by Dr. Andrew Barker. Uploaded by mycroftlectures. Accessed May 7, 2015.)

1833 - Johannes Brahms, German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. He is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the 19th-century conductor Hans von Bülow. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. (Johannes Brahms Biography. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 7, 2018.) 

1840 - Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer of the Romantic period, whose works are among the most popular music in the classical repertoire. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally, bolstered by his appearances as a guest conductor in Europe and the United States. Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause of his death. (Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Biography. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 7, 2018.)

1901 - Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper), American actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, as well as receiving an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961. He was one of the top 10 film personalities for 23 consecutive years, and one of the top money-making stars for 18 years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper at No. 11 on its list of the 25 greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

1909 - Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon. MRI, American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision, among other things.

1919 - Eva "Evita" Peron (born María Eva Duarte), better known as María Eva Duarte de Perón, Eva Perón and Evita, was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children.

1943 - Peter Philip Carey, AO is an Australian novelist. He has won the Miles Franklin Award three times and is frequently named as Australia's next contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Carey is one of only five writers to have won the Booker Prize twice—the others being J. G. Farrell, J. M. Coetzee, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. Carey won his first Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda, and won for the second time in 2001 with True History of the Kelly Gang. In May 2008 he was nominated for the Best of the Booker Prize. In addition to writing fiction, he collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders. 

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays today, May 7 - On This Day.

Related Links: 

Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Wife of Robert Browning)

Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana: Orchestral Suite No. 4

Historical Events

1663 - In London, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane opens.

1824 - Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, "Choral," is first performed, in Kaerntnerthor Theater, Vienna, with Michael Umlauf conducting.