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.

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. (Il Sogno video:  Il sogno di Scipione 2019 Buzza Boncompagni Bobro. Accessed February 25, 2019.)

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.

1931 - The 102-story Empire State Building opens in New York City.

1941 - Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane premieres at the RKO Palace in New York.

1964 - The first BASIC program runs on a computer at Dartmouth College. BASIC was the first functional multi-purpose programming language, at the time when computers relied on customized programs.

1967 - Elvis Presley (aged 32) marries Priscilla Beaulieu (aged 21) in Las Vegas.  Lisa Marie, their daughter, was born nine months later, on February 1, 1968. The couple met 8.5 years earlier in Germany when Elvis was on his tour of duty. Priscillia, 14, was living with her stepfather in Wiesbaden. The couple's marriage lasted 6 years. They divorced amicably in October, 1973.

1971 - Dave Brubeck's oratorio Truth Has Fallen is first performed at the opening of the Center for Arts, Midland, Michigan.

1997 - Great Britain's Labour Party led by Tony Blair wins a national election in a landslide victory.

1999 - The body of mountaineer George Leigh Mallory is found near the summit of Mt. Everest, having been missing since a 1924 expedition. It is not known whether he died on the way up or he and his climbing partner Andrew Irving were actually successful before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. 




Resources:

1. Asiado, Tel. The World's Movers and Shapers. New Hampshire: Ore Mountain Publishing House (2005)

2. Britannica. www.britannica.com
3. Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 19th Ed. London: Chambers Harrap, 2011
4. Dateline. Sydney: Millennium House, (2006)
5. Grun, Bernard. The Timestables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org



© Posted June 2007. Updated May 1, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.