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April 9 Dateline

Birthdays



1717 - Georg Matthias Monn (born Johann Georg Mann), Austrian composer, organist and music teacher whose works were in the transition from the Baroque to Classical period. Together with G. C. Wagenseil and other contemporaries such as Leopold Mozart and Josef Starzer, Monn formed the Viennese Pre-Classical movement (Wiener Vorklassik). He represented a school of Austrian composers who had thoroughly studied the principles of counterpoint as practised by JS Bach and Johann Joseph Fux. They renewed the sonata form by expanding the concepts of secondary theme and development, and later on, developed to a greater extent by Michael and Joseph Haydn. Monn's successful introduction of the secondary theme in the symphony was an important element for the First Viennese School (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert) that would come some fifty years later. The catalog of works written by Monn contains sixteen symphonies, a score of quartets, sonatas, masses and compositions for violin and keyboard. (M.G. Monn- Cello Concerto in G minor - i. Allegro- ii. Adagio-iii. Allegro non tanto. YouTube. Accessed April 9, 2018.)  
 
1794 - Theobald Boehm (Böhm), German flaute inventor, Bavarian court musician, virtuoso flautist, and a celebrated flaute composer. He perfected the modern Western concert flaute and improved its fingering system. The fingering system he devised has also been adapted to other instruments, such as the oboe and the clarinet.

1821 - Charles Pierre Baudelaire,  French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and one of the first translators of Edgar Allan Poe. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited from Romantics, but are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. He is credited with coining the term modernity (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others.

1830 - Eadweard Muybridge (born Edward James Muggeridge), English photographer, Poet, Critic and Translator. Pioneer of motion-picture important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first name Eadweard as the original Anglo-Saxon form of Edward, and the surname Muybridge, believing it to be similarly archaic.

1908 - Victor Vasarely, a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement. His work entitled Zebra, created in the 1930s, is considered by some to be one of the earliest examples of Op art.

1918 - Jørn Oberg Utzon, AC, Hon. FAIA, Danish architect, most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia. When it was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, Utzon became the second person to have received such recognition for one of his works during his lifetime, after Oscar Niemeyer. UTzon's other noteworthy works include Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen and the National Assembly Building in Kuwait. He also made important contributions to housing design, especially with his Kingo Houses near Helsingør. (Sydney Opera House: Building an Icon. The B1M. Accessed April 9, 2019. Sydney Opera House: A Grand Design Presented by Kevin McCloud. Accessed April 9, 2019. Year 2018 marks the celebration for the JØRN UTZON Centenary of his birthday. Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik kicks off the celebrations. Link - here. Bjorn Utzon Biography from Wiki.)

1919 - J. Presper Eckert (John Adam Presper Eckert Jr.), American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures), founded the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC, which incorporated Eckert's invention of the mercury delay line memory. 
 
1954 - Dennis William Quaid, American actor known for a variety of dramatic and comedic roles. First gaining widespread attention in the 1980s, some of his notable credits include Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, Great Balls of Fire!, Dragonheart, The Parent Trap, The Rookie, The Day After Tomorrow, Footloose, Soul Surfer, and The Intruder, among others. For his role in Far from Heaven (2002), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor among other accolades. The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

Leftie:
Actor Dennis Quaid

Death:
HRH, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021).
 
More birthdays and historical events today, 9 April - On This Day.
 

 
 
Featuring:

Theobald Boehm: Grand Polonaise, Op. 16.  Performers: Denis Bouriakov (flute), Ji-Yoon Kim (piano). YouTube, uploaded by Denis B. himself. Accessed April 9, 2018.




Historical Events


1865 - The American Civil War ends when General Robert E. Lee surrenders his confederate troops to General Ulysses S. Grant, of the Union forces, in Virginia.   

1867 - The U.S. signs a treaty with Russia to purchase Alaska.

1916 - Manuel de Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain, for piano and orchestra is first performed in Madrid. Watch and enjoy the video with Barenboim (piano) and Placido Domingo (conductor) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - here

1939 - Marian Anderson sings to 75,000 people at her Lincoln Memorial Concert, sponsored by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to protest the racial discrimination when Anderson was denied the use of Washington's Constitution Hall, owned and administered by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

1959 - The first astronauts of the U.S. known as "The Mercury Seven" are introduced to the world. They are all military test pilots, chosen to be at the forefront of America's attempt to be the first to put man in space. The U.S.S.R. beats them to it on April 12, 1961.

2002 - The Queen Mother's funeral in Westminster Abbey.

2003 - As U.S. forces take control of Baghdad, Iraqis turn on a statue of their former leader, Saddam Hussein.

2005 - Prince Charles of UK and Camilla Parker Bowles marry in a civil ceremony.



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



(c) June 2007. Updated April 9, 2022. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

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