May 12 Dateline

Birthdays

1754 - Franz Anton Hoffmeister, German composer and music publisher, contemporary of Wolfgang Mozart. His publishing activities reached a peak in 1791 after Mozart passed on, but he appeared to have devoted more time to composition. Most of his operas were composed and staged during the early 1790s and this, combined with an apparent lack of business sense, led to his noticeable decline as a publisher.

1765 - Lady Emma Hamilton, (26 April 1765?; baptised 12 May), English model and actress, best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of the portrait artist George Romney.

1820 - Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DSt, English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. (Florence Nightingale - The Lady with the Lamp. YouTube, uploaded by Biographics. Accessed May 12, 2021.)  

1828 - Gabriel Dante Rossetti (also called Dante Gabriel Rossetti), British poet, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais (Dante Gabriel Rossetti Life & Works. Uploaded by Literature Forever. Accessed May 12, 2017. Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828 1882 Painter & Poet. Uploaded by  Antony D.I. Barnard. Accesed May 12, 2019. Antony D.I. Barnard. )

1842 - Jules (Émile Frédéric) Massenet, French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, Manon and Werther, and famous for "Thais Meditation," from his opera Thais. He wrote more than thirty operas. Aside from his two most frequently staged Manon and Werther, he also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. He wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although critics do not rank him among the handful of outstanding operatic geniuses such as Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, his operas are now widely accepted. (Antonio Pappano introduces the music of Werther (The Royal Opera). YouTube, uploaded by Royal Opera House. Accessed May 12, 2021.)
 

1845 - Gabriel (Urbain) Faure, French composer, organist, pianist and teacher, popular with his own Requiem. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs. Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style. (Gabriel FAURE': Pavane, Op. 50 - Paintings By "CLAUDE MONET". YouTube, uploaded by andrewgrummanJC. Accessed May 12, 2020.)

1903 - Sir Lennox Berkeley, English composer, In 1927, he went to Paris to study music with Nadia Boulanger, and there became acquainted with Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Albert Roussel. Berkeley studied with Maurice Ravel, often cited as a key influence in Berkeley's technical development as a composer. He was Professor of Composition in the Royal Academy of Music. 1954 saw the premiere of his first opera, Nelson, at Sadler's Wells premiered in 1954. He was knighted in 1974.

1907 - Katharine Hepburn (born Katharine Houghton Hepburn), American actress who was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received a record (for any gender) four Academy Awards for Lead Acting Performances, plus eight further nominations. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema. She was known for her fierce independence and spirited personality.(Top 10 Katherine Hepburn performance. Updated by MsMojo. Accessed May 12, 2019.) 

1928 - Burt Freeman Bacharach, American composer, songwriter, pianist, and record producer. He has composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, Bacharach's songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 different artists. He was one of the most important composers of 20th-century popular music. (Burt Bacharach Documentary - His Life and His Music. Uploaded by Brill Videos. Accessed May 13, 2019. A Burt Bacharach - Hal David Songbook. Youtube, uploaded by Alain Robert. Accessed February 8, 2023.)

   

Lefties:
None known

Trivia:
Composers Jules Masssenet and Gabriel Faure share the same birthday today.

 

More birthdays and historical events today, May 12 - On This Day.

 

 

 

Features: 

1.  Opera Thais's 'Meditation'  by Jules Massenet. Classic FM M-Tel Radio Symphony Orchestra 13 March 2006. NDK Sofia. Maxim Vengerov, Violin. Conductor: Luciano Di Martino  (YouTube, uploaded by The Classicalmusicfan. Accessed 12 May 2018.) 




2.  Gabriel Rossetti's poem "Sudden Light" set to lovely music by Australian composer and pianist Sally Whitwell, performed by Nicole Thomson, soprano and Rachel Scott, cello.

Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - 

- Music by Sally Whitwell -

Suggested Reading:

A Short Analysis of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Sudden Light." 

Historical Events

 

1908 - Wireless Radio Broadcasting is patented by Nathan B. Stubblefield.

1926 - Dmitri Shostakovich's First Symphony premieres in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The composer wrote the piece at the age of 19 as his conservatory graduation project.

1932 - The body of the kidnapped infant son of Charles Lindbergh and wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh is found less than 5 miles (8 km) from their home in New Jersey, U.S.

1938 - Arthur Honegger's cantata Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher is first performed, in Basel. 

1997 - Susie Maroney, Australian swimmer becomes the first person to swim from Florida to Cuba. She was 22 years old and did the feat in 24 1/2 hours.


 Poem Credit:

"Sudden Light" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Music by Sally Whitwell. PotW.Org. Accessed OCtober 26, 2017.  


More recommended listening:

Itzhak Perlman - Jules Massenet "Thais."  Itzhak Perlman - Violin, Lawrence Foster - Conductor,
The Abbey Road Ensemble.

Gabriel Faure's Fequiem Op. 48. Gabriel Fauré (Composer), Robert Shaw (Conductor), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (Orchestra), Judith Blegen (Soprano), James Morris (Baritone)




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 and Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org

 

 (c) June 2007. Updated May 12, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.