March 23 Dateline

Birthdays

1878 - Franz Shreker, Austrian late Romantic composer, first won success with his ballet Der Geburstag der Infantin, and still more, with his opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound). He was a popular composer in the early decades of the 20th century, until his music was banned by the Nazis because he was of Jewish background. Der ferne Klang, his first major work, is a late Romantic opera of grand passions. Briefly, the opera is about Fritz, a composer, and Grete Graumann, the daughter of a poor retired officer, in love. Fritz wants to marry Grete, but he tells her that before that happens, he has to write a great piece of music and discover the mysterious distant sound ("der ferne Klang") which he hears within him. Grete tries in vain to convince him to stay with her. Fritz leaves his childhood sweetheart and goes in search of the distant sound.(Trailer of  Der ferne Klang, uploaded by theaterbonn. Accessed March 23, 2019.)

1887 - Juan Gris (born José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez), Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.

1900 - Erich Fromm, German psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, democratic socialist, a Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the US.  He was one of the Founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. The word biophilia was used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "state of being". For example, in an addendum to his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil, Fromm wrote as part of his humanist credo: "I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom." E. Fromm postulated eight basic needs: Transcendence, Rootedness, Sense of Identity, Frame of Orientation, Excitation & Stimulation, Unity, and and Effectiveness. (The Art of Love | Erich Fromm - The art of loving. Uploaded by 5 Minute Concepts. Accessed March 23, 2021.)

1908 - Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur), American film and television actress. She debuted as a chorus girl on Broadway before signing a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925, her career spanning six decades. Her films ranged in genres from contemporary crime, melodramas, film noir, historical costume dramas, romances, mysteries, musicals, suspense, horror, to three westerns and over a dozen comedies. Her greater successes and perhaps most memorable performances were in romantic dramas and melodramas. In 1999, The American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

1910 - Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema.
ore entering the Japanese film industry in 1936, he had a brief stint as a painter. He made his debut as a director during WWII with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role. The two men collaborated on another 15 films. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Ikiru, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. His final two epics, Kagemusha and Ran continued to win awards. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century.

1944 - Michael Nyman, English composer, librettist, musicologist and pianist, known for numerous film scores / soundtracks, and minimalist music. Many of his film scores were written in collaboration with filmmaker Peter Greenaway. He is also known for his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. (See feature linked below)


Lefties:
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More birthdays and historical events, March 23 - On This Day



Features:

Film Soundtrack of the The Piano composed by Michael Nyman. 

Historical Events

1729 -  Johann Sebastian Bach's  St Matthew Passion is first performed, in Leipzig.

1917 - Leonard and Virginia Woolf establish the Hogarth Press.

1935 - Samuel Barber's Music from a Scene from Shelley is first performed, by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. 

1919 - Benito Mussolini and several other World War I veterans found the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, or the Italian Combat Fascists, in Milan. They believe that post-war Italy can be restored by force.

1999 - NATO gives an ultimatum to Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic, warning that Serbian military positions will be adopted if he does not withdraw Serbian troops from Kosovo. 

2001 - The Russian Mir space station is brought down and breaks up over the ocean between Chile and New Zealand. It was launched in February 1986, and had traveled 20.9 billion miles or 33.6 billion km, in 86,331 orbits of the Earth.





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 Timetables of History, New 3rd Revised Ed. Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1991)
6. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org



© June 2007. Updated March 23, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.