Irish engineer, father of modern submarine who designed and developed the submarine, the first underwater vessel
John Philip Holland (29 February 1840 – 12 August 1914), was an Irish engineer who designed and built the first submarine formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy, and the first Royal Navy submarine, the Holland 1.
He was a school teacher in Ireland, his country of birth but in 1873, emigrated in New Jersey, USA. In 1875, he offered a submarine design to the US navy but it was rejected as not practicable. Despite this rejection, he continued his experiments.
Antoine (Joseph) Reicha was a flautist in his youth and an influential theorist. A Bohemian-born naturalized French composer, he was born on February 26, 1770, in Prague, and died on May 28, 1836.
Today, he is best known for his substantial contribution to the wind quintet literature in his day, twenty-five works (written in Paris) which were played all over Europe.
Reicha claimed in his memoirs that his wind quintets filled a void: "At that time, there was a dearth not only of good classic music, but of any good music at all for wind instruments, simply because the composers knew little of their technique."
Classical Music / Composers Datebook: February 26.
English Composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941)
Frank Bridge, English composer, conductor and teacher was born in Brighton, February 26, 1879. He studied at London's Royal College of Music (RCM) from 1899 to 1903 under prominent composer Charles Villiers Stanford.
Bridge played the viola and conducted before devoting himself to composition where he received the patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.
Australian Soprano Nicole Car is Luisa Miller in Verdi's opera of the same name.
Soprano Nicole Car is one of the most outstanding young singers to emerge from Australia in recent years. She is currently starring in the title role of Verdi's "Luisa Miller" - an opera of love, intrigue, and poison.
"Luisa Miller" is still on: February 24
(Wednesday), 27 (Saturday), and 29 (Monday), 7.30pm for all
performances at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House.
(For Sydneysiders interested, get your tickets while there are few seats left.)
Niels Wilhelm Gade (Feb 22, 1817 – Dec 21, 1890), was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Considered the most important Danish musician in his day, he was a composer, violinist, organist, and teacher.
Gade was the son of an instrument maker. He began his career as a violinist with the Royal Danish Orchestra, and saw his concert overture Efterklange af Ossian ("Memories of Ossian") premiered with them in 1840. When his first symphony was turned down for performance in Copenhagen, he sent it to Felix Mendelssohn, who received the work positively, and conducted it in Leipzig to enthusiastic public reaction in March 1843.
A Village Romeo and Juliet is an opera by Frederick Delius. The composer himself, with his wife Jelka, wrote the English-language libretto based on the short story Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe by the Swiss author Gottfried Keller. The first performance, as Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe, was at the Komische Oper Berlin, on 21 February 1907. The British premiere was performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, February 22, 1910, with Thomas Beecham conducting.
The Walk to Paradise Garden
This meltingly beautiful music is taken from "The Paradise Garden," a work of artist/painter
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836- 1893). Delius' heart-warming music "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" is the orchestral interlude between scenes 5 and 6 of Delius' A Village Romeo and Juliet. While this opera has been rarely staged, "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" is heard
separately in concerts and has been recorded many times.
Below is a video of "The Walk to the Paradise Garden," performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, with Sir John Barbirolli conducting.
"The Paradise Garden" is a dilapidated pub where the lover's Sali and Vreli can "dance all night". This rural lover have known each other since childhood and are willing to die together rather than give in to the pressures that will separate them.
Brief Synopsis
(The opera A Village Romeo and Juliet has six scenes)
Beginning. Sali, son of the farmer Manz, and
Vrenchen (Vreli), daughter of the farmer Marti, are children. They are
playing together one September morning on a plot of land. The Dark
Fiddler is the rightful owner of this disputed land, but because he is
illegitimate and thus without legal rights, he cannot exert control over
the land. He appears to the children and warns them that the land must
not be tilled. Manz and Marti dispute ownership of the land, and put a
stop to the relationship between their respective children.
Six years later. At Marti's now run-down house, Sali and Vrenchen
plan a meeting. Since their childhood, a lawsuit about the land has
ruined both Manz and Marti. Sali persuades Vrenchen to meet him on the
plot. The Dark Fiddler re-appears once more and invites them to join
him. He also tells them that, regardless, they will meet again. Marti
sees the two lovers and takes Vreli away. In trying to stop Marti, Sali
injures him severely. As a result, Marti loses his reason and must be
confined in an asylum. Sali returns and sees Vreli at her house, which
is to be sold. The two declare their love and decide to leave together.
Sali and Vreli buy rings at a local fair. Sali mentions an inn, the
Paradise Garden, where they can dance all night, and they go there. There, the
Dark Fiddler and some vagrants are drinking. He greets the lovers,
and suggests they join him to share a vagabond life in the mountains.
Instead, Sali and Vreli decide that they cannot live such an existence,
and they resolve to die together, uncompromising in their love for each
other. They leave the inn and find a hay barge, which they release from
the dock to begin to float down the river. As the Dark Fiddler observes
them, Sali removes the plug from the bottom of the boat, and Sali and
Vreli sink with the boat.
On reflection. Delius' music interlude seems to synthesize many elements found in the
opera, where in "Paradise Garden", a seedy country dance hall, the two
lovers make a pact to do themselves in, a plot of land where they played
together during their childhood, with the Dark Fiddler and his symbolic
social conflicts, the hay barge that will sink in the river and carry
the lovers to their death, and most of all, the heartbreak of love... Painful, it
weaves in long unbearable phrases, in this familiar operatic play akin to Shakespeare's tragic Romeo and Juliet.
Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (Jan Křtitel Václav Kalivoda) was a prolific composer. His works are numerous, of which there are about 250 works or sets of works, opus-numbered.
Bohemian composer, violinist and conductor Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda was born on February 21, 1801, in Prague. His compositions included operas and symphonies. One of his concert overtures was commissioned was used to open the first concert in 1842, of the New York Philharmonic.
Harper Lee (Nelle Harper Lee), is the author of one of America's most beloved literary classics, To Kill a Mockingbird, loved by millions of readers worldwide. She is born this day, 28th April 1926, and died at the age of 89, 19th February 2016.
Nelle Harper Lee was born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama, and grew up during the Great Depression. Her family is descended from the American Civil War general Robert E. Lee. She followed in the footsteps of her father, a lawyer, and went to law school. However, Harper Lee had been writing since she was 7. At the age of 29 she left law school and went to New York city to pursue her writing career. She supported herself by working for an airline company.
She spent more than two years rewriting her novel after it had been accepted by a publisher. This was in 1960 when she was 34. To Kill a Mockingbird was an immediate success. This was also the time when the civil rights movement was escalating and the book's examination of racial hatred in the South made it especially poignant. Its theme summed up with the advice of Atticus Finch (the noble lawyer) given to Scout, his young daughter: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
Below is the film Soundtrack of To Kill a Mockingbird (Elmer Bernstein), YouTube, uploaded by bobbengan. Accessed April 28, 2016. The score for To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Elmer Bernstein, is regarded as one of the greatest film scores and has been recorded three times.
The film takes place across six days. A married Norfolk couple, childless but comfortably-off, preparing to celebrate their wedding anniversary receive a shattering news that promises to forever change the course of their live.
Kate and Geoff Mercer are retirees. Five years after their retirement they had to cancel their 40th wedding anniversary because of his heart bypass surgery.
Now, they are preparing for their 45 years of wedded bliss. A week before the party, Geoff receives a letter from Switzerland telling him that the body of Katya, his lover in the early 1960s, has been found surprisingly intact where she fell into the crevasse on their hike. Memories rush back.
Physicist Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery
Alessandro (Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio) Volta was an Italian physicist known for the invention of the battery. He was born on February 18, 1745, in Como, a town in present-day northern Italy near the Swiss border.
In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. He improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that produced static electricity. He is often credited with its invention although a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by Johan Wilcke, a Swedish experimenter.
Volta's Works
Volta studied the chemistry of gases between the years 1776-78. He discovered methane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin on "flammable air." In November, 1776, he found methane at Lake Maggiore. After two years he isolated it.
Here are two of my favourite reviews for La Famille Bélier film: One is written for Sydney Morning Herald by Paul Byrnes, who describes it as a "charm and a knockout finale carry French comedy to the end" and the other, written for SBS by Rochelle Siemienowicz, the film as "A mix of sensitivity and rude exuberance."
The Official Trailer:
La Famille Bélier (English: The Bélier Family)
is a French comedy-drama film directed by Eric Lartigau in 2014. It
received six nominations at the 40th Cesar Awards, with Louane Emera
(Paula, the 16 year-old daughter) winning the Most Promising Actress
Award.
William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989), was an American physicist and inventor. He co-invented the transistor, along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain. All three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of electronics innovation. In his later life, he was a professor at Stanford and became a strong advocate of eugenics.
Profiles Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor of gramophone who laid foundation of electric lighting lamp, and electronics through "Edison Effect."
Thomas Alva Edison (b. 1847-d.1931), was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Edison was the most productive American inventor of his day, receiving more than a thousand patents for applications of scientific principles. Also a businessman, he developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park", he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, was written by W.A. Mozart in 1785.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the soloist in the first performance of his own Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor (K. 466), on February 11, 1785, in Mehlgrube Casino, Vienna. He performed it without any rehearsal and the music sheets came directly to the concert hall from the copyists.
Few days after the first performance, Leopold, the composer's father, visiting in Vienna, wrote to his daughter Nannerl about her brother's recent success: "[I heard] an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn't even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation."
Other works by Mozart in this key include the Fantasia K. 397 for piano, Requiem, a Kyrie, the aria "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" from the opera The Magic Flute and parts of the dark opera Don Giovanni. It is the first of two piano concertos he wrote in a minor key, with No. 24 in C minor the other.
André Grétry, French opera composer, famous for opéras comiques.
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (8 February 1741 – 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), born of a poor musician father. He was a choir-boy at the church of Saint-Denis.
Gretry became a pupil of Leclerc in 1753 and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul.
Of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Pergolesi and other masters.
(Jakob Ludwig) Felix Mendelssohn (Bartholdy), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. His music has the charm of classical music. Among his best-known works: (I try hard not to be biased when profiling a loved composer) A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Fingal's Cave overture, the song "On Wings of Song" (German: "Auf Flügeln des Gesanges"), five symphonies, which include the Reformation, the Italian, and the Scottish, choral symphony Lobgesang, motets, and his greatest oratorio, Elijah.
A grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a prominent Jewish family. He was close to his older sister Fanny Mendelssohn, also a composer, five years his senior. Until the age of seven, he was brought up without religion, then baptised as a Reformed Christian. Early on, he was recognised as a musical prodigy but his parents did not seek to capitalise on his talent.
There have been numerous articles written about Felix Mendelssohn. This post is a remembrance to celebrate his birthday, complimenting his life, music and musical style, and his influence in the Romantic Era.
Famous for his engaging romantic music, Mendelssohn's compositions have the beauty of classical music applied to romantic themes. Unlike many of his contemporaries or predecessors, he based most of his works on personal experiences rather than from inspired literature or drawn out imagination.
Mendelssohn's Song without Words, Op. 19,1, (Lieder ohne Worte) performed by Richter. The quality of recording may not do justice to Richter's playing but it's still beautiful.
John Philip Holland (29 February 1840 – 12 August 1914), was an Irish engineer who designed and built the first submarine formally commissioned by the U.S. Navy, and the first Royal Navy submarine, the Holland 1.
