by Grania
Good morning and welcome to Saturday. There are 281 days left in the year, which somehow doesn’t seem very many.
In 1807 the Slave Trade Act became law. abolishing slavery in the British Empire. In 1811 Percy Shelley got expelled from Oxford (or “sent down” as they like to say over there) for publishing The Necessity of Atheism.
In 1995 the world’s first ever wiki was published: WikiWikiWeb:
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was born today. He also collected and studied fold music and can be considered on the the founders of comparative musicology (ethnomusicology).
This is his composition Romanian Folk Dances, performed here by Tessa Lark and Yannick Rafalimanana .
This is a recording of Bartok himself playing Romanian Folk Dances on the piano.
Today Hili has visitors, and is managing to put on a remarkable, if slightly unconvincing, display of self-effacing humility.
A: Hili, look! What a nice picture of Urszula and Asia.
Hili: When I was that age I always wanted to be in the foreground, too.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, patrz jakie fajne zdjęcie Urszulki i Asi.
Hili: W tym wieku też zawsze chciałam być na pierwszym planie.
Thanks for the Bartok. Great with morning coffee!
Bartok, one of my top ten favorites. Others to spend time listening to with Bartok: Janáček and Berio and a little Mahler and Britten.
I think the 1807 act only outlawed British participation in the slave trade. Slaves under British jurisdiction were not actually freed until 1833, when slavery itself was abolished in the empire.
This is true. It outlawed the slave trade, not slavery. It’s still a major win though.
Good “accessible” Bartok! I use scare quotes because if you want to hear some pieces by him in a more modern style, don’t miss his piano concertos (the third is the most accessible of the three, but I do love those first two). Also, “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”, one of the greatest orchestral works of the 20th century, is a masterpiece.
Interesting that Shelley capitalized the word deity in his “The Necessity of Atheism”.
A small typo: “He also collected and studied _fold_ music…”
You probably meant folk music, not fold music.
Also thank you for the great music. I had a friend who told me violin is a way to hang ourselves up without rope. This reminded me how much I disagree with him.:)
Puzzlement recedes.
Gloria Marie !
Today a mere 83 !
Heroine is she !
https://goo.gl/0nwhku and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem.
Perhaps not a precise haiku !
Still … … longer may she live, breathe, write and activate !
Blue
Bartok is my favourite composer. His string quartets are among the greatest pieces of music ever written.
Hah, Bela Bartok, one of the few non-baroque composers I really liked and still like!
I soppose ‘fold’ music is ‘folk’ music.
Beautiful Hili & guests photo!