by Grania
Well, here we are again, another new week on this little blue dot far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy.
Today in 1996 Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was captured ending a costly FBI hunt for him. He is now serving eight life sentences without parole for a series of bombings from 1978 to 1995. In 2000, US v Microsoft the software juggernaut was ruled to have violated US antitrust laws. More than a century earlier, in 1895 Oscar Wilde started his ill-fated and tragically misjudged libel suit against the then Marquess of Queensberry; which was ultimately to end in his own conviction and imprisonment for homosexuality.
Today was the birthday of German composer Valentin Rathgeber (1682-1750) and Italian composer Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682).
As a young man, after his studies at university, Rathgeber was first a teacher, then a chamber musician to the local abbot at Banz Abbey and then at the age of 29 entered the priesthood. Although he somehow managed to spend 11 years on a “study trip” afterwards, he eventually returned to the Abbey and died there at the relatively young age of 68.
In contrast, although Stradella composed a great deal of sacred music, it is fair to say that he was not a particularly pious man. He was renowned for extramarital “indiscretions” causing him to have flee the cities in which he lived more than once, and ultimately to be stabbed to death by a hired assassin.
Today is also the anniversary of the death of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan (1924-1990). She started playing the piano at the young age of seven and after winning a competition at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1942 she was hired to sing with Earl Hines’s orchestra. She had a long and varied career that spanned more than four decades.
Finally, in Poland Hili is once again displaying her finely-developed work ethic.
A: Let’s go back to work.
Hili: Maybe you could suggest something else.
In Polish:
Ja: Wracamy do pracy.
Hili: Masz może jakiś inny pomysł?
Thanks for the Stradella & Rathgeber links – new composers to me! and delightful stuff…
You and me both, and the lovely Sarah Vaughan to finish.
PS this may be of interest….
America’s evangelical Christian right isn’t the political force it once was
http://theconversation.com/americas-evangelical-christian-right-isnt-the-political-force-it-once-was-73719
Interesting yes, but in some ways cold comfort when you look currently at the 2 old white guys running the country. Every day a few old white guys will die.
I have a disc of Sarah Vaughan in Tokyo performances. She seems to have been very popular all over the world. The standards she sung late in life were pretty much the same as the set she started with. She’s my favorite in this class, ranking above Ella Fitzgerald. Her vocal range was fantastic.
Unfashionable end. Sigh. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is quite wrong about this. The Fermi paradox notwithstanding, for those of us who live here the Orion Spur is dernier cri.