Ludwing van Beethoven:

Music in silence

Dilmika Tennakoon

Ludwing van Beethoven is a German Composer born to a musical family in 1770. Both his father and grandfather were musicians. His first teacher was his father and he was trained to play the piano at a very tender age.

The Beethoven family became poor after the death of his grand father in 1773. His father became a drunkard. By age 11 Beethoven left school due to the financial difficulties and at the age of 18 he became the breadwinner. At the age of 25 Beethoven made his first public appearance as a composer and a pianist, on a day just like today. But he gave up playing for composing due to his sudden, progressive deafness.

Compositions

Beethoven was the first Romantic composer. He bridged the gap between the classical period and the Romantic era. He was the first composer to succeed without the support of a patron. He adapted classical forms to express powerful emotions such as the sprit of humanism and nationalism.

Beethoven’s powerful style of composing, particularly in the symphonies and piano sonatas caused a stir in the late classical period. He became famous for composing nine symphonies. He dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon. But when Napoleon made himself Emperor, Beethoven scratched out the dedication.

His many master pieces which we now regard as his greatest creations were strongly criticized during that time. His seventh symphony was criticized, claiming that its composer was “quite ripe for the madhouse” by Weber who was also a musician.

The tragedy of his life became more acute after he went completely deaf. Critics said that “Horrors of sound” in his work were because he could not hear them himself. Fidelio opera was criticized as an incoherent, coarse, wild and ear splitting composition. However Beethoven dominated a whole period of musical history.

No other period of musical history is completely dominated by one composer like him.

Most of his masterpieces were composed during the last 10 years of his life when he was quite unable to hear.

Last days

He had studied under Mozart and Haydn. Some of his early compositions were influenced by those masters. But he guarded his own independence of outlook and possessed his own style when it came to composition. In art he was neither classicist nor a romanticist, but his aim was to be a realist and express the truth from music.

Beethoven was a loner. He could not find a partner in life though he sensed the world more than any other musician. In his last days he spent his time in a shabby room and was haunted by his misfortune. He suffered from insomnia, which did not bring him joy in the last days of his life. He was isolated in a world surrounded by silence.

His final words were “Clap hands, friends; the play is over.” A great composer passed away on March 26, 1827. His funeral took place on March 29 with the presence of thousands of people.

Scientists say that Beethoven died due to lead poisoning. Beethoven became the legend that he is only after his death.

Unexplained

Ringing rocks of Pennsylvania

Ringing Rocks Park is a 128 acre park nestled in the woods in Upper Black Eddy. Located within the park is a field of boulders, about seven to eight acres in size, that have an unusual property. When the rocks are struck with a hammer or another rock, they sound as if they are metal and hollow and ring with a sound similar to a metal pipe being struck.

The boulders are made of a substance called diabase which is basically volcanic basalt. This is one of the largest diabase boulder fields in the Eastern United States. The boulders have a high content of iron and aluminum and were thought to have broken apart during the Pleistocene Epoch probably about 12,000 years ago. The boulders were created through many years of freeze-thaw cycles that broke up the diabase into individual pieces, a process known as “frost wedging”.

The rocks may then have accumulated in this one area as the water saturated soil provided lubrication for the stones to “creep” downhill to their present location, a process known as “solifluction”. This could have happened during the prior ice ages when overlying moist soil literally slid over the frozen permafrost below, carrying the boulders with it.

Others have more fanciful explanations such as radioactivity, meteorites, or strange magnetic fields. Even supernatural possibilities have been suggested, and the area has been studied by those with an inclincation for the paranormal.
 

Cursed painting of Crying Boy

The legend around this painting is as grim as it gets. The stories began around 1985, when several mysterious fires occurred all around England. When the debris was sifted through the only item that remained un-charred was a painting of a little boy with a tear rolling his cheek in every fire.

Bragolin, who died in 1981 and created a series of Crying Boy paintings for tourists in post-war Venice. This version claims that the boy in the painting was an orphan whose parents had died in a fire. He was taken in by the painter despite warnings that he was a firestarter - a child who can burn things without touching them.

The artist’s studio caught fire and he was ruined. The boy ran away - and ten years later a car crashed in flames on the outskirts of Barcelona. The driver died in the crash, the online story goes, but a driving licence found inside showed it was the orphan boy.

Research has proved that a flame put immediately in front of the painting did set fire to a corner of the frame but only burnt around the outer edge of the child’s profile before petering out. But it turns out there is a reason why paintings often survive fires relatively undamaged: It is to do with the string on the back burning through first. The painting falls face-down, giving it protection from smoke and heat.

 

Albert Hall, London

The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated in the South Kensington area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941.

The Royal Albert Hall is one of the UK’s most treasured and distinctive buildings, recognisable all over the world. Since its opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world’s leading artists from every kind of performance genre have appeared on its stage. Each year it hosts more than 350 performances including classical concerts, rock and pop, ballet and opera, tennis, award ceremonies, school and community events, charity performances and lavish banquets.

The Hall was originally supposed to have been called The Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, but the name was changed by Queen Victoria to Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences when laying the foundation stone as a dedication to her deceased husband and consort Prince Albert.

Sepoy mutiny

The growing Indian discontent with British rule erupted on May 10, 1857. The Sepoys, who were Indians trained by the British as soldiers, heard rumours that the cartridges for their new Enfield rifles were greased with lard and beef fat.

Since the cow is sacred to Hindus and the pig is abhorrent to Muslims, all the Sepoys were outraged, and they mutinied. Although initially the mutiny was spontaneous, it quickly became more organized and the Sepoys even took over the cities of Delhi and Kanpur. This mutiny was harshly crushed by the British. On September 20, 1857, the British recaptured Delhi, and in the following months, the British recaptured Kanpur and withstood a Sepoy siege of Lucknow.

The British victories were accompanied by widespread recrimination and in many cases, unarmed Sepoys were bayonetted, sown up in the carcasses of pigs or cows, or fired from cannons.
 

Zulu

The Zulu are the largest South African ethnic group, with an estimated 10 to 11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. Their language, Zulu, is a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup.

The Zulu were originally a major clan in what is today Northern KwaZulu-Natal, founded in 1709 by Zulu kaNtombhela. In the Nguni languages, ‘Zulu’ means ‘heaven’, or ‘sky’. At that time, the area was occupied by many large Nguni communities and clans. Nguni communities had migrated down Africa’s east coast over thousands of years, as part of the Bantu migrations probably arriving in what is now South Africa in about the 9th Century AD.

The Zulu Kingdom played a major role in South African history during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Under apartheid, Zulu people were classed as third-class citizens and suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination. They remain today the most numerous ethnic group in South Africa, and now have equal rights along with all other citizens.



 

Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England, fought between supporters of two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York, the ‘red’ and the ‘white’ rose, respectively.

They were fought in several sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1485, although there was related fighting both before and after this period.

The final victory went to a relatively remote Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of the late Yorkist king Edward IV, to reconcile the two factions and founded the House of Tudor, which subsequently ruled England and Wales for 117 years.
 

Sheep gives birth to puppy

Vets say it’s impossible - but to Chinese farmer Liu Naiying his birth is a miracle. For Liu insists one of his sheep has given birth to a dog. The ‘puppy’ has wool like a lamb but its mouth, nose, eyes, paws and tail look more like a dog’s. His ‘sheep dog’ even plays like a hound.

The birth has prompted thousands to flock to his farm in Shaanxi Province to see for themselves.

Mr Liu told how he found the unusual baby animal shortly after it was born in one of his fields.

‘I was herding the sheep, and saw a sheep licking her newborn lamb on the grassland. The lamb was still wet,’ he said.

 

[This day then]

1461

Wars of the Roses:

Battle of Towton – Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England

1795

Beethoven,

at age 24, debuts as pianist in Vienna

1798

Republic of Switzerland forms

1827

20,000 attend Ludwig von Beethovens burial in Vienna

1847

Mexican-American War: United States forces led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege

1848

Niagara Falls stops flowing for 30 hours due to an ice jam

1849

Britain formally annexs Punjab after defeat of Sikhs in India

1857

Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the British rule in India and inspires a long-drawn War of Independence of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.

1871

Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria in London

1879

Anglo-Zulu War:

Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus

1886

Dr John Pemberton brews the first batch of Coca-Cola in a backyard in Atlanta, Georgia.

1912

Captain Robert Scott, blizzard-bound in a tent 18 km from the South Pole, makes last entry in his diary “the end cannot be far”

1927

Henry O D Segrave races his Sunbeam to a record 203.79 mph at Daytona; 1st auto to exceed 200 mph (322 kph)

1961

After a four and half year trial Nelson Mandela is acquitted on treason charge

1974

NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury. It was launched on November 3, 1973

1994

Serbs and Croats signed a cease-fire to end the war in Croatia

2004

The Republic of Ireland becomes the first country in the world to ban smoking in all work places, including bars and restaurants

2008

Thirty-five countries and over 370 cities join Earth Hour for the first time