William Walton (1902–1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year
career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from
film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade – An
Entertainment, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast and his First Symphony.
Born in Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and
then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the
university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who
provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of
note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, which at first
brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet
score. Other early works that made his name were a Viola Concerto and
Belshazzar's Feast. By middle age, he had ceased to be regarded as a
modernist, and some of his compositions of the 1950s were criticised as
old-fashioned. In his last years, his works came back into critical
fashion; his later compositions, dismissed by critics at the time of
their premieres, were revalued and regarded alongside his earlier
works. (more...)
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1461:
Yorkist troops defeated Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Towton in
Yorkshire, England, the largest battle in the Wars of the Roses up
until that time with approximately 20,000 casualties.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Towton>
1807:
German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovered 4 Vesta,
the brightest asteroid and the second-most massive body in the asteroid
belt.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Vesta>
1911:
The M1911 single-action, semi-automatic pistol developed by American
firearms designer John Browning became the standard-issue side arm in
the United States Army.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911_pistol>
1941:
Second World War: British Royal Navy and Australian Navy ships
intercepted and sank or severely damaged the ships of the Italian Regia
Marina near Crete.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cape_Matapan>
1999:
The strongest earthquake to hit the foothills of the Himalayas in more
than ninety years killed 103 people.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Chamoli_earthquake>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
otorhinolaryngology (n):
(medicine) The study of diseases of the ear, nose and throat
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/otorhinolaryngology>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
144px
I am like a tree,
From my top boughs I can see
The footprints
that led up to me.
--R. S. Thomas
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._S._Thomas>