The Eighth Symphony was Jean Sibelius's final major compositional
project, occupying him intermittently from the mid-1920s until around
1938. How much of the symphony was completed is unknown; Sibelius
repeatedly refused to release it for performance, though he promised the
premiere to several leading conductors. Following the success of his
Seventh Symphony of 1924, it was expected that his symphonic flow would
continue, but after the tone poem Tapiola of 1926, his published output
was confined to minor pieces and revisions to earlier works. The Eighth
Symphony's destruction was made known after Sibelius's death in 1957,
but in the 1990s, while cataloguing the composer's many notebooks and
sketches, scholars speculated that fragments of music from the lost
symphony may have survived. Several short manuscript sketches have been
tentatively identified with the Eighth, three of which (comprising less
than three minutes of music) were recorded by the Helsinki Philharmonic
Orchestra in 2011. The prospect of further reconstruction has generally
been discounted; the propriety of publicly performing music that
Sibelius himself had rejected has also been questioned.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Sibelius)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1660:
A woman appeared on stage as a professional actress in England
for the first time, most often credited to Margaret Hughes.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hughes>
1813:
Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (audio featured) premiered in Vienna
with the composer himself conducting.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Beethoven)>
1963:
After being hit by a lightning strike while in a holding
pattern, Pan Am Flight 214 crashed near Elkton, Maryland, US, killing
all 81 people on board.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_214>
1987:
A man shot and killed eight people at the Australia Post
building in Melbourne, before jumping to his death.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Street_massacre>
2013:
After a fatal car accident in the Little India region of
Singapore, angry mobs of passersby attacked the bus involved and
emergency vehicles, the first riot in the country in over 40 years.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Little_India_riot>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
cheeky:
1. (informal) Impudent; impertinent; impertinently bold, often in a way
that is regarded as endearing or amusing.
2. (informal, Britain, of food and drink) Eaten or drunk as an indulgence.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheeky>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality Of a voice speaking the
mind's knowing, The sunlight bright on the green windowshade, And the
self articulate, affectionate, and flowing, Ease, warmth, light, the
utter showing, When in the white bed all things are made.
--Delmore Schwartz
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Delmore_Schwartz>