William Barley (1565?–1614) was an English bookseller and publisher. He
completed an apprenticeship as a draper in 1587, but was soon working
in the London book trade. As a freeman of the Drapers' Company, he was
embroiled in a dispute between it and the Stationers' Company over the
rights of drapers to function as publishers and booksellers. He found
himself in legal tangles throughout his life. Barley's role in
Elizabethan music publishing has proved to be a "contentious" issue
among scholars. The assessments of him range from "a man of energy,
determination, and ambition", to "somewhat remarkable", to "surely to
some extent a rather nefarious figure". His contemporaries harshly
criticized the quality of two of the first works of music that he
published, but he was also influential in his field. After becoming the
assignee of the composer and publisher Thomas Morley, Barley published
Anthony Holborne's Pavans, Galliards, Almains (1599), the first work of
music for instruments rather than voices to be printed in England. His
partnership with Morley enabled him to claim a right to the music
publishing patent that Morley held prior to his death in 1602. Some
publishers ignored his claim, however, and many music books printed
during his later life gave him no recognition.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barley>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1065:
London's Westminster Abbey was consecrated, becoming the traditional
place of coronation for English, and now Monarchs of the Commonwealth
Realms.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Abbey>
1768:
Taksin the Great was crowned king of the newly established Thonburi
Kingdom in the new capital at Thonburi, present-day Thailand.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taksin>
1836:
At the Old Gum Tree near present-day Adelaide, Royal Navy Rear–Admiral
John Hindmarsh read a proclamation establishing the British province of
South Australia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia>
1973:
U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into
law, a wide-ranging environmental law designed to protect critically
imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth
and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_Species_Act>
1989:
In one of Australia's most serious natural disasters, a 5.6 ML
earthquake struck Newcastle, New South Wales, killing 13 people and
injuring more than 160 others, and causing an estimated AUD$4 billion
in damages.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
fiddle (v):
1. To play aimlessly.
2. To adjust in order to cover a basic flaw or fraud etc.
3. To play
the violin
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fiddle>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a
paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which
tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Babington_Macaulay%2C_1st_Baron_Macaulay>
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