Was born today : Maximilian I

Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519), the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans (also known as King of the Germans) from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky. He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from c. 1483. He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today's Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy.
Through marriage of his son Philip the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, Maximilian helped to establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain which allowed his grandson Charles to hold the throne of both León-Castile and Aragon, thus making Charles V the first de jure King of Spain. Since his father Philip died in 1506, Charles succeeded Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and thus ruled both the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire simultaneously.
On the death of Frederick III in 1493, Maximilian became sole ruler over the German kingdom and head of the house of Habsburg. He then drove the Turks from his southeastern borders, married Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan (1494), and handed over the Low Countries to his son Philip (1494), reserving, however, the right of joint rule. The flourishing culture of the Low Countries influenced literature, art, government, politics, and military methods in all the other Habsburg possessions.
Maximilian was born at Wiener Neustadt on 22 March 1459. His father, Frederick III, named him for an obscure saint whom Frederick believed had once warned him of imminent peril in a dream. In his infancy, he and his parents were besieged in Vienna by Albert of Austria. One source relates that, during the siege's bleakest days, the young prince would wander about the castle garrison, begging the servants and men-at-arms for bits of bread .
At the time, the Dukes of Burgundy, a cadet branch of the French royal family, with their sophisticated nobility and court culture, were the rulers of substantial territories on the eastern and northern boundaries of modern-day France. The reigning duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, was the chief political opponent of Maximilian's father Frederick III. Frederick was concerned about Burgundy's expansive tendencies on the western border of his Holy Roman Empire and, to forestall military conflict, he attempted to secure the marriage of Charles's only daughter, Mary of Burgundy, to his son Maximilian. After the Siege of Neuss (1474–75), he was successful. The wedding between Maximilian and Mary took place on the evening of 16 August 1477.
He successfully defended his new domains against the attacks of Louis XI of France, defeating the French at the Battle of Guinegate in 1479. There Maximilian’s military innovation saved him. French armies consisted primarily of the prized and formidable Swiss Reisläufer, mercenary units that have survived in the modern era as the Swiss Guards. Maximilian recruited these elite pikemen to train his German forces, who in time came to be known as the Landsknechte. At Guinegate the Landsknechte showed their mettle and would vie with the Swiss Reisläufer for primacy on the battlefield for more than a century.
After Mary’s death (1482) Maximilian was forced to allow the States General (representative assembly) of the Netherlands to act as regent for his infant son Philip (later Philip I [the Handsome] of Castile), but, having defeated the States General in war, he reacquired control of the regency in 1485. Meanwhile, by the Treaty of Arras (1482), Maximilian was also forced to consent to the betrothal of his daughter Margaret of Austria to Charles VIII of France.
In 1486 he was elected king of the Romans (heir to his father, the emperor) and crowned at Aachen on April 9. With the military help of Spain, England, and Brittany, he continued his war against France. Like his predecessors, Maximilian also saw chronic revolts in the Netherlands, typically about taxation. In 1488 he was taken captive and held for more than three months in Brugge, where he watched from his window as several of his companions were executed. In order to surround France, Maximilian in 1490 married Duchess Anne of Brittany by proxy but could not forestall an invasion of Brittany by the French. A dramatic setback occurred when Charles VIII sent his fiancée Margaret back to her father and required Anne to sever her marriage with Maximilian and to become the queen of France.
Through the archduke Sigismund, his cousin, Maximilian obtained the Tirol. Because of its favourable situation politically as well as its silver mines, its chief city, Innsbruck, became his favourite centre of operations.
By 1490 he had regained control of most of his family’s traditional territories in Austria, which had been seized by Hungary. He then became a candidate for the vacant Hungarian throne. When Vladislas (Ulászló) II of Bohemia was elected instead, he waged a successful campaign against Vladislas. By the Treaty of Pressburg in 1491, he arranged that the succession to Bohemia and Hungary would pass to the Habsburgs if Vladislas left no male heir.
The Treaty of Senlis (1493) ended the conflict against the Netherlands and France and left the duchy of Burgundy and the Low Countries securely in the possession of the house of Habsburg.
Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy (1494) upset the European balance of power. Maximilian allied himself with the pope, Spain, Venice, and Milan in the so-called Holy League (1495) to drive out the French, who were conquering Naples. He campaigned in Italy in 1496, but, although the French were expelled, he achieved little benefit. More important were the marriages of his son Philip to the Spanish infanta Joan (the Mad), in the same year, and of his daughter Margaret to the Spanish crown prince, in 1497. These marriages assured him of the succession in Spain and the control of the Spanish colonies.
At a meeting of the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) at Worms in 1495, Maximilian sought to strengthen the empire. Laws were projected to reform the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber of Justice) and taxation and to give permanency to the public peace; however, no solution was forthcoming for many military and administrative problems. The princes would permit no strengthening of the central authority, and this limitation of power neutralized imperial policies. To thwart the opposition, which was led primarily by the lord chancellor Berthold, archbishop of Mainz, Maximilian set up his own extra-constitutional judicial and financial commissions.
In 1499 Maximilian fought an unsuccessful war against the Swiss Confederation and was forced to recognize its virtual independence by the Peace of Basel (September 22). At the same time, the French moved back into Italy, in cooperation with Spain, and occupied the imperial fief of Milan.
In 1500 the imperial princes at the Reichstag in Augsburg withdrew considerable power from Maximilian and invested it in the Reichsregiment, a supreme council of 21 electors, princes, and others. They even considered deposing him, but the plan miscarried because of their own apathy and Maximilian’s effective countermeasures. He strengthened his European position by an agreement with France, and he regained prestige within the empire by victories in a dynastic war between Bavaria and the Rhenish Palatinate (1504). At the same time, the death of Berthold of Mainz rid him of one of his main opponents. Credit arrangements with southern German business firms, such as the Fuggers, assured Maximilian of funds for foreign and domestic needs, and a campaign against Hungary in 1506 strengthened the Habsburg claim to the Hungarian throne. Though he was the German king, he had not been crowned emperor by the pope, as was customary. Excluded from Italy by the hostile Venetians, he was unable to go to Rome for his coronation and had to content himself with the title of Roman emperor-elect that was bestowed on him with the consent of Pope Julius II on February 4, 1508.
To oppose Venice, Maximilian entered into the League of Cambrai with France, Spain, and the pope in 1508. Their aim was to partition the Republic of Venice. In the war that followed, Maximilian was labelled an unreliable partner because of his lack of funds and troops. Pope Julius’s severe illness prompted Maximilian to consider accepting the office of pope, which the schismatic Council of Pisa offered him. At times pious, at other times antipapal, he thought he might win financial help from the German church if he were a rival pope, but in the end he let himself be dissuaded from this by Ferdinand II (the Catholic) of Aragon. Turning away from his French alliance, he entered into a new Holy League (1511) with the pope, Spain, England, and their allies. With the help of England, he scored a victory against the French in the Battle of the Spurs (1513) while his allies concentrated on regaining Milan and Lombardy. The French were victorious in Italy at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, and Maximilian’s efforts to re-win Milan failed miserably. The Treaty of Brussels granted Milan to the French and Verona to the Venetians, leaving Maximilian with only the territorial boundaries of Tirol.
In the east, by making overtures to Russia, he was able to put pressure on Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary to acquiesce in his expansionist plans. In 1515 advantageous marriages were arranged between members of the Habsburg family and the Hungarian royal house, thus strengthening the Habsburg position in Hungary and also in Bohemia, which was under the same dynasty. His intricate system of alliances, embracing both central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, made Maximilian a potent force in European affairs.
On January 12, 1519, having spent the previous year trying to have his grandson Charles elected emperor and to raise a European coalition against the Turks, he died at Wels in Upper Austria. He was buried in Georgskirche at Wiener Neustadt. (His magnificent tomb at the Hofkirche in Innsbruck was completed later.) His plans did come to fruition when his grandson, already king of Spain, became emperor as Charles V later the same year.

"Maximilian I, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, etc. Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Princely Count of Habsburg, Hainaut, Flanders, Tyrol, Gorizia, Artois, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, the Enns, Burgau, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Salins, Mechelen, [...]"

Sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/370486/Maximilian-I/4727/Assessment

Event of the day : Battle of Marton

While searching for today's rubric, i came across an event i never personally heard about. It is called Battle of Marton, and it took place 1144 years ago on 22 March. The location is something that is not known, but it seems that it was won by the Vikings. The lack of informations i found, will make this be a really short article, i hope you will enjoy it and find this event as interesting as i thought it will be.
The Battle of Marton or Meretum took place on 22 March 871 at a place recorded as Marton, perhaps in Wiltshire or Dorset, after Æthelred of Wessex, forced (along with his brother Alfred) into flight following their costly victory against an army of Danish invaders at the Battle of Ashdown, had retreated to Basing (in Hampshire), where he was again defeated by the forces of Ivar the Boneless.
It was the last of eight battles known to be fought by Æthelred against the Danes that year, and the defeated King is reported to have died on 15 April 871. Whether he died in battle, or as a result of wounds suffered in battle is unclear. The site of the battle is unknown. Suggestions include the borders of the London Borough of Merton, Merton in Oxfordshire, Marden in Wiltshire or Martin in Dorset. The more westerly locations tend to be favoured because King Ethelred was buried in Wimborne Minster in Dorset shortly afterwards.
One possible location for the battle is at Merriton, on the banks of the River Stour, a few miles downstream of Wimborne, thus providing a simple journey by barge with the body of King Æthelred. The medieval manor of Merriton was situated on what is now the southern perimeter of Bournemouth (Hurn) Airport.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marton

Event of the day: Operation Michael

The situation Germany found herself in at the end of 1917 was somewhat mixed. Yes, the defeat of Russia in the East had released a huge number of troops and supplies that could be switched to the Western Front, but the window of opportunity for effective action in the West was rapidly diminishing as the Americans slowly but surely increased their presence in this area. It would only be a matter of time before they were ready to get in on the action in a meaningful way. The pressure was definitely on Germany to go on the offensive and try and win the war before the Allies got any stronger.
With this in mind, Ludendorff got working on his master offensive plan. His idea was simple: to smash the British Army to pieces.
The German army adopted an approach that had succeeded on the Eastern Front, particularly at the Battle of Riga. Their infantry attack would be preceded by an intense barrage concentrated not on the British infantry holding the forward posts, but on the artillery and machine-gun positions, headquarters, telephone exchanges, railways and other important centres of communications. In other words it was a very deep barrage designed to knock out the British ability to respond - but lasting only a few hours before the infantry went in. When the German infantry attacked, they would operate in small groups, specially trained to "infiltrate" - exploiting gaps and moving forward, not worrying about areas that were held up: they would be dealt with by follow-up units. For the British, unused to a discontinuous line and the idea of a deep zone of defended hotspots, such a tactic would spell chaos, uncertainty and disaster. It very nearly worked.
British intelligence had come to the conclusion that a German attack was to be expected, as early as November 1917. It was known to all by March 1918 and only the precise date, time and place was to be determined. Forecasts made by the "E" (Enemy) Group of the British military staff at the Supreme War Council proved to be reasonably accurate but were largely dismissed by GHQ as a result of politics between the two.
At the same time as German strength was growing, the British Army was depleted, having to face up to a manpower crisis and resultant reorganisation, and at a low point of morale after enduring the conditions of Passchendaele and the disappointment after early success at Cambrai.
Operation Michael involved a vast attack along the whole front between the River Oise  and the River Sensée. This area is generally known as "the Somme" sector, although geographically it includes the Cambrésis and the Santerre plateau. The entire area between the St-Quentin/Cambrai front line and the Bapaume/Albert area had been deliberately laid waste by the Germans when they withdrew from that area (in Operation Alberich) in spring 1917. The Bapaume/Albert area had been the site of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Thus, other than the area west of Albert and on to Amiens, this was in effect one endless area of devastation. The only significant geographical bariers to an advance were the River Somme south of Péronne and the Canal du Nord north of it.

"Main Headquarters
10.3.18
By His Majesty's Orders:
1. The Michael attack will take place on the 21.3.  The first attack on the enemy's lines is fixed for 9.40 a.m.
2. The first great tactical objective of the Crown Prince Rupprecht's Army Group is to cut off the English in the Cambrai salient and reach the line Croisilles (southeast of Arras)-Bapaume-Peronne.  If the attack of the right wing (Seventeenth Army) proceeds favourably, this army is to press on beyond Croisilles.
The further task of this Army Group is to push forward in the general direction of Arras-Albert, keep its left wing on the Somme at Peronne, and intensifying its pressure on the right wing compel the retirement of the English front facing the Sixth Army also, and release further German troops from trench warfare for the general advance.
3. The German Crown Prince's Army Group will first gain the line of the Somme south of the Omignon stream (this flows into the Somme south of Peronne) and the Crozat Canal (west of La Pere).  By pushing on rapidly the Eighteenth Army (right wing of the Crown Prince's Army Group) is to secure the crossing of the Somme and the Canal."

74 German Divisions (roughly 910,000 men) lined up against the British lines. The preliminary bombardment was a hurricane of just five hours where 6,600 guns fired 1,100,000 shells of all descriptions onto the British lines. The bombardment was incredibly accurate, both on the forward lines of the British, but also the reverse areas; smashing communication and transportation infrastructure as well as supplies and reserve camps. Not only did the British lose 7,500 in the barrage, but there was absolute chaos behind the lines.
When the guns fell silent a dense mist had enveloped the entire battlefield allowing the stormtroopers to penetrate deep into enemy territory undetected. The massed infantry followed quickly behind, also covered by the mist, and, despite some heroic defending by the British, over-ran almost all of the British front line areas.
By the end of the first day, the British had no choice but to execute a fighting retreat, they may have inflicted 40,000 odd casualties on the Germans, but they had suffered a similar number themselves and were quite literally, running for their lives.

"The hopes and wishes which had soared beyond Amiens had to be recalled.  Facts must be treated as facts.  Human achievements are never more than patchwork.  Favourable opportunities had been neglected or had not always been exploited with the same energy, even where a splendid goal was beckoning.
We ought to have shouted into the ear of every single man: "Press on to Amiens.  Put in your last ounce.  Perhaps Amiens means decisive victory.  Capture Villers-Bretonneux whatever happens, so that from its heights we can command Amiens with masses of our heavy artillery!"
It was in vain; our strength was exhausted.
The enemy fully realised what the loss of Villers-Bretonneux would mean to him.  He threw against our advancing columns all the troops he could lay hands on.  The French appeared, and with their massed attacks and skilful artillery saved the situation for their Allies and themselves.
With us human nature was urgently voicing its claims.  We had to take breath.  The infantry needed rest and the artillery ammunition.
It was lucky for us that we were able to live to a certain extent on the supplies of the beaten foe; otherwise we should not even have been able to cross the Somme, for the shattered roads in the wide shell-hole area of the first enemy position could only have been made available after days of work.
Even now we did not give up all hope of capturing Villers-Bretonneux.  On April 4, we made another attempt to drive the enemy from the village.  The first reports of the progress of our attack on that day were very promising, but the next day brought a reverse and disillusionment at this point.
Amiens remained in the hands of the enemy, and was subjected to a long-range bombardment which certainly disturbed this traffic artery of our foe but could not cut it.
The "Great Battle" in France was over!"

Surces : http://www.1914-1918.net/bat22.htm
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/kaiserbattle_hindenburg.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-stage-of-german-spring-offensive-ends
http://www.scottaddington.com/2012/03/kaiserschlacht-i-operation-michael/

Was born today: Antonia Maury

Antonia Maury (March 21, 1866–January 8, 1952) was an American astronomer who published an important early catalog of stellar spectra.
Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Maury was born in Cold Spring, New York in 1866. She was named in honor of her maternal grandmother, Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner Draper,[1] who belonged to a noble family that fled Portugal for Brazil on account of Napoleon Bonaparte's wars. Maury's father was the Reverend Mytton Maury, a direct descendant of the Reverend James Maury and one of the sons of Sarah Mytton Maury. Maury's mother was Virginia Draper, a daughter of Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner and Dr. John William Draper.
Maury was also the granddaughter of John William Draper and a niece of Henry Draper, both pioneering astronomers. As such, young Antonia and her two siblings were exposed to science at a very early age.
Antonia Maury attended Vassar College, graduating in 1887 with honors in physics, astronomy, and philosophy. There, she studied under the tutelage of renowned astronomer Maria Mitchell.
Due to the endowment to Harvard College Observatory for the Henry Draper Catalogue project by her aunt Anna Draper, Maury was hired by Pickering as a computer in 1888. She was responsible for cataloguing and computing stellar spectra for stars in the northern hemisphere. Maury, however, was not satisfied to merely perform mundane calculations. She had an interest in theoretical work, an endeavor discouraged by Pickering in his computers. This created a strained relationship between Maury and Pickering, resulting in her intermittent employment during her years at Harvard College Observatory. “She was one of the most original thinkers of all the women Pickering employed; but instead of encouraging her attempts at interpreting observations, he was only irritated by her independence and departure from assigned and expected routine,” according to Dorrit Hoffleit, one of Maury’s colleagues at Harvard College Observatory.
During Maury’s cataloguing work, she rearranged Fleming’s scheme to reflect the temperatures of stars. She further refined the sequence by adding another “dimension” to describe the spectral lines. Maury’s scheme included “‘a’ for wide and well defined; ‘b’ for hazy but relatively wide and of same intensity as ‘a’; and ‘c’ for spectra in which the H lines and ‘Orion lines’ (now known to be due to helium) were narrow and sharply defined, whereas the calcium lines were more intense. She also had a class ‘ac’ for stars having characteristics of both ‘a’ and ‘c.’”
Maury firmly believed in her category scheme of stellar spectra and that the “‘c-characteristic’... represented a fundamental property of the stars.” Other astronomers agreed. In 1905, famed Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung published his work on stellar magnitudes and luminosities. “Hertzsprung discovered that the red stars appeared to be of two types, nearby stars or dwarfs and distant stars or giants. His “red giant” objects were the same stars Maury had catalogued with the “c-characteristic.” According to Hertzsprung, “In my opinion the separation of Antonia C. Maury of the c- and ac- stars is the most important advancement in stellar classification since the trials by Vogel and Secchi.”
Maury did not complete her work at Harvard College Observatory, leaving in 1891 to pursue a position at Gilman School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She returned in 1893 for one year, and again in December 1895 to assist with the final phase in the Draper project. The Henry Draper Catalogue was finally published in 1897.
After the completion of the catalogue, Maury continued her intermittent relationship at Harvard College Observatory. She also lectured on astronomy to professionals of the field, as well as public forums. During this time, she pursued her own interests in spectroscopic binaries. She co-discovered the first example of these objects, Mizar in Ursa Major, in 1899, as well as the second, Beta Aurigae. She was the first to calculate their orbits. Famed astronomer, “Colonel John Herschel called her work on spectroscopic binaries ‘one of the most notable advances in physical astronomy ever made.’”
Maury officially retired from Harvard College Observatory in 1935. For the next three years, she was in charge of the Draper Park Observatory Museum in Hastings-on-Hudson. Until her death on January 8, 1952, Maury continued to visit Harvard College Observatory “to check on observations of her final project, the enigmatic double Beta Lyrae.”
As with Fleming, Maury received recognition from astronomers worldwide. In a dedication in Dr. W. W. Morgan’s atlas of stellar spectra, Maury was described as “the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra.” Because of her ingenuity, determination, and perseverance, Maury is remembered for her contributions to stellar astrophysics.

Soures : http://www.womanastronomer.com/amaury.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonia_Maury

Was born today : Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter

Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter (March 20 [O.S. March 7] 1915 – August 1, 1997) was a Soviet pianist known for the depth of his interpretations, virtuoso technique, and vast repertoire. He is considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.
Richter was born near Zhytomyr (Ukraine), in the Russian Empire. His father, Teofil Danilovich Richter (1872–1941), was a German expatriate pianist, organist, and composer who had studied in Vienna. His mother, Anna Pavlovna (née Moskaleva; 1893–1963), was from a landowning family, and at one point had been a pupil of her future husband. In 1918, when Richter's parents were in Odessa, the Civil War separated them from their son, and Richter moved in with his aunt Tamara. He lived with her from 1918 to 1921, and it was then that his interest in art first manifested itself: he first became interested in painting, which his aunt taught him.
In 1921 the family was reunited, and the Richters moved to Odessa, where Teofil taught at the Odessa Conservatory and, briefly, worked as organist of a Lutheran church. In early 1920s Richter became interested in music (as well as other art forms such as cinema, literature, and theatre) and started studying piano. Unusually, he was largely self-taught. His father only gave him a basic education in music, and so did one of his father's pupils, a Czech harpist.
Even at an early age, Richter was an excellent sight-reader and regularly practised with local opera and ballet companies. He developed a lifelong passion for opera, vocal and chamber music that found its full expression in the festivals he established in Grange de Meslay, France, and in Moscow, at the Pushkin Museum. At age 15, he started to work at the Odessa Opera, where he accompanied the rehearsals.
On March 19, 1934, Richter gave his first recital, at the Engineers' Club of Odessa; but he did not formally start studying piano until three years later, when he decided to seek out Heinrich Neuhaus, a famous pianist and piano teacher, at the Moscow Conservatory. During Richter's audition for Neuhaus (at which he performed Chopin's Ballade No. 4), Neuhaus apparently whispered to a fellow student, "This man's a genius". Although Neuhaus taught many great pianists, including Emil Gilels and Radu Lupu, it is said that he considered Richter to be "the genius pupil, for whom he had been waiting all his life," while acknowledging that he taught Richter "almost nothing."
Early in his career, Richter also tried his hand at composing, and it even appears that he played some of his compositions during his audition for Neuhaus. He gave up composition shortly after moving to Moscow. Years later, Richter explained this decision as follows: "Perhaps the best way I can put it is that I see no point in adding to all the bad music in the world".
By the beginning of World War II, Richter's parents' marriage had failed and his mother had fallen in love with another man. Because Richter's father was a German, he was under suspicion by the authorities and a plan was made for the family to flee the country. Due to her romantic involvement, his mother did not want to leave and so they remained in Odessa. In August 1941 his father was arrested and later found guilty of espionage, being sentenced to death on 6 October 1941. Richter didn't speak to his mother again until shortly before her death nearly 20 years later in connection with his first US tour.
In 1945, Richter met and accompanied in recital the soprano Nina Dorliak. Richter and Dorliak thereafter remained companions until his death, although they never married. She accompanied Richter both in his complex life and career. She supported him in his last sickness, and died herself a few months later, on May 17, 1998.
It was very widely rumored that Richter was homosexual and that having a female companion provided a social front for his sexual orientation, because homosexuality was still widely seen as strongly taboo and could result in legal repercussions. Richter had a tendency to be private and withdrawn and was not open to interviews. He never publicly discussed his personal life until in the last year of his life filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon convinced him to be interviewed for a documentary.
In 1949 Richter won the Stalin Prize, which led to extensive concert tours in Russia, Eastern Europe and China. He gave his first concerts outside the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia in 1950. In 1952, Richter was invited to play Franz Liszt in a film based on the life of Mikhail Glinka, called Kompozitor Glinka (Russian: Композитор Глинка, "The Composer Glinka"; a remake of the 1946 film Glinka). The title role was played by Boris Smirnov.
On February 18, 1952, Richter made his debut as a conductor (a role he never again assumed) when he led the world premiere of Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E minor, with Mstislav Rostropovich as the soloist.
In 1960, even though he had a reputation for being "indifferent" to politics, Richter defied the authorities when he performed at Boris Pasternak's funeral. (He had played Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No. 1 at Joseph Stalin's funeral in 1953, with David Oistrakh.)
Having received the Stalin and Lenin prizes and become People's Artist of the RSFSR, he gave his first tour concerts in the USA in 1960, and in England and France in 1961.
The West first became aware of Richter through recordings made in the 1950s. One of Richter's first advocates in the West was Emil Gilels, who stated during his first tour of the United States that the critics (who were giving Gilels rave reviews) should "wait until you hear Richter."
Richter's first concerts in the West took place in May 1960, when he was allowed to play in Finland, and on October 15, 1960, in Chicago, where he played Brahms's Second Piano Concerto accompanied by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Erich Leinsdorf, creating a sensation. In a review, noted Chicago Tribune music critic Claudia Cassidy, who was known for her unkind reviews of established artists, recalled Richter first walking on stage hesitantly, looking vulnerable (as if about to be "devoured"), but then sitting at the piano and dispatching "the performance of a lifetime". Richter's 1960 tour of the United States culminated in a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall.
Richter disliked performing in the United States and the high expectations of American audiences. Following a 1970 incident at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, when Richter's performance alongside David Oistrakh was disrupted by anti-Soviet protests, Richter vowed never to return. Rumors of a planned return to Carnegie Hall surfaced in the last years of Richter's life, although it is not clear if there was any truth behind them.
In 1961, Richter played for the first time in London. His first recital, pairing works of Haydn and Prokofiev, was received with hostility by British critics. Notably, Neville Cardus concluded that Richter's playing was "provincial", and wondered why Richter had been invited to play in London, given that London had plenty of "second class" pianists of its own. Following a July 18, 1961, concert, where Richter performed both of Liszt's piano concertos, the critics reversed course.
In 1963, after searching in the Loire Valley, France, for a venue suitable for a music festival, Richter discovered La Grange de Meslay several kilometres north of Tours. The festival was established by Richter and became an annual event.
In 1970, Richter visited Japan for the first time, traveling across Siberia by railway and boat as he disliked flying. He played Beethoven, Schumann, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Bartók and Rachmaninoff, as well as works by Mozart and Beethoven with Japanese orchestras. He visited Japan eight tWhile he very much enjoyed performing for an audience, Richter hated planning concerts years in advance, and in later life took to playing at very short notice in small, most often darkened halls, with only a small lamp lighting the score. Richter said that this setting helped the audience focus on the music being performed, rather than on extraneous and irrelevant matters such as the performer's grimaces and gestures.
In 1986, Richter embarked on a six-month tour of Siberia with his beloved Yamaha piano, giving perhaps 150 recitals, at times performing in small towns that did not even have a concert hall. It is said that after one such concert, the members of the audience, who had never before heard classical music performed, gathered in the middle of the hall and started swaying from side to side to celebrate the performer. It is said that in his last years Richter contemplated giving concerts free of charge (although he never actually did so).
An anecdote illustrates Richter's approach to performance in the last decade of his life. After reading a biography of Charlemagne (he was an avid reader), Richter had his secretary send a telegram to the director of the theater in Aachen, Charlemagne's favoured residence city and his burial place, stating "The Maestro has read a biography of Charlemagne and would like to play at Aquisgrana (Aachen)". The performance took place shortly thereafter.
As late as 1995, Richter continued to perform some of the most demanding pieces in the pianistic repertoire, including Ravel's Miroirs cycle, Prokofiev's Second Sonata and Chopin's études and Ballade No. 4.
Richter's last recorded orchestral performance was of three Mozart concerti in 1994 with the Japan Shinsei Symphony Orchestra conducted by his old friend Rudolf Barshai.
Richter's last recital was a private gathering in Lübeck, Germany, on March 30, 1995. The program consisted of two Haydn sonatas and Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Beethoven, a piece for two pianos, which Richter performed with pianist Andreas Lucewicz.
Richter died at Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow from a heart attack on August 1, 1997 aged 82. He had been suffering from depression due to an inability to perform caused by changes in his hearing that altered his perception of pitch. At the time of his death, he was rehearsing Schubert's Fünf Klavierstücke.
As Richter once put it, "My repertory runs to around eighty different programs, not counting chamber works." His repertoire ranged from Handel and Bach to Szymanowski, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith, Britten, and Gershwin.
It is perhaps instructive, although baffling, to note the works he did not play: they include Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Waldstein and Moonlight sonatas and Fourth and Fifth piano concertos, Schubert's A-major sonata D. 959, Prokofiev's Third piano concerto, Chopin's first piano concerto and second sonata and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3.
Richter worked tirelessly to learn new pieces. For instance, in the late 1980s, he learned Brahms's Paganini and Handel Variations, and in the 1990s, several of Debussy's études and Gershwin, and works by Bach and Mozart that he had not previously included in his programs.
Central to his repertoire were the works of Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, J. S. Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev and Debussy.[29] He is said to have learned the second book of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier by heart in one month.
He gave the premiere of Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7, which he learned in four days, and No. 9, which Prokofiev dedicated to Richter. Apart from his solo career, he also performed chamber music with partners such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Barshai, David Oistrakh, Oleg Kagan, Yuri Bashmet, Natalia Gutman, Zoltán Kocsis, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Benjamin Britten and members of the Borodin Quartet. Richter also often accompanied singers such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Schreier, Galina Pisarenko and his long-time companion Nina Dorliak.
Richter also conducted the premiere of Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra. This was his sole appearance as a conductor. The soloist was Rostropovich, to whom the work was dedicated. Prokofiev also wrote his 1949 Cello Sonata in C for Rostropovich, and he and Richter premiered it in 1950. Richter himself was a passable cellist, and Rostropovich was a good pianist; at one concert in Moscow at which he accompanied Rostropovich on the piano, they exchanged instruments for part of the program.
Richter explained his approach to performance as follows: "The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter. He doesn't add anything that isn't already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn't dominate the music, but should dissolve into it." Or, similarly: "I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror . . . Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart."
Richter's belief that musicians should "carry ... out the composer's intentions to the letter", led him to be critical of others and, most often, himself. After attending a recital of Murray Perahia, where Perahia performed Chopin's Third Piano Sonata without observing the first movement repeat, Richter asked him backstage to explain the omission. Similarly, after Richter realized that he had been playing a wrong note in Bach's Italian Concerto for decades, he insisted that the following disclaimer/apology be printed on a CD containing a performance thereof: "Just now Sviatoslav Richter realized, much to his regret, that he always made a mistake in the third measure before the end of the second part of the 'Italian Concerto'. As a matter of fact, through forty years – and no musician or technician ever pointed it out to him – he played 'F-sharp' rather than 'F'. The same mistake can be found in the previous recording made by Maestro Richter in the fifties."

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sviatoslav_Richter

Event of the day : Uncle Tom's Cabin was published

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day." The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change."
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned "mammy"; the "pickaninny" stereotype of black children; and the "Uncle Tom", or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, wrote the novel as a response to the passage, in 1850, of the second Fugitive Slave Act. Much of the book was composed in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, taught at his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
An engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe from 1872, based on an oil painting by Alonzo Chappel
Stowe was partly inspired to create Uncle Tom's Cabin by the slave narrative The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849). Henson, a formerly enslaved black man, had lived and worked on a 3,700 acres (15 km2) tobacco plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland, owned by Isaac Riley. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient, and where he wrote his memoirs. Stowe acknowledged in 1853 that Henson's writings inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin. When Stowe's work became a best-seller, Henson republished his memoirs as The Memoirs of Uncle Tom and traveled on lecture tours extensively in the United States and Europe. Stowe's novel lent its name to Henson's home—Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site, near Dresden, Canada—which since the 1940s has been a museum. The cabin where Henson lived while he was enslaved no longer exists, but a cabin on the Riley farm erroneously thought to be the Henson Cabin was purchased by the Montgomery County, Maryland, government in 2006.[18] It is now a part of the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program, and plans are underway to build a museum and interpretive center on the site.
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters, is also a source of some of the novel's content.[20] Stowe said she based the novel on a number of interviews with people who escaped slavery during the time when she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state. In Cincinnati the Underground Railroad had local abolitionist sympathizers and was active in efforts to help runaway slaves on their escape route from the South.
Stowe mentioned a number of the inspirations and sources for her novel in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853). This non-fiction book was intended to verify Stowe's claims about slavery. However, later research indicated that Stowe did not read many of the book's cited works until after she had published her novel.
Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era, an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851, issue. Because of the story's popularity, the publisher John P. Jewett contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book. While Stowe questioned if anyone would read Uncle Tom's Cabin in book form, she eventually consented to the request.
Convinced the book would be popular, Jewett made the unusual decision (for that time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing.[22] Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel soon sold out its complete print run. A number of other editions were soon printed (including a deluxe edition in 1853, featuring 117 illustrations by Billings).
In the first year of publication, 300,000 copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold. At that point, however, "demand came to an unexpected halt... No more copies were produced for many years, and if, as is claimed, Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe in 1862 as 'the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war,' the work had effectively been out of print for many years." Jewett went out of business, and it was not until Ticknor and Fields put the work back in print in November 1862 that demand began again to increase.
The book was translated into all major languages, and in the United States it became the second best-selling book after the Bible. A number of the early editions carried an introduction by Rev James Sherman, a Congregational minister in London noted for his abolitionist views. Uncle Tom's Cabin sold equally well in Britain, with the first London edition appearing in May 1852 and selling 200,000 copies. In a few years over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain, although most of these were pirated copies (a similar situation occurred in the United States).


Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom%27s_Cabin

Was born today : Aleksey Mikhailovich

Alexis Mikhailovich, also known as Alexis I of Russia, was born on March 19, 1629, in Moscow, Russia. The son of the first Romanov monarch of Russia, Alexis took the throne at age 16 and passed a code of laws that defined serfdom. He was married twice, first to Mariya Ilinichna Miloslavskaya (with whom he had two sons, the tsars Fyodor III and Ivan V), then to Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, whose son became Peter the Great. He died in Moscow on February 8, 1676.
His reign saw the Russian invasion of Poland and war with Sweden during the Deluge, the Raskol schism in the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Cossack revolt of Stenka Razin. On the eve of his death in 1676, the Tsardom of Russia spanned almost 2,000,000,000 acres (8,100,000 km2).
Born in Moscow on 29 March 1629, the son of Tsar Michael and Eudoxia Streshneva, Alexei acceded to the throne at the age of sixteen after his father's death on 12 July 1645. He was committed to the care of the boyar Boris Morozov, a shrewd and sensible guardian sufficiently enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no means inaccessible to Western ideas.
Morozov's foreign policy was pacificatory. He secured a truce with Poland and carefully avoided complications with the Ottoman Empire. His domestic policy was scrupulously fair and aimed at relieving the public burdens by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On 17 January 1648 Morozov procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavskaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later, both daughters of Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky (1594–1668).
Morozov was very unpopular however, regarded as a typical self-seeking 17th-century boyar, and was generally detested and accused of sorcery and witchcraft. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them in the so-called Salt Riot, and the young Tsar was compelled to dismiss them and exile Boris to the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. Four months later, Boris was secretly allowed to return to Moscow, where he subsequently managed to regain some of his lost power.
The popular discontent demonstrated by the riot was partially responsible for Alexis' 1649 issuance of a new legal code, the Sobornoye Ulozhenie.
According to reports by his contemporaries, he was complacent, affable and simultaneously grand and serious, with kindness shining in his blue eyes. He received some formal education, but it was limited to practical subjects needed to conduct the affairs of the state. He was taught history, geography, mathematics and natural sciences, as well as military and foreign affairs.
Aleksey Mikhailovich was also encouraged to read a wide range of books, including classical works by Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, medical books, and works on astrology and occult arts. He even tried to write verses and left notes about the Polish War. He liked to philosophize and was a passionate hunter. He was especially fond of falconry in which he was an expert. Despite his evidently good nature, he was quick-tempered and frequently came to blows. At one session of the Duma he drove his father-in-law, Miloslavsky, from the room by beating and kicking him. However he was quick to calm down and was far from vindictive.
In general, Aleksey Mikhailovich possessed a broad, relatively liberal background that allowed him to assess political issues quickly and accurately. However, he always had difficulty grasping abstract principles, which caused him to be swayed more by good rhetoric than by sound arguments. The impulsiveness of Aleksey Mikhailovich's mind resulted in his many dramatic shifts of opinion over the years. No doubt these qualities made autocratic rule more complicated and unpredictable. On the other hand, Aleksey Mikhailovich was free to use his imagination and ingenuity to reform and invigorate the languid Muscovite bureaucracy. It is the merit of Aleksey that he discovered so many great men (like Nikon, Orduin-Naschokin, Matvyeev) and suitably employed them.
Morozov was a shrewd and sensible guardian, sufficiently enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no means resistant to Western ideas. On 17 January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar to Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, 10 days later, thus became the tsar's brother-in-law. Both brides were daughters of Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky (1594 - 1668). When Aleksey married into the Miloslavsky family, they secured the most influential positions, according to well-established custom.


Sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_of_Russia
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-romanov-dynasty/aleksey-mikhailovich-romanov/
http://www.biography.com/people/alexis-mikhailovich-37732