Sila Blume
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Gioachino Rossini *II 29 1792 — The Life You Give
Gioachino Rossini, born Gioachino Antonio Rossini, on February 29 1792, in Pesaro, Papal States [Italy], is the composer noted for his operas, particularly his comic operas, of which The Barber of Seville (1816), Cinderella (1817), and Semiramide (1823) are among the best known. Of his later, larger-scale dramatic operas, the most widely heard is William…
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Rudolf Steiner *II 27 1861 — The Life You Give
Rudolf Steiner, born February 27 1861, in Kraljević, Austria, was a spiritualist, lecturer, and founder of anthroposophy, a movement based on the notion that there is a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but accessible only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge. Attracted in his youth to the works of Goethe, Steiner edited that…
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Víctor Hugo *II 26 1802 — The Life You Give
Victor Hugo, born Victor-Marie Hugo, February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France, is the poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).…
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Enrico Caruso *II 25 1873 — The Life You Give
Enrico Caruso, born February 25, 1873, in Naples, Italy, is the most admired Italian operatic tenor of the early 20th century and one of the first musicians to document his voice on recordings. Caruso was born into a poor family. Although he was a musical child who sang Neapolitan folk songs everywhere and joined his…
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Renata Scotto *II 24 1934 –The Life You Give
Renata Scotto’s long and successful operatic career was marked by a rare combination of dramatic intensity and vocal flexibility, which allowed her to traverse a wide variety of styles. She believed strongly in the theatrical elements of performing and always focused her energies on the meaning of a text. She also felt much of the…
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Georg Friedrich Händel *II 23 1685 — The Life You Give
George Frideric Handel, German (until 1715) Georg Friedrich Händel, Händel also spelled Haendel, (born February 23, 1685, Halle, Brandenburg [Germany]—died April 14, 1759, London, England), German-born English composer of the late Baroque era, noted particularly for his operas, oratorios, and instrumental compositions. He wrote the most famous of all oratorios, Messiah (1741), and is also…
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Luis Buñuel *II 22 1900 — The Life You Give / La Vida Que Das
Luis Buñuel, born Luis Buñuel Portolés on February 22, 1900, Calanda, Aragón, Spain, is the filmmaker who was a leading figure in Surrealism, the tenets of which suffused both his life and his work. An unregenerate atheist and communist sympathizer who was preoccupied with themes of gratuitous cruelty, eroticism, and religious mania, he won early…
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Andrés Segovia *II 21 1893 — La Vida Que Das / The Life You Give
Andrés Segovia, nacido en Linares, España, el 21 de febrero del 1893, es el guitarrista y pedagogo cual, junto a Narciso Yepes, fue el principal responsable de la consolidación de la guitarra como instrumento de concierto, a un nivel comparable al que ocupan el violín y el piano, al menos en cuanto a la calidad…
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Simon Jeffes *II 19 1949 — The Life You Give
Simon Jeffes, born Simon Harry Piers Jeffes, on 19 February 1949, is the classically trained guitarist, composer and arranger who formed, and was the primary performer of, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. He was the composer of the ballet Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, of the much-recorded piece Music For A Found Harmonium, and other…
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Toni Morrison *II 18 1931 — The Live You Give
Toni Morrison, born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.A., was the writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense…
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Repeatedly attractive for the wrong reason
He – standing while I sat – leaned his upper body towards me to utter some form of greeting. I understood neither the language nor the intention of the greeting. Yet, I immediately had the feeling to understand why he had addressed me. One of my several sketch/notebooks has a Persian structure on its cover,…
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silence — music — silence
Whenever music happens, silence must follow.Not the absolute absence of sound but no other piece of music should be allowed to interject the silence which ought to encompass and protect a piece of music. A short, intricate piece, at times “simple” – Schubert, Chopin, Satie, Liszt, et cetera – interpreted by a mature, talented, seasoned,…
Sila Blume 