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Interrupted/Innerupted: Symphony No. 8, Franz Schubert
Take a moment, hook in your best pair of headphones, maybe even close your eyes, and listen to the first haunting bars of Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished” Eighth Symphony. It begins with a single, hushed melodic line in the low strings which quickly gives way to shivering violins and darkly pulsating bass pizzicati. Then, a lamenting…
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Marina Abramović *XI 30 1946 — The Life You Give
Marina Abramović, born November 30, 1946, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia [now in Serbia]), is a performance artist known for works that dramatically tested the endurance and limitations of her own body and mind. Abramović was raised in Yugoslavia by parents who fought as Partisans in World War II and were later employed in the communist government…
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C. S. Lewis *XI 29 1898 — The Life You Give
Clive Staples Lewis, born November 29, 1898, Belfast, Ireland [now in Northern Ireland] was scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, many of them on Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. His works of greatest lasting fame may be The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children’s books that have…
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Gaetano Donizetti *XI 29 1797 — The Life You Give
Gaetano Donizetti, born on Nov. 29, 1797, in Bergamo, Cisalpine Republic, was an Italian opera composer whose numerous operas in both Italian and French represent a transitional stage in operatic development between Rossini and Verdi. Among his major works are Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), La fille du régiment (1840), and La favorite (1840). In his…
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William Blake *XI 28 1757 — The Life You Give
William Blake, born Nov. 28, 1757, in London, England, is the engraver, artist, poet, and visionary, author of exquisite lyrics in Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) and profound and difficult “prophecies,” such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804[–?11]), and Jerusalem (1804[–?20]).…
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Stefan Zweig *XI 28 1881 — The Life You Give
Stefan Zweig, born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now in Austria], is the writer who achieved distinction in several genres—poetry, essays, short stories, and dramas—most notably in his interpretations of imaginary and historical characters. Zweig was raised in Vienna. His first book, a volume of poetry, was published in 1901. He received a doctorate…
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Alfredo Kraus *XI 24 1927 — The Life You Give
One of the most stylistic, professional and refined tenors of the century, Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus passed away recently in Madrid after a long and outstanding career in the world of opera. The Kraus personality gravitated between two poles. On one side the tenor of Mozart and on the other side the lyrical tenor of…
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Alfred Schnittke *XI 24 1934 — The Life you Give
Alfred Schnittke, born Nov. 24, 1934, Engels, Volga German Autonomous S.S.R. [now in Saratov oblast, Russia], is the postmodernist Russian composer who created serious, dark-toned musical works characterized by abrupt juxtapositions of radically different, often contradictory, styles, an approach that came to be known as “polystylism.” Schnittke’s father was a Jewish journalist who had been…
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Sila Blume 