Celebration Day
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The Life You Give: Jean-Paul Sartre *VI 21 1905
Jean-Paul Sartre, born June 21, 1905, in Paris, France, is the philosopher, novelist, and playwright, best known as the leading exponent of existentialism in the 20th century. In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize for Literature, which had been awarded to him “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of…
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The Life You Give: Ray Davies *VI 21 1944
Ray Davies was the lead singer, chief songwriter, and rhythm guitarist in the Kinks, one of the most long-lived of the British Invasion rock groups of the 1960s. In effect, the Kinks had always been merely a backup group for Davies, who wrote and sang nearly all their songs with only the occasional contribution from…
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Das Leben, das Du gibst / The Life You Give: Kurt Schwitters *1887
Kurt Schwitters, born June 20, 1887, in Hannover, Germany, is the Dada artist and poet, best known for his collages and relief constructions. Soon after World War I Schwitters was attracted by the emerging Dada school, a nihilistic literary and artistic movement dedicated to the destruction of existing aesthetic values. Denied membership in the Berlin…
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The Life You Give: Paul McCartney *1942
Paul McCartney, born James Paul McCartney, June 18, 1942, in Liverpool, England, is the vocalist, songwriter, composer, bass player, poet, and painter whose work with the Beatles in the 1960s helped lift popular music from its origins in the entertainment business and transform it into a creative, highly commercial art form. He is also one…
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The Life You Give: Eva Marton *1943
Hungarian soprano Eva Marton has enjoyed a highly successful career on the world’s leading operatic stages since the late ’60s. With her powerful, attractive voice she has managed to score numerous successes in the Italian spinto roles of Verdi and Puccini, the heftier roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss, and the more delicate but equally…
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The Life You Give: Igor Stravinsky *1882
Igor Stravinsky, born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum [now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia, is the composer whose work had a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and whose compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working…
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The Life You Give: Charles Gounod *1818
Charles Gounod, born Charles-françois Gounod, June 17, 1818, in Paris, France, is a composer noted particularly for his operas, of which the most famous is Faust. Gounod’s father was a painter, and his mother was a capable pianist who gave Gounod his early training in music. He was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis, where he…
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The Life You Give: Edvard Grieg *1843
Edvard Grieg, born Edvard Hagerup Grieg, June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway, is the composer who was a founder of the Norwegian nationalist school of music. His father, Alexander Grieg, was British consul at Bergen. The Grieg (formerly Greig) family was of Scottish origin, the composer’s grandfather having emigrated after the Battle of Culloden. His…
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The Life You Give: Anne Frank *1929
Anne Frank, born Annelies Marie Frank, June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, February/March 1945, is the girl whose diary of her family’s two years in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands became a classic of war literature. Early in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, Anne’s father, Otto Frank (1889–1980), a…
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The Life You Give: Hugh Laurie *1959
Hugh Laurie, born James Hugh Calum Laurie, June 11, 1959, in Oxford, England, is comic actor perhaps best known for his role on the television series House (2004–12). Laurie was educated at Eton College and Selwyn College, Cambridge. His father won a gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics as a member of the British…
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The Life You Give: Richard Strauss *1864
Richard Strauss, born Richard Georg Strauss, June 11, 1864, Munich, Germany, is an outstanding Romantic composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His symphonic poems of the 1890s and his operas of the following decade have remained an indispensable feature of the standard repertoire. Strauss’s father, Franz, was the principal horn player of…
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“Tristan and Isolde” (Richard Wagner), premiered today in 1865
Tristan and Isolde, Tristan also called Tristram or Tristrem, Isolde also called Iseult, Isolt, or Yseult, principal characters of a famous medieval love-romance, based on a Celtic legend (itself based on an actual Pictish king). Though the archetypal poem from which all extant forms of the legend are derived has not been preserved, a comparison…
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The Life You Give: Paul Gauguin *1848
Paul Gauguin, born Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin, June 7, 1848, in Paris, France, is the painter, printmaker, and sculptor who sought to achieve a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist, and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van…
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The Life You Give: Robert Schumann *1810
Robert Schumann, born Robert Alexander Schumann, June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony [Germany], is the Romantic composer renowned particularly for his piano music, songs (lieder), and orchestral music. Many of his best-known piano pieces were written for his wife, the pianist Clara Schumann. Schumann’s father was a bookseller and publisher. After four years at a…
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The Life You Give: Prince *1958
Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, on June 7 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A., is the singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, dancer, and performer on keyboards, drums, and bass who was among the most talented American musicians of his generation. Like Stevie Wonder, he was a rare composer who could perform at a professional level on virtually…
Sila Blume 