Today in History: May 7

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony received its premiere on this date in 1824 at Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna.

By now Beethoven was totally deaf, yet he continued to lead performances of his work as a sort of side conductor; he kept what he thought was the correct tempo and he followed along with the printed score. For this performance, the musicians respectfully ignored him and watched the chief conductor, Michael Umlauf. It was to be Beethoven’s first appearance on stage in a dozen years. (More after the jump …)
Read More

My Shadow Knows Nothing

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

At once sarcastic and tender, W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” asks us to imagine a night sky empty of stars:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
 
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
 
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
 
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.— “The More Loving One,” W.H. Auden, 1957

I might very well like a starless sky and call it sublime or subtle in its black-on-black nuance, the poet declares, and not mourn the sight of a supernova, which is after all the explosive death of a star, and I may not notice the absence of one should it simply blink out, but in all matters, “If equal affection cannot be,/Let the more loving one be me.”

In all matters attracting my human attention, be it the night sky or my beloved’s face, let the more loving one be me.
Read More

Today in History: May 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. If he had not been born, America would have needed to invent someone like him. He left a mark on radio, theater, and film history, and he helped push each one of those forms forward into the future; and his public persona—a charming rogue, self-serious yet self-deprecating—is still missed 30-plus years after he left.

To the day he died, at age 70 in October 1985, he was scrambling for support, for the finances to back his film projects. Hollywood’s powers decided in the late 1940s, as a group, that he had decided to go it alone as a filmmaker. So he decided to go it alone as a filmmaker. At this Hollywood’s powers decided, as a group, that Welles could not be trusted, because he had kept his word.
Read More