Most famous for his operas, Gluck was an Austrian who first came to prominence as a composer in Italy. Later, he moved to Paris, where his works came to synthesise elements of the Italian and French operatic styles, invigorating the form. One of the most important elements of his approach was to diminish the importance of the singers in favour of a greater concentration on the actual story being related.
His most famous opera is probably Orfeo ed Euridice, first performed in 1762, which showed early moves in his reformist direction. Later works, such as Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (1770), were even more innovative. At the time of his death, Gluck had created 35 full-length operas, plus a number of shorter works and ballets. The composer most directly influenced by him was probably Antonio Salieri, but his reach is great – Mozart, Berlioz and Wagner, among others, all cited him as an influence on their work.
There were those who never expected Charles to live to adulthood, let alone become king. The second son of James VI of Scotland, he was judged too fragile and sickly to travel to London with his family when James became King of England. And his older brother Henry was heir ahead of him.
But Henry died of diptheria when he was 18, and Charles, two weeks short of his 12th birthday, became the heir to the throne. Charles was 25 when he himself became King of England and Scotland, and few would have predicted that his reign would have the results it did – neither Cromwell’s uprising nor Charles’ later (posthumous) canonisation seemed very likely in 1625.
Oddly, not the Platonic Ideal of the philosopher (although in fairness, he would have been the first to point that out), Plato is one of the trio of great Greek philosophers who helped to define Western Philosophy and Science for millenia. The other two were his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle (who was himself the teacher of Alexander the Great).
Plato was born in Athens (although the exact date is unknown – the one I have used here is traditional, but not necessarily correct) to a wealthy family, and given the best education money could buy. Even as a child, he was known for his quick mind. As a younger man, he travelled widely in search of knowledge, and returned to Athens at the age of forty to found the Academy, an institution that would last for nine centuries and train many philosophers, scientists and others from all over the ancient world.
He also left behind a considerable body of writing that helped to define the parameters of philosophy and science until virtually the Rennaisance. He also wrote on politics, art and religion. Often, his writings were in the form of Socratic Dialogues, in which Socrates would be the one who espoused the ideas that were actually Plato’s.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, David Hume was one of the greatest of British philosophers. Best known for his empiricism and skepticism, his most famous claim is that – in direct opposition to Rene Descartes – reason is not the greatest driver of humanity, but rather, than desire is. (Obviously, economists were too busy misunderstanding Adam Smith to catch up with this idea for several centuries.) His attitudes to religion were notably ambiguous, although he was critical of the argument from design.
Broadly a member of the utilitarian school of philosophy, Hume was a very influential figure in the history of philosophy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, William James, Joseph Butler and Adam Smith were all influenced by his ideas – Kant and Smith in particular credited him with inspiring their own works. Hume was also a pioneer of the essay as a literary form.
Born at almost the end of the 16th Century, Oliver Cromwell would grow to become one of the most important figures of the following century. He was born to a family of the gentry, and lived the first four decades of his life as a gentleman farmer. Had not two changes occurred in his life – an inheritance from an uncle that made him richer, and a conversion to a more Puritan faith.
With these behind him, Cromwell would become first the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, and rise through the ranks to become Lord-Protector of England by the time of his death. He would also, by this point, by a recigide who had led a civil war against his rightful king, and responsible for an invasion of Ireland that killed thousands, many of them civilians – even today, he is still hated on many parts of Ireland.
The third of the three great Ancient Greek philoshophers was the student of Plato (who, in his turn, had been a student of Socrates). The works of Plato and Aristotle were the foundation of science and reason – and for that matter, of theology – for literally hundreds of years. It was not until the Rennaisance that their works were surpassed in Western Europe.
Aristotle’s works included foundational texts on logic, politics, ethics, poetry, physics, metaphysics and biology. In addition to being one of the most prolific writers of his era – and this is based only on his surviving works (some of them are lost to us) – he was also a teacher. He taught in Athens and later in Macedon, where his students included Alexander the Great, as well as Ptolemy I (a general of Alexander’s) and Cassander (a later Macedonian king). In his 62 years of life, it appears that about the only thing he didn’t do was sleep…
Handel was 74 years old at the time of his death. Unmarried, he left much of his estate to a niece. He had experienced loss of vision after a botched cataract operation eight years earlier, which had curtailed his output.
Handel’s musical compositions included 42 operas, 29 oratorios, numerous arias, chamber music, a large number of ecumenical pieces, odes and serenatas, 16 organ concerti and more than 120 cantatas, trios and duets. His best known work is the Messiah oratorio, which featured the Hallelujah Chorus. Handel was an unusual composer. Influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral traditions, he also introduced a range of unusual instruments into his compositions, including the viola d’amore, violetta marina, lute, trombone, clarinet, small high cornet, theorbo, horn, lyrichord, double bassoon, viola da gamba, bell chimes, positive organ and harp – many of which would become more commonly used by composers and musicians as a result of Handel’s popularisation of them.
At the direction of Cromwell, Colonel Thomas Pride took elements of their forces – his own Regiment of Foot and Nathaniel Rich’s Regiment of Horse – and they moved to control access to the Houses of Parliament. As the Members arrived, they were checked off against a list that Pride had been issued by Lord Grey of Groby. Continue reading 1648 – Colonel Pride purges the Houses of Parliament
Franz Peter Schubert was only 31 when he died of what doctors diagnosed as typhoid fever (although others claimed that it was tertiary syphillis). The Austrian was one of the most prolific composers of his era, writing more than 600 songs, 7 symphonies – not including his famous “Unfinished Symphony” (of which he wrote two movements before his death) – 5 operas and 21 sonatas.
His 600 songs were primarily Lieder, and Schubert’s greatest influence is found in this form – understandably, as in doing so many of them he explored nearly every possible variation of them. There is no telling what he might have accomplished had he lived longer – even in his relatively brief span, his style changed and evolved markedly. His epitath reads “Here music has buried a treasure, but even fairer hopes” – and rarely has anyone had a more accurate epitath.
The initial stages of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland started well for him. His forces triumphed over the Royalist and Irish forces at the battle of Rathmines on August 2, 1649, and Cromwell himself landed in Dublin on August 15, with a fleet of 35 ships. 77 more ships, also loaded with troops and materiel, landed two days later, reinforcing the already substantial forces of Cromwell.
His conquest of Ireland was bloody and brutal. Cromwell’s religious tolerance did not extend to Catholics, whose numbers included the over-whelming majority of the Irish. Cromwell’s invasion marked the beginning of more than three and half centuries of oppression of the Irish Catholic majority by their Protestant British conquerors, ending only in 1922 when the independent Repblic of Eire was formed – and arguably not even then, considering the endless fighting between Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland even today.
Another thing that continues to the current day is the upopularity of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, for understandable reasons.
Born in 1791 in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer was one of the foremost exponents of the musical and theatrical form known as ‘The Grand Opera’. In his day he was one of the most famed composers in all of Europe, but his reputation has suffered since his death – largely due to the attacks on his character and works by his former student Richard Wagner.
The motivation for these attacks is complex – Wagner was clearly jealous of his teacher’s success and the wealth that it brought him, but also despised Meyerbeer due to the older man’s Jewishness. Among other wild accusations, Wagner accused Meterbeer of bribing critics to ensure favourable reviews.
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