Archive for February, 2024

George Frederic Handel

Posted in Westminster Abbey with tags , on February 26, 2024 by Cade

handel1February 23, 1684  – April 14, 1759

Before Beethoven, before Mozart, before Tchaikovsky…there was Handel. One of the big three composers of the pre-Classical Baroque era (along with Bach and Vivaldi) Georg Friederich Händel quickly became known in his Brandendburg-Prussian hometown (modern-day Germany). Before the age of 10, he was discovered playing a church organ and his formal music education commenced. Marked by distinctively harmonic – if LONG – cantatas and church compositions, Handel’s early career led him to Hamburg and then to Italy, where he composed sacred church music when classic Italian opera was not allowed by the Pope.

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Malcolm McLaren

Posted in Highgate Cemetery with tags on February 19, 2024 by Cade

January 22, 1946 – April 08, 2010

The history of popular culture – and counter-cultural music in particular – is riddled with provocateurs. Characters whose entire being longs to push boundaries and shock the system. Enter Malcolm McLaren.

Whether selling original clothes out of a dingy shop in Chelsea or building the foundational architecture of the punk rock subgenre of music, McLaren approached everything he did with a proverbial thumb in the eye of “The Man”.

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Alexandre Dumas

Posted in The Pantheon with tags , on February 12, 2024 by Cade

July 24, 1802 – December 05, 1870

French novelist and playwright, Alexandre Dumas, was a leading voice in the 19th Romantic literary movement. Born of a mixed-race lineage stemming from the Caribbean French colony known today as Haiti, Dumas used his struggles with race issues along with his travels throughout a changing European landscape to craft historical fiction that was both immediately popular and enduring. Though a successful playwright at the start of his career, his most famous works are arguably his many novels, including “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers.” Like many of his contemporaries, much of his writing was released serially and later compiled into the works we know today.

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Benjamin Franklin

Posted in Christ Church Burial Ground with tags on February 5, 2024 by Cade

January 6, 1705 – April 17, 1790

The key. The kite. The bifocals. The legend.

Benjamin Franklin is arguably one of the most popular and famous Americans in the history of the country. Born in Boston to English colonists, Ben was one of 17 children between his father’s two marriages. Originally, his father wanted him to be a minister, but could not afford to pay for more than two years of school. Young Ben dropped out and became an apprentice in his brother’s printshop.

Printmaking would define much of Franklin’s early life. He moved himself to Philadelphia and began publishing leaflets, newsletters and – eventually – newspapers. Gravitating toward critique and satire, his writings (often under pseudonyms) became very popular. He made a very good living having founded a number of papers in Pennsylvania and other colonies.
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