Jay (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jaytheotaku) wrote,@ 2006-09-07 10:56:00 |
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Birthday Cards
Stolen from another site!
Amazing Find in a Crate of Birthday Cards
The birthday cards, all dating from the 18th century, were packed in a crate that was removed from a library in Weimar, Germany just before it was devastated by a fire last September. Now researchers have meticulously sorted through those cards and found something quite extraordinary: a previously unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The Associated Press reports that the work for soprano and string or keyboard accompaniment was composed for a German duke's birthday when Bach was 28 years old and served as the duke's court organist. The composition, which is dated October 1713, is the first new music Bach to be found in three decades. There is no doubt about the authenticity of the handwritten, two-page score that was found by Michael Maul from the Bach Archiv Foundation. "It is no major composition, but an occasional work in the form of an exquisite and highly refined strophic aria, Bach's only contribution to a musical genre popular in late 17th-century Germany," Christoph Wolff, the foundation's director and a professor at Harvard University, told AP. These are the oldest handwritten music scripts of Bach.
The crate of antique birthday cards, all of which were given in honor of the German duke's 52nd birthday by various officials and clerics, was stored in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, and was removed for restoration. Soon after, the library caught fire, and the room in which the crate had been stored was completely destroyed. "Otherwise the work would have been consumed by the flames and we would never have known of its existence," Wolff said. English conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner is preparing to record the newly found composition, reports AP.
I have two thoughts on this. One being that it would be pretty cool to find something like that. The second that all of the "new IIDX / DDR songs" jokes on bemanistyle are hilarious, and awesome. Either way, still pretty cool.
Stolen from another site!
Amazing Find in a Crate of Birthday Cards
The birthday cards, all dating from the 18th century, were packed in a crate that was removed from a library in Weimar, Germany just before it was devastated by a fire last September. Now researchers have meticulously sorted through those cards and found something quite extraordinary: a previously unknown composition by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The Associated Press reports that the work for soprano and string or keyboard accompaniment was composed for a German duke's birthday when Bach was 28 years old and served as the duke's court organist. The composition, which is dated October 1713, is the first new music Bach to be found in three decades. There is no doubt about the authenticity of the handwritten, two-page score that was found by Michael Maul from the Bach Archiv Foundation. "It is no major composition, but an occasional work in the form of an exquisite and highly refined strophic aria, Bach's only contribution to a musical genre popular in late 17th-century Germany," Christoph Wolff, the foundation's director and a professor at Harvard University, told AP. These are the oldest handwritten music scripts of Bach.
The crate of antique birthday cards, all of which were given in honor of the German duke's 52nd birthday by various officials and clerics, was stored in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, and was removed for restoration. Soon after, the library caught fire, and the room in which the crate had been stored was completely destroyed. "Otherwise the work would have been consumed by the flames and we would never have known of its existence," Wolff said. English conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner is preparing to record the newly found composition, reports AP.
I have two thoughts on this. One being that it would be pretty cool to find something like that. The second that all of the "new IIDX / DDR songs" jokes on bemanistyle are hilarious, and awesome. Either way, still pretty cool.
