June 17
CHARLES GOUNOD (June 17, 1818)
June 17 is the birthday of French composer CHARLES GOUNOD (1818-1893).
"God created three beautiful things: music, flowers and women. It is them I always sang."
Gounod "wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been Faust (1859); his Roméo et Juliette (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his 'Ave Maria' (an elaboration of a Bach piece) and 'Funeral March of a Marionette.'
Born in Paris into an artistic and musical family, Gounod was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris and won France's most prestigious musical prize, the Prix de Rome. His studies took him to Italy, Austria and then Prussia, where he met Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy of the music of Bach was an early influence on him. He was deeply religious, and after his return to Paris, he briefly considered becoming a priest. He composed prolifically, writing church music, songs, orchestral music and operas." (Wikipedia)
IGOR STRAVINSKY (June 17, 1882)
June 17 is the birthday of Russian-American composer IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971).
"My music is best understood by children and animals."
Stravinsky "was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.
Born to a famous bass in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied under him until his death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and later changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure." (Wikipedia)
M.C. ESCHER (June 17, 1898)
June 17 is the birthday of Dutch illustrator M.C. ESCHER (1898-1972).
"Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?"
"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check."
"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder."
Escher "work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, and Donald Coxeter, and the crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation." (Wikipedia)
Drawing Hands
Other World
Self Portrait
RUTH GRAVES WAKEFIELD (June 17, 1903)
June 17 is the birthday of the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie, RUTH GRAVES WAKEFIELD (1903-1977) Woo Hoo!!! 🍪 🥛
"We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it, but I was trying to give them something different. So I came up with Toll House cookie."
Wakefield and her husband owned the Toll House Inn, a tourist lodge, in Whitman, Massachusetts. She invented the chocolate chip cookie for Toll House around 1938. Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name for one dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestlé chocolate. Nestlé began marketing chocolate chips to be used especially for cookies and printing the recipe for the Toll House Cookie on its package.
WALLY WOOD (June 17, 1927)
June 17 is the birthday of cartoonist WALLY WOOD (1927-1981).
"If I had it all to do over again, I'd cut off my hands." -- Wally Wood
Wood is best known for his work on the science fiction and horror E.C. Comics, being a founding cartoonist of MAD magazine and his work on the "Mars Attacks" trading cards.
After a a tragic life that included chronic headaches, divorce, alcoholism, a stroke, kidney failure and vision loss, Wood, described as "a stand-up guy" and an "engine of rage," killed himself by gunshot.
"Wally may have been our most troubled artist . . . I'm not suggesting any connection, but he may have been our most brilliant" -- EC publisher William Gaines
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
union station massacre
On June 17, 1933, the Union Station Massacre occurred. In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash were gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash.