contrafactum (10. 855)

Lyrics written by Andover, Massachusetts seminarian Samuel Francis Smith to the melody of the British royal anthem, God Save the King, the above adaptation reworking the tune from a symbol and trapping of monarchy to a statement about American democracy, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” was first performed for Independence Day celebrations in 1831 and became one of the two de facto national anthems (along side the patriotic number “Hail Columbia”—the march of the vice-president) until the adoption of the “The Star-Spangled Banner” exactly a century later. The implementation of the tune and musical salute (which also exists in Latin, peace-time and Republican—God save the Guillotine—versions) for another national song, however, was not new and contrafacta arrangements were used, usually connected with royal ceremony, and still used in Liechtenstein (Oben am jungen Rhein), Norway (Kongesangen) and Switzerland (Rufst du, mein Vaterland, until 1961 when replaced the National Hymne) formerly used in the kingdoms of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria and imperial Russia.

synchronoptica  

one year ago: nebulas were known as guest stars

two years ago: Occupied Austria (1945) plus flowers in the woods

three years ago: American Top 40 (1970), Nixon’s Honor America Day (1970) plus more on spelling conventions

four years ago: Annual Reminder (1969) plus the Sky Disc of Nebra discovered (1999)

five years ago: more adventures on Lake Garda

lux æterna (10. 854)

Ahead of the composer’s centenary tribute from the Proms, the Guardian profiles the life and career of influential, dissident virtuoso György Ligeti whose work informed the likes of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Radiohead, and rather infamously used by the director in 2001: A Space Odyssey to frame pivotal moments without the artist’s full permission, Stanley Kubrick opting not to use the work commissioned for the soundtrack and using public domain classic orchestral arrangements instead. 2001 is by far not his lasting legacy, having created many evocative and innovative works, like an arrangement for one hundred metronomes, but his plexiglass Ehrengrab (1923 - 2006) in Vienna’s Central Cemetery looks as if it could have been fashioned from the original Monolith. Read more about the progressive compositions of Ligeti at the link up top. Below is one of his final works, the 2003 reworking of the Hamburg Concerto with distempered tuning.

9x9 (10. 853)

lost animals: a short story by Geoff Manaugh who exorcises haunted houses with mundane equipment  

clippit: discontinued Microsoft Office Assistant resurrected as a ChatGPT add-on—see previously  

space10: IKEA reimagines a line of flatware encouraging the use of abundant, locally sourced materials—see also 

all-domain anomaly resolution office: newspapers of record passed on the bombshell story of US government programme to reverse-engineer captured extraterrestrial technology—via Slashdot 

i do not want my name to be a thing: John Hancock explains his outsized signature on the Declaration of Independence—see also 

duty to bargain: Google joins Meta in pulling its headline aggregators from Canada over the so called “link tax” 

not to put too fine a point on it: the origins of a selection of hackneyed idioms 

the ganzfeld procedure: a cheap, easy and effective sensory-deprivation technique

short fiction: six-word sci-fi prompts

ziggy played guitar (10. 852)

After one hundred eighty two concert performances and eighteen months of touring, David Bowie, with only bandmate and guitarist Mick Ronson knowing in advance, announced on this day in 1973 during live show at Hammersmith Odeon in London that he would be retiring, just before the final song “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide,” “Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because it is not only the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show we’ll ever do”—only to clarify to shocked fans and the rest of his band that he meant the persona of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars backing band. This final concert for Stardust was the subject of a documentary by D A Pennebaker and later released as a motion picture a decade on.

curtain call (10. 851)

NPR’s Goats and Soda features a commendable selection of superlative aerial photography from this year’s Drone Photo Awards (previously), which will be displayed in Siena’s Teatro dei Rinnovati during its festivities in October. In its sixth year, the annual competition to challenge our perspectives showcases a wide range of subjects from natural disasters, pollution, playgrounds to the precision symmetry of agriculture, like this strawberry field prepared for harvest as captured by Guy Shmueli in Hadera, Israel, that looks like the opening of a stage play. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Dog Days of summer, Double Indemnity (1944), assorted links to revisit plus DALL-E Mini

two years ago: the Phaistos Disk (1908), IKEA on the US government’s report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena plus on the etymology of the antiquated word hermaphrodite  

three years ago: a narrow-cast channel featuring video artefacts and interstitials, Mount Rushmore plus the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (1979)

four years ago: assorted links to revisit plus Krispy Kreme leaves Iceland

five years ago: the cliffs of Lake Garda

civics semiotics (10. 850)

As part of an ongoing series of glossaries on diverse themes (previously), Tedium presents an interesting index of Americana ahead of its national holiday, not as a patriotic apology but rather a celebration of the miscellany that has influenced the shape of the country—and there are some choice facts and figures, like how the Clinton impeachment helped launch Netflix, with the company selling DVDs of the grand jury testimony for 2¢ (plus shipping), Kraft dinner, disco demolition Night at ballparks, Jackalopes and other domestic cryptids, suppressing the metric system, or the phenomenon that is BJ Snowden—a cult figure more for the neighbour to the north of the US for her songs covering each province but also celebrated as an outsider musician in America as well for her album Life in the USA and Canada and this power ballad.

8x8 (10. 849)

♄: JWST captures outstanding images of the ringed planet, completing a family portrait of the gas giants  

dining al fresco: excavations in Pompeii uncover a a still life featuring a proto-pizza—see also  

ɚ: rare phonemes and how to pronounce them  

gas, food, lodging: one hundred twenty pump filling station, the world’s largest, opens in Tennessee as a tourist attraction—via Marginal Revolution 

ripples in a pond: astrophysicists detect new class of gravitational waves rolling through the Cosmos

abacusynth: a unique electronic musical instrument from Elias Jarzobek 

liquid television: MTV’s first animated series, Stevie and Zoya—see previously  

euclid and roman: a joint NASA, ESA mission to survey the skies for signs of dark matter and dark energy

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit

two years ago: your daily demon: Morax, the influence of 70s Japanese soft rock on Nintendo music, mid-point of the year, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, a trip to Oberwaldbehrungen plus the punishments of Pompeii

three years ago: assorted links to revisit, Airplane (1980) plus the Civil Rights Act (1964)

four years ago: disruptive cake icing to evade IP infringement plus the time that Pepsi (sort of) had the second largest naval fleet in the world

five years ago: holidaying on Lake Garda

six years ago: playable Wikipedia,  a preview of the G20 in Hamburg plus words only said once

amtsblatt (10. 848)

Fresh off the announcement that National Geographic has let go its remaining staff writers after a storied history of one hundred thirty five years and is veering to a glossy legacy publication cobbled together from Wikipedia posts edited by freelancers, we learn also via Boing Boing, that after two republics, ten emperors and three hundred and twenty years of daily reportage, the Wiener Zeitung will end its print edition and severely reduce its operations to online, monthly reviews. Until yesterday the oldest still published newspaper in the world, was the official record of the government of Austria (founded in 1703 as the Wiennerisches Diarium and in 1857 nationalised by Franz Joseph I), a gazette publishing notices of the passage of laws and executive orders, but had editorial independence and featured stories of local and international interest and had a robust circulations in the tens of thousands. Meanwhile the Wiener Zeitung will establish a media hub for aggregating content and training journalist, prompting street protests in Vienna in response to the government’s decision to stop publication.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: one time collaborator turned critic priest Walter Niemöller (author of “First They Came”) arrested by the Nazis (1937) plus the opening of the newly devolved Scottish Parliament (1999) 

two years ago: Tell Me You Love Me Junie Moon (1970), the bizarre sequel to 101 Dalmatians, assorted links to revisit, “The Message” by Grand Master Flash (1982) plus the holdings of the Vatican Library

three years ago: slavery abolished in the Dutch Antilles (1863), reforms to Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a new American Gothic, safeguarding statues plus license plates in Palau

four years ago: Denmark legalises pornography (1969), moving day in Quebec, assorted links to revisit, Lights at Sea plus the Coffer Illusion