Wikipedia:Main Page history/2019 January 1

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Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht (Time, which day and year doth make), BWV 134a, is a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach for a celebration of New Year's Day in 1719 at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen (hall in the palace pictured). The libretto by the author Christian Friedrich Hunold portrays a dialogue between two allegorical figures, Time (representing the past) and Divine Providence (the future). Bach set the words to eight movements consisting of alternating recitatives and arias, culminating in a choral finale. Most movements are duets for alto and tenor, supported by a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes, strings and continuo. The character of the music is close to Baroque opera, including its French dances. In Leipzig in 1724, Bach used this secular work as the basis for a church cantata for the Third Day of Easter, omitting two movements and changing only the text. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Christmas Oratorio at the Unionskirche

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... that Alphonsus J. Donlon became known as the "father of Georgetown athletics" for overseeing multiple victorious teams?
... that when creating the television drama Butterfly, the playwright Tony Marchant aimed to dispel the myth that transgender children transition in order to be "trendy"?
... that Wilmer Clemont Fields of the Southern Baptist Convention was a defender of freedom of the press?
... that the underwater mountain and former atoll Darwin Guyot is named after Charles Darwin?
... that Gujarati writer Geeta Parikh has written more than 900 poems?
... that in the Battle of the Hatpins, women protestors repelled police officers with rolling pins and skillets?

In the news

Damage from the Sunda Strait tsunami

The New Horizons space probe performs a flyby of 2014 MU₆₉, nicknamed Ultima Thule.
A tsunami hits the Sunda Strait, Indonesia, killing at least 426 people and injuring more than 7,000 others (aftermath pictured).
In field hockey, the World Cup concludes with Belgium defeating the Netherlands in the final.
The Balangiga bells, taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.

On this day

January 1

Ceres

417 – Galla Placidia was forced by her brother Honorius into marriage with his magister militum, Constantius III.
1773 – The hymn "Amazing Grace" was probably first used in a prayer meeting in Olney, England, without the music familiar to modern listeners.
1801 – Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf planet Ceres (pictured), naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture and of motherly love.
1945 – World War II: In retaliation for the massacre of captured Americans by Waffen SS soldiers, U.S. Army personnel killed 60 Wehrmacht prisoners near Chenogne, Belgium.
2011 – A bomb exploded at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, killing 23 people.

Lorenzo de' Medici (b. 1449) · Marie-Louise Lachapelle (b. 1769) · Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (d. 1937)

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The Garden at Sainte-Adresse is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French impressionist painter, Claude Monet. It was painted in 1867 in the French resort town of Sainte-Adresse, where Monet was spending the summer. The models were probably Monet's father Adolphe, his cousin Jeanne Marguérite Lecadre, her father Dr. Adolphe Lecadre, and perhaps Lecadre's other daughter, Sophie, the woman seated with her back to the viewer. The painting is composed with flat horizontal bands of colour, which were reminiscent of Japanese colour wood-block prints. The Garden at Sainte-Adresse is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Painting: Claude Monet

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