Sir Alastair Pilkington

 Alastair Pilkington 

Alastair Pilkington - he was honoured with a knighthood in 1970 - invented the "float"

 method of glass making which revolutionised the industry in the 1960s. He had the idea in the early 1950s, but it took seven years of hard work to prove that he was right, and the cost of developing the process was high, particularly for a company that was at the time family owned. Although the process was announced to the public in 1959, it was not until 1962-3 that it became consistently reliable and profitable.

Born in 1920, Alastair Pilkington was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He became an officer in the Royal Artillery just before the outbreak of World War II, and later fought in the Mediterranean, where he was taken prisoner after the fall of Crete. When the war ended, he returned to Cambridge and gained a degree in mechanical science. He joined what was then Pilkington Brothers (there was no family connection) as a technical officer in 1947.

When he started work on his process, the target was to make, more economically, the high-quality glass essential for shop windows, cars, mirrors and other applications where distortion free glass was necessary.  At that time this quality of glass could only be made by the costly and wasteful plate process, of which Pilkington Brothers had also been the innovator. Because there was glass-to-roller contact, surfaces were marked. They had to be ground and polished to produce the parallel surfaces which bring optical perfection in the finished product.

Sheet glass - glass made by drawing it vertically in a ribbon from a furnace - was cheaper than polished plate glass because it was not ground or polished, but it was unacceptable for high-quality applications because the production method imparted some distortion. It was suitable for domestic and horticultural glazing, but could not replace polished plate. Many people in the glass industry had dreamed of combining the best features of both processes. They wanted to make glass with the brilliant surfaces of sheet glass and the flat and parallel surfaces of polished plate.  Float

 glass proved to be the answer.

In the process, a continuous ribbon of glass moves out of the melting furnace and floats along the surface of a bath of molten tin. The ribbon is held at a high enough temperature over a long enough time for the irregularities to melt and for the surfaces to become flat and parallel: because the surface of the molten tin is flat, the glass also becomes flat. The ribbon is then cooled down while still on the molten tin, until the surfaces are hard enough for it to be taken out of the bath without rollers marking the bottom surface: so a glass of uniform thickness and with bright, fire-polished surfaces is produced without the need for grinding and polishing.

Alastair Pilkington encountered numerous setbacks during his seven years of hard labour. People, he recalls, kept asking him: 'When will you succeed?' All he could say was: 'We will know the answer to that only when we have succeeded.' The cost was far higher than anyone had bargained for, and it took considerable courage for the board of directors to go on supporting him. When he finally made it, they decided to license the process, chiefly to get some income but also in order to ensure that others would not find it worthwhile to research their own technology.

The first foreign licence went to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in 1962, and this was quickly followed by manufacturers in Europe, Japan, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and others in the USA. Today, around 260 float plants are in operation, under construction or planned worldwide. Pilkington operates 25 plants, and has an interest in a further nine.

Sir Alastair Pilkington died in 1995.

With affection,

Ruben

Great Fire of Rome

 

Great Fire of Rome

Source: Wikipedia Free encyclopedia

Rome (Latin: incendium magnum Romae) began on the evening of 18-19 July 64 AD.[1] The fire started in the merchant shops around Rome's chariot stadium, Circus Maximus. After six days, the fire was brought under control, but before the damage could be assessed, the fire reignited and burned for another three days. In the aftermath of the fire, nearly three quarters of Rome had been destroyed (10 out of 14 districts).[2]

 

According to Tacitus and later Christian tradition, Emperor Nero blamed the devastation on the Christian community in the city, initiating the empire's first persecution against the Christians.[3] Other contemporary historians blamed Nero's incompetence but it is commonly agreed by historians nowadays that Rome was too densely populated and inadequately prepared to effectively deal with large scale disasters, including fires, and that such an event was inevitable.

 

Background

Previous recorded fires in Rome

Fires in Rome were common, especially in houses,[4] and fires that had occurred previously in Rome and destroyed parts of major buildings include:

 

AD 6, which led to the introduction of the Cohortes Vigiles[5]

AD 12 which destroyed the Basilica Julia[4]

AD 14 at the Basilica Aemilia[4]

AD 22 at the Campus Martius[4]

AD 26 at Caelian Hill[4]

AD 36 at the Circus Maximus[4]

Nero

Nero was proclaimed Roman emperor in AD 54 at the age of 17.[2] His rule has commonly been associated with impulsiveness and tyranny but was, for the most part, liked by the general populace and disliked merely by the aristocracy. Early in his reign, he was heavily advised, but he slowly became more independent. In AD 59, encouraged by his mistress Poppaea, Nero murdered his mother Agrippina. His leading adviser, Seneca, was discharged and forced to commit suicide.[6]

 

After the Great Fire of Rome occurred in July AD 64, it was rumored that Nero had ordered the fire to clear space for a new palace, the Domus Aurea.[7] At the time of the fire Nero may not have been in Rome but 35 miles away at his villa in Antium,[8] and possibly returned to the city before the fire was out.[9]

 

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. His exact birth date is unknown, but most sources place it in either AD 56 or 57. His two main works, the Annals and the Histories, covered the history of the empire between AD 14 and AD 96. However, much of the work has been lost, including the books covering events after AD 70. Tacitus was only eight years old at the time of the fire, but he was able to use public records and reports to write an accurate account.[10]

 

Vigiles

In 22 BC, Augustus funded a fire brigade.[11] In AD 6, he introduced the Vigiles ("cohorts of the watchmen"). The cohortes vigilum, run by freedmen, were tasked with guarding Rome at night. The cohortes urbanae were tasked with guarding Rome during the day.[5] By the time of the Great Fire of Rome, there were thousands of Vigiles in the city, and they went to work trying to stop the flames by pouring buckets of water into buildings, trying to move flammable material from the fire's path, and even demolishing buildings to attempt to make a fire break.[12]

 

Rome's water system

Before the fire, Rome's water was brought in by nine aqueducts, which were not set up with equipment to fight fires. Carrying out repairs to the aqueducts was an ongoing task for the Curator Aquarum or Water Commissioner of Rome. The Curator Aquarum was also in charge of investigations into those who were illegally piping water away without paying a license fee to the state.[13] Firefighters relied on blankets, buckets of water, vinegar, and demolition of buildings to put fires out.[14]

 

Outbreak and progress of fire

According to Tacitus, the fire began in shops where flammable goods were stored, in the region of the Circus neighboring the Caelian and Palatine Hills of Rome. The night brought strong winds and the flames rapidly spread along the full length of the Circus. The fire expanded through an area of narrow, twisting streets and closely located apartment blocks. In this lower area of ancient Rome, there were no large buildings such as temples, or open areas of ground, to impede the conflagration. It then spread along the Palatine and Caelian slopes.[15]

 

The population fled first to areas unaffected by the fire and then to the open fields and rural roads outside the city. Looters and arsonists were reported to have spread the flames by throwing torches or, acting in groups, hindering measures being made to halt or slow the progress of the flames. Some groups responsible for throwing torches and stopping those from fighting the fire were reported to have claimed they were under orders to do so. The fire stopped after six days of continuous burning. It then reignited and burned for another three days.[16]

 

Tests into how fires spread have shown that large fires are able to create their own wind and this, combined with embers being blown to new buildings, could have caused the fire to spread further and could account for witnesses claiming that random fires started in houses that were away from the flames.[17] As well as wind playing a factor in fire spread, those who had claimed to be under orders to stop people from fighting the fires never named the one who ordered them and they were also reported to have looted buildings.[18]

 

Aftermath

 

Nero's Torches by Henryk Siemiradzki. According to Tacitus, Nero targeted Christians as those responsible for the fire.

According to Tacitus, Nero was away from Rome, in Antium, when the fire broke out. Nero returned to the city and took measures to bring in food supplies and to open gardens and public buildings to accommodate refugees.[19] Of Rome's fourteen districts, three were completely devastated, seven more were reduced to a few scorched and mangled ruins and only four completely escaped damage. The Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals, and Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria were damaged or destroyed.[20]

 

Also destroyed in the fire was the portion of the Forum where the Roman senators lived and worked. The open space in the middle of the Forum remained a shopping/meeting centre.[21] The accusations of Nero having started the fire were further exacerbated by his quickness to rebuild burned neighbourhoods in the Greek style and to launch construction of his new palace.

 

For the city's reconstruction, Nero dictated new and far-sighted building rules,[22] intended to curb the excesses of speculation [clarification needed] and trace a new urban plan, which still can be discerned from the city layout today.[23] He rebuilt much of the destroyed area, and had the ostentatious building complex known as Domus Aurea (Golden House) built, his personal residence, replacing the Domus Transitoria and including an extension of about 2.5 km2, which came to include the Palatine, the slopes of the Esquiline (Opium) and part of the Celio.[24] This may not have been a possible motive for the fire, as he could have requisitioned the necessary land anyway, and most was already in his possession.[23]

 

To find the necessary funds for the reconstruction, Nero's government increased taxation. In particular, heavy tributes were imposed on the provinces of the empire. To meet at least a proportion of the costs, Nero devalued the Roman currency, increasing inflationary pressure for the first time in the Empire's history.[25][failed verification][better source needed]

 

Debris from the fire was used as in-fill for the nearby malaria-infested marshes.[26]

 

Christians, blamed by Nero for the fire, were identified, arrested, and killed. Some, for the entertainment of spectators, were torn to pieces by hunting dogs, while others were crucified in ways calculated to make them look ridiculous. According to Jerome, the total number of Christians killed by Nero was 979.[2

With affection,

Ruben

 

Arnold Schoenberg

Classical Music Composers of the 20th Century

Arnold Schoenberg

Alexander Zemlinsky and Arnold Schönberg, Prague, 1917

Source:Interlude 

By Georg Predota  July 13th, 2024

“Great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener”

I am sure that at one point or another you’ve heard the slant that Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is the only classical composer who uniquely can empty any concert hall by the mere mentioning of his name on the programme. It is indeed a rather cheeky overstatement that somehow blames Schoenberg for divorcing music from music lovers.

Arnold Schoenberg

 

Fact is, however, that Schoenberg is probably the first great composer in modern history whose music has not entered the repertoire almost a century and a half after his death on 13 July 1951. Schoenberg was a polymath, a fantastically talented individual of substantial complexity, who lived, worked and engaged with one of the most tumultuous political and artistic periods in human history.

 

We primarily know Schoenberg as a serious composer of modern music, whose experimentations with atonality led to the development of the dodecaphonic, better known as the twelve-tone method of composition. However, Schoenberg was also a painter of considerable ability who exhibited alongside Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. He was also a charismatic teacher and brilliant theorist who authored a substantial number of books and essays.

 

In 1915 he returned to Vienna. During the years of the First World War, he focused

 increasingly on the search for logic and unity in music

Arnold Schönberg (bottom, 2nd on the right) with his regiment, Bruck an der Leitha, 1916

  

Arnold Schönberg, he changed to the anglicised form Schoenberg when he left Germany and re-converted to Judaism in 1933, was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in Vienna. His mother Pauline, a native of Prague, was a piano teacher, and his father Samuel, a native of Hungary, a shopkeeper. Although he took counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, Schoenberg was essentially self-taught.

 

Schoenberg composed a considerable quantity of music during his childhood, but as he later explained, “all my composition up to about my seventeenth year were nothing more than imitations of such music as I could become acquainted with.” However, he did start to probe the future direction of Germany music, addressing the legacies of Brahms and Wagner.

Blending Brahms and Wagner

Arnold Schoenberg

 

Beginning with songs and string quartets written around the turn of the century, Schoenberg presented works that simultaneously contained characteristics of both Brahms and Wagner. On one hand we find a clarity of tonal and motific organisation typical of Brahms, with “balanced phrases and an undisturbed hierarchy of key relationships.” Concordantly, he explored bold incidental chromaticism, aspiring to a Wagnerian representational approach to motivic identity.

 

By combining Brahms’ approach to motivic development and tonal cohesion with Wagnerian narrative of motific ideas, Schoenberg was recognised by both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler as a significant composer. Strauss would eventually turn away from Schoenberg, but Mahler adopted Schoenberg as a protégé. Despite his Jewish background, Schoenberg converted to Lutheranism in 1898. “At no point in my life,” he later wrote, “have I been unreligious, let alone anti-religious.” Schoenberg returned to the faith in which he had been brought up in 1933.

Atonality

Schoenberg married Mathilde Zemlinsky in 1901. The couple initially moved to Berlin, where Schoenberg was active on the cabaret scene. Thanks to the influence of Richard Strauss, Schoenberg returned to Vienna and became a private teacher of composition and theory. In 1904, he was joined by two new recruits, Anton Webern and Alban Berg.

 

Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde had far-reaching effects regarding the emancipation of dissonance, as tonal centres and traditional dissonance-consonance relationships became subservient to dramatic expression. Starting around 1908, Schoenberg’s music began to experiment with a variety of ways to address the absence of traditional keys and tonal centres. His first explicitly atonal piece is identified as the second string quartet, Op. 10, with soprano.

Godowski, Einstein and Schoenberg

The disintegration of functional harmony seemingly destroyed the conditions for large-scale forms. However, as a scholar wrote, “dissonance’s new independence permitted, at least in an orchestral context, unprecedented simultaneous contrasts. It is not. Only novelty of expression but the power to bring seemingly irreconcilable elements into a relation that gives the music its visionary quality.” For a period of time, Schoenberg strongly believed that the dictates of expression would be able to renounce motivic features as well as tonality.

 

However, the way forward was the construction of larger forms on the basis of text. And the texts largely drew on a modernist movement called Expressionism, a poetic style that presented the world from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. The half-hour monodrama Erwartung features a single female character, full of fear and apprehension, as she wanders through a forest at night in search of her lover. The only dramatic event is her discovery of his murdered body, followed by her monologue recollecting their love, jealousy and “a sense of reconciliation born from exhaustion.”

 

Arnold Schoenberg: Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Boulez,

Alban Berg and Anton Webern

Arnold Schoenberg was 42 when he was called up to the army. He was medically examined in 1915 and rejected, but a second medical examination reversed the decision. With many of his students called up as well, his teaching ceased completely. In addition, he was not able to work uninterrupted or for longer periods of time, and as a result, he left many unfinished works and undeveloped beginnings.

 

One thing is for sure: WWI sped up the deteriorating relationship between contemporary composers and the public. As such, Schoenberg founded the “Society for Private Musical Performances.” The press was excluded and details of programmes not available in advance. Within the period from February 1919 to the end of 1921, 353 performances of 154 works were given in 117 concerts. Once Schoenberg was made president of the International Mahler League, he organised festivals of his own works and gave a series of lectures on music theory. This was the time of the formulation of serialism.

Serialism

After the war, Schoenberg was looking for a musical order that would make his musical texture simpler and clearer. The result was a method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with and to one another. All twelve pitches of the chromatic scale within the octave are regarded as equal, and no one note is given emphasis. For Schoenberg, it was not merely a compositional method but an attempt for music to regain a genuine and valid simplicity of expression, such as in the music of his beloved Mozart and Schubert. Musical language had to be renewed.

 

Serialism, as a method of composition, does not give any indication of musical style. For Schoenberg, this meant a return to Classical forms “in his need to find new scope for the inherently developmental cast of thought.” Schoenberg considered 12-tone composition, later retitled Serialism akin to the discoveries of Albert Einstein in the field of Physics. As he related to a friend, “I have made today a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.”

Schoenberg’s Theory of Harmony

 

Between 1920 and 1936, Schoenberg wrote a series of marvellous instrumental works of striking individuality. He serves as Director of a Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, but growing Anti-Semitism and the government’s intention to remove Jewish elements from the academy hastened his departure for Paris. Searching for employment, Schoenberg accepted an appointment in Boston in the autumn of 1933. Struggling with health issues, Schoenberg moved to Los Angeles and eventually became a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

 

Schoenberg enjoyed little peace of mind as he found the alien surroundings hard to accept. Few of his students were able to fully benefit from his knowledge and experience, and his relatives and friends in Europe were under constant threat. Schoenberg continued to compose works, nearly all religious in inspiration, and he revised his vast collection of unpublished essays and articles under the title Style and Idea. His opera Moses and Aron remained unfinished.

 

Schoenberg’s twelve-tone works and the truly revolutionary nature of this new system became “one of the most central and polemic issues among American and European musicians during the mid-to late-twentieth century.” Various ideologies are still hotly debated, and music lovers continue to find difficulty with Schoenberg’s music. Attempts to popularise the music of Schoenberg, despite roughly forty years of advocacy and countless “books devoted to the explanation of this difficult repertory to non-specialist audiences,” have undoubtedly failed. Be that as it may, Schoenberg saw all great music as “expressing the longing of the soul for God, and genius as representing man’s spiritual future.”

 

Arnold Schoeenberg Paints

In around 1907 Schönberg began to paint. His paintings and drawings consist of (self-)portraits, nature pieces, and also impressions and fantasies. In 1911/12 his works were exhibited in Munich as part of “Der Blaue Reiter”, a group of artists with Wassily Kandinsky at its helm.

 

Exhibition of “Der Blaue Reiter”, Moderne Galerie Thannhauser, Munich; Schönberg’s

 “Walking Self-Portrait” can be seen to the left of the door.

Gertrud and Arnold Schönberg on honeymoon, Venice, 1924

 The Schönberg family, Los Angeles, 1948

Arnold Schönberg died in Los Angeles on July 13, 1951.

With affection,

Ruben