The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name. The image is a real photograph.
The card was posted in Farnborough using a ½d. stamp on the 8th. November 1905. It was sent to:
Mr. B. Southgate,
32, Chaplin Road,
Willesden Green,
London NW.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Billie,
You are awfully good to
ask what we would like
next.
I should like actors,
especially Henry Irving.
Many thanks for the
cards you have already
sent.
I suppose you will be
wearing smaller boots
when you next come
down as your feet are
diminishing so much.
Don't you feel happy
about them?
We went to a dance
last Friday & arrived
home at 3.50 am.
Dol."
The Birth of the State of Oklahoma
So what happened on the day that the card was written?
Well, on Tuesday the 7th. November 1905, by a margin of 56,279 in favor and 9,073 against, voters in the Indian Territory of the United States voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution petitioning for the territory to be admitted as the State of Sequoyah, and submitting a proposed state constitution.
Congress however refused to consider a statehood resolution for a mostly Native American state, and Sequoyah and the mostly white Oklahoma Territory to the west were joined together as the State of Oklahoma on the 16th. November 1907.
William Randolph Hearst
Also on that day, in elections in the U.S., newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst narrowly lost the race for Mayor of New York City to incumbent Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.
Hearst unsuccessfully contested the election on the basis of fraud in counting the votes.
Maryland
Also on the 7th. November 1905, a proposed amendment to the Maryland state constitution, to disenfranchise African-American voters, was rejected by voters.
William Alwyn CBE
The day also marked the birth in Northampton of William Alwyn.
William Alwyn Smith was an English composer, conductor, and music teacher. He showed an early interest in music, and began to learn to play the piccolo. At the age of 15 he entered the Royal Academy of Music in London where he studied flute and composition.
He became a virtuoso flautist, and for a time played with the London Symphony Orchestra. Alwyn served as professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1926 to 1955.
Alwyn was a distinguished polyglot, poet, and artist, as well as musician. In 1948 he became a member of the Savile Club in London. He helped found the Composers' Guild of Great Britain (now merged into the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors), and was its chairman in 1949, 1950 and 1954.
William was also sometime Director of the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society, a Vice-President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, and Director of the Performing Right Society.
For many years he was one of the panel engaged by the BBC to read new scores to help assess whether the works should be performed and broadcast. He was appointed a CBE in 1978 in recognition of his services to music.
His compositional output was varied and large and included five symphonies, four operas, several concertos, film scores and string quartets.[citation needed]
Alwyn wrote over 70 film scores from 1941 to 1962. His classic film scores included Green for Danger, Odd Man Out, Desert Victory, Fires Were Started, The History of Mr. Polly, The Fallen Idol, The Black Tent, The Way Ahead, The True Glory and The Crimson Pirate.
Some of the scores have been lost, although many scores and sketches are now in the William Alwyn Archive at Cambridge University Library.
In recent years CD recordings have been made. Some works, for which only fragmentary sketches remained, were reconstructed by Philip Lane or Christopher Palmer from the film soundtracks themselves.
Alwyn relished dissonance, and devised his own alternative to twelve-tone serialism. For instance, in his third symphony (1955–56), eight notes of the possible twelve are used in the first movement, with the remaining four (D, E, F, and A♭) constituting the middle movement, and all twelve being combined for the finale. The work was premièred on the 10th. of October 1956 at the Royal Festival Hall by Sir Thomas Beecham.
Alwyn's concerto for harp and string orchestra, Lyra Angelica, was popularized when the American figure skater Michelle Kwan performed to it at the 1998 Winter Olympics.
William Alwyn spent the last twenty-five years of his life at Lark Rise, Dunwich Road, Blythburgh, Suffolk. There he composed his Concerto Grosso no. 3 (1964), two operas, Juan, or the Libertine, and Miss Julie, and his last major orchestral work, Symphony No. 5 Hydriotaphia (1972–73).
Alwyn recorded his five symphonies as conductor for the Lyrita label in the 1970's, recordings which have since been reissued on CD. Most of Alwyn's orchestral and chamber music has more recently been recorded on CD for Chandos Records: the five symphonies were played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Hickox.
William Alwyn's Personal Life and Death
William was married first to Olive Mary Audrey (Pull).
William died in Southwold, Suffolk at the age of 79 on the 11th. September 1985. He was survived by his second wife, the composer Doreen Carwithen. His great-grandson is the actor Joe Alwyn.
