Pickering and the Female Computers.
In 1881,
Edward Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, became so impatient with a male lab assistant’s work that he famously declared his maid could do a better job. Rather than take offense, his 24-year-old maid,
Williamina Fleming, instead took him up on the offer. She ended up working at the Observatory for the next 30 years, supervising the tedious work of cataloging photographic plates, but also discovering variable stars and novae, helping to develop a classification system—and,
perhaps even more importantly, hiring nearly 40
female assistants, many of whom went on to have
distinguished scientific careers.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock
at 9:58 AM on September 20, 2008
(27 comments)
Kindertotenlieder.
In 1833-34,
Frederich Rückert wrote 425 poems after two of his children died within 16 days of each other; seven decades later, Mahler set
five of them to
music.
Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children, has been
recorded by both
male and
female singers, in both orchestral and piano-vocal arrangements. The song cycle is a powerful meditation on grief and loss, which is somewhat surprising since we think of the 18th, 19th, and even early 20th centuries as being a time when people -- especially
young children -- lived
closer to death and had a different relationship with
grief than we do today. Mahler, who was one of 14 children, eight of whom died in infancy and one of whom died at 12, had much personal experience to bring to the
Kindertotenlieder; indeed, just three years after the song cycle's completion,
his own daughter died of scarlet fever. But some musicians dismiss the idea that the music is premonitory, or
indicative of Mahler's personal tragedy, and posit instead that Mahler's intent was not to showcase his own grief but capture the intensity of Rückert's first-person text. Modern works on the topic of Kindertoten range from
mixed media and text to
dance to
film, and even to
modern stage works. And there is, of course,
music -- the most famous contemporary work in this tradition might just be the Grammy-award winning song inspired by
real-life tragedy,
Eric Clapton's
Tears in Heaven.
posted to MetaFilter by mothershock
at 10:49 AM on April 3, 2006
(23 comments)
