Year 1695 (MDCXCV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar. It was also a particularly cold and wet year. Contemporary records claim that wine froze in the glasses in the Palace of Versailles.
Henry Purcell ( /ˈpɜrsəl/; 10 September 1659 (?)– 21 November 1695), was an English composer. Although incorporating Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, Purcell's legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest English composers; no other native-born English composer approached his fame until Edward Elgar.
Purcell was born in St Ann's Lane Old Pye Street, Westminster. Henry Purcell Senior, whose older brother Thomas Purcell (d. 1682) was also a musician, was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal and sang at the coronation of King Charles II of England. Henry the elder had three sons: Edward, Henry and Daniel. Daniel Purcell (d. 1717), the youngest of the brothers, was also a prolific composer who wrote the music for much of the final act of The Indian Queen after Henry Purcell's death. Henry Purcell's family lived just a few hundred yards west of Westminster Abbey from the year 1659 and onward.
After his father's death in 1664, Purcell was placed under the guardianship of his uncle who showed him great affection and kindness. Thomas was himself a gentleman of His Majesty's chapel, and arranged for Henry to be admitted as a chorister. Henry studied first under Captain Henry Cooke (d. 1672),Master of the Children, and afterwards under Pelham Humfrey (d. 1674), Cooke's successor. Henry was a chorister in the Chapel Royal until his voice broke in 1673, when he became assistant to the organ-builder John Hingston, who held the post of keeper of wind instruments to the King.
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's name also occurs in early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin.
The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). Some Welsh and Breton tales and poems relating the story of Arthur date from earlier than this work; in these works, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. How much of Geoffrey's Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.
Matteo Goffriller (1659–1742) was an Venetian luthier, particularly noted for the quality of his cellos.
Although it is known that Goffriller was born in Brixen, little else is known of him prior to his days in Venice before 1685. He is thought to have been active between 1689–1740, and is the founder of the "Venetian School" of luthiers, during the time when Venice was one of the most important centers of musical activity in the world.
In the past, Goffriller's celli had been erroneously attributed to the Guarneri family, Carlo Bergonzi, and even Antonio Stradivari, and was virtually unknown until the 1920s when his instruments began to be discovered. His cello of 1733 once owned by Pablo Casals was originally attributed to Bergonzi. His earliest identified instrument is a viola da gamba dated 1689.
Goffriller was married in 1686 to Maddalena Maria Caiser at the Madonna delle Grazie in Venice, and together had twelve children including five boys and seven girls in the span of 26 years. Francesco Goffriller, long thought to be his brother, may according to recent research, actually be his son.[citation needed] Goffriller died in Venice in 1742.