1.
1917 in music
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This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1917. S. See Category, Musical groups established in 1917 All The World Will Be Jealous Of Me w. Al Dubin m. Ernest R. Ball Any Time Is Kissing Time w. Oscar Asche m, frederic Norton from the musical Chu Chin Chow Are You From Heaven. W. m. L. Wolfe Gilbert & Anatole Friedland A Bachelor Gay w. Frank Clifford Harris & Valentine m. James W. Tate from the musical The Maid of the Mountains Barnyard Blues w. m. Edwin B. Charles Shisler Cheer Up, Liza John L. Golden, Raymond Hubbell Cleopatra Had A Jazz Band w. Jack Coogan m, jimmy Morgan Come To The Fair w. Helen Taylor m. Easthope Martin The Darktown Strutters Ball w. m, shelton Brooks Dixie Jass Band One-Step Original Dixieland Jass Band Down in the Valley trad US Eileen w. Henry Blossom m. Victor Herbert For Me And My Gal w. Edgar Leslie & E. Ray Goetz m. George W. Meyer For Your Country and My Country w. m. Irving Berlin Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride w. James Thomson m. Geoffrey OHara Give Me the Moonlight, Hirsch Good Luck and God Be With You, Laddie Boy w. Gus Edwards Good Bye Broadway, Hello France w. C. Francis Reisner & Benny Davis m, goodbye, Mule, with Yer Old Hee-Haw. w. William Herschell m. Barclay Walker Good-bye, That Means You w. Andrew B, sterling m. Arthur Lange Good-bye-ee w. m. R. P. Weston & Bert Lee Hail, the Gangs All Here w. D. A. Esrom m. Theodore F. Morse & Arthur Sullivan Have A Heart w. P. G. Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Hawaiian Butterfly w. George A. Billy Baskette & Joseph H. Santley Homeward Bound m. George Meyer w. Howard Johnson, teresa del Riego How Can I Forget When Theres So Much To Remember w. m. Irving Berlin Huckleberry Finn by Cliff Hess I Dont Know Where Im Going But Im On My Way w. m, willie White Ill Take You Back To Italy w. m. Irving Berlin Im All Bound Round With The Mason-Dixon Line w. Sam M. Lewis & Joe Young m, irving Berlin, Edgar Leslie & George W. Meyer Lily Of The Valley w. L. Wolfe Gilbert m. Fred Fisher Love Will Find A Way w. Harry Graham m, introduced by José Collins in the musical The Maid of the Mountains Madmoiselle From Armentieres w. m. anon McNamaras Band w. John J. Stamford m. Shamus OConnor The Modern Maidens Prayer w. Ballard MacDonald m. James F. Hanley My Sunshine Jane w. J. Keirn Brennan m. Ernest R. Ball My Sweetie w. m. Al Jolson, B. G. DeSylva & Gus Kahn Napoleon w. P. G, Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Nesting Time In Flatbush w. P. G. Wodehouse m. Jerome Kern Oh Its A Lovely War w. m. Maurice Scott Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh, abe Olman Ole Miss Rag w. m. Handy On The Road To Home Sweet Home w. Gus Kahn m, egbert van Alstyne Ostrich Walk m. Edwin B
2.
1912 in art
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January 5 – Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet, designed by Edward Gordon Craig, opens. December 24 – William Zorach marries Marguerite Thompson, in Paris, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger publish the first major treatise on Cubism, Du Cubisme, followed by André Salmons La jeune peinture française including Histoire anecdotique du cubisme. Ludwig Meidner begins producing his Apocalyptic Landscapes, march – Exhibition of Italian Futurism transfers from Paris to the Sackville Gallery in London, organised by Robert René Meyer-Sée. Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition organized by Roger Fry in London, René Lalique and Maurice Marinot independently stage the first exhibitions of their glasswares. Fernand Léger Grade Crossing La Fumée Woman in Blue Wyndham Lewis – Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair J. B, george With Riding Crop Pablo Picasso Still Life with Chair Caning Violon et raisins Violon, verre, pipe et encrier Charles A
3.
Copenhagen
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Copenhagen, Danish, København, Latin, Hafnia) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark. Copenhagen has an population of 1,280,371. The Copenhagen metropolitan area has just over 2 million inhabitants, the city is situated on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand, another small portion of the city is located on Amager, and is separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the strait of Øresund. The Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by rail and road, originally a Viking fishing village founded in the 10th century, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century it consolidated its position as a centre of power with its institutions, defences. After suffering from the effects of plague and fire in the 18th century and this included construction of the prestigious district of Frederiksstaden and founding of such cultural institutions as the Royal Theatre and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Later, following the Second World War, the Finger Plan fostered the development of housing, since the turn of the 21st century, Copenhagen has seen strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investment in its institutions and infrastructure. The city is the cultural, economic and governmental centre of Denmark, Copenhagens economy has seen rapid developments in the service sector, especially through initiatives in information technology, pharmaceuticals and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund Bridge, Copenhagen has become integrated with the Swedish province of Scania and its largest city, Malmö. With a number of connecting the various districts, the cityscape is characterized by parks, promenades. Copenhagen is home to the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark. Copenhagen is home to the FC København and Brøndby football clubs, the annual Copenhagen Marathon was established in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world, the Copenhagen Metro serves central Copenhagen while the Copenhagen S-train network connects central Copenhagen to its outlying boroughs. Serving roughly 2 million passengers a month, Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, the name of the city reflects its origin as a harbour and a place of commerce. The original designation, from which the contemporary Danish name derives, was Køpmannæhafn, meaning merchants harbour, the literal English translation would be Chapmans haven. The English name for the city was adapted from its Low German name, the abbreviations Kbh. or Kbhvn are often used in Danish for København, and kbh. for københavnsk. The chemical element hafnium is named for Copenhagen, where it was discovered, the bacterium Hafnia is also named after Copenhagen, Vagn Møller of the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen named it in 1954. Excavations in Pilestræde have also led to the discovery of a well from the late 12th century, the remains of an ancient church, with graves dating to the 11th century, have been unearthed near where Strøget meets Rådhuspladsen
4.
Carl Nielsen
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Carl August Nielsen was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his countrys most prominent composer. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen and he initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op.1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, in 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death. Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now internationally acclaimed, Nielsens career and personal life were marked by many difficulties, often reflected in his music. The works he composed between 1897 and 1904 are sometimes ascribed to his period, resulting mainly from a turbulent marriage with the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen. Nielsen is especially noted for his six symphonies, his Wind Quintet and his concertos for violin, flute, in Denmark, his opera Maskarade and many of his songs have become an integral part of the national heritage. Nielsens sixth and final symphony, Sinfonia semplice, was written in 1924–25 and he died from a heart attack six years later, and is buried in Vestre Cemetery, Copenhagen. Nielsen maintained the reputation of an outsider during his lifetime, both in his own country and internationally and it was only later that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in popularity from the 1960s through Leonard Bernstein and others. In Denmark, Nielsens reputation was sealed in 2006 when three of his compositions were listed by the Ministry of Culture amongst the twelve greatest pieces of Danish music, for many years, he appeared on the Danish hundred-kroner banknote. The Carl Nielsen Museum in Odense documents his life and that of his wife, Nielsen was born the seventh of twelve children to a poor peasant family in 1865 at Nørre Lyndelse near Sortelung, south of Odense on the island of Funen. His father, Niels Jørgensen, was a painter and traditional musician who, with his abilities as a fiddler. Nielsen described his childhood in his autobiography Min Fynske Barndom and his mother, whom he recalls singing folk songs during his childhood, came from a well-to-do family of sea captains while one of his half-uncles, Hans Andersen, was a talented musician. He had received the instrument from his mother when he was six and he learned the violin and piano as a child and wrote his earliest compositions at the age of eight or nine, a lullaby, now lost, and a polka which the composer mentioned in his autobiography. After learning to play instruments, on 1 November 1879 he became a bugler. Nielsen did not give up the violin during his time with the battalion, in 1881, Nielsen began to take his violin playing more seriously, studying privately under Carl Larsen, the sexton at Odense Cathedral. Following an introduction to Niels W and he also studied composition under Gade, whom he liked as a friend but not for his music. Contacts with fellow students and cultured families in Copenhagen, some of whom would become lifelong friends, the patchy education resulting from his country background left Nielsen insatiably curious about the arts, philosophy and aesthetics. But, in the opinion of the musicologist David Fanning, it left him with a highly personal
5.
Gustav Mahler
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Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century, born in Bohemia as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the regular opposition. Late in his life he was director of New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Mahlers œuvre is relatively limited, for much of his composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Some of Mahlers immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composers life, the Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia and were of humble circumstances, the composers grandmother had been a street pedlar. Bohemia was then part of the Austrian Empire, the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, from this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, always an intruder, never welcomed. Bernhard Mahler, the son and the composers father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman. He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt, halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the center of todays Czech Republic. Bernhards wife, Marie, gave birth to the first of the couples 14 children, a son Isidor, two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born. In December 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the town of Iglau,25 km to the south-east, the family grew rapidly, but of the 12 children born to the family in Iglau only six survived infancy. All of these elements would later contribute to his musical vocabulary. When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents piano and he developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local Wunderkind and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his reports from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded. In 1871, in the hope of improving the results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague. In 1874 he suffered a personal loss when his younger brother Ernst died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music, with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he work on an opera
6.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
7.
Vienna Philharmonic
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The Vienna Philharmonic, founded in 1842, is an orchestra regularly considered one of the finest in the world. The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria and its members are selected from the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. Selection involves a process, with each musician having to demonstrate his or her capability for a minimum of three years performing for the opera and ballet. After this probationary period, the musician may request from the Vienna Philharmonics board an application for a position in the orchestra, until the 1830s, orchestral performance in Vienna was done by ad hoc orchestras, consisting of professional and amateur musicians brought together for specific performances. Nicolai and the orchestra gave only 11 concerts in the five years, and when Nicolai left Vienna in 1847. Between 1854 and 1857 Karl Eckert – the first permanent conductor of the Vienna Court Opera – led the Vienna Philharmonic in a few concerts. In 1857, Eckert was made Director of the Hofoper – the first musician to have given the post, in 1860. Since that time, writes Vienna Philharmonic violinist and president Clemens Hellsberg, in 1860, the orchestra elected Otto Dessoff to be permanent conductor. According to Max Kalbeck, the Vienna-based music critic, newspaper editor, and biographer, after fifteen years, in 1875, Dessoff was pushed out of his position in Vienna through intrigue, and he left Vienna to become conductor of the Badische Staatskapelle in Karlsruhe, Germany. In Karlruhe the next year, he fulfilled the request of his friend Johannes Brahms to conduct the first performance of his Symphony no,1, in 1873 Brahms had conducted the premiere of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn with Dessoffs Vienna Philharmonic. In 1875, the orchestra chose Hans Richter to take Dessoffs place as subscription conductor and he remained until 1898, except for the season 1882/1883 when he was in dispute with the orchestral committee. Richter led the VPO in the premieres of Brahmss Second Symphony, Tragic Overture. 3, the Violin Concerto of Tchaikovsky in 1881, and in 1892 the 8th symphony of Anton Bruckner and it was Richter who in 1881 appointed Arnold Rosé as concertmaster, who was to become Gustav Mahlers brother-in-law and was concertmaster until the Anschluss in 1938. In order to be eligible for a pension, Richter intended to remain in his position for 25 years, Richter recommended Mahler or Ferdinand Löwe to the orchestra as his replacement. In 1898, on 24 September, the orchestra elected Gustav Mahler, under Mahlers baton the Vienna Philharmonic played abroad for the first time at the 1900 Paris World Exposition. He resigned on 1 April 1901, like Richter, citing health concerns as a pretext, in 1901, Joseph Hellmesberger, Jr. briefly took his place, he remained only until 1903. He was most renowned for his Beethoven – he programmed at least two symphonies per season, and complete cycles in 1916/17 and 1926/27 and it was Weingartner who led the orchestras first concert devoted to entirely to the music of Johann Strauss, Jr. on 25 October 1925. In 1927, when Weingartner resigned, the orchestra elected Wilhelm Furtwängler and he resigned at the end of the 1929/30 season because of increased professional demands in Berlin
8.
W. C. Handy
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William Christopher Handy was an American composer and musician, known as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential American songwriters and he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, and he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. Handy was a musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers, Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a church in Guntersville. The log cabin of Handys birth has been preserved near downtown Florence, growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering. Handy was deeply religious, and his style was influenced by the church music he sang. It was also influenced by the sounds of the natural world, Handys father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home, and ordered him to take it back where it came from, but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet and he joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a band member and spent every free minute practicing it. With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable. It was better to us than the music of a drum corps. He wrote, Southern Negroes sang about everything. They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect and he would later reflect that In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues. In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take an exam, which he passed easily. Learning that it poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer. In his time off from his job, he organized a string orchestra. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet, when the group read about the upcoming Worlds Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend
9.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
10.
Arnold Schoenberg
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Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg or Schönberg was an Austrian composer, music theorist, and painter. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, by 1938, with the rise of the Nazi Party, Schoenbergs works were labeled degenerate music, because he was Jewish. He moved to the United States in 1934, Schoenbergs approach, both in terms of harmony and development, has been one of the most influential of 20th-century musical thought. Many European and American composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have reacted against it. Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms, later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century art music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a melodic idea. Schoenbergs archival legacy is collected at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna, at Obere Donaustraße 5. His father Samuel, a native of Bratislava, was a shopkeeper and he took only counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law. In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works and he later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Strauss turned to a more conservative idiom in his own work after 1909, Mahler adopted him as a protégé and continued to support him, even after Schoenbergs style reached a point Mahler could no longer understand. Mahler worried about who would look after him after his death, Schoenberg, who had initially despised and mocked Mahlers music, was converted by the thunderbolt of Mahlers Third Symphony, which he considered a work of genius. Afterward he spoke of Mahler as a saint, in 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the Lutheran church. According to MacDonald this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions and he would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life. In October 1901, he married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and he and Mathilde had two children, Gertrud and Georg. Gertrud would marry Schoenbergs pupil Felix Greissle in 1921, during the summer of 1908, his wife Mathilde left him for several months for a young Austrian painter, Richard Gerstl. This period marked a change in Schoenbergs work. This was the first composition without any reference at all to a key, also in this year, he completed one of his most revolutionary compositions, the String Quartet No
11.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
12.
Savonlinna
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Savonlinna is a town and a municipality of 35,504 inhabitants in the southeast of Finland, in the heart of the Saimaa lake region. The Finnish name of the town means Castle of Savonia and the Swedish name means New Castle, the city was founded in 1639, based on Olavinlinna castle. The castle was founded by Erik Axelsson Tott in 1475 in an effort to protect Savonia, during the Russo-Swedish War, the castle was captured by Field-Marshal Peter Lacy. It was held by Russia between 1743 and 1812, when it was granted back to Finland as a part of the Old Finland, in 1973 the municipality of Sääminki was consolidated with Savonlinna. In the beginning of year 2009 the municipality of Savonranta and a 31.24 km2 land strip from Enonkoski between Savonlinna and Savonranta were consolidated with Savonlinna and this town is 335 kilometres away from the capital of Helsinki by road, some four hours away by train. There is an airport in the town, and the journey to Helsinki takes 40–60 minutes by plane and it is built on a chain of islands located throughout a number of large lakes. The University of Eastern Finland has a campus in Savonlinna, primarily for teacher education, the city hosts the famous annual Savonlinna Opera Festival. The operas are performed on a stage built inside the castle and it also has hosted the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships annually since 2000. The ice hockey team of Savonlinna, SaPKo or Savonlinnan Pallokerho, is playing in the second tier Mestis, notable SaPKo alumni include Jarmo Myllys, Ville Leino, Tuukka Rask and Hannu Aravirta. One notable hockey player from the city who did not play for SaPKo is Joonas Rask of HIFK and formerly the Nashville Predators, the top-tier volleyball team Saimaa Volley plays some of its home matches in Savonlinna. The football team Savonlinnan Työväen Palloseura, is playing in Kolmonen, the fourth tier
