1.
Larchmont, New York
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Larchmont is a village located within the Town of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, approximately 18 miles northeast of Midtown Manhattan. The population of the village was 5,864 at the 2010 census, in July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Larchmont 11th on its list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States. Originally inhabited by the Siwanoy, Larchmont was discovered by the Dutch in 1614. In 1661, John Richbell, a merchant from Hampshire, England, traded a minimal amount of goods, the purchase included three peninsulas of land that lay between the Mamaroneck River to the east, and Pelham Manor to the west. The east neck is now known as Orienta while the neck is what is now known as Larchmont Manor. The third neck was later sold and is now known as Davenport Neck in New Rochelle, the purchase was contested by Thomas Revell who, one month following Richbells purchase, bought the land from the Siwanoy at a higher price. Richbell petitioned Governor Stuyvesant, Director General of the Colonies of the New Netherland, in 1664 Great Britain took control of the colonies and Richbell received an English title for his lands in 1668 whereupon he began to encourage settlement. In 1675 Richbell leased his Middle Neck to his brother however when he died in 1684 none of his property remained in his name. Larchmonts oldest and most historic home, the Manor House on Elm Avenue, was built in 1797 by Peter Jay Munro, Munro was the nephew of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and was later adopted by Jay. At the beginning of the 19th Century, Munro was active in the abolitionist movement, helping to found the New York State Manumission Society, along with his uncle and Alexander Hamilton. In 1795 Munro had purchased much of the owned by Samuel Palmer and by 1828 he owned all of the Middle Neck south of the Post Road. Munro later became a lawyer with Aaron Burrs law firm and built a home in Larchmont Manor known as the Manor House, munros house faced towards the Boston Post Road, which tended to generate a lot of dust in summer months. To combat this, his gardener imported a Scottish species of trees that were known to be fast growing. These were planted along the front of the property, eventually giving the village its name, when Munro died in 1833, his son Henry inherited the property which he subsequently lost and sold at auction in 1845 to Edward Knight Collins, owner of a steamship line. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, Collins had gone bankrupt and his estate was put up for auction, flint divided the estate into building lots and called his development company the Larchmont Manor Company. Flint converted the Munro Mansion into an inn for prospective buyers, after 1872 the area became a popular summer resort for wealthy New Yorkers. The New York legislature created Mamaroneck as a town in 1788, which includes a part of the Village of Mamaroneck, The Village of Larchmont, and this three part division occurred in the 1890s to meet the growing demand for municipal services which the town could not provide. In 1891 the residents of Larchmont Manor obtained a charter from the legislature in which they incorporated that section of Town into a village, many of the Victorian cottages and a grand hotels remain to this day, though these have been converted to other uses such as private residences
2.
University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
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The University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna is an Austrian university located in Vienna, established in 1817. Today, with a student body of three thousand, it is the largest institution of its kind in Austria, and one of the largest in the world. In 1817, it was established by the Society for the Friends of Music and it has had several names, Vienna Conservatory, Vienna Academy and in 1909 it was nationalized as the Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. In 1998, the university assumed its current name to reflect its university status, with a student body of more than 3000, the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien is one of the largest arts universities in the world. The University consists of 24 departments including the Max Reinhardt Seminar, Vienna Film Academy, MDW facilities include the Schönbrunn Palace Theater, Antonio Vivaldi Room, Salesian Convent, St. Ursula Church, Lothringerstrasse and the Anton Von Webern Platz. Modern film studios were completed on the university campus in 2004, the University organizes around 10 competitions, including the International Beethoven Piano Competition. It also presents an acclaimed film festival every two years. The MDW may be considered an institution to all major orchestras in Austria. Calls for a conservatory in Vienna started in 1808. In 1811 an outline for an education institution for Vienna was published. A year later the Society for the Friends of Music was formed, the Vienna Conservatory was founded in 1817. It was meant to be modeled on the Paris Conservatory, but, due to a lack of funds, Antonio Salieri was the Conservatorys first director. In 1819, it hired violinist Joseph Böhm, and by 1827 offered courses in most orchestral instruments, the conservatorys finances were very unstable. Tuition fees were introduced in 1829, but by 1837 the institution was bankrupt, the state eventually funded the conservatory from 1841 to 1844 and from 1846 to 1848. In 1848 political unrest caused the state to discontinue funding, with support from the state and the city, finances again stabilized after 1851. Despite growing state subsidy, The Society for the Friends of Music, however, by a January 1,1909 imperial resolution the school was nationalized and became the Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr. was director from 1851 to 1893, from 1907 Wilhelm Bopp had been the director of Conservatory. The Conservatory was still dominated by the aging Robert Fuchs and Hermann Grädener, in 1912, attempting to rejuvenate the conservatory Bopp offered teaching positions to Franz Schreker and Arnold Schoenberg
3.
Vienna Volksoper
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The Vienna Volksoper is a major opera house in Vienna, Austria. It puts on three hundred performances of twenty-five German language productions during an annual season which runs from September through June. It was built in 1898 as the Kaiser-Jubiläums-Stadttheater, originally producing only plays, because of the very brief construction period the first director Adam Müller-Gutenbrunn had to start with debts of 160,000 gulden. After this inauspicious startup the Kaiser-Jubiläums-Stadttheater had to declare bankruptcy five years later in 1903, on 1 September 1903 Rainer Simons took over the house and renamed it the Kaiser-Jubiläums-Stadttheater - Volksoper. His intention was to continue the production of plays but also series of opera. The first Viennese performances of Tosca and Salome were given at the Volksoper in 1907 and 1910 respectively, World famous singers such as Maria Jeritza, Leo Slezak and Richard Tauber appeared there, the conductor Alexander Zemlinsky became the first bandmaster in 1906. In the years up to and through the First World War the Volksoper attained a position as Viennas second prestige opera house, in 1919, Felix Weingartner became Artistic Director and Principal Conductor. He was followed as Director by Hugo Gruder-Guntram, after the Second World War, the Vienna Volksoper became the alternative venue to the devastated Vienna State Opera. In 1955 the Volksoper returned to its role of presenting opera, operetta. From September 1991 to June 1996 the Vienna Volksoper was under a leadership with the Vienna State Opera. In 1999 the Volksoper became a 100% subsidiary of the Bundestheater-Holding, since 1 September 2007 Robert Meyer has headed the Volksoper as artistic director together with the business manager Christoph Ladstätter. Each season includes about 25 productions, a total of approximately 300 performances—a performance almost every day, in addition to opera, operetta, musicals and ballet, there are special performances and childrens programs. On three different levels there are 1261 seats and 72 standing room places as well as two places for wheelchairs, the orchestra pit is equipped with two electrically driven stage lifts, with a loading capacity of 500 kg/m². It is adjustable in height from 0 to 2.65 meters below stage level, the red velvet house curtain is hydraulically drawn and liftable. The gather velocity is 0.15 to 3.0 m/s, the stage is 17.2 meters wide and 19 meters deep and has a mechanic load capacity of 500 kg/m². In the middle of the stage is a turnable and liftable circular platform, there are also 3 hand-operated person trap mechanisms. Since 1999 the Volksoper Vienna is a 100% subsidiary of the Bundestheater Holding AG along with the Vienna State Opera, the Bundestheater Holding AG is owned by the Republic of Austria. The Holding also holds 51. 1% of the Theaterservice Gmbh, the remaining 48. 9% are shared equally among the three theater houses
4.
State Opera (Prague)
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The State Opera, is an opera house in Prague, Czech Republic. It is part of the National Theatre of the Czech Republic, the theatre itself originally opened in 1888 as the New German Theatre and from 1949 to 1989 it was known as the Smetana Theatre. More recently it was known as the Prague State Opera, currently it is home to approximately 300 performances a year. The history of the currently known as the Prague State Opera dates back to the late 19th Century. While often overshadowed by the more prominent National Theatre of Prague, the birth of a magnificent Czech Theatre, the National Theatre, in 1883 indirectly created a longing among the Prague German community for a German-speaking opera house of its own. At that time the Czech lands were part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and there was a large German minority living in Prague, on 4 February 1883 the Deutscher Theaterverein was founded with the goal of raising funds for the new theatre. The plans were developed by the well-known Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer along with Karl Hasenauer, the resulting Neues deutsches Theater was designed by the Prague architect Alfons Wertmüller and built within 20 months. With its spacious auditorium and elaborate neo-rococo décor, the theater was one of the most beautiful in Europe, performances commenced on 5 January 1888 with Richard Wagners opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The first director became Angelo Neumann, who brought there distinguished musicians, neumanns successors were Heinrich Teweles, Leopold Kramer, Robert Volkner, Paul Eger, and Pavel Ludikar. Guest artists included Nellie Melba, Enrico Caruso, Emma Calvé, Lilli Lehmann, Selma Kurz, Maria Jeritza, Richard Tauber and Leo Slezak. In the 1930s, with the growing Nazi threat, the New German Theatre in Prague was among the bastions of democracy, political developments shortly before signing of the Munich Agreement along with financial problems however led the German Theatre Association to close the theatre in September 1938. The Czechoslovak state expressed an interest in the building, but the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939 and establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia thwarted its plans. Under the new title Deutsches Opernhaus, the served for political assemblies of the Nazi Party. A radical change came in May 1945 following the fall of the Nazi-led government, a group of Czech artists headed by Alois Hába, Václav Kašlík, and Antonín Kurš founded the Theatre of the Fifth of May in the former German Opera House. For the first time the theatre became a home for Czech, the first performance was of Bedřich Smetanas Brandenburgers in Bohemia on 4 September 1945. The artistic agenda of the new ensemble strove to create a theatre that would serve as an alternative to the more conservative National Theatre. The theatres ground-breaking productions aroused attention on the part of the public, unfortunately, the success of the Grand Opera of the Fifth of May began to create unwanted competition for the National Theatre. Starting with the 1948-49 season, by government decree the Grand Opera was incorporated into the National Theatre, thus the second significant creative period of the theatre ended after only three seasons
5.
Kroll Opera House
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The Kroll Opera House was an opera building in Berlin, Germany, located in the central Tiergarten district on the western edge of the Königsplatz square, facing the Reichstag building. It was built in 1844 as an entertainment venue for the restaurant owner Joseph Kroll, during its eventful history it was redeveloped as an opera house in 1851 and was used by various owners and directors for opera, operetta and drama. It was later operated by the Prussian state opera and drama companies, severely damaged by bombing and the Battle of Berlin in World War II, it was finally demolished in 1951. On 19 July 1940, the house was used to host the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. The Kroll story began in the Silesian capital Breslau, where the entrepreneur Joseph Kroll had opened the “Kroll Winter Garden” in 1837, the Breslau authorities chose this reputable establishment to entertain the new Prussian king Frederick William IV when he visited the city in 1841. The king was impressed by the splendid, flower-decorated rooms and suggested that something similar should be initiated in Berlin to become the hub for the nobility in the Prussian residence. The parade ground, which had stood since 1730, was outside of the city just to the north west of the Brandenburg Gate and it had long degenerated into a sandy field, and the Berliners therefore derisively called it the “Sahara”. Every step on the ground would kick up a cloud of dust on the square. When it rained, the soil would turn into a mass of dirty mud, yet Kroll took solace in the fact that the greenery of the Tiergarten park lay just beyond the property. After a construction period of ten months, Kroll’s enterprise opened on 15 February 1844. Forty waiters were to serve up to five thousand guests in the three halls, thirteen boxes for at least thirteen people each, and fourteen large rooms, the “Tunnel” was a special attraction and praised as a novelty for Berlin – a hall where one could smoke. A technical innovation was the newly implemented gas lighting, which “consisted of 400 flames”, during the first year Kroll had satisfactory results. Yet despite its uniqueness in Germany, as noted by the critics, on 15 April 1848, on his deathbed, Kroll regretted that his king had once had breakfast with him.1 Joseph Kroll’s successor was his eldest daughter, Auguste. The “National People’s Garden” was opened as soon as May 1848 as part of an expansion, great attractions were offered first in the garden and later in the great hall, such as performances with wild animals by their tamers and an extensive trade fair in 1849. In 1850 Auguste Kroll established a permanent summer theatre with open-air performances of operas, here, among others, Augustes protégé Albert Lortzing directed his operas Undine, Der Waffenschmied and Zar und Zimmermann. The operation of the new Theatre and Opera Company was suddenly disrupted on 1 February 1851, but Auguste Kroll didn’t let that stop her, she encashed the fire insurance sum and on 24 February 1852, the theatre already reopened in a completely new building. About a year later, Auguste married her capellmeister, the Hungarian violinist, conductor and they successfully expanded the “Kroll Opera Pool” and brought many new comic operas to the stage, but also enacted lengthy music dramas by Richard Wagner. But the couple could not prevent the business closing its doors on 1 April 1855
6.
University of California, Los Angeles
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The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California, United States. It became the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919 and it offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. UCLA enrolls about 31,000 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate students, and had 119,000 applicants for Fall 2016, including transfer applicants, the university is organized into six undergraduate colleges, seven professional schools, and four professional health science schools. Fourteen Nobel laureates, three Fields Medalists, two Chief Scientists of the U. S. Air Force and three Turing Award winners have been faculty, researchers, or alumni, the university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1974. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015–2016 ranked UCLA 16th in the world for academics, in 2015-2016, UCLA ranked 12th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities and 31st in the 2016/17 QS World University Rankings. UCLA student-athletes compete as the Bruins in the Pac-12 Conference, the Bruins won 126 national championships, including 113 NCAA team championships, more than any other university. UCLA student-athletes, coaches and staff won 251 Olympic medals,126 gold,65 silver and 60 bronze, UCLA student-athletes competed in every Olympics since 1920 with one exception, and won a gold medal in every Olympics that the United States participated in since 1932. The State Normal School at Los Angeles opened on August 29,1882, the facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their technique with children. That elementary school is related to the present day version, UCLA Lab School, in 1887, the school became known as the Los Angeles State Normal School. In 1914, the moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. However, David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California, the same legislation added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science. After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname Bruins, in 1927, the Regents renamed the Southern Branch the University of California at Los Angeles. In the same year, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, the campus in Westwood opened to students in 1929. The original four buildings were the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, the first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. A timeline of the history can be found on its website, during its first 32 years, UCLA was treated as an off-site department of UC. As such, its presiding officer was called a provost, in 1951, UCLA was formally elevated to co-equal status with UC Berkeley, and its presiding officer Raymond B. Allen was the first chief executive to be granted the title of chancellor. The appointment of Franklin David Murphy to the position of Chancellor in 1960 helped spark an era of growth of facilities. By the end of the decade, UCLA had achieved distinction in a range of subjects
7.
University of Southern California
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The University of Southern California is a private research university founded in 1880 with its main campus in Los Angeles, California. As Californias oldest private university, USC has historically educated a large number of the regions business leaders. In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia, an engine for economic activity, USC contributes $8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California. For the 2014–15 academic year, there were 18,740 students enrolled in undergraduate programs. USC also has 23,729 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the world, consistently ranking among the top 3 in external contributions, multiple academic rankings list the University of Southern California as being among the top 25 universities in the United States. With an acceptance rate of 16 percent, USC is also among the most selective academic institutions in the nation. USC maintains a tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship, with alumni having founded companies such as Lucasfilm, Myspace, Salesforce. com, Intuit, Qualcomm, Box, Tinder. As of 2014, the university has produced the fourth largest number of billionaire alumni out of all institutions in the world. USC is home to the world’s most powerful computer, which is presently housed in a super-cooled. The only other commercially available quantum computing system is operated jointly by NASA, USC was also one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Domain Name System. Other technologies invented at USC include DNA computing, dynamic programming, image compression, VoIP, USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Members of the teams, the Trojans, have won 102 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the nation. Trojan athletes have won 288 medals at the Olympic games, more than any university in the United States. If USC were a country, its athletes would have received the 12th-most Olympic gold medals in history. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities, the University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Hellman. The three donated 308 lots of land to establish the campus and provided the seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that no student would be denied admission because of race, the university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952
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Composer
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A composer is a person who creates or writes music, which can be vocal music, instrumental music or music which combines both instruments and voices. The core meaning of the term refers to individuals who have contributed to the tradition of Western classical music through creation of works expressed in written musical notation, many composers are also skilled performers, either as singers, instrumentalists, and/or conductors. Examples of composers who are well known for their ability as performers include J. S. Bach, Mozart. In many popular genres, such as rock and country. For a singer or instrumental performer, the process of deciding how to perform music that has previously composed and notated is termed interpretation. Different performers interpretations of the work of music can vary widely, in terms of the tempos that are chosen. Composers and songwriters who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others, although a musical composition often has a single author, this is not always the case. A piece of music can also be composed with words, images, or, in the 20th and 21st century, a culture eventually developed whereby faithfulness to the composers written intention came to be highly valued. This musical culture is almost certainly related to the esteem in which the leading classical composers are often held by performers. The movement might be considered a way of creating greater faithfulness to the original in works composed at a time that expected performers to improvise. In Classical music, the composer typically orchestrates her own compositions, in some cases, a pop songwriter may not use notation at all, and instead compose the song in her mind and then play or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written scores play in classical music. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music. In the development of European classical music, the function of composing music initially did not have greater importance than that of performing it. The preservation of individual compositions did not receive attention and musicians generally had no qualms about modifying compositions for performance. In as much as the role of the composer in western art music has seen continued solidification, for instance, in certain contexts the line between composer and performer, sound designer, arranger, producer, and other roles, can be quite blurred. The term composer is often used to refer to composers of music, such as those found in classical, jazz or other forms of art. In popular and folk music, the composer is usually called a songwriter and this is distinct from a 19th-century conception of instrumental composition, where the work was represented solely by a musical score to be interpreted by performers
9.
Conducting
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Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance, such as an orchestral or choral concert. A conductors directions will almost invariably be supplemented or reinforced by verbal instructions or suggestions to their musicians in rehearsal prior to a performance. The conductor typically stands on a podium with a large music stand for the full score. Conducting while playing a piano or synthesizer may also be done with musical theatre pit orchestras, communication is typically non-verbal during a performance. However, in rehearsals, frequent interruptions allow the conductor to give verbal directions as to how the music should be played or sung, Conductors act as guides to the orchestras or choirs they conduct. They choose the works to be performed and study their scores, to which they may make adjustments, work out their interpretation. They may also attend to matters, such as scheduling rehearsals, planning a concert season, hearing auditions and selecting members. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and other musical ensembles such as big bands are usually led by conductors. The principal conductor of an orchestra or opera company is referred to as a music director or chief conductor, or by the German words Kapellmeister or Dirigent. Conductors of choirs or choruses are sometimes referred to as director, chorus master, or choirmaster. Conductors of concert bands, military bands, marching bands and other bands may hold the title of director, bandmaster. Respected senior conductors are sometimes referred to by the Italian word, an early form of conducting is cheironomy, the use of hand gestures to indicate melodic shape. This has been practiced at least as far back as the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, other devices to indicate the passing of time came into use. Rolled up sheets of paper, smaller sticks and unadorned hands are all shown in pictures from this period, the large staff was responsible for the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully, who injured his foot with one while conducting a Te Deum for the Kings recovery from illness. The wound became gangrenous and Lully refused amputation, whereupon the gangrene spread to his leg, in instrumental music throughout the 18th century, a member of the ensemble usually acted as the conductor. This was sometimes the concertmaster, who could use his bow as a baton and it was common to conduct from the harpsichord in pieces that had a basso continuo part. In opera performances, there were sometimes two conductors – the keyboard player was in charge of the singers, and the principal violinist or leader was in charge of the orchestra. By the early 19th century, it became the norm to have a dedicated conductor, the size of the usual orchestra expanded during this period, and the use of a baton became more common, as it was easier to see than bare hands or rolled-up paper
10.
Roman Catholic
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The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church or the Universal Church, is the largest Christian church, with more than 1.28 billion members worldwide. As one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, it has played a prominent role in the history, headed by the Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope, the churchs doctrines are summarised in the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed. Its central administration is located in Vatican City, enclaved within Rome, the Catholic Church is notable within Western Christianity for its sacred tradition and seven sacraments. It teaches that it is the one church founded by Jesus Christ, that its bishops are the successors of Christs apostles. The Catholic Church maintains that the doctrine on faith and morals that it declares as definitive is infallible. The Latin Church, the Eastern Catholic Churches, as well as such as mendicant orders and enclosed monastic orders. Among the sacraments, the one is the Eucharist, celebrated liturgically in the Mass. The church teaches that through consecration by a priest the sacrificial bread and wine become the body, the Catholic Church practises closed communion, with only baptised members in a state of grace ordinarily permitted to receive the Eucharist. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Catholic Church as Queen of Heaven and is honoured in numerous Marian devotions. The Catholic Church has influenced Western philosophy, science, art and culture, Catholic spiritual teaching includes spreading the Gospel while Catholic social teaching emphasises support for the sick, the poor and the afflicted through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of education and medical services in the world, from the late 20th century, the Catholic Church has been criticised for its doctrines on sexuality, its refusal to ordain women and its handling of sexual abuse cases. Catholic was first used to describe the church in the early 2nd century, the first known use of the phrase the catholic church occurred in the letter from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans, written about 110 AD. In the Catechetical Discourses of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the name Catholic Church was used to distinguish it from other groups that call themselves the church. The use of the adjective Roman to describe the Church as governed especially by the Bishop of Rome became more widespread after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and into the Early Middle Ages. Catholic Church is the name used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church follows an episcopal polity, led by bishops who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders who are given formal jurisdictions of governance within the church. Ultimately leading the entire Catholic Church is the Bishop of Rome, commonly called the pope, in parallel to the diocesan structure are a variety of religious institutes that function autonomously, often subject only to the authority of the pope, though sometimes subject to the local bishop. Most religious institutes only have male or female members but some have both, additionally, lay members aid many liturgical functions during worship services
11.
Sarajevo
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Sarajevo is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its current administrative limits. The Sarajevo metropolitan area, including Sarajevo Canton and East Sarajevo is home to 688,384 inhabitants, nestled within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans. Due to its long and rich history of religious and cultural variety and it is the only major European city to have a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church and synagogue within the same neighbourhood. Although settlement in the area back to prehistoric times, the modern city arose as an Ottoman stronghold in the 15th century. Sarajevo has attracted international attention several times throughout its history, in 1885, Sarajevo was the first city in Europe and the second city in the world to have a full-time electric tram network running through the city, following San Francisco. For nearly four years, from 1992 to 1996, the city suffered the longest siege of a city in the history of warfare during the Bosnian War. Sarajevo has been undergoing reconstruction, and is the fastest growing city in Bosnia. The travel guide series, Lonely Planet, has named Sarajevo as the 43rd best city in the world, in 2011, Sarajevo was nominated to be the European Capital of Culture in 2014 and will be hosting the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2019. The earliest known name for the large central Bosnian region of todays Sarajevo is Vrhbosna, Sarajevo is a slavicized word based on saray, the Turkish word for palace. The evo portion may come from the term saray ovası first recorded in 1455, the first mention of name Sarajevo was in 1507 letter written by Feriz Beg. The earliest is Šeher, which is the term Isa-Beg Ishaković used to describe the town he was going to build and it is a Turkish word meaning an advanced city of key importance which in turn comes from Persian, شهر shahr. As Sarajevo developed, numerous nicknames came from comparisons to other cities in the Islamic world, the most popular of these was European Jerusalem. Some argue that a correct translation of saray is government office or house. Saray is a word in Turkish for a palace or mansion. Sarajevo is located near the center of the triangular-shaped Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is situated 518 meters above sea level and lies in the Sarajevo valley, the valley itself once formed a vast expanse of greenery, but gave way to urban expansion and development in the post-World War II era. The city is surrounded by forested hills and five major mountains. The last four are known as the Olympic Mountains of Sarajevo
12.
Sephardi Jews
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They established communities throughout Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity. Spoken by Sephardim in the Eastern Mediterranean, Haketia, an Arabic influenced Judaeo-Spanish variety also derived from Old Spanish, with numerous Hebrew and Aramaic terms. Taken with them in the 15th century after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Early Modern Spanish and Early Modern Portuguese, including in a mixture of the two. Traditionally spoken or used liturgically by the ex-converso Western Sephardim, taken with them during their later migration out of Iberia in the 16th to 18th centuries as conversos, after which they reverted to Judaism. In most cases these varieties have incorporated loanwords from the languages of the Americas introduced following the Spanish conquest. This article deals with Sephardim within the narrower ethnic definition, the name Sephardi means Spanish or Hispanic, derived from Sepharad, a Biblical location. The location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by later Jews as Hispania, that is, Sepharad still means Spain in modern Hebrew. In its most basic form, this broad definition of a Sephardi refers to any Jew, of any ethnic background. The term Sephardi in the sense, thus describes the nusach used by Sephardi Jews in their Siddur. A nusach is defined by a liturgical traditions choice of prayers, order of prayers, text of prayers, Sephardim traditionally pray using Minhag Sefarad. Additionally, Ethiopian Jews, whose branch of practiced Judaism is known as Haymanot, have come under the umbrella of Israels already broad Sephardic Chief Rabbinate. The divisions among Sephardim and their descendants today is largely a result of the consequences of the Royal edicts of expulsion. In the case of the Alhambra Decree of 1492, the purpose was to eliminate their influence on Spains large converso population. Indeed, a number of those Jews who had not yet joined the converso community finally chose to convert. While the stipulations were similar in the Portuguese decree, King Manuel then largely prevented Portugals Jews from leaving, by blocking Portugals ports of exit. This failure to leave Portugal was then reasoned by the king to signify a default acceptance of Catholicism by the Jews, actual physical forced conversions, however, were also experienced throughout Portugal. Sephardi Jews, therefore, encompass Jews descended from those Jews who left the Iberian Peninsula as Jews by the expiration of the respective decreed deadlines. This group is divided between those who fled south to North Africa, as opposed to those who fled eastwards to the Balkans, West Asia
13.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
14.
Bosnian Muslim
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Islam is the most widespread religion in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was introduced to the population in the 15th and 16th centuries as a result of the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia. The Bosniaks are predominantly Muslim by religion, for which reason they have also emphasized as Bosnian Muslims throughout their history. There is also a small Sufi community, located primarily in Central Bosnia, Muslims comprise the single largest religious community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Minority groups of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina include Albanians, Roma people, Turks, Islam was first introduced to the Balkans on a large scale by the Ottomans in the mid-to-late 15th century who gained control of most of Bosnia in 1463, and seized Herzegovina in the 1480s. Over the next century, the Bosnians - composed of dualists, during the Ottoman era the name Bošnjanin was definitely transformed into the current Bošnjak, with the suffix -ak replacing the traditional -anin. By the early 1600s, approximately two thirds of the population of Bosnia were Muslim, Bosnia and Herzegovina remained a province in the Ottoman Empire and gained autonomy after the Bosnian uprising in 1831. After the 1878 Congress of Berlin it came under the control of Austria-Hungary. In 1908, Austria-Hungary formally annexed the region, Bosnia, along with Albania, were the only parts of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans where large numbers of people were converted to Islam, and remained there after independence. Within the Federation, distinct Muslim and Catholic majority areas remain, throughout Bosnia, mosques were systematically destroyed by Serb and Croat armed forces. Among the most important losses were two mosques in Banja Luka, Arnaudija and Ferhadija mosque, that were on the UNESCO register of world cultural monuments. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are eight Muftis located in municipalities across the country, Sarajevo, Bihać, Travnik, Tuzla, Goražde, Zenica, Mostar. The acting head of the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Husein Kavazović, in a 1998 public opinion poll,78. 3% of Bosniaks in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared themselves to be religious. Headscarves for women, or the hijab is worn only by a minority of Bosniak women, Bosnians who participate in or are children of ethnically mixed marriages between the Bosniak, Serb and Croat populations in Bosnia and Herzegovina are often irreligious. The State Constitution provides freedom of religion, and individuals generally enjoy this right in ethnically mixed areas or in areas where they were adherents of the majority religion. The governments census bureau today does not collect data on religious affiliation, Development Programs Human Development Report 2002 as quoted by the Bosnia and Herzegovina report. Historically, Bosnian Muslims has always practiced Islam which is influenced by Sufism. Since Bosnian War, however, some remnants of groups of fighters from Middle-east, fighting on the side of Bosnian Army, remained for some time
15.
Piano
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The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. The word piano is a form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had a sound and smaller dynamic range. An acoustic piano usually has a wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings. Pressing one or more keys on the keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings. The hammer rebounds from the strings, and the continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air, when the key is released, a damper stops the strings vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained, even when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs and this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the accidentals, which are needed to play in all twelve keys, more rarely, some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass that graduates from one to two, the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. There are two types of piano, the grand piano and the upright piano. The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music and art song and it is used in jazz. The upright piano, which is compact, is the most popular type, as they are a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, with technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, and digital pianos have also been developed. The electric piano became an instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music. The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments, pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches
16.
Organ (music)
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In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands on a keyboard or with the feet using pedals. The organ is an old musical instrument, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria. It was played throughout the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman world, subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument in the Classical music tradition. Pipe organs use air moving through pipes to produce sounds, since the 16th century, pipe organs have used various materials for pipes, which can vary widely in timbre and volume. The pipes are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops, although the keyboard is not expressive as on a piano and does not affect dynamics, some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. Some organs are enclosed, meaning that all the divisions can be controlled by one set of shutters. Some special registers with free reed pipes are expressive and these instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors, and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive or portative, increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions. Great economies of space and cost are possible especially when the lowest of the pipes can be replaced, non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium, which like the accordion and harmonica use air to excite free reeds. Electronic organs or digital organs, notably the Hammond organ, generate electronically produced sound through one or more loudspeakers, mechanical organs include the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion. These are controlled by means such as pinned barrels or book music. Little barrel organs dispense with the hands of an organist and bigger organs are powered in most cases by a grinder or today by other means such as an electric motor. The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made mechanical creations before the Industrial Revolution. Pipe organs range in size from a short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards with five each, and a two-and-a-half octave pedal board. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the King of instruments, some of the biggest instruments have 64-foot pipes, and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphony orchestras, most organs in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia can be found in Christian churches. The introduction of organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century
17.
Synagogue
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A synagogue, also spelled synagog, is a Jewish house of prayer. Synagogues have a hall for prayer, and may also have smaller rooms for study and sometimes a social hall. Some have a room for Torah study, called the beith midrash beis medrash —בית מדרש. Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of prayer, Tanakh reading, study and assembly, halakha holds that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever ten Jews assemble. Worship can also be carried out alone or with fewer than ten people assembled together, however, halakha considers certain prayers as communal prayers and therefore they may be recited only by a minyan. The synagogue does not replace the long-since destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, israelis use the Hebrew term beyt knesset. Jews of Ashkenazi descent have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul in everyday speech, Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal. Spanish Jews call the synagogue a sinagoga and Portuguese Jews call it an esnoga, persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the non-Hebrew term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Arab Jews use kenis. Reform and some Conservative Jews use the word temple, the Greek word synagogue is used in English, to cover the preceding possibilities. The all-day Yom Kippur service, in fact, was an event in which the congregation both observed the movements of the kohen gadol as he offered the days sacrifices and prayed for his success. During the Babylonian captivity the Men of the Great Assembly formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers, prior to that people prayed as they saw fit, with each individual praying in his or her own way, and there were no standard prayers that were recited. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple era and this contributed to the continuity of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a portable way of worship despite the destruction of the Temple, according to many historians. A synagogue dating from between 75 and 50 BCE has been uncovered at a Hasmonean-era winter palace near Jericho, more than a dozen Second Temple era synagogues have been identified by archaeologists. Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue, there is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. In fact, the influence from local religious buildings can often be seen in synagogue arches, domes. Historically, synagogues were built in the architectural style of their time. Thus, the synagogue in Kaifeng, China looked very like Chinese temples of that region and era, with its outer wall, the styles of the earliest synagogues resembled the temples of other sects of the eastern Roman Empire. The surviving synagogues of medieval Spain are embellished with mudéjar plasterwork, the surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest and Prague are typical Gothic structures
18.
Anton Door
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Anton Door was an Austrian pianist and music educator, also known in Russia as Anton Andreyevich Door. Anton Door was born in Vienna and studied piano with Carl Czerny and he began a concert career in 1850, touring as a soloist in Germany and Italy. He was appointed Court Pianist and a member of the Royal Academy in Stockholm, from 1868-1901 he taught in Vienna at the Friends of Music Society. He served as president of the Friends of Brahms Society and instituted the organizations concert series, Door was known for emphasis on technical ability, and notable students include Robert Fischhof, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Fritz Steinbach and Laura Netzel. See, List of music students by teacher, C to F#Anton Door, pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky dedicated his Valse-Caprice, Op.4 to Anton Door
19.
Music theory
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Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The term is used in three ways in music, though all three are interrelated. The first is what is otherwise called rudiments, currently taught as the elements of notation, of key signatures, of time signatures, of rhythmic notation, Theory in this sense is treated as the necessary preliminary to the study of harmony, counterpoint, and form. The second is the study of writings about music from ancient times onwards, Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. However, this medieval discipline became the basis for tuning systems in later centuries, Music theory as a practical discipline encompasses the methods and concepts composers and other musicians use in creating music. The development, preservation, and transmission of music theory in this sense may be found in oral and written music-making traditions, musical instruments, and other artifacts. In ancient and living cultures around the world, the deep and long roots of music theory are clearly visible in instruments, oral traditions, and current music making. Many cultures, at least as far back as ancient Mesopotamia and ancient China, have also considered music theory in more formal ways such as written treatises, in modern academia, music theory is a subfield of musicology, the wider study of musical cultures and history. Etymologically, music theory is an act of contemplation of music, from the Greek θεωρία, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, theory, also a sight, a person who researches, teaches, or writes articles about music theory is a music theorist. University study, typically to the M. A. or Ph. D level, is required to teach as a music theorist in a US or Canadian university. Methods of analysis include mathematics, graphic analysis, and especially analysis enabled by Western music notation, comparative, descriptive, statistical, and other methods are also used. See for instance Paleolithic flutes, Gǔdí, and Anasazi flute, several surviving Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets include musical information of a theoretical nature, mainly lists of intervals and tunings. The scholar Sam Mirelman reports that the earliest of these dates from before 1500 BCE. Further, All the Mesopotamian texts are united by the use of a terminology for music that, much of Chinese music history and theory remains unclear. The earliest texts about Chinese music theory are inscribed on the stone and they include more than 2800 words describing theories and practices of music pitches of the time. The bells produce two intertwined pentatonic scales three tones apart with additional pitches completing the chromatic scale, Chinese theory starts from numbers, the main musical numbers being twelve, five and eight. Twelve refers to the number of pitches on which the scales can be constructed, the Lüshi chunqiu from about 239 BCE recalls the legend of Ling Lun. On order of the Yellow Emperor, Ling Lun collected twelve bamboo lengths with thick, blowing on one of these like a pipe, he found its sound agreeable and named it huangzhong, the Yellow Bell
20.
Robert Fuchs
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Robert Fuchs was an Austrian composer and music teacher. As Professor of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory, Fuchs taught many notable composers and he was born in Frauental an der Laßnitz in Styria in 1847 as the youngest of thirteen children. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Felix Otto Dessoff and Joseph Hellmesberger among others and he eventually secured a teaching position there and was appointed Professor of music theory in 1875. He retained the position until 1912 and he died in Vienna at the age of eighty. He was the youngest brother of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, who was also a composer, Robert Fuchs taught many notable composers, See, List of music students by teacher, C to F#Robert Fuchs. Unfailingly tuneful and enjoyable, Robert Fuchs’s piano trios are an easily accessible way to get to know a composer whom Brahms greatly admired, noted the magazine Gramophone, in his time Fuchs was very highly regarded, with one critic famously pointing to Fuchsisms in Mahler’s Second Symphony. He certainly had his admirers, among them Brahms, who almost never praised the works of other composers. But with regard to Fuchs, Brahms wrote, “Fuchs is a musician, everything is so fine and so skillful, so charmingly invented. In his lifetime, his best known works were his five serenades, the serenades have been recorded by the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Christian Ludwig for Naxos. Robert Fuchs, Studien zu Person und Werk des Wiener Komponisten und Theorielehrers, münchen, Musikverlag E. Katzbichler, Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, Bd.39
21.
Johann Nepomuk Fuchs (composer)
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Johann Nepomuk Fuchs was an Austrian composer, opera conductor, teacher and editor. His editorial work included an important role in the preparation of the first complete edition of Schuberts works and he was an older brother of the composer Robert Fuchs. Johann Nepomuk Fuchs was born on 5 May 1842 at Frauental in Styria in the south of Austria and his youngest brother was the composer and music teacher Robert Fuchs. Johann studied musical theory in Vienna with the prominent theorist and composer Simon Sechter, in 1864, he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Bratislava Opera. He also conducted opera outside Bratislava, in Brno, Kassel, Cologne, Hamburg, in 1888, Fuchs joined the faculty of the Vienna Conservatory, where the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky was one of his students of composition. Other notable students included composers Edmund Eysler, Leo Fall and Rubin Goldmark, in 1893, Fuchs succeeded Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr. as director of the conservatory. Further recognition followed in 1894, when he was appointed Vice Hofkapellmeister for his services at the Vienna Court Opera, Fuchs composed operatic and incidental music for the theatre, as well as lieder and piano pieces. His one opera, Zingara, was first staged in Brno in 1872, as an editor, Fuchs worked on editions of operas, including Glucks Le cadi dupé, Handels Almira and Schuberts Alfonso und Estrella. He died at Bad Vöslau in Lower Austria on 15 October 1899, free scores by Johann Nepomuk Fuchs at the International Music Score Library Project Works catalogued by the German National Library
22.
Anton Bruckner
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Josef Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character. Bruckners compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, unlike other musical radicals such as Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf who fit the enfant terrible mould, Bruckner showed extreme humility before other musicians, Wagner in particular. This apparent dichotomy between Bruckner the man and Bruckner the composer hampers efforts to describe his life in a way that gives a straightforward context for his music. On the other hand, Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers including his friend Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden on 4 September 1824. The ancestors of Bruckners family were farmers and craftsmen, their history can be traced to as far back as the 16th century and they lived near a bridge south of Sindelburg, which led to their being called Pruckhner an der Pruckhen. Bruckners grandfather was appointed schoolmaster in Ansfelden in 1776, this position was inherited by Bruckners father, Anton Bruckner senior and it was a poorly paid but well-respected position in the rural environment. Music was a part of the curriculum, and Bruckners father was his first music teacher. Bruckner learned to play the organ early as a child and he entered school when he was six, proved to be a hard-working student, and was promoted to upper class early. While studying, Bruckner also helped his father in teaching the other children, after Bruckner received his confirmation in 1833, Bruckners father sent him to another school in Hörsching. The schoolmaster, Johann Baptist Weiß, was a music enthusiast, here, Bruckner completed his school education and learned to play the organ excellently. Around 1835 Bruckner wrote his first composition, a Pange lingua – one of the compositions which he revised at the end of his life, when his father became ill, Anton returned to Ansfelden to help him in his work. Bruckners father died in 1837, when Bruckner was 13 years old, the teachers position and house were given to a successor, and Bruckner was sent to the Augustinian monastery in Sankt Florian to become a choirboy. In addition to practice, his education included violin and organ lessons. Bruckner was in awe of the great organ, which was built during the late baroque era and rebuilt in 1837. Later, the organ was to be called the Bruckner Organ, despite his musical abilities, Bruckners mother sent her son to a teaching seminar in Linz in 1841. After completing the seminar with an excellent grade, Bruckner was sent as an assistant to a school in Windhaag. The living standards and pay were horrible, and Bruckner was constantly humiliated by his superior, despite the difficult situation, Bruckner never complained or rebelled, a belief of inferiority was to remain one of Bruckners main personal characteristics during his whole life
23.
Johannes Brahms
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Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works and he worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished, Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, the diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahmss works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs, Brahmss father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from the town of Heide in Holstein. The family name was sometimes spelt Brahmst or Brams, and derives from Bram. Against the familys will, Johann Jakob pursued a career in music, arriving in Hamburg in 1826, where he work as a jobbing musician. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress 17 years older than he was, in the same year he was appointed as a horn player in the Hamburg militia. Eventually he became a player in the Hamburg Stadttheater and the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. As Johann Jakob prospered, the family moved over the years to better accommodation in Hamburg. Johannes Brahms was born in 1833, his sister Elisabeth had been born in 1831, Fritz also became a pianist, overshadowed by his brother he emigrated to Caracas in 1867, and later returned to Hamburg as a teacher. Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training, Johannes also learnt to play the violin, from 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms could be such a good player, at the age of 10, Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including Beethovens quintet for piano and winds Op.16 and a piano quartet by Mozart. He also played as a solo work an étude of Henri Herz, by 1845 he had written a piano sonata in G minor
24.
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
25.
Counterpoint
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In music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, the term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning point against point. Counterpoint generally involves musical lines with strongly independent identities, Counterpoint has been used to designate a voice or even an entire composition. In each era, contrapuntally organized music writing has been subject to rules—sometimes strict ones, chords are the simultaneous soundings of notes, whereas harmonic, vertical features are considered secondary and almost incidental when counterpoint is the predominant textural element. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction—only secondarily on the produced by that interaction. In the words of John Rahn, It is hard to write a beautiful song and it is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The way that is accomplished in detail is, some examples of related compositional techniques include, the round, the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention, the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint, Species counterpoint generally offers less freedom to the composer than other types of counterpoint and therefore is called a strict counterpoint. The student gradually attains the ability to free counterpoint according to the given rules at the time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfranco described a concept in his Scintille di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques, a succession of later theorists quite closely imitated Fuxs seminal work, often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part, if the final is approached from below, then the leading tone must be raised in a minor key, but not in Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C♯ is necessary at the cadence, permitted melodic intervals are the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. The ascending minor sixth must be followed by motion downwards. The three notes should be from the triad, if this is impossible, they should not outline more than one octave. In general, do not write more than two skips in the same direction, if writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with motion in the other direction. The interval of a tritone in three notes should be avoided as is the interval of a seventh in three notes, there must be a climax or high point in the line countering the cantus firmus. This usually occurs somewhere in the middle of exercise and must occur on a strong beat, an outlining of a seventh is avoided within a single line moving in the same direction
26.
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
27.
Es war einmal
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Es war einmal is a fairy-tale opera in a prologue and three acts by the Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. Its libretto, an adaptation of M. Von Borchs German translation of the fairy-tale play Der var engang by the Danish author Holger Drachmann, was written by Maximilian Singer. The opera was first performed on 22 January 1900 at the Vienna State Opera conducted by Gustav Mahler with Selma Kurz, the successful premiere resulted in a run of twelve performances. It was revived in Mannheim in May 1912, and in October 1912 at the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, the principal roles were sung by Eva Johansson, Kurt Westi, Per-Arne Wahlgren and Aage Haugland. This performance was the first one since the Prague staging of 1912, notes Sources Batta, András, Opera - Komponisten, Werke, Interpreten
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Vienna State Opera
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The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria and it was originally called the Vienna Court Opera. In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian Republic, the members of the Vienna Philharmonic are recruited from its orchestra. The opera house was the first major building on the Vienna Ringstrasse commissioned by the Viennese city expansion fund, work commenced on the house in 1861 and was completed in 1869, following plans drawn up by architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll. It was built in the Neo-Renaissance style by the renowned Czech architect, the somewhat coarser-grained Kelheimerstein was intended as the main stone to be used in the building of the opera house, but the necessary quantity was not deliverable. Breitenbrunner stone was suggested as a substitute for the Kelheimer stone, the staircases were constructed from polished Kaiserstein, while most of the rest of the interior was decorated with varieties of marble. The decision was made to use dimension stone for the exterior of the building, due to the monumental demand for stone, stone from Sóskút, widely used in Budapest, was also used. Three Viennese masonry companies were employed to supply enough masonry labour, Eduard Hauser, Anton Wasserburger, the foundation stone was laid on 20 May 1863. The building was, however, not very popular with the public, on the one hand, it did not seem as grand as the Heinrichshof, a private residence which was destroyed in World War II. Eduard van der Nüll committed suicide, and barely ten weeks later Sicardsburg died from tuberculosis so neither architect saw the completion of the building, the opening premiere was Don Giovanni, by Mozart, on May 25,1869. Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth were present, towards the end of World War II, on March 12,1945, the opera was set alight by an American bombardment. The front section, which had been walled off as a precaution, remained intact including the foyer, with frescoes by Moritz von Schwind, the stairways, the vestibule. The auditorium and stage were, however, destroyed by flames as well as almost the entire décor, the State Opera was temporarily housed at the Theater an der Wien and at the Vienna Volksoper. Eventually the decision was made to rebuild the house as it had been. The Austrian Federal Chancellor Leopold Figl made the decision in 1946 to have an opera house again by 1949. An architectural competition was announced, which was won by Erich Boltenstern, in order to achieve a good acoustic, wood was the favoured building material, at the advice of, among others, Arturo Toscanini. In addition, the number of seats in the parterre was reduced, and the fourth gallery, the façade, entrance hall and the Schwind foyer were restored and remain in their original style. In 1947, the company went on tour to London, due to the appalling conditions at Theater an der Wien, the opera company leadership tried to raise significant quantities of money to speed up reconstruction of the original opera house
29.
Carltheater
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The Carltheater was a theatre in Vienna. It was in the suburbs in Leopoldstadt at Praterstraße 31 and it was the successor to the Leopoldstädter Theater. After a series of difficulties, that theater had been sold in 1838 to the director, Carl Carl. The theatre was opened under the name Carltheater in the year,1847. Many Alt-Wiener Volkstheater pieces by Johann Nepomuk Nestroy premiered here, between 1854 and 1860, Nestroy was the director of the theatre, in subsequent years, many well-known Viennese playwrights wrote pieces for the Carltheater and reinforced its reputation as the favoured opera house for Viennese folk-pieces and operettas. After a rapid changeover of directors in the 20th century, the theatre became unprofitable, in 1944, the auditorium of the theatre was almost entirely destroyed in a bomb attack. The artistically valuable facade was, however, still intact after the war. In 1951 it was demolished, with neighbouring building which had not been damaged in the war, nowadays, the site is host to the Galaxy-building. A few years ago there was a plaque in Praterstraße, marking the location of the theatre. Die schlimmen Buben in der Schule, burlesque in one act, by Johann Nestroy, freiheit in Krähwinkel, farce with song by Johann Nestroy, on July 1,1848. Judith und Holofernes, travesty with song by Johann Nestroy, on March 13,1849, Vienna,2002 Dieter Klein, Martin Kupf, Robert Schediwy, Stadtbildverluste Wien — Ein Rückblick auf fünf Jahrzehnte. LIT, Vienna 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-7754-5 Birgit Peter, Nestroytheater, in, Julia Danielczyk, Nestroy — weder Lorbeerbaum noch Bettelstab
30.
Protestantism
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Protestantism is a form of Christianity which originated with the Reformation, a movement against what its followers considered to be errors in the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the three divisions of Christendom, together with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks from or attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Protestants reject the notion of papal supremacy and deny the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but disagree among themselves regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Five solae summarize the reformers basic differences in theological beliefs, in the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, and Iceland. Reformed churches were founded in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by such reformers as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, the political separation of the Church of England from Rome under King Henry VIII brought England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement. Protestants developed their own culture, which made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, some Protestant denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of families, Adventism, Anglicanism, Baptist churches, Reformed churches, Lutheranism, Methodism. Nondenominational, evangelical, charismatic, independent and other churches are on the rise, and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, the edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. During the Reformation, the term was used outside of the German politics. The word evangelical, which refers to the gospel, was more widely used for those involved in the religious movement. Nowadays, this word is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions in Europe, above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the EKD. In continental Europe, an Evangelical is either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, the German word evangelisch means Protestant, and is different from the German evangelikal, which refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word evangelical usually refers to Evangelical Protestant churches, and it traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States. Protestantism as a term is now used in contradistinction to the other major Christian traditions, i. e. Roman Catholicism. Initially, Protestant became a term to mean any adherent to the Reformation movement in Germany and was taken up by Lutherans. Even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ, French and Swiss Protestants preferred the word reformed, which became a popular, neutral and alternative name for Calvinists
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Christian cross
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The Christian cross, seen as a representation of the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus, is the best-known symbol of Christianity. It is related to the crucifix and to the general family of cross symbols. The basic forms of the cross are the Latin cross and the Greek cross, with variants used in heraldry. The cross-shaped sign, represented in its simplest form by a crossing of two lines at right angles, greatly predates the introduction of Christianity, in both East and West and it goes back to a very remote period of human civilization. It is supposed to have used not just for its ornamental value. It may have represented the apparatus used in kindling fire, and thus as the symbol of sacred fire or as a symbol of the sun, denoting its daily rotation. It has also interpreted as the mystic representation of lightning or of the god of the tempest, or the emblem of the Aryan pantheon. Another associated symbol is the cross used in ancient Egypt. It was often depicted in the hands of the goddess Sekhmet, Egyptian Christians adopted it as the emblem of the cross. Yet another Egyptian symbol is the nfr - meaning, beauty or perfect, in the Bronze Age a representation of the cross as conceived in Christian art appeared, and the form was popularised. The more precise characterization coincided with a general change in customs. The cross then came into use in forms on many objects, fibulas, cinctures, earthenware fragments. De Mortillet believed that use of the sign was not merely ornamental. In the proto-Etruscan cemetery of Golasecca every tomb has a vase with a cross engraved on it, true crosses of more or less artistic design have been found in Tiryns, at Mycenæ, in Crete, and on a fibula from Vulci. According to Swami Vivekananda the Christian cross is the Shivalinga converted into a cross, according to W. E. Vine, the cross was used by worshipers of Tammuz, an Ancient Near East deity of Babylonian origin who had the cross-shaped taw as his symbol. In which there was not only a straight and erected piece of Wood fixed in the Earth, but also a transverse Beam fastned unto that towards the top thereof. A symbol similar to the cross, the staurogram, was used to abbreviate the Greek word for cross in very early New Testament manuscripts such as P66, P45 and P75, the extensive adoption of the cross as Christian iconographic symbol arose from the 4th century. Another early depictions of the cross as a Christian symbol is the Alexamenos graffito. e, in his book De Corona, written in 204, Tertullian tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace repeatedly on their foreheads the sign of the cross
32.
Jesus
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In Christology, the Person of Christ refers to the study of the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ as they co-exist within one person. There is no discussion in the New Testament regarding the dual nature of the Person of Christ as both divine and human. Hence, since the days of Christianity theologians have debated various approaches to the understanding of these natures. In the period following the Apostolic Age, specific beliefs such as Arianism and Docetism were criticized. On the other end of the spectrum, Docetism argued that Jesus physical body was an illusion, docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch and were eventually abandoned by proto-orthodox Christians. However, after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Logos, historically in the Alexandrian school of christology, Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos paradoxically humanized in history, a divine Person who became enfleshed, uniting himself to the human nature. The views of these schools can be summarized as follows, Alexandria, Antioch, Logos assumes a specific human being The First Council of Ephesus in 431 debated a number of views regarding the Person of Christ. At the same gathering the council debated the doctrines of monophysitism or miaphysitism. The council rejected Nestorianism and adopted the term hypostatic union, referring to divine, the language used in the 431 declaration was further refined at the 451 Council of Chalcedon. However, the Chalcedon creed was not accepted by all Christians, because Saint Augustine died in 430 he did not participate in the Council of Ephesus in 431 or Chalcedon in 451, but his ideas had some impact on both councils. On the other hand, the major theological figure of the Middle Ages. The Third Council of Constantinople in 680 held that both divine and human wills exist in Jesus, with the divine will having precedence, leading and guiding the human will. John Calvin maintained that there was no element in the Person of Christ which could be separated from the person of The Word. Calvin also emphasized the importance of the Work of Christ in any attempt at understanding the Person of Christ, the study of the Person of Christ continued into the 20th century, with modern theologians such as Karl Rahner and Hans von Balthasar. Balthasar argued that the union of the human and divine natures of Christ was achieved not by the absorption of human attributes, thus in his view the divine nature of Christ was not affected by the human attributes and remained forever divine
33.
Psalms
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The Book of Psalms, commonly referred to simply as Psalms or the Psalms, is the first book of the Ketuvim, the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and a book of the Christian Old Testament. The title is derived from the Greek translation, ψαλμοί psalmoi, meaning instrumental music and, by extension, the book is an anthology of individual psalms, with 150 in the Jewish and Western Christian tradition and more in the Eastern Christian churches. Many of the psalms are linked to the name of David, over a third appear to be musical directions, addressed to the leader or choirmaster, including such statements as with stringed instruments and according to lilies. Others appear to be references to types of composition, such as A psalm and Song. Many superscriptions carry the names of individuals, the most common being of David, others named include Moses, Asaph, the Sons of Korah and Solomon. A natural way of understanding these attributions is as a claim to authorship, Psalms are usually identified by a sequence number, often preceded by the abbreviation Ps. Numbering of the Psalms differs—mostly by one digit, see table—between the Hebrew and it is generally admitted that Pss.9 and 10 were originally a single acrostic poem, they have been wrongly separated by Massorah, rightly united by the Septuagint and Vulgate. On the other hand, Ps.144 is made up of two songs — verses 1–11 and 12–15, Pss.42 and 43 are shown by identity of subject, of metrical structure and of refrain, to be three strophes of one and the same poem. The Hebrew text is correct in counting as one Ps.146, later liturgical usage would seem to have split up these and not a few other psalms. Zenner combines into what he deems were the original choral odes,1,2,3,4,6 +13,9 +10,19,20,21,56 +57,69 +70,114 +115,148,149,150. A choral ode would seem to have been the form of Pss.14 +70. The two strophes and the epode are Ps,14, the two antistrophes are Ps.70. It is noteworthy that, on the breaking up of the ode, each portion crept twice into the Psalter, Ps.14 =53, Ps.70 =40. Other such duplicated psalms are Ps and this loss of the original form of some of the psalms is allowed by the Biblical Commission to have been due to liturgical uses, neglect of copyists, or other causes. The Septuagint bible, present in Eastern Orthodox churches, includes a Psalm 151, Some versions of the Peshitta include Psalms 152–155. There are also the Psalms of Solomon, which are a further 18 psalms of Jewish origin, likely written in Hebrew. These and other indications suggest that the current Western Christian and Jewish collection of 150 psalms were selected from a wider set, gunkel divided the psalms into five primary types, Hymns, songs of praise for Gods work in creation or in history. They typically open with a call to praise, describe the motivation for praise, two sub-categories are enthronement psalms, celebrating the enthronement of Yahweh as king, and Zion psalms, glorifying Mount Zion, Gods dwelling-place in Jerusalem
34.
Alma Mahler
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Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel was a Viennese-born composer and socialite. Musically active from her teens, she was the composer of at least seventeen songs for voice, in later years her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles. Alma Schindler was born in Vienna, Austria, to the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna Bergen, although later in life Mahler characterized her upbringing as privileged, the family is said to have been only moderately successful. After her fathers death, her married her late husbands former pupil, Carl Moll. Almas social interactions in her youth included friendships with the artists of the Vienna Secession, as a young woman she had a series of flirtations, including Gustav Klimt, theater director Max Burckhard and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. On 9 March 1902 she married Gustav Mahler, who was nineteen years her senior, with him she had two daughters, Maria Anna, who died of scarlet fever or diphtheria, and Anna, who became a sculptor. The terms of Almas marriage with Gustav were that she would abandon her own interest in composing, artistically stifled herself, she embraced her role as a loving wife and supporter of Gustavs music, together regularly attending the salon of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Later in their marriage, after becoming depressed in the wake of Marias death, she began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius. Upon his urging, and under his guidance, she prepared five of her songs for publication, after this turbulent period in their marriage, Alma and Gustav traveled to New York, where Gustav was seasonally engaged as a conductor. In February,1911, he fell ill with an infection related to a heart defect that had been diagnosed several years earlier. He died in May, shortly after their return to Vienna, after Mahlers death, she did not immediately resume contact with Gropius. Between 1912 and 1914 she had an affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschkas possessiveness wore on Alma, and the vicissitudes of the relationship tired them both. She and Gropius married in 1915 during one of his military leaves and they had a daughter together, Manon Gropius, who grew up being friends with Maria Altmann. After Manon died of polio at the age of 18, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Martin Carl Johannes Gropius. Gropius at first believed that the child was his, but Almas ongoing affair with Werfel was common knowledge in Vienna by this time, within a year, they agreed to a divorce. In the meantime, Martin, who had been born prematurely, developed hydrocephalus and her divorce from Gropius became final in 1920. While Gropiuss military duties were keeping him absent, she met and began an affair with Prague-born poet
35.
Erwartung
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Erwartung, Op.17, is a one-act monodrama in four scenes by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until 6 June 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano, the opera takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo soprano accompanied by a large orchestra. In performance, it lasts for half an hour. It is sometimes paired with Béla Bartóks opera Bluebeards Castle, as the two works were roughly contemporary and share similar psychological themes. Philip Friedheim has described Erwartung as Schoenbergs only lengthy work in an athematic style, in his analysis of the structure, one indication of the complexity of the music is that the first scene of over 30 bars contains 9 meter changes and 16 tempo changes. Herbert Buchanan has countered this description of the work as athematic, the musicologist Charles Rosen has said that Erwartung, along with Bergs Wozzeck and Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, is among the impregnable great monuments of modernism. Erwartung had its British premiere on 9 January 1931, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer and it was the first live opera shown on Times Square in New York City in a production by Robin Rhode in November 2015. The Woman Time, Night Place, A forest A woman is in a state as she searches for her lover. In the darkness, she comes across what she first thinks is a body and she is frightened and becomes more anxious as she cannot find the man she is looking for. She then finds a body, and sees that it is her lover. She calls out for assistance, but there is no response and she tries to revive him, and addresses him as if he were still alive, angrily charging him with being unfaithful to her. She then asks herself what she is to do with her life, finally, she wanders off alone into the night
36.
Otto Klemperer
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Otto Klemperer was a German-born conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the conductors of the 20th century. Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany, as a son of Nathan Klemperer, Klemperer studied music first at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and later at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin under James Kwast and Hans Pfitzner. He followed Kwast to three institutions and credited him with the basis of his musical development. In 1905 he met Gustav Mahler while conducting the brass at a performance of Mahlers Symphony No. He also made a reduction of the second symphony. The two men became friends, and Klemperer became conductor at the German Opera in Prague in 1907 on Mahlers recommendation, Mahler wrote a short testimonial, recommending Klemperer, on a small card which Klemperer kept for the rest of his life. Later, in 1910, Klemperer assisted Mahler in the premiere of his Symphony No, Klemperer went on to hold a number of positions, in Hamburg, in Barmen, the Strasbourg Opera, the Cologne Opera, and the Wiesbaden Opera House. From 1927 to 1931, he was conductor at the Kroll Opera in Berlin, on March 22,1920, his wife soprano Johanna Geisler gave birth to their son, the German-American actor Werner Klemperer. In 1933, once the Nazi Party had reached power, Klemperer, Klemperer had previously converted to Catholicism, but returned to Judaism at the end of his life. In the U. S. he was appointed Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and he was granted United States citizenship in 1937. He also visited other countries, including England and Australia, Klemperer hoped for a permanent position as lead conductor in New York or Philadelphia. The New York decision was particularly galling, as Klemperer had been engaged to conduct the first fourteen weeks of the New York Philharmonics 1935-6 season and you see, I am no youngster. I have a name and a good name, one could not use me in a most difficult season and then expell me. This non-reengagement will have bad results not only for me in New York. This non-reengagement is an absolutely unjustified wrong done to me by the Philharmonic Society, though he would occasionally conduct the Philharmonic after that, he lost the post of Music Director. Furthermore, his behavior during manic episodes made him an undesirable guest to US orchestras. After World War II, Klemperer returned to Europe to work at the Budapest Opera, in the early 1950s Klemperer experienced difficulties arising from his U. S. citizenship
37.
Nazi Party
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Its precursor, the German Workers Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, the party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism, the Nazis propagated the idea of a peoples community. Their aim was to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, to maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovahs Witnesses, the partys leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a regime known as the Third Reich. The term Nazi derives from the name given in German to a party member Nationalsozialist and was coined in response to the German term Sozi, members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten, rarely as Nazis. The term Parteigenosse was commonly used among Nazis, with the feminine form Parteigenossin used when it was appropriate, the term was in use before the rise of the party as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backward peasant, characterising an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the name in intentional association to the long-time existing Sozi to the dismissive Nazi. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the designation Nazi diminished in Germany, the use of Nazi Germany, and Nazi regime, was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after the Second World War. The party grew out of political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden was created in Bremen. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, though very small, Drexlers movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, later in 1918, Karl Harrer, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel. The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews and they became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time
38.
Soprano
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A soprano is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The sopranos vocal range is from approximately middle C =261 Hz to high A =880 Hz in choral music, in four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto. The lyric soprano is the most common female singing voice, the word soprano comes from the Italian word sopra, as the soprano is the highest pitch human voice, often given to the leading female roles in operas. The term soprano is also based on the Latin word superius which, like soprano, the word superius was especially used in choral and other multi-part vocal music between the 13th and 16th centuries. The soprano has the highest vocal range of all voice types, a soprano and a mezzo-soprano have a similar range, but their tessituras will lie in different parts of that range. The low extreme for sopranos is roughly A3 or B♭3, within opera, the lowest demanded note for sopranos is F3. Often low notes in higher voices will project less, lack timbre, however, rarely is a soprano simply unable to sing a low note in a song within a soprano role. The high extreme, at a minimum, for non-coloratura sopranos is soprano C, a couple of roles have optional E♭6s, as well. In the coloratura repertoire several roles call for E♭6 on up to F6, in rare cases, some coloratura roles go as high as G6 or G♯6, such as Mozarts concert aria Popoli di Tessaglia. Or the title role of Jules Massenets opera Esclarmonde, while not necessarily within the tessitura, a good soprano will be able to sing her top notes full-throated, with timbre and dynamic control. In opera, the tessitura, vocal weight, and timbre of voices, a singers tessitura is where the voice has the best timbre, easy volume, and most comfort. Within the soprano voice type category are five generally recognized subcategories, coloratura soprano, soubrette, lyric soprano, spinto soprano, the coloratura soprano may be a lyric coloratura or a dramatic coloratura. The lyric coloratura soprano is a very agile light voice with a high upper extension capable of fast vocal coloratura, Light coloraturas have a range of approximately middle C to high F with some coloratura sopranos being able to sing somewhat higher or lower. Dramatic coloraturas have a range of approximately low B to high F with some coloratura sopranos being able to sing higher or lower. In classical music and opera, a soubrette soprano refers to both a type and a particular type of opera role. A soubrette voice is light with a bright, sweet timbre, a tessitura in the mid-range, the soubrette voice is not a weak voice, for it must carry over an orchestra without a microphone like all voices in opera. The voice, however, has a lighter weight than other soprano voices with a brighter timbre
39.
Baritone
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A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice types. It is the most common male voice, the baritone voice type is generally divided into the baryton-Martin baritone, lyric baritone, Kavalierbariton, Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, baryton-noble baritone, and the bass-baritone. The first use of the term baritone emerged as baritonans, late in the 15th century, at this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices, but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice. Baritones took roughly the range as it is today at the beginning of the 18th century. Indeed, many works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles. Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas, the greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Papageno in The Magic Flute and these included the likes of Filippo Galli, Giovanni Inchindi, and Henri-Bernard Dabadie. The basse-taille and the bass were commonly confused because their roles were sometimes sung by singers of either actual voice part. The bel canto style of vocalism which arose in Italy in the early 19th century supplanted the castrato-dominated opera seria of the previous century and it led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. More often than not, however, baritones found themselves portraying villains, the principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be, Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and the young Giuseppe Verdi. Figaro in Il barbiere is often called the first true baritone role, however, Donizetti and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasize the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini and he was a famous Don Giovanni in Mozarts eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty, flexibility and smooth tonal emission, Tamburinis range, however, was probably closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern Verdi baritone. His French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie, who was a mainstay of the Paris Opera between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell. Dabadie sang in Italy, too, where he originated the role of Belcore in Lelisir damore in 1832, the most important of Tamburinis Italianate successors were all Verdians. In France, Paul Barroilhet succeeded Dabadie as the Paris operas best known baritone, like Dabadie, he also sang in Italy and created an important Donizetti role, in his case, Alphonse in La favorite. Antonio Pini-Corsi was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between about 1880 and World War I, reveling in comic roles by Rossini, Donizetti and Paer. In 1893, he created the part of Ford in Verdis last opera, notable among their contemporaries were the cultured and technically adroit French baritones Jean Lassalle, Victor Maurel, Paul Lhérie, and Maurice Renaud
40.
Bengal
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Bengal is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in Asia, which is located in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Geographically, it is made up by the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta system, in 2011, the population of Bengal was estimated to be 250 million, making it the most densely populated region in South Asia. An estimated 160 million people live in Bangladesh, while 91.3 million people live in West Bengal, the predominant ethno-linguistic group are the Bengali people, who speak the Indo-Aryan Bengali language. Bengali Muslims are the majority in Bangladesh, Bengali Hindus are the majority in West Bengal. Dense woodlands, including rainforests, cover Bengals northern and eastern areas. In the littoral southwest are the Sunderbans, the worlds largest mangrove forest, in the coastal southeast lies Coxs Bazaar, the longest beach in the world at 125 km. The region has a climate, which the Bengali calendar divides into six seasons. Bengal has played a role in the history of Asia. In antiquity, its kingdoms were known as seafaring nations, at times an independent regional empire, or a bastion of larger empires, the historical region was a leading power of the Indian subcontinent and the Islamic East. Bengali culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the fields of literature, music, art, architecture, sports, currency, commerce, politics and cuisine. The name of Bengal is derived from the ancient kingdom of Banga, theories on the origin of the term Banga point to the Proto-Dravidian Bong tribe that settled in the area circa 1000 BCE and the Austric word Bong. The term Bangaladesa is used to describe the region in 11th century South Indian records, the modern term Bangla is prominent from the 14th century, which saw the establishment of the Sultanate of Bengal, whose first ruler Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah was known as the Shah of Bangala. The Portuguese referred to the region as Bengala in the Age of Discovery, most of the Bengal region lies in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, but there are highlands in its north, northeast and southeast. The Ganges Delta arises from the confluence of the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra, the total area of Bengal is 232,752 km2—West Bengal is 88,752 km2 and Bangladesh 147,570 km2. The flat and fertile Bangladesh Plain dominates the geography of Bangladesh, the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Sylhet regions are home to most of the mountains in Bangladesh. Most parts of Bangladesh are within 10 metres above the sea level, because of this low elevation, much of this region is exceptionally vulnerable to seasonal flooding due to monsoons. The highest point in Bangladesh is in Mowdok range at 1,052 metres, a major part of the coastline comprises a marshy jungle, the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world and home to diverse flora and fauna, including the royal Bengal tiger. In 1997, this region was declared endangered, West Bengal is on the eastern bottleneck of India, stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south
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Rabindranath Tagore
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Author of Gitanjali and its profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Sometimes referred to as the Bard of Bengal, Tagores poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial, however, his elegant prose, a Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta with ancestral gentry roots in Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At the age of sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha, by 1877 he graduated to his first short stories and dramas, published under his real name. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and ardent anti-nationalist, he denounced the British Raj, Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal, Gitanjali, Gora and Ghare-Baire are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems, Indias Jana Gana Mana and Bangladeshs Amar Shonar Bangla, the Sri Lankan national anthem was inspired by his work. The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born on 7 May 1861 in the Jorasanko mansion in Calcutta to Debendranath Tagore, Tagore was raised mostly by servants, his mother had died in his early childhood and his father travelled widely. The Tagore family was at the forefront of the Bengal renaissance and they hosted the publication of literary magazines, theatre and recitals of Bengali and Western classical music featured there regularly. Tagores father invited several professional Dhrupad musicians to stay in the house, Tagores oldest brother Dwijendranath was a philosopher and poet. Another brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian appointed to the elite, yet another brother, Jyotirindranath, was a musician, composer, and playwright. His sister Swarnakumari became a novelist, jyotirindranaths wife Kadambari Devi, slightly older than Tagore, was a dear friend and powerful influence. Her abrupt suicide in 1884, soon after he married, left him for years profoundly distraught, Tagore largely avoided classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby Bolpur and Panihati, idylls which the family visited. His brother Hemendranath tutored and physically conditioned him—by having him swim the Ganges or trek through hills, by gymnastics and he learned drawing, anatomy, geography and history, literature, mathematics, Sanskrit, and English—his least favourite subject. Tagore loathed formal education—his scholarly travails at the local Presidency College spanned a single day, there Tagore read biographies, studied history, astronomy, modern science, and Sanskrit, and examined the classical poetry of Kālidāsa. Tagore returned to Jorosanko and completed a set of works by 1877. As a joke, he claimed that these were the lost works of a newly discovered 17th-century Vaiṣṇava poet Bhānusiṃha, regional experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhānusiṃha. He debuted in the genre in Bengali with Bhikharini. Published in the year, Sandhya Sangit includes the poem Nirjharer Swapnabhanga
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Gurre-Lieder
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Gurre-Lieder is a large cantata for five vocal soloists, narrator, chorus and large orchestra, composed by Arnold Schönberg, on poems by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen. In 1900, Schönberg began composing the work as a cycle for soprano, tenor. It was written in a lush, late-romantic style heavily influenced by Richard Wagner, according to Schönberg, however, he finished them half a week too late for the contest, and this decided the fate of the work. Later that year, he expanded his original conception, composing links between the first nine songs as well as adding a prelude, the Wood Doves Song. He worked on this version sporadically until around 1903, when he abandoned the task of orchestrating the work. He had also come under the spell of Gustav Mahler, whom he had met in 1903, in Des Sommerwindes wilde Jagd, Schönberg also introduced the first use of Sprechgesang, a technique he would explore more fully in Pierrot Lunaire of 1912. The orchestration was completed in November 1911. Franz Schreker conducted the premiere of the work in Vienna on 23 February 1913, by this time, Schönberg was disenchanted with the style and character of the piece and was even dismissive of its positive reception, saying I was rather indifferent, if not even a little angry. I foresaw that this success would have no influence on the fate of my later works, I had, during these thirteen years, developed my style in such a manner that to the ordinary concertgoer, it would seem to bear no relation to all preceding music. I had to fight for new work, I had been offended in the most outrageous manner by criticism, I had lost friends. And I stood alone against a world of enemies, violinist Francis Aranyi called it the strangest thing that a man in front of that kind of a hysterical, worshipping mob has ever done. It would be wrong to assume that Schoenberg considered Gurre-Lieder a composition of no merit, a few months after the premiere he wrote to Wassily Kandinsky, I certainly do not look down on this work, as the journalists always suppose. For although I have certainly developed very much since those days, I have not improved, I consider it important that people give credence to the elements in this work which I retained later. The Dutch first performance, directed by Schoenberg himself, was in March 1921, clark had tried to have the premiere the previous year, on 14 April 1927, but these plans fell through. Leopold Stokowski conducted the American premiere on 8 April 1932, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, soloists, stokowskis performances on 9 and 11 April 1932 were recorded live by RCA. Bell Laboratories had been recording the Philadelphia Orchestra in high fidelity and stereophonic sound. A performance of Gurre-Lieder without intermission runs over an hour and a half, riccardo Chaillys 1990 Decca recording, for example, lasts more than 100 minutes and takes two compact discs. In 2014 the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam was the first company to stage the Gurre-Lieder, the cantata is divided into three parts
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