1.
Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
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It is situated in Dublin, Ireland, and is the elder of the capital citys two medieval cathedrals, the other being St Patricks Cathedral. Christ Church is officially claimed as the seat of both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic archbishops of Dublin, in law, and in fact it has been the cathedral of only the Church of Irelands Archbishop of Dublin, since the English Reformation. Though nominally claimed as his cathedral, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin uses St Marys in Marlborough Street in Dublin as his pro-cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral is located in the former heart of medieval Dublin, next to Wood Quay at the end of Lord Edward Street. As a result, the cathedral now appears dominant in isolation behind new civil offices along the quays, in recent years the Cathedral has offered a great set for Medieval Dramas such as the CWs hit drama Reign. The Main Building of Christchurch Cathedral was used to film pivotal moments in the dramas pilot, Christ Church is the only one of the three cathedrals or acting cathedrals which can be seen clearly from the River Liffey. The cathedral was founded sometime after 1028 when King Sitric Silkenbeard. The church was built on the ground overlooking the Viking settlement at Wood Quay and Sitric gave the lands of Baldoyle, Raheny. The cathedral was staffed by secular clergy. The second Bishop of Dublin introduced the Benedictines, Henry II attended the Christmas service at the cathedral in 1171. According to the cathedral guidebook this was the first time Henry received Holy Communion following the murder of Thomas Beckett by Henrys knights in Canterbury, Edmund and St. Mary and St. Lô. A chapel to St Laurence OToole was added in the 13th century and its design was inspired by the architecture of the English western school of Gothic, and its wrought stones- of a Somersetshire oolite- were sculpted and laid by craftsmen from the same area. In the 1350s a major extension was undertaken by John de St Paul, by 1358, the nave of the cathedral was partly in use for secular purposes and a long quire was added, extending the old choir area by around 10 metres. St Paul also installed an organ and his works were destroyed by the major rebuilding project in the 1870s. In 1480 the wealthy judge William Sutton bequeathed all his lands, the cathedral was the location of the purported coronation, in 1487, of Lambert Simnel, a boy pretender who sought unsuccessfully to depose Henry VII of England, as King Edward VI. In 1493, the school was founded. In 1539, King Henry VIII converted the priory to a cathedral with a dean and chapter and his immediate successor, Edward VI of England, in 1547, provided funds for an increase in cathedral staffing and annual royal funding for the choir school. King Edward VI formally suppressed St Patricks Cathedral and, on 25 April 1547, its silver, jewels and ornaments were transferred to the dean, belonging to that cathedral and which had been in the possession of the dean and chapter of Christ Church. Queen Mary I of England, and later James I of England, meanwhile, in 1551, divine service was sung for the first time in Ireland in English instead of Latin
2.
Classical music
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Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical and secular music. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common-practice period, Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches, tempo, meter and rhythms for a piece of music. This can leave less room for such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation. The term classical music did not appear until the early 19th century, the earliest reference to classical music recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. This score typically determines details of rhythm, pitch, and, the written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them, J. S. The use of written notation also preserves a record of the works, Musical notation enables 2000s-era performers to sing a choral work from the 1300s Renaissance era or a 1700s Baroque concerto with many of the features of the music being reproduced. That said, the score does not provide complete and exact instructions on how to perform a historical work, even if the tempo is written with an Italian instruction, we do not know exactly how fast the piece should be played. Bach was particularly noted for his complex improvisations, during the Classical era, the composer-performer Mozart was noted for his ability to improvise melodies in different styles. During the Classical era, some virtuoso soloists would improvise the cadenza sections of a concerto, during the Romantic era, Beethoven would improvise at the piano. The instruments currently used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century and they consist of the instruments found in an orchestra or in a concert band, together with several other solo instruments. The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for music and includes members of the string, woodwind, brass. The concert band consists of members of the woodwind, brass and it generally has a larger variety and number of woodwind and brass instruments than the orchestra but does not have a string section. However, many bands use a double bass. Many of the used to perform medieval music still exist. Medieval instruments included the flute, the recorder and plucked string instruments like the lute. As well, early versions of the organ, fiddle, Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self accompanied with a drone note, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut, during the earlier medieval period, the vocal music from the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic, using a single, unaccompanied vocal melody line. Polyphonic vocal genres, which used multiple independent vocal melodies, began to develop during the medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th
3.
Religious music
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Religious music is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence. Ritual music is music, sacred or not, performed or composed for or as ritual, according to some scholars, the earliest music in the Christian Church came from Jewish worship music, with some additional Syriac influence. It is believed that this music lay somewhere between singing and speaking, or speaking with an understood ritual cadence, however, there is another opinion that the roots of early Christian music come from the early ascetic monastic orders. Hindu music is created for or influenced by Hinduism. The earliest synagogal music was based on the system as that in the Temple in Jerusalem. Shintō music is music for Shinto which is the native religion of Japan. Buddhist music is music for Buddhist ceremony or meditation, Zoroastrian music is a genre of music that accompanies Zoroastrian traditions and rites. Church music Gospel music Liturgical music Music and politics Secular music Spiritual World Sacred Music Festival Conomos, early Christian and Byzantine Music, History and Performance. Reprinted Archdiocesan School of Byzantine Music, Greek Orthodox Archdioces of America,15 November 2012, from Age to Age, How Christians Have Celebrated the Eucharist. The Oxford History of Western Music, fertonani, Cesare, Raffaele Mellace, Cesare Toscani, eds. La Musica Sacra nella Milano del Settecento, Gregorian chant, liturgical music The Gregorian chant of the abbeys of Provence in France New England religious music Hibbas Web Anthology of Traditional Jewish Music Religious Music - Greek
4.
Gregorian chant
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Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the western Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, although popular legend credits Pope St. Gregory the Great with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman chant and Gallican chant. Gregorian chants were organized initially into four, then eight, the scale patterns are organized against a background pattern formed of conjunct and disjunct tetrachords, producing a larger pitch system called the gamut. The chants can be sung by using six-note patterns called hexachords, Gregorian melodies are traditionally written using neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern four-line and five-line staff developed. Multi-voice elaborations of Gregorian chant, known as organum, were a stage in the development of Western polyphony. Gregorian chant was sung by choirs of men and boys in churches. It is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass, although Gregorian chant is no longer obligatory, the Roman Catholic Church still officially considers it the music most suitable for worship. During the 20th century, Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence, singing has been part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church. Until the mid-1990s, it was accepted that the psalmody of ancient Jewish worship significantly influenced and contributed to early Christian ritual. However, early Christian rites did incorporate elements of Jewish worship that survived in later chant tradition, canonical hours have their roots in Jewish prayer hours. Amen and alleluia come from Hebrew, and the threefold sanctus derives from the threefold kadosh of the Kedushah, the New Testament mentions singing hymns during the Last Supper, When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives Matthew 26.30. The 3rd-century Greek Oxyrhynchus hymn survived with musical notation, but the connection between this hymn and the plainchant tradition is uncertain, musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to appear in the 3rd century. The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the theologian Hippolytus, attests the singing of Hallel psalms with Alleluia as the refrain in early Christian agape feasts, around 375, antiphonal psalmody became popular in the Christian East, in 386, St. Ambrose introduced this practice to the West. In the fifth century, a school, the Schola Cantorum, was founded at Rome to provide training in church musicianship. Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th through the 9th centuries, around 410, St. Augustine described the responsorial singing of a Gradual psalm at Mass. 520, Benedict of Nursia established what is called the rule of St. Benedict, around 678, Roman chant was taught at York. Distinctive regional traditions of Western plainchant arose during this period, notably in the British Isles, Spain, Gaul and these traditions may have evolved from a hypothetical year-round repertory of 5th-century plainchant after the western Roman Empire collapsed. John the Deacon, biographer of Pope Gregory I, modestly claimed that the saint compiled a patchwork antiphonary, unsurprisingly and he reorganized the Schola Cantorum and established a more uniform standard in church services, gathering chants from among the regional traditions as widely as he could manage
5.
Paide
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Paide, is the capital of Järva County, Estonia. Paides German name Weißenstein means white stone and this name was derived from the limestone used for the construction of Paide Castle. A Latin translation of that, Albus Lapis, has also been used, the Estonian name Paide was first recorded in 1564 as Paida and is thought to derive from the word paas, pae limestone. A castle was built in Paide by order of Konrad von Mandern, master of the Livonian Order and it was from the beginning constructed around the central tower or keep, locally known as Tall Hermann tower or Vallitorn. With its six storeys, the tower has always been the core of the castle complex, the fortress was strengthened during the 14th and 15th centuries, when the surrounding walls were enlarged and towers added. It was also modernised to be able to meet the new threat of firearms, during the 16th century, the castle was again modified through the addition of outer bastions. During the Livonian War, the castle was besieged by Russian troops. After that, the castle changed several times. It was also involved in the fighting during the 1600-1611 Polish-Swedish War, in 1895-1897 restoration work was carried out on the central tower and some other parts of the castle. However, in 1941, during World War II, retreating Soviet troops blew up the tower and it was not repaired until after Estonia regained its independence. Today the restored central tower houses a part of Järva County museum, Paide is home to Paide linnastaadion, the home ground of Meistriliiga football team Paide Linnameeskond
6.
Rakvere
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Rakvere is a town in northern Estonia and the county seat of Lääne-Viru County,20 km south of the Gulf of Finland. The earliest signs of settlement dating back to the 3rd–5th centuries AD have been found on the present theatre hill. Probably to protect that settlement, a stronghold was built on the present Vallimägi. When it changed owners in 1220, the Danes started to erect buildings from stone, a settlement called Tarvanpea was first mentioned in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia in 1226. The new Danish stronghold was called Wesenbergh in Middle Low German for the first time in 1252, the battle of Wesenberg between the Danish and German knights and Russians occurred nearby on 18 February 1268. On 12 June 1302, Rakvere was granted Lübeck rights, when the Danish king sold Danish Estonia to the Livonian Order in 1346, a large castle was built on top of the previous stronghold. The Ordensburg was protected by towers and courtyards, the building of a Franciscan monastery was started in 1508. During the Livonian War from 1558 to 1581, Rakvere was under Russian rule and was heavily damaged, sweden, after the disastrous Siege of Wesenberg, captured the town in 1581 before it passed to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1602, Poles destroyed the castle in 1605. After being returned to Swedish control in that year, a mansion was built on the ruins of the monastery, during the Great Northern War, Rakvere was burned down in 1703. During the first period of independence, many prominent buildings were built, such as the building, the old bank building. In 1930, the stadium was opened. Local newspapers started to emerge, including the county paper Virumaa Teataja, the idea of Rakveres own professional theatre started to take shape as well. The construction of the house was completed at the end of the 1930s. The theatre survived World War II and is active to this day, Rakvere also has a professional theatre and it is believed that it is the smallest town in Europe which has a professional theatre. Its roots date back to 1882 and it is still active, the theatre of Rakvere has given Estonia many famous actors and actresses such as Volli Käro, Üllar Saaremäe, Indrek Saar, Ülle Lichtfeldt, Aarne Üksküla etc. It also holds the biannual event Baltoscandal, which gathers avant-garde plays, Rakvere is also known now for its Tarvas statue of an aurochs, which was made by the Estonian sculptor Tauno Kangro. It is thought to be the largest animal statue in the Baltic countries and it is situated on the edge of Vallimägi hill and was erected for the towns 700th birthday. Along with the block it sits on, the statue is seven meters long and four meters high
7.
Oboe
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Oboes /ˈoʊboʊ/ OH-boh are a family of double reed woodwind musical instruments. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range, oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials. A soprano oboe measures roughly 65 cm long, with keys, a conical bore. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed and vibrating a column of air, the distinctive oboe tone is versatile, and has been described as bright. When the term oboe is used alone, it is taken to mean the standard treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called a hautbois, hoboy. The spelling of oboe was adopted into English c.1770 from the Italian oboè, a musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist or simply an oboe player. In comparison to other woodwind instruments, the treble oboe is sometimes referred to as having a clear. The Sprightly Companion, a book published by Henry Playford in 1695, describes the oboe as Majestical and Stately. Humorously, the sound of the oboe is described in the play Angels in America as like that of a if the duck were a songbird. The rich timbre of the oboe is derived from its conical bore, as a result, oboes are readily audible over other instruments in large ensembles. The highest note of the oboe is a lower than the nominally highest note of the B♭ clarinet. Since the clarinet has a range of notes, the lowest note of the B♭ clarinet is significantly deeper than the lowest note of the oboe. Music for the oboe is written in concert pitch. Orchestras normally tune to a concert A played by the oboe, according to the League of American Orchestras, this is done because the pitch of the oboe is secure and its penetrating sound makes it ideal for tuning purposes. The pitch of the oboe is affected by the way in which the reed is made. The reed has a significant effect on the sound of the instrument, Variations in cane and other construction materials, the age of the reed, and differences in scrape and length all affect the pitch of the instrument. German and French reeds, for instance, differ in many ways, weather conditions such as temperature and humidity also affect the pitch
8.
Heino Eller
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Heino Eller was an Estonian composer and composition teacher. Eller was born in Tartu, where he took lessons in violin and music theory, played in several ensembles and orchestras. In 1907 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study violin, from 1908 to 1911 he was a law student. In 1920 Eller graduated from the conservatory renamed to Petrograd Conservatory, from 1920 to 1940, Eller was a professor of music theory and composition at the Tartu Higher School for Music. During this time he formed the Tartu school of composition, which rise to many composers. In 1940 he became a professor of composition at the Tallinn Conservatory and he was named a Peoples Artist of the USSR in 1967. Eller was a teacher of composition, the school he formed in Tartu counterbalanced the so-called Tallinn school headed by Artur Kapp. The list of his pupils offers the best proof of this and his symphonic works, especially Koit and Videvik, break new ground for Estonian symphonic music. His musical language contains many national traits, but he was influenced by 20th-century styles as diverse as impressionism and expressionism, Tallinn, Eesti Teatri- ja Muusikamuuseum, SE&JS,2008. ISBN9985985648, ISBN9789985985649 Heino Eller at the Estonian Music Information Centre Heino Eller discography at MusicBrainz Works by Heino Eller at Open Library
9.
Cantata
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A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. Cantatas for use in the liturgy of church services are called church cantata or sacred cantata, several cantatas were, and still are, written for special occasions, such as Christmas cantatas. Johann Sebastian Bach composed cycles of cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year. The term originated in the early 17th century simultaneously with opera, prior to that, all cultured music was vocal. With the rise of music the term appeared, while the instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the beginning of the 17th century until late in the 18th, a cantata consisted first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Fine examples may be found in the music of Giacomo Carissimi. With the rise of the da capo aria, the became a group of two or three arias joined by recitative. George Frideric Handels numerous Italian duets and trios are examples on a large scale. His Latin motet Silete Venti, for solo, shows the use of this form in church music. This is equally evident whether we examine the church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200 are extant. Cantatas were in demand for the services of the Lutheran church. Many secular cantatas were composed for events in the nobility and they were so similar in form to the sacred ones that many of them were parodied to sacred cantatas, for example in Bachs Christmas Oratorio. The term cantata came to be applied almost exclusively to choral works, Anton Bruckner composed several Name-day cantatas, a Festive Cantata and two secular cantatas. Brucknerss Psalm 146 is also in cantata form, mendelssohns Symphony Cantata, the Lobgesang, is a hybrid work, partly in the oratorio style. Robert Schumann wrote the cantata Paradise and the Peri, the full lyric possibilities of a string of choral songs were realized by Johannes Brahms in his Rinaldo, that—like the Walpurgisnacht—was set to a text by Goethe. The competition for the French Prix de Rome prescribed that each candidate submit a cantata, hector Berlioz failed in three attempts before finally winning in 1830 with Sardanapale. While almost all of the Prix de Rome cantatas have long since been forgotten, cantatas, both of the chamber variety and on a grand scale, were composed after 1900 as well
10.
Tikhon Khrennikov
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Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist, and leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, who was also known for his political activities. He wrote three symphonies, four concertos, two violin concertos, two cello concertos, operas, operettas, ballets, chamber music, incidental music and film music. During the 1930s, Khrennikov was already being hailed as a leading official Soviet composer, in 1948, Andrei Zhdanov, the leader of the anti-formalism campaign, nominated Khrennikov as Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers. He held this influential post until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tikhon Khrennikov was the youngest of ten children, born into a family of horse traders in the town of Yelets, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire. He learned guitar and mandolin from members of his family and sang in a choir in Yelets. There he also played in an orchestra and learned the piano. As a teenager he moved to Moscow, from 1929 to 1932, he studied composition at the Gnessin State Musical College under Mikhail Gnessin and Yefraim Gelman. From 1932 to 1936, he attended the Moscow Conservatory, there he studied composition under Vissarion Shebalin and piano under Heinrich Neuhaus. As a student, he wrote and played his Piano Concerto No,1, and his graduation piece was the Symphony No.1. His first symphony was conducted by Leopold Stokowski and he became popular with the series of songs and serenades that he composed for the 1936 production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. By the 1930s, Khrennikov was already treated as a leading official Soviet composer, Soviet artists had not withstood scrutiny. After 23rd April, youth was inspired to study, the problem was, we had to master the skills and techniques of composition. We developed an enthusiasm for modern western composers, the names of Hindemith and Krenek came to be symbols of advanced modern artists. After the enthusiasm for western tendencies came an attraction to simplicity, influenced by composing for the theatre and we grew, our consciousness also grew, as well as the aspiration to be genuine Soviet composers, representatives of our epoch. Compositions by Hindemith satisfied us no more, soon after that Prokofiev arrived, declaring Soviet music to be provincial and naming Shostakovich as the most up-to-date composer. Critics wrote laudatory odes to Shostakovich, how did young composers react to Lady Macbeth. This opera contains several large fragments which opened some creative perspectives to us. But the entre‘actes and other things aroused complete hostility, in 1941, Khrennikov was appointed Music Director of the Central Theatre of the Red Army, a position he would keep for 25 years
11.
Serialism
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In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenbergs twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking. The idea of serialism is also applied in ways in the visual arts, design, and architecture. Integral serialism or total serialism is the use of series for such as duration, dynamics. Other terms, used especially in Europe to distinguish post–World War II serial music from music and its American extensions, are general serialism. Serialism is a method, highly specialized technique, or way of composition and it may also be considered, a philosophy of life, a way of relating the human mind to the world and creating a completeness when dealing with a subject. However, serialism is not by itself a system of composition, neither is pitch serialism necessarily incompatible with tonality, though it is most often used as a means of composing atonal music. It is sometimes used specifically to apply only to music where at least one element other than pitch is subjected to being treated as a row or series. In such usages post-Webernian serialism will be used to denote works that extend serial techniques to other elements of music, other terms used to make the distinction are twelve-note serialism for the former, and integral serialism for the latter. A row may be assembled pre-compositionally, or it may be derived from a spontaneously invented thematic or motivic idea, the structure of the row, however, does not in itself define the structure of a composition, which requires development of a comprehensive strategy. The basic set may have restrictions, such as the requirement that it use each interval only once. The series is not an order of succession, but indeed a hierarchy—which may be independent of order of succession. Stockhausen, for example, in early serial compositions such as Kreuzspiel and Formel and this provides an exemplary demonstration of that logical principle of seriality, every situation must occur once and only once. Prohibited intervals, like the octave, and prohibited successional relations, such as premature note repetitions, frequently occur, the number twelve no longer plays any governing, defining rôle, the pitch constellations no longer hold to the limitation determined by their formation. The dodecaphonic series loses its significance as a model of shape is played out. And the chromatic total remains active only, and provisionally, as a general reference, in the 1960s Pousseur took this a step further, applying a consistent set of predefined transformations to pre-existent music. In his opera Votre Faust Pousseur used a number of different quotations, themselves arranged into a scale for serial treatment, so as to bring coherence. He extended this serial polyphony of styles in a series of works in the late 1960s, as well as later in portions of Licht
12.
Medieval music
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Medieval music consists of songs and instrumental pieces from about 400 A. D. to 1400. Medieval music was an era of Western music, including music used for the church. Medieval music includes vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music, solely instrumental music. Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass, the Mass is a reenactment of Christs Last Supper, intended to provide a spiritual connection between man and God. Part of this connection was established through music and this era begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the era and the beginning of the Renaissance music era is difficult. The date range in this article is the one adopted by musicologists. S. Bach and Classical music period composers from the 1700s such as W. A. Mozart, the most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned by ear and this greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music made it easier to disseminate songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people. Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, the flute was made of wood in the medieval era] rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While modern orchestral flutes are made of metal and have complex key mechanisms and airtight pads. The recorder was made of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 2000s, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has holes on its front. One of the predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times. This instruments pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches, Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore, gittern, citole, the bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings, the hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings
13.
Renaissance music
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Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the style of the Franco-Flemish school. The invention of the press in 1440 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and musical theory texts on a wider geographic scale. Prior to the invention of printing, songs and music that were written down and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. These musicians were sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier, opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as an attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Music was increasingly freed from constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression, composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa, popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists, Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Precursor versions of familiar modern instruments developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to responding to the evolution of musical ideas, Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works, an enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance. These can be heard on recordings made in the 20th and 21st century, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the reliance on the interval of the third. Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. The modal characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the use of root motions of fifths or fourths
14.
Lutheranism
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Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German friar, ecclesiastical reformer and theologian. Luthers efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched the Protestant Reformation in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Lutheranism advocates a doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Scripture alone and this is in contrast to the belief of the Catholic Church, defined at the Council of Trent, concerning authority coming from both the Scriptures and Tradition. In addition, Lutheranism accepts the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils of the undivided Christian Church, unlike Calvinism, Lutherans retain many of the liturgical practices and sacramental teachings of the pre-Reformation Church, with a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, or Lords Supper. Lutheran theology differs from Reformed theology in Christology, the purpose of Gods Law, the grace, the concept of perseverance of the saints. Today, Lutheranism is one of the largest denominations of Protestantism, with approximately 80 million adherents, it constitutes the third most common Protestant denomination after historically Pentecostal denominations and Anglicanism. The Lutheran World Federation, the largest communion of Lutheran churches, Other Lutheran organizations include the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, as well as independent churches. The name Lutheran originated as a term used against Luther by German Scholastic theologian Dr. Johann Maier von Eck during the Leipzig Debate in July 1519. Eck and other Catholics followed the practice of naming a heresy after its leader. Martin Luther always disliked the term Lutheran, preferring the term Evangelical, which was derived from euangelion, the followers of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and other theologians linked to the Reformed tradition also began to use that term. To distinguish the two groups, others began to refer to the two groups as Evangelical Lutheran and Evangelical Reformed. As time passed by, the word Evangelical was dropped, Lutherans themselves began to use the term Lutheran in the middle of the 16th century, in order to distinguish themselves from other groups such as the Philippists and Calvinists. In 1597, theologians in Wittenberg defined the title Lutheran as referring to the true church, Lutheranism has its roots in the work of Martin Luther, who sought to reform the Western Church to what he considered a more biblical foundation. Lutheranism spread through all of Scandinavia during the 16th century, as the monarch of Denmark–Norway, through Baltic-German and Swedish rule, Lutheranism also spread into Estonia and Latvia. Since 1520, regular Lutheran services have been held in Copenhagen, under the reign of Frederick I, Denmark-Norway remained officially Catholic. Although Frederick initially pledged to persecute Lutherans, he adopted a policy of protecting Lutheran preachers and reformers. During Fredericks reign, Lutheranism made significant inroads in Denmark, at an open meeting in Copenhagen attended by the king in 1536, the people shouted, We will stand by the holy Gospel, and do not want such bishops anymore. Fredericks son Christian was openly Lutheran, which prevented his election to the throne upon his fathers death, however, following his victory in the civil war that followed, in 1537 he became Christian III and advanced the Reformation in Denmark-Norway
15.
Eastern Orthodox Church
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The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that it is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission to the apostles. It practices what it understands to be the original Christian faith, the Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of autocephalous churches, each typically governed by a Holy Synod. It teaches that all bishops are equal by virtue of their ordination, prior to the Council of Chalcedon in AD451, the Eastern Orthodox had also shared communion with the Oriental Orthodox churches, separating primarily over differences in Christology. Eastern Orthodoxy spread throughout the Roman and later Eastern Roman Empires and beyond, playing a prominent role in European, Near Eastern, Slavic, and some African cultures. As a result, the term Greek Orthodox has sometimes used to describe all of Eastern Orthodoxy in general. However, the appellation Greek was never in use and was gradually abandoned by the non-Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox churches. Its most prominent episcopal see is Constantinople, there are also many in other parts of the world, formed through immigration, conversion and missionary activity. The official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Orthodox Catholic Church and it is the name by which the church refers to itself in its liturgical or canonical texts, in official publications, and in official contexts or administrative documents. Orthodox teachers refer to the Church as Catholic and this name and longer variants containing Catholic are also recognized and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Orthodox writers. The common name of the Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, is a shortened practicality that helps to avoid confusions in casual use, for this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as Greek, even before the great schism. After 1054, Greek Orthodox or Greek Catholic marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople and this identification with Greek, however, became increasingly confusing with time. Missionaries brought Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. Today, many of those same Roman churches remain, while a large number of Orthodox are not of Greek national origin. Eastern, then, indicates the element in the Churchs origin and development, while Orthodox indicates the faith. While the Church continues officially to call itself Catholic, for reasons of universality, the first known use of the phrase the catholic church occurred in a letter written about 110 AD from one Greek church to another. Quote of St Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, thus, almost from the very beginning, Christians referred to the Church as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same Church, a number of other Christian churches also make a similar claim, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. The Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church, not directly from the Orthodox Church, the depth of this meaning in the Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word Orthodox itself, a union of Greek orthos and doxa
16.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
17.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
18.
Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
19.
Tallinn
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Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland,80 km south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm, from the 13th century until 1918, the city was known as Reval. Tallinn occupies an area of 159.2 km2 and has a population of 444,591, approximately 33% of Estonias total population lives in Tallinn. Tallinn was founded in 1248, but the earliest human settlements date back 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest capital cities of Northern Europe. The initial claim over the land was laid by the Danes in 1219 after a raid of Lyndanisse led by Valdemar II of Denmark. Due to its location, the city became a major trade hub, especially from the 14th to the 16th century. Tallinns Old Town is one of the best preserved cities in Europe and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tallinn is the political, financial, cultural and educational center of Estonia. Often dubbed the Silicon Valley of Europe, it has the highest number of startups per person in Europe and is a birthplace of international companies. The city is to house the headquarters of the European Unions IT agency, providing to the global cybersecurity it is the home to the NATO Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. It is ranked as a city and has been listed among the top 10 digital cities in the world. The city was a European Capital of Culture for 2011, along with Turku in Finland and it has been suggested that Quwri may have denoted a predecessor of the modern city. The earliest names of Tallinn include Kolyvan, which is known from East Slavic chronicles, up to the 13th century, the Scandinavians and Henry of Livonia in his chronicle called the town Lindanisa (or Lyndanisse in Danish, Lindanäs in Swedish and Ledenets in Old East Slavic. It has been suggested that the archaic Estonian word linda is similar to the Votic word lidna. According to this suggestion, nisa would have the meaning niemi, producing Kesoniemi, another ancient historical name for Tallinn in Finnish is Rääveli. The Icelandic Njals saga mentions Tallinn and calls it Rafala, which is a variant of the name Raphael, after the Danish conquest in 1219, the town became known in the German, Swedish and Danish languages as Reval. The name originated from Revelia Revala or Rävala, the adjacent ancient name of the surrounding area and it is usually thought to be derived from Taani-linn, after the Danes built the castle in place of the Estonian stronghold at Lindanisse. However, it could also have come from tali-linna, or talu-linna, the element -linna, like Germanic -burg and Slavic -grad / -gorod, originally meant fortress, but is used as a suffix in the formation of town names
20.
Laulasmaa
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Laulasmaa is a village in Keila Parish, Harju County, in northwestern Estonia. Its located about 29 km west of the capital Tallinn, west of Keila-Joa, north of Kloogaranna, Laulasmaa had the population of 309. Village was mentioned first time under the Swedish power, Laulasmaa borders with Lohusalu, Keila-Joa and Kloogaranna. People started to spend their summers in Laulasmaa from the 1930s, official website of Laulasmaa SPA Hotel
21.
The Daily Telegraph
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It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as The Daily Telegraph and Courier, the papers motto, Was, is, and will be, appears in the editorial pages and has featured in every edition of the newspaper since April 19,1858. The paper had a circulation of 460,054 in December 2016 and its sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph, which started in 1961, had a circulation of 359,287 as of December 2016. The Daily Telegraph has the largest circulation for a newspaper in the UK. The two sister newspapers are run separately, with different editorial staff, but there is cross-usage of stories, articles published in either may be published on the Telegraph Media Groups www. telegraph. co. uk website, under the title of The Telegraph. However, critics, including an editor, accuse it of being unduly influenced by advertisers. The Daily Telegraph and Courier was founded by Colonel Arthur B, Sleigh in June 1855 to air a personal grievance against the future commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge. Joseph Moses Levy, the owner of The Sunday Times, agreed to print the newspaper, the paper cost 2d and was four pages long. Nevertheless, the first edition stressed the quality and independence of its articles and journalists, however, the paper was not a success, and Sleigh was unable to pay Levy the printing bill. Levy took over the newspaper, his aim being to produce a newspaper than his main competitors in London. The same principle should apply to all other events—to fashion, to new inventions, in 1876, Jules Verne published his novel Michael Strogoff, whose plot takes place during a fictional uprising and war in Siberia. In 1937, the newspaper absorbed The Morning Post, which espoused a conservative position. Originally William Ewart Berry, 1st Viscount Camrose, bought The Morning Post with the intention of publishing it alongside The Daily Telegraph, for some years the paper was retitled The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post before it reverted to just The Daily Telegraph. As an result, Gordon Lennox was monitored by MI5, in 1939, The Telegraph published Clare Hollingworths scoop that Germany was to invade Poland. In November 1940, with Fleet Street subjected to almost daily bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, The Telegraph started printing in Manchester at Kemsley House, Manchester quite often printed the entire run of The Telegraph when its Fleet Street offices were under threat. The name Kemsley House was changed to Thomson House in 1959, in 1986 printing of Northern editions of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph moved to Trafford Park and in 2008 to Newsprinters at Knowsley, Liverpool. During the Second World War, The Daily Telegraph covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park, the ability to solve The Telegraphs crossword in under 12 minutes was considered to be a recruitment test. The competition itself was won by F. H. W. Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes, both the Camrose and Burnham families remained involved in management until Conrad Black took control in 1986
22.
Kalevipoeg
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Kalevipoeg is an epic poem by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald held to be the Estonian national epic. There existed a tradition within Ancient Estonia of legends explaining the origin of the world. Within old Estonian folklore, a malevolent giant by the name of Kalev, Kalevine, Kalevipoiss, Kalevine posikine and Kalevin Poika appears, battling with other giants or enemies of the nation. The earliest written references are found in Leyen Spiegel in 1641 as Kalliweh, the main material is taken from Estonian folklore of a giant hero named Kalevipoeg. In 1839, Friedrich Robert Faehlmann read a paper at the Learned Estonian Society about the legends of Kalevipoeg and he sketched the plot of a national romantic epic poem. In 1850, after Faehlmanns death, Kreutzwald started writing the poem and he collected oral stories and wove them together into a unified whole. The first version of Kalevipoeg could not be printed due to censorship, the second, thoroughly revised version was published in sequels as an academic publication by the Learned Estonian Society in 1857–1861. The publication included a translation into German, in 1862, the third, somewhat abridged version came out. This was a book for common readers and it was printed in Kuopio, Finland. In Estonian legends, Kalevipoeg carries stones or throws them at enemies and he also forms surface structures on landscape and bodies of water and builds towns. Kalevipoeg eventually dies after his feet are cut off by his own sword owing to his own prior—and fatally ambiguous—instructions, Kalevipoeg was the youngest son of Kalev and Linda, born after his fathers death and surpassed his brothers in intelligence and strength. It is often thought that Kalevipoegs real name was Sohni/Soini, but it means simply son. Alevipoeg, Olevipoeg and Sulevipoeg were his friends and more distant relatives, the character only rarely appears in folk songs. In literature, he was first mentioned by Heinrich Stahl in the 17th century, Kalevipoeg travels to Finland in search of his kidnapped mother. During his travel he purchases a sword but kills the blacksmiths eldest son in an argument, the blacksmith places a curse on the sword and is thrown in the river. On returning to Estonia Kalevipoeg becomes king after defeating his brothers in a hurling competition. He constructs towns and forts and tills the land in Estonia, Kalevipoeg then journeys to the ends of the earth to expand his knowledge. He defeats Satan in a trial of strength and rescues three maidens from hell, war breaks out and destruction visits Estonia and Kalevipoegs faithful comrades are killed, he hands rule over to his brother Olev and withdraws to the forest depressed
23.
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
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Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten is a short canon in A minor, written in 1977 by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, for string orchestra and bell. The work is an example of Pärts tintinnabuli style, which he based on his reactions to early chant music. Its appeal is often ascribed to its simplicity, a single melodic motif dominates. However, as the critic Ivan Hewett observes, while it may be simple in concept. the concept produces a tangle of lines which is hard for the ear to unravel. And even where the music really is simple in its audible features, a typical performance lasts about six and a half minutes. The cantus was composed as an elegy to mourn the December 1976 death of the English composer Benjamin Britten, Pärt described Britten as possessing the unusual purity that he himself sought as a composer. Pärt viewed the Englishman as a spirit, however, he gained access to the latters music only in 1980, after emigrating from Soviet Estonia to Austria. When Britten died, Pärt felt that he had lost hope of meeting the only composer whose musical outlook. It is perhaps Pärts most popular piece, and a 1997 recording by the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra conducted by Tamas Benedek has been widely distributed, due to its evocative and cinematic feel, the piece has been used extensively as background accompaniment in both film and television documentaries. Scored for string orchestra and bell, Cantus exemplifies Pärts tintinnabuli style, the work is based on a simple idea, a descending A-minor scale, and is in the form of a prolation canon, an old technique which Pärt also uses in the work Festina Lente. It is in 6/4 meter and alternates long and short notes, Pärt has said of tintinnabulation, The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it, traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises – and everything that is unimportant falls away. Here I am alone with silence, I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, each part except the viola is split into two, with one playing notes from the A minor scale, and the other playing only notes from an A minor chord. These choices have a definite symbolism for Pärt, the latter always signifies the subjective world, the daily egoistic life of sin and suffering, meanwhile, is the objective realm of forgiveness. For Pärt, there is only an apparent dualism here, he believes all is one. The A natural minor scale has some historical connections, before major and minor scales became prevalent in Western art music, music, especially the early liturgical music that has been so influential on Pärt, used a system of modes. The idea of musical modes was known to the ancient Greeks, the church modes are formed by using the notes of the C major scale but starting at different notes in each mode
24.
String quintet
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A string quintet is a musical composition for five string players. As an extension to the quartet, a string quintet includes a fifth string instrument, usually a second viola or a second cello. Notable examples of classic viola quintets, in four movement form include those of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, other examples were written by composers including Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn. A famous cello quintet is Franz Schuberts Quintet in C major, antonín Dvořáks Quintet Op.77 uses a double bass, and Mozarts famous Eine kleine Nachtmusik may be performed with this instrumentation. Alternative additions include clarinet or piano, and other closely related chamber music genres include the string quartet, the trio. A more unusual form of string quintet is the violin quintet composed of 3 violins, a viola, the term string quintet may refer to a group of five players that performs such works. The ensemble was standard in 17th century Italy and can be seen as early as 1607 in Claudio Monteverdis opera and it can also be applied to the standard five-part orchestral string section, first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. The third movement Minuet of the Cello Quintet Op.11 No.5 is extremely well known, darius Milhaud – Quintet Op. post
25.
John Tavener
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Sir John Kenneth Tavener was an English composer, known for his extensive output of religious works, including The Protecting Veil, Song for Athene and The Lamb. Tavener first came to prominence with his cantata The Whale, premiered in 1968, then aged 24, he was described by The Guardian as the musical discovery of the year, while The Times said he was among the very best creative talents of his generation. The Lamb featured in the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentinos film The Great Beauty, Tavener was knighted in 2000 for his services to music and won an Ivor Novello Award. Tavener was born on 28 January 1944 in Wembley, London and his parents ran a family building firm and his father was also an organist at St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Frognal, Hampstead. At the age of 12, Tavener was taken to Glyndebourne to hear Mozarts The Magic Flute and that same year he heard Stravinsky’s most recent work, Canticum Sacrum, which he later described as the piece that woke me up and made me want to be a composer. Tavener became a scholar at Highgate School. The school choir was often employed by the BBC in works requiring boys voices, so Tavener gained choral experience singing in Mahlers Third Symphony and he also became organist and choirmaster in 1961 at St Johns Presbyterian Church, Kensington, a post he held for 14 years. Tavener entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1962, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley, during his studies there he decided to give up the piano and devote himself to composition. Tavener first came to prominence in 1968 with his dramatic cantata The Whale and it was premièred at the London Sinfoniettas début concert, which was also the opening concert of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The following year Tavener began teaching at Trinity College of Music, when staged in 1979 the opera was thought too static to be a successful drama. Tavener had also been affected by his brief 1974 marriage to the Greek dancer Victoria Maragopoulou. His chamber opera A Gentle Spirit, with a libretto by McLarnon based on a story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and it has been deemed far superior to Thérèse, with the internal drama more suited to the stage. Significantly, it touched on Russian Orthodoxy, to which McLarnon had been a convert for several years. Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977, Orthodox theology and liturgical traditions became a major influence on his work. Of more lasting success was Taveners short unaccompanied four-part choral setting of William Blakes poem The Lamb and this simple homophonic piece is usually performed as a Christmas carol. The two choral works were settings of texts by Mother Thekla, a Russian Orthodox abbess who was Taveners long-time spiritual adviser until her death in 2011, Song for Athene in particular gained worldwide exposure when performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Taveners Fall and Resurrection, first performed in 2000, used such as rams horn, ney flute. It was dedicated to the Prince of Wales, with whom Tavener formed a lasting friendship, in 2003 Tavener composed the exceptionally large work The Veil of the Temple, based on texts from a number of religions
26.
Choir
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A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical repertoire, which spans from the Medieval era to the present. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, a body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus. The former term is often applied to groups affiliated with a church and the second to groups that perform in theatres or concert halls. Choirs may sing without instrumental accompaniment, with the accompaniment of a piano or pipe organ, with a small ensemble, choirs are often led by a conductor or choirmaster. Other than four, the most common number of parts are three, five, six, and eight, choirs can sing with or without instrumental accompaniment. Singing without accompaniment is called a cappella singing, many choirs perform in one or many locations such as a church, opera house, or school hall. In some cases choirs join up to become one mass choir that performs for a special concert, in this case they provide a series of songs or musical works to celebrate and provide entertainment to others. Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance, such as a concert, by way of visible gestures with the hands, arms, face. The primary duties of the conductor or choirmaster are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble. The conductor or choral director typically stands on a raised platform, many choral conductors use their hands to conduct. In the 2010s, most conductors do not play an instrument when conducting, although in earlier periods of music history. In Baroque music from the 1600s to the 1750s, conductors performing in the 2010s may lead an ensemble while playing a harpsichord or the violin, conducting while playing a piano 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 sung. Conductors act as guides to the choirs they conduct and they choose the works to be performed and study their scores, to which they may make certain adjustments, work out their interpretation, and relay their vision to the singers. Choral conductors may also have to conduct instrumental ensembles such as if the choir is singing a piece for choir. They may also attend to matters, such as scheduling rehearsals, planning a concert season, hearing auditions
27.
Occupation of the Baltic states
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On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Baltic territory was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland of the Third Reich, the Soviet annexation occupation of the Baltic states lasted until August 1991, when the Baltic states regained independence. In its reassessment of Soviet history that began during perestroika in 1989, however, Russia agreed to Europes demand to assist persons deported from the occupied Baltic states upon joining the Council of Europe. De facto independence was restored to the Baltic states in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia started to withdraw its troops from the Baltics in August 1993. The full withdrawal of troops deployed by Moscow was completed in August 1994, Russia officially ended its military presence in the Baltics in August 1998 by decommissioning the Skrunda-1 radar station in Latvia. The dismantled installations were repatriated to Russia and the returned to Latvian control. Early in the morning of August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a ten-year non-aggression pact, the pact contained a secret protocol by which the states of Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into German and Soviet spheres of influence. In the north, Finland, Estonia and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, Poland was to be partitioned in the event of its political rearrangement—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. According to this protocol, Lithuania would regain its historical capital Vilnius. Following the end of Soviet invasion of Poland on 6 October, the Soviets pressured Finland, the Soviets questioned the neutrality of Estonia after the escape of an interned Polish submarine on 18 September. A week later on 24 September, the Estonian foreign minister was given an ultimatum in Moscow, the Soviets demanded the conclusion of a treaty of mutual assistance to establish military bases in Estonia. The Estonians had no choice but to accept naval, air, the corresponding agreement was signed on 28 September 1939. Latvia followed on 5 October 1939 and Lithuania shortly thereafter, on 10 October 1939, in September and October 1939, the Soviet government compelled the Baltic states to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave it the right to establish Soviet military bases. In May 1940, the Soviets turned to the idea of military intervention. Their model was the Finnish Democratic Republic, a puppet regime set up by the Soviets on the first day of the Winter War, the Soviets organised a press campaign against the allegedly pro-Allied sympathies of the Baltic governments. In May 1940, the Germans invaded France, which was overrun, in late May and early June 1940, the Baltic states were accused of military collaboration against the Soviet Union by holding meetings the previous winter. On 15 June 1940, the Lithuanian government had no choice but to agree to the Soviet ultimatum, president Antanas Smetona proposed armed resistance to the Soviets but the government refused, proposing their own candidate to lead the regime. However, the Soviets refused this offer and sent Vladimir Dekanozov to take charge of affairs while the Red Army occupied the state, on 16 June 1940, Latvia and Estonia also received ultimata
28.
Nazism
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical
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Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Estonia)
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia is a Cabinet-level governmental agency in Estonia in charge of conducting and designing Estonian Foreign policy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia was established in 1919 soon after the declaration of independence of Estonia on February 23,1918, after the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Army in September 1939 following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August of the same year. After establishment of the Soviet rule in Estonia, the government in exile assumed the duties of the foreign service. This government promoted and called for Estonian independence abroad, among the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs in exile were August Rei, Aleksander Warma, August Koern, Elmar Lipping, Olev Olesk. After restoration of independence of Estonia in 1990, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was reestablished in Tallinn, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia
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Neoclassicism (music)
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Neoclassicism had two distinct national lines of development, French and German. Neoclassicism was a trend rather than an organized movement, even many composers not usually thought of as neoclassicists absorbed elements of the style. Although the term refers to a 20th-century movement, there were important 19th-century precursors. Sergei Prokofievs Symphony No.1 is sometimes cited as a precursor of neoclassicism, prokofiev himself thought that his composition was a passing phase whereas Stravinskys neoclassicism was by the 1920s becoming the basic line of his music. Igor Stravinskys first foray into the style began in 1919/20 when he composed the ballet Pulcinella, Stravinskys neoclassicism culminated in his opera The Rakes Progress, with a libretto by W. H. Auden. Neoclassicism found an audience in Europe and America, as the school of Nadia Boulanger promulgated ideas about music based on her understanding of Stravinskys music. In the first movement of the concerto, Falla quotes fragments of the 15th-century villancico De los álamos and he had similarly incorporated quotations from 17th-century music when he first embraced neoclassicism in the puppet-theatre piece El retablo de maese Pedro, an adaptation from Cervantess Don Quixote. Later neoclassical compositions by Falla include the 1924 chamber cantata Psyché and incidental music for Pedro Calderón de la Barcas, El gran teatro del mundo, written in 1927. Other important Spanish neoclassical composers are found amongst the members of the Generación de la República, including Julián Bautista, Fernando Remacha, Salvador Bacarisse,1 in D of 1939 consciously follows Mozarts concerto style. Portuguese representatives of neoclassicism include two members of the Grupo de Quatro, Armando José Fernandes and Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, argentine composers associated with neoclassicism include Jacobo Ficher, José María Castro, Luis Gianneo, and Juan José Castro. Roberto Caamaño, professor of Gregorian chant at the Institute of Sacred Music in Buenos Aires, employed a dissonant neoclassical style in some works and a serialist style in others. Neoclassical traits figure in Guarnieris music starting with the movement of the Piano Sonatina of 1928. The Chilean composer Domingo Santa Cruz Wilson was so influenced by the German variety of neoclassicism that he became known as the Chilean Hindemith. In Cuba, José Ardévol initiated a school, though he himself moved on to a modernistic national style later in his career. Even the atonal school, represented by Arnold Schoenberg, showed the influence of neoclassical ideas, the forms of Schoenbergs works after 1920, beginning with opp. 23,24, and 25, have described as openly neoclassical. Schoenberg attempted in those works to offer listeners structural points of reference with which they could identify, beginning with the Serenade,24, and the Suite for piano, op. Schoenbergs pupil Alban Berg actually came to neoclassicism before his teacher, in his Three Pieces for Orchestra,6, and the opera Wozzeck, which uses closed forms such as suite, passacaglia, and rondo as organizing principles within each scene
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Dmitri Shostakovich
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Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian pianist and composer of the Soviet period. He is regarded as one of the composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. A polystylist, Shostakovich developed a voice, combining a variety of different musical techniques into his works. Shostakovichs orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti and his chamber output includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet. His solo piano works include two sonatas, an set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Born at Podolskaya street in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, Shostakovichs paternal grandfather, originally surnamed Szostakowicz, was of Polish Roman Catholic descent, but his immediate forebears came from Siberia. When his term of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia and he eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and studied physics and mathematics in Saint Petersburg University. He then went to work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights, in 1903 he married another Siberian transplant to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born to a Russian Siberian native. Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed significant musical talent after he began lessons with his mother at the age of nine. In 1918 he wrote a march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors. In 1919, at the age of thirteen, he was allowed to enter the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov, Shostakovich also attended Alexander Ossovskys history of music classes. Steinberg tried to guide Shostakovich in the path of the great Russian composers and he also suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major achievement was the First Symphony, written as his graduation piece at the age of nineteen. After graduation, Shostakovich initially embarked on a career as concert pianist and composer. He nevertheless won a mention at the First International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. He explained the disappointment at the competition to suffering from appendicitis and he later had his appendix removed in April 1927
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Sergei Prokofiev
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Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and conductor. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Prokofievs greatest interest, however, was opera, and he composed works in that genre, including The Gambler. Prokofievs one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and subsequently performed over the decade in Europe. During that time he married a Spanish singer, Carolina Codina, in the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofievs ballets and operas to be staged in America and western Europe. He enjoyed some success there – notably with Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, the Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred him to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoys War and Peace. Prokofiev was born in 1891 in Sontsovka, a rural estate in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev, was an agronomist, Prokofievs mother, Maria, came from a family of former serfs who had been owned by the Sheremetev family, under whose patronage serf-children were taught theatre and arts from an early age. She was described by Reinhold Glière as a woman with beautiful. Who knew how to create an atmosphere of warmth and simplicity about her, after their wedding in the summer of 1877, the Prokofievs had moved to a small estate in the Smolensk governorate. Eventually Sergei Alexeyevich found employment as a engineer, employed by one of his former fellow-students, Dmitri Sontsov. By seven, he had learned to play chess. At the age of nine, he was composing his first opera, The Giant, as well as an overture, unable to arrange that, Tanayev instead arranged for composer and pianist Reinhold Glière to spend the summer of 1902 in Sontsovka teaching Prokofiev. The first series of lessons culminated, at the 11-year-old Prokofievs insistence, the following summer, Glière revisited Sontsovka to give further tuition. By 1904, his mother had decided instead on Saint Petersburg, glazunov was so impressed that he urged Prokofievs mother to have her son apply for admission to the Conservatory. He passed the tests and enrolled that year. Several years younger than most of his class, Prokofiev was viewed as eccentric and arrogant and he also shared classes with the composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky, the latter becoming a relatively close and lifelong friend. As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev developed a reputation as a rebel, while getting praise for his original compositions
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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
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Twelve-tone technique
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All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th century composers, many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or even actively opposed the technique, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky, eventually adopted it in their music. Schoenberg himself described the system as a Method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another and it is commonly considered a form of serialism. Schoenbergs countryman and contemporary Josef Matthias Hauer also developed a system using unordered hexachords or tropes—but with no connection to Schoenbergs twelve-tone technique. Other composers have created systematic use of the scale. The twelve tone technique was preceded by freely atonal pieces of 1908–23 which, though free, the twelve-tone technique was also preceded by nondodecaphonic serial composition used independently in the works of Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Carl Ruggles, and others. Oliver Neighbour argues that Bartók was the first composer to use a group of twelve notes consciously for a structural purpose, essentially, Schoenberg and Hauer systematized and defined for their own dodecaphonic purposes a pervasive technical feature of modern musical practice, the ostinato. In Hauers breakthrough piece Nomos, Op. Schoenbergs idea in developing the technique was for it to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies, Some of these composers extended the technique to control aspects other than the pitches of notes, thus producing serial music. Some even subjected all elements of music to the serial process, the basis of the twelve-tone technique is the tone row, an ordered arrangement of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. There are four postulates or preconditions to the technique which apply to the row, on which a work or section is based, no note is repeated within the row. The row may be subjected to interval-preserving transformations -—that is, it may appear in inversion, retrograde, or retrograde-inversion, the row in any of its four transformations may begin on any degree of the chromatic scale, in other words it may be freely transposed. A particular transformation together with a choice of transpositional level is referred to as a set form or row form, every row thus has up to 48 different row forms. However, not all prime series will yield so many variations because transposed transformations may be identical to each other. A simple case is the chromatic scale, the retrograde inversion of which is identical to the prime form. In the above example, as is typical, the retrograde inversion contains three points where the sequence of two pitches are identical to the prime row, thus the generative power of even the most basic transformations is both unpredictable and inevitable. Motivic development can be driven by such internal consistency, note that rules 1–4 above apply to the construction of the row itself, and not to the interpretation of the row in the composition. While a row may be expressed literally on the surface as thematic material, it need not be, however, individual composers have constructed more detailed systems in which matters such as these are also governed by systematic rules. The tone row chosen as the basis of the piece is called the prime series, untransposed, it is notated as P0
