1.
Bayreuth Festival
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The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, the Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagner enthusiasts, who often must wait years to obtain tickets. The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagners interest in establishing his financial independence, a souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. Wagner next considered Nuremberg, which would have reinforced the significance of works such as Die Meistersinger. On the advice of Hans Richter, however, the focus fell upon Bayreuth which enjoyed three distinct advantages, first, the town boasted a splendid venue, the Markgräfliches Opernhaus built for Margrave Frederick and his wife, Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine in 1747. With its ample capacity and strong acoustics, the house was a good match for Wagners vision. Finally, the town had no cultural life that could offer competition to Wagners own artistic dominance, the Festival, once launched, would be the dominant feature of Bayreuths cultural landscape. In April 1870, Wagner and his wife Cosima visited Bayreuth, on inspection, the Opera House proved to be inadequate. It was built to accommodate the baroque orchestras of the 18th century and was unsuited for the complex stagings. Nonetheless, the Burgermeisters proved open to assisting Wagner with the construction of a new theatre. After a fruitless meeting in the spring of 1871 with the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to obtain funds, Wagner embarked on a tour across Germany, including Leipzig. Societies were established, among other places, in Leipzig, Berlin, despite making direct appeals based on Wagners role as a composer of the new German Reich, the Societies and other fundraising channels were well short of the needed sum by the end of 1872. Wagner made another appeal to Bismarck in August 1873 and was again denied, desperate, Wagner turned to his former patron, Ludwig II who reluctantly agreed to help. In January 1874, Ludwig granted 100,000 Thaler and construction on the theatre, designed by architect Gottfried Semper, a planned 1875 debut was postponed for a year due to construction and other delays. Since its opening in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival has been a socio-cultural phenomenon, the inauguration took place on 13 August 1876, with a performance of Das Rheingold. Artistically, the festival was a success, financially, however, the festival was a disaster and did not begin to make money until several years later. Wagner abandoned his plan to hold a second festival the following year
2.
Bayreuth
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Bayreuth is a sizeable town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The towns roots date back to 1194, in the early 21st century, it is the capital of Upper Franconia and has a population of 72,576. It is world-famous for its annual Bayreuth Festival, at performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. The town is believed to have founded by the counts of Andechs probably around the mid-12th century. The syllable -rute may mean Rodung or clearing, whilst Baier- indicates immigrants from the Bavarian region, already documented earlier, were villages later merged into Bayreuth, Seulbitz and St. Johannis. Even the district of Altstadt west of the centre must be older than the town of Bayreuth itself. Even older traces of human presence were found in the hamlets of Meyernberg, pieces of pottery, while Bayreuth was previously referred to as a villa, the term civitas appeared for the first time in a document published in 1231. One can therefore assume that Bayreuth was awarded its town charter between 1200 and 1230, the town was ruled until 1248 by the counts of Andechs-Merania. After they died out in 1260 the burgraves of Nuremberg from the House of Hohenzollern took over the inheritance, initially, however, their residence and the centre of the territory was the castle of Plassenburg in Kulmbach. The town of Bayreuth developed slowly and was affected time and again by disasters, as early as 1361 Emperor Charles IV had conferred on Burgrave Frederick V the right to mint coins for the towns of Bayreuth and Kulmbach. Bayreuth was first published on a map in 1421, in February 1430, the Hussites devastated Bayreuth and the town hall and churches were razed. In 1605 a great fire, caused by negligence, destroyed 137 of the towns 251 houses, in 1620 plague broke out and, in 1621, there was another big fire in the town. The town also suffered during the Thirty Years War, the first Hohenzollern palace was built in 1440-1457 under Margrave John the Alchemist. It was the forerunner of todays Old Palace and was expanded and renovated many times, the development of the new capital stagnated due to the Thirty Years War, but afterwards many famous baroque buildings were added to the town. After Christians death in 1655 his grandson, Christian Ernest, followed him and he was an educated and well-travelled man, whose tutor had been the statesman Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal. He founded the Christian-Ernestinum Grammar School and, in 1683, participated in the liberation of Vienna which had been besieged by the Turks. To commemorate this feat, he had the Margrave Fountain built as a monument on which he is depicted as the victor of the Turks, during this time, the outer ring of the town wall and the castle chapel were built. In 1705 he founded the Order of Sincerity, which was renamed in 1734 to the Order of the Red Eagle and had the church built
3.
Bavaria
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Bavaria is a free state and one of 16 federal states of Germany. Located in the German southeast with an area of 70,548 square kilometres and its territory comprises roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany, and, with 12.9 million inhabitants, it is Germanys second most populous state. Munich, Bavarias capital and largest city, is the third largest city in Germany, the Duchy of Bavaria dates back to the year 555. In the 17th century CE, the Duke of Bavaria became a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Bavaria existed from 1806 to 1918, when Bavaria became a republic. In 1946, the Free State of Bavaria re-organised itself on democratic lines after the Second World War, Bavaria has a unique culture, largely because of the states Catholic majority and conservative traditions. Bavarians have traditionally been proud of their culture, which includes such as Oktoberfest. The state also has the second largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, modern Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia, Upper Palatinate and Swabia. The Bavarians emerged in a north of the Alps, previously inhabited by Celts. The Bavarians spoke Old High German but, unlike other Germanic groups, rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by Roman withdrawal late in the 5th century. These peoples may have included the Celtic Boii, some remaining Romans, Marcomanni, Allemanni, Quadi, Thuringians, Goths, Scirians, Rugians, the name Bavarian means Men of Baia which may indicate Bohemia, the homeland of the Celtic Boii and later of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources circa 520, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the diocese was named after an ancient Bohemian king, Boiia, in the 14th century BCE. From about 554 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the Duchy of Bavaria and their daughter, Theodelinde, became Queen of the Lombards in northern Italy and Garibald was forced to flee to her when he fell out with his Frankish overlords. Garibalds successor, Tassilo I, tried unsuccessfully to hold the frontier against the expansion of Slavs. Tassilos son Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616, after Garibald II little is known of the Bavarians until Duke Theodo I, whose reign may have begun as early as 680. From 696 onwards he invited churchmen from the west to organize churches and his son, Theudebert, led a decisive Bavarian campaign to intervene in a succession dispute in the Lombard Kingdom in 714, and married his sister Guntrud to the Lombard King Liutprand. At Theodos death the duchy was divided among his sons, at Hugberts death the duchy passed to a distant relative named Odilo, from neighbouring Alemannia. He was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748, saint Boniface completed the peoples conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Bavaria was in ways affected by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Gottfried Semper
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Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later to London, later he returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries. Semper designed works at all scales, from a baton for Richard Wagner to major urban interventions like the re-design of the Ringstraße in Vienna, Semper was born into a well-to-do industrialist family in Altona. The fifth of eight children, he attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg before starting his university education at Göttingen in 1823 and he subsequently studied architecture in 1825 at the University of Munich under Friedrich von Gärtner. In 1826, Semper travelled to Paris in order to work for the architect Franz Christian Gau, between 1830 and 1833 he travelled to Italy and Greece in order to study the architecture and designs of antiquity. In 1832 he participated for four months in archaeological research at the Acropolis in Athens, the drawn reconstructions of the painterly decorations of ancient villas he created in Athens inspired his later designs for the painted decorations in Dresden and Vienna. The flourishing growth of Dresden during this period provided the young architect with considerable creative opportunities, in 1838-40 a synagogue was built in Dresden to Sempers design, it was ever afterward called the Semper Synagogue and is noted for its Moorish Revival interior style. The Synagogues exterior was built in romanesque style so as not to call attention to itself, the interior design included not only the Moorish inspired wall decorations, but furnishings, specifically, a silver lamp of eternal light, which caught Richard Wagner and his wife Cosimas fancy. They gave a great deal of effort to have a copy of this lamp, Sempers student, Otto Simonson would construct the magnificent Moorish Revival Leipzig synagogue in 1855. Certain civic structures remain today, such as the Elbe-facing gallery of the Zwinger Palace complex and his first building for the Dresden Hoftheater burnt down, and the second, today called the Semperoper, was built in 1841. Other buildings also remain indelibly attached to his name, such as the Maternity Hospital, the Synagogue, the Oppenheim Palace, and this last construction stands as a prototype of German villa architecture. On September 1,1835 Semper married Bertha Thimmig, the marriage ultimately produced six children. A convinced Republican, Semper took a role, along with his friend Richard Wagner. He was a member of the Civic Guard and helped to erect barricades in the streets, when the rebellion collapsed, Semper was considered a leading agitator for democratic change and a ringleader against government authority and he was forced to flee the city. He was destined never to return to the city that would, ironically, the Saxon government maintained a warrant for his arrest until 1863. When the Semper-designed Hoftheater burnt down in 1869, King John, on the urging of the citizenry, Semper produced the plans, but left the actual construction to his son, Manfred. What must I have done in 48, that one persecutes me forever, one single barricade did I construct - it held, because it was practical, and as it was practical, it was beautiful, wrote Semper in dismay
6.
Opera house
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An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other houses are part of larger performing arts centers. In contrast, there was no house in London when Henry Purcell was composing. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, with the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theatre companies raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples introduces the plant horseshoe, the oldest in the world, a model for the Italian theater. On this model were built following theaters of Italy and Europe, among others, the theater of the Palace of Caserta. Given the popularity of opera in 18th and 19th century Europe, opera houses are large, with generally more than 1,000 seats. Modern opera houses of the century such as New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Many operas are better suited to being presented in smaller theatres, in a traditional opera house, the auditorium is U-shaped, with the length of the sides determining the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer to the stage, are boxes and this is especially true of Wagners Bayreuth Festspielhaus where the pit is almost completely covered. The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be large, for some romantic period works. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers, therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, major opera houses throughout the world often have highly mechanized stages, with large stage elevators permitting heavy sets to be changed rapidly. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, sets are changed during the action, as the audience watches. This occurs in the Mets productions of such as Aida. Much the same happened in the remodeling of Milans La Scala opera house between 2002 and 2004, since the 1990s, however, many opera houses have begun using a subtle form of sound reinforcement called acoustic enhancement. Often, operas are presented in their languages, which may be different from the first language of the audience. For example, a Wagnerian opera presented in London may be in German, therefore, since the 1980s modern opera houses have assisted the audience by providing translated supertitles, projections of the words above or near to the stage
7.
Richard Wagner
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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and he described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
8.
Munich
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Munich is the capital and largest city of the German state of Bavaria, on the banks of River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, the Munich Metropolitan Region is home to 5.8 million people. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute Munich is considered an alpha-world city, the name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning by the monks. It derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who ran a monastery at the place that was later to become the Old Town of Munich, Munich was first mentioned in 1158. From 1255 the city was seat of the Bavarian Dukes, black and gold—the colours of the Holy Roman Empire—have been the citys official colours since the time of Ludwig the Bavarian, when it was an imperial residence. Following a final reunification of the Wittelsbachian Duchy of Bavaria, previously divided and sub-divided for more than 200 years, like wide parts of the Holy Roman Empire, the area recovered slowly economically. In 1918, during the German Revolution, the house of Wittelsbach, which governed Bavaria since 1180, was forced to abdicate in Munich. In the 1920s, Munich became home to political factions, among them the NSDAP. During World War II, Munich was heavily bombed and more than 50% of the entire city, the postwar period was characterised by American occupation until 1949 and a strong increase of population and economic power during the years of the Wirtschaftswunder after 1949. The city is home to corporations like BMW, Siemens, MAN, Linde, Allianz and MunichRE as well as many small. Munich is home to national and international authorities, major universities, major museums. Its numerous architectural attractions, international events, exhibitions and conferences. Munich is one of the most prosperous and fastest growing cities in Germany and it is a top-ranked destination for migration and expatriate location, despite being the municipality with the highest density of population in Germany. Munich nowadays hosts more than 530,000 people of foreign background, the year 1158 is assumed to be the foundation date, which is the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document. The document was signed in Augsburg, by that time the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, had built a bridge over the river Isar next to a settlement of Benedictine monks—this was on the Old Salt Route and a toll bridge. In 1175, Munich was officially granted city status and received fortification, in 1180, with the trial of Henry the Lion, Otto I Wittelsbach became Duke of Bavaria and Munich was handed over to the Bishop of Freising. In 1240, Munich was transferred to Otto II Wittelsbach and in 1255, Duke Louis IV, a native of Munich, was elected German king in 1314 and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in 1328. He strengthened the position by granting it the salt monopoly
9.
Ludwig II of Bavaria
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Ludwig II was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King or der Märchenkönig and he also held the titles of Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Duke of Franconia, and Duke in Swabia. He succeeded to the throne aged 18, two years later Bavaria and Austria fought a war against Prussia, which they lost. However, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Bavaria sided with Prussia against France and he commissioned the construction of two lavish palaces and the Neuschwanstein Castle, and was a devoted patron of the composer Richard Wagner. Ludwig spent all his royal revenues on these projects, borrowed extensively and this extravagance was used against him to declare him insane, an accusation which has since come under scrutiny. Today, his architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavarias most important tourist attractions, born in Nymphenburg Palace, he was the elder son of Maximilian II of Bavaria of the House of Wittelsbach, and his wife Princess Marie of Prussia. His younger brother, born three years later, was named Otto, like many young heirs in an age when kings governed most of Europe, Ludwig was continually reminded of his royal status. King Maximilian wanted to both of his sons in the burdens of royal duty from an early age. Ludwig was both extremely indulged and severely controlled by his tutors and subjected to a regimen of study. There are some who point to these stresses of growing up in a family as the causes for much of his odd behavior as an adult. Ludwig was not close to either of his parents, King Maximilians advisers had suggested that on his daily walks he might like, at times, to be accompanied by his future successor. The King replied, But what am I to say to him, after all, my son takes no interest in what other people tell him. Later, Ludwig would refer to his mother as my predecessors consort and he was far closer to his grandfather, the deposed and notorious King Ludwig I, who came from a family of eccentrics. Ludwigs childhood years did have happy moments and he lived for much of the time at Castle Hohenschwangau, a fantasy castle his father had built near the Alpsee near Füssen. It was decorated in the Gothic Revival style with frescoes depicting heroic German sagas. The family also visited Lake Starnberg, as an adolescent, Ludwig became close friends with his aide de camp, Prince Paul, a member of Bavarias wealthy Thurn und Taxis family. The two young men together, read poetry aloud, and staged scenes from the Romantic operas of Richard Wagner. The friendship ended when Paul became engaged in 1866, during his youth Ludwig also initiated a lifelong friendship with his cousin, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, later Empress of Austria
10.
Cornerstone
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The rite of laying a cornerstone is an important cultural component of eastern architecture and metaphorically in sacred architecture generally. Some cornerstones include time capsules from, or engravings commemorating, the time a building was built. Often, the ceremony involved the placing of offerings of grain, wine and these were symbolic of the produce and the people of the land and the means of their subsistence. This in turn derived from the practice in more ancient times of making an animal or human sacrifice that was laid in the foundations. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and stability to the building and it is believed that the man will die within the year. Not long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it was to provide architects with the necessary for securing their walls. In these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who, deprived of it, must die. Ancient Japan legends talk about Hitobashira, in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks and this person is usually asked to place their hand on the stone or otherwise signify its laying. Often still, and certainly until the 1970s, most ceremonies involved the use of a manufactured and engraved trowel that had a formal use in laying mortar under the stone. Similarly, a hammer was often used to ceremonially tap the stone into place. Freemasons sometimes perform the public cornerstone laying ceremony for notable buildings and this ceremony was described by The Cork Examiner of 13 January 1865 as follows. After this, Bishop Gregg spread cement over the stone with a specially made for the occasion by John Hawkesworth, a silversmith. He then gave the stone three knocks with a mallet and declared the stone to be duly and truly laid, the Deputy Provincial Grand Master of Munster poured offerings of corn, oil and wine over the stone after Bishop Gregg had declared it to be duly and truly laid. The Provincial Grand Chaplain of the Masonic Order in Munster then read out the prayer, May the Great Architect of the universe enable us as successfully to carry out. The choir and congregation sang the Hundredth Psalm. In Freemasonry, which grew from the practice of stonemasons, the initiate is placed in the north-east corner of the Lodge as a foundation stone. This is intended to signify the unity of the North associated with darkness, a cornerstone will sometimes be referred to as a foundation-stone, and is symbolic of Christ, whom the Apostle Paul referred to as the head of the corner and is the Chief Cornerstone of the Church. Many of the ancient churches will place relics of the saints, especially martyrs
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