1.
Lower Saxony
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Lower Saxony is a German state situated in northwestern Germany and is second in area, with 47,624 square kilometres, and fourth in population among the sixteen Länder of Germany. In rural areas Northern Low Saxon, a dialect of Low German, and Saterland Frisian, a variety of Frisian, are still spoken, but the number of speakers is declining. Lower Saxony borders on the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the state of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony, one being the city of Bremen, the other, its city of Bremerhaven. In fact, Lower Saxony borders more neighbours than any other single Bundesland, the states principal cities include the state capital Hanover, Braunschweig, Lüneburg, Osnabrück, Oldenburg, Hildesheim, Wolfenbüttel, Wolfsburg and Göttingen. The northwestern area of Lower Saxony, which lies on the coast of the North Sea, is called East Frisia, in the extreme west of Lower Saxony is the Emsland, a traditionally poor and sparsely populated area, once dominated by inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony, also known as the North German Plains, is almost invariably flat except for the hills around the Bremen geestland. Towards the south and southwest lie the northern parts of the German Central Uplands, the Weser Uplands, between these two lie the Lower Saxon Hills, a range of low ridges. Thus, Lower Saxony is the only Bundesland that encompasses both maritime and mountainous areas, Lower Saxonys major cities and economic centres are mainly situated in its central and southern parts, namely Hanover, Braunschweig, Osnabrück, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter, Hildesheim and Göttingen. Oldenburg, near the coastline, is another economic centre. To the north, the Elbe river separates Lower Saxony from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the banks just south of the Elbe are known as Altes Land. Due to its local climate and fertile soil, it is the states largest area of fruit farming. Most of the territory was part of the historic Kingdom of Hanover. It was created by the merger of the State of Hanover with several states in 1946. Lower Saxony has a boundary in the north in the North Sea. The state and city of Bremen is an enclave surrounded by Lower Saxony. The Bremen/Oldenburg Metropolitan Region is a body for the enclave area. To the southeast the state border runs through the Harz, low mountains that are part of the German Central Uplands, in northeast Lower Saxony is Lüneburg Heath
2.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
3.
Musical instrument
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A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument, the history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual, such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment, Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the first device considered an instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some refer to as a musical instrument. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago, many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials. Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world, however, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in areas and was dominated by the Occident. Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material composition, their size, etc. However, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of instruments is called organology. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by using objects to create music from sounds. Primitive instruments were designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the pursuit of musical composition were unknown to early players of musical instruments. A player sounding a flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the notion of making music. Musical instruments are constructed in an array of styles and shapes
4.
Woodwind instrument
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Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the more general category of wind instruments. There are two types of woodwind instruments, flutes and reed instruments. What differentiates these instruments from other instruments is the way in which they produce their sound. Examples are a saxophone, a bassoon and a piccolo, flutes produce sound by directing a focused stream of air below the edge of a hole in a cylindrical tube. The flute family can be divided into two sub-families, open flutes and closed flutes, to produce a sound with an open flute, the player is required to blow a stream of air across a sharp edge that then splits the airstream. This split airstream then acts upon the air contained within the flutes hollow causing it to vibrate. Examples of open flutes are the flute, panpipes and shakuhachi. Ancient flutes of this variety were often made from sections of plants such as grasses, reeds. Later, flutes were made of such as tin, copper. Modern concert flutes are made of high-grade metal alloys, usually containing nickel, silver, copper. To produce a sound with a flute, the player is required to blow air into a duct. This duct acts as a channel bringing the air to a sharp edge, as with the open flutes, the air is then split, this causes the column of air within the closed flute to vibrate and produce sound. Examples of this type of include the recorder, ocarina. Reed instruments produce sound by focusing air into a mouthpiece which then causes a reed, or reeds, similar to flutes, Reed pipes are also further divided into two types, single reed and double reed. Single-reed woodwinds produce sound by placing a reed onto the opening of a mouthpiece, when air is forced between the reed and the mouthpiece, the reed causes the air column in the instrument to vibrate and produce its unique sound. Single reed instruments include the clarinet, saxophone, and others such as the chalumeau, double-reed instruments use two precisely cut, small pieces of cane bound together at the base. This form of production has been estimated to have originated in the middle to late Neolithic period. The finished, bound reed is inserted into the instrument and vibrates as air is forced between the two pieces and this family of reed pipes is subdivided further into another two sub-families, exposed double reed, and capped double reed instruments
5.
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
6.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
7.
Old English
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Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
Mahillon, Victor-Charles; Schlesinger, Kathleen (1911). "Cromorne". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).
