1.
Swedish language
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Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken natively by more than 9 million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by number of speakers, Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the rural dialects still exist. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages, V2, Swedish morphology is similar to English, that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, no cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. Older analyses posit the cases nominative and genitive and there are remains of distinct accusative and dative forms as well. Adjectives are compared as in English, and are inflected according to gender, number. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes, complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles, the prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, by many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, the dialects of Old East Norse that were spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish. The dialects are described as runic because the body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, from 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain, there was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr dead
2.
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
3.
Drottningholm Palace
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The Drottningholm Palace is the private residence of the Swedish royal family. Built on the island Lovön, it is one of Swedens Royal Palaces and it was originally built in the late 16th century. It served as a summer residence of the Swedish royal court for most of the 18th century. Apart from being the residence of the Swedish royal family. The name Drottningholm came from the original building designed by Willem Boy. This palace was preceded by a mansion called Torvesund. The Queen Dowager Regent Hedwig Eleonora bought the castle in 1661, a year after her role as Queen of Sweden ended, Hedwig Eleonora engaged the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Elder to design and rebuild the castle. In 1662, work began on the reconstruction of the building, with the castle almost complete, Nicodemus died in 1681. His son Nicodemus Tessin the Younger continued his work and completed the interior designs. During the period of the reconstruction, Hedwig Eleonora was head of the protectorate for the still-underage King, Charles XI of Sweden, Sweden had grown to be a powerful country after the Peace of Westphalia. The position of the queen, essentially the ruler of Sweden, during the reign of the kings Charles XI of Sweden and Charles XII of Sweden, the royal court was often present at the palace, which was used for hunting. Hedwig Eleonora used the palace as a residence until her death in 1715. Drottningholm continued to regularly as a summer residence for the royal court during the entire 18th-century. After the death of Hedwig Eleonora in 1715, Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden, during Louisa Ulrikas ownership of Drottningholm the interior of the palace was transformed in a more sophisticated French rococo style. Louisa Ulrika was also responsible for having the Drottningholm Palace Theatre rebuilt in a grand style after the more modest original building burnt down in 1762, Louisa Ulrika and Adolf Fredrick continued to reside at the palace during their reign. In 1777, Louisa Ulrika sold Drottningholm to the Swedish state, during the reign of Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and Charles XIII of Sweden the palace was gradually used more sporadically. After the Coup of 1809, the deposed Gustav IV Adolf was kept here under guard in the Chinese Drawing Room for eleven days, during the reign of Charles XIV John of Sweden, the palace was abandoned. The King regarded it as a symbol of the old dynasty, the buildings were damaged by the forces of nature, and their inventories were either taken away or auctioned off
4.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
5.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
6.
Joseph Haydn
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Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. Haydn spent much of his career as a musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who served as Marktrichter. Haydns mother Maria, née Koller, had worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach. Neither parent could read music, however, Mathias was a folk musician. According to Haydns later reminiscences, his family was extremely musical. Haydns parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training, Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg 12 kilometres away, he never again lived with his parents. Life in the Frankh household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry and he began his musical training there, and could soon play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg heard him sing treble parts in the church choir, Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister. Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutters family, and the other four choirboys, the choirboys were instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard. Reutter was of help to Haydn in the areas of music theory and composition. However, since St. Stephens was one of the musical centres in Europe. Like Frankh before him, Reutter did not always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed, by 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. Empress Maria Theresa herself complained to Reutter about his singing, calling it crowing, one day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister. This was enough for Reutter, Haydn was first caned, then summarily dismissed and he had the good fortune to be taken in by a friend, Johann Michael Spangler, who shared his familys crowded garret room with Haydn for a few months. Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician and he was also briefly in Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitzs employ, playing the organ in the Bohemian Chancellery chapel at the Judenplatz
7.
George Frideric Handel
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George Frideric Handel was a German, later British baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712 and he was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Within fifteen years, Handel had started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera, musicologist Winton Dean writes that his operas show that Handel was not only a great composer, he was a dramatic genius of the first order. As Alexanders Feast was well received, Handel made a transition to English choral works, after his success with Messiah he never composed an Italian opera again. Almost blind, and having lived in England for nearly fifty years, he died in 1759 and his funeral was given full state honours, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. Handel was born in 1685 in Halle-on-Saal, Duchy of Magdeburg, to Georg Händel and his father,63 when George Frideric was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who served the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Georg Händel was the son of a coppersmith, Valentin Händel who had emigrated from Eisleben in 1608 with his first wife Anna Belching and they were Protestants and chose reliably Protestant Saxony over Silesia, a Hapsburg possession as religious tensions mounted in the years before the Thirty Years War. Halle was a prosperous city, home of a salt-mining industry. Even the smaller churches all had able organists and fair choirs, and humanities, the Thirty Years War brought extensive destruction to Halle, and by the 1680s it was impoverished. But since the middle of the war the city was under the administration of the Duke of Saxony, the arts and music, however, flourished only among the higher strata, which did not describe Handels family. Handel was the child of this marriage, the first son died still born. Two younger sisters were born after the birth of George Frideric, Dorthea Sophia, born 6 October 1687 and Johanna Christiana, born 10 January 1690. Early in his life Handel is reported to have attended the gymnasium in Halle, Mainwaring is the source for almost all information of Handels childhood, and much of that information came from J. C. Smith, Jr. Handels confidant and copyist. Whether they came from Smith or elsewhere, Mainwaring frequently relates misinformation and it is from Mainwaring that the portrait of Handels father as implacably opposed to any musical education comes. This did nothing to dampen young Handels inclination, in fact, Mainwaring tells the story of Handels secret attic spinnet, Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately conveyd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep, but Handel had to have had some experience with the keyboard to have made the impression in Weissenfels that resulted in his receiving formal musical training. Somehow Handel made his way to the organ, where he surprised everyone with his playing. Overhearing this performance and noting the youth of the performer caused the Duke to recommend to Georg Händel that Handel be given musical instruction, Handels father engaged the organist at the Halle parish church, the young Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, to instruct Handel
8.
Christoph Willibald Gluck
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Christoph Willibald Gluck was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period. With a series of new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste. The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. One of the last of these, Iphigénie en Tauride, was a success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. Gluck was born on 2 July 1714 in Erasbach near Neumarkt and his father Alexander was a forester in Erasbach, and after 1717 head forester in Reichstadt, Kreibitz and Eisenberg, all in northern Bohemia. According to some biographers, it was here, in the middle of Lusatian Mountains, in 1727 the family moved to Eisenberg, where his father was admitted to the service of Prince Philip Hyazinth von Lobkowitz. The Alsatian painter Johann Christian von Mannlich says it was as a Bohemian schoolboy that Gluck received his first musical training. Mannlich relates in his memoirs, written in French and published in 1810 and he quotes Gluck as saying, My father was forestmaster at M. in Bohemia and he planned that eventually I should succeed him. In my homeland everyone is musical, music is taught in the schools, as I was passionate about the art, I made rapid progress. I played several instruments and the schoolmaster, singling me out from the other pupils, I no longer thought and dreamt of anything but music, the art of forestry was neglected. Most now claim that the object of Glucks travels was not Vienna but Prague, at the time the University of Prague boasted a flourishing musical scene that included performances of both Italian opera and oratorio. Gluck eventually left Prague without taking a degree, and vanishes from the record until 1737. According to the music historian Daniel Heartz, there has been considerable controversy concerning Glucks native language, Glucks first biographer, Anton Schmid, accepted that Gluck spoke Czech, but thought Salieri incorrect, proposing instead that Gluck learned Czech in Prague. Heartz writes, More devious manoeuvres have been attempted by Glucks German biographers of this century, while the French ones have, without exception, hans Joachim Moser wanted a lyric work in Czech as proof. In fact, the music theorist Larent Garcin, writing in 1770 before Gluck arrived in Paris, in 1737 Gluck arrived in Milan, where he studied under G. B. Sammartini, who, according to Carpani, taught Gluck practical knowledge of all the instruments, apparently this relationship lasted for several years. Set to a libretto by Metastasio, the opera opened the Milanese Carnival of 1742, according to one anecdote, the public would not accept Glucks style until he inserted an aria in the lighter Milanese manner for contrast. Nearly all of his operas in this period were, like Artaserse, set to Metastasios texts, in 1745 Gluck accepted an invitation to become house composer at Londons Kings Theatre, probably travelling to England via Frankfurt and in the company of Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz
9.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, he showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood, already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, while visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame, during his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons and he composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote, posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl and this was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy and his elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth, at St. Ruperts Cathedral in Salzburg, the baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form, as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself Wolfgang Amadè Mozart as an adult, Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, Germany, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as fourth violinist in the establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg, Leopold became the orchestras deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his sons birth, Leopold published a textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule. When Nannerl was 7, she began lessons with her father. Years later, after her brothers death, she reminisced, He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and he could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. At the age of five, he was composing little pieces
10.
Historically informed performance
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Historically informed performance is an approach to the performance of Western music and theatre. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived. Whenever this knowledge conflicts with current aesthetic criteria, the option of re-training the listener/viewer, Music is usually played on instruments corresponding to the period of the piece being played, such as period instruments for early music. Historical treatises, as well as historical evidence, are used to gain insight into the performance practice of a historic era. Corresponding types of acting and scenery are deployed, historically informed performance has originated in the performance of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, but has come to encompass music from the Classical and Romantic eras as well. Quite recently, the phenomenon has begun to affect the theatrical stage, historically informed performance needs to access musical instruments corresponding to the period of the music being played. This has led to the revival of musical instruments entirely gone out of practice, during the second half of the 18th century, the fortepiano gradually replaced the harpsichord. Many harpsichords were destroyed, indeed, the Paris Conservatory is notorious for having used harpsichords for firewood during the French Revolution, composers such as François Couperin, Domenico Scarlatti, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ. Among the foremost modern players of the harpsichord are Robert Hill, Igor Kipnis, Ton Koopman, Wanda Landowska, Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock, Skip Sempé, Andreas Staier, Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Marin Marais, Antoine Forqueray, and Carl Frederick Abel. From largest to smallest, the family consists of, contrabass or violone bass viol tenor viol alto viol treble or descant viol. Among the foremost modern players of the viols are Paolo Pandolfo, Wieland Kuijken, Jordi Savall, John Hsu, there are many modern viol consorts. Recorders in multiple sizes are often played today in consorts of mixed size, handel and Telemann, among others, wrote solo works for the recorder. Arnold Dolmetsch did much to revive the recorder as a concert instrument, reconstructing a consort of recorders all at low pitch. A few of the singers who have contributed to the historically informed performance movement are Emma Kirkby, Max van Egmond, Julianne Baird, Nigel Rogers, historic pictures, layout sketches and sources give information about the layout of singers and instruments. Three main layouts are documented, Circle Choir in the front of the instruments Singers, Johann Mattheson, The singers must stand alltime in front. Some familiar difficult items are as follows, Early composers often wrote using the symbols as today, yet in a different meaning. For example, what is written as an appoggiatura is often meant to be longer or shorter than the notated length, E. g. the note durations may be omitted altogether, such as in unmeasured preludes, pieces written without rhythm or metre indications. The music may be written using alternative, non-modern notations, such as tablature, some tablature notations are only partially decoded, such as the notation in the harp manuscript by Robert ap Huw
