Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, at 44°25′57″N 26°06′14″E, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border. Bucharest was first mentioned in documents in 1459, it became the capital of Romania in 1862 and is the centre of Romanian media and art. Its architecture is a mix of historical, communist era and modern. In the period between the two World Wars, the city's elegant architecture and the sophistication of its elite earned Bucharest the nickname of "Little Paris". Although buildings and districts in the historic city centre were damaged or destroyed by war and above all Nicolae Ceaușescu's program of systematization, many survived and have been renovated. In recent years, the city has been experiencing an cultural boom. In 2016, the historical city centre was listed as "endangered" by the World Monuments Watch. According to the 2011 census, 1,883,425 inhabitants live within the city limits, a decrease from the 2002 census.
Adding the satellite towns around the urban area, the proposed metropolitan area of Bucharest would have a population of 2.27 million people. According to Eurostat, Bucharest has a functional urban area of 2,412,530 residents. Bucharest is the sixth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits, after London, Madrid and Paris. Economically, Bucharest is the most prosperous city in Romania and is one of the main industrial centres and transportation hubs of Eastern and Central Europe; the city has big convention facilities, educational institutes, cultural venues, traditional "shopping arcades", recreational areas. The city proper is administratively known as the "Municipality of Bucharest", has the same administrative level as that of a national county, being further subdivided into six sectors, each governed by a local mayor; the Romanian name București has an unverified origin. Tradition connects the founding of Bucharest with the name of Bucur, a prince, an outlaw, a fisherman, a shepherd or a hunter, according to different legends.
In Romanian, the word stem bucurie means "joy", it is believed to be of Dacian origin, hence the city Bucharest means "city of joy". Other etymologies are given by early scholars, including the one of an Ottoman traveller, Evliya Çelebi, who said that Bucharest was named after a certain "Abu-Kariș", from the tribe of "Bani-Kureiș". In 1781, Austrian historian Franz Sulzer claimed that it was related to bucurie, bucuros, or a se bucura, while an early 19th-century book published in Vienna assumed its name has been derived from "Bukovie", a beech forest. In English, the city's name was rendered as Bukarest. A native or resident of Bucharest is called a "Bucharester". Bucharest's history alternated periods of development and decline from the early settlements in antiquity until its consolidation as the national capital of Romania late in the 19th century. First mentioned as the "Citadel of București" in 1459, it became the residence of the famous Wallachian prince Vlad III the Impaler; the Ottomans appointed Greek administrators to run the town from the 18th century.
A short-lived revolt initiated by Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821 led to the end of the rule of Constantinople Greeks in Bucharest. The Old Princely Court was erected by Mircea Ciobanul in the mid-16th century. Under subsequent rulers, Bucharest was established as the summer residence of the royal court. During the years to come, it competed with Târgoviște on the status of capital city after an increase in the importance of southern Muntenia brought about by the demands of the suzerain power – the Ottoman Empire. Bucharest became the permanent location of the Wallachian court after 1698. Destroyed by natural disasters and rebuilt several times during the following 200 years, hit by Caragea's plague in 1813–14, the city was wrested from Ottoman control and occupied at several intervals by the Habsburg Monarchy and Imperial Russia, it was placed under Russian administration between 1828 and the Crimean War, with an interlude during the Bucharest-centred 1848 Wallachian revolution. An Austrian garrison took possession after the Russian departure.
On 23 March 1847, a fire consumed about 2,000 buildings. In 1862, after Wallachia and Moldavia were united to form the Principality of Romania, Bucharest became the new nation's capital city. In 1881, it became the political centre of the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Romania under King Carol I. During the second half of the 19th century, the city's population increased and a new period of urban development began. During this period, gas lighting, horse-drawn trams, limited electrification were introduced; the Dâmbovița River was massively channelled in 1883, thus putting a stop to endemic floods like the 1865 flooding of Bucharest. The Fortifications of Bucharest were built; the extravagant architecture and cosmopolitan high culture of this period won Bucharest the nickname of "Little Paris" of the east, with Calea Victoriei as its Champs-Élysées. Between 6 December 1916 and November 1918, the city was occupied by German forces as a result of the Battle of Bucharest, with the official capital temporarily moved to Iași, in
Piano
The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings; the word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from gravicembalo col piano e forte and fortepiano. The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate "soft" and "loud" in this context referring to the variations in volume produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, the louder the sound of the note produced and the stronger the attack; the name was created as a contrast to harpsichord, a musical instrument that doesn't allow variation in volume. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had smaller dynamic range.
An acoustic piano has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, which are strung under great tension on a heavy metal frame. Pressing one or more keys on the piano's keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings; the hammer rebounds from the strings, the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air; when the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs, by the use of pedals at the base of the instrument; the sustain pedal enables pianists to play musical passages that would otherwise be impossible, such as sounding a 10-note chord in the lower register and while this chord is being continued with the sustain pedal, shifting both hands to the treble range to play a melody and arpeggios over the top of this sustained chord.
Unlike the pipe organ and harpsichord, two major keyboard instruments used before the piano, the piano allows gradations of volume and tone according to how forcefully a performer presses or strikes the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys, which are raised above the white keys, set further back on the keyboard; this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the "accidentals". More some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass; the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is classified as a percussion instrument rather than as a stringed instrument, because the strings are struck rather than plucked. There are two main types of piano: the upright piano.
The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music, art song, it is used in jazz and pop concerts. The upright piano, more compact, is the most popular type, as it is a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making and practice. During the 1800s, influenced by the musical trends of the Romantic music era, innovations such as the cast iron frame and aliquot stringing gave grand pianos a more powerful sound, with a longer sustain and richer tone. In the nineteenth century, a family's piano played the same role that a radio or phonograph played in the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many musical works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play and hear the popular pieces of the day in their home; the piano is employed in classical, jazz and popular music for solo and ensemble performances and for composing and rehearsals. Although the piano is heavy and thus not portable and is expensive, its musical versatility, the large number of musicians and amateurs trained in playing it, its wide availability in performance venues and rehearsal spaces have made it one of the Western world's most familiar musical instruments.
With technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, digital pianos have been developed. The electric piano became a popular instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music and rock music; the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments. Pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches; the first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dul
Harmony
In music, harmony considers the process by which the composition of individual sounds, or superpositions of sounds, is analysed by hearing. This means occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords; the study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line, or the "horizontal" aspect. Counterpoint, which refers to the relationship between melodic lines, polyphony, which refers to the simultaneous sounding of separate independent voices, are thus sometimes distinguished from harmony. In popular and jazz harmony, chords are named by their root plus various terms and characters indicating their qualities. In many types of music, notably baroque, romantic and jazz, chords are augmented with "tensions". A tension is an additional chord member that creates a dissonant interval in relation to the bass. In the classical common practice period a dissonant chord "resolves" to a consonant chord.
Harmonization sounds pleasant to the ear when there is a balance between the consonant and dissonant sounds. In simple words, that occurs; the term harmony derives from the Greek ἁρμονία harmonia, meaning "joint, concord", from the verb ἁρμόζω harmozō, " fit together, join". In the past, harmony referred to the whole field of music, while music referred to the arts in general. In Ancient Greece, the term defined the combination of contrasted elements: a lower note, it is unclear whether the simultaneous sounding of notes was part of ancient Greek musical practice. In the Middle Ages the term was used to describe two pitches sounding in combination, in the Renaissance the concept was expanded to denote three pitches sounding together. Aristoxenus wrote a work entitled Harmonika Stoicheia, thought the first work in European history written on the subject of harmony, it was not until the publication of Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie in 1722 that any text discussing musical practice made use of the term in the title, although that work is not the earliest record of theoretical discussion of the topic.
The underlying principle behind these texts is that harmony sanctions harmoniousness by conforming to certain pre-established compositional principles. Current dictionary definitions, while attempting to give concise descriptions highlight the ambiguity of the term in modern use. Ambiguities tend to arise from either aesthetic considerations or from the point of view of musical texture (distinguishing between harmonic and "contrapuntal". In the words of Arnold Whittall: While the entire history of music theory appears to depend on just such a distinction between harmony and counterpoint, it is no less evident that developments in the nature of musical composition down the centuries have presumed the interdependence—at times amounting to integration, at other times a source of sustained tension—between the vertical and horizontal dimensions of musical space; the view that modern tonal harmony in Western music began in about 1600 is commonplace in music theory. This is accounted for by the replacement of horizontal composition, common in the music of the Renaissance, with a new emphasis on the vertical element of composed music.
Modern theorists, tend to see this as an unsatisfactory generalisation. According to Carl Dahlhaus: It was not that counterpoint was supplanted by harmony but that an older type both of counterpoint and of vertical technique was succeeded by a newer type, and harmony comprises not only the structure of chords but their movement. Like music as a whole, harmony is a process. Descriptions and definitions of harmony and harmonic practice may show bias towards European musical traditions. For example, South Asian art music is cited as placing little emphasis on what is perceived in western practice as conventional harmony. Pitch simultaneity in particular is a major consideration. Many other considerations of pitch are relevant to the music, its theory and its structure, such as the complex system of Rāgas, which combines both melodic and modal considerations and codifications within it. So, intricate pitch combinations that sound do occur in Indian classical music—but they are studied as teleological harmonic or contrapuntal progressions—as with notated Western music.
This contrasting emphasis manifests itself in the different methods of performance adopted: in Indian Music improvisation takes a major role in the structural framework of a piece, whereas in Western Music improvisation has been uncommon since the end of the 19th century. Where it does occur in Western music, the improvisation either embellishes pre-notated music or draws from musical models established in notated compositions, therefore uses familiar harmonic schemes. Emphasis on the precomposed in European art music and th
Florica Musicescu
Florica Musicescu was a renowned Romanian pianist and musical pedagogue, daughter of the renowned composer and musicologist Gavriil Musicescu. She taught piano music for many decades at the Bucharest Conservatory. For her masterful guidance and mentorship, she is considered to be one of the founders of the Romanian School of Piano Music. Many of the famous pianists of the 20th century emerged from this school: Mihai Brediceanu, Paul Dan, Dan Grigore, Mindru Katz, Dinu Lipatti, Myriam Marbe, Radu Lupu, Svetla Protich, Madeleine Cantacuzene, Sorin Enăchescu, Maria Fotino, Corneliu Gheorghiu, Marietta Orlov, Shulamith Shapira and Tamás Vesmás. Dinu Lipatti - a biography Radu Lupu - Biography Musical and Choreographic Calendar Who’s who in Romania: Dan Grigore
Domnitor
Domnitor was the official title of the ruler of Romania between 1862 and 1881. It was translated as prince in other languages. Derived from the Romanian word "domn" and, in turn, from the Latin "Dominus", Domnitor had been in use since the Middle Ages. Moldavian and Wallachian rulers had sometimes been referred to by the term, though their official titles had been voievod or hospodar after they were nominated by the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire; the title acquired an recognized meaning only after Moldavia and Wallachia united in 1862 to form the United Romanian Principalities under Alexander John I, the ruler of states since 1859. Alexander John was deposed in 1866 and succeeded by Carol I, who held the post until 1881; when Romania was proclaimed a kingdom in 1881, Carol became its first king. King of the Romanians List of rulers of Moldavia List of rulers of Wallachia List of heads of state of Romania
Interwar period
In the context of the history of the 20th century, the interwar period was the period between the end of the First World War in November 1918 and the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939. Despite the short period of time, this period represented an era of significant changes worldwide. Petroleum and associated mechanisation expanded leading to the Roaring Twenties, a period of economic prosperity and growth for the middle class in North America and many other parts of the world. Automobiles, electric lighting, radio broadcasts and more became commonplace among populations in the developed world; the indulgences of this era subsequently were followed by the Great Depression, an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn which damaged many of the world's largest economies. Politically, this era coincided with the rise of communism, starting in Russia with the October Revolution and Russian Civil War, at the end of World War I, ended with the rise of fascism in Germany and in Italy.
China was in the midst of long period of instability and civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China. The Empires of Britain and others faced challenges as imperialism was viewed negatively in Europe, independence movements in British India, French Indochina and other regions gained momentum; the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires were dismantled, while the Ottoman and German colonies were redistributed among the Allies, chiefly the United Kingdom and France. The western parts of the Russian Empire, Finland, Latvia and Poland became independent nations in their own right, while Bessarabia chose to reunify with Romania; the Russian communists managed to regain control of the other East Slavic states, Central Asia, the Caucasus, forming the Soviet Union. Ireland was partitioned between the independent Irish Free State and the British-controlled Northern Ireland. In the Middle East and Iraq gained independence. During the Great Depression, Latin American countries nationalised many foreign companies in a bid to strengthen their own economies.
The territorial ambitions of the Soviets, Japan and Germany led to the expansion of their empires, setting the stage for the subsequent World War. The Interwar Period is accepted to have ended in September 1939, with the invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II. However, in Asia, it is considered to have ended with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Following the Armistice of Compiègne on November 11th, 1918 that ended World War I, the years 1918–24 were marked by turmoil as the Russian Civil War continued to rage on, Eastern Europe struggled to recover from the devastation of the First World War and the destabilising effects of not just the collapse of the Russian Empire, but the destruction of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, as well. There were numerous new nations in Eastern Europe, some small in size, such as Lithuania or Latvia, some large and vast, such as Poland and Yugoslavia; the United States gained dominance in world finance.
Thus, when Germany could no longer afford war reparations to Britain and other former members of the Entente, the Americans came up with the Dawes Plan and Wall Street invested in Germany, which repaid its reparations to nations that, in turn, used the dollars to pay off their war debts to Washington. By the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known as the Roaring Twenties; the important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries. Disarmament was a popular public policy. However, the League of Nations played little role in this effort, with the United States and Britain taking the lead. U. S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes sponsored the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in determining how many capital ships each major country was allowed; the new allocations were followed and there were no naval races in the 1920s. Britain played a leading role in the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference and the 1930 London Conference that led to the London Naval Treaty, which added cruisers and submarines to the list of ship allocations.
However the refusal of Japan, Germany and the USSR to go along with this led to the meaningless Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Naval disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearmi
Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion
Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion was a Romanian journalist and poet remembered for his legal dispute with humorist Ion Luca Caragiale, he was a Symbolist, a disciple of Alexandru Macedonski, a militant Francophile, as well as a leading opponent of literary tradition. His scattered work comprises essays, short stories and prose poetry, noted for their cultural references, but made little impact on Romanian literature; as a journalist, Caion prioritized scandals, accusing Caragiale of plagiarism and losing the subsequent celebrity trial of 1902, before recanting and winning the retrial. Despite his own coquetries with Romanian nationalism, Caion focused his verve on Transylvania's contemporary nationalist literary current. Ionescu-Caion was the founder of several magazines, most notably Românul Literar. Conceived as a literary supplement for the daily Românul, it became a tribune of Macedonski's Romanian Symbolist movement, helped discover George Bacovia, the celebrated modern poet. During World War I, when he oscillated between the two opposing camps, Caion put out the journal Cronicarul.
This was his last known activity in the Romanian press. A contradictory figure, Caion was equated with infamy and ridicule in the Romanian context, his evidently unsubstantiated allegations against Caragiale have traditionally puzzled literary historians. In Transylvania, the word Caion was for a while synonymous with yellow journalist. Little is recorded about Caion's roots, other than that he was a devout Roman Catholic, a regular presence at Saint Joseph Cathedral, he had a early debut in cultural journalism. After 1897, when he was 15, his literary chroniclers saw print in several newspapers, under various pseudonyms such as C. A. I. Nică Burdușel, Ion Filionescu, Marin Gelea, Isac Șt. Micu, Roman Mușat, among others. In January 1898, he was employed by Adevărul daily. Péladan, a writer and self-styled mage, failed to impress the young reporter, who reported on his various claims with a note of irony, he affiliated with Macedonski's eclectic art magazine Literatorul. Interested in the Roman Empire, he published with Literatorul a comparative biography of Julius Caesar and Augustus, republished as a book by Carol Göbl of Bucharest.
In 1898, Ionescu-Caion completed his adaptation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, published by the Adevărul collection Biblioteca Enciclopedică as Trei ani de suferință: O călătorie curioasă. It came with Caion's own critical study of Swift. According to Anglicist Mihaela Mudure, Caion, "a famous journalist and a minor writer", was thus the first Romanian to publish an essay on Swift, albeit one, "not sophisticated". Caion published other such translations with Biblioteca Enciclopedică, rendering works by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Louis Henri Boussenard, Henry de Graffigny, Louis Jacolliot and others. Under contract with Adevărul, Caion published his translation from Prosper Castanier novellas, dealing with "Roman decadence". Writing in 2011, critic Angelo Mitchievici suggested that Caion's introduction to the volume exaggerated Castanier's merits, but was still "interesting" for showing the popularity of "decadentism" in 1890s Romania: Caion's argument was that Rome fell victim to "Asiatic luxury" and sophisticated sexuality.
Caion's own texts on the subject of decadence were published as booklets by the French company Retaux Frères. His bibliography for 1899 includes the essay Coversații despre artă, with Adevărul, a selection of his own novellas. Not much is known about Caion's other involvements, other than that he attended the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters, in the same year as fellow journalist Eugen Porn. Although living in the capital, he maintained links with the youth of Iași, published alongside I. I. Mironescu in the high school magazine C. Negruzzi, his work included an essay about the works of the eponymous novelist. A "Constantin Ionescu", whom literary historian Victor Durnea tentatively identifies as the future Caion, was arrested by Romanian Police on Calea Victoriei, during the breakup of a student nationalist rally, he was still enlisted at the University in 1899, when he organized a charity event to benefit the impoverished schoolchildren of Câmpina. Despite his subsequent involvement in various scandals, Ionescu-Caion was not universally perceived as a mediocre journalist.
Historian Lucian Boia notes that he "was not without merit as a publicist." Around the year 1900, Caion became a sympathizer of the Romanian Symbolist movement, whose leader was the poet Macedonski. Attached by philologist Ștefan Cazimir to a "Secessionist" current in Romanian literature, Caion made himself noted for a prose poem dedicated to his lover's hair. A regular presence in Macedonski's house, Caion mounted a campaign to promote minor Romanian Symbolist authors in France; as noted by critics, the French contacts were themselves fringe magazines, with Legitimist and Traditionalist Catholic agendas. Caion had an enduring interest in history and, in 1900, completed his monograph on Wallachian Prince Gheorghe Bibescu. Titled Asupra domniei lui Bibescu, it was first published as an addendum to Georges Bibesco's pamphlet, O execuție. Bibesco, the Prince's destitute son, continued to employ Caion as his d
