1.
Conducting
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Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance, such as an orchestral or choral concert. A conductors directions will almost invariably be supplemented or reinforced by verbal instructions or suggestions to their musicians in rehearsal prior to a performance. The conductor typically stands on a podium with a large music stand for the full score. Conducting while playing a piano or synthesizer may also be done with musical theatre pit orchestras, communication is typically non-verbal during a performance. However, in rehearsals, frequent interruptions allow the conductor to give verbal directions as to how the music should be played or sung, Conductors act as guides to the orchestras or choirs they conduct. They choose the works to be performed and study their scores, to which they may make adjustments, work out their interpretation. They may also attend to matters, such as scheduling rehearsals, planning a concert season, hearing auditions and selecting members. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and other musical ensembles such as big bands are usually led by conductors. The principal conductor of an orchestra or opera company is referred to as a music director or chief conductor, or by the German words Kapellmeister or Dirigent. Conductors of choirs or choruses are sometimes referred to as director, chorus master, or choirmaster. Conductors of concert bands, military bands, marching bands and other bands may hold the title of director, bandmaster. Respected senior conductors are sometimes referred to by the Italian word, an early form of conducting is cheironomy, the use of hand gestures to indicate melodic shape. This has been practiced at least as far back as the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, other devices to indicate the passing of time came into use. Rolled up sheets of paper, smaller sticks and unadorned hands are all shown in pictures from this period, the large staff was responsible for the death of Jean-Baptiste Lully, who injured his foot with one while conducting a Te Deum for the Kings recovery from illness. The wound became gangrenous and Lully refused amputation, whereupon the gangrene spread to his leg, in instrumental music throughout the 18th century, a member of the ensemble usually acted as the conductor. This was sometimes the concertmaster, who could use his bow as a baton and it was common to conduct from the harpsichord in pieces that had a basso continuo part. In opera performances, there were sometimes two conductors – the keyboard player was in charge of the singers, and the principal violinist or leader was in charge of the orchestra. By the early 19th century, it became the norm to have a dedicated conductor, the size of the usual orchestra expanded during this period, and the use of a baton became more common, as it was easier to see than bare hands or rolled-up paper
2.
Cleveland Orchestra
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The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the Big Five. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, as of 2016, the incumbent music director is Franz Welser-Möst. In 2012 Gramophone Magazine ranked the Cleveland Orchestra number 7 on its list of 20 of the worlds greatest orchestras, the orchestra was founded in 1918 by Adella Prentiss Hughes, with Nikolai Sokoloff as its principal conductor. From early in its existence, it toured throughout the eastern United States, made radio broadcasts, subsequent principal conductors, with the title of Music Director, were Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, and Christoph von Dohnányi. Franz Welser-Möst has been Music Director since 2002 and is contracted to remain through the 2021-2022 season, George Szells long reign as Music Director has been largely credited for the orchestras rise to eminence. He reformed the orchestra in the late-1940s, firing a dozen musicians in the process with a dozen more leaving of their own volition, Szell is also credited with giving the orchestra its distinct, European sound. He pushed an ambitious recording schedule with the orchestra, bringing its music to millions worldwide, Szells influence has continued, even decades after his death. Cleveland is the smallest city amongst the traditional Big Five orchestras, the others are based in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. However, musicians in Cleveland are often treated as local celebrities, clevelanders are proud that their city boasts an orchestra that has several times been touted as Americas finest, and compared favorably to many of the great orchestras in Central Europe. In the 1960s fans were known to have airport rallies when the orchestra comes home from tour chant, past assistant conductors of the Cleveland Orchestra include Matthias Bamert, James Levine, Alan Gilbert, James Judd and Michael Stern. Severance Hall is the Cleveland Orchestras home and it was built for the orchestra in 1931. The orchestra performs the majority of its concerts at Severance and also uses the hall for rehearsals, the concert organ there is by Ernest M. Skinner IV-94. During the summer months, the orchestra presents their annual Blossom Festival at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, until 2005, the Blossom Festival had its own music director. The last person to serve in that capacity was Jahja Ling, after he stepped down from that position, the orchestra eliminated the post, and now has current music director Franz Welser-Möst in charge of the classical music concerts at the Blossom Festival. The orchestra also has long-term performing relationships in Lucerne, Vienna, New York City, a residency in Miami, the Cleveland Orchestra Official website Cleveland Orchestra history at the Wayback Machine from the Telarc website. Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra Musicians
3.
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
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The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its director since 2001. The ASOs main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center, the organization changed to its current name in 1947 and soon began attracting well known soloists such as Isaac Stern and Glenn Gould. In 1967, with the departure of Sopkin, Robert Shaw became the Music Director, in 1970, Shaw founded a choir, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. In 1988, Yoel Levi became Music Director and Principal Conductor, under him, the Orchestra played at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Levi became Music Director Emeritus in 2000, and was succeeded as Music Director by Robert Spano, allison Vulgamore was hired as president of the orchestra in 1993, remaining in the role until 2009. The orchestra toured Europe under Yoel Levi in 1991, and with its Chorus, under Robert Shaw, in 2006 the orchestra and its chamber chorus, under Robert Spano, served as the resident ensemble for Californias Ojai Festival. Encore Park and the Amphitheatre are owned by the Woodruff Arts Center, including Encore Park and its activities at Atlanta Symphony Hall and Chastain Park, the ASO expects to present more than 300 performances annually. With a budget expected to increase to US $50 million with the completion of its new Amphitheatre and this continues a rancorous history between management and players, as they attempt to extricate themselves from operating in the red, as has been the case for many years now. The local paper also indicates that their operating budget is unsustainable for a variety of reasons. Since 2005 the Orchestra has been planning for the construction of a new principal concert hall. In addition to the Verizon Amphitheatre the Orchestra plays an extensive outdoor summer concert series at Atlantas city-owned Chastain Park. On February 5,2014, the ASO announced that Joseph Young would take over as Assistant Conductor, jane Little, who debuted as a double bassist in Atlanta on February. 4,1945, at the age of 16 and she remained a member of the orchestra for the rest of her life, dying on May 15,2016 a few hours after collapsing during a performance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She was said to be the longest tenured orchestra musician in the world, the orchestra and chorus made their first recording, a 2-LP Christmas album entitled Nativity, for Turnabout/Vox Records in 1975, conducted by Robert Shaw. This was an album based on their annual Christmas concert. A slightly shortened version of the 75-minute album was issued by Vox in the 1990s on compact disc under the title Christmas with Robert Shaw. The Telarc association, which resulted in 26 Grammy awards, continued until 2010, in 2011 the Orchestra began releasing recordings on its own ASO Media label
4.
Robert Shaw (conductor)
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Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded to a conductor. His father, Rev. Shirley R. Shaw, was a minister and he had four siblings, one of whom was singer Hollace Shaw. He attended Pomona College, class of 1938, shortly after his graduation, Shaw was hired by popular band leader Fred Waring to recruit and train a glee club that would sing with the band. In 1941, Shaw founded the Collegiate Chorale, a notable in its day for its racial integration. In 1948, the group performed Beethovens Symphony No.9 with the NBC Symphony and Arturo Toscanini, Shaw continued to prepare choirs for Toscanini until March 1954, when they sang in Te Deum by Verdi and the prologue to Mefistofele by Boito. Shaws choirs participated in the NBC broadcast performances of three Verdi operas, Aida, Falstaff and A Masked Ball, all conducted by Toscanini and they can be seen on the home videos of the telecasts of Aida and Beethovens Ninth Symphony, also conducted by Toscanini. Shaw himself took a bow at the end of the Beethoven telecast, Shaw was also Charles F. Shaws second cousin and often vacationed at his winery in Napa Valley. He went on to found the Robert Shaw Chorale in 1948, the Chorale visited 30 countries in tours sponsored by the U. S. State Department. Shaw was named director of the San Diego Symphony in 1953. Only after his San Diego tenure did he become an apprentice again, studying the art of conducting with George Szell and he also took over the fledgling Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and fine-tuned it into one of the finest all-volunteer choral ensembles sponsored by an American symphony orchestra. From 1967-1988 he was director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Although noted in classical repertoire, Shaw hardly limited himself to that genre, for Telarc he recorded several digital remakes of the Christmas albums he had previously recorded for RCA Victor, including The Many Moods of Christmas. Shaw collaborated with noted composer and conductor Alice Parker on arrangements of folksongs, hymns, spirituals. His work set new standards in the United States. He recorded many of the great choral-orchestral works more than once, bachs Mass in B minor, Beethovens Missa Solemnis, Orffs Carmina Burana, Verdis Requiem, and other similar masterworks remain highly regarded. In a move toward historically informed performance, Shaws first recording of Messiah, in 1966, Shaw was a champion of modern music from the beginning of his career. He commissioned a requiem for Franklin D, in 1998 Yale also awarded Shaw an honorary doctorate
5.
Red Bluff, California
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Red Bluff is a city in and the county seat of Tehama County, California, United States. The population was 14,076 at the 2010 census, up from 13,147 at the 2000 census, Red Bluff is on the northern edge of the Sacramento Valley, and is the third largest city in the Shasta Cascade region. It is about 30 mi south of Redding,40 mi northwest of Chico, the city is located at 40°10′36″N 122°14′17″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 7.7 square miles. 7.6 square miles of it is land and 0.1 square miles of it is water, the total area is 1. 48% water. The Nomlaki and Southern Yana people originally inhabited the area along the banks of the Sacramento River where Red Bluff was built, on April 10,1828, Jedediah Smith passed through on the way to Oregon. In 1843 Peter Lassen, John Bidwell, and John Burheim came in pursuit of horse thieves, the first house where Red Bluff now is an adobe structure put up late in 1849 by John Myers, who conducted it for a short time as a hotel. In the following spring Mr. Cooper erected a small adobe there, dibble built another at the Adobe Ferry, one mile north. This adobe has been associated with William B. Ide, whose home was south of Red Bluff, settlement began in 1850 when Sashel Woods and Charles L. Wilson began laying out a town called Leodocia. It was known by name and Covertsburg until 1854, when maps showed the community as Red Bluffs. In 1851 Captain Ellbridge G. Reed built and started a hotel near where the now known as Reeds Creek enters the Sacramento River. It languished later on with the subsidence of activity in the mines, in 1854 Red Bluff had a population of 1,000 people. In 1860 it had twice as many, on the organization of the county in 1856, there was a strong attempt to locate the county seat at Tehama, but in March,1857, Red Bluff was chosen. The city of Red Bluff was incorporated in 1876, Red Bluff has a Mediterranean climate with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. There are an average of 100.1 days annually with highs of 90 °F or higher, the record highest temperature was 121 °F on August 7,1981, and the record lowest temperature was 17 °F on January 9,1937. Annual precipitation averages 23.21 inches with measurable precipitation falling of an average of 71 days, the wettest year was 1983 with 52.98 inches and the driest year was 1976 with 7.20 inches. The most rainfall in one month was 21.47 inches in January 1995, the most snowfall in one month was 15.0 inches in January 1937
6.
Pomona College
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Pomona College is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college located in Claremont, California, United States. Established in 1887, it is the member of the Claremont Colleges consortium. Pomona is a selective, four-year undergraduate institution, and enrolled approximately 1,660 students representing 49 states and 63 countries in Fall 2016. The college maintains 48 majors and 600 courses, though students have access to nearly 2000 additional courses at the other Claremont Colleges, the colleges 140-acre main campus is located in a residential community near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The campus is located adjacent to the Village, an area of Claremont that has grown around the college. Pomona College is currently ranked seventh among all institutions in the United States by Forbes. And seventh among all liberal arts colleges by U. S. News & World Report, 70% of enrolled students hail from out of state, 56% receive need-based financial aid, and 57% self-identify as domestic students of color or international students. Pomona College was established as an institution on October 14,1887. The group’s goal was to create a college in the mold as small New England institutions. The College was originally formed in Pomona, California, classes first began in a house on September 12,1888. The next year, the moved to Claremont, at the site of an unfinished hotel. This building would eventually become Sumner Hall, current location of the Admissions, the name Pomona College remained after the relocation. The College’s first graduating class had ten members in 1894 and its founders’ values led to the College’s belief in educational equity. Like other Congregationalist-founded colleges such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Pomona received its own governing board, ensuring its independence. The board of trustees was composed of graduates of Williams, Dartmouth, Bates and Yale, among others. This would allow Pomona to retain its small, liberal arts-focused teaching while gaining the resources of a larger university, on October 14,1925, Pomona College’s 38th anniversary, the Claremont Colleges were incorporated. By 1997, the consortium reached its present membership of five undergraduate, Pomona ranks eighth in the country for graduates receiving the most competitive graduate fellowships per capita. In 2013, Pomona students received the most Goldwater Scholarships of any liberal arts college, nearly 85% of recent alumni attend graduate or professional school within ten years
7.
Fred Waring
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Fredrick Malcolm Waring was a popular musician, bandleader, and radio-television personality, sometimes referred to as Americas Singing Master and The Man Who Taught America How to Sing. He was also a promoter, financial backer and eponym of the Waring Blendor, fredrick Malcolm Waring was born in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, on June 9,1900, to Jesse Calderwood and Frank Waring. During his teenaged years, Fred Waring, his brother Tom, and their friend Poley McClintock founded the Waring-McClintock Snap Orchestra, the band often played at fraternity parties, proms, and dances, and achieved local success. Waring attended Penn State University, where he studied architectural engineering and he also aspired to be in the Penn State Glee Club, but he was rejected with every audition due to college politics and tension between the glee clubs director, Dr. Clarence Robinson, and him. His Banjo Orchestra eventually became so successful that he decided to abandon his education to tour with the band and he married his college sweetheart, Dorothy McAteer, in 1923, but divorced her in 1929. He remarried in 1933 to Evalyn Nair and had three children, but in 1954, they divorced and their children were, Dixie, Fred Waring Jr. William Bill, Paul, and Malcolm. Son Fred Jr. was a conductor and jazz trombonist, grandson Jordan Waring is an orchestral composer. Fred Waring died of stroke at his home on July 29,1984, in State College. From 1923 until late 1932, Warings Pennsylvanians were among Victor Records best-selling bands, in late 1932, he abruptly quit recording, although his band continued to perform on radio. In 1933, You Gotta Be a Football Hero was performed on radio to great acclaim, adding a mens singing group to his ensemble, he recruited Robert Shaw, recently out of the Pomona College glee club, to train his singers. Shaw later founded the Robert Shaw Chorale, directed the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Waring glee club sound can be detected in some Robert Shaw Chorale recordings. Pembroke Davenport was Warings pianist and arranger, during World War II, Waring and his ensemble appeared at war bond rallies and entertained the troops at training camps. He composed and/or performed dozens of songs, his most famous being My America. In 1943, Waring acquired the Buckwood Inn in Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, to promote the inn, Waring centered his musical activities at the inn itself. He created, rehearsed, and broadcast his radio programs from the stage of Shawnees Worthington Hall throughout the 1950s, during the 1940s and early 1950s, Waring and His Pennsylvanians produced a string of hits, selling millions of records. A few of his many choral hits include Sleep, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Button Up Your Overcoat, White Christmas, Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, and Dancing in the Dark. At these sessions, talented musicians learned to sing with precision, sensitivity, when these vocalists returned home and shared what they had learned with fellow musicians, Warings approach to choral singing spread throughout the nation. The first Fred Waring Music Workshop in the western United States was held in June 1968 as part of the University of Nevadas Summer Session curriculum in Reno, Waring taught and supervised these summer workshop for 37 years, continuing until the day he died
8.
Racial integration
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Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation. Desegregation is largely a matter, integration largely a social one. The movement toward desegregation, breaking down the nations Jim Crow system, integration, on the other hand, Professor Oscar Handlin maintains, implies several things not yet necessarily accepted in all areas of American society. In one sense it refers to the levelling of all barriers to other than those based on ability, taste. But in another sense integration calls for the distribution of a minority throughout society. Here, according to Handlin, the emphasis is on balance in areas of occupation, education, residency. From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation. It constantly used the terms integration and equal treatment and opportunity to describe its racial goals, rarely, if ever, does one find the word desegregation in military files that include much correspondence. Integration happens even without a mandate from the law, desegregation, on the other hand, was the legal remedy to segregation. Making almost the point, Henry Organ, identifying himself as a participant in the Civil Rights Movement on the Peninsula in the 60s. The term integration, on the hand, pertains to a social domain, it does. In their book By the Color of Our Skin Leonard Steinhorn, give white Americans the sensation of having meaningful, repeated contact with blacks without actually having it. Reviewing this book in the libertarian magazine Reason, Michael W. Lynch sums up some of their conclusions as, Blacks and whites live, learn, work, pray, play, and entertain separately. If a significant number of black children arent comfortable with them, it isnt by choice and its one thing for members of the black elite and upper middle class to choose to retire to predominantly black neighborhoods after a lucrative days work in white America. Its quite another for people to be unable to enter that commercial sphere because they spent their formative years in a community that didnt, or couldnt, prepare them for it. Writes Patterson, The greatest problem now facing African-Americans is their isolation from the norms of the dominant culture. Although widespread, this distinction between integration and desegregation is not universally accepted, for example, it is possible to find references to court-ordered integration from sources such as the Detroit News, PBS, or even Encarta. These same sources use the phrase court-ordered desegregation, apparently with exactly the same meaning
9.
Ludwig van Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he one of the most famous. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies,5 piano concertos,1 violin concerto,32 piano sonatas,16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant in the Flemish region of what is now Belgium, who at the age of twenty moved to Bonn. Ludwig was employed as a singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained proudly displayed in his grandsons rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann, who worked as a tenor in the musical establishment and gave keyboard. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767, she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no record of the date of his birth, however. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776. Beethovens first music teacher was his father and he later had other local teachers, the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, and Franz Rovantini. Beethovens musical talent was obvious at a young age, some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Courts Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition, Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, and then as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi. His first three piano sonatas, named Kurfürst for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783, Maximilian Frederick noticed Beethovens talent early, and subsidised and encouraged the young mans musical studies. Maximilian Fredericks successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts
10.
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
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The Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op.125, is Ludwig van Beethovens final complete symphony. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the works in classical music. It is almost universally considered by critics to be one of Beethovens greatest works, the symphony was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony. The words are sung during the movement by four vocal soloists. They were taken from the Ode to Joy, a written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803. In the 2010s, it stands as one of the most performed symphonies in the world, the Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817. The main composition work was done between autumn 1822 and the completion of the autograph in February 1824, the symphony emerged from other pieces by Beethoven that, while completed works in their own right, are also in some sense musical sketches for the future symphony. 80, basically a concerto movement, brings in a choir. As in the Ninth Symphony, the vocal forces sing a theme first played instrumentally, going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song Gegenliebe, for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795. According to Robert W. Gutman, Mozarts K.222 Offertory in D minor, Misericordias Domini, written in 1775, contains a melody that foreshadows Ode to Joy. When his friends and financiers heard this, they urged him to premiere the symphony in Vienna in the form of a signed by a number of prominent Viennese music patrons. This was the composers first on-stage appearance in 12 years, the hall was packed with an eager audience, while no complete list of premiere performers exists, many of Viennas most elite performers are known to have participated. The soprano and alto parts were sung by two young singers, Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger. German soprano Henriette Sontag was eighteen years old when Beethoven personally recruited her to perform in the premiere of the Ninth, also personally recruited by Beethoven, 20-year-old contralto Caroline Unger, a native of Vienna, had gained critical praise in 1821 appearing in Rossinis Tancredi. After performing in Beethovens 1824 premiere, Unger then found fame in Italy, Italian composers Donizetti and Bellini were known to have written roles specifically for her voice. Although the performance was directed by Michael Umlauf, the theatres Kapellmeister. However, two earlier, Umlauf had watched as the composers attempt to conduct a dress rehearsal of his opera Fidelio ended in disaster. So this time, he instructed the singers and musicians to ignore the almost totally deaf Beethoven, at the beginning of every part, Beethoven, who sat by the stage, gave the tempos
11.
Arturo Toscanini
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Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for detail and sonority. He was at times the music director of La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the music conservatory. Living conditions at the conservatory were harsh, for example, his diet consisted almost completely of fish. When he became successful, he never ate anything that came from the sea and he joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work, in desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth and sheer aplomb of this unknown conductor, for the rest of that season, Toscanini conducted eighteen operas, all with absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19, upon returning to Italy, Toscanini set out on a dual path for some time. He continued to conduct, his first appearance in Italy being at the Teatro Carignano in Turin, on November 4,1886, in the world premiere of the revised version of Alfredo Catalanis Edmea. This was the beginning of Toscaninis lifelong friendship and championing of Catalani, however, he also returned to his chair in the cello section, and participated as cellist in the world premiere of Verdis Otello under the composers supervision. The composer was impressed when Toscanini consulted him personally about Verdis Te Deum. Verdi said that he had left it out for fear that certain interpreters would have exaggerated the marking, gradually, Toscaninis reputation as an operatic conductor of unusual authority and skill supplanted his cello career. In the following decade, he consolidated his career in Italy, entrusted with the premieres of Puccinis La bohème. In 1896, Toscanini conducted his first symphonic concert and he exhibited a considerable capacity for hard work, conducting 43 concerts in Turin in 1898. By 1898, Toscanini was Principal Conductor at La Scala, where he remained until 1908, returning as Music Director and he brought the La Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour in 1920/21, during which he made his first recordings. Outside Europe, Toscanini conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as well as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and he toured Europe with the New York Philharmonic in 1930. At each performance, he and the orchestra were acclaimed by critics, Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth, and the New York Philharmonic was the first non-German orchestra to play there
12.
Te Deum
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The Te Deum is an early Christian hymn of praise. The title is taken from its opening Latin words, Te Deum laudamus, rendered as Thee, O God and it is sung either after Mass or the Divine Office or as a separate religious ceremony. The hymn also remains in use in the Anglican Communion and some Lutheran Churches in similar settings, a plenary indulgence is granted, under the usual conditions, to those who recite it in public on New Years Eve. Authorship is traditionally ascribed to Saints Ambrose and Augustine, on the occasion of the baptism by the former in AD387. It has also ascribed to Saint Hilary, but The Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern says it is now accredited to Nicetas. The petitions at the end of the hymn are a selection of verses from the book of Psalms, the hymn follows the outline of the Apostles Creed, mixing a poetic vision of the heavenly liturgy with its declaration of faith. The hymn then returns to its formula, naming Christ and recalling his birth, suffering and death. The hymn was chanted jubilantly by the people of Orléans after the successful Siege of Orléans, during the Hundred Years War, when St. Joan of Arc and the French army entered the town. The text has been set to music by composers, with settings by Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Bruckner, Furtwängler, Dvořák, Britten, Kodály. Jean-Baptiste Lully wrote a setting of Te Deum for the court of Louis XIV of France, earlier it had been used as the theme music for Bud Greenspans documentary series, The Olympiad. Sir William Waltons Coronation Te Deum was written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, puccinis opera Tosca features a dramatic performance of the initial part of the Te Deum at the end of Act I. A version by Father Michael Keating is popular in some Charismatic circles, mark Hayes wrote a setting of the text in 2005, with Latin phrases interpolated amid primarily English lyrics. In 1978, British hymnodist Christopher Idle wrote God We Praise You, British composer John Rutter has composed two settings of this hymn, one entitled Te Deum and the other Winchester Te Deum. Igor Stravinsky set the first 12 lines of the text as part of The Flood in 1962, antony Pitts was commissioned by the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music to write a setting for the 2011 10th Anniversary Festival. The 18th-century German hymn Großer Gott, wir loben dich is a translation of the Te Deum. In the Book of Common Prayer, verse is written in half-lines, at which reading pauses, texts on Wikisource, Te Deum Te Deum Catholic Encyclopedia entry Piers Maxim Te Deum in Service, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris on YouTube
13.
Giuseppe Verdi
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Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian opera composer. Verdi was born near Busseto to a family of moderate means. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, whose works influenced him. In his early operas Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy and he also participated briefly as an elected politician. He surprised the world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida. The baptismal register, prepared on 11 October 1813, lists his parents Carlo, additionally, it lists Verdi as being born yesterday, but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. Verdi himself, following his mother, always celebrated his birthday on 9 October, Verdi had a younger sister, Giuseppa, who died aged 17 in 1833. From the age of four, Verdi was given lessons in Latin and Italian by the village schoolmaster, Baistrocchi. After learning to play the organ, he showed so much interest in music that his parents provided him with a spinet. Verdis gift for music was apparent by 1820–21 when he began his association with the local church, serving in the choir, acting as an altar boy for a while. After Baistrocchis death, Verdi, at the age of eight, Carlo Verdi was energetic in furthering his sons education. something which Verdi tended to hide in later life. He picture emerges of youthful precocity eagerly nurtured by a father and of a sustained, sophisticated. Verdi returned to Busseto regularly to play the organ on Sundays, at age 11, Verdi received schooling in Italian, Latin, the humanities, and rhetoric. By the time he was 12, he began lessons with Ferdinando Provesi, maestro di cappella at San Bartolomeo, director of the music school. This information comes from the Autobiographical Sketch which Verdi dictated to the publisher Giulio Ricordi late in life, in 1879, written, understandably, with the benefit of hindsight, it is not always reliable when dealing with issues more contentious than those of his childhood. The other director of the Philharmonic Society was Antonio Barezzi, a grocer and distiller. The young Verdi did not immediately become involved with the Philharmonic, by June 1827, he had graduated with honours from the Ginnasio and was able to focus solely on music under Provesi. By 1829–30, Verdi had established himself as a leader of the Philharmonic, none of us could rival him reported the secretary of the organisation, Giuseppe Demaldè
14.
Mefistofele
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Mefistofele is an opera in a prologue, four acts and an epilogue, the only completed opera with music by the Italian composer-librettist Arrigo Boito. The opera was given its premiere on 5 March 1868 at La Scala, Milan under the baton of the composer, despite his lack of experience, however, it was not a success and was immediately withdrawn after only two performances. Revisions in 1875 resulted in success in Bologna and, with adjustments in 1876 for Venice. Boito began consideration of an opera on the Faustian theme after completing his studies at the Milan Conservatory in 1861, Mefistofele is one of many pieces of classical music based on the Faust legend and, like many other composers, Boito used Goethes version as his starting point. He was an admirer of Richard Wagner and, like him, chose to write his own libretto, much of the text is actually a literal translation from Goethes German to Boitos Italian. The most popular earlier work based on the legend was Charles Gounods opera Faust and he hoped that it would be a wake-up call and an inspiration to other young Italian composers. The piano-vocal score was completed in 1867 while Boito was visiting relatives in Poland, furthermore, the work was far too long and the cast inadequate for the complexities of the music. When the curtain came down well after midnight, it was clear that the premiere had been a failure. After just two performances, with the one being divided into two sections and presented on successive evenings, the opera was withdrawn. Boito immediately set to work revising his opera, greatly reduced its length by about one-third by making many scenes smaller in scale, Faust was changed from a baritone to a tenor. The revised version was premiered in Bologna on 4 October 1875, this time sung by what is regarded to be a very fine cast. Boito made further minor revisions during 1876, and this version was first performed in Venice on 13 May 1876, the first British performance took place at Her Majestys Theatre, London on 6 July 1880 and the American premiere was on 16 November 1880 in Boston. Thereafter, Boito continued to make small changes until the definitive production in Milan on 25 May 1881. Chaliapin made his first appearance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 25 May 1926, parts of a subsequent performance on 31 May were recorded by His Masters Voice. In 1969, the New York City Opera presented a new production by Tito Capobianco, the Metropolitan Opera has given the work a total of 67 times since it first appeared there on 5 December 1883, most recently in February 2000. The Royal Opera in London has only one performance of the opera. As Mefistofele, Ramey made the role a signature one, appearing in productions in the 1980s and early 1990s. The opera was performed as part of the 2013/14 season at the Croatian National Theatre, directed by Michał Znaniecki, in 2014 the opera was performed in Kraków as a co-production with Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, the premiere in Trondheim, Norway took place in June 2015
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Arrigo Boito
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Along with Emilio Praga, and his own brother Camillo Boito he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement. His older brother, Camillo Boito, was an Italian architect and engineer, in 1866 he fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Seven Weeks War in which the Kingdom of Italy and Prussia fought against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy. Between 1887 and 1894, he had an affair with celebrated actress Eleonora Duse and their relationship was carried out in a highly clandestine manner, presumably because of Boitos many aristocratic friends and acquaintances. The two remained on good terms until his death, towards the end of his musical career, Boito succeeded Giovanni Bottesini as director of the Parma Conservatory after the latters death in 1889 and held the post until 1897. He received the degree of doctor of music from the University of Cambridge in 1893, and when he died in Milan. A memorial concert was given in his honor at La Scala in 1948, the orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Recorded in very primitive sound, the concert has been issued on CD. Boito wrote very little music, but completed the opera, Ero e Leandro, and left incomplete a further opera, Nerone, which he had been working at, on and off, between 1877 and 1915. Excluding its last act, for which Boito left only a few sketches, Nerone was finished after his death by Arturo Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini and he also left a Symphony in A minor in manuscript. Mefistofele His only finished opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethes Faust, was given its first performance on 5 March 1868, at La Scala, Milan. The premiere, which he conducted himself, was received, provoking riots and duels over its supposed Wagnerism. Boitos revised and drastically cut version also changed Faust from a baritone to a tenor, Mefistofele is the only work of his performed with any regularity today, and Enrico Caruso included its two tenor arias in his first recording session. The Prologue to the opera, set in Heaven, is a favorite concert excerpt, librettos Boitos literary powers never dried up. As well as writing the libretti for his own operas, he wrote them for other composers, as Tobia Gorrio he provided the libretto for Amilcare Ponchiellis La Gioconda. The revised Boccanegra premiered to acclaim in 1881. With that, their friendship and respect blossomed. After their years of association, when Verdi died in 1901. The years given are those of the premieres, Boito also provided the text to Verdis cantata Inno delle Nazioni which was first given on 24 May 1862 at Her Majestys Theatre, London
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Aida
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Aida is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in Egypt, it was commissioned by and first performed at Cairos Khedivial Opera House on 24 December 1871, ghislanzonis scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Aida eventually premiered in Cairo in late 1871, contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, for which Verdi had been invited to write an inaugural hymn, but had declined. The plot bears striking, though similarities to Metastasios libretto La Nitteti. Verdi originally chose to write an orchestral prelude instead of a full overture for the opera. He then composed an overture of the variety to replace the original prelude. However, in the end he decided not to have the overture performed because of its—his own words—pretentious insipidity and this overture, never used today, was given a rare broadcast performance by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra on 30 March 1940, but was never commercially issued. Aida met with acclaim when it finally opened in Cairo on 24 December 1871. He therefore considered the Italian premiere, held at La Scala, Milan on 8 February 1872, Verdi had also written the role of Aida for the voice of Teresa Stolz, who sang it for the first time at the Milan premiere. Verdi had asked her fiancé, Angelo Mariani, to conduct the Cairo premiere, the Milan Amneris, Maria Waldmann, was his favourite in the role and she repeated it a number of times at his request. Aida was received with enthusiasm at its Milan premiere. With Polish translation Aida was performed for the first time 9 June 1877, france,22 April 1876, Théâtre-Lyrique Italien, Salle Ventadour, Paris, with almost the same cast as the Milan premiere, but with Édouard de Reszke making his debut as the King. Rio de Janeiro,30 June 1886, Theatro Lyrico Fluminense, Arturo Toscanini, at the time a 19-year-old cellist who was assistant chorus master, was persuaded to take up the baton for the performance. Toscanini conducted the opera from memory, with great success. This would be the start of a promising career, laibach, Austrian Empire,1 October 1898, conducted by Hilarion Benišek A complete concert version of the opera was given in New York City in 1949. Conducted by Toscanini with Herva Nelli as Aida and Richard Tucker as Radamès, due to the length of the opera, it was divided into two telecasts, preserved on kinescopes, and later released on video by RCA and Testament. The audio portion of the broadcast, including some remakes in June 1954, was released on LP, La Scala mounted a lavish new production of Aida designed by Franco Zeffirelli for the opening night of its 2006/2007 season. The production starred Violeta Urmana in the role and Roberto Alagna as Radamès
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Falstaff (opera)
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Falstaff is an opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeares The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV, the work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Verdi wrote Falstaff, which was the last of his 28 operas, as he was approaching the age of 80 and it was his second comedy, and his third work based on a Shakespeare play, following Macbeth and Otello. The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boitos draft libretto. It took the three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new opera from Verdi aroused immense interest in Italy and around the world, some felt that the piece suffered from a lack of the full-blooded melodies of the best of Verdis previous operas, a view strongly contradicted by Toscanini. Conductors of the generation after Toscanini to champion the work included Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, the work is now part of the regular operatic repertory. Verdi made numerous changes to the music after the first performance, the work was first recorded in 1932 and has subsequently received many studio and live recordings. Singers closely associated with the role have included Victor Maurel, Mariano Stabile, Giuseppe Valdengo, Tito Gobbi, Geraint Evans. By 1889 Verdi had been a composer for more than fifty years. He had written 27 operas, of only one was a comedy, his second work, Un giorno di regno. His fellow composer Rossini commented that he admired Verdi greatly, Verdi disagreed and said that he longed to write another light-hearted opera, but nobody would give him the chance. He had included moments of even in his tragic operas, for example in Un ballo in maschera. For a comic subject Verdi considered Cervantess Don Quixote and plays by Goldoni, Molière and Labiche, the singer Victor Maurel sent him a French libretto based on Shakespeares The Taming of the Shrew. Verdi liked it, but replied that to deal with it properly you need a Rossini or a Donizetti, following the success of Otello in 1887 he commented, After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines, I have at last the right to laugh a little. He confided his ambition to the librettist of Otello, Arrigo Boito, Boito said nothing at the time, but he secretly began work on a libretto based on The Merry Wives of Windsor with additional material taken from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2. Many composers had set the play to music, with success, among them Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Antonio Salieri, Michael William Balfe. The first version to secure a place in the repertoire was Otto Nicolais The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1849
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Un ballo in maschera
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Un ballo in maschera is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. However, Sommas libretto was based on the five act libretto which playwright Eugène Scribe had written for Daniel Aubers 1833 opera, Gustave III. Scribe wrote about the assassination in 1792 of King Gustav III of Sweden who was killed as the result of a conspiracy against him. He was shot while attending a masked dance and died 13 days later of his wounds. It was to take two years between the time of the commission from Naples and planned for a production there and its premiere performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 17 February 1859. In order to become the Un ballo in maschera which we know today, Verdis opera was forced to undergo a significant series of transformations and title changes. These changes were caused by a combination of censorship regulations in both Naples and Rome, as well as by the situation in France in January 1858. It became one of the most frustrating experiences of Verdis career, from the mid-20th century, it has become more common for the setting to revert to its original 18th-century Stockholm location. A re-creation of the original Gustavo III has been staged in Sweden, when this proved to be impracticable, Verdi turned to the subject of King Gustav IIIs assassination as portrayed in Scribe and Aubers opera, albeit not an historically accurate narrative. That subject was known and had been used by other composers. Sommas new libretto, known as Gustavo III, was presented to the censors in Naples by late 1857, as had happened with Rigoletto, changes in characters names and titles were proposed and the location was moved from Stockholm to Stettin. Working together with Somma over Christmas, Verdi accommodated these changes, Somma was asked to change the names of the characters on the Gustave libretto while Verdi worked on completing sketches of the music. The name of the opera became Una vendetta in dominò, by 9 January 1858, prior to setting out for Naples, Verdi wrote from his home the San Carlo that the opera is done and even here I am working on the full score. The imposition of further, more stringent requirements by the censor incurred Verdis wrath. He broke his contract, returned to SantAgata in April, and was sued by the management of the San Carlo house and this provoked him to lodge a counter-claim against the theatre for damages and, eventually, the legal fight ended. When the legal issues were resolved within a few months, Verdi was free to present the libretto, there, the censors demanded further changes. Removing the action from Europe, the location became Boston during the British colonial period and the character became Riccardo. At this point, the opera became Un ballo in maschera set in North America, Un ballo in maschera received its premiere performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 17 February 1859 and was immediately successful
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RCA Records
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RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, Inc. It is one of SMEs three flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, R&B, blues, jazz, the companys name is derived from the initials of the labels former parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. It is the second oldest recording company in US history, after sister label Columbia Records, RCAs Canadian unit is Sonys oldest label in Canada. It was one of only two Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression, kelly, Enrique Iglesias, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Giorgio Moroder, Jennifer Hudson, DAngelo, Pink, Tinashe, G-Eazy, Pitbull, Zayn and Wizkid. In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the worlds largest manufacturer of phonographs and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor but retained use of the Victor Records name on their labels until the beginning of 1946 when the labels were finally switched over to RCA Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper His Masters Voice trademark, in Shanghai, China, in 1931, RCA Victors British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board, in September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm records sold to the public, calling them Program Transcriptions. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a commercial failure, during the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the dime store labels. The first was the short-lived Timely Tunes label in 1931 sold at Montgomery Ward, in 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8-inch record with a blue label. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10-inch label, another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced. The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels and Bluebird Records still survives eight decades after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued, RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward label during the 1930s. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for independent record labels, RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Readers Digest Association. RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings in the UK, RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the RCA and HMV labels in North America. During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed, the Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary. From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period
20.
United States Department of State
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The Department was created in 1789 and was the first executive department established. The Department is headquartered in the Harry S Truman Building located at 2201 C Street, NW, the Department operates the diplomatic missions of the United States abroad and is responsible for implementing the foreign policy of the United States and U. S. diplomacy efforts. The Department is also the depositary for more than 200 multilateral treaties, the Department is led by the Secretary of State, who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is a member of the Cabinet. The current Secretary of State is Rex Tillerson, beginning 1 February 2017, the Secretary of State is the second Cabinet official in the order of precedence and in the presidential line of succession, after the Vice President of the United States. This legislation remains the law of the Department of State. In September 1789, additional legislation changed the name of the agency to the Department of State and these responsibilities grew to include management of the United States Mint, keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and the taking of the census. President George Washington signed the new legislation on September 15, most of these domestic duties of the Department of State were eventually turned over to various new Federal departments and agencies that were established during the 19th century. On September 29,1789, President Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, then Minister to France, from 1790 to 1800, the State Department had its headquarters in Philadelphia, the capital of the United States at the time. It occupied a building at Church and Fifth Streets, in 1800, it moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C. where it first occupied the Treasury Building and then the Seven Buildings at 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. It moved into the Six Buildings in September 1800, where it remained until May 1801 and it moved into the War Office Building due west of the White House in May 1801. It occupied the Treasury Building from September 1819 to November 1866 and it then occupied the Washington City Orphan Home from November 1866 to July 1875. It moved to the State, War, and Navy Building in 1875, since May 1947, it has occupied the Harry S. Truman Building in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, the State Department is therefore sometimes metonymically referred to as Foggy Bottom. Madeleine Albright became the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State, condoleezza Rice became the second female secretary of state in 2005. Hillary Rodham Clinton became the female secretary of state when she was appointed in 2009. In 2014, the State Department began expanding into the Navy Hill Complex across 23rd Street NW from the Truman Building, the Executive Branch and the U. S. Congress have constitutional responsibilities for U. S. foreign policy. Within the Executive Branch, the Department of State is the lead U. S, the Department advances U. S. objectives and interests in the world through its primary role in developing and implementing the Presidents foreign policy. It also provides an array of important services to U. S. citizens, the total Department of State budget, together with Other International Programs, costs about 45 cents a day for each resident of the United States. Keeping the public informed about U. S. foreign policy and relations with other countries, providing automobile registration for non-diplomatic staff vehicles and the vehicles of diplomats of foreign countries having diplomatic immunity in the United States
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San Diego Symphony
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The San Diego Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in San Diego, California. On December 6,1910, it gave its first concert as the San Diego Civic Orchestra, from July through September, the Symphony presents an outdoor Summer Pops season. Recently, a Thursday Night Jazz series was initiated, the Symphony performs subscription series concerts at Copley Symphony Hall, which was built in 1929 as a French Rococo style luxury movie theater, the Fox Theater. It was conferred to the Symphony in 1984, the Symphony Towers building was built around Copley Hall in 1989. Since 2005, symphony musicians have performed as the pit orchestra for San Diego Opera. The orchestra encountered several periods of fiscal trouble over its history which forced it to cease operations, the first such period was from 1921 to 1926. The orchestra resumed limited summer concerts in 1927, but disbanded again in 1936, in 1949, the symphony began to play concerts again. From 1996 to 1998, the troubles of the orchestra led it to file for bankruptcy in May 1996. Lennon, who managed the finances, the reorganized and restarted in 1998. He had become the assistant conductor in 1994. One report stated that the arrangement is for $50 million to be donated over a period of 10 years, the remainder would then be left to the orchestra as a bequest. In 2001, the orchestra had ratified an agreement which would increase the annual base salary from $25,920 to $45,750. In 2006, the orchestra ratified a new 5-year contract that raised the minimum salary from $45,750 to $57,776 over five years. The 41-week season will also expand to 42 weeks, as of 2006, the annual budget of the orchestra was $14 million. In September 2016, the San Diego Symphony announced a new 5-year contract which will increase base musician salaries from just under $70,000 to $80,000 per year. In January 2016, the San Diego Symphony won approval to construct a new pavilion to host its Summer Pops programs. Since 2004, the director has been Jahja Ling. In October 2007, Ling extended his contract with the orchestra to 2012, since 2003, the executive director of the orchestra is Edward Gill
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George Szell
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George Szell, originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born Jewish-American conductor and composer. He is widely considered one of the centurys greatest conductors. Szell came to Cleveland in 1946 to take over a respected if undersized orchestra, by the time of his death he was credited, to quote the critic Donal Henahan, with having built it into what many critics regarded as the worlds keenest symphonic instrument. Through his recordings, Szell has remained a presence in the music world long after his death. While on tour with the Orchestra in the late 1980s, then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi remarked, We give a great concert, Szell was born in Budapest but grew up in Vienna. One of Roberts other students was Rudolf Serkin, Szell and Serkin became lifelong friends, in addition to the piano, Szell studied composition with Eusebius Mandyczewski, and with Max Reger for a brief period. Although his work as a composer is unknown today, when he was fourteen Szell signed a ten-year exclusive publishing contract with Universal Edition in Vienna. In addition to writing pieces, he arranged Bedřich Smetanas String Quartet No. 1, From My Life, for orchestra, at the age of eleven, Szell began touring Europe as a pianist and composer, making his London debut at that age. Newspapers declared him the next Mozart, throughout his teenage years he performed with orchestras in this dual role, eventually making appearances as composer, pianist and conductor, as he did with the Berlin Philharmonic at age seventeen. Szell quickly realized that he was never going to make an out of being a composer or pianist. He made an unplanned public conducting debut when he was seventeen, the Vienna Symphonys conductor had injured his arm, and Szell was asked to substitute. Szell quickly turned to conducting full-time, though he abandoned composing, throughout the rest of his life he occasionally played the piano with chamber ensembles and as an accompanist. Despite his rare appearances as a pianist after his teens, he remained in good form, during his Cleveland years he occasionally would demonstrate to guest pianists how he thought they should play a certain passage. In 1915, at the age of 18, Szell won an appointment with Berlins Royal Court Opera, there, he was befriended by its Music Director, Richard Strauss. Strauss instantly recognized Szells talent and was impressed with how well the teenager conducted Strausss music. Strauss once said that he could die a happy man knowing that there was someone who performed his music so perfectly, in fact, Szell ended up conducting part of the world premiere recording of Don Juan for Strauss. The composer had arranged for Szell to rehearse the orchestra for him, since the recording session was already paid for, and only Szell was there, Szell conducted the first half of the recording
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Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus
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The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its director since 2001. The ASOs main concert venue is Atlanta Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center, the organization changed to its current name in 1947 and soon began attracting well known soloists such as Isaac Stern and Glenn Gould. In 1967, with the departure of Sopkin, Robert Shaw became the Music Director, in 1970, Shaw founded a choir, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. In 1988, Yoel Levi became Music Director and Principal Conductor, under him, the Orchestra played at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Levi became Music Director Emeritus in 2000, and was succeeded as Music Director by Robert Spano, allison Vulgamore was hired as president of the orchestra in 1993, remaining in the role until 2009. The orchestra toured Europe under Yoel Levi in 1991, and with its Chorus, under Robert Shaw, in 2006 the orchestra and its chamber chorus, under Robert Spano, served as the resident ensemble for Californias Ojai Festival. Encore Park and the Amphitheatre are owned by the Woodruff Arts Center, including Encore Park and its activities at Atlanta Symphony Hall and Chastain Park, the ASO expects to present more than 300 performances annually. With a budget expected to increase to US $50 million with the completion of its new Amphitheatre and this continues a rancorous history between management and players, as they attempt to extricate themselves from operating in the red, as has been the case for many years now. The local paper also indicates that their operating budget is unsustainable for a variety of reasons. Since 2005 the Orchestra has been planning for the construction of a new principal concert hall. In addition to the Verizon Amphitheatre the Orchestra plays an extensive outdoor summer concert series at Atlantas city-owned Chastain Park. On February 5,2014, the ASO announced that Joseph Young would take over as Assistant Conductor, jane Little, who debuted as a double bassist in Atlanta on February. 4,1945, at the age of 16 and she remained a member of the orchestra for the rest of her life, dying on May 15,2016 a few hours after collapsing during a performance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She was said to be the longest tenured orchestra musician in the world, the orchestra and chorus made their first recording, a 2-LP Christmas album entitled Nativity, for Turnabout/Vox Records in 1975, conducted by Robert Shaw. This was an album based on their annual Christmas concert. A slightly shortened version of the 75-minute album was issued by Vox in the 1990s on compact disc under the title Christmas with Robert Shaw. The Telarc association, which resulted in 26 Grammy awards, continued until 2010, in 2011 the Orchestra began releasing recordings on its own ASO Media label
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
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Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a 16. 3-acre complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts many notable performing arts organizations, which are nationally and internationally renowned, including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York City Ballet. Respected architects were contracted to design the buildings on the site. Rockefeller was Lincoln Centers inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961, the centers three buildings, David Geffen Hall, David H. Koch Theater and the Metropolitan Opera House were opened in 1962,1964 and 1966, respectively. While the center may have been named because it was located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, the name was bestowed on the area in 1906 by the New York City Board of Aldermen, but records give no reason for choosing that name. There has long been speculation that the name came from a local landowner, City records from the time show only the names Johannes van Bruch, Thomas Hall, Stephan de Lancey, James de Lancey, James de Lancey, Jr. and John Somerindyck as area property owners. One speculation is that references to President Lincoln were omitted from the records because the mayor in 1906 was George B, mcClellan, Jr. son of General George B. McClellan, who was general-in-chief of the Union Army early in the American Civil War, Architects who designed buildings at the center include, Max Abramovitz, David Geffen Hall Pietro Belluschi, The Juilliard School. Koch Theater Eero Saarinen, Vivian Beaumont Theater Davis, Brody and Associates, The Samuel B. the centers cultural institutions also make use of facilities located away from the main campus. In 2004, the center was expanded through the addition of Jazz at Lincoln Centers newly built facilities, in March 2006, the center launched construction on a major redevelopment plan that modernized, renovated, and opened up its campus. Redevelopment was completed in 2012 with the completion of the Presidents Bridge over West 65th Street, when it was first announced in 1999, Lincoln Centers campuswide redevelopment was to cost $1.5 billion over 10 years and radically transform the campus. Among the architects that have been involved were Frank Gehry, Cooper, Robertson & Partners, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Beyer Blinder Belle, Fox & Fowle, Olin Partnership, and Diller & Scofidio. Additionally, Alice Tully Hall was modernized and reopened to critical and popular acclaim in 2009, topped by a sloping lawn roof, the film center is part of a new pavilion that also houses a destination restaurant named Lincoln, as well as offices. Subsequent projects were added which addressed improvements to the main plazas, under the direction of the Lincoln Center Development Project, Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with FXFOWLE Architects and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects provided the design services. Additionally, Turner Construction Company and RCDolner, LLC were the managers for the projects. April 21,1955, Lincoln Square designated for urban renewal, june 22,1956, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. incorporated. May 14,1959, Ground-breaking ceremony with U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower September 23,1962, a two-hour live CBS special, Opening Night at Lincoln Center, preserved the event on videotape. April 6,1964, Lincoln Center Fountain opened, renamed the Revson Fountain April 23,1964, New York State Theater opened
25.
Watergate scandal
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When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U. S. Congress, the Nixon administrations resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis. The term Watergate, by metonymy, has come to encompass an array of clandestine and those activities included such dirty tricks as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty, the affair began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex on Saturday, June 17,1972. In July 1973, evidence mounted against the Presidents staff, including testimony provided by staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. The investigation revealed that President Nixon had a system in his offices. After a protracted series of court battles, the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president was obliged to release the tapes to government investigators. The tapes revealed that Nixon had attempted to cover up activities that took place after the break-in, facing virtually certain impeachment in the House of Representatives and equally certain conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9,1974. On September 8,1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, the name Watergate and the suffix -gate have since become synonymous with political and non-political scandals in the United States. According to Dean, this marked the scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century. Mitchell viewed the plan as unrealistic, Liddy was nominally in charge of the operation, but has since insisted that he was duped by Dean and at least two of his subordinates. These included former CIA officers E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, in May, McCord assigned former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin III to carry out the wiretapping and monitor the telephone conversations afterward. McCord testified that he selected Baldwins name from a registry published by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI to work for the Committee to Re-elect the President, Baldwin first served as bodyguard to Martha Mitchell, the wife of John Mitchell, who was living in Washington. Baldwin accompanied Martha Mitchell to Chicago, Martha did not like Baldwin and described him as the gauchest character Ive ever met. The Committee replaced Baldwin with another security man, the room 419 was booked in the name of McCord’s company. At behest of G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, McCord and his team of burglars prepared for their first Watergate break-in, two phones inside the offices of the DNC headquarters were said to have been wiretapped. The FBI found no evidence that OBriens phone was bugged, however, it was determined that an effective listening device had been installed in Olivers phone. Despite the success in installing the devices, the Committee agents soon determined that they needed to be repaired. They planned a burglary in order to take care of this
26.
First Lady of the United States
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First Lady of the United States is the informal but accepted title held by the wife of the President of the United States, concurrent with the presidents term of office. Although the first lady’s role has never been codified or officially defined, melania Trump is the current First Lady. While the title was not in use until much later, Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington. During her lifetime she was referred to as Lady Washington. Since the 1790s the role of first lady has changed considerably and it has come to include involvement in political campaigns, management of the White House, championship of social causes, and representation of the president at official and ceremonial occasions. Additionally, over the individual first ladies have held influence in a range of sectors. Historically, should a president be unmarried, or a widower, the use of the title First Lady to describe the spouse or hostess of an executive began in the United States. In the early days of the republic, there was not a generally accepted title for the wife of the president. Indulging in no indolence, she left the pillow at dawn, sometime after 1849, the title began being used in Washington, D. C. social circles. The title first gained recognition in 1877, when newspaper journalist Mary C. Ames referred to Lucy Webb Hayes as the First Lady of the Land while reporting on the inauguration of Rutherford B, the frequent reporting on Lucy Hayes activities helped spread use of the title outside Washington. A popular 1911 comedic play about Dolley Madison by playwright Charles Nirdlinger, titled The First Lady in the Land, by the 1930s, it was in wide use. Use of the later spread from the United States to other nations. The wife of the Vice President of the United States is sometimes referred to as the Second Lady of the United States, the position of the First Lady is not an elected one and carries only ceremonial duties. Nonetheless, first ladies have held a highly visible position in American society, the role of the First Lady has evolved over the centuries. She is, first and foremost, the hostess of the White House and she organizes and attends official ceremonies and functions of state either along with, or in place of, the president. Lisa Burns identifies four main themes of the first ladyship, as public woman, as political celebrity, as political activist. Martha Washington created the role and hosted many affairs of state at the national capital and this socializing became known as the Republican Court and provided elite women with an opportunity to play backstage political role
27.
Pat Nixon
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Thelma Catherine Pat Nixon was the wife of Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, and First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974. Born in Ely, Nevada, she grew up with her two brothers in what is now Cerritos, California, graduating high school in 1929. She attended Fullerton Junior College and later the University of Southern California and she paid for her schooling by working multiple jobs, including pharmacy manager, typist, radiographer, and retail clerk. In 1940, she married lawyer Richard Nixon and they had two daughters, Nixon campaigned for her husband in his successful congressional campaigns of 1946 and 1948. Richard Nixon was elected Vice President in the Eisenhower administration, whereupon Pat undertook many missions of goodwill with her husband and she assisted her husband in both his unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign and later in his successful 1968 presidential campaign. As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes and she oversaw the collection of more than 600 pieces of historic art and furnishings for the White House, an acquisition larger than that of any other administration. She was the most traveled First Lady in U. S. history and these trips gained her favorable reception in the media and the host countries. Her tenure ended when, after being re-elected in a victory in 1972. Her public appearances became increasingly rare later in life and she and her husband returned to California, and later moved to New Jersey. She suffered two strokes, one in 1976 and another in 1983, then was diagnosed with cancer in 1992. She died in 1993, aged 81, thelma Catherine Ryan was born in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada, the day before Saint Patricks Day. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr. was a sailor, gold miner, Pat was a nickname given to her by her father, referring to her birthdate and Irish ancestry. After her birth, the Ryan family moved to California, thelma Ryans high-school yearbook page gives her nickname as Buddy and her ambition to run a boarding house. During this time she worked on the farm, and also at a local bank as a janitor. Her mother died of cancer in 1924, Pat, who was 12 at the time, assumed all the household duties for her father, who died in 1929 of silicosis, and two older brothers, William Jr. and Thomas. She also had a half-sister, Neva Bender, and a half-brother, Matthew Bender, from her mothers first marriage and it has been said that few, if any, First Ladies worked as consistently before their marriage as did Pat Nixon. As she told the writer Gloria Steinem during the 1968 presidential campaign, I never had time to think things like that—who I wanted to be, or who I admired. I never had time to dream about being anyone else, after graduating from Excelsior High School in 1929, she attended Fullerton Junior College
28.
White House
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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U. S. president since John Adams in 1800, the term White House is often used to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in The White House announced that. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style, construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior, reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semi-circular South portico in 1824, because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, in the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as an area for social events. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space, by 1948, the houses load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the rooms were completely dismantled. Once this work was completed, the rooms were rebuilt. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, the property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Presidents Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of Americas Favorite Architecture, in May 1790, New York began construction of Government House for his official residence, but he never occupied it. The national capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790, the July 1790 Residence Act named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the temporary national capital for a 10-year period while the Federal City was under construction. The City of Philadelphia rented Robert Morriss city house at 190 High Street for Washingtons presidential residence, the first president occupied the Market Street mansion from November 1790 to March 1797, and altered it in ways that may have influenced the design of the White House. As part of an effort to have Philadelphia named the permanent national capital, Pennsylvania built a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away. President John Adams also occupied the Market Street mansion from March 1797 to May 1800, on Saturday, November 1,1800, he became the first president to occupy the White House. The Presidents House in Philadelphia became a hotel and was demolished in 1832, the Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre Charles LEnfants plan for the newly established federal city, Washington, D. C
29.
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. The Center, which opened September 8,1971, is a multi-dimensional facility, both an enduring memorial to John F. Now in its 45th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater, supports artists in the creation of new work and it is both the nations public memorial to President John F. Kennedy and the national center for the performing arts. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through sales and gifts from individuals, corporations. The building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was constructed by Philadelphia contractor John McShain and it receives annual federal funding to pay for its maintenance and operation. The Library of Congress added an auditorium, but it had restrictions on its use. A congressional resolution in 1938 called for construction of a building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center near Judiciary Square. In 1950, the idea for a national theater resurfaced when U. S, representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience, in 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center. From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy and this was the first time in history that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the Presidents Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, by November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million. The National Cultural Center was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, the National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group Eisenhower established January 29,1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years, President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nations capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, President Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as Honorary Chairman of the Center, and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman. The total cost of construction was $70 million, Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a gift of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble from Italy from the Italian government, President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first-shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center December 2,1964
30.
United Nations
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The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict, at its founding, the UN had 51 member states, there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, the UNs mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in actions in Korea and the Congo. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military, the UN has six principal organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council. UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, the UNs most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese António Guterres since 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UNs work, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UNs effectiveness have been mixed, some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France, four Policemen was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries, the term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, by 1 March 1945,21 additional states had signed. Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto, the foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. During the war, the United Nations became the term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis, at the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, the General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General
31.
Carnegie Hall
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Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own programming, development, and marketing departments. It is also rented out to performing groups, the hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Centers Philharmonic Hall. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among its three auditoriums, Carnegie Hall presented about 200 concerts in the 2008–2009 season, up 3 percent from the previous year. Its stages were rented for an additional 600 events in the 2008–2009 season, Carnegie Hall contains three distinct, separate performance spaces. The Isaac Stern Auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels and was named after violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 to recognize his efforts to save the hall from demolition in the 1960s, the hall is enormously high, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 137 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator, the main hall was home to the performances of the New York Philharmonic from 1892 until 1962. Known as the most prestigious concert stage in the U. S. almost all of the classical music. After years of wear and tear, the hall was extensively renovated in 1986. The Ronald O. Perelman Stage is 42 feet deep, the First Tier and Second Tier consist of sixty-five boxes, the First Tier has 264 seats at eight seats per box and the Second Tier seats 238, with boxes ranging from six to eight seats each. Second from the top is the Dress Circle, seating 444 in six rows, at the top, the balcony seats 837. Although seats with obstructed views exist throughout the auditorium, only the Dress Circle level has structural columns, Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named after Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply Recital Hall, this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April 1891, following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. The completely reconstructed Zankel Hall is flexible in design and can be reconfigured in several different arrangements to suit the needs of the performers, the 599 seats in Zankel Hall are arranged in two levels. The Parterre level seats a total of 463 and the Mezzanine level seats 136, each level has a number of seats which are situated along the side walls, perpendicular to the stage. These seats are designated as boxes, there are 54 seats in six boxes on the Parterre level and 48 seats in four boxes on the Mezzanine level, the boxes on the Parterre level are raised above the level of the stage. Zankel Hall is accessible and its stage is 44 feet wide and 25 feet deep — the stage occupies approximately one fifth of the performance space, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall seats 268 and is named after Sanford I. Weill, a chairman of the board, and his wife Joan
32.
New Haven, Connecticut
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New Haven, in the U. S. state of Connecticut, is the principal municipality in Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 862,477 in 2010. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut. It is the second-largest city in Connecticut, with a population of 129,779 people as of the 2010 United States Census, according to a census of 1 July 2012, by the Census Bureau, the city had a population of 130,741. New Haven was founded in 1638 by English Puritans, and a year later eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, the central common block is the New Haven Green, a 16-acre square, and the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark and the Nine Square Plan is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark, New Haven is the home of Yale University. The university is an part of the citys economy, being New Havens biggest taxpayer and employer. Health care, professional services, financial services, and retail trade also help to form a base for the city. The city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, New Haven has since billed itself as the Cultural Capital of Connecticut for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven is also the birthplace of George W. Bush, New Haven had the first public tree planting program in America, producing a canopy of mature trees that gave New Haven the nickname The Elm City. The area was visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic. In 1637 a small party of Puritans reconnoitered the New Haven harbor area, the Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for protection. By 1640, the theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place. However, the north of New Haven remained Quinnipiac until 1678. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, at the time, the New Haven Colony was separate from the Connecticut Colony, which had been established to the north centering on Hartford. Economic disaster struck the colony in 1646, however, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of goods back to England. This ship never reached the Old World, and its disappearance stymied New Havens development in the face of the rising power of Boston. In 1660, founder John Davenports wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins, in 1661, the judges who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II
33.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and he is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U. S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County and he attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and he entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt was presidential candidate James M. Coxs running mate and he was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting the enactment of programs to combat the depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency, Roosevelt took office while in the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. Energized by his victory over polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to labor union growth while more closely regulating business. His support for the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, the economy improved rapidly from 1933–37, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, when the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business, along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. His goal was to make America the Arsenal of Democracy, which would supply munitions to the Allies, in March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. He supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort, as an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and initiate the development of the worlds first atomic bomb. His work also influenced the creation of the United Nations. Roosevelts physical health declined during the war years, and he died 11 weeks into his fourth term. One of the oldest Dutch families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in other than politics. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York militia during the American Revolution, Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was president
34.
Paul Hindemith
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Paul Hindemith was a prolific German composer, violist, violinist, teacher and conductor. Notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben, Der Schwanendreher for Viola and Orchestra, Hindemiths most popular work, both on record and in the concert hall, is likely the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, written in 1943. Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child and he entered Frankfurts Hoch’sche Konservatorium, where he studied violin with Adolf Rebner, as well as conducting and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. At first he supported himself by playing in bands and musical-comedy groups. He became deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in 1914 and he played second violin in the Rebner String Quartet from 1914. Hindemith was conscripted into the German army in September,1917, there he was assigned to play bass drum in the regiment band, and also formed a string quartet. In May 1918 he was deployed to the front in Flanders, after the armistice he returned to Frankfurt and the Rebner Quartet. In 1921 he founded the Amar Quartet, playing viola, in 1922, some of his pieces were played in the International Society for Contemporary Music festival at Salzburg, which first brought him to the attention of an international audience. The following year, he began to work as an organizer of the Donaueschingen Festival, in 1927 he was appointed Professor at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Hindemith wrote the music for Hans Richters 1928 avant-garde film Ghosts Before Breakfast, although the score was subsequently lost, in 1929 he played the solo part in the premiere of William Waltons Viola Concerto, after Lionel Tertis, for whom it was written, turned it down. Hindemith did not stay in Turkey as long as many other émigrés, nevertheless, he greatly influenced the developments of Turkish musical life, the Ankara State Conservatory owes much to his efforts. In fact, Hindemith was regarded as a master by young Turkish musicians and he was appreciated. Towards the end of the 1930s, he made tours in America as a viola and viola damore soloist. Hindemiths relationship to the Nazis is a complicated one, the controversy around his work continued throughout the thirties, with the composer falling in and out of favor with the Nazi hierarchy, he finally emigrated to Switzerland in 1938. This development seems to have been supported by the Nazi regime, it may have got him out of the way, yet at the same time he propagated a German view of musical history. In 1940, Hindemith emigrated to the United States, at the same time that he was codifying his musical language, his teaching and compositions began to be affected by his theories, according to critics like Ernest Ansermet. During this time he gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. Hindemith had a friendship with Erich Katz, whose own compositions were influenced by him
35.
Walt Whitman
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Walter Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works, Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass. Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans. Whitmans major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money, the work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892, after a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at age 72, his became an public spectacle. Walter Whitman was born on May 31,1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, to parents with interests in Quaker thought, Walter, the second of nine children, he was immediately nicknamed Walt to distinguish him from his father. Walter Whitman, Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, the oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age of six months. The couples sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward, at age four, Whitman moved with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, one happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4,1825. At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling, there, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting. He may have written sentimental bits of material for occasional issues. Clements aroused controversy when he and two attempted to dig up the corpse of Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head. Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy, the following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to West Hills in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, at age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn. He moved to New York City to work as a compositor though, in later years, in May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long Island. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, after his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York to found his own newspaper, the Long Islander
36.
Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father
37.
Yale University
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Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony to train Congregationalist ministers, it is the third-oldest institution of education in the United States. The Collegiate School moved to New Haven in 1716, and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century the school introduced graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, the undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each schools faculty oversees its curriculum, the universitys assets include an endowment valued at $25.4 billion as of June 2016, the second largest of any U. S. educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States, Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents,19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices,20 living billionaires, and many heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress,57 Nobel laureates,5 Fields Medalists,247 Rhodes Scholars, and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University. Yale traces its beginnings to An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9,1701, the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, the group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as The Founders. Originally known as the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, the school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College, meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and it had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Lockes works and developed his original theology known as the new divinity
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