AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Quranist prayer is set three times a day. This is similar to the combined prayer into 3 by Shias. In Islamic countries, the public call to prayer from the mosques sets the rhythm of the day for the entire population, including non-Muslims. Carrying it out is not only highly spiritual, but connects each Muslim to all others around the world, and to all those who have uttered the same words and made the same movements at different times in Islamic history.
Prayer for a Quranists involves uniting mind, soul, and body in worship; so a Muslim carrying out these prayers will perform a whole series of set movements that go with the words of the prayer. Quranists make sure that they are in the right frame of mind before they pray; they put aside all everyday cares and thoughts so that they can concentrate exclusively on God. If a Quranist prays without the right attitude of mind, it as if they had not bothered to pray at all.
There are different subsets of Shia Islam. Some of them pray 3 times combined, others 5 times. Allah does not need human prayers because he has no needs at all. Muslims pray because God has told them that they are to do this, and because they believe that they obtain great benefit in doing so.
"Muslims must be clean before they pray." They make sure of this by performing ritual washing, called wudhu. Mosques have washing facilities.
Fasting in Islam
Fasting in Islam or Sawm () is the practice of abstaining, usually from food, drink, smoking, and sexual activity. Fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam, "Sawm" is observed between dawn and nightfall during the holy month of Ramadan.
Some exceptions or accommodations for "Sawm" are made in the case of pregnancy, illness, travel, and for young children.Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797, Vienna 19 November 1828, Vienna) was an Austrian composer. Although he died at the age of 31, he composed over one thousand pieces of music. There were other great composers who lived and worked in Vienna: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but Schubert is the only one who was born in Vienna. He was the last great composer of the Classical music period, and one of the first of the Romantic period.
Schubert’s father was a schoolteacher. Twelve children were born into the family, but only four of them lived to become adults. Schubert's father tried to persuade his sons to help at the school when they grew up. As a boy, the young Franz learned the violin, piano, organ, singing and harmony. He soon became very good at them all. His teachers were all amazed at how quickly he learned. He was also very good at other subjects in school.
In the holidays he played string quartets with his two brothers and his father. He wrote his first string quartets for them to play. By the age of 16 he had composed a lot of music, including his first symphony. His mother died. His father soon remarried. His stepmother was very kind to him and often lent him money. He had one strange thumb on his right hand.
By the age of 17, Schubert was teaching at his father’s school. He had been rejected by the army because he was too short (shorter than five feet) and his sight was very poor. He still had composition lessons from Antonio Salieri. He often went to the opera where he heard some of the finest music of the time. He liked reading. One of his favourite books was Goethe’s "Faust". He wrote a song called "Gretchen am Spinnrade" which is about the young girl in the book sitting at a spinning wheel dreaming of her lover. The piano has a gentle accompaniment which sounds like the throbbing of the spinning wheel. The music stops for a moment when the girl imagines her lover is kissing her, then the piano gradually starts again. It is a very famous song. Another song which soon made him famous in all Europe was "Erlkönig". When it was first published another composer whose name was also Franz Schubert, thought that somebody had published a song in his name because the music publishers sent it to him for correction. He sent a very angry letter back saying he had not composed that rubbish.
It was difficult to find enough time to compose because he was a teacher. A man called Schober persuaded Schubert to give up teaching so that he could spend all his time composing. Soon he had become well known in all the drawing-rooms in Vienna where he met famous people, many of them musicians. These meetings were called “Schubertiads” because they played and sang his music. He wrote so many wonderful pieces that it seems strange that the music publishers did not want to publish them. They were only interested in publishing works written by performers, but were not very interested in people like Schubert who just composed. For a time he became music teacher for the two princesses of Count Johann Esterházy, but then he returned to Vienna to live with the Schober family. During the last few years of his life Schubert was ill. He had to leave the Schober’s house and find his own rooms. He was often desperately poor and composed in bed to keep warm.
Although Beethoven and Schubert lived in the same town they only met once, although they knew one another’s music. Schubert visited Beethoven on 19 March 1827. Beethoven was dying. Schubert was one of the torch-bearers at his funeral. A year and a half later Schubert, too, had died. He asked to be buried near Beethoven. Their graves were just three places apart.
Schubert’s songs are among the greatest ever written. They are all settings of German poems. German art songs are called Lieder (pronounced “leader”), and Schubert made his Lieder very special by making the piano accompaniments describe the action of the songs in many different ways. If you try to sing them in a translation it is difficult to make it sound good. It is best to hear them in German and to have a translation so that you understand what is being sung. Some of the last songs he wrote make up a cycle called “Die Winterreise” (“The Winter Journey”). The poems are about a man who is unhappy because his lover does not want him. He goes out into the cold winter woods and all nature seems to reflect the way he feels inside. The songs are usually sung by a male singer (tenor, baritone or bass).
Schubert wrote a great deal of chamber music. Among his most famous pieces are several string quartets, a string quintet (for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos) and the “Trout” quintet (for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass). There are sonatas and sonatinas for violin and piano, and a sonata for an instrument called the “arpeggione” which was used for about ten years after it was invented and then it was forgotten. The sonata is normally played on a cello or a viola nowadays. There is lots of piano music including sonatas, impromptus and also piano duet music. Schubert wrote eight famous impromptus.
Schubert wrote nine symphonies. The last one is known as the “Great” symphony in C major. The eighth is called the “Unfinished”. There are only two movements instead of the usual four. A lot of people still argue about why he left it unfinished. Some people even think that he completed it and that the last two movements are either lost, or are now known as movements from a piano duet. We shall probably never know for certain.
Most of his life he was supported by his friends who gave him manuscript paper when he could not afford it. Many of his greatest works only became widely known in the 1860s, long after his death. The house in Vienna where Schubert was born is now a museum which people can visit.
Cowpox
Cowpox is a disease. This disease affects the skin. It is caused by a virus (Cowpox virus) that is related to the "Vaccinia virus". People (or animals) who have the disease have red blisters. The disease can be spread by touch from cows to humans. The virus that causes cowpox was used to perform the first successful vaccination against another disease. The disease vaccinated against was the deadly smallpox. Smallpox is caused by the related "variola virus". Therefore, the word "vaccination" has the Latin root "vaca" meaning cow.
In 1798, the English physician Edward Jenner made a curious observation. Jenner lived in the countryside, not in the city.
Some of his patients had gotten cowpox, and recovered from it. He observed that those patients did not get the disease again, they seemed to be immune against it. What was more, they also seemed to be immune against smallpox. Smallpox was a deadly disease then, that killed most of the people it infected. So he used the fluid he got from cowpox lesions, and scratched it into healthy people. That way, he could make those people immune against smallpox.
The Cowpox (Catpox) virus is found in Europe and mainly in the UK. Human cases are very rare and most often contracted from domestic cats. The virus is not commonly found in cows; the reservoir hosts for the virus are woodland rodents particularly voles. It is from these rodents that domestic cats get the virus. Symptoms in cats include lesions on the face, neck, forelimbs, and paws, and less commonly upper respiratory tract infection. Symptoms of infection with cowpox virus in humans are localized, pustular lesions generally found on the hands and limited to the site of introduction. The incubation period (the time between an infection and the first signs of the disease) is 9–10 days. The virus can be found mostly in late summer and autumn.
Cowpox was the original vaccine of sorts for smallpox. After infection with the disease, the body (usually) gains the ability recognise the similar smallpox virus from its antigens and so is able to fight the smallpox disease much more efficiently.
Later, and still today, another vaccine was used: "vaccinia". Vaccinia is similar to cowpox, but not the same.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian writer. She is best known for writing novels. She has also published 15 books of poetry. "The Edible Woman" was her first novel, published in 1969.
Her novel "The Handmaid's Tale" was the first winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, in 1987. The sequel, "The Testaments", is due for release in September 2019.
"The Blind Assassin" won the 2000 Booker Prize.
Rainbow Brite was a 1980s animated television show in the United States based on a series of Hallmark cards. It involves a girl called "Rainbow Brite" and the "Color Kids" who are in charge of bringing color to the world. It was produced by DiC Entertainment, Cookie Jar Entertainment, Optix Digital Pictures, Super Sonics Productions, The Canadian Film or Production Tax Credit, Shaw Rocket Fund, Canadian Television Fund, and Nick Jr. Productions in its "Kideo TV" package.
A tie-in movie, "Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer", came out in 1985.
Chickenpox, also known as chicken pox, is a disease. Usually, it is children who get the disease, but adults can also get it. People who have it get blisters or spots, mostly on the body and in the face. Those blisters are filled with a liquid. At some point, the blisters will drain, and the person will want to scratch them. Burst blisters usually become healthy without leaving scars, unless they become infected. The symptoms come in two or three waves, and they usually include fever. If there are no complications, the disease will last between three and five days in children. Chickenpox is very common and by the age 14, more than 90% of children will have had the disease.
Getting chickenpox during a pregnancy is dangerous, as it can hurt both the mother and the child.
Chickenpox is caused by a virus of the herpes family. People who had chickenpox in the past can also get a related disease called shingles later. Shingles are caused by the same virus but usually is only one part of the body.
There is a vaccine against chickenpox. Usually, the vaccine is given to children if they did not have the disease before the start of puberty, that is aged 9–13 years old. Sometimes to help your child not to scratch when they have chicken pox, you can get a special cream for it such as e45.
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Music has tonality if it uses the notes of a major or minor scale. Such music is tonal. It is in a particular "key". Nearly all Western music is tonal.
All tonal music is based on a major or minor scale. If the tune “Twinkle, twinkle little star” is played starting on the note C, the notes of a C major scale will be used. The note C will sound like the home note (the “tonic”) and, indeed, the tune finishes on a C. The tune could have started on any other note (C sharp, D, E flat, E etc.) but a knowledge of scales would be needed as some sharps or flats (black notes) will be required. When singing the tune there is no need to think about the sharps and flats: the singer does them quite naturally.
A piece of tonal music will usually modulate after a while. This means that it changes key. But the music will not sound finished until it goes back to the original key. If one sings The Star-Spangled Banner and stops after the words “our flag was still there” the song sounds as if it has stopped in mid-air. It will not sound finished until it goes back to the first key in the last two lines.
Most Western music from about 1600 onwards is based in a major or minor key. This system of tonality was used by all the great composers up to the 20th century and in popular music and most folk music. Listening to a symphony by Beethoven is like going on a journey through various key areas, always returning to the original tonic at the end. In some cases, such as Beethoven’s "Fifth Symphony", it may start in the minor and finish in the major. This is because minor keys can sound disturbed, full of tension, but major keys sound happier and more relaxed.
The opposite of “tonality” is atonality. An atonal piece is one where there is no feeling of a home key. Playing lots of random notes will sound atonal. Schoenberg was one of the most famous composers of atonal music. Of course, his music is not just random notes (although it may sound like it to the listener at first), so he had to find another way of giving his music shape. That is why he invented the twelve-tone system.
The toucan is a South American bird in the family Ramphastidae. This social bird lives in small flocks in lowland rainforests in countries such as Costa Rica. It flies short distances between trees. Toucans rest in holes in trees. They mostly eat fruit, but sometimes they also eat insects and small lizards.
They are brightly marked and have large, often-colorful bills. The family includes five genera and over forty different species.
Toucans are resident breeders and do not migrate. Toucans are usually found in pairs or small flocks. They sometimes fence with their bills and wrestle, which scientists think is to find out who is the top bird amongst them.
Toucans are known for their huge beaks, which can grow larger than their bodies. They use their beaks for reaching over and plucking fruit from branches of trees. The bright colors (usually orange) on the beak may help the toucans to recognize each other, and to scare off other birds.
The wrist is the joint that links together the lower arm and the hand.
The knee is the joint that links 4 of the upper and lower bones of the leg, which are called the femur, tibia, fibula and the patella. The knee joint is the largest joint in the body and is an extensive network of ligaments and muscles. Basically, it is a hinge which allows movement of the lower leg in only one direction. The lower leg (tibia+fibula+foot) can swing back from the knee, and that is all.
The knee is held together by ligaments which connect the bones and produces fluid which lubricates the movement at the joint. The meniscus is a cartilage
that lies on the inner and outer edges of the upper surface of the tibia. These are the shock
absorbers of the knee and supply proper weight distribution.
Atomic theory
In chemistry and physics, the atomic theory explains how our understanding of the atom has changed over time. Atoms were once thought to be the smallest pieces of matter. However, it is now known that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. These subatomic particles are made up of quarks. The first idea of the atom came from the Greek philosopher Democritus. A lot of the ideas in the modern theory came from John Dalton, a British chemist and physicist.
The theory applies to solids, liquids and gases, but it does not apply in way analogous to plasmas or neutron stars.
Democritus thought that if you cut something in half again and again, you would at last have to stop. He said that this last piece of matter could not be cut any smaller. Democritus called these small pieces of matter atoms, which means "indivisible". He thought that atoms would last forever, never change and could not be destroyed. Democritus thought that there was nothing between the atoms and that everything around us could be explained if we could understand how atoms worked.
Some other philosophers agreed, and others disagreed. They had no way to experiment to show whether his theory was true or not.
In 1758, Roger Joseph Boscovich described a precursor of the atomic theory.
In 1803, the English scientist John Dalton, born in Cumberland, reworked Democritus' theory, as follows:
Dalton defined the atom as the "basic unit of an element that can take part in a chemical combination".
In 1850, Sir William Crookes constructed a 'discharge tube', that is a glass tube with the air removed and metallic electrodes at its ends, connected to a high voltage source. When creating a vacuum in the tube, a light discharge can be seen that goes from the cathode (negatively-charged electrode) to the anode (positively-charged electrode). Crookes named the emission 'cathode rays'.
After the cathode ray experiments, Sir Joseph John Thomson established that the emitted ray was formed by negative charges, because they were attracted by the positive pole. Thomson knew that the atoms were electrically neutral, but he established that, for this to occur, an atom should have the same quantity of negative and positive charges. The negative charges were named "electrons" ("e"-).
According to the assumptions established about the atoms neutral charge, Thomson proposed the first atomic model, that was described as "a positively-charged sphere in which the electrons were inlaid (with negative charges)". It is known as the "plum pudding model".
In 1906, Robert Millikan determined that the electrons had a Coulomb (C) charge of -1.6 * 10, something that allowed calculation of its mass as tiny, equal to 9.109 * 10 kg.
In the same time, experiments by Eugene Goldstein in 1886 with cathode discharge tubes allowed him to establish that the positive charges had a mass of 1.6726 * 10 kg and an electrical charge of +1,6 * 10 C. Lord Ernest Rutherford later named these positively charged particles "protons"
In 1910, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford put forward the idea that the positive charges of the atom were found mostly in its center, in the nucleus, and the electrons ("e"-) around it.
Rutherford showed this when he used an alpha radiation source (from helium) to hit the very thin gold sheets, surrounded by a Zinc sulphide lampshade that produced visible light when hit by alpha emissions. This experiment was called the Geiger–Marsden experiment or the Gold Foil Experiment
By this stage the main elements of the atom were clear, plus the discovery that atoms of an element may occur in isotopes. Isotopes vary in the number of neutrons present in the nucleus. Although this model was well understood, modern physics has developed further, and present-day ideas cannot be made easy to understand. Some idea of present-day atomic physics can be found in the links in the table below.
Atoms are "not</u/l>" elementary particles, because they are made of subatomic particles like protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are also not elementary particles because they are made up of even smaller particles called quarks joined together by other particles called gluons (because they "glue" the quarks together in the atom). Quarks "are" elementary because quarks cannot be broken down any further.
Particle physics is a category of physics that studies really tiny pieces of things, known as particles. These particles are the really small pieces that build up the world around us. They are best described in the language of math: calculus, the imaginary number, and group theory (which describes symmetry).
Particles can carry fundamental forces. For example, the electromagnetic force is carried by photons. The four fundamental forces are responsible for almost everything in all of physics. These fundamental forces are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction.
One of the important concepts of particle physics is called the Standard Model. The Standard Model is a theory which tries to explain the fundamental forces. The Standard Model combined with general relativity is currently the most accepted explanation of how the universe works.
The Standard Model is known to have problems. For example, it explains three of the four forces very well, but it cannot explain gravity. This is why general relativity, a different theory that explains where gravity comes from, needs to be included in order for physicists to explain the universe. There is a lot of work to improve the theory and/or find a better theory that is being done. This work is often called theoretical particle physics because it is about building better theories of particles. Theoretical particle physicists make theories to try to improve the Standard Model. One example of this is how there are many theories that predict undiscovered particles.
Physicists find out about particles by studying collisions between different particles. A good analogy of how physicists study particles through colliding is the car crash example. Imagine a person wanted to look inside cars. By crashing two cars together at very high speeds, we can break the cars apart and see inside. In the same way, physicists crash two particles together in order to break them and study the inside.
If particles are moving at very high speeds, some of them will break apart when they collide. When they break, they create new smaller particles. These particles are very hard to find and detect because they decay (change into lighter particles) very quickly. Modern particle physics involves colliding particles together very energetically to create new particles inside a particle accelerator. This is called high-energy physics, due to the large amount of energy needed.
However, many particles do not simply break apart, such as electrons. Because it does not break apart, the electron is called a fundamental particle. If you were to smash two super-fast electrons against each other, they would not break, but instead they might create more particles around them without breaking (this is another form of decay, known as a hadron jet). The Standard Model says that there are 17 types of fundamental particles, but there are actually twice as many because they can all be created out of antimatter.
Particle physics can help us learn about the early universe, because conditions that are similar to the early universe (which was a much more energetic place than it is now) can be made in a small volume of space using the collisions of these particles. The biggest particle accelerator in the world is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe.
X Japan is a Japanese rock band. They were formed in 1982 by Yoshiki. They have sold over 30 million albums and singles and over 2 million videos to date. X Japan stopped making music in 1997, but reunited in 2007. They performed their first world tour live in Hong Kong in 2009. They played to 20,000 people in two days.
Some visual kei bands are influenced by X Japan.
The band was first called "X" but because the letter X was already the name of another band they changed their name to "X Japan" to avoid confusion.
State Anthem of the Soviet Union
The State Anthem of the Soviet Union was the national anthem of the Soviet Union from 1944 until 1991. It replaced the old one, which was a Russian translation of "The Internationale".
The music was created around 1938 by Alexander Alexandrov, a great Russian composer who earlier started the Alexandrov Ensemble. The original lyrics were by Sergey Mikhalkov and Gabriel El-Registan and first written in 1943. They mentioned Joseph Stalin by his name as well as the Great Patriotic War. When Stalin died in 1953, the lyrics were no longer appropriate and so the music was performed without them. For the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1977, the lyrics were brought back, but changed so that they do not mention Stalin or the war.
This song was in use until the Soviet Union broke down in 1991. Until then, most of the republics of the Soviet Union also had their own anthem, but the Russian SSR did not until 1990. After Russia became independent, the Russian SSR anthem, which used a melody by Mikhail Glinka and had no official words, became the Russian national anthem. But in 2000, the newly elected President, Vladimir Putin, decided to bring back the melody of the Soviet anthem. He had new words written to it by Sergey Mikhalkov, the same person who wrote the original Soviet anthem.
Below is the Russian and the English versions of the lyrics; both can be sung to the music. Like "The Internationale", there are also other versions of the Soviet anthem in different languages.
The official version of lyrics endorsed by CPSU:
The 1944 text had three different refrains following three different stanzas; in each refrain, the second line was consequently modified with references to friendship, then happiness and finally the glory. In 1977, these refrains were replaced by a uniform refrain following all stanzas.
<poem>The Russian [Soviet] republics, in freedom united,
Have mustered their power, their glory, their pride,
And thus they created the great Soviet Union,
The will of the nations that spread far and wide!
"Great shall your glory be, Motherland proud and free,"
"Bulwark of friendship for nation and man!"
"Flag of the Soviet, lead us to victory,"
"Flag of the people since freedom began!"
The sunlight of freedom has shone through the tempest,
And Lenin has lighted our path with his flame,
While Stalin has shown us that faith in the people
Inspires us to action, to deeds and to fame.
"Bulwark of happiness for nation and man!"
Our army in action has grown in its power,
And soon it will wipe out the enemy horde;
The fate of the future is sealed by our bravery,
And honor and glory shall be our reward!
"Bulwark of glory for nation and man!"
"Flag of the people since freedom began!"</poem>
The Hymn of the Bolshevik Party (Гимн партии большевиков / "Gimn partii boljševikov") uses the same melody as the Soviet anthem, but with different lyrics by Vasily Lebedev-Kumach.
Minimalism is a way of making modern art or music that uses simple ideas, sounds or shapes. It was most popular in America in the 1960s and 1970s. There are many different kinds of minimalism. Sometimes a simple thing is repeated many times until it seems very complicated. Today minimalism can be used to talk about many things such as design, architecture, poetry, and movies.
In music, minimalism is a way of composing classical music which became popular during the second half of the 20th century. It is a way of composing by using a simple idea which is repeated many times. A minimalist piece of music usually takes a short idea which may be a melodic or a rhythmic pattern. This idea is then repeated many times, but each time it changes slightly. Sometimes this may be done by two or more instruments which start off by playing their notes or chords together but, as one is going slightly faster than the other, they gradually become “out of sync” (not synchronized, i.e. not together), then eventually they catch up with one another again. Usually this music is tonal so that it is firmly in one key. "A steady pulse is kept throughout the whole piece."
Composers who wrote minimalist music include Steve Reich (b.1936), Philip Glass (b.1937) and Terry Riley (b.1935). Other composers like John Adams (b.1947) have also used minimalist ways of composing, but they combined these with other techniques, so that their music is not just minimalist.
Minimalist music became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Minimalist composers started writing like this, also because a lot of new music at that time was very complicated and hard to understand. It was often serial music which was atonal with no obvious melodies or ideas that were easy to remember.
Minimalist music is not necessarily simple. It can have a kind of hypnotic effect, but this is part of what the composer wants. Reich’s "Clapping Music" just consists of hand : there is no melody. He was thinking of African drum music when he wrote it. Two performers begin by clapping a rhythm together. After 13 seconds the second performer leaves out the first quaver (eighth note) and puts it at the end of the second bar (measure). After another 13 seconds this happens again so that in the end the two performers are together again. This music has to be listened to in a different way from other kinds of music.
Minimalism in visual art, sometimes referred to as "literalist art" and "ABC Art" emerged in New York in the 1960s. As a product it had much in common with earlier geometric abstraction and suprematism.
The term "minimalism" was not generally embraced by the artists associated with it, and many practitioners of art called minimalist by critics did not identify it as a movement as such.
One of the first artists specifically associated with Minimalism was the painter, Frank Stella, whose early "stripe" paintings were highlighted in the 1959 show, "16 Americans", organized by Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The width of the stripes in Frank Stellas's stripe paintings were determined by the dimensions of the lumber, visible as the depth of the painting when viewed from the side, used to construct the supportive chassis upon which the canvas was stretched. The decisions about structures on the front surface of the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, but pre-conditioned by a "given" feature of the physical construction of the support. In the show catalog, Carl André noted, "Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes. There is nothing else in his painting".
These reductive works were in sharp contrast to the energy-filled and emotionally-charged expressionist paintings of Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline.
They leaned more towards the controlled, somber "color field" paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. Although Stella received immediate attention from the MOMA show, artists like Kenneth Noland, Ralph Humphrey, Robert Motherwell and Robert Ryman had begun to explore stripes, monochromatic and hard-edge formats from the late 50s through the 1960s.
Igor Stravinsky was born in Lomonosov (then Oranienbaum), 17 June 1882 and died in New York, 6 April 1971. He was one of the most important composers of the 20th century, and a leader in modernism in music. He was brought up in Russia. When the Russian Revolution started he moved to Switzerland and then to Paris, and finally, when World War II started in 1939, he moved to the United States.
Stravinsky wrote music in different styles. At first he wrote music similar to his teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He loved his native Russian music. He wrote music which had very complicated chords and rhythms. It is lively music, and some of his best known works of this kind were written for the "Ballets Russes" of Sergei Diaghilev: "The Firebird", "Petrushka", "The Rite of Spring", "Les noces", "Pulcinella" and "Apollo musagète". They were written from 1910 to 1928.
Then he changed his style and wrote in what is called a “neo-classical” way. He based it on music from the Classical music period but changed it. His only full-length opera "The Rake's Progress" was written in this way. In his later years he wrote serial music.
Igor was the third of four children, all boys. As a child he spent the winter months in St Petersburg and the summers in the country where several of his relatives on his mother’s side had large estates.
Igor was not particularly good at school, but he often went to see the operas in which his father Fyodor was performing. Fyodor was an opera singer with a fine bass voice. He sang at the opera house in Kiev and later at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. Igor also went to ballets and even heard Tchaikovsky conduct in 1893, at the end of his life.
For a time Stravinsky studied law at the university of St Petersburg, but gave up in 1906. Then he married one of his cousins. They soon had a son and a daughter.
Meanwhile, since his school days, Igor played the piano, and had lessons in harmony and counterpoint. He enjoyed improvising and he started to be interested in composing. He wrote some short piano pieces and showed them to the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the father of a friend. Rimsky-Korsakov told him he ought to continue to have private music lessons instead of going to the conservatoire. Shortly after this, Stravinsky’s father died. Igor went to stay with Rimsky-Korsakov. He met many musical people there, and Rimsky-Korsakov taught him how to write for the different instruments. In 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov, whom he came to regard as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908.
In 1908 Rimsky-Korsakov died. Stravinsky met Sergei Diaghilev, the ballet impresario. Diaghilev wanted to put on performances of new operas and ballets. He needed a composer to write the music and saw that Stravinsky might be the ideal person. He asked him to write music for a ballet called "The Firebird", which was a Russian fairytale. Stravinsky wrote it at Rimsky-Korsakov’s country house and finished it in St Petersburg. The ballet was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 25 June 1910 by the Ballets Russes who were very famous in Europe. Mikhail Fokin was the choreographer. It has remained one of Stravinsky’s most famous pieces of music. Some of the music is often performed in a concert hall without the dancing. This version is called a “suite” (literally “a collection of dances”). It shows his love of Russian folk melody.
The success of "The Firebird" made Stravinsky world famous. His music was especially well known in Europe, and in Paris where the Ballets Russes were based. The next work Stravinsky wrote for them was "Petrouchka". It was the story of a puppet which comes to life. It was performed in Paris on 13 June 1911 and became just as famous as "The Firebird". This music, too, is often performed as a concert piece. Stravinsky also made an arrangement of three of the dances for piano solo. It is very hard to play and needs a virtuoso pianist.
Stravinsky was becoming well known among musicians. His friends included Debussy and Ravel. He met Schoenberg in Berlin and was very impressed by his piece called "Pierrot Lunaire". He spent a lot of his time with his family in Switzerland where he had peace and quiet to compose.
On 29 May 1913 a new ballet by Stravinsky called "The Rite of Spring" was performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. It was an absolute sensation. Some people loved it and others hated it. There was a big fight in the theatre and the police were called in. People were shouting so much that no one could hear the music. Stravinsky became ill afterwards and spent some weeks to recover. When the ballet was performed again people were quieter and listened to the music. There were lots of new ideas in the music: harsh chords and very complicated rhythms. The music of "The Rite of Spring" had an great influence on the development of music in the 20th century.
Stravinsky’s next idea for a ballet was "Les noces", French for 'The Wedding'. Stravinsky went back to Russia to collect some things that would help him to compose it. When he returned to Switzerland World War I started.
Stravinsky’s family spent most of their time in Switzerland during the war. He was short of money because there was no more income from the Russian estates. The Ballets Russes could not perform any more in Paris. Stravinsky spent a lot of time working at "Les Noces". He finished it in 1917 and played it to Diaghilev. It was another six years before it was performed. Stravinsky eventually chose to arrange it for four pianos, percussion, chorus and vocal soloists. It was performed at the Théâtre de la Gaîté Lyrique on 13 June 1923.
Because Switzerland was neutral in the war, Stravinsky was able to travel. He went to Italy where he met Gerald Tyrwhitt (who later became Lord Berners) and Prokofiev. He wrote "Reynard" and "Rag-Time". He performed in America with Ballets Russes.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in February 1917 Stravinsky thought this would be good, but when the Bolshevik Revolution followed it became obvious that he would never be able to go back to Russia. He wrote "L’histoire du soldat" ("The Soldier’s Tale"). It was performed in Lausanne with Ernest Ansermet conducting. There would have been more performances but many people had influenza. When the war ended Stravinsky decided to move to France. He wrote a ballet called "Pulcinella" which was based on music by the 18th century composer Pergolesi. It was performed at the Paris Opéra on 15 May 1920. For some years Igor became interested in the music of the late 18th century, and the style of his work after 1920 is often described as neoclassical.
In 1920 Stravinsky’s family moved from Stravinsky to Brittany, then the following year they moved to Biarritz. Stravinsky composed a piece called "Symphonies for Wind Instruments". It was soon performed in London at a concert which also included "The Rite of Spring", conducted by Eugene Goossens in the Queen's Hall. He met a theatre designer called Serge Soudeikine and fell madly in love with Vera, who would later become his second wife. Meanwhile, his first wife, Katerina, was in a sanitorium suffering from tuberculosis. Vera and Stravinsky saw one another as much as possible for the next 18 years. Meanwhile, Stravinsky’s mother managed to get out of Russia and she joined Stravinsky’s family in Biarritz. Stravinsky had to support a large family, and he decided he needed to work more as a conductor and pianist instead of composing large works. He composed smaller pieces, including the piano version of three dances from "Petrouchka". Later, when his son was grown up, he composed a Concerto for two solo pianos for himself to play with his son. He did not compose any more for the Ballets Russes, but he did compose "Oedipus rex" as a special tribute to them. This work was a mixture of opera and oratorio. The words were in Latin and were written by Jean Cocteau. It was performed as a concert performance. Although he did not write for Diaghilev any more, he accepted an invitation from Ida Rubinstein to write a ballet called "Le baiser de la fée" ("The fairy’s kiss") which was based on music by Tchaikovsky. Diaghilev was annoyed, but then he died in 1929 and the Ballets Russes company no longer carried on.
In 1926 Stravinsky, who belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church, had a deep religious experience which effected his music. The best of these religious pieces is the "Symphony of Psalms", written for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50th birthday celebrations.
Stravinsky met the violinist Dushkin and composed a "Violin Concerto" as well as the "Duo concertante" for violin and piano which the two musicians played together at many concerts. He became more and more in demand in the United States and wrote several works for American people. He was offered a job as professor at Harvard University. At this time a lot of his family were ill. Then his daughter died, his wife died and his mother died. He was ill himself. Then, by September 1939, just as World War II started, he was well enough to travel to North America.
Stravinsky was immediately invited to conduct many concerts in America. Vera arrived in America four months later and she and Stravinsky were married in Bedford, Massachusetts. They applied for American citizenship and settled in Hollywood. He was quite short of money and he accepted any invitation to compose music. He even accepted a private pupil.
Stravinsky composed a mass. It was not commissioned, he just wanted to compose it. It was performed in La Scala, Milan, in 1948 conducted by Ansermet. He then decided to compose a full-length opera in English. This was "The Rake’s Progress". It was first performed in Venice in 1951. It is the best of his works in the neo-classical style. Another work from this period is his "Symphony in C". It shows a different way of composing tonal music to the tonal works of classical composers.
He met a musician called Robert Craft who came to live with the family and helped Stravinsky sort out his compositions and papers. He was surprised to find that Stravinsky never visited Schoenberg, who only lived a few streets away. After Schoenberg died in 1951 Craft encouraged Stravinsky to listen to Schoenberg’s serial music. Soon Stravinsky started to use serialism in his own compositions. Craft travelled with Stravinsky and helped him a great deal, for example, by conducting some of the concerts, or rehearsing the orchestras before Stravinsky came.
In 1962 he was invited to the White House by President Kennedy. In the same year he returned to Russia for a visit. He had not been there for nearly half a century. It was a great success, and people in the USSR became more interested in Stravinsky’s music. It made Stravinsky very happy to know that Russians were interested in him again.
During his last years he became rather ill. "Threni" is one of his last compositions. It is a setting of the parts of the Lamentations of Jeremiah for voices and orchestra. He composed other religious works including "Requiem Canticles". In 1969 he moved with his family to New York where he died two years later.
Stravinsky was buried in Venice, near Diaghilev’s grave.
Emilio de Villota
Emilio de Villota Ruíz (born in Madrid, July 26, 1946) is a former racing driver from Spain. He participated in 15 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on May 2, 1976. He scored no championship points.
In 2005, he participated in Formula Palmer Audi driving a Mapfre's car (nº7)
TAE connector
TAE (Telekommunikations-Anschluss-Einheit) is the German standard for telephone plugs and sockets.
The standard covers two TAE types: "F" ("Fernsprechgerät": for telephones) and "N" ("Nebengerät": for other devices such as answering machines and modems).
The technological singularity is the idea that a machine or computer, or a group of machines and computers, will one day be smarter than humans.
Because it has not happened yet, nobody really knows what the technological singularity will do, or if it will even happen. Nonetheless, the technological singularity has been a subject in many science fiction works, such as "The Terminator", "The Matrix", and the Borg in "Star Trek". In most depictions of the singularity, machines have consciousness and humans are considered to be useless. The futurist (who studies about the future) and inventor Ray Kurzweil believes the "Singularity" will happen about the year 2045. The major impetus driving toward the singularity, according to Kurzweil, is that according to Moore's Law, computers are doubling in memory capacity every 18 months. According to Kurzweil, by 2029, computers will be as intelligent as human beings (see artificial intelligence).
Mew (Pokémon)
Mew (ミュウ, Myuu) is a fictional character from the "Pokémon" franchise. In the "Pokémon" video games, it is a Psychic-type secret Pokémon that was discovered in the first group of Pokémon games: "Pokémon Red and Blue", "Green", and "Yellow". Mew is the "Red/Blue/Green/Yellow" counterpart to the "Gold/Silver/Crystal" Celebi and the "Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald" Jirachi.
The name "Mew" refers to the sound made by a cat. Mew was secretly put in the game by one of the lead programmers, Shigeki Morimoto. When the Game Freak president, Satoshi Tajiri, found out about it, he told about it being in the game.
Mew is #151 in the Pokédex and could only be obtained through special events or by using a cheating device like Gameshark, or a game-enhancing device. Mew can also be obtained in the original issues of the Pokémon yellow and blue (US) by “cheat”. If you get a Pokémon early on (before going to Misty’s gym or defeating man to the left of the nugget bridge) that has growl (charmander has it from the start) and an Abra or a Pokémon that can fly but you can’t fly this early in game (you can get an abra in the grass next to the nugget bridge but be careful not to battle the man standing above that grass he’s needed later. After this go to the health center and heal, then go to the top of the nugget bridge and save. Head down to Misty’s gym, go straight and take a right and challenge hit the guy trainer in a pool to the right use growl 6 times on his shelder then defeat him. Go back to the top of the nugget bridge and take a left to engage in battle with that man but press start right when you do and he should have a ❗️ Over his head when you hit teleport (restart if you start the fight) and teleport back to the health center. Then run up the nugget bridge making sure to have a load of poke balls and the last Pokémon you fought was that shelder after using growl on him 6 times, and you should have a random encounter with Mew. Also if you fight a Pokémon that’s low enough in level not to level your Mew up to level 2, it will automatically level up to 100.
Mewtwo is a "Genetic" species of Pokémon that is number 150 in the Pokédex. Mewtwo was cloned from Mew by scientists. It is a Psychic type Pokémon. Mewtwo appeared in two movies: "" and "".
In "Pokémon Red and Blue" the player first learns of Mewtwo by research papers left in a ruined laboratory on Cinnabar Island. Mewtwo is told to be a mutant child of Mew made after years of work by one scientist. Mewtwo is obtainable in the Cerulean Cave, which opens after defeating the Elite Four. In the remakes "Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen" the player now has to get 60 Pokédex entries before they can go in the cave.
In Pokémon X and Y, Mewtwo can be found in the Unknown Dungeon after entering the Hall of Fame. It can Mega Evolve into two different forms: Mega Mewtwo X using Mewtwonite X and Mega Mewtwo Y using Mewtwonite Y.
Mewtwo is a character in "Super Smash Bros. Melee", and is one of eleven playable characters that can be unlocked in the game. It uses the moves Shadow Ball, Confusion, Teleport, and Disable
Avignon (; ) is a commune in southeastern France in the department of Vaucluse on the left bank of the Rhône river. It is the capital (prefecture) of the Vaucluse department.
The historical centre, which includes the Palais des Papes, the cathedral, and the Pont d'Avignon, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. The medieval monuments and the annual Festival d'Avignon have helped to make the town a major centre for tourism.
The earliest forms of the name were reported by the Greeks:
The Roman name "Avennĭo Cavarum" (Mela, II, 575, Pliny III, 36), i.e. "Avignon of Cavares" shows that Avignon was one of the three cities of the tribe of "Cavares", along with "Cavaillon" and "Orange".
Between 1309 and 1377, during the Avignon Papacy, seven successive popes lived in Avignon and in 1348 Pope Clement VI bought the town from Joanna I (; March 1328 – 27 July 1382) was Queen of Naples and Countess of Provence.
Papal control persisted until 1791 when, during the French Revolution, it became part of France.
Avignon is on the left bank of the Rhône river, a few kilometres above its confluence with the Durance, about southeast of Paris, south of Lyon and northwest of Marseille.
It has an area of and its average altitude is ; at the city hall, the altitude is .
On the west Avignon shares a border with the department of Gard and to the south it borders the department of Bouches-du-Rhône.
Avignon is surrounded by the "communes" Sorgues, Le Pontet, Vedène, Morières-lès-Avignon and Caumont-sur-Durance and the departments Bouches-du-Rhône ("communes" of Noves, Châteaurenard, Rognonas and Barbentane) and Gard ("communes" of Les Angles and Villeneuve-lès-Avignon).
The Rhône, the Durance (tributary of the Rhône and the L'Anguillon (tributary of the Durance) are the rivers flow through the "commune".