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.
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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
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
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.