In 1892 he married Aino Järnefelt. Her father was a general and very keen on the Finnish language. The Finnish were trying more and more at this time to be free of rule by Russia. Sibelius wrote more patriotic music during the 1890s e.g. the tone poem "En Saga" and the "Lemminkäinen" legends which include the popular "The Swan of Tuonela". His patriotic tone poem "Finlandia" is still very popular today. His music at this time was influenced by Wagner and Tchaikovsky. He also heard Finnish folk melodies and, although he does not use them directly in his music, they became part of his musical language. In 1897 he was given a state pension which helped him financially although for many years he was still very often short of money because he had expensive tastes.
Between 1899 and 1924 Sibelius composed the 7 symphonies which made him famous worldwide. His friend, the conductor Kajanus, conducted Sibelius’s works when he took the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra on tour around Europe. His wife was becoming worried about how much alcohol he was drinking in Helsinki, so 1903 she persuaded him to move the family to a place called Ainola in the Finnish countryside. They had a house built in Järvenpää. Apart from a few short periods in Helsinki he spent the rest of his life there. The first works he wrote there were his "Symphony no 2" and the "Violin Concerto ". He became seriously ill in 1908 and for several years he had to stop smoking cigars and drinking alcohol. He continued to travel and visited England several times and the United States in 1914 where he was very popular. After the war he continued to write more symphonies as well as some short, light pieces. The last great work that he wrote was the tone-poem "Tapiola" in 1926. He tried to write another symphony (no 8) but gave up and destroyed it. He never wrote any more music. He continued to live in retirement in his house in the Finnish country for another 30 years. He died of a brain hemorrhage. The house is now a Sibelius museum.
Sibelius's wife Aino came from a highly respectable family. Although her father was a general in the army, there was a very great interest in culture in the Järnefeld family which included musicians, painters and poets. Jean fell in love with Aino on his first visit to her home. Aino was to be a faithful wife to him all his life, although she suffered a lot of hardship due to his drinking problems and his debts. They had five daughters.
Sibelius is best known for his symphonies and tone-poems. His symphonies are very different from one another, none can be described as being “typical” of his style. The early symphonies are Romantic in character, in the later symphonies he tries out lots of new ideas and sounds. His "Violin Concerto" is played by all the great violinists. Sibelius wrote lots of songs for voice and piano. These are mostly settings of Swedish poems. He also wrote many choral works, mostly in Finnish. These vocal works are not so well known outside Finland because the language is not familiar abroad, but there are some very good songs, especially "Luonnotar". Besides his important works he also wrote many short works in order to earn enough money to live. These include songs as well as many short piano pieces.
Sibelius's music today is extremely popular. His music has also been an influence on recent composers.
Schutzstaffel
The (SS) was a large security and military organization controlled by the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) in Germany. "SS" was sometimes written in Runic as , and this symbol was put on the SS flag and insignia.
The SS played a major part in The Holocaust. For example, they ran the Nazi concentration camps and death camps, where they killed millions of people. After World War II, judges at the Nuremberg Trials ruled that the SS was an illegal criminal organization. The judges also said that the SS was the organization that had done most of the Holocaust.
The SS was created in the 1925 to guard Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. ("Schutzstaffel" means "Protection Squadron" in German). From 1929 to 1945, Heinrich Himmler led the SS. During that time, the SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to one of the largest and most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany.
The Nazis saw the SS as a special unit, like the Praetorian Guard (which used to guard Roman emperors). To be chosen for the SS, a person had to be racially "pure". This meant they had to prove that all their ancestors were "Aryan". They also had to be completely loyal to the Nazi party. They could never ask questions or disagree with anything the SS did.
The SS had two different parts. The "Allgemeine-SS" ("General SS") were the Nazis' police. The "Waffen-SS" ("Armed SS") were special units of soldiers in Nazi Germany's military. The Waffen-SS became known for fierce fighting and brutality against civilians and prisoners of war. Its units helped crush the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where Polish Jews tried to fight back against the Nazis. Waffen-SS units also killed many American prisoners of war during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.
The SS was militaristic but not military. It had its own rank system, insignia, and uniforms. This made the SS different from the German military, the Nazi party, and people who worked in the German government.
As the Nazi party gained more and more power in Germany, it gave control of more important jobs (like law enforcement) to the SS. Many SS organizations became as powerful as parts of the government. The Nazi party decided that to help it keep its power, it needed to give the SS two even more important jobs. One of these was to create and run the Sicherheitsdienst ("SD"), the Nazi security and intelligence service. The other was to control the "Geheime Staatspolizei" ("Gestapo"): the SS secret police. Because it was in charge of so many important things, the SS could do almost anything it wanted.
As the SS's leader, Heinrich Himmler used the SS to put the Final Solution into action. The SS Einsatzgruppen murdered many civilians, mostly Jews, in the countries controlled by Nazi Germany during World War II. The SS was in charge of creating and running concentration camps and death camps (camps where people were sent to be killed). In these camps, millions of prisoners died from many causes, including murder, starvation, disease, freezing to death, and being experimented on by Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele.
After the war, the judges at the Nuremberg Trials decided the SS was a criminal organization (a group that was created only to commit crimes). They ruled that the SS had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. They also said that the SS was the organization that had carried out most of the Holocaust.
Logarithm
Logarithms or logs are a part of mathematics. They are related to exponential functions. A logarithm tells what exponent (or power) is needed to make a certain number, so logarithms are the inverse (opposite) of exponentiation. Historically, they were useful in multiplying or dividing large numbers.
An example of a logarithm is formula_1. In this logarithm, the base is 2, the argument is 8 and the answer is 3. In this case, the exponentiation function would be:
formula_2
The most common types of logarithms are common logarithms, where the base is 10, binary logarithms, where the base is 2, and natural logarithms, where the base is e ≈ 2.71828.
Logarithms were first used in India in the 2nd century BC. The first to use logarithms in modern times was the German mathematician Michael Stifel (around 14871567). In 1544, he wrote down the following equations: formula_3 and formula_4. This is the basis for understanding logarithms. For Stifel, formula_5 and formula_6 had to be whole numbers. John Napier (1550–1617) did not want this restriction, and wanted a range for the exponents.