Q: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What is the title of the composition that was premiered by the dedicatees in September 1994? Messiaen's next work was the large-scale La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. The composition occupied him from 1965 to 1969 and the musicians employed include a 100-voice ten-part choir, seven solo instruments and large orchestra. Its fourteen movements are a meditation on the story of Christ's Transfiguration. Shortly after its completion, Messiaen received a commission from Alice Tully for a work to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial. He arranged a visit to the US in spring 1972, and was inspired by Bryce Canyon in Utah, where he observed the canyon's distinctive colours and birdsong. The twelve-movement orchestral piece Des canyons aux etoiles... was the result, first performed in 1974 in New York.In 1971, he was asked to compose a piece for the Paris Opera. While reluctant to undertake such a major project, he was persuaded in 1975 to accept the commission and began work on his Saint-Francois d'Assise. The composition was intensive (he also wrote his own libretto) and occupied him from 1975 to 1979; the orchestration was carried out from 1979 until 1983. Messiaen preferred to describe the final work as a "spectacle" rather than an opera. It was first performed in 1983. Some commentators at the time thought that the opera would be his valediction (at times Messiaen himself believed so), but he continued to compose. In 1984 he published a major collection of organ pieces, Livre du Saint Sacrement; other works include birdsong pieces for solo piano, and works for piano with orchestra.In the summer of 1978, Messiaen retired from teaching at the Conservatoire. He was promoted to the highest rank of the Legion d'honneur, the Grand-Croix, in 1987. An operation prevented his participation in the celebration of his 70th birthday in 1978, but in 1988 tributes for Messiaen's 80th included a complete performance in London's Royal Festival Hall of St. Francois, which the composer attended, and Erato's publication of a seventeen-CD collection of Messiaen's music including a disc of the composer in...
A: Concert a quatre

Q: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What had almost entirely disappeared from Bach's compositions by the second quarter of the 18th century? Bach structured the cantata in eight movements: an instrumental sinfonia and seven vocal movements corresponding to the stanzas of the hymn. The duration is given as 22 minutes.The title of the original parts of the first Leipzig performance is (in Johann Christoph Altnickol's handwriting): "Feria Paschatos / Christ lag in Todes Banden / a.4. Voc: / Cornetto / 3 Trombon. / 2 Violini / 2 Viole / con / Continuo / Di Sign. Joh.Seb.Bach", In this late version, Bach scored the work for four vocal parts (soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T), and bass (B)), and a Baroque instrumental ensemble consisting of strings, brass and continuo. The brass parts, a choir of cornetto (Ct) and three trombones (Tb) playing colla parte with the voices at times, may have been added in the 1720s. They may also possibly represent the original scoring, in the style of the 17th-century polychoral tradition.The scoring of the cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden has been described as "archaic" and its style "medieval": The string section consists of two violin parts (Vl) and two viola parts (VA); this indicates an older practice as for instance found in 17th-century church cantatas by Bach's ancestors (see Altbachisches Archiv), and in Jesus Christus ist um unsrer Missetat willen verwundet, a Passion setting from the early 18th century (or older) which Bach had performed a few years after composing the cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden. In the first half of the 18th century the standard for a string section soon evolved to two violin parts, one viola part and continuo. The cornett used in the cantata was an instrument that belonged to an earlier age: by the second quarter of the 18th century it had almost entirely disappeared from Bach's compositions. The brass instruments were only used for the 1 April 1725 version of the work. The other performances (24 April 1707, 8 April 1708, and 9 April 1724) were performed without brass instruments (i.e., Cornetto and three Trombones). The first version (1707 and 1708) concluded with the words of...
A: cornett

Q: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What's the official name of the island country lying southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia? Nauru ( nah-OO-roo or NOW-roo; Nauruan: Naoero), officially the Republic of Nauru (Nauruan: Repubrikin Naoero) and formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country in Micronesia, a subregion of Oceania, in the Central Pacific. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east. It further lies northwest of Tuvalu, north of the Solomon Islands, east-northeast of Papua New Guinea, southeast of the Federated States of Micronesia and south of the Marshall Islands. With only a 21-square-kilometre (8.1 sq mi) area, Nauru is the third-smallest state on the list of countries and dependencies by area behind Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest state in the South Pacific Ocean, the smallest island state, and the smallest republic. Its population is 11,347, making it the third smallest on the list of countries and dependencies by population, after the Vatican and Tuvalu. Settled by people from Micronesia and Polynesia c. 1000 BC, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops, who were bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968, and became a member of the Pacific Community (SPC) in 1969. Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations. It has some remaining phosphate resources which, as of 2011, are not economically viable for extraction. When the phosphate reserves were exhausted, and the island's environment had been seriously harmed by mining, the trust that had been established to manage the island's wealth diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre. From 2001 to 2008, and again from 2012, it...
A:
the Republic of Nauru