History.

The sport that would later become wakeboarding began as wakesurfing, which was invented by surfers who were looking for an alternative to surfing when the sea was calm. Wakesurfing began picking up traction around 1964, where it was seen as an "exciting new sport that's soon going to sweep the waterways." Although surfboards were originally used, boards without straps or bindings were first seen in New Zealand with boards called "skurfboards". Eventually, wakeboards with bindings or straps were sold in Australia under the name "McSkis". Later, another company called "Skurfer" was founded by Tony Finn in 1985, named as such due to the board being a cross of a surfboard and a water ski. The first board made in the early 1990s was the Hyperlite board by the O’Brien company, a water ski manufacturer who marketed the board as a “compression-molded neutral-buoyancy wakeboard.” This was followed by a variety of boards that are curvier and more compact, creating a smoother ride.  The wakeboard rope has advanced over the years with improvements in the material makeup. When wakeboarding first started, wakeboarders used ski rope, which was made with stretchy cloth or plastic ropes. The latter soon grew in popularity, and a braided rope made out of polypropylene was eventually introduced. A few years later, a rope that was less stretchy was invented that gave the rider a more consistent pull on the rope, though they were heavier and larger in diameter. Modern ropes are coated with Spectra and Dyneema, which decrease the stretch and drag of the rope.

Equipment.

When wakeboarding, a wide variety of safety equipment is used. These include life vests or other buoyancy aids which prevent water-related injuries and deaths, as they keep the wearer buoyant until they are picked up. These vests especially help in situations where the rider is knocked unconscious or cannot tread water. Furthermore, wakeboarders use water-resistant helmets that are able to ventilate water so that the helmets do not fill up with water. Even the length of a wakeboarder's rope is important in providing safety; if the rope is too long, a wakeboarder will land on the flat part of the wake instead of the downside, and their knees will buckle.  At the same time, the length of a wakeboarding rope will vary based on the rider's preferences. A longer rope may allow for more preparation and momentum before performing tricks, whereas a shorter rope may require less speed and height to travel between wakes.

Tricks.

When wakeboarding, a variety of tricks may be attempted. Most of these stem from the wakeboarder adjusting their posture, edge, and distribution of weight so as to fly into the air upon hitting the wake. Various tricks include the toeside edge, the heelside edge, the ride switch, and the 180° spin.  More advanced tricks call for what is known as inversion or “inverts”. An invert is considered any action where the board is above the head of the rider. This does not necessarily mean the rider is fully upside down, as evidenced by the Raley, a trick where the rider extends their body parallel to the water bending at the knees to achieve inversion.  The heel side backflip, otherwise known as a tantrum, is often regarded as the first and easiest invert to learn as an intermediate level rider. This is because the shape of the wake or the “kicker” (a type of floating ramp, used primarily at cable parks, that mimics the shape of a wake) naturally initiates the sequence of motions which are necessary to complete the trick.

Wakeboarding is a water sport in which the rider, standing on a wakeboard (a short board with foot bindings), is towed behind a motorboat across its wake and especially up off the crest in order to perform aerial maneuvers. A hallmark of wakeboarding is the attempted performance of midair tricks. The rider is usually towed by a rope behind a boat, but can also be towed by cable systems and winches, and be pulled by other motorized vehicles like personal watercraft, cars, trucks, and all-terrain vehicles. The gear and wakeboard boat used are often personalized to each rider's liking.


Biography.

Early life.

Eduard Böhm was born in the Italian city of Ancona where his father served with a small representative detachment of the Austrian army. His father, Georg Böhm (1813–1893), had as a sergeant won a battlefield commission for bravery after the battle of Novara in 1849, been promoted to the rank of major upon his retirement in 1877. In June 1885, he received permission to attach his wife's (Maria Josepha Ermolli) maiden name to his family name. He was elevated to hereditary nobility in September 1885, and hence the family was known as "von Böhm-Ermolli".  Böhm-Ermolli was trained at the cadet academy in St. Pölten and the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt and entered the service on 1 September 1875 as a lieutenant in the dragoons. He served in a variety of line and staff positions, steadily rose through the ranks, being promoted to General of the Cavalry on 1 May 1912 and appointed commanding general of the 1st Army Corps in Kraków.

Service during World War One.

At the start of World War I, Böhm-Ermolli was given command of the Austrian 2nd Army, which was intended for action on the Serbian front. After the Russian Empire mobilised, the 2nd Army was diverted to the Russian front, where it reinforced the armies of Austria's German ally.<br> In September 1915 he also became commander of the Army Group Böhm-Ermolli which included the German South Army besides his own Second Army.  Böhm-Ermolli was promoted to "Generaloberst" in May 1916 and to "Feldmarschall" in January 1918. In March 1918, his forces occupied Ukraine. His Army Group was dissolved at Odessa at the war's end.

Later life.

Böhm-Ermolli then settled in his home town of Troppau in Austrian Silesia, which became part of Czechoslovakia in 1919, and the government of Czechoslovakia paid him his pension and honored him as a General 1st Class in the reserve. In 1928 he became an "Army General" of Czechoslovakia, even though he never served in the Czechoslovak Army.  When the Sudetenland, the predominantly German settled regions along the fringes of Czechoslovakia, was annexed to Nazi Germany in 1938, he became a German subject. On 31 October 1940 Böhm-Ermolli received an honorary promotion to "Generalfeldmarschall" of the German Army. In addition, he was appointed honorary colonel-in-chief of Infantry Regiment 28 in his hometown of Troppau (Opava).  When he died in December 1941, he was accorded a state funeral with full military honors in Vienna.

Military Service and Promotion Record.

Retired, December 1, 1918.

Eduard Freiherr von Böhm-Ermolli (12 February 1856 – 9 December 1941) was an Austrian general during World War I who rose to the rank of field marshal in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was the head of the Second Army and fought mainly on the front of Galicia during the entire conflict. On 30 October 1940, Böhm-Ermolli was made a German "Generalfeldmarschall".


Early life.

Philip was born 23 May 1052 at Champagne-et-Fontaine, the son of Henry I and his wife Anne of Kiev. Unusually for the time in Western Europe, his name was of Greek origin, being bestowed upon him by his mother. Although he was crowned king at the age of seven, until age fourteen (1066) his mother acted as regent, the first queen of France ever to do so. Baldwin V of Flanders also acted as co-regent.

Personal rule.

Following the death of Baldwin VI of Flanders, Robert the Frisian seized Flanders. Baldwin's widow, Richilda, requested aid from Philip, who was defeated by Robert at the battle of Cassel in 1071.  Philip first married Bertha of Holland in 1072. Although the marriage produced the necessary heir, Philip fell in love with Bertrade de Montfort, the wife of Fulk IV, Count of Anjou. He repudiated Bertha (claiming she was too fat) and married Bertrade on 15 May 1092. In 1094, he was excommunicated by Hugh of Die, for the first time; after a long silence, Pope Urban II repeated the excommunication at the Council of Clermont in November 1095. Several times the ban was lifted as Philip promised to part with Bertrade, but he always returned to her, but in 1104 Philip made a public penance and must have kept his involvement with Bertrade discreet. In France, the king was opposed by Bishop Ivo of Chartres, a famous jurist.  Philip appointed Alberic first Constable of France in 1060. A great part of his reign, like his father's, was spent putting down revolts by his power-hungry vassals. In 1077, he made peace with William the Conqueror, who gave up attempting the conquest of Brittany. In 1082, Philip I expanded his demesne with the annexation of the Vexin, in reprisal against Robert Curthose's attack on William's heir, William Rufus. Then in 1100, he took control of Bourges.  It was at the aforementioned Council of Clermont that the First Crusade was launched. Philip at first did not personally support it because of his conflict with Urban II. Philip's brother Hugh of Vermandois, however, was a major participant.

Death.

Philip died in the castle of Melun and was buried per his request at the monastery of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire – and not in St Denis among his forefathers. He was succeeded by his son, Louis VI, whose succession was, however, not uncontested. According to Abbot Suger:

Issue.

Philip's children with Bertha were:  Philip's children with Bertrade were:

Philip I (c.1052 – 29 July 1108), called the Amorous, was King of the Franks from 1060 to 1108. His reign, like that of most of the early Capetians, was extraordinarily long for the time. The monarchy began a modest recovery from the low it reached in the reign of his father and he added to the royal demesne the Vexin and Bourges.


Early life and ordination.

Meisner was born in Breslau, Germany (modern Wrocław, Poland). He studied in East Germany at the seminary of Erfurt from 1959 to 1962, and was ordained a deacon on 8 April 1962. On 22 December 1962, he was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Josef Freusberg, an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Fulda.  Between 1963 and 1975, Meisner served as chaplain at St. Giles Parish in Heiligenstadt and Holy Cross Parish in Erfurt. He also served as diocesan director of Caritas. During his pastoral ministry, he studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, earning his doctorate of theology in 1969.

Bishop.

In 1975, he was elected titular Bishop of Vina and auxiliary bishop to the Apostolic Administrator Erfurt-Meiningen. He was elected as a delegate to the Fourth Synod of Bishops at the Vatican in 1977, where he renewed a friendship with Karol Wojtyła, who in 1980 as Pope John Paul II appointed Meisner Bishop of Berlin and made him Cardinal-Priest of Santa Pudenziana in the consistory of 2 February 1983.  In 1988 after the death of Joseph Höffner, Meisner was named Archbishop of Cologne, a post he continued to hold until he retired. He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI. Meisner was the bishop in charge for the XX. World Youth Day in August 2005 in the archdiocese in Cologne that attracted more than one million people.  On 18 September 2012, Meisner was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a Synod Father for the October 2012 Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.  In January 2013, two Catholic hospitals refused to provide a "morning after pill" to a rape victim based on Church policy that treats such medications as abortifacients. Meisner apologized and approved the use of some such pills for rape victims based on the belief that they prevented fertilization and did not induce abortion. He said that if "a medication that hinders conception is used after a rape with the purpose of avoiding fertilization, then this is acceptable in my view." The German Bishops' Conference endorsed his policy on 21 February, distinguishing between different types of morning after pills.  Meisner participated in the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis. At Pope Francis' inauguration, Meisner was one of the six cardinals who made the public act of obedience on behalf of the College of Cardinals.  On 25 December 2013, Cardinal Meisner turned 80 and lost the right to participate in future conclaves and he submitted his resignation, which Pope Francis accepted on 28 February 2014. Diocesan administrator Stefan Heße led the archdiocese until a successor, Rainer Woelki, was appointed on 11 July and installed as Archbishop on 20 September 2014.  Meisner died on 5 July 2017 while vacationing in Bad Füssing in Bavaria.

Views.

Papacy and Magisterium.

Meisner was known for his support of the Pope and of the teachings of the Church. Pope John Paul asked for Cardinal Meisner to see him when he was in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. Meisner had a very close relationship to Pope John Paul II and was a long-time friend of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.  He said that Benedict "has the intelligence of 12 professors and is as pious as a child on the day of his first communion."  In 2009, Meisner "approached [Pope] Benedict on behalf of a number of cardinals to ask him to dump his Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone." "According to the interview in the "Frankfurter Rundschau", Meisner told Benedict: 'Your Holiness, you have to make Cardinal Bertone resign! He has the responsibility, like in a secular government.' According to Meisner, Benedict's response was: 'Listen to me carefully. Bertone will remain! Enough, enough, enough.'"

Culture and liturgy.

"Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, cult atrophies in ritualism and culture becomes degenerate", said Meisner at the blessing of his own archdiocese's new art museum, the Kolumba, on 14 September 2007. His choice of words recalled the phrase ""entartete Kunst"" ("degenerate art") used as the title of the exhibition opened by Adolf Hitler in Munich on 19 July 1937 and provoked strong negative reaction.  It was widely recognized that Meisner was criticizing the stained-glass window in Cologne Cathedral by Gerhard Richter, which was unveiled just weeks before and of which he disapproved.

"Amoris laetitia".

In April 2016, Pope Francis issued the apostolic exhortation "Amoris laetitia". Meisner and three other cardinals (Carlo Caffarra, Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Leo Burke) submitted "dubia" (doubts) in private, followed by a public letter ("Seeking Clarity: A Plea to Untie the Knots in "Amoris Laetitia"") in November 2016, asking Francis to clarify various points of doctrine. The first "dubia" asked about the reception of the sacraments by the divorced and remarried. The public letter asked about fundamental issues of the Christian life and referenced Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Veritatis splendor". In April 2017, following no reply to their letter, the cardinals requested a meeting with Francis, but there had been no response to this request by June 2017.  While waiting for a response from Francis, Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote a letter complimentary of Cardinal Meisner, in spite of the latter being "a fierce critic of Francis who spoke out against the pontiff allowing remarried divorcees to receive holy communion", according to The Guardian.

Joachim Meisner (25 December 1933 – 5 July 2017) was a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the immediate past Archbishop of Cologne, serving from 1989 until his resignation was accepted by Pope Francis in 2014. He previously served as Bishop of Berlin from 1980 to 1989, and was created a cardinal in 1983. He was widely considered to be Germany's leading conservative Roman Catholic figure.


Marriage to Jacob.

Rachel is first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in when Jacob happens upon her as she is about to water her father's flock. She was the second daughter of Laban, Rebekah's brother, making Jacob her first cousin. Jacob had traveled a great distance to find Laban. Rebekah had sent him there to be safe from his angry twin brother, Esau.  During Jacob's stay, he fell in love with Rachel and agreed to work seven years for Laban in return for her hand in marriage. On the night of the wedding, the bride was veiled and Jacob did not notice that Leah, Rachel's older sister, had been substituted for Rachel. Whereas "Rachel was lovely in form and beautiful", "Leah had tender eyes". Later Jacob confronted Laban, who excused his own deception by insisting that the older sister should marry first. He assured Jacob that after his wedding week was finished, he could take Rachel as a wife as well, and work another seven years as payment for her. When God "saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb" (Gen 29:31), and she gave birth to four sons.  Rachel, like Sarah and Rebecca, remained unable to conceive. According to Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "The infertility of the matriarchs has two effects: it heightens the drama of the birth of the eventual son, marking Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph as special; and it emphasizes that pregnancy is an act of God."  Rachel became jealous of Leah and gave Jacob her maidservant, Bilhah, to be a surrogate mother for her. Bilhah gave birth to two sons that Rachel named and raised (Dan and Naphtali). Leah responds by offering her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, and names and raises the two sons (Gad and Asher) that Zilpah bears. According to some commentaries, Bilhah and Zilpah are actually half-sisters of Leah and Rachel. After Leah conceived again, Rachel was finally blessed with a son, Joseph, who would become Jacob's favorite child.

Children.

Rachel's son Joseph was destined to be the leader of Israel's tribes between exile and nationhood. This role is exemplified in the Biblical story of Joseph, who prepared the way in Egypt for his family's exile there.  After Joseph's birth, Jacob decided to return to the land of Canaan with his family. Fearing that Laban would deter him, he fled with his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and twelve children without informing his father-in-law. Laban pursued him and accused him of stealing his idols. Indeed, Rachel had taken her father's idols, hidden them inside her camel's seat cushion, and sat upon them. Laban had neglected to give his daughters their inheritance ().  Not knowing that the idols were in his wife's possession, Jacob pronounced a curse on whoever had them: "With whoever you will find your gods, he will not live" (). Laban proceeded to search the tents of Jacob and his wives, but when he came to Rachel's tent, she told her father, "Let not my lord be angered that I cannot rise up before you, for the way of women is upon me" (). Laban left her alone, but the curse Jacob had pronounced came true shortly thereafter.

Death and burial.

Near Ephrath, Rachel went into a difficult labor with her second son, Benjamin. The midwife told her in the middle of the birth that her child was a boy. Before she died, Rachel named her son Ben Oni ("son of my mourning"), but Jacob called him Ben Yamin (Benjamin). Rashi explains that Ben Yamin either means "son of the right" (i.e., "south"), since Benjamin was the only one of Jacob's sons born in Canaan, which is to the south of Paddan Aram; or it could mean "son of my days", as Benjamin was born in Jacob's old age.  Rachel was buried on the road to Efrat, just outside Bethlehem, and not in the ancestral tomb at Machpelah. Today a site claimed to be Rachel's Tomb, located between Bethlehem and the Israeli settlement of Gilo, is visited by tens of thousands of visitors each year. Rachel's tomb is said to be in the ancient city of Zelzah in the land of the Tribe of Benjamin (First Book of Samuel, chapter 10, v. 2).

In Islam.

Despite not being named in the Quran, Rachel (, Rāḥīl) is honored in Islam as the wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph, who are frequently mentioned by name in the Qur'an as "Ya‘qūb" () and "Yūsuf" (), respectively.

Rachel () was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife; their mother was Adinah. Her aunt Rebekah was Jacob's mother.


History.

The coastline of the northern and eastern portions of New Guinea had been charted by navigators in the early 17th century, and the visible mountain ranges named by British admiralty navigators later in the century. Most German surveying efforts had focused on coastal regions and river basins, where Germans had established plantations. The boundary between Papua and Kaiser Wilhelmsland had been established by a joint British-German expedition in 1909; the interior had not been mapped. Since then, Papuan gold prospectors had crossed into German territory which, from the German perspective, made the accuracy of the border essential.

1870–1880.

In the 1870s and 1880s German commercial firms began to site trading stations in New Guinea. Agents of J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn reached the Bismarck Archipelago from the Caroline Islands in 1872. In 1875 Hernsheim & Company moved to the Archipelago.

1880–1900.

In 1884, the German New Guinea Company was founded in Berlin by Adolph von Hansemann and a syndicate of German bankers for the purpose of colonising and exploiting resources on "Neu Guinea" (German New Guinea), where German interest grew after British Queensland's annexation of part of eastern New Guinea. This expedition was with the knowledge and blessing of the German Chancellor, Count Otto von Bismarck, and with secrecy and speed an expedition was fitted out under Dr Otto Finsch, ornithologist and explorer.  His task was to select land for plantation development on the north-east coast of New Guinea and establish trading posts. Its influence soon grew to encompass the entire north-eastern part of New Guinea and some of the islands off the coast.  The Neuguinea Compagnie expedition left Sydney for New Guinea in the steamer Samoa captained by Eduard Dallmann. On 19 August, Chancellor Bismarck ordered the establishment of a German protectorate in the New Britain Archipelago and north-eastern New Guinea.  In 1885 and 1887, Johann Flierl established missionary stations in Simbang and Timba Island. After malaria epidemics in 1889 and again in 1891 killed almost half of the European settlers on the coast in Finschhafen, many of the Europeans moved toward Friedrich Wilhelmshafen (now Madang). Flierl established a Mission station at the Sattelberg, in the highlands. In 1890 and 1891, he built the Sattelberg Mission Station there and constructed a road approximately between the station and the Finsch harbour ("Finschhafen"), which cut the travelling time from three days to five hours.  German colonial rule in New Guinea lasted for a period of thirty years, For the first fifteen years the colony was administered under imperial charters by a private company, in the manner of the old British and Dutch East India company, but with far less success. From 1899 to 1914, the Imperial Government administered German New Guinea through a governor, who was assisted after 1904 by a nominated Government Council.  When the Imperial Government took over the running of the colony in 1899, its over-riding objective was rapid economic development, based on a German- controlled plantation economy.

1900–1914.

In April 1911, Dr Wegener, director of the Meteorological Observatory in Apia, stated he was on his way to German New Guinea, to make preliminary arrangements for a series of journeys by balloon across the mainland, the purpose of which was to make aerial surveys.  In late 1913, the Imperial Colonial Office appointed Hermann Detzner to lead an expedition to survey the border between the British protectorate, called Papua, and the German territory and to survey and map the interior. Detzner, an Austrian, was a military surveyor.  The expedition set off along the Langimar-Watut divide, and travelled by raft down the Watut River to its junction with the Markham River, and on to the Lutheran Mission station at Gabmadzung (near the Lae Nadzab Airport).

1914–1918.

On 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. As World War I spread to the Pacific, Australian troops invaded German New Guinea, taking the German barracks in Herbertshöhe (present day Kokopo) and forcing the defending German colonial troops to capitulate on 21 September after their defeat at Bita Paka.  On 6 August 1914, residents of the Protectorate were notified by proclamation that a state of war existed between Germany, and England, France and Russia. During this time Detzner continued surveying and avoiding allied forces.  On 11 November 1918, Detzner was advised that the war had ended and surrendered himself at Finschafen complete with sword and sun helmet. He was interned at Sydney and returned to Germany.

1920–1945.

In 1918, Kaiser Wilhelmsland and the other territories that comprised German New Guinea (New Pomerania and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago) were administered by the Commonwealth of Australia. Beginning in 1920, Australia, under a mandate from the League of Nations, governed the former German territory of New Guinea. It was administered under this mandate until the Japanese invasion in December 1941. Most of the territory of New Guinea, including the islands of Bougainville, and New Britain, was occupied by Japanese forces before recapture during the final months of the war in the Australian-American New Guinea campaign.

Natural features.

Quaternary glaciers created much of the topography of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. Recent studies suggest Mount Wilhelm held approximately of glacial ice. Further north, closer to the Equator, the glaciers left behind large rubble fields.  The territory of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland was largely mountainous, with Mount Wilhelm the highest peak of the Hagan Range, which separated the protectorate from the British "Papua". There are several major rivers, notably the Sepik River which drops from the Highlands and winds through lowland swamp plains to the north coast. The Markham River flows from the Finisterre Range and ends in the Huon Gulf. The Huon Peninsula, named for the French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, has raised beaches, usually created by the combination of tectonic coastal uplift and quaternary sea-level fluctuations. The Saruwaged "massif", with its twin peaks of Bangeta and Saruwaged, dominate the Saruwaged Range; rugged and steep, the massif reaches, and is surrounded by jungles at its base.

Indigenous population.

Near Mount Hagen, archaeologists have identified the Kuk Swamp (), one of the oldest agricultural drainage sites in Australasia; the site has been identified as a UNESCO site, and is on the list of recommended World Heritage sites.  Linguistic features suggest the origins of the population. Along the southeast coast and in the Markham Valley, the Austronesia family of languages predominate. The two main languages were Kâte and Yabim, with Kâte spoken in the mountainous hinterlands and Yabim on the coastal areas, particularly on coast of the Huon Peninsula. The Non-Austronesia languages are heard most commonly in the mountain regions.

Kaiser-Wilhelmsland formed part of German New Guinea (German: "Deutsch-Neuguinea"), the South Pacific protectorate of the German Empire. Named in honour of Wilhelm I, who reigned as German Emperor ("Kaiser") from 1871 to 1888, it included the northern part of present-day Papua New Guinea. From 1884 until 1920 the territory was a protectorate () of the German Empire. Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the Bismarck Archipelago (including New Mecklenburg and New Pomerania), the northern Solomon Islands, the Caroline Islands, Palau, Nauru, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands comprised German New Guinea.


Co-rule with father.

Immediately after his own coronation, Robert's father Hugh began to push for the coronation of his son. "The essential means by which the early Capetians were seen to have kept the throne in their family was through the association of the eldest surviving son in the royalty during the father's lifetime," Andrew W. Lewis has observed, in tracing the phenomenon in this line of kings who lacked dynastic legitimacy. Hugh's claimed reason was that he was planning an expedition against the Moorish armies harassing Borrel II of Barcelona, an invasion which never occurred, and that the stability of the country necessitated a co-king, should he die while on expedition. Ralph Glaber, however, attributes Hugh's request to his old age and inability to control the nobility. Modern scholarship has largely imputed to Hugh the motive of establishing a dynasty against the claims of electoral power on the part of the aristocracy, but this is not the typical view of contemporaries and even some modern scholars have been less sceptical of Hugh's "plan" to campaign in Spain. Robert was eventually crowned on 25 December 987. A measure of Hugh's success is that when Hugh died in 996, Robert continued to reign without any succession dispute, but during his long reign actual royal power dissipated into the hands of the great territorial magnates.  Robert had begun to take on active royal duties with his father in the early 990s. In 991, he helped his father prevent the French bishops from trekking to Mousson in the Kingdom of Germany for a synod called by Pope John XV, with whom Hugh was then in disagreement.

Marital problems.

As early as 989, having been rebuffed in his search for a Byzantine princess, Hugh Capet arranged for Robert to marry Rozala, the recently widowed daughter of Berengar II of Italy, many years his senior, who took the name of Susanna upon becoming queen. She was the widow of Arnulf II of Flanders, with whom she had two children. Robert divorced her within a year of his father's death in 996. He then married Bertha, daughter of Conrad of Burgundy, around the time of his father's death. She was a widow of Odo I of Blois, but was also Robert's second cousin. For reasons of consanguinity, Pope Gregory V refused to sanction the marriage, and Robert was excommunicated. After long negotiations with Gregory's successor, Sylvester II, the marriage was annulled.  Finally, in 1001, Robert entered into his final and longest-lasting marriage—to Constance of Arles, the daughter of William I of Provence. Her southern customs and entourage were regarded with suspicion at court. After his companion Hugh of Beauvais, count palatine, urged the king to repudiate her as well, knights of her kinsman Fulk III, Count of Anjou had Beauvais murdered in 1008. The king and Bertha then went to Rome to ask Pope Sergius IV for an annulment so they could remarry. After this was refused, he went back to Constance and fathered several children by her. Her ambition alienated the chroniclers of her day, who blamed her for several of the king's decisions. Constance and Robert remained married until his death in 1031.

Piety.

Robert was a devout Catholic, hence his sobriquet "the Pious." He was musically inclined, being a composer, chorister, and poet, and made his palace a place of religious seclusion where he conducted the matins and vespers in his royal robes. Robert's reputation for piety also resulted from his lack of toleration for heretics, whom he harshly punished. He is said to have advocated forced conversions of local Jewry. He supported riots against the Jews of Orléans who were accused of conspiring to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Robert reinstated the Roman imperial custom of burning heretics at the stake.  In 1030–1031, Robert confirmed the foundation of Noyers Abbey.

Military career.

The kingdom Robert inherited was not large and, in an effort to increase his power, he vigorously pursued his claim to any feudal lands that became vacant, usually resulting in war with a counter-claimant. In 1003, his invasion of the Duchy of Burgundy was thwarted, and it would not be until 1016 that he was finally able to get the support of the Church to be recognized as Duke of Burgundy.  The pious Robert made few friends and many enemies, including three of his own sons: Hugh, Henry, and Robert. They turned against their father in a civil war over power and property. Hugh died in revolt in 1025. In a conflict with Henry and the younger Robert, King Robert's army was defeated, and he retreated to Beaugency outside Paris, his capital. He died in the middle of the war with his sons on 20 July 1031 at Melun. He was interred with Constance in Saint Denis Basilica and succeeded by his son Henry, in both France and Burgundy.

Children.

Robert had no children from his short-lived marriage to Susanna. His illegal marriage to Bertha gave him one stillborn son in 999, but only Constance gave him surviving children:  Robert also left an illegitimate son: Rudolph, Bishop of Bourges.

Robert II (27 March 972 – 20 July 1031), called the Pious () or the Wise (), was King of the Franks from 996 to 1031, the second from the House of Capet. He was born in Orléans to Hugh Capet and Adelaide of Aquitaine. Robert distinguished himself with an extraordinarily long reign for the time. His 35-year-long reign was marked by his attempts to expand the royal domain by any means, especially by his long struggle to gain the Duchy of Burgundy. His policies earned him many enemies, including three of his sons. He was also known for his difficult marriages: he married three times, annulling two of these and attempting to annul the third, prevented only by the Pope's refusal to accept a third annulment.


Life and career.

Early life.

Born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, who moved to France soon thereafter, Lino dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs. At one point Ventura was pursuing a prizefighting and professional wrestling career but had to end it because of an injury.

Early roles.

In 1953, by chance, one of his friends mentioned him to Jacques Becker who was looking for an Italian actor to play opposite Jean Gabin in a gangster movie called "Touchez pas au grisbi" (1954). Becker offered him on the spot the role of Angelo, which Ventura refused at first but then accepted. He had such a presence in the film that the whole profession took notice. The film was a big success.  Ventura started to build up an acting career in similar hard-boiled gangster films, often playing beside his friend Jean Gabin, including his second film, "Razzia sur la chnouf" (1955).  He followed it with "Law of the Streets" (1956), "Crime and Punishment" (1956) with Gabin.

Later career.

Some of his most famous roles include the portrait of corrupt police chief Tiger Brown in "The Threepenny Opera" (1963) and mob boss Vito Genovese in "The Valachi Papers" (1972).  Although he remained an Italian citizen throughout his life and long used to seeing himself dubbed into Italian from the original French release, he only made a handful of films in his native language, among them "The Last Judgement" ("Il giudizio universale", 1961), "Illustrious Corpses" ("Cadaveri eccellenti", 1976) and "Cento Giorni a Palermo" (1983).  Ventura remained active until the year before his death from a heart attack in 1987 at the age of 68. Having a disabled daughter himself, he created a charitable foundation, "Perce-Neige" ("Snowdrop") in 1966, which supports disabled people.  Throughout his career, he was one of the most popular actors of French cinema. He spoke French without any accent (excepting a Parisian one at the beginning of his career) and spoke Italian with a slight French accent, having arrived in France at the age of seven. Forcibly conscripted into the Italian army during the Second World War, he deserted. But, although his wife and four children were French, he never wanted to give up Italian citizenship, out of respect for his parents. Despite this, he was ranked 23rd of the 100 greatest Frenchmen, 17 years after his death.  Somewhat paradoxically, Ventura attributed his great success to his limited range as an actor; and often said "If I cannot believe in a character, or if something does not ring true, I cannot act it."  In a 1980 interview he said that the previous year "I began to realize how incredibly lucky I had been since the age of 9, how much I had been loved by so many people. When I act, I am doing what I love, and I am paid for it. So I put myself in the service of the film, never the film in service to me." He mentioned he turned down several roles - a part in "Apocalypse Now" (cut from the final film), a role in a Robert Aldrich film and the part played by François Truffaut in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  He said, "The story is everything. My good friend Jean Gabin told me 25 years ago there are three important things in movies: the story, the story and the story."  "I have limitations," he said. "I have no training; I could not do the classics. What I can do is myself. And I like best not to talk at all... I study the script, and then try to become the character. That is very mysterious, how that happens. I cannot explain it. There are so many mysteries in cinema, the way everything must interlock, that when you think of it all, you never want to make a film."

Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura (14 July 1919 – 22 October 1987) was an Italian actor who grew up in France and starred in many French films. Born in Italy, he was raised in Paris by his Italian mother. After a first career as a professional wrestler was ended by injury, he was offered a part as a gang boss in the Jacques Becker film "Touchez pas au grisbi" (1954) and rapidly became one of France's favourite film actors, playing opposite many other great stars such as Bourvil, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Claude Rich, Bernard Blier, Jacques Brel, Michel Serrault, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and working with other leading directors such as Louis Malle, Claude Sautet, Claude Miller, and the great script writer Michel Audiard. Usually portraying a tough man, either a criminal or a cop, he also featured as a leader of the Resistance in the Jean-Pierre Melville directed "Army of Shadows" ("L'armée des ombres", 1969). Having a daughter born handicapped, he and his wife founded a charity Perce-Neige (Snowdrop) which aids disabled children and their parents. Though he never renounced his Italian citizenship, he was voted 23rd in a poll for the 100 greatest Frenchmen.


Specification process.

The OSGi specification is developed by the members in an open process and made available to the public free of charge under the OSGi Specification License. The OSGi Alliance has a compliance program that is open to members only. As of November 2010, there are seven certified OSGi framework implementations. A separate page lists both certified and non-certified OSGi Specification Implementations, which include OSGi frameworks and other OSGi specifications.

Architecture.

OSGi is a Java framework for developing and deploying modular software programs and libraries. Each bundle is a tightly coupled, dynamically loadable collection of classes, jars, and configuration files that explicitly declare their external dependencies (if any).  The framework is conceptually divided into the following areas:

Bundles.

A bundle is a group of Java classes and additional resources equipped with a detailed manifest codice_1 file on all its contents, as well as additional services needed to give the included group of Java classes more sophisticated behaviors, to the extent of deeming the entire aggregate a component.  Below is an example of a typical codice_1 file with OSGi Headers:  The meaning of the contents in the example is as follows:

Life-cycle.

A Life Cycle layer adds bundles that can be dynamically installed, started, stopped, updated and uninstalled. Bundles rely on the module layer for class loading but add an API to manage the modules in run time. The life cycle layer introduces dynamics that are normally not part of an application. Extensive dependency mechanisms are used to assure the correct operation of the environment. Life cycle operations are fully protected with the security architecture. Below is an example of a typical Java class implementing the codice_3 interface:  package org.wikipedia;  import org.osgi.framework.BundleActivator; import org.osgi.framework.BundleContext;  public class Activator implements BundleActivator {

Services.

Standard services.

The OSGi Alliance has specified many services. Services are specified by a Java interface. Bundles can implement this interface and register the service with the Service Registry. Clients of the service can find it in the registry, or react to it when it appears or disappears.  The table below shows a description of OSGi System Services:  The table below shows a description of OSGi Protocol Services:  The table below shows a description of OSGi Miscellaneous Services:

Organization.

The OSGi Alliance was founded by Ericsson, IBM, Motorola, Sun Microsystems and others in March 1999. Before incorporating as a nonprofit corporation, it was called the Connected Alliance.  Among its members are () more than 35 companies from quite different business areas, for example Adobe Systems, Deutsche Telekom, Hitachi, IBM, Liferay, Makewave, NEC, NTT, Oracle, Orange S.A., ProSyst, Salesforce.com, Siemens, Software AG and TIBCO Software.  The Alliance has a board of directors that provides the organization's overall governance. OSGi officers have various roles and responsibilities in supporting the alliance. Technical work is conducted within Expert Groups (EGs) chartered by the board of directors, and non-technical work is conducted in various working groups and committees. The technical work conducted within Expert Groups include developing specifications, reference implementations, and compliance tests. These Expert Groups have produced five major releases of the OSGi specifications ().  Dedicated Expert Groups exist for the enterprise, mobile, vehicle and the core platform areas.  The Enterprise Expert Group (EEG) is the newest EG and is addressing Enterprise / Server-side applications. In November 2007 the Residential Expert Group (REG) started to work on specifications to remotely manage residential/home-gateways. In October 2003, Nokia, Motorola, IBM, ProSyst and other OSGi members formed a Mobile Expert Group (MEG) that will specify a MIDP-based service platform for the next generation of smart mobile phones, addressing some of the needs that CLDC cannot manage - other than CDC. MEG became part of OSGi as with R4.

The OSGi Alliance, formerly known as the Open Services Gateway initiative, is an open standards organization founded in March 1999 that originally specified and continues to maintain the OSGi standard.


Early life.

Ernest was the eldest son of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf. His youngest brother, Leopold Georg Christian Frederick, was later elected the first King of the Belgians.  On 10 May 1803, aged 19, Ernest was proclaimed an adult because his father had become gravely ill, and he was required to take part in the government of the duchy. When his father died in 1806, he succeeded in the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld as Ernest III. However, he could not immediately take over the formal government of his lands, because the duchy was occupied by Napoleonic troops and was under French administration. The following year, after the Peace of Tilsit (1807), the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was reunited (having previously been dissolved) and restored to Ernest. This occurred through Russian pressure, since his sister Juliane was married to the brother of the Russian Tsar.

Marriages and children.

Ernest married Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg in Gotha on 3 July 1817. They had two children:  The marriage was unhappy because both husband and wife were promiscuous. As the biographer Lytton Strachey put it: "The ducal court was not noted for the strictness of its morals; the Duke was a man of gallantry, and the Duchess followed her husband's example. There were scandals: one of the Court Chamberlains, a charming and cultivated man of Jewish extraction, was talked of; at last there was a separation, followed by a divorce." Ernest and Louise were separated in 1824 and were officially divorced on 31 March 1826. As heirs to Coburg, the children remained with their father. Seven months after the divorce, in October 1826, Louise secretly married one of her lovers. She died in 1831.  In Coburg on 23 December 1832, Ernest married his niece Duchess Marie of Württemberg, the daughter of his sister Antoinette. They had no children. This marriage made Marie both Prince Albert's first cousin and his stepmother.  Ernest had three illegitimate children:

Estates.

After 1813, Ernest was a Prussian general and participated in military actions against Napoleon. He fought in the battles of Lützen and Leipzig (1813), and drew in 1814 into the French fortress of Mainz. After the battle of Leipzig, he commanded the "5. Armeekorps".  After the defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna on 9 June 1815 gave him an area of 450 square kilometres with 25,000 inhabitants around the town of St. Wendel. Its area was somewhat augmented by the second Treaty of Paris. In 1816, this estate received the name of Principality of Lichtenberg. Ernest sold it to Prussia in 1834.  In 1825, Frederick IV, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, who was the uncle of Ernest's first wife Louise, died without an heir. This resulted in a rearrangement of the Ernestine duchies. It was only as a member of the Ernestine dynasty (and not as Louise's husband) that Ernest had a claim on the late duke's estates. However, he was at that time in the process of divorcing Louise, and the other branches used this as a leverage to drive a better bargain for themselves by insisting that he should not inherit Gotha. They reached a compromise on 12 November 1826: Ernest received Gotha, but had to cede Saalfeld to Saxe-Meiningen. He subsequently became "Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha". Although he had given a constitution to Gotha in 1821, he did not interfere in the system of government in Gotha.  At Coburg, Ernest was responsible for various construction projects, including the establishment of the "Hoftheater" in its new building. The "Schlossplatz" as it appears today is largely due to work under his rule. He is chiefly remembered for the economic, educational and constitutional development of his territories, and for the significant international position attained by the house of Coburg.

Death and burial.

Ernest died on 29 January 1844 and was initially buried in the Morizkirche but later reinterred in the newly built mausoleum in "".

Honours.

He received the following awards:

Ernest I (; 2 January 178429 January 1844) was the last sovereign duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (as Ernest III) and, from 1826, the first sovereign duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (as Ernest I). He was the father of Albert, Prince Consort, who was the husband of Queen Victoria. Ernest fought against Napoleon Bonaparte, and through construction projects and the establishment of a court theatre, he left a strong imprint on his residence town, Coburg.


Life.

Early life.

Born in Orbe Castle, Orbe, Kingdom of Upper Burgundy (now in modern-day Switzerland), she was the daughter of Rudolf II of Burgundy, a member of the Elder House of Welf, and Bertha of Swabia.  She became involved from the beginning in the complicated fight to control not only Burgundy but also Lombardy. The battle between her father Rudolf II and Berengar I to control northern Italy ended with Berengar's death, and Rudolf could claimed the throne.  However, the inhabitants of Lombardy weren't happy with this decision and called for help of another ally, Hugh of Provence, who considered Rudolf an enemy for a long time. Although Hugh challenged Rudolf for the Burgundian throne, he only succeeded when Adelaide's father died in 937, and in order to be able to control Upper Burgundy he decided to marry his son Lothair II, the nominal King of Italy, with Adelaide (in 947, before June 27) who was fifteen years old.  The marriage produced a daughter, Emma of Italy, born about 948. She became Queen of Western France by marrying King Lothair of France.

Empress.

The Calendar of Saints states that her first husband was poisoned, on November 22 of 950 in Turin, by the holder of real power, his successor, Berengar II of Italy.  Not only did some people of Lombardy suggest that Adelaide wanted to rule the kingdom by herself, but Berengar attempted to cement his political power by forcing her to marry his son, Adalbert. The young widow refused and fled, taking refuge in the castle of Como. Nevertheless, she was quickly tracked down and imprisoned for four months at Garda.  According to Adelaide's contemporary biographer, Odilo of Cluny, she managed to escape from captivity. After a time spent in the marshes nearby, she was rescued by a priest and taken to a "certain impregnable fortress," likely the fortified town of Canossa Castle near Reggio. She managed to send an emissary to Otto I, and asked the East Frankish king for his protection. The widow met Otto at the old Lombard capital of Pavia and they married on 23 September 951.  A few years later, in 953, Liudolf, Duke of Swabia, Otto's son by his first marriage, made a big revolt against his father that was quelled by the latter. On account of this episode, Otto decided to dispossess Liudolf of his ducal title. This decision favoured the position of Adelaide and her descendants at court. Adelaide also managed to retain her entire territorial dowry.  After returning to Germany with his new wife, Otto cemented the existence of the Holy Roman Empire by defeating the Hungarian invaders at the battle of Lechfeld (August 10, 955). In addition, he extended the boundaries of East Francia beyond the Elbe River, defeating the Obrodites and other Slavs of the Elbe at the battle of Recknitz (October 16, 955).  Adelaide accompanied her husband on his second expedition to Italy, destined to subdue the revolt of Berengar II and to protect Pope John XII. In Rome, Otto the Great was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on February 2, 962 by Pope John XII and breaking tradition, also crowned Adelaide as Holy Roman Empress. Four years later, Adelaide and their eleven-year-old son, Otto II, traveled again with Otto in 966 on his third expedition to Italy, where the Emperor restored the newly elected Pope John XIII to his throne (and executed some of the Roman rioters who had deposed him).  Adelaide remained in Rome for six years while Otto ruled his kingdom from Italy. Their son Otto II was crowned co-emperor in 967, then married the Byzantine princess Theophanu in April 972, resolving the conflict between the two empires in southern Italy, as well as ensuring the imperial succession. Adelaide and her husband then returned to Germany, where Otto died in May 973, at the same Memleben palace where his father had died 37 years earlier.

Regency.

In the years following Oto's death, Adelaide exerted a powerful influence at court. However, her daughter-in-law, the Byzantine princess Theophanu, turned her husband against her and Adelaide was expelled from court in 978. During her exile, she divided her time living partly in Italy and partly in Arles with her brother Conrad of Burgundy, King of Burgundy, through whom she was finally reconciled with her son; in 983 (shortly before his death) Otto II appointed her his viceroy in Italy.  In 983, her son Otto II died and was succeeded by her grandson Otto III under the regency of his mother Adelaide's daughter-in-law Dowager Empress Theophanu while Adelaide remained in Italy. When Theophanu died in 990, Adelaide assumed regency on behalf of her grandson the Emperor until he reached legal majority four years later. Adelaide resigned as regent when Otto III was declared of legal majority in 995 and then was free to devote herself exclusively to her works of charity, in particular to the foundation and restoration of religious houses: monasteries, churches and abbeys.  Adelaide had long entertained close relations with Cluny, then the center of the movement for ecclesiastical reform, and in particular with its abbots Majolus and Odilo. She retired to a nunnery she had founded in c. 991 at Selz in Alsace.  On her way to Burgundy to support her nephew Rudolf III against a rebellion, she died at Selz Abbey on 16 December 999, days short of the millennium she thought would bring the Second Coming of Christ. She was buried in the Abbey and Pope Urban II canonized her in 1097. Although after serious flooding, which almost completely destroyed it in 1307, the saint's relics, miraculously saved, were moved to the parish church in the town of Seltz, dedicated to Saint Stephen, where they now rest.  Adelaide had constantly devoted herself to the service of the church and peace, and to the empire as guardian of both; she also interested herself in the conversion of the Slavs. She was thus a principal agent—almost an embodiment—of the work of the pre-schism Orthodox Catholic Church at the end of the Early Middle Ages in the construction of the religious culture of Central Europe. Some of her relics are preserved in a shrine in Hanover. Her feast day, 16 December, is still kept in many German dioceses.

Issue.

In 947, Adelaide was married to King Lothair II of Italy. The union produced one child:  In 951, Adelaide was married to King Otto I, the future Holy Roman Emperor. The union produced four children:

Legacy, art, and literature.

Adelaide is usually represented in the garb of an empress, with sceptre and crown. Since 14th century, it is also given as an attribute a model church or a ship (with which it is said to have escaped from captivity).  The most famous representation of German art belongs to a group of sandstone figures in the choir of Meissen Cathedral, which was created around 1260. She is shown here with her husband, who was not canonized, since he founded the diocese of Meissen with her.  Operas:  Books and Novels:  Artwork:  Others:

Adelaide of Italy (; 93116 December 999 AD), also called Adelaide of Burgundy, was Holy Roman Empress by marriage to Emperor Otto the Great; she was crowned with him by Pope John XII in Rome on 2 February 962. She was regent of the Holy Roman Empire as the guardian of her grandson in 991–995.


Establishment.

Ostensibly, the alliance was formed to instill the divine right of kings and Christian values in European political life, as pursued by Alexander I under the influence of his spiritual adviser Baroness Barbara von Krüdener. About three months after the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, the monarchs of Catholic (Austria), Protestant (Prussia), and Orthodox (Russia) confession promised to act on the basis of "justice, love and peace", both in internal and foreign affairs, for "consolidating human institutions and remedying their imperfections".  The Alliance was quickly rejected by the United Kingdom (though George IV declared consent in his capacity as King of Hanover), the Papal States, and the Ottoman Empire. Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, called it "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense".

Organization.

In practice, the Austrian state chancellor and foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich made it a bastion against democracy, revolution, and secularism (although it is said that his first reaction was to call it "a resounding nothing"). The monarchs in the Alliance used it to suppress revolutionary influence (especially from the French Revolution) from entering their own nations.  The Alliance is usually associated with the later Quadruple and Quintuple Alliances, which included the United Kingdom and (from 1818) France with the aim of upholding the European peace settlement and balance of power in the Concert of Europe concluded at the Congress of Vienna. On 29 September 1818, Alexander, Emperor Francis I of Austria and King Frederick William III of Prussia met with the Duke of Wellington, Viscount Castlereagh and the Duc de Richelieu at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle to demand stern measures against university "demagogues", which would be realized in the Carlsbad Decrees of the following year. At the Congress of Troppau in 1820 and the succeeding Congress of Laibach in 1821, Metternich tried to align his allies in the suppression of the Carbonari revolt against King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. In 1821 the Alliance met in Ljubljana. The Quintuple Alliance met for the last time at the Congress of Verona in 1822 to advise against the Greek Revolution and to resolve upon the French invasion of Spain.  The last meetings had revealed the rising antagonism with Britain and France, especially on Italian unification, the right to self-determination, and the Eastern Question. The Alliance is conventionally taken to have become defunct with Alexander's death in 1825. France ultimately went her separate way following the July Revolution of 1830, leaving the core of Austria, Prussia, and Russia as a Central-Eastern European block which once again congregated to suppress the Revolutions of 1848. The Austro-Russian alliance finally broke up in the Crimean War. Though Russia had helped to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Austria did not take any action to support her ally, declared herself neutral, and even occupied the Wallachian and Moldavian lands on the Danube upon the Russian retreat in 1854. Thereafter, Austria remained isolated, which added to the loss of her leading role in the German states, culminating in her defeat during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866.

The Holy Alliance (;, "Svyashchennyy soyuz"; also called the Grand Alliance) was a coalition linking the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. It was created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Emperor Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815. The alliance aimed to restrain liberalism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, and it nominally succeeded in this until the Crimean War. Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance following the unification of Germany in 1871, but the alliance again faltered by the 1880s over Austrian and Russian conflicts of interest with regard to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.


Biography.

Early years.

Christian was elected successor to his father in June 1650. This was not a free choice, but "de facto" automatic hereditary succession. Escorted by his chamberlain Christoffer Parsberg, Christian went on a long trip abroad, to Holland, England, France, and home through Germany. On this trip, he saw absolutism in its most splendid achievement at the young Louis XIV's court, and heard about the theory of the divine right of kings. He returned to Denmark in August 1663. From 1664 he was allowed to attend proceedings of the State College. Hereditary succession was made official by Royal Law in 1665. Christian was hailed as heir in Copenhagen in August 1665, in Odense and Viborg in September, and in Christiania, Norway in July 1666. Only a short time before he became king, he was taken into the Council of the Realm and the Supreme Court. He became king upon his father's death on 9 February 1670, and was formally crowned in 1671. He was the first hereditary king of Denmark-Norway, and in honor of this, Denmark-Norway acquired costly new crown jewels and a magnificent new ceremonial sword.

Reign.

It is generally argued that Christian V's personal courage and affability made him popular among the common people, but his image was marred by his unsuccessful attempt to regain Scania for Denmark in the Scanian War. The war exhausted Denmark's economic resources without securing any gains. Part of Christian's appeal to the common people may be explained by the fact that he allowed Danish and Norwegian commoners into state service, but his attempts to curtail the influence of the nobility also meant continuing his father's drive toward absolutism. To accommodate non-aristocrats into state service, he created the new noble ranks of count and baron. One of the commoners elevated in this way by the king was Peder Schumacher, named Count of Griffenfeld by Christian V in 1670 and high councillor of Denmark in 1674. Griffenfeld, a skilled statesman, better understood the precarious situation Denmark-Norway placed itself by attacking Sweden at a time when the country was allied with France, the major European power of the era. After some hesitation, Christian V initiated the Scanian War (1675-1679) against Sweden in an attempt to reconquer Scania which Denmark the lost under the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. As Griffenfeld predicted, Sweden's stronger ally France was the party that dictated the peace with Denmark's ally the Netherlands, and in spite of Danish victory at sea in the battles against Sweden in 1675–1679 during the Scanian War, Danish hopes for border changes on the Scandinavian Peninsula between the two countries were dashed. The results of the war efforts proved politically and financially unremunerative for Denmark-Norway. The damage to the Danish-Norwegian economy was extensive. At this point, Christian V no longer had his most experienced foreign relations counsel around to repair the political damage — in 1676 he had been persuaded to sacrifice Griffenfeld as a traitor, and to the clamour of his adversaries, Griffenfeld was imprisoned for the remainder of his life.  After the Scanian War, his sister, Princess Ulrike Eleonora of Denmark, married Swedish king Charles XI, whose mother was a stout supporter of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. In spite of the family ties, war between the brothers-in-law was close again in 1689, when Charles XI nearly provoked confrontation with Denmark-Norway by his support of the exiled Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp in his claims to Holstein-Gottorp in Schleswig-Holstein.  Like Charles XI of Sweden, who had never been outside Sweden, Christian V spoke only German and Danish and was therefore often considered poorly educated due to his inability to communicate with visiting foreign diplomats. Christian V was also often considered dependent on his councillors by contemporary sources. The Danish monarch did nothing to dispel this notion. In his memoirs, he listed "hunting, love-making, war and maritime affairs" as his main interests in life.  Christian V introduced the Danish Code ("Danske Lov") in 1683, the first law code for all of Denmark. He also introduced the similar "Norske Lov" (Norwegian Code) of 1687 to replace Christian IVs Norwegian Code from 1604 in Norway. He also introduced the land register of 1688, which attempted to work out the land value of the united monarchy in order to create a more just taxation.  During the reign of Christian V, Denmark's trade in cattle that had declined due to catastrophic fires and wars has been restored, and livestock and crop exports have also surpassed Frederick III, with thousands of cattle entering and leaving Jutland through the Oxen Way. After entering and fattening in the Danish King's German enclave County of Oldenburg,the castle reached the big market in Wedel. From there, cattle are resold to all parts of North Germany via Stade, Hamburg and Lübeck. As the population continues to soar at the end of the seventeenth century, demand for beef, grains and fish is increasing, both throughout North Germany and on the Baltic coast alone. In terms of the number of livestock shipped to the South, in 1680 each market had reached 40,000 cattle. Traditional export commodities, including fish and grains, have increased their exports since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The agricultural products exported by Denmark, especially cattle, have made a lot of money from Germany and the Netherlands for the Danish royal family, the aristocrats and the town residents. During his reign, science witnessed a golden age due to the work of the astronomer Ole Rømer in spite of the king's personal lack of scientific knowledge and interest. He died from the after-effects of a hunting accident and was interred in Roskilde Cathedral.

Family.

Christian V had eight children by his wife and six by his Maîtresse-en-titre, Sophie Amalie Moth (1654–1719), whom he took up with when she was sixteen. Sophie was the daughter of his former tutor Poul Moth. Christian publicly introduced Sophie into court in 1672, a move which insulted his wife, and made her countess of Samsø on 31 December 1677.  Legitimate children by his queen Charlotte Amalie: Illegitimate children by his mistress, Sophie Amalie Moth, Countess of Samsø:

Christian V (15 April 1646 25 August 1699) was king of Denmark and Norway from 1670 until his death in 1699. Well-regarded by the common people, he was the first king anointed at Frederiksborg Castle chapel as absolute monarch since the decree that institutionalized the supremacy of the king in Denmark-Norway, he fortified the absolutist system against the aristocracy by accelerating his father's practice of allowing Holstein nobles but also Danish and Norwegian commoners into state service.


History.

Lee Ka Lau, Francis Lau, Benny Lau, and Kwok Yuen Ho founded ATI in 1985 as Array Technology Inc. Working primarily in the OEM field, ATI produced integrated graphics cards for PC manufacturers such as IBM and Commodore. By 1987, ATI had grown into an independent graphics-card retailer, introducing EGA Wonder and VGA Wonder card product lines that year. In the early nineties, they released products able to process graphics without the CPU: in May 1991, the Mach8, in 1992 the Mach32, which offered improved memory bandwidth and GUI acceleration. ATI Technologies Inc. went public in 1993, with shares listed on NASDAQ and on the Toronto Stock Exchange.  In 1994, the Mach64 accelerator debuted, powering the Graphics Xpression and Graphics Pro Turbo, offering hardware support for YUV-to-RGB color space conversion in addition to hardware zoom; early techniques of hardware-based video acceleration.  ATI introduced its first combination of 2D and 3D accelerator under the name 3D Rage. This chip was based on the Mach 64, but it featured elemental 3D acceleration. The ATI Rage line powered almost the entire range of ATI graphics products. In particular, the Rage Pro was one of the first viable 2D-plus-3D alternatives to 3Dfx's 3D-only Voodoo chipset. 3D acceleration in the Rage line advanced from the basic functionality within the initial 3D Rage to a more advanced DirectX 6.0 accelerator in 1999 Rage 128.  The All-in-Wonder product line, introduced in 1996, was the first combination of integrated graphics chip with TV tuner card and the first chip that enabled display of computer graphics on a TV set. The cards featured 3D acceleration powered by ATI's 3D Rage II, 64-bit 2D performance, TV-quality video acceleration, analog video capture, TV tuner functionality, flicker-free TV-out and stereo TV audio reception.  ATI entered the mobile computing sector by introducing 3D-graphics acceleration to laptops in 1996. The Mobility product line had to meet requirements different from those of desktop PCs, such as minimized power usage, reduced heat output, TMDS output capabilities for laptop screens, and maximized integration. In 1997, ATI acquired Tseng Labs's graphics assets, which included 40 engineers.  The Radeon line of graphics products was unveiled in 2000. The initial Radeon graphics processing unit offered an all-new design with DirectX 7.0 3D acceleration, video acceleration, and 2D acceleration. Technology developed for a specific Radeon generation could be built in varying levels of features and performance in order to provide products suited for the entire market range, from high-end to budget to mobile versions.  In 2000, ATI acquired ArtX, which engineered the Flipper graphics chip used in the Nintendo GameCube game console. They also created a modified version of the chip (codenamed Hollywood) for the successor of the GameCube, the Wii. Microsoft contracted ATI to design the graphics core (codenamed Xenos) for the Xbox 360. Later in 2005, ATI acquired Terayon's cable modem silicon intellectual property, strengthening their lead in the consumer digital television market. K. Y. Ho remained as Chairman of the Board until he retired in November 2005. Dave Orton replaced him as the President and CEO of the organization.  On July 24, 2006, a joint announcement revealed that Advanced Micro Devices would acquire ATI in a deal valued at $5.6 billion. The acquisition consideration closed on October 25, 2006, and included over $2 billion financed from a loan and 56 million shares of AMD stock. ATI's operations became part of the AMD Graphics Product Group (GPG), and ATI's CEO Dave Orton became the Executive Vice President of Visual and Media Businesses at AMD until his resignation in 2007. The top-level management was reorganized with the Senior Vice President and General Manager, and the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Electronics Group, both of whom would report to the CEO of AMD. On 30 August 2010, John Trikola announced that AMD would retire the ATI brand for its graphics chipsets in favor of the AMD name.

Products.

In addition to developing high-end GPUs (originally called a VPU, visual processing unit, by ATI) for PCs and Apple Macs, ATI also designed embedded versions for laptops (Mobility Radeon), PDAs and mobile phones (Imageon), integrated motherboards (Radeon IGP), and others.  "Ruby", a fictional female character described as a "mercenary for hire", was created by ATI to promote some of its products. Computer-animated videos produced by RhinoFX about Ruby on a mission (being a sniper, saboteur, hacker and so on) appeared at large technology shows such as "CeBIT" and "CES".

Computer graphics chipsets.

Although AMD strongly considered making the functional part of the ATI drivers "open source", before the merger with AMD, ATI had no plans to release their graphics drivers as free software:

Personal computer platforms and chipsets.

In addition to the above chipset, ATI struck a deal in 2005, with CPU and motherboard manufacturers, particularly Asus and Intel, to create onboard 3D Graphics solutions for Intel's range of motherboards released with their range of Intel Pentium M-based desktop processors, the Intel Core and Intel Core 2 processors, the D101GGC and D101GGC2 chipset (codenamed ""Grand County"") based on the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset. However, high-end boards with integrated graphics processor (IGP) still used Intel GMA integrated graphics processors. The deal with Intel ended with the purchase of ATI by AMD in 2006, with Intel announcing SiS IGP chipset (D201GLY chipset, codenamed ""Little Valley"") for entry-level desktop platform, replacing the ""Grand County"" series chipsets.

Handheld chipsets.

Besides full products, ATI also supplied 3D and 2D graphics components to other vendors, specifically the Qualcomm MSM7000 series SoC chips of handheld and upcoming Freescale i. MX processors ATI claimed in May 2006, that it had sold over 100 million 'cell phone media co-processors', significantly more than ATI's rival NVIDIA, and announced in February 2007, that the firm had shipped a total of 200 million of Imageon products since 2003.  After the AMD acquisition, the Imageon and Xilleon were sold off to Qualcomm and Broadcom, respectively.

ATI Technologies Inc. (commonly called ATI, later known as Radeon Technologies Group) was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technology Inc., the company listed publicly in 1993. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) acquired ATI in 2006. As a major fabrication-less or fabless semiconductor company, ATI conducted research and development in-house and outsourced the manufacturing and assembly of its products. With the decline and eventual bankruptcy of 3dfx in 2000, ATI and its chief rival Nvidia emerged as the two dominant players in the graphics processors industry, eventually forcing other manufacturers into niche roles.


Biography.

Baptismal records indicate that Corelli was born on 17 February 1653 in the small Romagna town of Fusignano, then in the diocese of Ferrara, Papal States. His ancestors had been in Fusignano and land-owners there since 1506, when a Corelli moved to the area from Rome. Although apparently prosperous, they were almost certainly not of the nobility, as several fanciful accounts of the composer's genealogy subsequently claimed. Corelli's father, from whom he took the name Arcangelo, died five weeks before the composer's birth. Consequently, he was raised by his mother, Santa ("née" Ruffini, or Raffini), alongside four elder siblings.  The wealth of anecdotes and legends attached to Corelli contrast sharply with the paucity of reliable contemporary evidence documenting events in his life. This gap is especially pronounced for his formative years, including his musical education, even though traditional accounts of a highly idealized childhood have long been debunked. According to the poet Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, who presumably knew the composer well, Corelli initially studied music under a priest in the nearby town of Faenza, and then in Lugo, before moving in 1666 to Bologna.  A major centre of musical culture of the time, Bologna had a flourishing school of violinists associated with Ercole Gaibara and his pupils, Giovanni Benvenuti and Leonardo Brugnoli. Reports by later sources link Corelli's musical studies with several master violinists, including Benvenuti, Brugnoli, Bartolomeo Laurenti and Giovanni Battista Bassani. Although historically plausible, these accounts remain largely unconfirmed, as does the claim that the papal contralto Matteo Simonelli first taught him composition. A remark Corelli later made to a patron suggests that his musical education focused mainly on the violin.  Chronicles of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna indicate that Corelli was accepted as a member by 1670, at the exceptionally young age of seventeen. The credibility of this attribution has been disputed. Although the nickname "Il Bolognese" appears on the title-pages of Corelli's first three published sets of works (Opus 1 to 3), the duration of his stay in Bologna remains unclear. Anecdotes of trips outside Italy to France, Germany and Spain lack any contemporary evidence. For example, the anecdote that Corelli's continental fame stemmed from a trip to Paris at the age of nineteen, where he was chased away by an envious Jean-Baptiste Lully, seems to have originated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was also claimed that Corelli spent time in Germany in the service of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria (supposedly in 1681), as well as in the house of his friend and fellow violinist-composer Cristiano Farinelli (between 1680 and 1685).  Although it is unclear quite when Corelli arrived in Rome, he was certainly active there by 1675, when "Arcangelo Bolognese" (as he was referred to) was engaged to play as one of the supporting violinists in lenten oratorios at the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, as well as in the French national celebrations held each year on 25 August at San Luigi dei Francesi and during the ordination of a member of the powerful Chigi family at Santi Domenico e Sisto. In August 1676, he was already playing second violin to the renowned Carlo Mannelli at San Luigi dei Francesi. Although Rome did not have any permanent orchestra providing stable employment for instrumentalists, Corelli rapidly made a name for himself, playing in a variety of ensembles sponsored by wealthy patrons, such as Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, for whom he played in Lenten oratorios at San Marcello from 1676 to 1679. In 1687 Corelli led the festival performances of music for Queen Christina of Sweden. He was also a favorite of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, grandnephew of another Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, who in 1689 became Pope Alexander VIII. From 1689 to 1690 he was in Modena. The Duke of Modena was generous to him. In 1706 Corelli was elected a member of the Pontificia Accademia degli Arcadi (the Arcadian Academy of Rome). He received the Arcadian name of Arcomelo Erimanteo. In 1708 he returned to Rome, living in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. His visit to Naples, at the invitation of the king, took place in the same year. The style of execution introduced by Corelli and preserved by his pupils, such as Francesco Geminiani, Pietro Locatelli, Pietro Castrucci, Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli, Francesco Gasparini, and others, was of vital importance for the development of violin playing. It has been said that the paths of all of the famous violinist-composers of 18th-century Italy led to Arcangelo Corelli, who was their "iconic point of reference".  However, Corelli used only a limited portion of his instrument's capabilities. This may be seen from his writings. The parts for violin very rarely proceed above D on the highest string, sometimes reaching the E in fourth position on the highest string. The story has been told and retold that Corelli refused to play a passage that extended to A in altissimo in the overture to Handel's oratorio "The Triumph of Time and Truth" (premiered in Rome, 1708), and felt seriously offended when the composer (32 years his junior) played the note.  Nevertheless, his compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music. His influence was not confined to his own country. Johann Sebastian Bach studied the works of Corelli and based an organ fugue (BWV 579) on Corelli's Opus 3 of 1689. Handel's Opus 6 "Concerti Grossi" take Corelli's own older Opus 6 "Concerti" as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Bach.  Musical society in Rome also owed much to Corelli. He was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy, and for a long time presided at the celebrated Monday concerts in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. Corelli died in Rome in possession of a fortune of 120,000 marks and a valuable collection of works of art and fine violins, the only luxury in which he had indulged. He left both to his benefactor and friend, who generously made over the money to Corelli's relatives. Corelli is buried in the Pantheon at Rome.  His concerti grossi have often been popular in Western culture. For example, a portion of the "Christmas Concerto", Op. 6 No. 8, is in the soundtrack of the film "", and Corelli's Op. 6 No. 2 also provided the theme for Sir Michael Tippett's "Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli".

Works.

Corelli composed 48 trio sonatas, 12 violin and continuo sonatas, and 12 concerti grossi.  Six sets of twelve compositions, published between 1888 and 1891 by Chrysander, are authentically ascribed to Corelli, together with a few other works.

Arcangelo Corelli (,,, ; 17 February 1653 – 8 January 1713) was an Italian violinist and composer of the Baroque era. His music was key in the development of the modern genres of sonata and concerto, in establishing the preeminence of the violin, and as the first coalescing of modern tonality and functional harmony.


Life.

Michael Haydn was born in 1737 in the Austrian village of Rohrau, near the Hungarian border. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who also served as "Marktrichter", an office akin to village mayor. Haydn's mother Maria, Koller, had previously worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach, the presiding aristocrat of Rohrau. Mathias was an enthusiastic folk musician, who during the journeyman period of his career had taught himself to play the harp, and he also made sure that his children learned to sing.  Michael went to Vienna at the age of eight, his early professional career path being paved by his older brother Joseph, whose skillful singing had landed him a position as a boy soprano in the St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna choir under the direction of Georg Reutter, as were Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Franz Joseph Aumann, both composers with whom Haydn later traded manuscripts. By Michael's 12th birthday he was earning extra money as a substitute organist at the cathedral and had, reportedly, performed preludes and fantasies of his own composition. The early 19th-century author Albert Christoph Dies, based on Joseph's late-life reminiscences, wrote:  Reutter was so captivated by [Joseph]'s talents that he declared to his father that even if he had twelve sons he would take care of them all. The father saw himself freed of a great burden by this offer, consented to it, and some five years after dedicated Joseph's brothers Michael, and still later Johann to the musical muse. Both were taken on as choirboys, and, to Joseph's unending joy, both brothers were turned over to him to be trained.  The same source indicates that Michael was a brighter student than Joseph, and that (particularly when Joseph had grown enough to have trouble keeping his soprano voice) it was Michael's singing that was the more admired.  About 1753, he left the choir school because of the breaking of his voice. In 1760 Michael was appointed Kapellmeister at Großwardein (today Oradea) and later, in 1762, was appointed concertmaster at Salzburg, where he remained for 44 years, during which he wrote over 360 compositions comprising both church and instrumental music. From their mutual sojourn in Salzburg, Haydn was acquainted with Mozart, who held his work in high esteem.  On 17 August 1768 he married singer Maria Magdalena Lipp (1745–1827); their only child, a daughter (Aloisia Josepha, born 31 January 1770) died just short of her first birthday, on 27 January 1771. Although Lipp was disliked by the women in Mozart's family for some reason, she still created the role of "" ([Divine] Mercy) in Mozart's first musical play, "Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots" ("The Obligation of the First Commandment"), 1767, and later the role of Tamiri in his short pastoral opera "Il re pastore" of 1775.  Leopold Mozart criticized Haydn's heavy drinking.  In Salzburg Haydn taught young Carl Maria von Weber and Anton Diabelli. Michael remained close to Joseph all of his life. Joseph regarded his brother's music highly, to the point of feeling Michael's religious works were superior to his own (possibly for their devotional intimacy, as opposed to Joseph's monumental and majestic, more secularized, symphonic style). In 1802, when Michael was "offered lucrative and honourable positions" by "both Esterházy and the Grand Duke of Tuscany," he wrote to Joseph in Vienna asking for advice on whether or not to accept any of them, but in the end chose to stay in Salzburg. Michael and Maria Magdalena Haydn named their daughter Aloisia Josepha not in honor of Michael's brother, but after Josepha Daubrawa von Daubrawaick, who substituted as godmother at the baptism for Countess de Firmian.  He died in Salzburg at the age of 68.

Works.

Musicologist Karl Geiringer has claimed that Michael Haydn has not received the recognition he deserves from posterity, taking the view that his church music, his choruses for male voices, and many of his instrumental works are on respectable level and ought to be revived.  Michael Haydn never compiled a thematic catalog of his works, nor did he ever supervise the making of one. The earliest catalog was compiled in 1808 by Nikolaus Lang for his 'Biographische Skizze' (Biographical Sketch). In 1907 Lothar Perger compiled a catalogue of his orchestral works, the Perger-Verzeichnis, for "Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich", which is somewhat more reliable than Lang's catalog and attaches P. (for Perger) numbers to many of Haydn's instrumental works. And in 1915 Anton Maria Klafsky undertook a similar work regarding Michael's sacred vocal music. In 1982, Charles H. Sherman, who has edited scores of many of his symphonies for Doblinger, published a chronological catalog of them which some recording companies have adopted. Later, in 1991, Sherman joined forces with T. Donley Thomas to publish a chronological catalog of Michael's complete works using a single continuous range of numbers after Köchel's pioneering catalog of all of Mozart's works and Otto Erich Deutsch's similar comprehensive compendium for all of Schubert's works. Further important amendments to the Sherman/Thomas catalogue have been made by Dwight Blazin.  The task of cataloging Michael's music is facilitated by the fact that he almost always entered the date of completion on his manuscripts. Guesswork was necessary only where autograph manuscripts did not survive. Haydn's sacred choral works are generally regarded as his most important; his musical taste and skill showed themselves best in his church compositions and were already in his lifetime old-fashioned. Some of these works include the "Requiem pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismundo" (Requiem for the death of Archbishop Siegmund) in C minor, which greatly influenced the "Requiem" by Mozart; "Missa Hispanica" (which he exchanged for a diploma at Stockholm); his magnificent last St. Francis Mass in D minor; the motet "Lauda Sion" which he wished to have sung at his funeral; and a set of graduals, forty-two of which are reprinted in Anton Diabelli's "Ecclesiasticon". He wrote several settings of the mass ordinary in German by Franz Seraph von Kohlbrenner, named "Deutsches Hochamt".  Haydn was also a prolific composer of secular music, including forty symphonies and wind partitas, and multiple concertos and chamber music including a string quintet in C major was once thought to have been by his brother Joseph. There was another case of posthumous mistaken identity involving Michael Haydn: for many years, the G major symphony now known to be Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 25 was thought to be Mozart's Symphony No. 37 and assigned as K. 444. The confusion arose because an autograph was discovered with the opening movement of the symphony in Mozart's hand and the rest in another's hand. It is now known that Mozart composed the slow introduction to the first movement but the rest of the work is by Michael. As a result, this work, which had been quite widely played when thought to be a Mozart symphony, has been performed considerably less often since this discovery in 1907.  Indeed, several of Michael Haydn's works influenced Mozart. To give just three examples: the "Te Deum" "which Wolfgang was later to follow very closely in K. 141"; the finale of the Symphony No. 23 which influenced the finale of the G major Quartet, K. 387; and the (fugal) transition and (nonfugal) closing theme of the G major second subject expositions of the finales of both Michael's Symphony No. 28 (1784) and Mozart's monumental last Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter") (1788), both in C major.

Johann Michael Haydn (; 14 September 173710 August 1806) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period, the younger brother of Franz Joseph Haydn.


Life.

Scarlatti was born in Palermo (or in Trapani), then part of the Kingdom of Sicily. He is generally said to have been a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi in Rome, and some theorize that he had some connection with northern Italy because his early works seem to show the influence of Stradella and Legrenzi. The production at Rome of his opera "Gli equivoci nel sembiante" (1679) gained him the support of Queen Christina of Sweden (who at the time was living in Rome), and he became her "maestro di cappella". In February 1684 he became "maestro di cappella" to the viceroy of Naples, perhaps through the influence of his sister, an opera singer, who might have been the mistress of an influential Neapolitan noble. Here he produced a long series of operas, remarkable chiefly for their fluency and expressiveness, as well as other music for state occasions.  In 1702 Scarlatti left Naples and did not return until the Spanish domination had been superseded by that of the Austrians. In the interval he enjoyed the patronage of Ferdinando de' Medici, for whose private theatre near Florence he composed operas, and of Cardinal Ottoboni, who made him his "maestro di cappella", and procured him a similar post at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome in 1703.  After visiting Venice and Urbino in 1707, Scarlatti took up his duties in Naples again in 1708, and remained there until 1717. By this time Naples seems to have become tired of his music; the Romans, however, appreciated it better, and it was at the Teatro Capranica in Rome that he produced some of his finest operas ("Telemaco", 1718; "Marco Attilio Regolò", 1719; "La Griselda", 1721), as well as some noble specimens of church music, including a "Messa di Santa Cecilia" for chorus and orchestra, composed in honor of Saint Cecilia for Cardinal Francesco Acquaviva in 1721. His last work on a large scale appears to have been the unfinished "Erminia" serenata for the marriage of the prince of Stigliano in 1723. He died in Naples in 1725 and is entombed there at the church of Santa Maria di Montesanto.

Scarlatti's music.

Scarlatti's music forms an important link between the early Baroque Italian vocal styles of the 17th century, with their centers in Florence, Venice and Rome, and the classical school of the 18th century. Scarlatti's style, however, is more than a transitional element in Western music; like most of his Naples colleagues he shows an almost modern understanding of the psychology of modulation and also frequently makes use of the ever-changing phrase lengths so typical of the Napoli school.  His early operas—"Gli equivoci nel sembiante" 1679; "L'honestà negli amori" 1680, containing the famous aria "Già il sole dal Gange"; "Il Pompeo" 1683, containing the well-known airs "O cessate di piagarmi" and "Toglietemi la vita ancor," and others down to about 1685—retain the older cadences in their recitatives, and a considerable variety of neatly constructed forms in their charming little arias, accompanied sometimes by the string quartet, treated with careful elaboration, sometimes with the continuo alone. By 1686, he had definitely established the "Italian overture" form (second edition of "Dal male il bene"), and had abandoned the ground bass and the binary form air in two stanzas in favour of the ternary form or da capo type of air. His best operas of this period are "La Rosaura" (1690, printed by the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung), and "Pirro e Demetrio" (1694), in which occur the arias "Le Violette", and "Ben ti sta, traditor".  From about 1697 onwards ("La caduta del Decemviri"), influenced partly perhaps by the style of Giovanni Bononcini and probably more by the taste of the viceregal court, his opera arias become more conventional and commonplace in rhythm, while his scoring is hasty and crude, yet not without brilliance ("L'Eraclea", 1700), the oboes and trumpets being frequently used, and the violins often playing in unison. The operas composed for Ferdinando de' Medici are lost; they might have given a more favourable idea of his style as his correspondence with the prince shows that they were composed with a very sincere sense of inspiration.  "Mitridate Eupatore", accounted his masterpiece, composed for Venice in 1707, contains music far in advance of anything that Scarlatti had written for Naples, both in technique and in intellectual power. The later Neapolitan operas ("L'amor volubile e tiranno" 1709; "La principessa fedele" 1710; "Tigrane", 1714, &c.) are showy and effective rather than profoundly emotional; the instrumentation marks a great advance on previous work, since the main duty of accompanying the voice is thrown upon the string quartet, the harpsichord being reserved exclusively for the noisy instrumental "ritornelli". In his opera "Teodora" (1697) he originated the use of the orchestral "ritornello".  His last group of operas, composed for Rome, exhibit a deeper poetic feeling, a broad and dignified style of melody, a strong dramatic sense, especially in accompanied recitatives, a device which he himself had been the first to use as early as 1686 ("Olimpia vendicata") and a much more modern style of orchestration, the horns appearing for the first time, and being treated with striking effect.  Besides the operas, oratorios ("Agar et Ismaele esiliati", 1684; "La Maddalena", 1685; "La Giuditta", 1693; "Christmas Oratorio", c. 1705; "S. Filippo Neri", 1714; and others) and serenatas, which all exhibit a similar style, Scarlatti composed upwards of five hundred chamber-cantatas for solo voice. These represent the most intellectual type of chamber-music of their period, and it is to be regretted that they have remained almost entirely in manuscript, since a careful study of them is indispensable to anyone who wishes to form an adequate idea of Scarlatti's development.  His few remaining Masses (the story of his having composed two hundred is hardly credible) and church music in general are comparatively unimportant, except the great "Saint Cecilia Mass" (1721), which is one of the first attempts at the style which reached its height in the great Masses of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. His instrumental music, though not without interest, is curiously antiquated as compared with his vocal works.

Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (2 May 1660 – 22 October 1725) was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.


Etymology.

The first element of the name "Ermanaric" appears to be based on the Proto-Germanic root "*ermena-", meaning universal. The second element is from the element "*-rik", Gothic "reiks", meaning ruler; this is found frequently in Gothic royal names.

Historical Ermanaric.

In Roman sources.

According to Ammianus, Ermanaric was ""a most warlike king"" who eventually committed suicide, faced with the aggression of the Alani and of the Huns, who invaded his territories in the 370s. Ammianus says he "ruled over extensively wide and fertile regions". Ammianus also says that after Ermanaric's death, a certain Vithimiris was elected as the new king.  According to Jordanes' "Getica", Ermanaric ruled the realm of Oium. He describes him as a "Gothic Alexander" who "ruled all the nations of Scythia and Germania as they were his own". Jordanes also states that the king put to death a young woman named Sunilda (Svanhildr) with the use of horses, because of her infidelity. Thereupon her two brothers, Sarus and Ammius, severely wounded Ermanaric leaving him unfit to defend his kingdom from Hunnic incursions. Variations of this legend had a profound effect on medieval Germanic literature, including that of England and Scandinavia (see Jonakr's sons). Jordanes claims that he successfully ruled the Goths until his death at the age of 110.  Gibbon gives the version of Ammianus and Jordanes as historical, reporting that Ermanaric successively conquered, during a reign of about 30 years from 337 to 367 A.D., the west-goths, the Heruli, the Venedi and the Aestii, establishing a kingdom which ranged from the Baltic to the Black Sea; and died at the age of 110 of a wound inflicted by the brothers of a woman whom he had cruelly executed for her husband's revolt, being succeeded by his brother Vithimiris.

In Germanic sources.

Iormunrek (Jörmunrekkr) is the Norse form of the name. Ermanaric appears in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian legend. In the former, the poem Beowulf focused on the image of "Eormenric's wiles and hatred". According to Tolkien, he is described in the 10th century poem Deor as a powerful but perilous king: "We have heard of the wolfish mind of Eormanric: far and wide he ruled the people of the realm of the Goths: he was a cruel king".  Ermanaric also appears in the Norse sources, such as "Thidreks Saga", in which he is ill-advised by his counsellors to put his own wife to death for supposed adultery with his son, for which revenge is taken by his brothers-in-law.

Mythic Ermanaric.

The death of Swanhild (Svanhildr Sigurðardóttir) and Ermanaric's (Jörmunrek) subsequent death at the hands of Jonakr's sons occupies an important place in the world of Germanic legend. The tale is retold in many northern European stories, including the Icelandic Poetic Edda (Hamðismál and Guðrúnarhvöt), Prose Edda and the Volsunga Saga; the Norwegian Ragnarsdrápa; the Danish Gesta Danorum; and the German Nibelungenlied and Annals of Quedlinburg.  In the Norse "Thidreks Saga", Ermanaric is ill-advised by his treacherous counsellor Bicke, Bikka, Sifka, or Seveke (who wants revenge for the rape of his wife by Ermanaric), with the result that the king puts his own wife to death for supposed adultery with his son; he is thereafter crippled by his brothers-in-law in revenge.  In the Middle High German poems "Dietrichs Flucht", the "Rabenschlacht", and "Alpharts Tod" about Dietrich of Bern, Ermanaric is Dietrich's uncle who has driven his nephew into exile. The early modern Low German poem "Ermenrichs Tod" recounts a garbled version of Ermanaric's death reminiscent of the scene told in Jordanes and Scandinavian legend.

Name.

Ermanaric's Gothic name is reconstructed as "*Airmanareiks". It is recorded in the various Latinized forms:  In medieval Germanic epics, the name appears as:  Since the name "Heiðrekr" may have been confused with Ermanaric through folk etymology he is possibly identical to "Heiðrekr Ulfhamr" of the Hervarar saga.

Ermanaric (; or "Hermanaricus"; ; ; died 376) was a Greuthungian Gothic King who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia inhabited by the Goths at the time. He is mentioned in two Roman sources; the contemporary writings of Ammianus Marcellinus and in "Getica" by the 6th-century historian Jordanes.