title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In the sixth-season episode "Father's Day", the twins meet their biological father Matt Sullivan (played by Tony Carriero), a white famous photojournalist who never married their mother, Racelle Gavin, because they never got the chance: she was asked to paint a mural in Florida and he was assigned "the opportunity of a lifetime" in the Middle East; when he left, Racelle told him she'd join him in Tel Aviv but never mentioned her pregnancy, and after 6 months she stopped writing. When she died, Matt wasn't allowed to see the girls because he couldn't prove he was their father, and when he searched for them later, he never found them because they had been adopted separately.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: Throughout its run, the series was filmed in front of a live studio audience at Paramount Pictures, that provided the laugh track throughout the episode and utilize applause to signal the end of an episode.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: For the first five seasons, the series often had Tia and Tamera, either together or separately, break the fourth wall by talking directly to the viewer. During the ABC run, Tia and Tamera would address the audience on some of the goings on in the storyline involving them and occasionally other main characters, usually Roger. After the series moved to The WB, the breaking of the fourth wall was limited mainly to certain episodes and usually only in the teaser scenes and featured increasingly less often by the fourth season. For some of the episodes in the fifth season, it was included but was dropped by the middle of the fifth season. The sixth and final season was the only season that did not include it. Many of the episodes from the third season up to the sixth season also featured bloopers at the end of some of them, playing during the ending credits.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: The series' original theme song was written and composed by Tim Heintz, Randy Petersen and Kevin Quinn. Season one was the only season using the full version, with the short middle instrumental portion, vocalizations and the line "Living underneath one roof, no it won't be trouble-proof" dropped in season 2, though the short instrumental and vocalizations were restored in season 3. Performers for this version that was played from seasons 1-4 is unknown, as no evidence is revealed at this time, though many fans believed it was either Shanice or En Vogue. An updated version of the theme song was used starting in Season 5, composed by Heintz, Petersen, Quinn and Kurt Farquhar, who composed the music score for most of the series (save for Season 3, when the score was composed by Paul A. Kreiling), and performed by Tia and Tamera Mowry; this version used the same tune, but a slower tempo and lyrics that emphasized the two characters' differences and increased maturity. The season 5 version of the theme began with the end of the original theme prior to the start of the theme song. An instrumental version of the final theme was used as a closing theme for the final two seasons, though with the exception of the episode "Designer Genes", it was generally played over a blooper reel during the closing credits.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: The opening sequence used in the first two seasons, designed by Twin Art, opens with the sound of two smacks and crying babies over a black screen as animated crying babies appear with the word "separated" between them, then showing Ray and Lisa each holding babies, which has real-life baby pictures of Tia and Tamera, with the word "adopted" appearing between both. Throughout the sequence, the main cast is shown in front of a white background with various animations around them, at one point Tia and Tamera push Lisa and Ray towards each other. It ends with Tia, Tamera, Ray, and Lisa at a couch with an animated roof over it (pushed overhead by Ray), which morphs into the title logo. The sequence was shortened with the theme song in season two and modified to include Marques Houston as Roger, who became a contract cast member that season (Houston, as Roger, is shown peeking from an animated door which Tia and Tamera promptly close on him).


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: Seasons 3 and 4 used a computer-animated sequence by Pittard-Sullivan, with the main cast's video headshots in a stop-motion effect, opening with two babies drifting away from each other into two backgrounds: one, the city (which is actually the pre-September 11, 2001 Manhattan skyline, despite the fact the series was set in Detroit) and the other, a country road with the word "separated" between them, then showing Ray and Lisa each holding babies in a similar manner as the previous sequence with a rotating "adopted", then showing the cast in front of different backdrops (some of which include cutouts of objects). It ends with Tia, Tamera, Ray, who is reading from a newspaper, and Lisa walking into each other, then getting themselves tangled together over changing cloud backdrops, one which features two roadsigns, before the title logo appears. The cast's surnames are animated and in a variant of the show's logotype. This was the only time the intro remained exactly the same, though, by season four, the intro became a bit outdated as Tia and Tamera dropped the wavy hair, tams and plaid outfits for straight hair and trendier fashions, and Roger stopped wearing braids.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: The final two seasons used a music video-style sequence, designed by Paramount Digital Design; Marques Houston remained in the sequence despite his appearances on the series decreasing midway through the fifth season. For the sixth season, he was replaced in the sequence by RonReaco Lee and Deon Richmond. Because alternate takes of the same footage was used from the season before, viewers often notice that Lee and Richmond are digitally inserted in the group shots with the remaining original cast, as evidenced by a dim white glow around their bodies.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: After being picked up by The WB in 1995, reruns of the first two seasons of "Sister, Sister" were broadcast in early primetime as part of the network's then-newly launched Sunday night lineup during the 1995–1996 season, in addition to the first-run episodes of the series that aired on the WB's Wednesday night schedule. The series has been aired on various broadcast television networks in the U.S. after the series finale. From September 1998 to September 1999, Paramount Domestic Television (now CBS Television Distribution) distributed the series to Fox, The WB and UPN network affiliates, such as WWOR-TV (who aired the show reruns weeknights at 6:30pm in New York City) around the United States, airing depending on market. In some markets such as New York City (6:30pm), Philadelphia (5:30pm), Washington, D.C. (5pm & 5:30pm), Atlanta (2:30pm), and Bakersfield (9am & 9:30am), reruns of "Sister, Sister" were replaced by reruns of "The Hughleys" in September 2002.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: The series formerly aired reruns on BET, Disney Channel, ABC Family, WGN America, Up (formerly GMC TV), Centric, Hub Network, Logo TV, VH1 (In early 2021), and Fuse. The series currently airs on MTV 2.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: Disney Channel airings had most episodes edited for content deemed by the channel as unsuitable for its pre-teen audience; the edited Disney Channel versions were also the syndication package of the show that aired on sister network ABC Family, with the exception of the season two episode "Tattoo" that was omitted from Disney Channel airings. GMC also airs episodes with content the channel deems inappropriate usually muted or removed entirely, ranging from mild suggestive dialogue said by Roger to tame phrases such as "shut up", "butt", "dumb" and "pervert"; whereas the airings on other channels were the original syndicated prints.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In Australia and New Zealand, the series was aired on Nickelodeon and the Seven Network; in the United Kingdom, "Sister, Sister" was aired on Nickelodeon, and on Channel 4 between 1995 and 2000 as the channel had the terrestrial rights to the show. In the UK, Nickelodeon aired Sister Sister again in 2009 but only showed episodes from the first four seasons. It currently airs on Trace Vault in the UK, which also shows classic Teenage comedies like "Kenan and Kel" and "Moesha" in addition to music videos. It also aired in Ireland, on RTÉ2.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In Latin America, "Sister, Sister" used to air on Nickelodeon in the late 1990s and early 2000s. On October 21, 2009 it debuted on open television Rede Record, but was taken off on October 30, 2009, the cause for this is unknown.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In Spain, the TV series was aired during the late 90's and early 00's on Antena 3 on its morning first children's programme, "Megatrix", renamed as "Cosas de hermanas".


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released the first and second seasons of "Sister, Sister" on DVD in Region 1 in 2008 and 2009. As of September 2014, these releases have been discontinued and are out of print.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: On May 4, 2015, it was announced that Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI) had acquired the distribution rights to the series for Region 1 (encompassing the United States and Canada). It was subsequently announced on December 28, 2015, that VEI (through its deal with CBS Television Distribution) would release a complete DVD set of the series, "Sister, Sister: The Complete Collection" (which includes all six seasons), in Region 1 on January 19, 2016, the release date was then pushed back to March 18, 2016. The Mowry twins 2000 television film "Seventeen Again" is also included as a bonus disc on the "Complete Collection" set. On May 26, 2017, VEI released separate "Seasons 1–3" and "Seasons 4–6" sets of the series. Due to copyright issues, these releases are heavily edited.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In June 2012 interview with "TV Guide", both Tia Mowry and Tamera Mowry have said they would like to reunite the cast for a reunion film. They were thinking of doing a "Twins in the city" plot, like the twins in New York City.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In 2017, rumors started developing about a potential continuation of "Sister, Sister", both Tia and Tamera have confirmed that talks are ongoing and that a sequel series is very close to happening.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In October 2017, Tia Mowry stated in an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" that a revival of the series was "definitely closer than ever" and that she is "getting excited" about the possibility. She also said that she believed Jackée Harry and Tim Reid would be a part of the revival if it were to take place.


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: On January 16, 2018, while appearing on "Steve", Harry confirmed the revival, stating that "it's happening".


title: Sister, Sister (TV series)

text: In 2019, the reboot was put on hold indefinitely. Tia commented, "To be honest with you, I hate to pop the balloon. [A revival of] "Sister, Sister" kind of looks dead right now," and cited rights issues as part of the reason for the reboot not moving forward.


title: Dave Attell

text: David Attell (born January 18, 1965) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer best known as the host of Comedy Central's "Insomniac with Dave Attell", which earned him a cult following. His work has drawn admiration from many comedians.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell was born in the New York City borough of Queens to a Jewish family. He was raised in Rockville Centre, New York, on Long Island. He graduated from South Side High School.


title: Dave Attell

text: After graduating from New York University in 1987 with a degree in communications, Attell began performing at


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell's first appearance on television was in 1988 on VH1's "Stand-Up Spotlight," which also featured early appearances by Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Jeff Garlin, Jay Mohr and Wanda Sykes. The show was hosted by Rosie O'Donnell.


title: Dave Attell

text: On November 23, 1993, he made his first appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman". The appearance was seen by "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels, who then recruited Attell to be a writer, and occasional performer, on "SNL". Attell can be seen behind Chris Farley during the "Rudy Giuliani Inauguration" sketch. Attell worked on the show for the 1993–94 season.


title: Dave Attell

text: In 1995, Attell was featured on two HBO specials: alongside up-and-comers Louis C.K., Anthony Clark, Eric Tunney and Dave Chappelle. He was a featured performer on the 1995 "Young Comedians Special" hosted by Garry Shandling. He was given his own 60-minute special on the channel's "HBO Comedy Showcase." Subsequently, Attell was also given an episode of "HBO Comedy Half-Hour" in 1997. Attell's first one-hour special, "Captain Miserable" aired December 8, 2007, on HBO. His latest special "Road Work" aired 2014 on Comedy Central.


title: Dave Attell

text: In 1995, Attell appeared as Squiggly Dave on "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist". In 1999, the network issued Attell an installment in the second season of "Comedy Central Presents" series.


title: Dave Attell

text: The same year the network signed him as a regular commentator to its satirical news series "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", on which he appeared for three years. Attell's commentary segment was called "The Ugly American". He returned for the finale episode of host Stewart's tenure.


title: Dave Attell

text: In 2001, the television series "Insomniac with Dave Attell" premiered on Comedy Central. Attell described it as ""Wild on E!" for Ugly People". It featured Attell walking the streets of America's cities late at night, meeting the people in a haze of ecstatic inebriation. The show occasionally went overseas. The most common activity (besides roaming the street aimlessly and visiting bars) was visiting workers on their night shifts. Instead of spending time with gas station attendants, he went searching for odd professions to highlight. Among them were crime-scene cleaners, bail bondsmen, cow milkers, brothel hookers, bicycle cops, coal miners, and porn overdubbers. Memorable episodes include a visit to Chicago's world-famous The Wieners Circle, where the staff routinely got in cursing matches with their customers, and a visit to a Phoenix nudist camp. Throughout the run of the show, Attell carried around a one-time-use film still camera and took pictures of random events, which would be shown during the end credits.


title: Dave Attell

text: In 2003, Attell began sporting semi-regularly on "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn". The show featured many of the performers he works with at the New York City comedy club the Comedy Cellar and is based on the conversations they would have off-stage at the Olive Tree Cafe, the restaurant above the club. The unscripted show was canceled in November 2004.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell appeared on Comedy Central's "Last Laugh" in 2007. In 2008, Attell began hosting "The Gong Show with Dave Attell" for Comedy Central. Like the 1970s version, the show had a rotating panel of celebrity judges grading unusual acts.


title: Dave Attell

text: In January 2010, he co-hosted the AVN Awards show, along with porn actresses Kirsten Price and Kayden Kross; and again in 2012 with co-hostesses Sunny Leone and Bree Olson.


title: Dave Attell

text: In May 2008, Attell announced a casting call on his MySpace page for Comedy Central's relaunch of "The Gong Show". Attell was host, along with Greg Fitzsimmons serving as head writer on the series. However, "The Gong Show with Dave Attell" aired only from July to September 2008.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell returned to television on Showtime beginning October 20, 2011, in "Dave's Old Porn", a TV series in which Attell views and jokes about retro 1970s and 1980s pornographic movies with different guest comedians. Typically, during a given show, Attell and his guest view clips that give an overview of a particular retro porn star's career. Near the end of that show, that particular porn actor appears and also comments on clips from some of his or her movies.


title: Dave Attell

text: In April 2014, Comedy Central premiered "Comedy Underground with Dave Attell", a late-night, (mostly) uncensored stand-up comedy show taped live in New York.


title: Dave Attell

text: In 2018 he toured with Jeff Ross on the Bumping Mics Tour. Over the last three days of the tour they taped a three-part documentary series for Netflix. Interspersed footage showcases the duo's interactions both off-stage and on as they return to the Comedy Cellar, where a spontaneous first performance marked the birth of their ensemble act.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell played the role of "Don" in "Los Enchiladas!", a film written, produced and directed by comedian Mitch Hedberg, starring Hedberg as well as fellow comedians Todd Barry and Marc Maron.


title: Dave Attell

text: In the short film "The Office Party", Attell once again played the role of "Don". The film co-starred ex-"Karate Kid" Ralph Macchio, Jon Stewart, Carol Kane and Tate Donovan. The film was written and directed by "Daily Show" producer Chiara Edmands.


title: Dave Attell

text: "Pootie Tang" saw Attell as the bumbling corporate lackey, "Frank". The film was written and directed by his friend Louis C.K. It co-starred Lance Crouther, Wanda Sykes and Chris Rock among others.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attell also played "Efram the Driver" in the Independent feature "My Suicidal Sweetheart", written and directed by filmmaking newcomer Michael Parness. The film co-starred Natasha Lyonne, David Krumholtz, Tim Blake Nelson, Lorraine Bracco, David Paymer, and Rosanna Arquette.


title: Dave Attell

text: Attel had a cameo appearance in the Judd Apatow film "Funny People" which starred Adam Sandler (an old friend of Attell's from his New York University days).


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Beggars Banquet is the 7th British and 9th American studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 6 December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. It was the first Rolling Stones album produced by Jimmy Miller, whose production work formed a key aspect of the group's sound throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Brian Jones, the band's founder and early leader, had become increasingly unreliable in the studio due to his drug use, and it was the last Rolling Stones album to be released during his lifetime, though he also contributed to two songs on their next album "Let It Bleed", which was released after his death. (Jones did, however, contribute to the group's hit song "Jumpin' Jack Flash", which was part of the same sessions, and released in May 1968.) Nearly all rhythm and lead guitar parts were recorded by Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones' other guitarist and the primary songwriting partner of their lead singer Mick Jagger; together the two wrote all but one of the tracks on the album. Rounding out the instrumentation were bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, though all members contributed on a variety of instruments. As with most albums of the period, frequent collaborator Nicky Hopkins played piano on many of the tracks.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Beggars Banquet" marked a change in direction for the band following the psychedelic pop of their previous two albums, "Between the Buttons" and "Their Satanic Majesties Request". Styles such as roots rock and a return to the blues rock sound that had marked early Stones recordings dominate the record, and the album is among the most instrumentally experimental of the band's career, as they use Latin beats and instruments like the claves alongside South Asian sounds from the tanpura, tabla and shehnai, and African music-influenced conga rhythms.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Beggars Banquet" was a top-ten album in many markets, including a number 5 position in the US—where it has been certified platinum—and a number 3 position in the band's native UK. It received a highly favourable response from music critics, who deemed it a return to the band's best sound. While the album lacked a "hit single" at the time of its release, songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man" became rock radio staples for decades to come. One of their most acclaimed albums, it is considered the beginning of the band's enduring reputation as the "Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World". The album has appeared on many lists of the greatest albums of all time, including by "Rolling Stone", and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Glyn Johns, the album's recording engineer and a longtime collaborator of the band, said that "Beggars Banquet" signalled "the Rolling Stones' coming of age. ... I think that the material was far better than anything they'd ever done before. The whole mood of the record was far stronger to me musically." Producer Jimmy Miller described guitarist Keith Richards as "a real workhorse" while recording the album, mostly due to the infrequent presence of Brian Jones. When he did show up at the sessions, Jones behaved erratically due to his drug use and emotional problems. Miller said that Jones would "show up occasionally when he was in the mood to play, and he could never really be relied on:


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Even given this, Jones contributes to every track on the album except the final two, playing sitar and tanpura on "Street Fighting Man", slide guitar on "No Expectations", acoustic guitar on "Parachute Woman", harmonica on "Parachute Woman", "Dear Doctor" and "Prodigal Son", Maracas on "Sympathy for the devil", and Mellotron on "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Stray Cat Blues". In a television interview, Jagger recalled that Jones' slide guitar performance on "No Expectations" was the last time he contributed something with care. Other than Jones, the principal band members appeared extensively, with Richards providing nearly all of the lead and rhythm guitar work, as well as playing bass on two others, in the place of Bill Wyman, who appears on the rest. Drummer Charlie Watts plays the drum kit on all but two tracks, as well as other percussion on the tracks that do not feature a full drum kit. Additional parts were played by keyboardist and frequent Rolling Stones collaborator Nicky Hopkins and percussionist Rocky Dijon, among others.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: The basic track of "Street Fighting Man" was recorded on an early Philips cassette deck at London's Olympic Sound Studios, where Richards played a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, and Watts played on an antique, portable practice drum kit. Richards and Jagger were mistakenly credited as writers on "Prodigal Son", a cover of Robert Wilkins's Biblical blues song.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: According to Keith Richards, the album's title was thought up by British art dealer Christopher Gibbs. The album's original front and back cover art, photographs by Barry Feinstein depicting a bathroom wall covered with graffiti, was rejected by the band's record company, which delayed the album's release for months. Feinstein's photographs were later featured though on most vinyl, compact disc and cassette tape reissues of the album. On 7 June 1968, a photoshoot for the album's gatefold, with photographer Michael Joseph, was held at Sarum Chase, a mansion in Hampstead, London. Previously unseen images from the shoot were exhibited at the Blink Gallery in London in November and December 2008.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Beggars Banquet" was first released in the United Kingdom by Decca Records on 6 December 1968, and in the United States by London Records the following day. Like the band's previous album, it reached number three on the UK Albums Chart, but remained on the chart for fewer weeks. The album peaked at number five on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: On 11–12 December 1968 the band filmed a television extravaganza titled "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton, The Who, Jethro Tull and Marianne Faithfull among the musical guests. One of the original aims of the project was to promote "Beggars Banquet", but the film was shelved by the Rolling Stones until 1996, when their former manager, Allen Klein, gave it an official release.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Beggars Banquet" received a highly favourable response from music critics, who considered it a return to form for the Stones. Author Stephen Davis writes of its impact: "[The album was] a sharp reflection of the convulsive psychic currents coursing through the Western world. Nothing else captured the youthful spirit of Europe in 1968 like "Beggars Banquet"."


title: Beggars Banquet

text: According to music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, the "political correctness" of "Street Fighting Man", particularly the lyrics "What can a poor boy do/'Cept sing in a rock and roll band", sparked intense debate in the underground media. In the description of author and critic Ian MacDonald, French director Jean-Luc Godard's filming of the sessions for "Sympathy for the Devil" contributed to the band's image as "Left Bank heroes of the European Maoist underground", with the song's "Luciferian iconoclasm" interpreted as a political message.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Time" described the Stones as "England's most subversive roisterers since Fagin's gang in "Oliver Twist"" and added: "In keeping with a widespread mood in the pop world, "Beggars Banquet" turns back to the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country music." Jann Wenner of "Rolling Stone" considered that the band's regeneration marked the return of rock'n'roll, while the "Chicago Sun-Times" declared: "The Stones have unleashed their rawest, rudest, most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it's beautiful."


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Less impressed, the writer of "Melody Maker"s initial review dismissed "Beggars Banquet" as "mediocre" and said that, since "The Stones are Mick Jagger", it was only the singer's "remarkable recording presence that makes this LP". Geoffrey Cannon of "The Guardian" found that the album "demonstrates [the group's] primal power at its greatest strength" and wrote admiringly of Jagger's ability to fully engage the listener on "Sympathy for the Devil", saying: "We feel horror because, at full volume, he makes us ride his carrier wave with him, experience his sensations, and awaken us to ours." In his ballot for "Jazz & Pop" magazine's annual critics poll, Robert Christgau ranked it as the third-best album of the year, and "Salt of the Earth" the best pop song of the year. In April 1969, for "Esquire", he wrote that "Beggars Banquet" is "unflawed and lacking something".


title: Beggars Banquet

text: In a retrospective review for "Wondering Sound", Ben Fong-Torres called "Beggars Banquet" "an album flush with masterful and growling instant classics", and said that it "responds more to the chaos of '68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists ... the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority." Colin Larkin, in his "Encyclopedia of Popular Music" (2006), viewed the album as "a return to strength" which included "the socio-political 'Street Fighting Man' and the brilliantly macabre 'Sympathy for the Devil', in which Jagger's seductive vocal was backed by hypnotic Afro-rhythms and dervish yelps". Writing for MusicHound in 1999, Greg Kot opined that the same two songs were the "weakest cuts", adding: "Otherwise, the disc is a tour de force of acoustic-tinged savagery and slumming sexuality, particularly the gleefully flippant 'Stray Cat Blues.'" Larry Katz from the "Boston Herald" called "Beggars Banquet" "both a return to basics and leap forward".


title: Beggars Banquet

text: In his 1997 review for "Rolling Stone", DeCurtis said the album was "filled with distinctive and original touches", and remarked on its legacy: "For the album, the Stones had gone to great lengths to toughen their sound and banish the haze of psychedelia, and in doing so, they launched a five-year period in which they would produce their very greatest records." Author Martin C. Strong similarly considers "Beggars Banquet" to be the first album in the band's "staggering burst of creativity" over 1968–72 that ultimately comprised four of the best rock albums of all time. Writing in 2007, Daryl Easlea of BBC Music said that, although in places it fails to maintain the quality of its opening song, "Beggars Banquet" was the album where the Rolling Stones gained their enduring status as "the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band in the World".


title: Beggars Banquet

text: "Beggars Banquet" has frequently appeared on professional listings of the greatest albums. It was included in the "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings published in "" (1981). In 2000, it was voted number 282 in Colin Larkin's "All Time Top 1000 Albums". In 2003, it was ranked at number 57 on "Rolling Stone"s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, ranked at number 58 in a 2012 revised list, and ranked at number 185 in a 2020 revised list. Also in 2003, the TV network VH1 named "Beggars Banquet" the 67th greatest album of all time. The album is also featured in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Based on such honors, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music ranks it as the 39th most acclaimed album in history.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: In August 2002, ABKCO Records reissued "Beggars Banquet" as a newly remastered LP and SACD/CD hybrid disk. This release corrected an important flaw in the original album by restoring each song to its proper, slightly faster speed. Due to an error in the mastering, "Beggars Banquet" was heard for over thirty years at a slower speed than it was recorded. This had the effect of altering not only the tempo of each song, but the song's key as well. These differences were subtle but important, and the remastered version is about 30 seconds shorter than the original release.


title: Beggars Banquet

text: Also in 2002 the Russian label CD-Maximum unofficially released the limited edition "Beggars Banquet + 7 Bonus", which was also bootleged on a German counterfeit-DECCA label as "Beggars Banquet (the Mono Beggars)".


title: Beggars Banquet

text: It was released once again in 2010 by Universal Music Enterprises in a Japanese-only SHM-SACDversion and on 24 November 2010 ABKCO Records released a SHM-CD version.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Rowan Alexander "RJ" Barrett Jr. (born June 14, 2000) is a Canadian professional basketball player for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was selected third overall in the 2019 NBA draft by the New York Knicks after one year with the Duke Blue Devils.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Born in Toronto as the son of former basketball player Rowan Barrett, Barrett shone at St. Marcellinus Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, before transferring to Montverde Academy in Montverde, Florida. He was a five-star recruit and the consensus top recruit in the 2018 class, earning Naismith Prep Player of the Year and Gatorade National Player of the Year accolades in his final high school season whilst playing as a shooting guard a majority of the season. He was ranked the top player in his class by all recruiting services and was the first player since LeBron James to sweep all major awards in high school and win the national championship.


title: RJ Barrett

text: With the Canadian national under-19 team, Barrett was named MVP at the 2017 FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup after leading his team to a gold medal. He debuted for the senior team during qualification for the 2019 FIBA World Cup.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Kesha Duhaney and former professional basketball player Rowan Barrett. Early in his childhood, he developed an interest in basketball and played with a mini-hoop in his playroom in France, where his father was playing professional basketball at the time. While living in France, Barrett attended a French school but was taught English by his mother. He lived in a number of countries due to his father's career and shot around after games and practices. Barrett additionally played basketball with players his age through the clubs his father was a part of.


title: RJ Barrett

text: His family settled in Mississauga, Ontario in 2008, when his father left professional basketball. While growing up, he was also involved in football, 100 metres sprinting, and the high jump. At age 12, after struggling in a basketball game and coming home crying, Barrett began focusing on basketball instead of football to avoid missing tournaments. At that age, he told his father that he wanted to be an NBA All-Star and make the Basketball Hall of Fame. He sometimes trained with Steve Nash, his godfather and father's friend.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett, under the guidance of his father, emerged as one of the best under-12 players in Ontario. He attended Horizon Jeunesse in Clarkson, Mississauga, leading his school team to a city title for Mississauga French elementary schools, where he was named most valuable player (MVP) despite facing older opponents. Barrett also played for the Regional Elite Development Academy (REDA) under-12 program on the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) circuit, facing many teams from the United States. When he was 12, he was identified by the Ontario Basketball Association as one of the best players in his age group, and he consequently trained with the Canada Basketball junior academy, through which he competed for the Ontario provincial team. By age 15, Barrett was generally playing the point guard position. On August 3, 2014, he scored 37 points and grabbed seven rebounds in a 93–53 win over Quebec at an under-15 provincial tournament. Through grades seven and eight, Barrett attended École Secondaire Jeunes Sans Frontières, a French language school in Brampton.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett began high school at St. Marcellinus Secondary School in Mississauga, whilst competing for the Brampton Warriors AAU team through the REDA. After his 27-point effort for St. Marcellinus against Bill Crothers Secondary School on October 9, 2014, Canadian recruiting website North Pole Hoops labeled him "special" despite only being in his first year.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In February 2015, he was named MVP of the Guy Vetrie Memorial tournament after scoring 41 points and a making the game-winner for REDA in a 74–72 win over BTB Academy. In April, Barrett was invited to the Region of Peel Secondary Schools Athletic Association (ROPSSAA) all-star game. At the game, he was recognized as the best prospect in the ROPSSAA. In the same month, Barrett scored a game-high 25 points in the Futures Game at the BioSteel All-Canadian Basketball Game, which featured top grade 9 and 10 players across Canada.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In September 2015, one week after touring top prep schools in the United States, Barrett announced that he would leave St. Marcellinus. Later in the month, he transferred to Montverde Academy, a school in Montverde, Florida, with a decorated basketball program. Barrett made the decision in order to "take his game to another level" but described the transition as "rough". On December 7, he chipped in a team-high 18 points in a nationally televised game versus Huntington Prep School. Barrett erupted for 31 points on December 21, in a loss to Chino Hills High School at the City of Palms Classic quarterfinal. On April 15, 2016, he tallied 22 points and eight rebounds at the 2016 Jordan Brand Classic International Game, earning game MVP honors. At the end of the season, after leading Montverde Academy in scoring, Barrett was named to the MaxPreps Freshman All-American First Team.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Entering 2016–17, Barrett's sophomore season for Montverde, he was among 20 players named to the "USA Today" High School Sports All-USA Preseason Team. In November 2016, he was named to the Naismith Prep Player of the Year Award watch list. In December, Barrett led Montverde to a City of Palms Classic title, scoring a team-best 15 points in the finals against Memphis East High School, and received tournament MVP honors. He recorded 21 points on January 16, 2017, in a 73–67 win over Bishop Montgomery High School, to help his team win the Spalding Hoophall Classic. In February, Barrett garnered MVP accolades at Basketball Without Borders, a three-day camp during NBA All-Star Weekend. He joined the World Select Team at the 2017 Nike Hoop Summit in April, posting nine points and two steals in 20 minutes. Barrett finished the season averaging 22 points and 7 rebounds per game in high school, being tabbed National Sophomore of the Year by MaxPreps and making the Naismith All-American Third Team.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On July 31, 2017, Barrett reclassified to the 2018 class because he believed he was "ready to move up and to be in college a year earlier." Entering the 2017–18 season, he was named to the "USA Today" High School Sports All-USA Preseason Team. In his season opener on November 28, 2017, Barrett led Montverde, ranked the No. 1 team in the nation by MaxPreps, with 29 points in a 97–55 win over The Rock School. On January 11, 2018, in a nationally televised match-up with Orlando Christian Prep, he scored 24 points. Barrett posted 22 points and 10 rebounds on January 15 to defeat Mater Dei High School at the Spalding Hoophall Classic. On March 23, he played in the Signature All-Canadian Showcase, which featured 24 top Canadian prospects. Later in the month, Barrett took part in the 2018 McDonald's All-American Boys Game, where he scored 26 points.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In March 2018, Barrett was awarded the prestigious Morgan Wooten National Player of the Year award for "displaying outstanding character, showing leadership and embodying the values of a student athlete". One of the ways Barrett exhibited these attributes was by being involved in the Basketball Buddies Program of Montverde Academy, where he was in charge of mentoring young basketball athletes with their basketball skills, as well as advising them on how to manage their academics.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In the 2017–18 season, he led the undefeated Montverde team to the Geico National boys’ basketball championship, recording 25 points and 15 rebounds in the championship game.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett scored a game-high 20 points to go along with nine rebounds, six assists and five steals at the 2018 Nike Hoop Summit and was named MVP.


title: RJ Barrett

text: While attending St. Marcellinus Secondary School, Barrett was tabbed as the top Canadian prospect in the 2019 class. Barrett was rated as a five-star recruit and ranked the No.1 overall recruit in the class of 2018.


title: RJ Barrett

text: He received scholarship offers from several major universities including Arizona, Duke, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, UCLA, and USC, according to ESPN. Speaking to nbadraft.net in April 2017, Roy Rana, who coached Barrett at the 2017 FIBA Under-19 World Cup and at the Nike Hoop Summit, was quoted as saying about Barrett: "A star. A potential superstar down the road."


title: RJ Barrett

text: On August 16, 2017, Barrett narrowed down to five schools: Duke, Arizona, Oregon, Kentucky, and Michigan. On November 10, 2017, he announced that he would be attending Duke for the 2018–2019 season. Commenting on his decision, he said: "It feels like home. And obviously they have a great coach ... I love Coach K. I've been watching Duke since I was really young."


title: RJ Barrett

text: On November 6, in his first regular season game, he posted 33 points and six assists against second-ranked Kentucky at the Champions Classic, breaking the Duke freshman scoring record in a debut. On December 3, 2018, Barrett was named Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) rookie of the week. Barrett tallied his first double-double on December 5, with 27 points and 15 rebounds versus Hartford. On December 10, 2018, Barrett earned ACC player and freshman of the week honors for the second time. On January 28, 2019, Barrett earned his third ACC freshman of the week honor. On February 9, Barrett scored 26 points in an 81–71 victory against Virginia. On February 17, Barrett recorded 23 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists in a 94–78 win over North Carolina State. It was the fourth time in Duke history (second time under Mike Krzyzewski's tenure as head coach) where a player recorded a triple-double for the team. On February 25, 2019, Barrett was again named ACC freshman of the week for the fourth consecutive time. At the end of Duke's regular season, Barrett was named a member of both the Sporting News' All-American First Team, ACC All-Freshman team and the All-ACC First Team alongside his teammate Zion Williamson. Barrett was named USA Today's Player of the Year.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On March 22, Barrett led the team in both points and rebounds with 26 points and 14 rebounds in an 85–62 win over no. 16 North Dakota State in the NCAA Tournament. He saw action in a total of 38 games (starting all 38) as a freshman, averaging 22.6 points, 7.6 rebounds and 4.3 assists a contest.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Following Duke's loss in the 2019 NCAA men's basketball tournament, Barrett announced his intention to forgo his final three seasons of collegiate eligibility and declare for the 2019 NBA draft.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On June 20, 2019, the New York Knicks drafted Barrett with the third overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft. On July 3, Barrett officially signed with the Knicks. On October 23 2019, Barrett made his debut in the NBA, starting in a 111–120 loss to the San Antonio Spurs with 21 points, five rebounds, two assists and two steals. On December 17, Barrett scored a then career-high 27 points with six rebounds, an assist and a steal in a 143–120 win over the Atlanta Hawks. Barrett came down with a sprained ankle in a game against the Phoenix Suns on January 16, 2020. On March 2, Barrett tied his career-high 27 points by hitting a clutch layup before the game ended. He also had five rebounds, five assists and one steal in the 125–123 victory over the Houston Rockets.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett finished his rookie season averaging 14.3 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 1.0 steals in 30.4 minutes. He appeared in 56 games, starting in 55. He was controversially left out of an NBA All-Rookie Team after the premature end of the regular season.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On December 21, 2020, the Knicks announced that they exercised their third-year option on Barrett. On January 21, Barrett scored a then career-high 28 points, along with five assists and two rebounds, in a 119–104 win over the Golden State Warriors. On March 13, Barrett scored a then career-high 32 points, along with five rebounds and three assists, in a 119–97 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. Barrett made significant strides in his second year, finishing with 17.6 points per game, 5.8 rebounds, and 3.0 assists. Barrett also made big improvements in his shooting, finishing the season shooting 40.1 percent from the three-point line, and 74.6 percent from the free throw line. Barrett started in all 72 games during the season, which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, playing 34.9 minutes per game. The Knicks made the playoffs for the first time in eight years securing home court advantage in the first round. The Knicks ultimately lost 4–1 in the first round to the Atlanta Hawks.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On January 6, 2022, Barrett recorded 13 points and six assists and ended the night with a contested game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer, gifting the Knicks a 108–105 victory over the Boston Celtics, on a night where New York trailed by as much as 25. On January 10, against the San Antonio Spurs he scored 31 points, and on January 12 against the Dallas Mavericks. Barrett scored 32 points setting a franchise record becoming the youngest Knick to get consecutive games with at least 30 points at just 21 years old. He also became the eighth NBA player to tally 2,000 points, 500 rebounds and 300 assists by 21 years old, joining Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant and Luka Doncic. On February 6, he scored a then career-high 36 points, along with eight rebounds and five assists, in a 122–115 overtime loss against the Los Angeles Lakers. On February 25, Barrett scored a career-high 46 points in a 115–100 loss to the Miami Heat. He became the 7th player in NBA history to score 3400+ points, 1100+ rebounds and 550+ assist’s before turning 22 years old joining Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Luka Doncic. He also became the youngest Knicks player to average 20 points per game for a season at 21 years old.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On September 1, 2022, Barrett re-signed with the Knicks on a four-year, $120M deal. He was the first player to agree to a multiyear extension after a rookie deal with the Knicks since Charlie Ward in 1999.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett was the youngest player on Canada's under-16 national team that won silver at the 2015 FIBA Americas U16 Championship, in Argentina. Pouring in 14.6 points a contest, he led his team in scoring during the tournament.


title: RJ Barrett

text: He averaged 18.4 points, 4.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game at the 2016 FIBA U17 World Cup, in Spain, en route to eurobasket.com's All-World Cup U17 Second Team honours.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In July 2017, Barrett made headlines with a 38-point, 13-rebound, and five-assist showing as he guided Canada's under-19 squad to a 99–87 semifinal win over the US at the FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup. At the time, Northpolehoops.com described this performance as Barrett's "biggest game of his career so far". He subsequently led Canada to the title, tallying game-highs of 18 points and 12 rebounds in the championship game against Italy, and was named to the tournament's All-Star Five and also the tournament Most Valuable Player. Averaging 21.6 points a game, he was also the leading scorer of the tournament.


title: RJ Barrett

text: In June 2018, he made his debut on Canada's senior men's national team, scoring 16 points in a 97–62 win over China.


title: RJ Barrett

text: On May 24, 2022, Barrett agreed to a three-year commitment to play with the Canadian senior men's national team.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett's father Rowan Barrett was born to Jamaican parents and raised in Toronto. He played college basketball for St. John's before embarking on a professional career spent in Europe and South America. Rowan Sr. was a long-time member of the Canadian national team, which he captained at the 2000 Summer Olympics, and later became executive vice president and general manager of Canada Basketball.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett is the godson of Steve Nash, a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and former head coach of the Brooklyn Nets who played with his father on the Canadian national team. Rowan Sr. first met Nash, who is about two years his junior, while playing for the under-19 national team and quickly became close friends with him. When Barrett was a baby, Nash bought him his first crib.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett's mother Kesha Duhaney is a native of Brooklyn, New York. She was a nationally ranked sprinter and long jumper for St. John's University before working for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Barrett's parents first met while attending St. John's. His maternal aunt Dahlia Duhaney was a member of the Jamaica team 4 × 100 m relay that won a gold medal at the 1991 IAAF World Championships. Also on his mother's side, his grandparents ran track for the Jamaica national team, and his uncle played football for the University of Maryland.


title: RJ Barrett

text: Barrett can speak French fluently, although he admitted to being "a little rusty" in 2018. He has a brother Nathan, who is about four years younger than him. After Barrett left high school, Nathan joined the prep basketball team at Montverde Academy.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. As a Jewish composer, Schoenberg was targeted by the Nazi Party, which labeled his works as degenerate music and forbade them from being published. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, becoming an American citizen in 1941.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg's approach, bοth in terms of harmony and development, has shaped much of 20th-century musical thought. Many composers from at least three generations have consciously extended his thinking, whereas others have passionately reacted against it.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg was known early in his career for simultaneously extending the traditionally opposed German Romantic styles of Brahms and Wagner. Later, his name would come to personify innovations in atonality (although Schoenberg himself detested that term) that would become the most polemical feature of 20th-century classical music. In the 1920s, Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone technique, an influential compositional method of manipulating an ordered series of all twelve notes in the chromatic scale. He also coined the term developing variation and was the first modern composer to embrace ways of developing motifs without resorting to the dominance of a centralized melodic idea.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg was also an influential teacher of composition; his students included Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler, Egon Wellesz, Nikos Skalkottas, Stefania Turkewich, and later John Cage, Lou Harrison, Earl Kim, Robert Gerhard, Leon Kirchner, Dika Newlin, Oscar Levant, and . Many of Schoenberg's practices, including the formalization of compositional method and his habit of openly inviting audiences to think analytically, are echoed in avant-garde musical thought throughout the 20th century. His often polemical views of music history and aesthetics were crucial to many significant 20th-century musicologists and critics, including Theodor W. Adorno, Charles Rosen, and Carl Dahlhaus, as well as the pianists Artur Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin, Eduard Steuermann, and Glenn Gould.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Arnold Schoenberg was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in the Leopoldstadt district (in earlier times a Jewish ghetto) of Vienna, at "Obere Donaustraße 5". His father Samuel, a native of Szécsény, Hungary, later moved to Pozsony (Pressburg, at that time part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now Bratislava, Slovakia) and then to Vienna, was a shoe-shopkeeper, and his mother Pauline Schoenberg (née Nachod), a native of Prague, was a piano teacher. Arnold was largely self-taught. He took only counterpoint lessons with the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, who was to become his first brother-in-law.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In his twenties, Schoenberg earned a living by orchestrating operettas, while composing his own works, such as the string sextet "Verklärte Nacht" ("Transfigured Night") (1899). He later made an orchestral version of this, which became one of his most popular pieces. Both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler recognized Schoenberg's significance as a composer; Strauss when he encountered Schoenberg's "Gurre-Lieder", and Mahler after hearing several of Schoenberg's early works.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Strauss turned to a more conservative idiom in his own work after 1909, and at that point dismissed Schoenberg. Mahler adopted him as a protégé and continued to support him, even after Schoenberg's style reached a point Mahler could no longer understand. Mahler worried about who would look after him after his death. Schoenberg, who had initially despised and mocked Mahler's music, was converted by the "thunderbolt" of Mahler's "Third Symphony", which he considered a work of genius. Afterward he "spoke of Mahler as a saint".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In 1898 Schoenberg converted to Christianity in the Lutheran church. According to MacDonald (2008, 93) this was partly to strengthen his attachment to Western European cultural traditions, and partly as a means of self-defence "in a time of resurgent anti-Semitism". In 1933, after long meditation, he returned to Judaism, because he realised that "his racial and religious heritage was inescapable", and to take up an unmistakable position on the side opposing Nazism. He would self-identify as a member of the Jewish religion later in life.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In October 1901, Schoenberg married Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of the conductor and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, with whom Schoenberg had been studying since about 1894. Schoenberg and Mathilde had two children, Gertrud (1902–1947) and Georg (1906–1974). Gertrud would marry Schoenberg's pupil Felix Greissle in 1921.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: During the summer of 1908, Schoenberg's wife Mathilde left him for several months for a young Austrian painter, Richard Gerstl (who committed suicide in that November after Mathilde returned to her marriage). This period marked a distinct change in Schoenberg's work. It was during the absence of his wife that he composed "You lean against a silver-willow" (), the thirteenth song in the cycle "Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten", Op. 15, based on the collection of the same name by the German mystical poet Stefan George. This was the first composition without any reference at all to a key.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Also in this year, Schoenberg completed one of his most revolutionary compositions, the String Quartet No. 2. The first two movements, though chromatic in color, use traditional key signatures. The final two movements, again using poetry by George, incorporate a soprano vocal line, breaking with previous string-quartet practice, and daringly weaken the links with traditional tonality. Both movements end on tonic chords, and the work is not fully non-tonal.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: During the summer of 1910, Schoenberg wrote his "Harmonielehre" ("Theory of Harmony", Schoenberg 1922), which remains one of the most influential music-theory books. From about 1911, Schoenberg belonged to a circle of artists and intellectuals who included Lene Schneider-Kainer, Franz Werfel, Herwarth Walden, and Else Lasker-Schüler.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In 1910 he met Edward Clark, an English music journalist then working in Germany. Clark became his sole English student, and in his later capacity as a producer for the BBC he was responsible for introducing many of Schoenberg's works, and Schoenberg himself, to Britain (as well as Webern, Berg and others).


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Another of his most important works from this atonal or pantonal period is the highly influential "Pierrot lunaire", Op. 21, of 1912, a novel cycle of expressionist songs set to a German translation of poems by the Belgian-French poet Albert Giraud. Utilizing the technique of "Sprechstimme", or melodramatically spoken recitation, the work pairs a female vocalist with a small ensemble of five musicians. The ensemble, which is now commonly referred to as the Pierrot ensemble, consists of flute (doubling on piccolo), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), violin (doubling on viola), violoncello, speaker, and piano.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Wilhelm Bopp, director of the Vienna Conservatory from 1907, wanted a break from the stale environment personified for him by Robert Fuchs and Hermann Graedener. Having considered many candidates, he offered teaching positions to Schoenberg and Franz Schreker in 1912. At the time Schoenberg lived in Berlin. He was not completely cut off from the Vienna Conservatory, having taught a private theory course a year earlier. He seriously considered the offer, but he declined. Writing afterward to Alban Berg, he cited his "aversion to Vienna" as the main reason for his decision, while contemplating that it might have been the wrong one financially, but having made it he felt content. A couple of months later he wrote to Schreker suggesting that it might have been a bad idea for him as well to accept the teaching position.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: World War I brought a crisis in his development. Military service disrupted his life when at the age of 42 he was in the army. He was never able to work uninterrupted or over a period of time, and as a result he left many unfinished works and undeveloped "beginnings". On one occasion, a superior officer demanded to know if he was "this notorious Schoenberg, then"; Schoenberg replied: "Beg to report, sir, yes. Nobody wanted to be, someone had to be, so I let it be me". According to Norman, this is a reference to Schoenberg's apparent "destiny" as the "Emancipator of Dissonance".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In what Alex Ross calls an "act of war psychosis", Schoenberg drew comparisons between Germany's assault on France and his assault on decadent bourgeois artistic values. In August 1914, while denouncing the music of Bizet, Stravinsky, and Ravel, he wrote: "Now comes the reckoning! Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit and to worship the German God".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: The deteriorating relation between contemporary composers and the public led him to found the Society for Private Musical Performances ("Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen" in German) in Vienna in 1918. He sought to provide a forum in which modern musical compositions could be carefully prepared and rehearsed, and properly performed under conditions protected from the dictates of fashion and pressures of commerce. From its inception through 1921, when it ended because of economic reasons, the Society presented 353 performances to paying members, sometimes at the rate of one per week. During the first year and a half, Schoenberg did not let any of his own works be performed. Instead, audiences at the Society's concerts heard difficult contemporary compositions by Scriabin, Debussy, Mahler, Webern, Berg, Reger, and other leading figures of early 20th-century music.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Later, Schoenberg was to develop the most influential version of the dodecaphonic (also known as twelve-tone) method of composition, which in French and English was given the alternative name serialism by René Leibowitz and Humphrey Searle in 1947. This technique was taken up by many of his students, who constituted the so-called Second Viennese School. They included Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Hanns Eisler, all of whom were profoundly influenced by Schoenberg. He published a number of books, ranging from his famous "Harmonielehre" ("Theory of Harmony") to "Fundamentals of Musical Composition", many of which are still in print and used by musicians and developing composers.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg viewed his development as a natural progression, and he did not deprecate his earlier works when he ventured into serialism. In 1923 he wrote to the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart:


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: For the present, it matters more to me if people understand my older works ... They are the natural forerunners of my later works, and only those who understand and comprehend these will be able to gain an understanding of the later works that goes beyond a fashionable bare minimum. I do not attach so much importance to being a musical bogey-man as to being a natural continuer of properly-understood good old tradition!


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: His first wife died in October 1923, and in August of the next year Schoenberg married Gertrud Kolisch (1898–1967), sister of his pupil, the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. They had three children: Nuria Dorothea (born 1932), Ronald Rudolf (born 1937), and Lawrence Adam (born 1941). Gertrude Kolisch Schoenberg wrote the libretto for Schoenberg's one-act opera "Von heute auf morgen" under the pseudonym Max Blonda. At her request Schoenberg's (ultimately unfinished) piece, "Die Jakobsleiter" was prepared for performance by Schoenberg's student Winfried Zillig. After her husband's death in 1951 she founded Belmont Music Publishers devoted to the publication of his works. Arnold used the notes G and E (German: Es, i.e., "S") for "Gertrud Schoenberg", in the "Suite", for septet, Op. 29 (1925). (see musical cryptogram).


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Following the death in 1924 of composer Ferruccio Busoni, who had served as Director of a Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, Schoenberg was appointed to this post the next year, but because of health problems was unable to take up his post until 1926. Among his notable students during this period were the composers Robert Gerhard, Nikos Skalkottas, and Josef Rufer.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Along with his twelve-tone works, 1930 marks Schoenberg's return to tonality, with numbers 4 and 6 of the Six Pieces for Male Chorus Op. 35, the other pieces being dodecaphonic.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg continued in his post until the Nazi regime Machtergreifung came to power in 1933. While on vacation in France, he was warned that returning to Germany would be dangerous. Schoenberg formally reclaimed membership in the Jewish religion at a Paris synagogue, then traveled with his family to the United States. This happened after his attempts to move to Britain came to nothing.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: His first teaching position in the United States was at the Malkin Conservatory (Boston University). He moved to Los Angeles, where he taught at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, both of which later named a music building on their respective campuses Schoenberg Hall. He was appointed visiting professor at UCLA in 1935 on the recommendation of Otto Klemperer, music director and conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; and the next year was promoted to professor at a salary of $5,100 per year, which enabled him in either May 1936 or 1937 to buy a Spanish Revival house at 116 North Rockingham in Brentwood Park, near the UCLA campus, for $18,000. This address was directly across the street from Shirley Temple's house, and there he befriended fellow composer (and tennis partner) George Gershwin. The Schoenbergs were able to employ domestic help and began holding Sunday afternoon gatherings that were known for excellent coffee and Viennese pastries. Frequent guests included Otto Klemperer (who studied composition privately with Schoenberg beginning in April 1936), Edgard Varèse, Joseph Achron, Louis Gruenberg, Ernst Toch, and, on occasion, well-known actors such as Harpo Marx and Peter Lorre. Composers Leonard Rosenman and George Tremblay and the Hollywood orchestrator Edward B. Powell studied with Schoenberg at this time.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: After his move to the United States, where he arrived on 31 October 1933, the composer used the alternative spelling of his surname "Schoenberg", rather than "Schönberg", in what he called "deference to American practice", though according to one writer he first made the change a year earlier.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: He lived there the rest of his life, but at first he was not settled. In around 1934, he applied for a position of teacher of harmony and theory at the New South Wales State Conservatorium in Sydney. The Director, Edgar Bainton, rejected him for being Jewish and for having "modernist ideas and dangerous tendencies." Schoenberg also at one time explored the idea of emigrating to New Zealand. His secretary and student (and nephew of Schoenberg's mother-in-law Henriette Kolisch), was Richard Hoffmann, Viennese-born but who lived in New Zealand in 1935–1947, and Schoenberg had since childhood been fascinated with islands, and with New Zealand in particular, possibly because of the beauty of the postage stamps issued by that country.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: During this final period, he composed several notable works, including the difficult Violin Concerto, Op. 36 (1934/36), the "Kol Nidre", Op. 39, for chorus and orchestra (1938), the "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte", Op. 41 (1942), the haunting Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942), and his memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, "A Survivor from Warsaw", Op. 46 (1947). He was unable to complete his opera "Moses und Aron" (1932/33), which was one of the first works of its genre written completely using dodecaphonic composition. Along with twelve-tone music, Schoenberg also returned to tonality with works during his last period, like the Suite for Strings in G major (1935), the Chamber Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 38 (begun in 1906, completed in 1939), the Variations on a Recitative in D minor, Op. 40 (1941). During this period his notable students included John Cage and Lou Harrison.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In 1941, he became a citizen of the United States. Here he was the first composer in residence at the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg's superstitious nature may have triggered his death. The composer had triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13), and according to friend Katia Mann, he feared he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. This possibly began in 1908 with the composition of the thirteenth song of the song cycle "Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten" Op. 15. He dreaded his sixty-fifth birthday in 1939 so much that a friend asked the composer and astrologer Dane Rudhyar to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope. Rudhyar did this and told Schoenberg that the year was dangerous, but not fatal.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: But in 1950, on his 76th birthday, an astrologer wrote Schoenberg a note warning him that the year was a critical one: 7 + 6 = 13. This stunned and depressed the composer, for up to that point he had only been wary of multiples of 13 and never considered adding the digits of his age. He died on Friday, 13 July 1951, shortly before midnight. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick, anxious, and depressed. His wife Gertrud reported in a telegram to her sister-in-law Ottilie the next day that Arnold died at 11:45 pm, 15 minutes before midnight. In a letter to Ottilie dated 4 August 1951, Gertrud explained, "About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold's throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat and that was the end".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg's significant compositions in the repertory of modern art music extend over a period of more than 50 years. Traditionally they are divided into three periods though this division is arguably arbitrary as the music in each of these periods is considerably varied. The idea that his twelve-tone period "represents a stylistically unified body of works is simply not supported by the musical evidence", and important musical characteristics—especially those related to motivic development—transcend these boundaries completely.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: The first of these periods, 1894–1907, is identified in the legacy of the high-Romantic composers of the late nineteenth century, as well as with "expressionist" movements in poetry and art. The second, 1908–1922, is typified by the abandonment of key centers, a move often described (though not by Schoenberg) as "free atonality". The third, from 1923 onward, commences with Schoenberg's invention of dodecaphonic, or "twelve-tone" compositional method. Schoenberg's best-known students, Hanns Eisler, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, followed Schoenberg faithfully through each of these intellectual and aesthetic transitions, though not without considerable experimentation and variety of approach.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Beginning with songs and string quartets written around the turn of the century, Schoenberg's concerns as a composer positioned him uniquely among his peers, in that his procedures exhibited characteristics of both Brahms and Wagner, who for most contemporary listeners, were considered polar opposites, representing mutually exclusive directions in the legacy of German music. Schoenberg's Six Songs, Op. 3 (1899–1903), for example, exhibit a conservative clarity of tonal organization typical of Brahms and Mahler, reflecting an interest in balanced phrases and an undisturbed hierarchy of key relationships. However, the songs also explore unusually bold incidental chromaticism and seem to aspire to a Wagnerian "representational" approach to motivic identity.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: The synthesis of these approaches reaches an apex in his "Verklärte Nacht", Op. 4 (1899), a programmatic work for string sextet that develops several distinctive "leitmotif"-like themes, each one eclipsing and subordinating the last. The only motivic elements that persist throughout the work are those that are perpetually dissolved, varied, and re-combined, in a technique, identified primarily in Brahms's music, that Schoenberg called "developing variation". Schoenberg's procedures in the work are organized in two ways simultaneously; at once suggesting a Wagnerian narrative of motivic ideas, as well as a Brahmsian approach to motivic development and tonal cohesion.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg's music from 1908 onward experiments in a variety of ways with the absence of traditional keys or tonal centers. His first explicitly atonal piece was the second string quartet, Op. 10, with soprano. The last movement of this piece has no key signature, marking Schoenberg's formal divorce from diatonic harmonies. Other important works of the era include his song cycle "Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten", Op. 15 (1908–1909), his Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16 (1909), the influential "Pierrot Lunaire", Op. 21 (1912), as well as his dramatic "Erwartung", Op. 17 (1909).


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: The urgency of musical constructions lacking in tonal centers, or traditional dissonance-consonance relationships, however, can be traced as far back as his Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1906), a work remarkable for its tonal development of whole-tone and quartal harmony, and its initiation of dynamic and unusual ensemble relationships, involving dramatic interruption and unpredictable instrumental allegiances; many of these features would typify the timbre-oriented chamber music aesthetic of the coming century.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In the early 1920s, he worked at evolving a means of order that would make his musical texture simpler and clearer. This resulted in the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another", in which the twelve pitches of the octave (unrealized compositionally) are regarded as equal, and no one note or tonality is given the emphasis it occupied in classical harmony. He regarded it as the equivalent in music of Albert Einstein's discoveries in physics. Schoenberg announced it characteristically, during a walk with his friend Josef Rufer, when he said, "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". This period included the "Variations for Orchestra", Op. 31 (1928); Piano Pieces, Opp. 33a & b (1931), and the Piano Concerto, Op. 42 (1942). Contrary to his reputation for strictness, Schoenberg's use of the technique varied widely according to the demands of each individual composition. Thus the structure of his unfinished opera "Moses und Aron" is unlike that of his Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47 (1949).


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Ten features of Schoenberg's mature twelve-tone practice are characteristic, interdependent, and interactive:


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: After some early difficulties, Schoenberg began to win public acceptance with works such as the tone poem "Pelleas und Melisande" at a Berlin performance in 1907. At the Vienna première of the "Gurre-Lieder" in 1913, he received an ovation that lasted a quarter of an hour and culminated with Schoenberg's being presented with a laurel crown.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Nonetheless, much of his work was not well received. His Chamber Symphony No. 1 premièred unremarkably in 1907. However, when it was played again in the "Skandalkonzert" on 31 March 1913, (which also included works by Berg, Webern and Zemlinsky), "one could hear the shrill sound of door keys among the violent clapping, and in the second gallery the first fight of the evening began." Later in the concert, during a performance of the "Altenberg Lieder" by Berg, fighting broke out after Schoenberg interrupted the performance to threaten removal by the police of any troublemakers.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: According to Ethan Haimo, understanding of Schoenberg's twelve-tone work has been difficult to achieve owing in part to the "truly revolutionary nature" of his new system, misinformation disseminated by some early writers about the system's "rules" and "exceptions" that bear "little relation to the most significant features of Schoenberg's music", the composer's secretiveness, and the widespread unavailability of his sketches and manuscripts until the late 1970s. During his life, he was "subjected to a range of criticism and abuse that is shocking even in hindsight".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg criticized Igor Stravinsky's new neoclassical trend in the poem "Der neue Klassizismus" (in which he derogates Neoclassicism, and obliquely refers to Stravinsky as "Der kleine Modernsky"), which he used as text for the third of his "Drei Satiren", Op. 28.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg's serial technique of composition with twelve notes became one of the most central and polemical issues among American and European musicians during the mid- to late-twentieth century. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing to the present day, composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono and Milton Babbitt have extended Schoenberg's legacy in increasingly radical directions. The major cities of the United States (e.g., Los Angeles, New York, and Boston) have had historically significant performances of Schoenberg's music, with advocates such as Babbitt in New York and the Franco-American conductor-pianist Jacques-Louis Monod. Schoenberg's students have been influential teachers at major American universities: Leonard Stein at USC, UCLA and CalArts; Richard Hoffmann at Oberlin; Patricia Carpenter at Columbia; and Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim at Harvard. Musicians associated with Schoenberg have had a profound influence upon contemporary music performance practice in the US (e.g., Louis Krasner, Eugene Lehner and Rudolf Kolisch at the New England Conservatory of Music; Eduard Steuermann and Felix Galimir at the Juilliard School). In Europe, the work of Hans Keller, , and René Leibowitz has had a measurable influence in spreading Schoenberg's musical legacy outside of Germany and Austria. His pupil and assistant Max Deutsch, who later became a professor of music, was also a conductor. who made a recording of three "master works" Schoenberg with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, released posthumously in late 2013. This recording includes short lectures by Deutsch on each of the pieces.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In the 1920s, Ernst Krenek criticized a certain unnamed brand of contemporary music (presumably Schoenberg and his disciples) as "the self-gratification of an individual who sits in his studio and invents rules according to which he then writes down his notes". Schoenberg took offense at this remark and answered that Krenek "wishes for only whores as listeners".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Allen Shawn has noted that, given Schoenberg's living circumstances, his work is usually "defended" rather than listened to, and that it is difficult to experience it "apart" from the ideology that surrounds it. Richard Taruskin asserted that Schoenberg committed what he terms a "poietic fallacy", the conviction that what matters most (or all that matters) in a work of art is the making of it, the maker's input, and that the listener's pleasure must not be the composer's primary objective. Taruskin also criticizes the ideas of measuring Schoenberg's value as a composer in terms of his influence on other artists, the overrating of technical innovation, and the restriction of criticism to matters of structure and craft while derogating other approaches as vulgarian.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Writing in 1977, Christopher Small observed, "Many music lovers, even today, find difficulty with Schoenberg's music". Small wrote his short biography a quarter of a century after the composer's death. According to Nicholas Cook, writing some twenty years after Small, Schoenberg had thought that this lack of comprehension


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Ben Earle (2003) found that Schoenberg, while revered by experts and taught to "generations of students" on degree courses, remained unloved by the public. Despite more than forty years of advocacy and the production of "books devoted to the explanation of this difficult repertory to non-specialist audiences", it would seem that in particular, "British attempts to popularize music of this kind  ... can now safely be said to have failed".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: In his 2018 biography of Schoenberg's near contemporary and similarly pioneering composer, Debussy, Stephen Walsh takes issue with the idea that it is not possible "for a creative artist to be both radical and popular". Walsh concludes, "Schoenberg may be the first 'great' composer in modern history whose music has not entered the repertoire almost a century and a half after his birth".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Adrian Leverkühn, the protagonist of Thomas Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus" (1947), is a composer whose use of twelve-tone technique parallels the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg was unhappy about this and initiated an exchange of letters with Mann following the novel's publication.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Leverkühn, who may be based on Nietzsche, sells his soul to the Devil. Writer Sean O'Brien comments that "written in the shadow of Hitler, "Doktor Faustus" observes the rise of Nazism, but its relationship to political history is oblique".


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: Schoenberg was a painter of considerable ability, whose works were considered good enough to exhibit alongside those of Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. as fellow members of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter.


title: Arnold Schoenberg

text: He was interested in Hopalong Cassidy films, which Paul Buhle and David Wagner (2002, v–vii) attribute to the films' left-wing screenwriters—a rather odd claim in light of Schoenberg's statement that he was a "bourgeois" turned monarchist.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine of Siena (Italian: "Caterina da Siena"; 25 March 1347 – 29 April 1380), a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, was a mystic, activist, and author who had a great influence on Italian literature and on the Catholic Church. Canonized in 1461, she is also a Doctor of the Church.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Born and raised in Siena, she wanted from an early age to devote herself to God, against the will of her parents. She joined the "mantellates", a group of pious women, primarily widows, informally devoted to Dominican spirituality. Her influence with Pope Gregory XI played a role in his 1376 decision to leave Avignon for Rome. The Pope then sent Catherine to negotiate peace with Florence. After Gregory XI's death (March 1378) and the conclusion of peace (July 1378), she returned to Siena. She dictated to secretaries her set of spiritual treatises "The Dialogue of Divine Providence". The Great Schism of the West led Catherine of Siena to go to Rome with the pope. She sent numerous letters to princes and cardinals to promote obedience to Pope Urban VI and to defend what she calls the "vessel of the Church". She died on 29 April 1380, exhausted by her rigorous fasting. Urban VI celebrated her funeral and burial in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Devotion around Catherine of Siena developed rapidly after her death. Pope Pius II canonized her in 1461; she was declared a patron saint of Rome in 1866 by Pope Pius IX, and of Italy (together with Francis of Assisi) in 1939 by Pope Pius XII. She was the second woman to be declared a "doctor of the Church," on 4 October 1970 by Pope Paul VI – only days after Teresa of Ávila. In 1999 Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a (co-)patron saint of Europe.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine of Siena is one of the outstanding figures of medieval Catholicism, by the strong influence she has had in the history of the papacy and her extensive authorship. She was behind the return of the Pope from Avignon to Rome, and then carried out many missions entrusted to her by the pope, something quite rare for a woman in the Middle Ages. Her "Dialogue", hundreds of letters, and dozens of prayers, also give her a prominent place in the history of Italian literature.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa was born on 25 March 1347 (shortly before the Black Death ravaged Europe) in Siena, Republic of Siena (today Italy), to Lapa Piagenti, the daughter of a local poet, and Jacopo di Benincasa, a cloth dyer who ran his enterprise with the help of his sons. The house where Catherine grew up still exists. Lapa was about forty years old when she gave premature birth to twin daughters Catherine and Giovanna. She had already borne 22 children, but half of them had died. Giovanna was handed over to a wet-nurse and died soon after. Catherine was nursed by her mother and developed into a healthy child. She was two years old when Lapa had her 25th child, another daughter named Giovanna. As a child Catherine was so merry that the family gave her the pet name of "Euphrosyne", which is Greek for "joy" and the name of an Euphrosyne of Alexandria.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine is said by her confessor and biographer Raymond of Capua O.P.'s "Life" to have had her first vision of Christ when she was five or six years old: she and a brother were on the way home from visiting a married sister when she is said to have experienced a vision of Christ seated in glory with the Apostles Peter, Paul, and John. Raymond continues that at age seven, Catherine vowed to give her whole life to God.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: When Catherine was sixteen, her older sister Bonaventura died in childbirth; already anguished by this, Catherine soon learned that her parents wanted her to marry Bonaventura's widower. She was absolutely opposed and started a strict fast. She had learned this from Bonaventura, whose husband had been far from considerate but his wife had changed his attitude by refusing to eat until he showed better manners. Besides fasting, Catherine further disappointed her mother by cutting off her long hair as a protest against being overly encouraged to improve her appearance to attract a husband.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine would later advise Raymond of Capua to do during times of trouble what she did now as a teenager: "Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee." In this inner cell she made her father into a representation of Christ, her mother into the Blessed Virgin Mary, and her brothers into the apostles. Serving them humbly became an opportunity for spiritual growth. Catherine resisted the accepted course of marriage and motherhood on the one hand, or a nun's veil on the other. She chose to live an active and prayerful life outside a convent's walls following the model of the Dominicans. Eventually her father gave up and permitted her to live as she pleased.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: A vision of Saint Dominic gave strength to Catherine, but her wish to join his Order was no comfort to Lapa, who took her daughter with her to the baths in Bagno Vignoni to improve her health. Catherine fell seriously ill with a violent rash, fever and pain, which conveniently made her mother accept her wish to join the "Mantellate", the local association of devout women. The Mantellate taught Catherine how to read, and she lived in almost total silence and solitude in the family home.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Her custom of giving away clothing and food without asking anyone's permission cost her family significantly, but she requested nothing for herself. By staying in their midst, she could live out her rejection of them more strongly. She did not want their food, referring to the table laid for her in Heaven with her real family.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: According to Raymond of Capua, at the age of twenty-one (c. 1368), Catherine experienced what she described in her letters as a "Mystical Marriage" with Jesus, later a popular subject in art as the "Mystic marriage of Saint Catherine". Caroline Walker Bynum explains one surprising and controversial aspect of this marriage that occurs both in artistic representations of the event and in some early accounts of her life: "Underlining the extent to which the marriage was a fusion with Christ's physicality [...] Catherine received, not the ring of gold and jewels that her biographer reports in his bowdlerized version, but the ring of Christ's foreskin." Catherine herself mentions the foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters (#221), equating the wedding ring of a virgin with a foreskin; she typically claimed that her own wedding ring to Christ was simply invisible. She wrote in a letter (to encourage a nun who seems to have been undergoing a prolonged period of spiritual trial and torment): "Bathe in the blood of Christ crucified. See that you don't look for or want anything but the crucified, as a true bride ransomed by the blood of Christ crucified – for that is my wish. You see very well that you are a bride and that he has espoused you – you and everyone else – and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who on the eighth day, when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!" Raymond of Capua also records that she was told by Christ to leave her withdrawn life and enter the public life of the world. Catherine rejoined her family and began helping the ill and the poor, where she took care of them in hospitals or homes. Her early pious activities in Siena attracted a group of followers, women and men, who gathered around her.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: As social and political tensions mounted in Siena, Catherine found herself drawn to intervene in wider politics. She made her first journey to Florence in 1374, probably to be interviewed by the Dominican authorities at the General Chapter held in Florence in May 1374, though this is disputed (if she was interviewed, then the absence of later evidence suggests she was deemed sufficiently orthodox). It seems that at this time she acquired Raymond of Capua as her confessor and spiritual director.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: After this visit, she began travelling with her followers throughout northern and central Italy advocating reform of the clergy and advising people that repentance and renewal could be done through "the total love for God." In Pisa, in 1375, she used what influence she had to sway that city and Lucca away from alliance with the anti-papal league whose force was gaining momentum and strength. She also lent her enthusiasm toward promoting the launch of a new crusade. It was in Pisa in 1375 that, according to Raymond of Capua's biography, she received the stigmata (visible, at Catherine's request, only to herself).


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Physical travel was not the only way in which Catherine made her views known. From 1375 onward, she began dictating letters to scribes. These letters were intended to reach men and women of her circle, increasingly widening her audience to include figures in authority as she begged for peace between the republics and principalities of Italy and for the return of the Papacy from Avignon to Rome. She carried on a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, asking him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Toward the end of 1375, she returned to Siena, to assist a young political prisoner, Niccolò di Tuldo, at his execution. In June 1376 Catherine went to Avignon as ambassador of the Republic of Florence to make peace with the Papal States (on 31 March 1376 Gregory XI had placed Florence under interdict). She was unsuccessful and was disowned by the Florentine leaders, who sent ambassadors to negotiate on their own terms as soon as Catherine's work had paved the way for them. Catherine sent an appropriately scorching letter back to Florence in response. While in Avignon, Catherine also tried to convince Pope Gregory XI, the last Avignon Pope, to return to Rome. Gregory did indeed return his administration to Rome in January 1377; to what extent this was due to Catherine's influence is a topic of much modern debate.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine returned to Siena and spent the early months of 1377 founding a women's monastery of strict observance outside the city in the old fortress of Belcaro. She spent the rest of 1377 at Rocca d'Orcia, about twenty miles from Siena, on a local mission of peace-making and preaching. During this period, in autumn 1377, she had the experience which led to the writing of her "Dialogue" and learned to write, although she still seems to have chiefly relied upon her secretaries for her correspondence.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Late in 1377 or early in 1378 Catherine again travelled to Florence, at the order of Gregory XI, to seek peace between Florence and Rome. Following Gregory's death in March 1378 riots, the revolts of the Ciompi, broke out in Florence on 18 June, and in the ensuing violence she was nearly assassinated. Eventually, in July 1378, peace was agreed between Florence and Rome; Catherine returned quietly to Florence.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: In late November 1378, with the outbreak of the Western Schism, the new Pope, Urban VI, summoned her to Rome. She stayed at Pope Urban VI's court and tried to convince nobles and cardinals of his legitimacy, both meeting with individuals at court and writing letters to persuade others.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: For many years she had accustomed herself to a rigorous abstinence. She received the Holy Eucharist almost daily. This extreme fasting appeared unhealthy in the eyes of the clergy and her own sisterhood. Her confessor, Raymond, ordered her to eat properly. But Catherine claimed that she was unable to, describing her inability to eat as an "infermità" (illness). From the beginning of 1380, Catherine could neither eat nor swallow water. On 26 February she lost the use of her legs.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine died in Rome, on 29 April 1380, at the age of thirty-three, having eight days earlier suffered a massive stroke which paralyzed her from the waist down. Her last words were, "Father, into Your Hands I commend my soul and my spirit."


title: Catherine of Siena

text: There is some internal evidence of Catherine's personality, teaching and work in her nearly four hundred letters, her "Dialogue", and her prayers.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Much detail about her life has also, however, been drawn from the various sources written shortly after her death in order to promote her cult and canonization. Though much of this material is heavily hagiographic, it has been an important source for historians seeking to reconstruct Catherine's life. Various sources are particularly important, especially the works of Raymond of Capua, who was Catherine's spiritual director and close friend from 1374 until her death, and himself became Master General of the Order in 1380. Raymond wrote what is known as the "Legenda Major", his "Life" of Catherine which was completed in 1395, fifteen years after Catherine's death.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Another important work written after Catherine's death was "Libellus de Supplemento" ("Little Supplement Book"), written between 1412 and 1418 by Tommaso d'Antonio Nacci da Siena (commonly called Thomas of Siena, or Tommaso Caffarini); the work is an expansion of Raymond's "Legenda Major" making heavy use of the notes of Catherine's first confessor, Tommaso della Fonte (notes that do not survive anywhere else). Caffarini later published a more compact account of Catherine's life, entitled the "Legenda Minor".


title: Catherine of Siena

text: From 1411 onward, Caffarini also coordinated the compiling of the "Processus" of Venice, the set of documents submitted as part of the process of canonisation of Catherine, which provides testimony from nearly all of Catherine's disciples. There is also an anonymous piece entitled "Miracoli della Beata Caterina" ("Miracle of Blessed Catherine"), written by an anonymous Florentine. A few other relevant pieces survive.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: The University of Alcalá conserves a unique handwritten Spanish manuscript, while other available texts are printed copies collected by the National Library of France.<ref name="10.1093/fh/crt047 "> At section VI.</ref>


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Catherine's theology can be described as mystical, and was employed toward practical ends for her own spiritual life or those of others. She used the language of medieval scholastic philosophy to elaborate her experiential mysticism. Interested mainly with achieving an incorporeal union with God, Catherine practiced extreme fasting and asceticism, eventually to the extent of living solely off the Eucharist every day. For Catherine, this practice was the means to fully realize her love of Christ in her mystical experience, with a large proportion of her ecstatic visions relating to the consumption or rejection of food during her life. She viewed Christ as a "bridge" between the soul and God and transmitted that idea, along with her other teachings, in her book The Dialogue. The Dialogue is highly systematic and explanatory in its presentation of her mystical ideas; however, these ideas themselves are not so much based on reason or logic as they are based in her ecstatic mystical experience.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: In one of her letters she sent to her confessor, Raymund of Capua, she recorded this revelation from her conversation with Christ, in which he said: ""Do you know what you are to Me, and what I am to you, my daughter? I am He who is, you are she who is not"". This mystical concept of God as the wellspring of being is seen in the works and ideas of Aquinas and can be seen as a simplistic rendering of apotheosis and a more rudimentary form of the doctrine of divine simplicity. She describes God in her work, '"the Dialogues"', as a ""sea, in which we are the fish"", the point being that the relationship between God and man should not be seen as man contending against the Divine and vice versa, but as God being the endless being that supports all things.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: According to the writings attributed to Catherine, she had, in 1377, a vision in which the Virgin confirmed to her a thesis supported by the Dominican order, to which Catherine belonged: the Virgin said that she had been conceived "with" the original sin. The Virgin thus contradicted the future dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Cardinal Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV), in his treatise "De servorum Dei beatificatione et de beatorum canonizatione", 1734-1738, cites theologians who believed that Catherine's directors or editors had falsified her words; he also cites Father Lancicius, who believed that Catherine had made a mistake as a result of preconceived ideas.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: She was buried in the (Roman) cemetery of Santa Maria sopra Minerva which lies near the Pantheon. After miracles were reported to take place at her grave, Raymond moved her inside the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where she lies to this day.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Her head however, was parted from her body and inserted in a gilt bust of bronze. This bust was later taken to Siena, and carried through that city in a procession to the Dominican church. Behind the bust walked Lapa, Catherine's mother, who lived until she was 89 years old. By then she had seen the end of the wealth and the happiness of her family, and followed most of her children and several of her grandchildren to the grave. She helped Raymond of Capua write his biography of her daughter, and said, "I think God has laid my soul athwart in my body, so that it can't get out." The incorrupt head and thumb were entombed in the Basilica of San Domenico at Siena, where they remain.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: On 4 October 1970, Pope Paul VI named Catherine a Doctor of the Church; this title was almost simultaneously given to Teresa of Ávila (27 September 1970), making them the first women to receive this honour.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: Initially however, her feast day was not included in the General Roman Calendar. When it was added in 1597, it was put on the day of her death, 29 April; however, because this conflicted with the feast of Saint Peter of Verona which also fell on 29 April, Catherine's feast day was moved in 1628 to the new date of 30 April. In the 1969 revision of the calendar, it was decided to leave the celebration of the feast of St Peter of Verona to local calendars, because he was not as well known worldwide, and Catherine's feast was restored to 29 April.


title: Catherine of Siena

text: In his decree of 13 April 1866, Pope Pius IX declared Catherine of Siena to be a co-patroness of Rome. On 18 June 1939 Pope Pius XII named her a joint patron saint of Italy along with Saint Francis of Assisi.