Adrián Beltré Pérez (born April 7, 1979) is a Dominican former professional baseball third baseman. During his career, Beltré played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox, and Texas Rangers in Major League Baseball. He is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of all time.

Originally signed as an amateur free agent, Beltré made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998 at age 19. He batted and threw right-handed. Beltré hit a major league-leading 48 home runs while playing for the Dodgers in 2004, was the team MVP of the Red Sox in 2010, played in the 2011 World Series as a member of the Rangers, and tied for the major league lead in hits in 2013. On July 30, 2017, he became the 31st player in MLB history to reach 3,000 hits and the first Dominican player to achieve that milestone. Beltré retired following the 2018 season with 3,166 career hits, 477 home runs, and 1,707 runs batted in. He hit for the cycle three times in his career (2008, 2012, 2015), making him one of six players to do so in MLB history.

Having played 21 major league seasons and won the Rawlings Gold Glove Award five times, Beltré is notable for his defensive prowess and career longevity as well as his power hitting. He played in four MLB All-Star Games and won the Silver Slugger Award four times. Upon his retirement, Beltré was the only third baseman in history with both 3,000 career hits and 400 home runs. He retired as the all-time leader amongst third basemen in career hits and RBIs, and ranked third in home runs amongst third basemen. He is also the fifth major-leaguer to have hit at least 100 home runs for three different teams.

Early life
Beltré was born on April 7, 1979, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He attended Liceo Máximo Gómez High School.

While working out at Campo Las Palmas in 1994, a Los Angeles Dodgers facility — one of the first of its kind for a Major League Baseball (MLB) team in the Dominican Republic — Beltré was spotted by scouts Ralph Avila and Pablo Peguero. Though only 15 years  old and weighing , Beltré featured a quick swing and live throwing arm. On the insistence of Avila and Peguero, the Dodgers signed him in July 1994 with a $23,000 signing bonus.

Professional career

Los Angeles Dodgers (1998–2004)
Beltré was a highly touted prospect when he began his major league career. After being called up to the majors from the then-Dodgers' double-A affiliate San Antonio Missions, Beltré made his major league debut on June 24, 1998, starting at third base in the first game of an interleague series against the Anaheim Angels. At the time, he was the youngest player in the National League (NL). During his first at-bat, Beltré hit a two-out run batted in (RBI) double off Angels starter Chuck Finley into left field to score Paul Konerko from second base to tie the game. Beltré hit his first home run six days later against Texas Rangers starter Rick Helling. At the end of the 1998 season, Beltré finished with 13 errors at third base while batting .215 with seven home runs.

At one point in the spring training prior to the start of the 1999 season, Beltré's agent, Scott Boras, commented to him that "he couldn't believe" his relatively rapid ascent to the majors and handling of "such a difficult position like third base" at age 20. Beltré replied that he was 19 years old, not 20. Boras then realized that Beltré's date of birth in the Dodgers' records was incorrect and indicated the same to the team, but, that if they were to correct the mistake by compensating Beltré for signing him at younger than MLB's allowable age, they would no longer pursue the issue. Team personnel at Las Palmas denied Boras' assertion. As a result, Boras and Beltré went public. Boras convinced Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig to investigate the Dodgers, and Major League Baseball suspended their scouting operations in the Dominican Republic for one year, as well as Avila and Peguero. Dodgers general manager Fred Claire, whom MLB did not contact during their investigation, publicly expressed surprise and that he was unaware of the incident. Selig awarded Beltré $48,500 in damages.

In 2004, Beltré had a breakout season in which he established a number of career highs, including leading MLB with 48 home runs. Other career highs included batting .334, 200 hits, 121 RBI, 104 runs scored, .629 slugging percentage, and a then-career high 32 doubles. He finished second in voting for the NL Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) and was honored with his first career Silver Slugger Award and the Babe Ruth Home Run Award.

Seattle Mariners (2005–2009)

The Seattle Mariners signed Beltré as a free agent before the 2005 season to a five-year, $64 million deal. Regressing to his pre-2004 form, he batted just .255 with 19 home runs and 87 RBI. Manager Mike Hargrove did not give up hope on Beltré, saying, "I think it's a season that, personally, he's disappointed in. I think it was a year that he will improve on the longer he's here and the longer he's in the American League."

After Beltré had batted .167 through April 10, Ted Miller of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote that he might become one of the Mariners' greatest busts. By June 5, 2006, Beltré's batting average was slowly improving, from .109 on April 16 to .236 at that time. After he had hit his first home run in April and his second later that month, Beltré's hitting began to improve.

On July 23, 2006, against the Boston Red Sox, Beltré hit an inside-the-park home run, the first one ever in Safeco Field history.

Though it was not a great season for Beltré, it was statistically his best as a Mariner. He hit .276 and had 26 home runs, 99 RBI, and a career-high 41 doubles. He also was honored with a Fielding Bible Award for being the top MLB defensive third baseman during the year.

The 2007 season was not one of Beltré's better defensive years statistically. He tied with Brandon Inge for the AL lead in errors by a third baseman, with 18, but ranked second in the league in assists, total chances, and range factor. He was charged with the lowest fielding percentage of all third basemen in the league at .958. In spite of leading third basemen in errors, Beltré was selected for his first Rawlings Gold Glove Award, becoming the first Mariners third baseman to win the award.

On September 1, 2008, Beltré hit for the cycle, at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, becoming the fourth Mariner to do so. Arizona Diamondbacks shortstop Stephen Drew hit for the cycle that day as well, the first time two players had done so since 1920. He won his second Fielding Bible Award for his defense that year.

Beltré's decision not to wear a cup despite playing third base has been well-documented. This came back to hurt him on August 12, 2009, when he took a hard ground ball to the groin. Although he stayed in for the remainder of the 14-inning victory, he was put on the DL after suffering bleeding in one of his testicles. In his first game after returning from the DL, teammate Ken Griffey Jr. conspired with those responsible for the Safeco Field public address system to have Beltré's at-bat intro music be the opening march from The Nutcracker Suite.

Beltré declared free agency on November 5, 2009.

Boston Red Sox (2010)
On January 7, 2010, Beltré signed a one-year, $9 million deal with the Boston Red Sox. The contract had a $5 million player option for 2011 with a $1 million buyout.

While Beltré's career before coming to the Red Sox had been regarded as somewhat disappointing, he hit .321 with 28 homers and 49 doubles in 2010, benefiting from the hitter-friendly Fenway Park. Beltré led the Red Sox in batting average and tied David Ortiz for the team lead in RBIs (102). He finished the year with 189 hits in 589 at-bats and 84 runs scored. Beltré led the Majors in doubles with 49 (also a career-high). He also finished fourth in the AL in batting average, and was fifth in the AL in total bases (326) and slugging percentage (.553). He also had two stolen bases on the year, and finished ninth in the MVP voting.

Texas Rangers (2011–2018)
On January 5, 2011, Beltré signed a five-year (2011–15), $80 million contract with the Texas Rangers. He played with the Rangers for eight years until his retirement from baseball in 2018. Beltré's statistics improved when he was in his thirties. While he had previously played in ballparks in Los Angeles and Seattle that are known for being unfavorable to hitters, the Rangers' ballpark was known as a hitter-friendly environment. The Wall Street Journal described Beltré's Rangers tenure as "nothing short of brilliant".

2011

Beltré was on the 2011 American League All-Star team. On July 22, Beltré strained his hamstring and was also placed on the DL. On September 4, he hit a line single to right against the Red Sox for his 2,000th career hit. On September 11, Beltré hit two home runs, including the 300th of his career, against the Oakland Athletics. He was named the AL Player of the Month for September.

In 2011, Beltré batted .296 with 32 home runs, fifth in the AL. He was third in the American League in slugging percentage (.561), sixth in RBIs (105), and ninth in OPS (.892). The Fielding Bible staff estimated that he saved 17 runs on defense in 2011.

On October 4, 2011, in Game 4 of the ALDS against the Tampa Bay Rays, Beltré became the sixth player—the first in a Division Series—to hit three home runs in a Major League playoff game.

Beltré played in the 2011 World Series with the Rangers. He added a fourth playoff home run in Game 5 of the 2011 World Series when he went down to one knee chasing an outside curve ball from Chris Carpenter. The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Rangers in seven games.

More recognition was bestowed on Beltré for his defense. On November 1, 2011, he was honored with his third Gold Glove Award and first by a Ranger third baseman since Buddy Bell's six-year run from 1979 to 1984. He also won his third Fielding Bible Award. On November 2, 2011, he was awarded the Silver Slugger Award.

2012
Once again voted to the All-Star Game on July 1, 2012, Beltré was named a starter. He joined teammates Josh Hamilton and Mike Napoli on the All-Star team. It was Beltré's third All-Star Game and third in a row dating back to 2010 with the Boston Red Sox.

In the August 22, 2012, game against the Baltimore Orioles, Beltré hit three home runs in his first three at-bats, including two in the same inning. He joined Pablo Sandoval, Albert Pujols, George Brett, Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth as the only players to hit a three-homer game in both the regular season and the postseason. On August 24, he hit for the cycle for the second time in his career. Both of his cycles came at Rangers Ballpark. With his first coming as a member of the Mariners, it was the first time in MLB history that a player had hit for the cycle more than once at the same stadium. He joined Joe DiMaggio as the only two players in big league history to have a three-homer game and a cycle in the same week. For his efforts, Beltré was named the AL Player of the Week for August 20–26. During the seven games he hit .433 (13-for-30) with three doubles, one triple, five home runs, nine RBI and seven runs scored. He had the highest slugging percentage (1.100) in the majors, the most total bases (33), was tied for first in hits and home runs, and tied for second in RBI.

After the season, more defensive accolades followed Beltré. He won his second consecutive Fielding Bible Award and fourth overall. He was also honored with the Gold Glove Award for the season on October 30, and second Platinum Glove Award. Wilson Sporting Goods honored him as one of their Defensive Players of the Year; in that year the award was established.

2013

The Rangers organization named Beltré the team captain in 2013.

On July 8, 2013, Beltré was named the American League Player of the Week for July 1–7. He batted .478 (11-for-23) with four home runs, two doubles and five RBI in six games. He led the American League in home runs, slugging (1.087), OPS (1.607), total bases (25), and extra-base hits (six) while producing the fourth-highest batting average. Beltré hit safely in all six games with two or more hits four times. He had the 24th multi-homer game of his career with a pair of home runs on July 4 against Seattle.

Maintaining his strong hitting throughout July, Beltré was named the American League Player of the Month, his fourth career monthly award. He batted .369 with four doubles, nine homers, 19 RBI and 13 runs scored over 26 games. He tied for the major league lead with both Alfonso Soriano, in home runs, and Torii Hunter, in total bases (69). Beltré also finished among the AL leaders in slugging percentage (second, .670), hits (tied for second, 38), extra-base hits (tied for fourth, 13), RBI (tied for fifth) and batting average (sixth). He capped off the month with a walk-off home run to lead the Rangers past the Angels on July 31, the seventh walk-off home run of his career, and first with Texas. It was his third monthly award with Texas, making him one of seven players to win multiple times with the Rangers, including Josh Hamilton (four), Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez (both with three), Iván Rodríguez, Juan González and Rubén Sierra (two each).

For the 2013 season, Beltré played in 161 games and totaled a .315 average, 30 homers, 92 RBI and .509 SLG. He led the American League with 199 hits and was fourth in batting average and fifth in total bases (321). He also made the top-10 in games played, slugging percentage and home runs. In the AL MVP voting, he was tied for seventh place. The Dallas–Fort Worth chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America named Beltré the Texas Rangers Player of the Year.

2014
On May 7, 2014, while facing Jorge de la Rosa of the Colorado Rockies, Beltré hit his 100th home run as a member of the Rangers, becoming only the fifth player in Major League history to hit 100 home runs with three teams. He joined Darrell Evans, Reggie Jackson, Alex Rodriguez, and Jim Thome.

On June 24, 2014, Beltré singled off Drew Smyly of the Detroit Tigers for his 2,500th career hit, and the first hit of a 4-for-4 game.

On September 18, Beltré singled off Sonny Gray in the first inning for his 2,591st hit, surpassing Vladimir Guerrero as the all-time hit leader among Dominican-born players.

Beltré finished the 2014 season batting .324 – his highest average since 2004 – with 19 home runs and 77 RBI in 148 games.

2015
In February 2015, the Rangers picked up Beltré's option, which would have become guaranteed if he had reached 586 plate appearances in the 2015 season.

While playing the Cleveland Indians on May 15, 2015, Beltré hit his 400th home run on a sinker from Bruce Chen. He became the 52nd player in MLB history to reach that plateau, and the fourth to do so while playing at least 75 percent of his games at third base.

Enduring a torn ligament in his left thumb over the last three months of the season, Beltré had surgery to repair it immediately after the season ended.

On August 3, 2015, Beltré hit for the cycle with hits in each of the first, second, third, and fifth innings against the Houston Astros at Globe Life Park in Arlington in a 12–9 win. It was his third career cycle, second as a Ranger, and third at Globe Life, the Rangers' home park, making him the only player ever to hit three cycles in one stadium. He became the first Rangers player to hit for multiple cycles. The first player in 82 years to hit for a third cycle, he became the fourth player to do so and tied the major league record for total career cycles, joining Long John Reilly, Bob Meusel and Babe Herman.

The Phi Delta Theta fraternity presented Beltré with the 2014 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award on September 17, 2015, making him the first Rangers player to win the award. He had contributed significantly to humanitarian acts in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex such as Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation, Texas Rangers RBI program, the I Love Baseball program, which operates in the Dominican Republic, the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, as well as the foundations established by a number of major league players.

During the last week of the season, and the Rangers' run towards the AL West championship, Beltré batted .448 with two home runs and 13 RBI. He also went 2-4 with a home in the final game of the season to help the Rangers advance to their sixth AL West title. He finished the season with 18 home runs, 83 RBI, 163 hits, and .287 average.

2016
On April 15, 2016, Beltré and the Rangers agreed to a two-year, $36 million contract extension that would cover the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Valued at $18 million each for both seasons, the extension prevented Beltré from becoming a free agent at the end of the season.

Displaying a drop to one knee, Beltré hit a home run on a curve ball from Jesse Hahn of Oakland on May 17. In a May 29 game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Beltré hit a two-run home run off Juan Nicasio to give him 1,501 career RBI, making him the 54th player to reach the milestone, and the fourth third baseman. On July 2, 2016, Beltré became the 28th player all time to amass 10,000 career at-bats. On July 23, 2016, he became the 36th player all time to record 11,000 career plate appearances. Two days later, he hit the walk-off home run, the ninth of his career, against the Athletics in the bottom of the ninth inning for a 7−6 win.

On August 24, 2016, Beltré, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds, hit a go-ahead two-out double for his 2,900th career hit and led the Rangers to a 6–5 win. With this hit, Beltré became the 39th player in Major League history to reach the milestone.

Beltré would once again show his signature home run knee drop after hitting a solo shot in the second inning in a game against the Houston Astros on September 13, 2016. His 30th of the season, it was the first time he reached the mark since 2013 and fifth in his career. Ten days later, his two-run home run in the eighth inning against the Athletics aided the Rangers in clinching the American League West division crown for the second year in a row and the seventh in franchise history. He also reached 100 RBI for the first time since 2012, and the fifth time in his career. He was selected as the American League Gold Glove winner at third base, the fifth of his career.

2017
Beltré began the 2017 season on the 10-day disabled list; he had injured his right leg near the end of spring training.

On July 4, Beltré hit his 600th career double, becoming the 17th player all-time to reach that milestone. On July 7, Beltré became the 21st player to amass 5,000 career total bases. On July 26, Beltré was ejected by umpire Gerry Davis; in a game against the Miami Marlins, Davis asked Beltré, who was the next scheduled batter, to move closer to the on-deck circle. Beltré responded by picking up the edge of the logo that marked the on-deck circle and moving it closer to where he had been standing, which prompted Davis to eject him.

Beltré collected his 3,000th hit with a double into left field against Wade Miley of the Baltimore Orioles on July 30, 2017, making him the 31st player to reach this milestone and the first Dominican born player to accomplish it.

Beltré played in only 94 games in 2017 due to hamstring and calf problems.

2018
Prior to the start of the 2018 season, the Rangers signed Bartolo Colón, giving them the only two active players with at least 20 seasons in the major leagues. On April 5, 2018, Beltré doubled in the second inning versus the Oakland Athletics to pass Rod Carew as the all-time Latin-American hits leader.

On June 13, 2018, Beltré hit a double that gave him 3,090 career hits; this made him the all-time leader in hits by a player not born in the United States.

On November 20, 2018, Beltré announced his retirement.

Career statistics
In 2,933 games over 21 seasons, Beltré posted a .286 batting average with 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, 1,707 RBI, 121 stolen bases, 1,524 runs, 636 doubles, a .339 on-base percentage, a .480 slugging percentage, and a .960 fielding percentage. In 28 postseason games, he hit .261 (29-for-111) with five home runs and 11 RBI.

Playing style and reputation
Beltré is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of all time. Having played 21 major league seasons and won five Gold Gloves, he was notable for his longevity and his fielding ability as well as his power hitting.

Beltré's signature home run swing included a drop to one knee when connecting with a breaking ball, particularly notable during Game 5 of the 2011 World Series in an at bat against Cardinals ace pitcher Chris Carpenter.

Beltré's defensive style was somewhat unorthodox. Rangers manager Ron Washington remarked that Beltré fielded ground balls incorrectly by stopping before catching the ball and relying very little on the positioning of his feet in throwing the ball to first base. Beltré explained that his arm was so strong that early in his career he was making many throwing errors; by planting his feet, he was able to improve his accuracy despite his lack of proper foot positioning.

Another major league manager, Joe Maddon, compared the unique style of Beltré's defensive play to Ozzie Smith's "flair at shortstop," Stan Musial's "coiled batting stance" and the way Steve Carlton wrapped his left wrist before releasing a slider. Commented Maddon further on Beltré's defense, "There's a lot of guys that did things unique to them that weren't out of the Spalding Guide. They did things you wouldn't teach, and if somebody else tried to do it, they would not be very good." Commented Rangers bench coach Steve Buechele, "He's not your most conventional third baseman, he does things his own way and has developed his own style over his career but there's something to be said for his hand-eye coordination and his hands. It's remarkable what he does. ... He's a super smart player, knows where to position himself."

Beltré was known for the sense of playfulness and joy that he exhibited on the field. He had a routine with Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus on pop flies where both men put their arms up to catch the ball. During a game against the Red Sox on June 26, 2016, Sandy León hit a foul ball which landed in the first row in the stands, just out of Beltré's reach. However, instead of returning immediately to the infield, he reached very close to the ball in a motion, pretending as if he were going to take it away from the fan who caught León's foul ball.

Beltré was also known for his dislike of anyone touching the top of his head. Before the game where he recorded his 3,000th hit, he let his teammates touch his head. Much to his dismay, the act turned into a game, inducing repeat offenders such as his infield partner Andrus. Beltré also disliked Gatorade showers. After a game in which he hit a grand slam that provided the decisive runs in a 5–2 win over the Athletics on August 15, 2016, he took a broom from the groundskeepers closet and began combing an area of infield dirt. Still, Rougned Odor trotted to Beltré carrying a bucket filled with Gatorade, and in his attempt to drench Beltré, missed him with the launch of the column of the liquid.

Awards and accomplishments
Awards
 All-World Baseball Classic Team (2006)
 4× Fielding Bible Award at third base (2006, 2008, 2011, 2012)
 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award (2014)
 4× MLB All-Star (2010–12, 2014)
 4× MLB Player of the Month (September 2004, September 2011, September 2012, July 2013)
 6× MLB Player of the Week (August 27, 2000; June 27, 2004; August 26, 2012; July 7, 2013; October 4, 2015; July 30th, 2017)
 2× Rawlings American League Platinum Glove Award (2011, 2012)
 5× Rawlings Gold Glove Award at third base (2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2016)
 4× Silver Slugger Award at third base (2004, 2010, 2011, 2014)
 4× Texas Rangers Player of the Year (2012, 2013, 2014, 2016)
 Thomas A. Yawkey Award (Boston Red Sox team MVP) (2010)
 Wilson Defensive Player of the Year Award for the Texas Rangers (2012)

Selected MLB accomplishments
 First player from the Dominican Republic to reach 3,000 hits.
 Played 2,933 major league games; upon his retirement, this was the 14th-highest total in Major League history.
 Retired as the only third baseman in history with both 3,000 career hits and 400 homers.
 Retired as the all-time leader amongst third basemen in career hits and RBIs, and ranked third in home runs behind Mike Schmidt (548) and Eddie Mathews (512).
 One of five players to hit 100 home runs with three teams.
 Holds the MLB record for hitting for the cycles accomplished in the same stadium (3 at Globe Life Park in Arlington).
 Tied MLB record as fourth player to hit for the cycle three times.
 Sixth player with a three-home-run game in both the postseason (October 4, 2011) and regular season (August 22, 2012).
 Second player with both a three-home-run game (August 22, 2012) and a cycle (August 24, 2012) within the same week.
 Had his number 29 retired by the Texas Rangers in 2019.

Post-playing career
On June 5, 2023, Beltré was named the honorary general manager for the Karachi Monarchs of the Baseball United league for their inaugural season.

Charitable and humanitarian work
Beltré has contributed to humanitarian activities in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex such as the Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation, Texas Rangers RBI program, the I Love Baseball program, which operates in the Dominican Republic, and the Baseball Tomorrow Fund. He has donated to Dave Valle's Esperanza International as well as foundations established by other major-league players, including Robinson Chirinos, Eddie Guardado, Joakim Soria and Michael Young.

Personal life
Beltré and his wife Sandra have three children.

See also

 List of Boston Red Sox award winners
 List of Major League Baseball annual doubles leaders
 List of Major League Baseball annual home run leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career assists leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career games played leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career doubles leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career putouts as a third baseman leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career runs batted in leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders
 List of Major League Baseball career singles leaders
 List of Major League Baseball home run records
 List of Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
 List of Major League Baseball players to hit for the cycle
 Los Angeles Dodgers award winners and league leaders
 Texas Rangers award winners and league leaders

References

External links

1979 births
Living people
American League All-Stars
Boston Red Sox players
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in the United States
Gold Glove Award winners
Las Vegas 51s players
Los Angeles Dodgers players
Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
Major League Baseball players with retired numbers
Major League Baseball third basemen
National League home run champions
Round Rock Express players
San Antonio Missions players
San Bernardino Stampede players
Savannah Sand Gnats players
Seattle Mariners players
Silver Slugger Award winners
Baseball players from Santo Domingo
Texas Rangers players
Vero Beach Dodgers players
World Baseball Classic players of the Dominican Republic
2006 World Baseball Classic players
2017 World Baseball Classic players

Adrián Beltré


Sebastian Currier (born March 16, 1959) is an American composer of music for chamber groups and orchestras.  He was also a professor of music at Columbia University from 1999 to 2007.

Life
Currier was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, in a family of talented musicians, including his brother Nathan Currier, also a noted composer.  Sebastian Currier received degrees from the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music.  His compositions include Crossfade, written for two harps, and Microsymph, described as a "30-minute symphony compressed into 10 minutes."

In October 2005, members of the Berlin Philharmonic performed an entire evening of his works, including the premiere of Remix.

Currier completed the orchestration of Stephen Albert's Symphony No. 2, part of which was unfinished at the time of Albert's death. It was subsequently recorded on Naxos Records along with Albert's Symphony No. 1 Riverrun, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has recorded Currier's Aftersong, which the composer dedicated to her. On June 2, 2011, she also premiered his Time Machines (composed in 2007 and reworked by the composer in 2011) with the Slovak Roman Patkoló playing the contrabasso and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Alan Gilbert. His Piano Concerto was premiered in April 2007 by Emma Tahmizian.

Currier has received a Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, for Static, and a 2010 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Manhattan School of Music.

On March 12, 2013, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton announced the appointment of Currier as Artist-in-Residence, his term to begin on July 1, 2013.

Awards
 2007 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for Static for flute, clarinet, violin, 'cello, and piano. Static is the second Grawemeyer Award-winning piece that does not require a conductor (the other is György Ligeti's Piano Etudes, which won the award in 1986).
 1992 Guggenheim Fellowship
 American Academy of Arts.
 1994 Rome Prize

References

External links
 Sebastian Currier's page at Carl Fischer
 Composer's website
 Article from Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM)
 Biography from Columbia University
 Review of 'Static' in The New York Times
 Announcement of Grawemeyer Award
 Further Information on Static and Grawemeyer Award
 Sebastian Currier @ Boosey & Hawkes

Living people
1959 births
21st-century classical composers
20th-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Columbia University faculty
Manhattan School of Music alumni
Musicians from Providence, Rhode Island
Artists-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study
21st-century American composers
20th-century American composers
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Sebastian Currier


Maximilian Edwin Hoffman (12 November 1904 – 9 August 1981), was an American importer of luxury European automobiles during the 1950s.

Known equally for his acumen and influence, Hoffman was instrumental in development and refinement of several iconic luxury sports cars, including the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing, Porsche 356 Speedster, and V-8 powered BMW 507 roadster.

Hoffman's contributions to both automobile development and sports car racing earned him induction into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2003.  Both his home in Rye, New York, and Park Avenue Jaguar showroom in Manhattan were designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Early life
Hoffman was born on 12 November 1904 in Vienna, Austria, to a Catholic mother and Jewish father. His father owned a bicycle manufacturing business, where Hoffman worked when growing up. He developed enough skills to get a job as a factory driver for an Austrian company that produced the French Amilcar, and later became a dealer for the brand.

Career
Hoffman's dealers made requests through him, both for existing models and new types they thought their customers would purchase in the booming post-war American market. The most famous result of Hoffman's suggestions is the Mercedes-Benz 300SL "gullwing".  More than 80% of the 300SL's total production of approximately 1400 units were sold in the US, making it the first Mercedes-Benz widely successful outside its home market and thoroughly validating Hoffman's seat-of-the-pants prediction. Its success is credited with changing the company's image in America from a manufacturer of solid but staid luxury automobiles to one capable of rendering high-performance sports cars.

During World War II, when the private market for cars was very slow in the United States, Hoffman used his intuition for possibilities and market niches to start creating jewelry for women, using metallized plastic. He started this business with just 300 dollars, and even in wartime, he earned a small fortune from it. Once the war was over, Hoffman returned to following his true passion for fast and luxurious automobiles.

From 1950 until 1953, Hoffmann was the importer and distributor for Volkswagen for the eastern United States. He was also the importer and sole distributor for BMW from the mid-sixties until selling his business to BMW of North America in 1975. Alfa Romeo was also imported to the United States by Hoffman starting from the mid-1950s. The Giulietta Spider was born by request of Hoffman. In 1961 Alfa Romeo started importing cars to the United States.

Hoffman played an instrumental role in popularizing Porsche vehicles in the United States. In the mid-1950s, one third of Porsche's overall production was sold on the US market by Hoffman. Notably, Hoffman's vision for a cheaper, racier version of the Porsche 356 led to the creation of the iconic Porsche 356 Speedster. He also set a significant milestone by establishing the Porsche emblem, which was designed by Ferry Porsche at Hoffman's urging. Furthermore, Hoffman facilitated Porsche's success in the US by arranging for several Porsche 356 cars to race in various events, resulting in significant victories and increased popularity for the brand in the country.

Some of the dealers, such as Lake Underwood and his team's machine engineer, Dick DeBiasse, were especially influential on Hoffman.

Personal
The Max Hoffman House was designed and furnished by Frank Lloyd Wright a few years after Hoffman had commissioned Wright to design and build his Jaguar Hoffman Auto Showroom at 430 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

In 1982 Marion O. Hoffman established the non-profit Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation Inc. in West Hartford, Connecticut, in memory of her husband. The organization donates to groups, mostly in Connecticut, that further education, medicine and the arts. In 2013 the foundation had assets of approximately $60 million.

Hoffman, who had Jewish ancestry was an auto racer in Europe before immigrating to the United States to avoid the Nazis
.

See also
Lake Underwood
Ferrari America
BMW 507

References

External links
 Automobile / US-Markt: Aufreißer für Europa, Der Spiegel, 9 September 1968, p. 124.
 Donald Osborne: Max Hoffman Made Imports Less Foreign to Americans, New York Times, 18 March 2007
 Visionär und Autohändler, stern, 26 September 2014.
 Christof Vieweg: Er brachte deutsche Techniker zum Tanzen'', Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 March 2007

1904 births
1981 deaths
People in the automobile industry
Businesspeople from Vienna
20th-century American businesspeople
American people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Austrian Jews
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States

Max Hoffman


The Highway Code is a set of information, advice, guides and mandatory rules for road users in the United Kingdom. Its objective is to promote road safety. The Code applies to all road users including pedestrians, horse riders and cyclists, as well as motorcyclists and drivers. It gives information on road signs, road markings, vehicle markings and road safety, and has annexes on vehicle maintenance, licence requirements, documentation, penalties, and vehicle security.

The Highway Code was first published in 1931, and is regularly updated. It is prepared by the Department for Transport and the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and is published by The Stationery Office in both electronic form and as a printed book.

The 17th edition (2022) introduced some significant changes. In particular, a new "hierarchy of road users" classifies road users according to their risk in the event of a collision, with the most vulnerable at the top.

The Great Britain version, available in English and Welsh, applies to England, Scotland and Wales, but region-specific signs such as driver location signs in England and bilingual signs in Scotland and Wales are not covered. There is also a Northern Ireland version, available in English and Irish.

History

The Departmental Committee on the Regulation of Motor Vehicles announced in 1920 that "a compulsory and uniform code of signals for all road vehicles is to be brought into operation". Drivers in London had evolved a system for signalling their intentions to turn right or stop, using their arm, and this was seen to be of such benefit that it should be required and standardised as a code of behaviour across the country. The code allowed the driver to use either his own arm or a dummy arm – which had obvious benefits in wet weather for drivers with the luxury of an enclosed cab, or for drivers using left-hand-drive vehicles, as in imported American cars. The intention to bring in the compulsory code was delayed and in successive years the code was expanded including whip signals for horse-drawn vehicles, and signals made by policemen controlling junctions.

In 1923 a booklet costing one penny was published by His Majesty's Stationery Office and approved by the Home Office (and Scottish Office). Entitled Traffic Signals to be used by the Police and Drivers of Vehicles, this booklet arose from discussions between the Police and The Automobile Association. In subsequent years, in addition to being promoted by the automobile associations, the code was publicised using posters by the National Safety First Association (which still continues this work, having been renamed the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in 1936).

The formal introduction of The Highway Code was one of the provisions of the wide-reaching Road Traffic Act 1930. Costing one penny, the first edition of the code was published on 14 April 1931. It contained 21 pages of advice, including the arm signals to be given by drivers and police officers controlling traffic. The second edition, considerably expanded, appeared in 1934, and now illustrated road signs for the first time. During its preparation the Ministry of Transport consulted with the Pedestrians' Association.

Further major revisions followed after the Second World War so that, for example, references to trams were removed after the 1954 version. (Blackpool was for decades the only place in the UK with a tram system. Tramway rules returned to the Code in 1994, after the first modern tram systems in Britain had opened.) Motorway driving was included in the fifth edition. The sixth edition, in 1968, used photographs as well as drawings for the first time, and also updated the illustrations of road signs to take the new 'continental' designs into account. The 70-page 1978 edition introduced the Green Cross Code for pedestrians and orange badges for unskilled drivers. The format was changed to a 'taller' size in the 1990s. An electronic Highway Code app followed in 2012. Following public consultations in 2020, a new "hierarchy of road users" was incorporated into the 17th edition (2022), classifying road users according to their risk in the event of a collision, with the most vulnerable at the top.

Hierarchy of road users (2022 edition)

The "hierarchy of road users", according to The Official Highway Code "is a concept that places those road users most at risk in the event of a collision at the top of the hierarchy". Three special rules are provided which cover the concept:

Rule H1
Sets out the principle that those in charge of vehicles that can cause the greatest harm in the event of a collision bear the greatest responsibility to take care and reduce the danger they pose to others. The principle applies most strongly to drivers of large goods and passenger vehicles, vans/minibuses, cars/taxis and motorcycles. Cyclists, horse riders and drivers of horse drawn vehicles likewise have a responsibility to reduce danger to pedestrians.

Rule H2 – for drivers, motorcyclists, horse drawn vehicles, horse riders and cyclists
At a junction, these road users should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which (or from which) they are turning.

Pedestrians have priority on zebra crossings and on shared use cycle tracks. Only pedestrians (including wheelchair and mobility scooter users) may use the pavement. Pedestrians may use any part of the road and may use cycle tracks as well as the pavement, unless there are signs to the contrary.

Rule H3 – for drivers and motorcyclists
Drivers and motorcyclists should not cut across cyclists, horse riders or horse drawn vehicles going ahead when they are turning into or out of a junction or changing direction or lane (just as they would not turn across the path of another motor vehicle). The code says "do not turn at a junction if to do so would cause the [more vulnerable road user] going straight ahead to stop or swerve". This applies not only when the more vulnerable road user is on the road, but also when they are in a cycle lane or on a cycle track.

Legal aspects

Certain rules in The Highway Code are legal requirements, and are identified by the words 'must' or 'must not', presented in bold red block capitals. In these cases, the rules also include references to the corresponding legislation. Offenders may be cautioned, given licence penalty points, fined, banned from driving, or imprisoned, depending on the severity of the offence. Although failure to comply with the other rules would not, in itself, cause a person to be prosecuted, the Highway Code may be used in court under the Road Traffic Act 1988 to establish liability. These include advisory rules with wording 'should' and 'should not' or 'do' (or a simple imperative) and 'do not'. The latest official printed version of the Highway Code is the one in force at any time, but in legal proceedings the version current at the time of the incident applies.

The Road Traffic Act 1988 states:

Access

The currently applicable Highway Code for England, Scotland, and Wales is available to read online at the Highway Code Web site, with links to download as free PDF eBook, app, and audio book. A printed version is widely available for purchase.

See also
 Driver's manual, the United States equivalent of the Highway Code
Road Users' Code, the Hong Kong equivalent of The Highway Code
Malta's The Highway Code, the Maltese  Highway Code
Ireland's Rules of the Road, the Irish equivalent of the Highway Code
Road surface marking
Road marking machine
Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions
Vienna Convention on Road Traffic
Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals

References

External links
 The Highway Code (in English)
 The Highway Code for Northern Ireland with links to English, Irish,  Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Portuguese and Mandarin versions.

Road transport in the United Kingdom
Road safety in the United Kingdom
Road user guides
Transport policy in the United Kingdom
Road safety
Driving in the United Kingdom
1931 in the United Kingdom
British books
Publications established in 1931
1931 establishments in the United Kingdom
Rules of the road

The Highway Code


The T-12 (also known as Cloudmaker) earthquake bomb was developed by the United States from 1944 to 1948 and deployed until the withdrawal of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber aircraft in 1958. It was one of a small class of bombs designed to attack targets invulnerable to conventional "soft" bombs, such as bunkers and viaducts. It achieved this by having an extremely thick, hardened nose section designed to penetrate deeply into hardened concrete structures and then detonate inside the target after a short time delay.

Development
The T-12 was a further development of the concept initiated with the United Kingdom's Tallboy and Grand Slam weapons developed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis during the Second World War: a hardened, highly aerodynamic bomb of the greatest possible weight designed to be dropped from the highest possible altitude. Penetrating deeply in the earth before exploding, the resulting shock wave was transmitted through the earth into targets. The resulting underground cavity and ground motion could also undermine structures. The bomb could also be used against hardened targets. These types of bombs can reach supersonic speeds and have tail fins designed to spin the bomb for greater accuracy.

Originally designed to meet a  target weight (one half of the maximum payload for the  Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" bomber), with its hardened case was slightly less than . The final T-12 weighed . This was twice the size of the United States' previous largest bomb, the  M110 (T-14), the American-built version of the British Grand Slam. The T-12 was not a simple scale up of the M110, but incorporated modifications based on testing and calculations. The B-36 was redesigned so it could carry the T-12, although a converted B-29 Superfortress was used for testing.

See also
 Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power
 BLU-82
 Bunker buster
 Grand Slam bomb
 Massive Ordnance Penetrator
 MOAB

References

External links

 "Big Bomb Tight Fit In B-29 Bomb Bays",  Popular Science, October 1951, p. 144. Photo showing T-12 being fitted to B-29 bomb bay
 "The USA's 30,000 Pound Bomb", Defense Industry Daily.  Article on the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), has history of earlier systems.
 "The Extra-Super Blockbuster"  by Dr. William S. Coker. Air University Review, March-April 1967.

Anti-fortification weapons
Cold War aerial bombs of the United States

T-12 Cloudmaker


As a result of snowmelt, Bucharest, the capital of Romania, was hit by the worst flooding in its history. Although the death toll is unknown, documents attest a large number of dead and displaced people. At people's pressure, Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza started a project of sewering the Dâmbovița River, which concretized only in 1880, after the plans of engineer Grigore Cerkez. Modern facilities were built to supply water to the city and 12 bridges.

Flooding

The sixth decade of the 19th century was marked by severe flooding in the area surrounding the capital, mainly caused by torrential rains. Additional snowmelt in the spring of 1865 caused one of the most devastating natural disasters in the history of Bucharest. Then, the Dâmbovița River flooded large parts of Bucharest, lying from Grozăvești to Vitan. According to some documents cited by historian Dan Falcan, the water level reached up to three meters in some areas, ravaging Calea Rahovei, the Manuc's Inn and the Mihai Vodă Hill. Moreover, the circulation was totally interrupted, and water and food supply were made with great difficulty.

In an article from The Illustrated London News appears that "nearly one-half of the straggling extent of Bucharest is submerged", showing the ampleness of the flood.

Reactions
The troops, especially the artillery and engineers, were deployed on the spot with boats. Bread, meat, wine and spirits were voluntarily furnished by the wealthier inhabitants of the upper districts.

The press began a violent campaign against the government, accused that spent the money from taxes on unnecessary things, such as theaters, gardens, cattle breed improvement, etc., although the population was exposed to such calamities.

At the request of Prince Cuza, the government passed a law to dismantle the manorial mills that hindered the flow of Dâmbovița River. Likewise, it's passed a law according to that all mills and sluices that "throttle" waters to be dismantled, in order not to repeat the catastrophe. Historians note that work began immediately, with hundreds of prisoners taken to work from prisons around Bucharest. The river bed was cleaned and widened to 20 meters, and bridges with pylons in water were destroyed.

References

Floods in Romania
Disasters in Bucharest
1865 natural disasters
1865 in Romania
1865 disasters in Romania

1865 flooding of Bucharest


Olaszliszka is a village in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, Hungary.

Olaszliszka is nestled among the hills of the Tokay countryside (2 hours from Budapest) where the famous Tokay wines come from. It had a population in the 1830s of around 2,682 inhabitants.

Jewish history of the town

In the 1830s the Orthodox Jewish community numbered 70 families, 312 members altogether.

Among them were 57 tax paying citizens:

 1 entrepreneur
 17 small businessmen
 2 farmers
 2 civil servants
 2 self-employed
 5 freelance artists
 8 blue collar workers
 20 engaged in various other forms of employment

Two neighboring counties, as well as the town of Olaszliszka, banded together to supply 5,000 forint (Hungarian currency) toward the religious education as well as the support of the elementary school established in 1872. The elementary school had 1 teacher and 36 students. The Talmud Torah had 1 teacher and 25 students. The Jewish population also supplied the Talmud Torah students with housing and food. The Jewish community also made sure that the Library was well stacked and continually supplemented. The Library Project was called "Chevra Kiyan Seforim," or the Library Supply Committee.

Among other existing organizations are as follows: Chevra Kadisha (taking care of the deceased, funeral services and burials); Discretionary Funds — a poor house where one could stay if they had no place to go.

There are no exact dates given as to when the Jews decided to settle in Olaszliszka, however, it is concretely known that the mainstream of Jews came around 1830 with the advent of the young Rabbi, Zvi-Hersh Friedman (1808–1874). There is no question that the driving force behind the Jewish settlers was the rabbi, who with his great knowledge, human understanding, and wisdom, attracted the vintners (wine merchants) from Poland and Russia, who came for the purpose of buying wine, and subsequently settled in Olaszliszka to be near their rebbe. These men could be counted as the oldest or first settlers who subsequently aided the young Rabbi in establishing the various social services provided by the Jewish community of Olaszliszka.

The original founding fathers of the town, were mainly occupied with the selling, trading, and buying of the famous Tokay wine.

The Jewish population grew considerably with the brisk and successful wine trade. Spiritual religious life was at its focal point led by their spiritual leader Rabbi Zvi-Hersh Friedman, who was at an early age known as a great scholar. The pious young scholar spread far and wide the spirit of Chassidus. In a short time the town of Olaszliszka became the focal point of Chassidus and its rabbi named the father of the Chassidic movement of Hungary.

His humility, selflessness, aesthetic cleanliness, chesed (loving acts of kindness, i.e. charity) and wisdom spread far and wide so that people from foreign countries all over the world came to seek his advice and accept him as their rebbe.

During this time the township of Lisker grew in scope and fame. This affluence lasted till the end of Hershel Lisker's lifetime of four decades.

Gallery

See also
Liske (Hasidic dynasty)

External links
 Street map
 Olaszliszka

Populated places in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County

Olaszliszka


The Symphony No. 8 (also called the Antarctic Symphony) is an orchestral composition by Peter Maxwell Davies, completed on 15 December 2001.

History
Davies had announced prior to its premiere that his Seventh Symphony was to be his last work in the form. Less than six months later, Davies amended his statement to say that it was only the last of a seven-symphony cycle: "No. 8, next year, will be a musical account of my visit to Antarctica, with very different aims and preoccupations." Advance publicity for the Eighth proved to be more than that for the other seven symphonies put together.

Three years earlier the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which was seeking to promote the region's significance, had asked the Philharmonia Orchestra to recommend a composer for the commission of an orchestral work intended to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams's score for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic and the Seventh Symphony (Sinfonia antartica) which he fashioned out of that film score. Davies, as a committed environmentalist, was chosen. Terms of the commission required the composer to visit Antarctica, which he did for three weeks from late December 1997 to January 1998. The composer published his diary of the trip as an illustrated book, Notes from a Cold Climate. The composer also revealed that the symphony reflects his experience of having heard Vaughan Williams's Seventh at its first performance in Manchester in 1953. In the end, Davies decided that his new work would also be a symphony.

Davies conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in the premiere of his Antarctic Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall in London, on 6 May 2001. At this time, Davies once more announced that this would be absolutely his last symphony. This time it would take him ten years to change his mind.

Character and materials

Davies said he was "greatly influenced by my encounter with scientists searching into ways in which the Antarctic will change our environment over the coming centuries". The sounds of two particular events in his polar journey were incorporated directly into the symphony. The BAS had flown the composer to the Falklands, but from there onward it was a sea voyage. In his journal, Davies described hearing "the ice crack and split before the bow, then roar along, keel to stern, in a tumultuous clatter of slabs and shards", and this sound is represented at the beginning of the symphony through the percussive use of a biscuit tin filled with broken glass, a tam-tam with plastic soapdish, and three lengths of builders' scaffolding. The second sound was of an avalanche as the ship passed through a narrow channel between ice mountains. The composer described the sound that suddenly enveloped the ship as "the mightiest, gentlest, longest whisper ever. It was a sound which seemed almost quieter than the silence which surrounded it". These two sounds, of an ice-break and an avalanche, suggested using a Pentecost plainsong associated with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, which Davies had used before: "Dum complerentur dies pentecostes erant omnes pariter dicentes: Alleluia. Et subito factus est sonus de coelo ... Tamquam spiritus vehementis" (And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place saying: Alleluia. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven ... as of a mighty rushing wind).

Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani with Japanese temple gong and 2 cymbals, four percussionists (xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, crotales, tubular bells, bell tree, very small high woodblock, tambourine, side drum, 2 bass drums (small, very large), Chinese cymbals, clash cymbals, 4 suspended cymbals (very small, small, medium, large), nipple gong, tam-tam (with plastic soap-dish), tuned brandy glasses (with water), 2 small pebbles, football rattle, biscuit tin (filled with broken glass), 3 lengths of metal builder's scaffolding (5 inches or 18 cm, 12 inches or 30 cm, 16 inches or 40 cm) to be hit by a mallet), harp, celesta, strings.

Analysis
The symphony is in a single movement divided into five sections, reflecting the five movements of Vaughan Williams's Seventh. It is constructed symmetrically around a central scherzo, preceded and followed by slow sections, and faster music at the beginning and end. A brief introduction is followed by an allegro exposition featuring sharply contrasting dynamics. The first slow section begins with a simple clarinet melody accompanied by pizzicato cellos. Material from the introduction is then developed in a faster tempo, leading into the central scherzo which recalls Davies's An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise. This ends with an episode describing the litter left behind by early Antarctic expeditions, represented here by quotations from Davies's own recent works, followed by the second slow section, with glittering icy sounds overlaying earlier material. The final fast section transforms the ideas from the exposition, representing the changing shape of partially thawing icebergs in midsummer, and a slower coda brings back elements from the introduction.

References

Sources

Further reading
 Allison, John. 8 June 2004. "BBC PO/Maxwell Davies & Tortelier". The Times, p. 19.
 Morrison, Richard. 4 May 2005. "Philharmonia/Maxwell Davies. Festival Hall". The Times, p. 22.

External links
 , (unidentified orchestra and conductor; likely Bremen Philharmonic, conducted by the composer)

2001 compositions
Symphonies by Peter Maxwell Davies
Davies 8

Symphony No. 8 (Davies)


The Burning Soil () is a 1922 German silent film directed by F.W. Murnau. It was made the same year as Murnau's Nosferatu and released in Germany around the same time. The film follows the struggle over a plot of petroleum-rich land.

It was shot at the Babelsberg Studio in Berlin. The film's sets were designed by the art director Rochus Gliese.

The film was considered lost until 1978, when it was discovered to have been owned by an Italian priest who organized screenings in mental hospitals.  A restoration of the film was made with the assistance of French director Eric Rohmer.

Plot
"Devil's Field" is a cursed place, that scares the entire population of a small village of Silesia, because an ancestor of the family Rudenburg perished there victim of a mysterious explosion while digging a well in search of a buried treasure. Count von Rudenburg, current title holder, is also searching for the treasure, without result. He lives in his castle with his second wife, Helga, and a daughter from a first marriage, capricious Gerda.

In the nearby village, an old peasant, Rog, dies leaving two sons, Peter, very attached to the family land, and ambitious Johannes who thinks he is too good to live a peasant's life. He becomes secretary to Count von Rudenburg and starts courting his daughter. One day, he overhears that the Count has found an oilfield under Devil's Field. Shortly after, the Count, who is terminally ill, dictates him his will according to which his daughter Gerda will inherit his entire estate including all properties, manors and castles, while his second wife Helga will only inherit Devil's Field. Johannes then tells Helga she is the one he is in love with. He marries her after the Count's death.

Johannes goes to the city to discuss with a large company the exploitation of the oilfield. He refuses the sum of 25 million marks and convinces them to lend him the  money so that he can exploit it himself. Meanwhile, his wife, desperate with his obsession with Devil's Field, sells the cursed land to Peter for twelve thousand marks. Johannes, furious, demands that she cancels the sales. Peter agrees, but the young woman, desperate that Johannes has never loved her, drowns herself in the river.

Gerda, who spitefully had got engaged to Baron von Lellewel is hoping to regain Johannes' love. But he tells her that he never loved either of the women and acted only by ambition. To avenge herself, Gerda sets fire to the rig that was installed on Devil's Field and dies in the ensuing explosion. Finally aware of the misfortunes he has caused, and of the vanity of his ambitions, Johannes returns to the farm where his brother and Maria, a country girl in love with him, had always been waiting for him.

Cast
 Eugen Klöpfer – Peter Rog
 Vladimir Gajdarov – Johannes Rog
 Werner Krauss – Der alte Rog / Old Rog
 Eduard von Winterstein – Graf Rudenburg / Count Rudenburg
 Stella Arbenina – Helga, Rudenburgs zweite Frau / Helga, Rudenburg's 2nd wife
 Lya De Putti – Gerda, Rudenburgs Tochter / Gerda, Rudenburg's daughter
 Alfred Abel – Ludwig von Lellewel
 Grete Diercks – Maria
 Olga Engl
 Elsa Wagner – Magda
 Emilia Unda – Alte Magd / Old maid
 Leonie Taliansky – Gerdas Zofe / Gerda's maid
 Albert Patry
 Magnus Stifter

References

External links

Films of the Weimar Republic
1922 films
German silent feature films
Films directed by F. W. Murnau
Films with screenplays by Thea von Harbou
1920s rediscovered films
Films produced by Erich Pommer
German black-and-white films
Films shot at Babelsberg Studios
1922 drama films
Rediscovered German films
Silent German drama films
1920s German films

The Burning Soil


Matilde Elena López (20 February 1919 – 11 March 2010) was a Salvadoran poet, essayist, playwright and literary critic.  Her most important works include "Masferrer, alto pensador de Centro América", "Cartas a Grosa" and "La balada de Anastasio Aquino".

During the 1940s she was part of the League of Anti-Fascist Writers, a group of young writers with leftist ideas. In April 1944, she participated in the popular movement that sought to overthrow the government of dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. She studied at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala and the Universidad Central del Ecuador, and at from latter University she received a doctorate degree in philosophy.

In 1958 she joined the University of El Salvador where she worked as professor, director of the Department of Arts and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. She has also taught at the Universidad Centroamericana "Jose Simeon Cañas". Her 1978 play, The Ballad of Anastasio Aquino is dedicated to the Salvadoran indigenous leader Anastasio Aquino.

From 1997 until her death she was a member of the Academia Salvadoreña de la Lengua.

Notable works
 Masferrer, alto pensador de Centroamérica (essay, 1954),
 Interpretación social del arte (essay, 1965),
 Dante, poeta y ciudadano del futuro (essay, 1965),
 Estudio-prólogo a las Obras escogidas de Alberto Masferrer (1971),
 Estudio-prólogo a las Obras escogidas de Claudia Lars (1973),
 Estudios sobre poesía (essay, 1973),
 La balada de Anastasio Aquino (play, 1978),
 Los sollozos oscuros (poetry, 1982),
 El verbo amar (poetry, 1997)
 Ensayos literarios (1998).

References

External links
Biography and selected poetry
League of Anti-Fascist Writers

1919 births
2010 deaths
Salvadoran women writers
Salvadoran poets
Salvadoran dramatists and playwrights
Salvadoran essayists
People from San Salvador
Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala alumni
Salvadoran women poets
Women dramatists and playwrights
Salvadoran women essayists
20th-century women writers
20th-century poets
20th-century dramatists and playwrights
20th-century essayists
Salvadoran expatriates in Guatemala
Expatriates in Ecuador
20th-century Salvadoran women writers

Matilde Elena López


Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.

Life
Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of a building contractor who made his fortune assisting Baron Haussmann in the redevelopment of Paris in the 1850s. To please his father, Chausson studied law and was appointed a barrister for the Court of Appeals, but had little or no interest in the profession. He frequented the Paris salons, where he met celebrities such as Henri Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, and Vincent d'Indy. Before deciding on a musical career, he dabbled in writing and drawing.

In 1879, at the age of 24, he began attending the composition classes of Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire; Massenet came to regard him as "an exceptional person and a true artist". He had already composed some piano pieces and songs. Nevertheless, the earliest manuscripts that have been preserved are those corrected by Massenet. At the Conservatoire, Chausson also studied with César Franck, with whom he formed a close friendship that lasted until Franck's death in 1890. Chausson interrupted his studies in 1881 after a failed attempt to win the Prix de Rome.

During 1882 and 1883, Chausson, who enjoyed travel, visited Bayreuth to hear the operas of Richard Wagner. On the first of these journeys, he went with d'Indy for the premiere of Wagner's Parsifal, and on the second trip he went with his new spouse, Jeanne Escudier (1862–1936), with whom he was to have five children.

From 1886 until his death in 1899, Chausson was secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique. In his own home (22 Boulevard de Courcelles, near Parc Monceau), he received a great many eminent artists, including the composers Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz; poet Stéphane Mallarmé; Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev; and Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Chausson also assembled an important collection of paintings.

Death

When only 44 years old, Chausson died while staying at one of his country retreats, the Château de Moussets, in Limay, Yvelines. Riding his bicycle downhill, Chausson hit a brick wall and died instantly. The exact circumstances remain unclear; although probably an accident, there has been the suggestion of suicide, as Chausson was prone to depression. This suicide theory was propounded by Debussy's biographer Edward Lockspeiser, but has been firmly rejected more recently by Chausson's own biographer Ralph Scott Grover. Ironically, when he was 20, Chausson jotted into his diary "I have the premonition that my life will be short. I'm far from complaining about it, but I should not want to die before having done something."

Chausson was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His funeral was attended by many leading figures of the arts, including Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Isaac Albéniz, Redon, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Régnier, Pierre Louÿs and Claude Debussy. While Chausson's brotherly relationship with Debussy had ended abruptly five years earlier, following his disapproval of Debussy's promiscuity, Debussy never ceased to admire Chausson's music.

Eponymy
A small park, Square Ernest Chausson, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris is named in his honour.

Music

The creative work of Chausson is commonly divided into three periods. In the first, his output was stylistically dominated by the influence of Massenet. The second period, dating from 1886, is marked by a more dramatic character, deriving partly from Chausson's contacts with the artistic milieux in which he moved. From his father's death in 1894 dates the beginning of his third period, during which he was especially influenced by his reading of the symbolist poets and Russian literature, particularly Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy.

Chausson's work is deeply individual, but it does reflect some technical influences of both Wagner and his other musical hero, Franck. Stylistic traces not only of Massenet but also of Brahms can be detected sometimes. In general, Chausson's compositional idiom bridges the gap between the ripe Romanticism of Massenet and Franck and the more introverted Impressionism of Debussy.

Several delicate and admirable songs came from Chausson's pen. He completed one opera, Le roi Arthus (King Arthur). His orchestral output was small, but significant. It includes the symphonic poem Viviane; the Symphony in B-flat, his sole symphony; Poème for violin and orchestra, an important piece in the violin repertoire; and the dramatic and haunting song-cycle Poème de l'amour et de la mer.

Chausson is believed to be the first composer to use the celesta. He employed that instrument in December 1888 in his incidental music, written for a small orchestra, for La Tempête, a French translation by Maurice Bouchor of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Not at all prolific, Chausson left behind only 39 opus-numbered pieces. Musical creation for him always proved to be a long, painful struggle. However, the quality and originality of his compositions are consistently high, and several of his works continue to make occasional appearances on programmes of leading singers, chamber music ensembles and orchestras.

"There are moments when I feel myself driven by a kind of feverish instinct, as if I had the presentiment of being unable to attain my goal, or of attaining it too late."  Ernest Chausson

References

Bibliography
 Charles Oulmont (), Musique de l'amour. I. Ernest Chausson et "la bande à Franck" (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie., 1935).
 Jean Gallois, Ernest Chausson (Paris: Fayard, 1994).

External links

Free digital scores by Ernest Chausson in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus
Hymne védique Chorus accompanied by orchestra, op. 9 Vocal Score (Paris: Hamelle, 1886) From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
Mélodies pour chant et piano, op. 2 (Paris: J. Hamelle, 1890) From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
Les Vêpres du Commun des saint, op. 31 (Paris: Editions de la Schola Cantorum, 1907) From Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection

1855 births
1899 deaths
19th-century classical composers
19th-century French composers
19th-century French male musicians
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Composers for piano
Cycling road incident deaths
French male classical composers
French opera composers
French Romantic composers
Male opera composers
Composers from Paris
Pupils of César Franck
Road incident deaths in France

Ernest Chausson


Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it, "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing". The contrary view—non-essentialism—denies the need to posit such an "essence'".

Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. Plato, in the Parmenides dialogue, depicts Socrates questioning the notion, suggesting that if we accept the idea that every beautiful thing or just action partakes of an essence to be beautiful or just, we must also accept the "existence of separate essences for hair, mud, and dirt".

In biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the rationale for taxonomy at least until the time of Charles Darwin; the role and importance of essentialism in biology is still a matter of debate.

In modern times, academics in science, aesthetics, heuristics, psychology, and gender-based sociological studies have advanced their causes under the banner of essentialism.

History
An essence characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the forms and ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal, and is present in every possible world. Classical humanism has an essentialist conception of the human, in its endorsement of the notion of an eternal and unchangeable human nature. This has been criticized by Kierkegaard, Marx, Heidegger, Sartre, Badiou and many other existential, materialist and anti-humanist thinkers. Essentialism, in its broadest sense, is any philosophy that acknowledges the primacy of essence. Unlike existentialism, which posits "being" as the fundamental reality, the essentialist ontology must be approached from a metaphysical perspective. Empirical knowledge is developed from experience of a relational universe whose components and attributes are defined and measured in terms of intellectually constructed laws. Thus, for the scientist, reality is explored as an evolutionary system of diverse entities, the order of which is determined by the principle of causality.

In Plato's philosophy (in particular, the Timaeus and the Philebus), things were said to come into being by the action of a demiurge who works to form chaos into ordered entities. Many definitions of essence hark back to the ancient Greek hylomorphic understanding of the formation of the things. According to that account, the structure and real existence of any thing can be understood by analogy to an artefact produced by a craftsperson. The craftsperson requires hyle (timber or wood) and a model, plan or idea in their own mind, according to which the wood is worked to give it the indicated contour or form (morphe). Aristotle was the first to use the terms hyle and morphe. According to his explanation, all entities have two aspects: "matter" and "form". It is the particular form imposed that gives some matter its identity—its quiddity or "whatness" (i.e., "what it is"). Plato was one of the first essentialists, postulating the concept of ideal forms—an abstract entity of which individual objects are mere facsimiles. To give an example: the ideal form of a circle is a perfect circle, something that is physically impossible to make manifest; yet the circles we draw and observe clearly have some idea in common—the ideal form. Plato proposed that these ideas are eternal and vastly superior to their manifestations, and that we understand these manifestations in the material world by comparing and relating them to their respective ideal form. Plato's forms are regarded as patriarchs to essentialist dogma simply because they are a case of what is intrinsic and a-contextual of objects—the abstract properties that make them what they are. (For more on forms, read Plato's parable of the cave.) Plato believed that the universe was perfect and that its observed imperfections came from man's limited perception of it. For Plato, there were two realities: the "essential" or ideal and the "perceived".

Aristotle (384–322 BC) applied the term essence to that which things in a category have in common and without which they cannot be members of that category (for example, rationality is the essence of man; without rationality a creature cannot be a man). In his critique of Aristotle's philosophy, Bertrand Russell said that his concept of essence transferred to metaphysics what was only a verbal convenience and that it confused the properties of language with the properties of the world. In fact, a thing's "essence" consisted in those defining properties without which we could not use the name for it. Although the concept of essence was "hopelessly muddled" it became part of every philosophy until modern times.

The Egyptian-born philosopher Plotinus (204–270 AD) brought idealism to the Roman Empire as Neoplatonism, and with it the concept that not only do all existents emanate from a "primary essence" but that the mind plays an active role in shaping or ordering the objects of perception, rather than passively receiving empirical data.

Examples

Gender essentialism

In feminist theory and gender studies, gender essentialism is the attribution of fixed essences to men and women—this  idea that men and women are fundamentally different continues to be a matter of contention. Gay/lesbian rights advocate Diana Fuss wrote: "Essentialism is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness' of a given entity." Women's essence is assumed to be universal and is generally identified with those characteristics viewed as being specifically feminine. These ideas of femininity are usually biologized and are often preoccupied with psychological characteristics, such as nurturance, empathy, support, and non-competitiveness, etc. Feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz states in her 1995 publication Space, time and perversion: essays on the politics of bodies that essentialism "entails the belief that those characteristics defined as women's essence are shared in common by all women at all times. It implies a limit of the variations and possibilities of change—it is not possible for a subject to act in a manner contrary to her essence. Her essence underlies all the apparent variations differentiating women from each other. Essentialism thus refers to the existence of fixed characteristic, given attributes, and ahistorical functions that limit the possibilities of change and thus of social reorganization."

Gender essentialism is pervasive in popular culture, as illustrated by the #1 New York Times best seller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, but this essentialism is routinely critiqued in introductory women's studies textbooks such as Women: Images & Realities.

Starting in the 1980s, some feminist writers have put forward essentialist theories about gender and science. Evelyn Fox Keller, Sandra Harding,
 and Nancy Tuana
 argued that the modern scientific enterprise is inherently patriarchal and incompatible with women's nature.  Other feminist scholars, such as Ann Hibner Koblitz, Lenore Blum, Mary Gray, Mary Beth Ruskai, and Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram have criticized those theories for ignoring the diverse nature of scientific research and the tremendous variation in women's experiences in different cultures and historical periods.

Biological essentialism
Before evolution was developed as a scientific theory, there existed an essentialist view of biology that posited all species to be unchanging throughout time. The historian Mary P. Winsor has argued that biologists such as Louis Agassiz in the 19th century believed that taxa such as species and genus were fixed, reflecting the mind of the creator. Some religious opponents of evolution continue to maintain this view of biology.

Recent work by historians of systematic biology has, however, cast doubt upon this view of pre-Darwinian thinkers. Winsor, Ron Amundson and Staffan Müller-Wille have each argued that in fact the usual suspects (such as Linnaeus and the Ideal Morphologists) were very far from being essentialists, and it appears that the so-called "essentialism story" (or "myth") in biology is a result of conflating the views expressed by philosophers from Aristotle onwards through to John Stuart Mill and William Whewell in the immediately pre-Darwinian period, using biological examples, with the use of terms in biology like species.

Racial, cultural and strategic essentialism

Cultural and racial essentialism is the view that fundamental biological or physical characteristics of human "races" produce personality, heritage, cognitive abilities, or 'natural talents' that are shared by all members of a racial group. In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught this theory – that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity. This, coupled with a belief that linguistic, cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called scientific racism. After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation.

Historically, beliefs which posit that social identities such as ethnicity, nationality or gender determine a person's essential characteristics have in many cases been shown to have destructive or harmful results. It has been argued by some that essentialist thinking lies at the core of many simplistic, discriminatory or extremist ideologies. Psychological essentialism is also correlated with racial prejudice. In medical sciences, essentialism can lead to an over-emphasis on the role of identities—for example assuming that differences in hypertension in African-American populations are due to racial differences rather than social causes—leading to fallacious conclusions and potentially unequal treatment. Older social theories were often conceptually essentialist.

Strategic essentialism, a major concept in postcolonial theory, was introduced in the 1980s by the Indian literary critic and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. It refers to a political tactic in which minority groups, nationalities, or ethnic groups mobilize on the basis of shared gendered, cultural, or political identity. While strong differences may exist between members of these groups, and among themselves they engage in continuous debates, it is sometimes advantageous for them to temporarily "essentialize" themselves, despite it being based on erroneous logic, and to bring forward their group identity in a simplified way to achieve certain goals, such as equal rights or antiglobalization.

In historiography
Essentialism in history as a field of study entails discerning and listing essential cultural characteristics of a particular nation or culture, in the belief that a people or culture can be understood in this way. Sometimes such essentialism leads to claims of a praiseworthy national or cultural identity, or to its opposite, the condemnation of a culture based on presumed essential characteristics. Herodotus, for example, claims that Egyptian culture is essentially feminized and possesses a "softness" which has made Egypt easy to conquer. To what extent Herodotus was an essentialist is a matter of debate; he is also credited with not essentializing the concept of the Athenian identity, or differences between the Greeks and the Persians that are the subject of his Histories.

Essentialism had been operative in colonialism as well as in critiques of colonialism.

Post-colonial theorists such as Edward Said insisted that essentialism was the "defining mode" of "Western" historiography and ethnography until the nineteenth century and even after, according to Touraj Atabaki, manifesting itself in the historiography of the Middle East and Central Asia as Eurocentrism, over-generalization, and reductionism.

Today, most historians, social scientists and humanists reject methodologies associated with essentialism, though some have argued that certain varieties of essentialism may be useful or even necessary.

Karl Popper splits the ambiguous term realism into essentialism and realism. He uses essentialism whenever he means the opposite of nominalism, and realism only as opposed to idealism. Popper himself is a realist as opposed to an idealist, but a methodological nominalist as opposed to an essentialist. For example, statements like "a puppy is a young dog" should be read from right to left, as an answer to "What shall we call a young dog"; never from left to right as an answer to "What is a puppy?"

In psychology

There is a difference between metaphysical essentialism (see above) and psychological essentialism, the latter referring not to an actual claim about the world but a claim about a way of representing entities in cognitions (Medin, 1989). Influential in this area is Susan Gelman, who has outlined many domains in which children and adults construe classes of entities, particularly biological entities, in essentialist terms—i.e., as if they had an immutable underlying essence which can be used to predict unobserved similarities between members of that class. (Toosi & Ambady, 2011). This causal relationship is unidirectional; an observable feature of an entity does not define the underlying essence (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011).

In developmental psychology
Essentialism has emerged as an important concept in psychology, particularly developmental psychology. Gelman and Kremer (1991) studied the extent to which children from 4–7 years old demonstrate essentialism. Children believed that underlying essences predicted observable behaviours. Children were able to describe living objects' behaviour as self-perpetuated and non-living objects' behavior as a result of an adult influencing the object. Understanding the underlying causal mechanism for behaviour suggests essentialist thinking (Rangel and Keller, 2011).
Younger children were unable to identify causal mechanisms of behaviour whereas older children were able to. This suggests that essentialism is rooted in cognitive development. It can be argued that there is a shift in the way that children represent entities, from not understanding the causal mechanism of the underlying essence to showing sufficient understanding (Demoulin, Leyens & Yzerbyt, 2006).

There are four key criteria that constitute essentialist thinking. The first facet is the aforementioned individual causal mechanisms (del Rio & Strasser, 2011). The second is innate potential: the assumption that an object will fulfill its predetermined course of development (Kanovsky, 2007). According to this criterion, essences predict developments in entities that will occur throughout its lifespan. The third is immutability (Holtz & Wagner, 2009). Despite altering the superficial appearance of an object it does not remove its essence. Observable changes in features of an entity are not salient enough to alter its essential characteristics. The fourth is inductive potential (Birnbaum, Deeb, Segall, Ben-Aliyahu & Diesendruck, 2010). This suggests that entities may share common features but are essentially different. However similar two beings may be, their characteristics will be at most analogous, differing most importantly in essences.

The implications of psychological essentialism are numerous. Prejudiced individuals have been found to endorse exceptionally essential ways of thinking, suggesting that essentialism may perpetuate exclusion among social groups (Morton, Hornsey & Postmes, 2009). For example, essentialism of nationality has been linked to anti-immigration attitudes(Rad & Ginges, 2018). In multiple studies in India and the United States, Rad & Ginges (2018) showed that in lay view, a person's nationality is considerably fixed at birth, even if that person is adopted and raised by a family of another nationality at day one and never told about their origin. This may be due to an over-extension of an essential-biological mode of thinking stemming from cognitive development. Paul Bloom of Yale University has stated that "one of the most exciting ideas in cognitive science is the theory that people have a default assumption that things, people and events have invisible essences that make them what they are. Experimental psychologists have argued that essentialism underlies our understanding of the physical and social worlds, and developmental and cross-cultural psychologists have proposed that it is instinctive and universal. We are natural-born essentialists." Scholars suggest that the categorical nature of essentialist thinking predicts the use of stereotypes and can be targeted in the application of stereotype prevention (Bastian & Haslam, 2006).

See also
Determinism
Educational essentialism
Moral panic
Nature vs. nurture
Mereological essentialism
Medium essentialism
Non-essentialism
Pleasure
Poststructuralism
Primordialism
Social constructionism
Scientific essentialism
Structuralism
Traditionalist School
Vitalism

Political acceptation: Identity politics, Strategic essentialism, Ethnic nationalism
Brian David Ellis (New essentialism)
Greg McKeown (author) (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)

References

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading
 Runes, Dagobert D. (1972) Dictionary of Philosophy (Littlefield, Adams & Co.). See for instance the articles on "Essence", p. 97; "Quiddity", p. 262; "Form", p. 110; "Hylomorphism", p. 133; "Individuation", p. 145; and "Matter", p. 191.
 Barrett, H. C. (2001). On the functional origins of essentialism. Mind and Society, 3, Vol. 2, 1–30.
 Sayer, Andrew (August 1997) "Essentialism, Social Constructionism, and Beyond", Sociological Review 45 : 456.
 Oderberg, David S. (2007) Real Essentialism New York, Routledge.
 Cattarini, L.S. (2018) Beyond Sartre and Sterility (Montreal),  argues for priority of essence/conscience over existence/consciousness

External links

Substance theory
Philosophical theories
Identity (philosophy)

Essentialism


Johann Georg Heinrich Backofen (6 July 1768 in Durlach – 10 July 1830? in Darmstadt) was a German clarinetist, composer and painter.

In his time Backofen enjoyed great fame; he was not only known as a composer for, and virtuoso of the clarinet but also played the harp, flute and basset horn.

His year of death is not known with certainty; a year of 1839 is found in some documents.

Selected works
 Deux valses et deux allemandes à deux et quatre mains pour le piano (2 Waltzes and 2 Allemandes for Piano 2- and 4-Hands), Op. 1 (published 1834)
 Concerto in B major for clarinet and orchestra, Op. 3 (Bonn, 1809?)
 13 Variazioni sull' aria "Ey mein lieber Augustin" for harp, Op. 4 (Hamburg, 1801)
 Concertante for harp, basset horn and cello ad libitum, Op. 7 (Leipzig, 1800?)
 Concertante for harp, viola and cello ad libitum, Op. 8
 Quintet in F major for basset horn and string quartet, Op. 9
 Sinfonia concertante in A major for 2 clarinets and orchestra, Op. 10 (Leipzig, 1810?)
 3 Duos concertants for 2 clarinets, Op. 13 (Leipzig, 1803)
 Quintet for clarinet and string quartet, Op. 15 (Leipzig, 1805?)
 Concerto in E major for clarinet and orchestra, Op. 16 (Leipzig, 1809?)
 Concerto in E major for clarinet and orchestra, Op. 24 (Leipzig, 1821?)
 Grand Duo for 2 flutes, Op. 37
 Concerto in F major for basset horn and orchestra
 Concerto in F major for horn and orchestra (Leipzig, c.1823)
 3 Duets for 2 clarinets (C major, G major, F major)
 3 Menuette for harp
 Sonata in F major for violin (or flute) and harp
 Sonata for harp (and violin ad libitum) (Leipzig, 1795)
 Sonata facile for violin (or flute) and harp (or piano)
 Thema mit Variationen (Theme and Variations) for harp
 16 Variations sur l'air "Ah! vous dirai je maman" for harp
 Variations for bassett horn and orchestra

Pedigogical
 Harfenschule mit Bemerkungen über den Bau der Harfe und deren neuere Verbesserungen (Harp School) (Leipzig, 1801)
 Anweisung zur Klarinette (Neue teoretisch-prachtische Klarinett Schule) nebst einer kurzen Abhandlung über das Bassett-Horn (Leipzig, 1803)
 Anweisung zur Klarinette, mit besonderer Hinsicht auf die in neuern Zeiten diesem Instrument beigefügten Klappen (completely revised edition of the above) (Leipzig, 1824)

Recordings
Backofen: Clarinet Concertos

External links

Recording: Backofen: Clarinet Concertos
Backofen's Second Clarinet Method, 1824 (Facsimile Edition with English Translation)

1768 births
1830s deaths
German clarinetists
German male composers
German composers

Johann Georg Heinrich Backofen


La hija del mariachi "(the daughter of the mariachi)" is a Colombian telenovela produced by RCN TV and written by Mónica Aguledo. It debuted in 2006.

Synopsis
One night, ranchera singer Rosario Guerrero sees Emiliano Sánchez-Gallardo at the doors of Plaza Garibaldi, a mariachi bar. He has an air of vulnerability and signs of having been robbed, so she decides to help him. What she does not know is that he is a wealthy young Mexican who has reached Bogotá, fleeing from justice for a crime he did not commit.

The friendship they develop completely transforms their lives. He is astounded by Rosario's selfless support, a rare commodity in the world of wealth he comes from. Thanks to her, he manages to survive as a mariachi singer in the bar while eluding the zealous pursuit of Interpol and the police in Colombia and Mexico. In this world, he discovers the widespread influence of mariachi music in Colombia. Above all, in Rosario he finds the great love of his life.

She also finds love thanks to Emiliano. With him, she begins to fit together the scattered pieces of her life. The happiest and yet most painful parts of Rosario's life are related to the memory of her father. He was a mariachi singer, bohemian and passionate, and an affectionate man. Yet he filled his family's life with sadness, because he spent his nights with work, liquor, and women. In a desperate attempt to erase the memory of a turbulent childhood, Rosario is struggling to earn a degree in business management.

Emiliano, a member of one of the most powerful families in Mexico, never imagined he would end up as a singer in a Mexican music bar, living a middle-class life in the Colombian capital. He believed that his legal status in Mexico would be cleared in a few weeks, so he never told Rosario the truth. He is in serious trouble, however, accused of orchestrating a massive money laundering operation actually operated by his partners.

Cast and characters
 Mark Tacher as Emiliano Sánchez-Gallardo
 Carolina Ramírez as Rosario Guerrero
 Nicolás Montero as Javier Macías; he is obsessively in love with Rosario
 Gregorio Pernía as Manuel Rodríguez; has feelings for Rosario
 Estefanía Borges as Virginia Malagón; wants Francisco and wants to steal him from Rosario, whom she hates
 Laura Torres as Lucía Guerrero; Rosario's sister
 Mauro Urquijo as Pedro Guerrero; Rosario's father

Remake
 In 2012, Televisa produced Qué bonito amor, a Mexican remake of La hija del mariachi. It stars Jorge Salinas and Danna García in the roles of Emiliano and Rosario, respectively.

References

External links

2006 telenovelas
2006 Colombian television series debuts
2008 Colombian television series endings
RCN Televisión telenovelas
Spanish-language telenovelas
Television shows set in Colombia
Television shows set in Mexico

La Hija del Mariachi


Vileyka (, ; ) is a town in Minsk Region, Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Vileyka District. It is located on the Viliya River,  northwest of Minsk. The first historical record dates from 16 November 1460. As of 2023, it has a population of 26,811.

The Vileyka VLF transmitter operated by the Russian Navy is located near Vileyka. It provides VLF communication between Russian Navy's headquarters and atomic submarines in the Atlantic, Indian and parts of the Pacific Ocean.

History
In the 10th–13th centuries, the territory was under the Principality of Polotsk, and in XIV–XVII under Grand Duchy of Lithuania as manor house Kurenets. The city was first mentioned in 1460 as a borough center of the Vileyka Starostwo of the Ashmyany county in Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
 1635 – Władysław IV Vasa bestowed Vileyka upon Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski "for exclusive service to the state".
 1765 – Vileyka has 30 houses, 165 inhabitants, and became a county center.
 1793 – during the Second Partition of Poland the town is ceded to the Russian Empire.
 1795 – under the decree of Catherine II of Russia the town receives the status of a city and becomes a center of Vileyka uyezd in Minsk Governorate, then Vilna Governorate (1842–1917).
 1810, May 24 – almost the entire city is destroyed by the fire.
 1861 – 2931 inhabitants, 1880 – 3450, by the end of 19th century – more than 3500 inhabitants.
 1906 – big sawmill started.
 1907 – the city acquires a branch of Warsaw – Saint Petersburg Railway and a city station.
 1915, September 14 – occupied by the German Army, but several days later recovered by the Russian Army during the Sventiany Offensive.
 1917, November 8 – Soviets come to power during the October Revolution
 1918, December – occupied by German Army
 1919 – ceded to Poland in the Peace of Riga following Polish–Soviet War, becoming the center of the Wilejka county in the Wilno Voivodeship (1923–1939)
 1939 – annexed back to Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Poland in accordance with the conditions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Becomes center of the Vileyka Voblast of BSSR
 Several hundred people, mostly Polish political prisoners, sick and wounded, are executed prior to the departure of the occupying Soviet guards on June 24, 1941.
 1941, June 25 – occupied by troops of the German Army Group Centre during the first stage of Operation Barbarossa and placed under the administration of the Generalbezirk Weißruthenien of Reichskommissariat Ostland. Over 15,000 civilians massacred including 6,972 Polish Jews. See also: Belarusian Home Defence (BKA) pacification actions
 1941, July 12 and 30 – German SS forces murder the remaining Jewish citizens in Vileyka (over 500 people).
 1944, July 2 – Vileyka recaptured by troops of the 3rd Belorussian Front of the Red Army during the Minsk Offensive.
 1944 – the center of the Vileyka Raion formed
 1954 – furniture plant started
 1959 – repair plant opened
 1973 – "Zenit-BelOMO" optical plant started
 1973 – Vileyka reservoir started
 1998 – Vileyka hydropower station started

Geography
The modern city is located on the right bank of the river Viliya, in the northwest part of the Minsk region, 100 kilometers from Minsk. The town's population numbers 30,000 people. There is a railway station of the Molodechno-Polotsk line in the city. The roads to Maladzechna, Smarhoń, Myadzel, Dokshytsy, Pleshchanitsy run through the city. The town's industry is represented by the Zenit plant, wood processing enterprises (including a furniture factory), a motor repair plant, building materials plants, light and food enterprises. Vileyka also houses the Museum of Regional Studies.

The territory of the Vileyka district is . Forests account for 41% of the territory. The main part of the district is situated within the borders of Narach-Vileyka lowland. In the year 1974, near the town of Vileyka Belarus's largest artificial reservoir was built — Vileyka Reservoir with a total area of  and a volume of .

Demography

International relations

Twin towns — Sister cities
Vileyka is twinned with:
  Mozhaysk, Russia
  Pereiaslav, Ukraine
  Willmar, Minnesota, United States

Notes

References

External links

 Official site of Vileyka Regional Executive Committee
 Pictures of nearby Russian Navy long-haul communications center
 Photos of Vilejka at Radzima.org
 Foto,Forum,Articles – Vilejka.be.together!
 Unofficial reference and information site of Vileyka

Holocaust locations in Belarus
Populated places in Minsk Region
Towns in Belarus
Vileyka District
Vileysky Uyezd
Vilnius Voivodeship
Wilno Voivodeship (1926–1939)

Vileyka