Timurid conquests and invasions started in the seventh decade of the 14th century with Timur's control over Chagatai Khanate and ended at the start of the 15th century with the death of Timur. Due to the sheer scale of Timur's wars, and the fact that he was generally undefeated in battle, he has been regarded as one of the most successful military commanders of all time. These wars resulted in the supremacy of Timur over Central Asia, Persia,  the Caucasus and the Levant, and parts of South Asia and Eastern Europe, and also the formation of the short-lived Timurid Empire. Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at the time.

Timur gained power over the Western Chagatai Khanate (Transoxiana) after defeating Amir Husayn, the regent of the Chagatai Khanate, at the Battle of Balkh but the laws laid down by Genghis Khan prevented him from becoming Khagan in his own right because he was not directly descendant of Genghis Khan by birth. Instead, he installed a puppet Khan descended from Ögedei, Suurgatmish. After that, he launched massive military campaigns in all directions and established his suzerainty over most of Middle East and Central Asia. He never adopted the title of Emperor or Caliph, maintaining the title of Amir.

To legitimize his rule and military campaigns Timur married Husayn's widow Saray Mulk Khanum, a princess descended from Genghis Khan. In this way he called himself Temur Gurgan (son-in-law of the Great Khan, Genghis Khan). Timurid territorial gains in Transoxiana and Central Asia as well as Timur's suzerainty over the Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottoman Empire, the Delhi Sultanate and the Golden Horde were weakened after his death, due to a war of succession between his son and grandson Shahrukh Mirza and Khalil Sultan . However, in the Indian subcontinent a Timurid state survived until the mid 19th century in the form of the Mughal Empire which was founded by his great-great-grandson Babur.

Central Asia
Timur became head of the Barlas tribe (a Central Asian tribe) and its vast lands by helping Amir Husayn, a Qara'unas prince and de facto ruler of Western Chagatai Khanate. Timur's period as a Moghul vassal came to an end when Tughlugh Timur appointed his son Ilyas Khoja as governor of Mawarannahr. Both Timur and Amir Husayn rebelled against Ilyas Khoja but were defeated by Khoja's army at Tashkent. Ilyas Khoja advanced towards Samarkand but here he was defeated by Timurid forces and forced to retreat back into Eastern Chagatai Khanate. In this way, Timur became ruler of Samarkand.

South Asia

In 1370 Timur decided to attack Amir Husayn at Balkh. After crossing the Amu Darya at Termez his army surrounded the city. Husayn's army came out of the city to attack Timur's men, perhaps suggesting that they were unhappy to find themselves being besieged. The same occurred on the second day of the battle, but this time Timur's men managed to get into the city. Husayn shut himself up inside the citadel, leaving Timur's men to sack the city.

After capturing the city, Timur executed Khabul Shah, the Husayn's puppet Khan of Western Chagatai and installed Suurgatmish on the throne of Khan as his puppet. This made Timur the main power in Mawarannahr and Western Chagatai Khanate with supremacy over Central Asia.

In 1398, Timur started his campaign towards Indian subcontinent (Hindustan). At that time the dominant power of subcontinent was Tughlaq dynasty of Delhi Sultanate but it had already been weakened by the formation of regional sultanates and struggle of succession within imperial family. Timur started his journey from Samarkand. He invaded the north Indian subcontinent (present day Pakistan and North India) by crossing the Indus River on September 30, 1398.

Timurid forces firstly sacked Tulamba and then Multan by October 1398. Prior to Timur's invasion on Delhi, his grandson Pir Muhammad had already started his expedition. He had captured Uch. Pir Muhammad then joined Timur. The Bhati Rajput governor of the Bhatner fort was defeated, and Timur destroyed the fort and the city. He also faced resistance by Governor of Meerut but he was still able to approach Delhi, arrived in 1398. In this way, he already defeated all-important administrative centres of Delhi Sultanate before his arrival to Delhi.

The battle between Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Tughlaq allied with Mallu Iqbal and Timur took place on 17 December 1398. Indian forces had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks which gave difficult time to Timurid forces as Tatars experienced this first time. But within a passage of time Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. He capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of Nasir-ud-Din Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Sultan of Delhi fled with remnants of his forces. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. After the battle, Timur installed Khizr Khan, the Governor of Multan as the new Sultan of Delhi Sultanate under his suzerainty.

Delhi's conquest was one of the greatest victories of Timur, arguably surpassing Darius the Great, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because of the harsh conditions of the journey and the achievement of taking down the richest city of the world at the time. Delhi suffered a great loss due to this and took a century to recover.

In 1505, Babur's Timurid army marched to raid Bangash district. When they reached a valley between Kohat and Hangu, they beheaded about 100 Bangash Pashtuns and set up a pillar of their heads. On the next day, Babur reached Hangu and set up another tower of heads (most of them were Hazaras and Pashtuns). Afterwards, the Timurids marched to Bannu on the Kurram River, where they set up their third pillar of heads. In 1507, one year after the Battle of Qalati Ghilji, Babur's army marched out of Kabul with the intention to crush Ghilji Pashtuns. They attacked Ghilji Pashtuns in the mountains of Khwaja Ismail near Katawaz, setting up another pillar of heads.

On 6 January 1519, Babur captured the Fort of Bajaur and then massacred at least 3,000 Bajauri Pashtuns, setting up a tower of their skulls. On 30 January 1519, Babur married Bibi Mubarika, daughter of a Pashtun chief Shah Mansur Yusufzai, as part of a peace treaty with Yusufzai Pashtuns. Mubarika played an important role in the establishment of friendly relations of Yusufzai Pashtun chiefs with Babur, who later founded the Mughal Empire after defeating Pashtun Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the Battle of Panipat in 1526.

Western Asia

Caucasus

Kingdom of Georgia, a Christian kingdom dominated on the most of Caucasus, was subjected many times by Timur between 1386 and 1403. These conflicts were intimately linked with the wars between Timur and Tokhtamysh, the last Khan of Golden Horde. He officially proclaimed his invasions to be jihad against non-Muslims. Although Timur invaded the Georgia many times but he never made attempt to make Georgia a Muslim country. Timur personally led most of these raids to subdue the recalcitrant Georgian monarch. Kingdom of Georgia suffered a great loss due to these invasions and never recovered again. By the time George VII was forced to accept Timur's terms of peace and agree to pay tribute, he was a master of little more than gutted towns, ravaged countryside and a shattered monarchy.

Timur's first appearance in the Caucasus was a response to Tokhtamysh's marauding inroad into Northern Iran through the Caucasian lands in 1385. After having overrun Azerbaijan and Kars, Timur marched into Georgia. Firstly he assailed Samtskhe atabegate, the principality of Kingdom of Georgia. From there, he marched against Tbilisi which the Georgian king Bagrat V had fortified. The city fell on November 21, 1386, and King Bagrat V was captured. However Bagrat V was given some 12,000 troops to reestablish himself in Georgia under Timur's suzerainty.

In the following years Timur invaded Georgia many times and remained victorious in most of conflicts. In spring of 1387, he returned to Georgia to take revenge for the ambush and escape. In 1394, he again captured eastern provinces which were taken by Georgians during Tokhtamysh–Timur wars.

In 1395 the desperate Georgians allied themselves with Sidi Ali of Shekki and captured the Jalayirid prince, Tahir. This event prompted Timur to return, later in 1399. He took Shekki and devastated the neighboring region of Kakheti. In the spring of 1400, Timur moved back to destroy the Georgian state once and for all. He demanded that George VII should hand over the Jalayirid Tahir but George VII refused and met Timur at the Sagim River in Lower Kartli, but suffered a defeat. After the war, of those who survived the fighting and reprisals, many thousands died of hunger and disease, and 60,000 survivors were enslaved and carried away by Timur's troops.

In late 1401, Timur invaded the Caucasus once again. George VII had to sue for peace, and sent his brother with the contributions. Timur made peace with George VII on condition that the King of Georgia supplied him troops during his campaign against Ottoman Empire and granted the Muslims special privileges. Once the Ottomans were defeated, Timur, back to Erzurum in 1402, decided to punish the king of Georgia for not having come to present his congratulations on his victory. Historians reported that 700 towns were destroyed and their inhabitants massacred by Timurid forces.

George VII had to pay a huge tribute in the name of Timur. After the tribute, Timur made peace with George VII and then finally he left Caucasus permanently. All the territories from Beylagan to Trebizond were officially given by Timur as an appanage to his grandson Khalil Sultan.

Eastern Europe

Golden Horde was a division of Mongol Empire which was mainly located in Eastern Europe. After the death of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan and emperor of Golden Horde, the Golden Horde itself divided into many wings with mainly White and Blue wings among Jochi's descendants. In the late 1370s and early 1380s, Timur firstly helped Tokhtamysh against his uncle Urus Khan to assume supreme power in the White wing and then in the unification of Golden Horde. Timur also supported him to attack Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1382 and get tribute from the Muscovy.

After being established, Tokhtamysh invaded Azerbaijan and Northwest Iran in 1385 when Timur was busy in his conquest of Persia. Tokhtamysh plundered Tabriz. The inevitable response by Timur resulted in the major-scale war between them. The initial battle was fought between them at Volga River in 1391 which became victorious for Timur and allowed Tokhtamysh with his remaining army to escape. Despite the defeat, Tokhtamysh recovered his position and in the spring of 1395 raided the Timurid territory of Shirvan.

At that time Timur then counter-attacked by not only reconquering his own territories but also the realm of enemy via the crossing Caucasus region. In 1395, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River and concluding the struggle between them. In the same year, Timur also plundered Sarai, the capital of Golden Horde and other important cities including Ukek, Majar, Azaq and Astrakhan. After the battle of Terek River, Tokhtamysh was deposed and fleeing to the Ukrainian steppes where he asked for help from Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania but he never restored again.

Timur installed Edigu on the throne under his suzerainty in place of Tokhtamysh, Golden Horde became tributary of Timur and the boundaries of Timurid Empire were secured. The Golden Horde never recovered again from this and in the middle of the 15th century, it fragmented into smaller khanates: the Kazan Khanate, Nogai Horde, Qasim Khanate, Crimean Khanate and Astrakhan Khanate. This led to the decline of Tatar-Mongol rule over Russian lands and thus in 1480, the Grand duchy of Moscow became free to pay tribute to Tatar-Mongols.

Gallery

References

Further reading

Beatrice Forbes Manz, "Temür and the Problem of a Conqueror's Legacy," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Apr., 1998)
Abazov, Rafis. "Timur (Tamerlane) and the Timurid Empire in Central Asia." The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2008. 56–57.
YÜKSEL, Musa Şamil. "Timur'un Yükselişi ve Batı'nın Diplomatik Cevabı, 1390–1405." Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 1.18 (2005): 231–243.
Shterenshis, Michael V. "Approach to Tamerlane: Tradition and Innovation." Central Asia and the Caucasus 2 (2000).

Marozzi, Justin, Tamerlane: sword of Islam, conqueror of the world, London: HarperCollins, 2004
Marlowe, Christopher: Tamburlaine the Great. Ed. J. S. Cunningham. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1981.
Novosel'tsev, A. P. "On the Historical Evaluation of Tamerlane." Soviet studies in history 12.3 (1973): 37–70.
Sykes, P. M. "Tamerlane." Journal of the Central Asian Society 2.1 (1915): 17–33.

Marozzi, Justin, "Tamerlane", in: The Art of War: great commanders of the ancient and medieval world, Andrew Roberts (editor), London: Quercus Military History, 2008.

Battles of Timur
Military history of the Timurid Empire
1370s conflicts
1380s conflicts
1390s conflicts
1400s conflicts
1370s in Asia
1380s in Asia
1390s in Asia
1400s in Asia
1370s in Europe
1380s in Europe
1390s in Europe

Timurid conquests and invasions


Max Emanuel Cenčić (born 21 September 1976) is a Croatian countertenor, as of 1994 based in Austria. He was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben.

Early career as a boy soprano
Born Max Emanuel Cenčić in Zagreb, he started singing at a very early age, earning fame in his native Croatia at the age of six after singing the Queen of the Night's coloratura aria "Der Hölle Rache" from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte on Zagreb television.  From circa 1987 to 1992, Cenčić was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben, touring and recording with them.  Recorded performances, in which Cenčić was either treble soloist of the Sängerknaben or an independent male soprano, include Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Die Schöpfung, and Mozart's Requiem, alongside countertenor Derek Lee Ragin).  Cenčić can also be heard as the leading treble soloist with the Wiener Sängerknaben in numerous recordings of liturgical and secular music on the Philips label.  A particular highlight from his recordings with the Sängerknaben is a performance of the vocal version of Johann Strauss II's Frühlingsstimmen, a remarkable feat of vocalism for a boy soprano. Cenčić  was educated at Downside School in Somerset between the ages of 14 and 16.

Post-Sängerknaben career as a male soprano
From 1992 to 1997, he pursued a solo career, singing soprano although his voice had already broken. Following considerable success as a male soprano (including widely acclaimed performances as Amore in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice), he took a sabbatical from performance, during which he re-trained his voice as a high countertenor.  He made his debut as a countertenor in 2001.  Prior to adapting his vocal technique to the countertenor range, Cenčić made a series of recordings of operatic arias and Lieder for a private record label.  These recordings have been sporadically available through Arcadia, the online shop of the Wiener Staatsoper.

Countertenor
Following his re-training as a countertenor, Cenčić has enjoyed a successful career that has taken him around the world. He is noted for a series of dramatically varied portrayals, including the female role of Saint Alexis' wife (Sposa) in Stefano Landi's 1631 opera Il Sant'Alessio, with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.  Cenčić also appeared in the role of Perseo in the serenata Andromeda Liberata, attributed to Antonio Vivaldi but of dubious authorship, both in a world tour and a recording on the DGG Archiv label with Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra.

Cencic made his debut at the Vienna State Opera on 28 February 2010, in the role of the Herold in the premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Medea. He sang three additional performances of the role at the Staatsoper in November and December 2010.

A studio recording of operatic arias by George Frideric Handel, notably containing music composed for the mezzo-soprano castrato Giovanni Carestini, was released on the EMI/Virgin label in the UK on 1 March 2010.  In 2015 Decca released a recording by Parnassus Arts Productions of Leonardo Vinci's Catone in Utica co-produced by Cenčić, in which he sang the role of Arbace.

Cencic appeared as Nerone in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea for the Opéra de Lille in 2012, with Sonya Yoncheva as Poppea, Tim Mead as Ottone and Emanuelle Haïm conducting Le Concert d'Astrée. In 2017, he performed the same role in the production for the reopening of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, staged by Eva Höckmayr, conducted by Diego Fasolis, alongside Anna Prohaska as Poppea. He has also staged operas, notably Handel's Arminio, in which he also played the title role, at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in 2016

Discography
Albums
 Porpora: Opera Arias. Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Decca, 2018
 Porpora: Germanico in Germania Julia Lezhneva, Capella Cracoviensis, Jan Tomasz Adamus, Decca, 2018
 Handel; Ottone Max Emanuel Cencic, Pavel Kudinov, Lauren Snouffer, Ann Hallenberg, Anna Starushkevych, Il Pomo d'Oro, George Petrou, Decca, 2017
 Handel: Arminio, Max Emanuel Cencic, Layla Claire, Ruxandra Donose, Vince Yi, Juan Sancho, Xavier Sabata, Petros Magoulas, Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Decca, 2017
 Arie Napoletane, Il Pomo D'Oro, Maxim Emelyanychev, Decca, 2015
 Leonardo Vinci: Catone in Utica, Decca, 2015
 The 5 Countertenors, Max Emanuel Cencic, Yuriy Mynenko, Xavier Sabata, Vince Yi, Valer Barna-Sabadus, Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Decca, 2015
 Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Max Emanuel Cencic, Malin Hartelius, Franco Fagioli, Emmanuelle de Negri, Insula Orchestra, Laurence Equilbey, Archiv, 2015
 Hasse: Siroe, Julia Lezhneva, Mary-Ellen Nesi, Franco Faglioli, Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Decca, 2014
 Handel: Tamerlano, Xavier Sabata, Max Emanuel Cencic, John Mark Ainsley, Karina Gauvin, Ruxandra Donose, Il Pomo d'Oro, Riccardo Minasi, Naive Classique, 2014
 Rokoko, arias, Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Decca, 2014
 Venezia, Il Pomo d'oro, Riccardo Minasi Virgin, 2013
 Vinci: Artaserse, Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Valer Barna-Sabadus, Franco Fagioli, Concerto Köln, Diego Fasolis, Virgin, 2012
 Handel: Alessandro, Karina Gauvin, Julia Lezhneva, Armonia Aeterna, George Petrou, Decca, 2012
 Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Caldara: Cantatas, compilation box 3CD Capriccio, 2012
 Gluck: Ezio 1750 version, Topi Lehtipuu, Sonia Prina, Ann Hallenberg, Julian Pregardien, Mayuko Karasawa, Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis, Virgin, 2011
 Duetti, Philippe Jaroussky William Christie, Virgin, 2011
 Vivaldi: Farnace, Max Emanuel Cencic, Ruxandra Donose, Mary-Ellen Nesi, Ann Hallenberg, Karina Gauvin, Daniel Behle, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, I Barocchisti, Diego Fasolis, Virgin, 2011
 Handel: Mezzo-Soprano Opera Arias, I Barocchisti, Diego Fasolis, Virgin, 2010
 Handel: Faramondo, Philippe Jaroussky, Sophie Karthäuser, Choeur de la Radio Suisse, I Barocchisti, Diego Fasolis, Virgin, 2009
 Handel: Rodrigo, Al Ayre Espanol Eduardo Lopez Banzo, Ambroisie 2008
 Rossini: Opera Arias & Ouvertures, Michael Hofstetter, Virgin, 2008
 Handel: Fernando (Sosarme), Il Complesso Barocco, Alan Curtis, Virgin, 2007
 Domenico Scarlatti: Scarlatti Cantatas Vol. 2, Harpsichord: Aline Zylberajch, Lute and Gitarre: Yasunori Imamura, Cello: Maya Amrein Capriccio, 2006
 Gluck: Ezio (1750), Max Emanuel Cencic, Matthias Rexroth, Neue Düsseldorfer Hofmusik, Andreas Stoehr, Coviello, 2006
 Caldara: Caldara Cantatas, Capriccio, 2005
 Vivaldi and others: Andromeda Liberata, Andrea Marcon, Archiv, 2004
 The Vivaldi Album, Karsten Erik Ose, Capriccio, 2004
 Domenico Scarlatti: Cantate d'amore, Karsten Erik Ose, Capriccio, 2003
DVD
 Handel: Arminio, Max Emanuel Cencic, Juan Sancho, Lauren Snouffer, Owen Willetts, Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk, Gaia Petrone, Armonia Atenea, George Petrou, Karlsruhe, CMajor, 2017
 Vinci: Artaserse, Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Valer Barna-Sabadus, Franco Fagioli, Concerto Köln, Diego Fasolis, Warner Music Group Germany, 2012
 Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea, Philippe Jaroussky (Nerone), Danielle de Niese (Poppea), Anna Bonitatibus (Ottavia), Max Emanuel Cencic (Ottone), Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Virgin, 2012
 Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea, Sonya Yoncheva (Poppée), Max Emanuel Cencic (Néron), Ann Hallenberg (Octavie), Tim Mead (Othon), Paul Whelan (Sénèque) & Amel Brahim-Djelloul (Drusilla), Le Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor) & Jean-François Sivadier (stage director), Virgin, 2013
 Stefano Landi: Il Sant' Alessio, Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Alain Buet, Xavier Sabata, Damien Guillon, Pascal Bertin, Terry Wey, Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Virgin, 2007

References

External links

 Website of Parnassus Arts Productions
 Partial Discography (excludes recordings made with the Sängerknaben and as a boy soprano)
 Profile of Max Emanuel Cencic on the website of his French management firm, Concerts Parisiens

1976 births
Living people
21st-century Croatian male opera singers
Operatic countertenors
Musicians from Zagreb
Croatian expatriates in Austria
Performers of early music
21st-century Austrian male opera singers
20th-century Croatian male opera singers
20th-century Austrian male opera singers

Max Emanuel Cenčić


1-Hydroxyphenanthrene is a phenanthrol and a human metabolite of phenanthrene that can be detected in urine of persons exposed to PAHs.

It can also be used as a marker for PAH pollution measured in marine fish bile.

The model fungus Cunninghamella elegans produces, in the case of the biodegradation of phenanthrene, a glucoside conjugate of 1-hydroxyphenanthrene (phenanthrene 1-O-beta-glucose).

Relationship with smoking
Highly significant differences and dose-response relationships with regard to cigarettes smoked per day were found for 2-, 3- and 4-hydroxyphenanthrene and 1-hydroxypyrene, but not for 1-hydroxyphenanthrene.

References

External links

Phenanthrenoids
Phenolic human metabolites

1-Hydroxyphenanthrene


The lyre () is a stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the lute-family of instruments.  In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound table, and consists of two arms and a crossbar.

The lyre has its origins in ancient history. Lyres were used in several ancient cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.  The earliest known examples of the lyre have been recovered at archeological sites that date to c. 2700 BCE in Mesopotamia.

 The oldest lyres from the Fertile Crescent are known as the eastern lyres and are distinguished from other ancient lyres by their flat base. They have been found at archaeological sites in Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and the Levant.

The round lyre or the Western lyre also originated in Syria and Anatolia, but was not as widely used and eventually died out in the east c. 1750 BCE. The round lyre, called so for its rounded base, reappeared centuries later in ancient Greece c. 1700-1400 B.C.E., and then later spread throughout the Roman Empire. This lyre served as the origin of the European lyre known as the Germanic lyre or rotte that was widely used in north-western Europe from pre-Christian to medieval times.

Etymology
The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family. The English word comes via Latin from the Greek.

Classification

Hornbostel–Sachs classifies the lyre as a member of the lute-family of instruments which is one of the families under the chordophone classification of instruments. Hornbostel–Sachs divide lyres into two groups Bowl lyres (321.21), Box lyres (321.22).
 In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound table, and consists of two arms and a crossbar.

Ancient lyres
There is evidence of the development of many forms of lyres from the period 2700 B.C.E through 700 B.C.E. Lyres from the ancient world are divided by scholars  into two separate groups, the eastern lyres and the western lyres, which are defined by patterns of geography and chronology.

Eastern lyres

Eastern lyres, also known as flat-based lyres, are lyres which originated in the Fertile Crescent (Mesoptamia) in what is present day Syria, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt. The eastern lyres all contain sound boxes with flat bases. They are the oldest lyres with iconographical evidence of their existence, such as depictions of the eastern lyre on pottery, dating back to 2700 B.C.E.

While flat-based lyres originated in the East, they were also later found in the West after 700 BCE. By the Hellenistic period (c. 330 BCE) what was once a clearly divided use of flat-based lyres in the East and round-based lyres in the West had disappeared, as trade routes between the East and the West dispersed both kinds of instruments across more geographic regions.

Eastern lyres are divided into four main types: bull lyres, thick lyres, thin lyres and giant lyres.

Bull lyres
Bull lyres are a type of eastern lyre that have a flat base and bull's head on one side. The lyres of Ur, are bull lyres excavated in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which date to 2500 BC and are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. However, older pictorial evidence of bull lyres exist in other parts of Mesopotamia and Elam, including Susa.

Thick lyres
Thick lyres are a type of flat-based eastern lyre that comes from Egypt (2000–100 BCE) and Anatolia (c1600 BCE). The thick lyre is distinguished by a thicker sound box which allowed for the inclusion of more strings. These strings were held on a larger 'box-bridge' than the other type of eastern lyres, and the sound hole of the instrument was cut in the body of the lyre behind the box-bridge.

While similar to the bull lyre in size, the thick lyre did not contain the head of an animal, but did depict images of animals on the arms or yoke of the instrument. Like the bull lyre, the thick lyre did not use use a plectrum but was plucked by hand.

While the clearest examples of the thick lyre are extant to archaeological sites in Egypt and Anatolia, similar large lyres with thicker soundboxes have been found in Mesopotamia (1900–1500 BCE). However, these Mesopotamia lyres lack the box-bridge found in the instruments from Egypt and Anatolia.

Thin lyres
Thin lyres are a type of flat-based eastern lyre with a thinner soundbox where the sound hole is created by leaving the base of the resonator open. The earliest known example of the thin lyre dates to c. 2500 B.C.E. in Syria. After this, examples of the thin lyre can be found throughout the Fertile Crescent. The thin lyre is the only one of the ancient eastern lyres that is still used in instrument design today among current practitioners of the instrument. As a means of support, players of the thin lyre wear a sling around the left wrist which is also attached to the base of the lyre's right arm. It is played using a plectrum or pic to strike the strings; a technique later used by the Greeks on the western lyres.

There are several regional variations in the design of thin lyres. The Egyptian thin lyre was characterized by arms that bulged outwards asymmetrically; a feature also found later in Samaria (c375–c323 BCE). In contrast, thin lyres in Syria and Phoenicia (c. 700 BCE) were symmetrical in shape and had straight arms with a perpendicular yoke which formed the outline of a rectangle.

The kinnor is an ancient Israelite musical instrument that is thought to be a type of thin lyre based on iconographic archaeological evidence. It is the first instrument from the lyre family mentioned in the Old Testament. Its exact identification is unclear, but in the modern day it is generally translated as "harp" or "lyre", and associated with a type of lyre depicted in Israelite imagery, particularly the Bar Kochba coins. It has been referred to as the "national instrument" of the Jewish people, and modern luthiers have created reproduction lyres of the "kinnor" based on this imagery.

Giant lyres
Giant lyres are a type of flat-based eastern lyre of immense size that typically required two players. Played from a standing position, the instrument stood taller than the instrumentalists. The oldest extent example of the instrument was found in the ancient city of Uruk in what is present day Iraq, and dates to c.2500 BCE. Well preserved giant lyres dating to c. 1600 B.C.E. have been found in Anatolia. The instrument reached the height of its popularity in Ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten (c. 1353—1336 B.C.E.). A giant lyre found in the ancient city of Susa (c2500 BCE) is suspected to have been played by only a single instrumentalist, and giant lyres in Egypt dating from the Hellenistic period most likely also required only a single player.

Western lyres
Western lyres, sometimes referred to as round-based lyres, are lyres from the ancient history that were extant in the Aegean, Greece and Italy. They initially contained only round rather than flat bases; but by the Hellenistic period both constructs of lyre could be found in these regions. Like the flat-based Eastern lyres, the round-based lyre also originated in northern Syria and southern Anatolia in the 3rd millennium BCE. However, this round-based construction of the lyre was less common than its flat-based counterparts in the east, and by c1750 BCE the instrument had died out completely in this region. The round-based lyre re-appeared in the West in Ancient Greece where it was sole form of lyre used between 1400 BCE and 700 BCE.

Like the eastern flat-based lyre, the western round-based lyre also had several sub-types. Homer described two different western lyres in his writings, the phorminx and kitharis. However, both of terms have not had uniform meaning across time, and their use during Homer's time was later altered. Today, scholars divide instruments referred to as kitharis into two subgroups, the round-based cylinder kithara and the flat-based concert kithara.

Phorminx

Kitharis

Cultural use in Ancient Greece

In Ancient Greece, recitations of lyric poetry were accompanied by lyre playing. The earliest picture of a Greek lyre appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (a Minoan settlement in Crete). The sarcophagus was used during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete ().

The lyre of classical antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked with the fingers as with a harp. A pick called a plectrum was held in one hand, while the fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings.

Construction
A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator), which, in ancient Greek tradition, was made out of turtle shell. Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, makes the bridge, which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that closest to the player's body; since the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut (animal intestines). They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs that might be turned, while the other was to change the placement of the string on the crossbar; it is likely that both expedients were used simultaneously.

Lyres were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The pick, or plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).

Number of strings
Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form (c. 1200 BC), there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings - pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to a bias towards refinements of intonation. The number of strings on the classical lyre therefore varied, with three, four, six, seven, eight and ten having been popular at various times.

The priest and biographer Plutarch (c. 100 AD) wrote of the musicians of the archaic period Olympus and Terpander, that they used only three strings to accompany their recitation; but there is no evidence for or against this dating from that period. The earliest known lyre had four strings, tuned to create a tetrachord or series of four tones filling in the interval of a perfect fourth. By doubling the tetrachord a lyre with seven or eight strings was obtained. Likewise the three-stringed lyre may have given rise to the six-stringed lyre depicted on many archaic Greek vases. The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum held in the right hand.

Origin
According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes stole a herd of sacred cows from Apollo. In order not to be followed, he made shoes for the cows which were facing backwards, making it appear that the animals had walked in the opposite direction. Apollo, following the trails, could not follow where the cows were going. Along the way, Hermes slaughtered one of the cows and offered all but the entrails to the gods. From the entrails and a tortoise/turtle shell, he created the Lyre. Apollo, figuring out it was Hermes who had his cows, confronted the young god. Apollo was furious, but after hearing the sound of the lyre, his anger faded. Apollo offered to trade the herd of cattle for the lyre. Hence, the creation of the lyre is attributed to Hermes. Other sources credit it to Apollo himself.

Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization. The name kissar (cithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece. This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.

Central and Northern European lyres

Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the Iron Age. Lyres are depicted on ceramic and bronze vessels of the Proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture across central Europe. Among them there are lyres with rounded bottoms, stringed instruments whose resonators seem to be missing and lyres with strongly curved yokes and single or double bulging resonators. The number of strings depicted varies from two to ten. Fragmented tuning pegs and bridges made of wood have been discovered from the Iron Age industrial settlement in the Ramsau valley at Dürrnberg, Austria. Possible further wooden tuning pegs have been found in Glastonbury in Somerset in England and Biskupin in Poland. The remains of what is thought to be the bridge of a 2300-year-old lyre were discovered on the Isle of Skye, Scotland in 2010.

In 1988, a stone bust from the 2nd or 1st century BC was discovered in Brittany, France which depicts a figure wearing a torc playing a seven-string lyre.

The Germanic lyre is representative of a separate strand of lyre development. Appearing in warrior graves of the first millennium AD, these lyres differ from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or 'yoke. Famous examples include the lyre from the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, and the decayed lyre discovered in silhouette at  the Prittlewell royal Anglo-Saxon burial in Essex. The waterlogged lyre recovered from a grave at Trossingen, Germany,  in 2001 is the best-preserved example found so far.

Bowed lyres

Some instruments called "lyres" were played with a bow in Europe and parts of the Middle East, namely the Arabic rebab and its descendants, including the Byzantine lyra.

After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. The dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, but there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.

There came to be two different kinds of bowed European lyres: those with fingerboards, and those without.

The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and the Finnish jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.

The last of the bowed lyres with a fingerboard was the "modern" () Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.

Modern lyres

In popular culture

The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the work or skill of a poet, as in Shelley's "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is" or Byron's "I wish to tune my quivering lyre, / To deeds of fame, and notes of fire".

Other instruments called "lyres"
Over time, the name in the wider Hellenic space came to be used to label mostly bowed lutes such as the Byzantine lyra, the Pontic lyra, the Constantinopolitan lyra, the Cretan lyra, the lira da braccio, the Calabrian lira, the lijerica, the lyra viol, the lirone.

Global variants and parallels

Europe
 Armenia: քնար (knar)
 British Isles: Scotland cruit, The Shetland Isles gue and Wales crwth
 England: Anglo-Saxon Lyre,  giga , rote or crowd
 Continental Europe: Germanic or Anglo-Saxon lyre (hearpe), rotte or crotte
 Estonia: talharpa
 Finland: jouhikko
 Greece: λύρα (lýra; Modern Greek pronunciation: líra) with the subtypes of Politiki lyra ("Constantinopolitan lyre"), Cretan lyra and Pontic lyra ("lyre of the Black Sea", also known as kemençe)
 Italy: the Latin chorus, the modern Calabrian lira

 Lithuania: lyra
 Norway: giga, Kraviklyra
 Poland: lira
 Russia: Lyre-shaped gusli

Asia
 Arabian peninsula: tanbūra
 Iraq (Sumer): tanbūra, zami, zinar
 Israel: kinnor
 India and Pakistan: tanpura
 Kazakhstan: kossaz
 Siberia: nares-jux
 Yemen: tanbūra, simsimiyya

Africa
 Egypt: kissar, tanbūra, simsimiyya
 Ethiopia and Eritrea: begena, dita, krar
 Kenya: kibugander, litungu, nyatiti, obokano
 Sudan: kissar, tanbūra
 Uganda: endongo, ntongoli

See also
 Asor — an otherwise-unknown instrument mentioned in the Old Testament which may have been a type of lyre or a type of harp.
Ancient Greek harps
 Barbiton (barbitos) — a bass version of the kithara (cithara).
 Kithara (cithara) — the version of the lyre used by professional musicians.
 Lyre-guitar — a modern instrument that combines a guitar and a zither. Also called a "harp guitar".
 Phorminx — an ancient wooden-frame lyre intermediate in size between the smaller tortoise-shell lyre and larger kithara, which replaced it.

References

Bibliography

 Andersson, Otto. The Bowed Harp, translated and edited by Kathleen Schlesinger (London: New Temple Press, 1930).
 Bachmann, Werner. The Origins of Bowing, trans. Norma Deane (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
 Jenkins, J. "A Short Note on African Lyres in Use Today." Iraq 31 (1969), p. 103 (+ pl. XVIII).
 Kinsky, George. A History of Music in Pictures (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937).
 Sachs, Curt. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1943).
 Sachs, Curt. The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).

External links

 Anglo Saxon Lyres at Yahoo!Groups
 Ensemble Kérylos a music group directed by scholar Annie Bélis, dedicated to the recreation of ancient Greek and Roman music, and playing instruments reconstructed on archaeological reference.
 "The Universal Lyre – From Three Perspectives"  Article by Diana Rowan: a survey of three current lyre practitioners and builders – Temesgen Hussein of Ethiopia, Michalis Georgiou of Cyprus and Michael Levy of the United Kingdom.
 Hornbostel-Sachs classification for classification category
 Summary of Schemes of Tonal Organizations
 The Agia Triada sarcophagus

Ancient Greek musical instruments
Ancient Roman musical instruments
Early musical instruments
Greek musical instruments
Italian musical instruments
French musical instruments
German musical instruments
English musical instruments
Cornish musical instruments
Welsh musical instruments
Scottish musical instruments
Irish musical instruments

Lyre


The Great Impostor is a 1961 American comedy-drama film based on the story of an impostor named Ferdinand Waldo Demara. Loosely based on Robert Crichton's 1959 biography of the same name, it stars Tony Curtis in the title role and was directed by Robert Mulligan. The film only generally follows Demara's real-life exploits, and is much lighter in tone than the book on which it is based.

Plot
As he is arrested by the state police on an island in New England, a man born as Ferdinand Waldo Demara, but known by many other identities, recalls the events that brought him to this point.

Demara quit high school as a boy and joined the U.S. Army. He wanted to become an officer, but his lack of a high school diploma prevented it. On a whim, he fakes a set of credentials and becomes a U.S. Marine.

When his lie is detected, Demara, facing military jail time, fakes his suicide and hides out in a monastery, applying to become a Trappist monk. In spite of his best efforts, he is asked to return to the regular world. He is eventually identified as a wanted Marine and imprisoned in a military prison. There, on the eve of being released early for good behavior, Demara inveigles the warden to describe the details of his life to him. Once free, he steals the warden's identity and lands a job as the aide to the warden of a large Texas penitentiary, where he takes up with the man's daughter, Eulalie, after she pursues him. When a new inmate that he knew in military prison recognizes him in the Texas penitentiary, Demara is threatened by blackmail and once again flees.

He joins the Royal Canadian Navy, using the forged credentials of a doctor. After falling in love with an RCN nurse, Catherine Lacey, Demara is assigned to a destroyer as the ship's doctor bound for the war in Korea. He is immediately pressed into performing a tooth extraction on the ship's captain. In Korean waters, he treats nineteen South Korean battle casualties, including three that need immediate surgery. The soldiers survive, and he is hailed as a hero. On shore, he sets up a hospital for the local Koreans and treats all who need help.

The ensuing international publicity of his exploits reaches the doctor he is impersonating, and Demara is exposed and is once again faced with military imprisonment. As a court-martial looms, Nurse Lacey, the ship's captain, and others who have seen Demara's good side vow to testify on his behalf, feeding an already heavy media frenzy. Weighing potential disrepute reflecting on the Royal Canadian Navy against his stellar RCN service, the board of inquiry instead gives him a swift, under-the-radar general discharge. Demara next becomes a teacher in rural New England when he is finally apprehended by state police, but he easily escapes again.

The FBI determines to track down and finally capture this great impostor. Demara arrives at FBI headquarters in his new guise as a federal agent assigned to hunt down his true self!

Cast
 Tony Curtis as Demara
 Edmond O'Brien as Capt. Glover
 Gary Merrill as Pa Demara
 Karl Malden as Father Devlin
 Raymond Massey as the Abbot
 Joan Blackman as Lt. Catherine Lacey
 Arthur O'Connell as Warden Chandler
 Jeanette Nolan as Ma Demara
 Sue Ane Langdon as Eulalie
 Frank Gorshin as Barney
 Robert Middleton as Lt. Brown
 Mike Kellin as Clifford Thompson (inmate)
 Dick Sargent as Hotchkiss
 Doodles Weaver as Farmer Hauling Fertilizer
 Jerry Paris as Defense Lieutenant
 Cindi Wood as WAC Lieutenant

Awards
 Nominee Best director - Directors Guild of America (Robert Mulligan)

Reception
A.H. Weiler of the New York Times wrote: "...the film is not a harebrained exaggeration of the facts. But the story, enhanced by the serio-comic talents of Tony Curtis in the title role, add up to an odd-ball, but engaging, movie. ...Variety, it's been pointed out, is the spice of life, and Demara's life, as presented here, appears to be spicy beyond compare, but the record backs our adventurer fully. ...Suffice it to say that Mr. Curtis, running this gamut of adventures, seriously as well as with a wink, contributes the necessary light touch that makes palatable this derring-do based on factual data."

See also
 List of American films of 1961
 Catch Me If You Can, a 2002 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio
 The Pretender, a TV series

References

External links

1961 films
1961 comedy-drama films
1960s American films
1960s English-language films
American black-and-white films
American biographical films
American comedy-drama films
Biographical films about fraudsters
Films about con artists
Films based on biographies
Films directed by Robert Mulligan
Films scored by Henry Mancini
Universal Pictures films
Cultural depictions of fraudsters
Cultural depictions of American men

The Great Impostor


Josef Mysliveček (9 March 1737 – 4 February 1781) was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence.

Biography

Mysliveček was born in Prague, one of twin sons of a prosperous mill owner, and studied philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University before following in the footsteps of his father. No documentation exists to support claims that he was actually born in Horní Šárka, a rural district to the north and west of Prague in the early eighteenth century. He achieved the rank of master miller in 1761, but gave up the family profession in order to pursue musical studies. In Prague, he studied composition with Franz Habermann and Josef Seger in the early 1760s. His ambitions led him to travel to Venice in 1763 to study with Giovanni Pescetti. His travel to Italy was subsidized in part from family wealth, in part from the Bohemian nobleman Vincenz von Waldstein. In Italy he became known as Il Boemo ("the Bohemian") and also Venatorino ("the little hunter"), a literal translation of his name. Reports that he was known as Il divino Boemo ("the Divine Bohemian") during his lifetime are false. The nickname originated from the title of a romanetto about the composer by Jakub Arbes that was first published in 1884. He was made a member of the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna in 1771. Mysliveček prized freedom of movement and was never employed directly by any noble, prelate, or ruler, unlike most of his contemporaries. He earned his living through teaching, performing, and composing music, and frequently received gratuities from wealthy admirers.

After his arrival in Italy in 1763, Mysliveček never left the country except for a visit to Prague in 1767–68, a short visit to Vienna in 1773, and an extended stay in Munich between December 1776 and April 1778. His return to Prague led to the production of several of his operas. He was invited to Munich by the musical establishment of the Elector Maximilian III Joseph to compose an opera for the carnival season of 1777 (Ezio).

Mysliveček's first opera, Semiramide, was performed at Bergamo in 1766 (there is no evidence that a putative production at Parma of an opera titled Medea ever took place). His Il Bellerofonte was a great success in Naples after its first performance at the Teatro San Carlo on 20 January 1767, and it led to a number of commissions from Italian theaters. Ever after, his productions would almost always feature first-rate singers in the leading roles. Almost all of his operas were successful until a disastrous production of Armida that took place at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan for the carnival season of 1780. One of the many honors that came to him for his talents as a composer of opera was a commission to provide the music for the opening of a new opera theater in Pavia in 1773 (his first setting of Metastasio's libretto Demetrio).

Other than a reputation for promiscuity recorded in the Mozart correspondence, nothing is known of Mysliveček's love life. The composer never married, and no names of lovers are recorded.  There is no documentation to support reports of romantic liaisons with the singers Caterina Gabrielli and Lucrezia Aguiari; no mention of love affairs with these singers pre-dates the publication of the fifth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954).

Financially irresponsible throughout his life, he died destitute in Rome in 1781. He is buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where a memorial placed by latter-day Czech admirers can be seen. No trace has ever been found of a memorial in marble supposedly erected shortly after his death by James Hugh Smith Barry, a wealthy English student of Mysliveček who paid for his funeral expenses.

Relationship with Mozart
In 1770 Mysliveček met the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Bologna. He was close to the Mozart family until 1778, when contacts were broken off after he failed to make good on a promise to arrange an opera commission for Mozart at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. Earlier, the Mozarts found his dynamic personality irresistible.  In a letter to his father Leopold written from Munich on 11 October 1777, Mozart described his character as "full of fire, spirit and life."

Similarities in his musical style with the earlier works of Mozart have often been noted.  Additionally, Mozart used musical motifs drawn from various Mysliveček compositions to help fashion opera arias, symphonic movements, keyboard sonatas, and concertos. He also made an arrangement or transcription for voice and pianoforte of the aria "Ridente la calma", an aria sung on several occasion with different texts by the famous castrato soprano Luigi Marchesi. The aria had probably been written for the star singer by Mysliveček with the words "Il caro mio bene" and inserted in his hasty re-working of his own opera Armida of 1780, after the premiere had failed probably because it was deemed too experimental (and too "French") by the Milanese audience. In fact the aria appears in the score of the  Mysliveček opera in the Palacio de Ajuda library but it is absent from the printed libretto prepared for the premiere. Thus, it is probable that this aria pre-existed Armida and we cannot be sure whether its author is Mysliveček, Marchesi himself or some other composer. The musicologist Paolo V. Montanari discovered that Luigi Marchesi kept this aria as "aria di baule" throughout his career, inserting it in various operas and cantatas by other composers, such as Il trionfo della pace (Turin, 1782) by Francesco Bianchi (from which the text "Ridente la calma" comes) and Angelica e Medoro by Gaetano Andreozzi (Venice, 1791). Mozart's arrangement or transcription - probably written after Marchesi's triumph in Vienna in 1785 in Giuseppe Sarti's Giulio Sabino - is known with the catalogue number KV 152 (210a).

According to the same letter of Wolfgang Mozart written from Munich on 11 October 1777, an incompetent surgeon burned off Mysliveček's nose while trying to treat a mysterious illness.   A letter of Leopold Mozart to his son of 1 October 1777 refers to the illness as something shameful for which Mysliveček was deserving of social ostracism. Mysliveček's reputation for sexual promiscuity, Leopold's insinuations, and the reference to facial disfigurement in Wolfgang's letter hint unmistakably at the symptoms of tertiary syphilis. Mysliveček's explanation for his condition to Wolfgang – bone cancer caused by a carriage accident — seems preposterous. The concern Mozart revealed to his father at this time for Mysliveček's sufferings was very touching.  In the entire Mozart correspondence, no individual outside the Mozart family was ever the cause for so much outpouring of emotion as what is found in Wolfgang's letter of 11 October 1777.

Compositions

In all, he wrote twenty-six opere serie, including the aforementioned Il Bellerofonte. Nearly all were successful at their first performances until the disaster of Armida at La Scala during carnival of 1780.  Some of the irregularities that doomed this production were not Mysliveček's fault, such as the interruption of performances caused by the lying-in of the prima donna Caterina Gabrielli, who gave birth, out of wedlock, in the middle of the run, at the age of 49.

During the period of his activity as a composer of operas (1766–1780), Mysliveček succeeded in having more new opere serie brought into production than any other composer in Europe. It is noteworthy that in this same period more of his works were performed at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the most prestigious venue in Italy at that time for productions of serious opera, than those of any other composer. Nonetheless, his contributions to Italian operatic culture of the 1760s and 1770s have been almost universally ignored by opera historians.

Mysliveček and Gluck were the first Czechs to become famous as operatic composers, but their output exhibits few, if any, Czech characteristics. Mysliveček's operas were very much rooted in a style of Italian opera seria that prized above all the vocal artistry to be found in elaborate arias.

Among his other pieces were oratorios, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music, including the Op. 2 string quintets which were almost certainly the earliest string quintets with two violas ever published. Additionally, he was a pioneer in the composition of music for wind ensemble, the outstanding examples of which are his three wind octets. It may be fair to say that his greatest composition is the oratorio Isacco figura del Redentore, first performed in Florence in 1776. His violin concertos are perhaps the finest composed between the generation of Vivaldi and the Mozart violin concertos of 1775.

He was also one of the most gifted and most prolific composers of eighteenth-century symphonies, although his contributions to this genre have been ignored by musicologists in western Europe and North America almost as completely as his operas have been. Nearly all of Mysliveček's symphonies are cast in three movements without a minuet, following Italian traditions that originated in opera overtures. His opera overtures are also cast in three movements and were frequently performed as independent instrumental pieces. In the 1770s, he was the finest symphonist resident in Italy, and the esteem he enjoyed is reflected in the issuance of a set of symphonies (originally opera overtures) published by Ranieri del Vivo in Florence that was the first anthology of symphonies ever printed in Italy.

Mysliveček's compositions evoke a gracious, diatonic style typical of Italian classicism in music. His best works are characterized by melodic inventiveness, logical continuity, and a certain emotional intensity that may be attributable to his dynamic personality.

Works

Instrumental works

Mysliveček's instrumental music includes divertimenti, sonatas, symphonies, etc. Lost and questionable works have been omitted from this list, but they are inventoried fully in Freeman, Josef Mysliveček, which also provides a complete list of recordings and early and modern editions of the composer's music. The listings here do not report all manuscript and printed sources, rather key eighteenth-century sources and catalogs that offer clues to chronology.

Works for solo keyboard

 Six Easy Divertimentos for the Harpsichord or Piano-Forte.  London: Longman & Broderip, 1777. [F major, A major, D major, B-flat major, G major, C major]
 Six Easy Lessons for the Harpsichord.  Edinburgh: Corri & Sutherland, 1784. [C major, B-flat major, A major, G major, F major, D major]
 1 undated sonata in C major in the Archivio e Museo della Badia of the Basilica Benedettina di San Pietro, Perugia

Violin sonatas

 5 sonatas for violin and a bass line preserved in manuscripts in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica Niccolò Paganini in Genoa, perhaps from the 1760s
 Six Sonatas for the Piano Forte or Harpsichord with an Accompaniment for a Violin.  London: Charles & Samuel Thompson, c. 1775.  [E-flat major, D major, C major, B-flat major, G major, F major]
 6 sonatas for violin and keyboard in a manuscript dated 1777 in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague [D major, F major, E-flat major, G major, B-flat major, E-flat major]
 6 sonatas for violin and keyboard in an undated manuscript in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague [D major, G major, C major, B-flat major, F major, C major]

Sonatas for two cellos

 6 sonatas for two cellos and a bass line in an undated manuscript in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague [A major, D major, G major, F major, C major, B-flat major]

Sonata for violin, cello, and bass

 1 sonata in G major for violin, cello, and a bass line in an undated manuscript in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague

Duets for two flutes

 6 duets for two flutes and a bass line in an undated manuscript in the private collection of Antonio Venturi in Montecatini-Terme, Italy [G major, C major, A minor, E minor, D major, B-flat major]

Trios for flute, violin, and cello

 Sei trii per flauto, violino, e violoncello.  Florence:  Del Vivo, c. 1778 [D major, G major, C major, A major, F major, B-flat major]

String trios

 1 trio for 2 violins and cello in E-flat major in the Music Library of the University of California at Berkeley (remnant of a set of six advertised in the Breitkopf catalog of 1767)
 Six sonates, op. 1, for 2 violins and cello published by La Chevardière in Paris c. 1768 [C major, A major, D major, F major, A major, E-flat major]
 Four of the trios in the Op. 1 set of La Chevardière also appear in Six Orchestra Trios for Two Violins and a Violoncello (London: Welcker, c. 1772), but the English print also contains two new trios [G major, B-flat major]
 Six sonates, op. 1, for 2 violins and cello published by La Menu in Paris in 1772 [C major, G major, E-flat major, A major, B-flat major, F major]
 5 additional trios for 2 violins and cello survive in undated manuscripts in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague [D major, F major, F major, G major, A major]
 1 additional trio in E major for 2 violins and cello (remnant of an original set of six) survives in the Biblioteca Antoniana in Padua

Trio for violin, cello, and string bass

 1 trio in G major for this combination of instruments survives in the České Muzeum Hudby

String quartets

 Sei quartetti a due violini alto e basso, op. 3.  Paris: La Chervardière; Lyon: Castaud, c. 1768.  [A major, F major, B-flat major, G major, E-flat major, C major]
 Sei quartetti a due violini, viola e violoncello, op. 1.  Offenbach: Johann André, 1777.  [E-flat major, C major, D major, F major, B-flat major, G major]
 Six quatuors à deux violons, taille et basse, op. post.  Berlin: Hummel, c. 1781.

String quintets

 VI Sinfonie concertanti o sia quintetti per due violini, due viole, e basso, Op. 2.  Paris: Venier; Lyon: Castaud, c. 1767.  [B-flat major, E major, G major, A major, D major, C major]
 6 string quintets in an undated manuscript in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena [G major, E-flat major, C major, A major, F major, B-flat major]

Wind quintets

 6 quintets for 2 oboes, 2 horns, and bassoon in undated manuscripts in the Santini-Bibliothek in Münster, probably composed in Rome in 1780 or 1781 [D major, G major, E-flat major, B-flat major, F major, C major]

Wind octets

 3 octets for 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, and 2 bassoons in undated manuscripts from the Fürstlich Fürstenburgische Hofbibliothek in Donaueschingen, probably composed in Munich in 1777 or 1778 [E-flat major, E-flat major, B-flat major]

Oboe quintets

 6 quintets for oboe with string quartet in an undated manuscript in the Biblioteca Comunale in Treviso [B-flat major, D major, F major, C major, A major, E-flat major]

Miscellaneous work for wind instruments

 "Cassation" for 2 clarinets & horn in B flat major in an undated manuscript in the Rossijskaja Nacional'naja Biblioteka in St. Petersburg

Concertos

 Violin Concerto in D major cited in the Breitkopf catalog of 1769, preserved in an undated manuscript in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 Violin Concerto in C major cited in the Breitkopf catalog of 1770, preserved in an undated manuscript in the Thüringesches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Weimar, the original version of the Cello Concerto in C major
 Violin Concerto in C major preserved in an undated manuscripts in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague and other archives
 Six violin concertos preserved in an undated manuscript in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, almost certainly composed by 1772 [E major, A major, F major, B-flat major, D major, G major]
 Cello Concerto in C major preserved in an undated manuscript in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, an arrangement of a violin concerto preserved in Weimar
 Flute Concerto in D major preserved in an undated manuscript in the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka in Wrocław
 2 Keyboard Concertos preserved in undated manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris
 3 concertos for wind quintet & orchestra in undated manuscripts in the library of the Monumento Nazionale di Montecassino

Symphonies

 No. 1 - Symphony in C major dated 1762 in a manuscript preserved in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 Nos. 2-7 – Six symphonies [D major, G major, C major, D major, G minor, D major] preserved in the print VI Sinfonie a quattro, Op. 1 (Nuremberg: Johann Ulrich Haffner, [c. 1763])
 No. 8 – Symphony in D major cited in a 1766 catalog of the musical holdings of the court of Sigmaringen
 Nos. 9-10 – Two symphonies [G major, D major] cited in a 1768 catalog of the musical holdings of the Benedictine monastery of Lambach
 Nos. 11-12 – Two symphonies [D major, E-flat major] offered for sale in the Breitkopf catalog of 1769
 No. 13 – Symphony in D major dated 1769 in a manuscript in the Moravské Zemské Muzeum in Brno
 No. 14 – Symphony in G major dated 1770 in a catalog of the musical holdings of the Benedictine monastery in Göttweig
 No. 15 – Symphony in F major preserved in a manuscript of c. 1770 in the Fürstlich Thurn und Taxis Hofbibliothek in Regensburg
 No. 16 – Symphony in B-flat major preserved in a manuscript of c. 1770 in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 No. 17 – Symphony in G major preserved in a manuscript collection from the early 1770s in the Music Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
 No. 18 - Symphony in F major preserved in a manuscript of c. 1771 in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 Nos. 19-25 – Seven symphonies [C major, D major, D major, F major, C major, D major, F major] cited in a 1771 catalog of the musical holdings of Stift Vorau [the music for Nos. 23-25 is lost]
 Nos. 26-31 – Six symphonies [C major, A major, F major, D major, B-flat major, G major] preserved in the print Six Overtures (London: William Napier, [c. 1772])
 Nos. 32-35 – Four symphonies [D major, E-flat major, A major, B-flat major] cited in an Austrian catalog of unidentifiable origins compiled c. 1775
 Nos. 36-41 – Six symphonies [D major, B-flat major, G major, E-flat major, C major, F major] offered for sale in the Breitkopf catalog of 1776/77 [all of which are lost]
 Nos. 42-47 – Six symphonies [C major, D major, E-flat major, F major, G major, B-flat major] dated 1778 in manuscripts from the library of the Pfarrkirche in Weyarn
 No. 48 – Symphony in D major dated 1780 in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Civica Girolamo Tartarotti in Rovereto
 Nos. 49-53 - Five symphonies [C major, D major, F major, F major, G major] preserved in manuscripts of c. 1780 in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 No. 54 – Symphony in E-flat major preserved in an undated manuscript in the České Muzeum Hudby in Prague
 No. 55 – Symphony in G major preserved in an undated manuscript in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena

Overtures

 Overtures are preserved for all of the Mysliveček operas and oratorios that survive in score, most of them disseminated in manuscript and printed form to be performed as separate instrumental pieces.  A complete listing of sources is presented in Freeman, Josef Mysliveček.  The most significant print of overtures is the Sei sinfonie da orchestra published by Ranieri del Vivo in Florence c. 1777, the first anthology of symphonic works ever known to have been published in Italy.

Operas
See List of operas by Josef Mysliveček.

Miscellaneous secular dramatic works

 Il Parnaso confuso (c. 1765), dramatic cantata
 Elfrida (1774), play with choruses (lost)
 Das ausgerechnete Glück (1777), children's operetta (lost)
 Theodorich und Elisa (c. 1777), melodrama

Oratorios
 Il Tobia (Padua, 1769)
 I pellegrini al sepolcro (Padua, 1770)
 Giuseppe riconosciuto (Padua, c. 1770) - lost
 Adamo ed Eva (Florence, 1771)
 La Betulia liberata (Padua, 1771) - lost
 La passione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo (Florence, 1773)
 La liberazione d'Israele (1773 – c. 1774) - lost, perhaps composed in Naples, first recorded performance in Prague in 1775
 Isacco figura del redentore (Florence, 1776; revised for a performance in Munich in March 1777 known to Mozart under the title Abramo ed Isacco)

Other vocal works
Secular cantatas
 Cantata per S.E. Marino Cavalli (1768) - lost
 Narciso al fonte (1768) - lost
 Cantata a 2 (by 1771)
 Enea negl'Elisi (1777) - lost
 Armida
 Ebbi, non ti smarir
 Non, non turbati, o Nice
 6 birthday cantatas written between 1767 and 1779 during his stays in Naples - lost

Arias
 Ah che fugir … Se il ciel mi chi rida;
 3 duetti notturni (2 vv, insts)

Sacred works
 Veni sponsa Christi (1771)
 Lytanie laurentanae
 Offertorium Beatus Bernardy

Recordings
 Opera Il Medonte. L'Arte del Mondo. cond. Werner Ehrhardt, dhm, 2011
 Opera Il Bellerofonte. Prague Chamber Orchestra cond. Zoltán Peskó, Supraphon, 2003
 Opera L'Olimpiade. Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra and Choir, cond. Oliver von Dohnányi, Naxos, 2014
 Oratorio Adamo ed Eva. Il Gardellino dir. Peter Van Heyghen

Cinema

A documentary film about the genesis of the 2013 Prague production of Mysliveček's opera L'Olimpiade, produced by Mimesis Film and directed by Petr Václav, was released in 2015 under the title Zpověď zapomenutého (Confession of the Vanished). It was a winner of the Trilobit Beroun award of 2016.

The film Il Boemo (2022), directed by Petr Václav, is a full-length biopic based on incidents from the composer's life.  It was selected by the Czech Republic as its entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for the 95th Academy Awards.

Notes

See also
 Mozart in Italy

References
  Freeman, Daniel E. Josef Mysliveček, 'Il Boemo'. Minneapolis: Calumet Editions, 2022.
  Evans, Angela, and Robert Dearling. Josef Mysliveček (1737–1781): a Thematic Catalogue of His Instrumental and Orchestral Works. Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1999.
 Josef Mysliveček
 Mozart Contemporaries: Myslivecek, Joseph
 Karadar Classical Music Dictionary Includes full libretto of  Mysliveček's Il Gran Tamerlano, 1772.
 W.A.Mozart and Josef Mysliveček Discussion begins about halfway down page.
 More at the same site Links to several other language pages.

External links

 A variety of vocal and instrumental music in manuscript, including eight complete operas, available for viewing and downloading at http://www.internetculturale.it (Subcategory:  Digital Contents)
 Confession of the Vanished (complete film, with English subtitles) on the official YouTube channel of the distribution company Pilot Film

18th-century classical composers
18th-century male musicians
Italian Classical-period composers
18th-century Bohemian musicians
Classical composers of church music
Czech classical composers
Czech male classical composers
Italian male classical composers
Italian opera composers
Male opera composers
Czech expatriates in Italy
Composers from Prague
1737 births
1781 deaths
Twin musicians
Czech twins
String quartet composers

Josef Mysliveček


Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, and Mary Lou Williams.

Technique
Stride employed left hand techniques from ragtime, wider use of the piano's range, and quick tempos. Compositions were written but were also intended to be improvised.

The term "stride" comes from the idea of the pianist's left hand leaping, or "striding", across the piano.   The left hand characteristically plays a four-beat pulse with a single bass note, octave, major seventh, minor seventh or major tenth interval on the first and third beats, and a chord on the second and fourth beats. Occasionally this pattern is reversed by placing the chord on the downbeat and bass notes on the upbeat. Unlike performers of the ragtime popularized by Scott Joplin, stride players' left hands span greater distances on the keyboard.

Stride piano is highly rhythmic because of the alternating bass note and chord action of the left hand. In the left hand, the pianist usually plays a single bass note, or a bass octave or tenth, followed by a chord triad toward the center of the keyboard, while the right hand plays syncopated melody lines with harmonic and riff embellishments and fill patterns. Proper playing of stride jazz involves a subtle rhythmic tension between the left hand which is close to the established tempo, and the right hand, which is often slightly anticipatory.

Unlike ragtime pianists, stride pianists were not concerned with ragtime form and played pop songs of the day in the stride style. Ragtime was composed, but many stride pianists improvised. Some stride players didn't read music. Stride used tension and release and dynamics. Stride can be played at all tempos, slow or fast depending on the underlying composition and treatment the pianist is performing. On occasion a good stride jazz pianist might have the left hand shift into double time.

Some younger pianists have transcribed display pieces note for note from early recordings. However, this practice only illustrates a small part of stride jazz musical adventures.

James P. Johnson (1894–1955), known as the "Father of Stride", created this style of jazz piano along with fellow pianists Willie "The Lion" Smith (1893–1973), Thomas "Fats" Waller (1904–1943) and Luckey Roberts (1887–1968). One of Johnson's contributions was to recast the "straight" feeling of ragtime with a more modern, swinging beat, sophisticated harmonies and dynamics. He discovered and employed the tenth or "broken tenth" interval. The pianist could not only substitute tenths for single bass notes but could also play broken (staggered) tenths up and down the keyboard

Stride pianist Art Tatum (1909–1956) (a fan of Fats Waller and Lee Sims, who was himself a fan of the European "Impressionist" pianists such as Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, and hosted a radio program Tatum enjoyed) introduced more complex harmonies into his playing, and, like Fats Waller, would start songs with legato explorations of chordal intricacies before launching into swing. Tatum was given a posthumous Grammy Award in 1974.

Stride pianists used devices such as arpeggios, black note slide-offs, varying rhythmic accents, and tension and release.

Stride pianists engaged in marathon cutting contests to show off their skills.

Practitioners

Other stride jazz pianists of the 20th century included Clarence Profit, Johnny Guarnieri, Mary Lou Williams, Cliff Jackson, Hank Duncan, Pat Flowers, Don Ewell, Joe Turner, Claude Hopkins, Ralph Sutton, Dick Wellstood, Dick Hyman, and Judy Carmichael. Others such as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Jaki Byard developed the style for their own ends.

Other prominent stride jazz pianists are Butch Thompson, Mike Lipskin, Bernd Lhotzky, Louis Mazetier, and Stephanie Trick, who perform internationally. Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara's solo concerts often include stride-based pieces.

Mrs Mills used a stride technique for her many sing-along and party tunes.

Works
By James Price Johnson
"Carolina Shout" (1918/1921), "Mule Walk," "Caprice Rag"
By Thomas "Fats" Waller
"Handful of Keys" (1929), "Vipers Drag" (1934), "Alligator Crawl" (1934)
By Willie "The Lion" Smith
"Finger Buster" (1931), "Echoes of Spring" (1939)

See also
 Ragtime
 Jazz piano
 Novelty piano
 Swing music

References

External links
Recordings of James P. Johnson online at the Library of Congress National Jukebox

Musical techniques
Jazz genres
Piano

Jazz terminology

Stride (music)


Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer (May 23, 1879 in Wiesbaden, Germany – September 19, 1954 in Tel Aviv, Israel) was a pediatrician and nutrition expert (especially nutrition of infants and children), professor of Medicine at the University of Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Biography
Meyer studied medicine in Munich, Berlin and Bonn, where he graduated in 1902 and worked for three years in the Charite hospital in Berlin before moving in 1905 to work with the eminent pediatrician Heinrich Finkelstein, with whom he also wrote articles and chapters in many medical books many.
After Finkelstein's retirement Meyer was appointed director of the Emperor Frederick Berlin Hospital but in May 1933 was forced to resign due to the Nazi racial laws.
In 1935 immigrated to Israel with his wife Lotte, daughter Ilse and son in law, Professor Walter Hirsch and his grandson Daniel (later psychiatrist and author bestseller Dr. Daniel Offer) and settled first in Jerusalem where he served as head of the Bikur Holim Hospital for a year. Then he moved Tel Aviv and appointed head of pediatrics at Hadassah Hospital and pediatric consultant at the hospital Tzahalon (Dajani).

Professor Meyer was the world's leading child nutritionists at his time, studied the salt content of infant nutrition and invented one of the first artificial food for children based on cow's milk. He wrote many articles and several books, first in Germany in 1930, and latter on in English.
In 1969, the Municipality of Berlin decided to place a memorial plaque on the site of the department he  ran in the thirties in the Kaiser- und Kaiserin-Friedrich-Kinderkrankenhauses Hospital.

References
 Ludwig F. Meyer erez-israel.de

1879 births
1954 deaths
German pediatricians
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine

Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer


This is a list of noted or famous  Danish writers. (The list is sorted by when they died; those who are alive, are farther down the list.)

 Tycho Brahe (d. 1601), writer of non-fiction (Astronomy)
 Søren Kierkegaard (d. 1855), writer of non-fiction (Philosophy)
 Hans Christian Andersen (d. 1875)
 Karen Blixen (Tania Blixen) (d. 1962)
 Klaus Rifbjerg (d. 2015), writer of fiction and non-fiction
 Jesper Juul (d. 2019), writer of non-fiction
 Ole Henrik Laub (d. 2019)
 Yahya Hassan (d. 2020), poet
 Pia Juul (d. 2020), poet
 Lise Nørgaard (d. 2023)

Bjarne Reuter (1950-), novelist

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Lists of writers by nationality
writers

List of Danish writers